Strange Bedfellows
A Hyper-pragmatic Alliance between European Liberals and an Illiberal Czech Technocrat
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12149261 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Vít Hloušek (0000-0003-1153-1694, Masaryk University, corresponding author), Lubomír Kopeček (0000-0003-2987-3035, Masaryk University) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 29-50 |
| Publication date | 2020-09-22 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | East European Politics and Societies and Cultures (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0888-3254 • E-ISSN: 1533-8371 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0888325420953487 |
| OpenAlex | W3089132608 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 16 |
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
Alliance · Czech · Ideology · Parliament · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Technocracy · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · European Union Policy and Governance · Law · Populism, Right-Wing Movements
Ursachen der unterschiedlichen Entwicklung demokratischer Standards in den postkommunistischen Staaten Europas
Opposition to Government and Back
Centrist and Radical Right Populists in Central and Eastern Europe
Technocracy that fails
The (worst) laws of the land
Eurosceptic narratives in the age of Covid-19
The role of far-right party performance in shaping disinformation concerns of European voters
Migration
Political Parties in the European Union
Political Parties in Western Democracies
European Party Politics in Times of Crisis
A Tool in the Toolbox
Technocratic Populism and Political Illiberalism in Central Europe
The State as a Firm
The Future of Freedom-Illiberal democracy at home and abroad
Party Formation and Democratic Transition in Spain
Between ideology and pragmatism
Anti-Islamism without Moslems
The homogeneity of West European party families
After Enlargement
National parties and group membership in the European Parliament
Power to the Parties
Understanding the illiberal turn
| Citations per year | 1.17 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Highly cited | No |