WHY does it keep happening? Consider some events of the past week. Andrej Babis, a tycoon with a populist bent, sweeps aside the old guard in a Czech election. Fresh from his own electoral success, Sebastian Kurz, the boy wonder of Austrian conservatism, opens coalition talks with a far-right party that harbours former neo-Nazis in its ranks. Dozens of deputies from the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party take their seats in a Bundestag that was supposed never to find space for their kind, while Viktor Orban, the father of Hungary’s illiberal democracy, declares central Europe a “migrant-free zone”.
It is tempting to seek a single explanation for these disparate phenomena. Perhaps Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy of 2015 is to blame. Maybe this is the rage of those left behind by the uneven distribution of globalisation’s booty. Or it could be that the central Europeans have had enough of the overbearing bully-boys of Brussels. Worse, if these outcomes stem from...Continue reading
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