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The essay discusses Central Eastern Europe as a ‘laboratory’ of existing, emerging as well as contained elements of illiberal backlash. The Central European countries show both challenges and resilience mechanisms in more ‘extreme’ conditions than the cases from Western Europe. The paper offers the connection between the domestic development of Central European states and the ‘polycrisis’ of European integration by linking the issue of politicisation of European integration with the emergence of illiberal politics in contemporary Europe. The goal and main argument of the paper are that there exists a nexus between illiberal Central Eastern European politicians and rising Euroscepticism in the region. The empirical research of Central Eastern European cases will help us better understand general trends of European integration politicisation.

This paper deals with the sluggish Europeanisation efforts of the current political elites of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A typical explanation for the lack of progress would be the complex structure of consociational democracy of the specific Bosnian confederation. The authors, however, claim that the structural obstacles could have been bypassed given the real will of political elites of all three nations to cooperate. The authors examine the role of the structure of the peculiar political system in comparison with the influence of the agency of Bosnian elites on the integration process. The empirical analysis focuses on the situation after the general elections in 2018. The authors discuss the contrast between the official declarations of consistent support for a European future with the real political performance of the various Bosnian party elites. These elites often misuse the institutional settings of the political system to block reforms. They also prefer the politics of obstruction to cement their leading positions within their constituent nations. More than a quarter century after the Dayton Peace Treaty and adoption of the Constitution, the lack of genuine intrinsic motivation to pursue Europeanisation has remained the main reason for the reluctant rapprochement of Bosnia to the European Union.

This paper introduces the concept of decompression as a specific process of differentiation. Decompression can be anchored as one of the phenomena of non-compliance, representing a distinctive phenomenon, however. Governments or leaders acting in a decompression way are not Eurosceptics and they do not want to reverse the course of integration. We define decompression as a sudden violation of an EU rule by a member state, which leads to immediate disruption of shared trust in a basic EU policy or principle. In the case of a crisis, we can see a 'compression', an unexpected crisis-driven demand placed on domestic institutions. Decompression is a relaxation of this pressure triggering the non-application of an EU policy or principle in reaction to changes external to the political equilibrium. It sheds new light on the persistent power of individual politicians to compromise European integration in an unintended way, so far under-reported by the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate on entrepreneurial parties with the empirical example of the Czech ANO party. The authors focus on selected aspects of the internal organisation and functioning of the party, emphasising the points where business methods and practices are transferred to the environment of party politics. The empirical part shows how the leader has built loyalty inside the party, and analyses its methods of control and coercion that are similar to the human resources recruitment techniques used in businesses. The authors investigate such matters as the vetting of candidates for public offices, the significant barriers created against those wishing to join the party and the party leadership’s strict control over membership. The article also describes the development of ANO’s electoral-professional services and the creation of mass media support. In conclusion, the authors discuss the broader future for the internal workings of entrepreneurial parties – including their lack of intra-party democracy – and their relationship with the changing landscape of contemporary party politics.

This paper deals with the changing discourses of former Czech president Miloš Zeman on European integration and the European Union. Together with his predecessors Václav Havel and Václav Klaus, Zeman symbolises the period of democratic transition and consolidation after the Velvet Revolution and, as prime minister from 1998-2002 and president from 2013-2023, he co-formulated Czech European politics. Although labelling himself a Eurofederalist, Zeman never spared any effort to criticise the EU. The paper assumes that the change in his Eurosceptic discourse was due to the institution of direct presidential elections. Zeman followed the Czech political mainstream, which is softly Eurosceptic. Moreover, Zeman's Eurosceptic critique of the EU corresponded with the positions shared by his electorate. Euroscepticism, therefore, helped Zeman's re-election in 2018. The authors analyse key texts from various periods of Zeman's political career to describe and interpret his discourses on the EU in particular and European integration in general, to demonstrate that beyond the façade of his Euro-federalism, one can find a specific version of the mainstream Czech Eurosceptic discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of the article is to contribute to the bourgeoning debate on semipresidentialism, its definition, and its characteristic features, with analysis of the empirical example of the Czech Republic, a country which, according to Elgie´s standard definition, shifted to semi-presidentialism in 2012. The author investigates whether and how Miloš Zeman, the first directly elected president of the Czech Republic, influences relations among the key political institutions in the direction of the model of a semi-presidential democracy. The paper sets out the working concept of semi-presidentialism first and, through the lenses of process tracing, analyses the goals and acts of Zeman after he entered office in January 2013. The case study of the Czech Republic sheds light not only on the recent development(s) in the Czech political system, but it can be seen as an interesting example of how strong political personalities are attempting to expand their influence on politics in a parliamentary democracy and what the possible limits of this effort are.

The article deals with the membership of the most important Czech political party, ANO (meaning "yes" in Czech), led by Andrej Babiš, in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). Our goals are to reconstruct how Babiš's party joined ALDE and to discuss the ideological differences between ANO and ALDE. The paper shows that ALDE's offer of membership in 2014 was motivated by a pragmatic need to bolster its own position in the European Parliament; ANO, meanwhile, needed to anchor itself in European politics. Andrej Babiš's technocratic and illiberal view was not apparent at the beginning, but more importantly, this did not matter to ALDE. ALDE's Czech "point of contact," ANO's foreign policy expert and the leader of its party group in the European Parliament, Pavel Telička, made ANO's membership credible. However, as a Euro-optimist, Telička was not compatible with ANO's flexible ideological character in the long term and the party group split up. A comparison of the parties' European Parliament election manifestos and positions on crucial controversial European issues clearly reveals a deep division between ALDE and ANO—and their fundamentally opposed ideological positions. We describe the findings as a new hyper-pragmatic trend in the creation of Europarties, which weakens their ideological cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]