Freedom and the Illiberal Zeitgeist in East-Central Europe - a Conflict-Laden Relationship

Political and economic freedoms, as well as national sovereignty, were (re)gained only after 1989 in East-Central Europe. It followed decades of struggles that regularly turned violent, such as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968, or the Romanian Revolution of 1989, to name just a few examples. Even after the fall of the communist regimes, however, these long-awaited freedoms remained elusive. They were laden with conflicts and accompanied by a long and often polarizing process of negotiating what freedom actually meant. These debates included, but were not limited to, questions of women’s rights, the degree of state regulation in capitalist economies, the autonomy of the media, science, and civil society. The outcomes of these debates have varied across East-Central Europe. With recent democratic backsliding, they have often become battlegrounds where ideals of freedom clashed with an emerging illiberal zeitgeist (Ágh 2019). These conflicts are emblematic not only of regional specificities but also of broader global challenges to liberal democracy: scholars have argued that the rise of illiberalism represents a multifaceted response to the perceived failures of liberal democratic models (Deneen 2018; Holmes and Krastev 2019; Zielonka 2018), particularly against the backdrop of globalization, economic inequality, and cultural dislocation (Norris and Inglehart 2019).