Abstract
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have recently witnessed a surge in protest, mobilisation, and debates about marriage, abortion, gender, and feminism. This politics of morality has been notably more successful in the East than in the West of Europe: Most CEE countries have legally or even constitutionally precluded any chance of adopting same-sex marriage, some have rejected the Istanbul agreement, and many parliaments have debated “gender” in a hostile manner. The rising conservative voice in politics appears to signal a sort of illiberal, conservative turn in post-Communist EU member states. This article intends aims to explore the phenomenon of morality politics in itself, that is looking at the actors, strategies, discourse, and the contexts of individual types of mobilisations. Identifying contextual and transnational factors of the relative success of morality politics in CEE allows to avoid the sole perspective of a culturalist explanation and to analyse the instrumental nature of morality mobilisations.
Highlights
In 2013, 80,000 marched ‘for life’ in the eastern Slovak town of Košice
Since around 2012, conservative mobilizations have increasingly marked the political landscape throughout Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)
The argument developed here is that the arguable successes of Central European conservative mobilizations are due to the special role the politics of morality has played in the peculiar context of right-wing populist politics
Summary
In 2013, 80,000 marched ‘for life’ in the eastern Slovak town of Košice. When in 2019, 50,000 marched again in Bratislava, a Catholic website boasted: ‘The Košice miracle has [been] reproduced!’1 In more secular Prague, 3,000 and 10,000 ‘opponents of abortions and supporters of traditional families’ participated in a similar ‘national march for life’. Since around 2012, conservative mobilizations have increasingly marked the political landscape throughout Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Populist parties have made broad use of morality issues and their socially conservative positions in association with the new Global Right. Ne poli ic of mo ali in cee vative shift; that is, the concrete dynamics of morality policies, i.e. their actors, strategies, alliances, and the timing and the political context of large mobilizations. The argument developed here is that the arguable successes of Central European conservative mobilizations are due to the special role the politics of morality has played in the peculiar context of right-wing populist politics. The largest mobilizations emerged at roughly the same time, around similar issues, and with a shared vocabulary and similar political dynamics, usually involving a fragmented right-wing opposition or a governing populist party. The third chapter will analyze political opportunity structures – i.e. recurring patterns in the political dynamics of morality politics
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