Getting the Right Right - Redefining the Centre - Right in Post - Communist Europe
نویسنده
چکیده
Existing literature on the centre-right in Eastern and Central Europe is small and fragmentary. This contrasts with the voluminous, detailed and often sophisticated comparative literatures on the left and the far right in the region. This article reviews and synthesises the existing literature and to suggests the outline of a definition of the right and centre-right in the region, which can both accommodate its diversity and provide a shared framework for analysis. It argues that centre-right should be understood neither an atavistic throwback to pre-communist past nor a product of the straightforward assimilation of Western ideologies. Rather, it is a product of the politics of late communism, domestic reform, European integration and post-Cold War geo-political realignment, which has powerfully re-shaped historical influences and foreign models Introduction The existing literature on the centre-right in Eastern and Central Europe is small and fragmentary. Current published research amounts to an edited collection, one book length treatment, which largely reviews prospects for democratisation, several monographs on national cases, and a small number of comparative papers. A number of other works discuss the centre-right in the region as a subsidiary theme within accounts of topics such as economic transformation and the break-up of Czechoslovakia. Critical, left-wing scholarship has also sometimes focused on East and Central centre-right as the key political vehicle for the restoration of capitalism and agent of transnational capital after 1989. The paucity of literature on the centreright in post-communist Europe contrasts with the voluminous, detailed and often * Dr Seán Hanley is Lecturer in East European Politics at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He has published a number of articles on party politics in the Czech Republic and is currently working on a book dealing on The Rise and Fall of the New Czech Right
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