Abstract
The pandemic of Covid-19 has been an unprecedented challenge to the majority of countries in the world This article examines whether COVID-19 has strengthened or weakened the previously chosen path of development in four countries in Central and Eastern Europe - Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, and Moldova The selected countries represent different transformation paths taken after the collapse of communism and allow for showing various reactions of governments to the Covid- 19 crisis Therefore, we analyze the pandemic's effect on three major components of the developmental process - political, social, and economic and check whether COVID-19 has caused any changes in these three spheres Also, we scrutinized the scope of the measures implemented by governments and their impact on their development paths We found that while in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the liberal democracy model has not been questioned, in Hungary, the earlier tendencies of backsliding from democracy have deepened In the countries which are in the process of democracy-building - Moldova and Ukraine - the pandemic has not significantly affected the intensity of violating its principles, as they are still weakly established Thus, the analysis of the first wave of the Covid -19 pandemic showed that it was not a catalyst for the change but tended to deepen and strengthen trends that existed before
Highlights
It is justifiable to examine the effect of a global crisis – such as the COVID-19 pandemic – on the development model adopted in the region
The violations of democratic principles can be divided into two categories: those interfering with the rights and liberties of citizens, but not affecting the chosen development path; and those complementing the processes of building hybrid regimes which were initiated before the pandemic
If we look at the violations of media freedom it can be noted that the pandemic did not – except in the cases of Hungary and Slovakia – bring about a major change
Summary
The Post-Soviet region has been undergoing intense transformations since the 1990s. The changes included the abandoning of so-called real socialism/people’s democracy states, with their centrally steered and planned economies. We will analyse the effect of the pandemic on three major components of the process – political, social and economic – and we will check whether COVID-19 has caused any changes in these three spheres. We analyse the trajectories of transformation in the political, social and economic spheres and the measures introduced by the governments to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This will allow us to assess the potential changes that may occur (or be occurring) as an effect of the crises. This was a hybrid system which can be assessed by using democracy indices
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