The crisis of the Left Wing in the Visegrad Group

Abstract

As a result of the parliamentary elections held in the Czech Republic on October 20-21, 2017, the two left-wing parties of the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) achieved the worst results in the history of their parliamentary rivalry from the time of the Velvet Divorce [Výsledky voleb a referend: 2018]. This fact is part of the regularity of recent years also in Poland, Hungary and partly in Slovakia - weaker results in the parliamentary elections of left parties. This article is an attempt to show the political strength of the most important left-wing parties in these countries. It will be a kind of background that will help show the scale of the crisis. Otherwise, we should consider parties isolated from those that had a significant influence on state policy through the governance. The index of participation and government responsibility suggested by Giuseppe Ieraci will be helpful in this case. The second part of this article is an attempt to identify the causes of the crisis. It is known that the determinants of this state of affairs are many, the more necessary it seems to systematize them and attempt to indicate similarities in this respect in the Visegrad Group countries. This will allow us to determine if there are common features of the leftist crisis in the V4, which in turn may become the basis of discussions about left-wing issues in Central and Eastern Europe, leading to reflections on the contemporary challenges of left-wing parties. Although the national political scenes as well as the processes taking place in their areas, in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary are clearly different from the mechanisms and decisions in Western Europe, it is impossible to analyze the subject taken by the authors in isolation from the crisis of the West European Left Wing as well as the growing debate and critical voices towards liberal democracy, which, according to some European leaders, such as Viktor Orban, is a failure in the field of solving the most important problems of the modern state [Nowak 2018: 45].