Towards conservatism? Party politics in Slovakia at the end of the 2010s

Abstract

The Slovak political system has changed rapidly since the Republic’s formation in 1993. Today the number of ideologically conservative political parties is rapidly rising. This article clarifies some aspects of recent party-political developments in Slovakia. To provide an overview, only the most important social milestones have been taken into account. Specifically, the 2015 referendum on the protection of the ‘traditional family’, the mass civic protests that erupted in 2012 and 2018, and the business–mafia–political connections that have been exposed will be discussed.

The Ideological Recomposition of Political Elites in Serbia since 2012

“…With regard to post -communist countries specifically, over the past decade, scholars have underlined various trends, from global patterns of an updated version of 'competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky -Way 2010;Bieber 2018a) to 'situational nationalism' in Montenegro (Jenne -Bieber 2014), 'illiberalism/illiberal democracy' in Hungary (Kürti 2020) and Poland (Karolewski 2020), 'conservatism' in Slovakia (Sekerák 2019) and, broadly speaking, 'de--democratization' (Szymański -Ufel 2018;Procházka -Cabada 2020). The common denominator of these regimes is democratic backsliding which is rooted in the failure of reformist governments in forming independent and democratic institutions since the beginning of the 2000s.…”