About the size of a British two-pound coin, it’s well made and in surprisingly good condition, it would – as far as I can work out from a brief online trawl of historical statistics – once have been a sizeable chunk of someone’s weekly income. Or at least someone from lower social strata.

Its good condition is probably explained by the fact that it probably wasn’t in circulation that long. In 1892 the Gulden (known in Hungarian as the forint, in Czech the zlatý)) was replaced by a new Austro-Hungarian currency the Krone tied – with a degree of fiscal discpline that some modern day of the Euro would no doubt appreciate – to the Gold Standard. Further background can be found on the found here on the Policy and History website in a paper written by Richard Roberts in 2011, which seeks to draw lessons from the Habsburg experience of a single currency without one state. The main conclusion is that budgetary indiscipline can be fixed by tough minded independent central bank(s) policing tough fiscal rules for governments, which wish to play ball.

Despite the popularity of the Uncanny Historical Parallel as insight way into the present – BBC Radio 4′s The Long View documentary  series, for example, does a fascinating  job of ‘uncovering the present behind the past’, especially in interviews with contemporary politicians – I’m not sure if the Habsburg model of European integration, if that is what it was, has that much to tell us. As Richard Roberts notes, there is something of a difference between two governments co-ordinating to govern a single currency and  17 (or in a broad  sense 27). He also seeks the EU’s (surely now stalled?) enlargement agenda as the important and potentially derailing difference of the EU/Eurozone with the Dual Monarchy which is seen as victim of exogenous, apocalyptic shock of WWI.

All this seems rather oddly to ignore more basic political issues of identity and democracy. The Habsburg Dual Monarchy and its currency crumbled due to its inability, among many other things, to create and accomodate national political structures – six states emerged from its former territory in 1918 (today by my reckoning 11) – while the current EU seems to be struggling due to  inability to roll back and rein in well entrenched national states .

Perhaps, at bottom, despite huge democratisation of European political systems a century on, the problem is really the same – mismatch between political forms, political identities and functional economic necessities, the type of conundrum outlined by Gary Marks and Lisbet Hooghe in their ‘postfunctionalist’ take on integration a couple of years ago.

A quick root around around the odd coins and other bits of funny money amid the odds and ends on the mantelpiece reveals some Czechoslovak crowns from 1950s and 1970s and a 50 Euro cent piece with the national design of Greece.

Political afterlife in Prague? Photo: Frederico Saggini / Wikicommons

A recent report I read suggested that the travails of Public Affairs (VV) party had put voters in the Czech Republic off new political parties: VV, which burst from nowhere onto the political scene in the 2010 elections as an establishment, anti-corruption party, has  rapidly, but not totally, unwound in the two years since as a junior partner – and weakest link – in the current centre-right coalition in Prague.

Lax party discipline, lack of organisation; some very dodgy and incompetent ministers; and rapid confirmation of what many had lon suspected – that the party was a pet project  ABL security company and its owner Vít Bárta, originally conceived to forward their commercial interests in Prague.

But the new party habit, once acquired, can be hard to kick. Numerous small left-wing parties seem, relatively speaking, to be prospering at the political margins and, more remarkably, there still seems to an appetite for  new businessmen anti-politicians peddling an anti-corruption and anti-establishment message. The modern voter’s political crack cocaine…

In recent weeks and months two candidates have stepped forward to offere a new improved version of Public Affairs formula:

Anti-political protest voring: Addictive with short term high? Photo: Pyschonaught/Wikicommons

The first is Andrej Babiš, the super-wealthy owner of the Agrofert food and chemicals conglomerate. Originally hailing from Slovakia, but moving to Prague as a student, Mr Babiš made his fortune in the murky business and political environment of 1990s with all the attendant political connections that you would expect.

His entry into politics – which from what can be gathered was planned quite carefully beforehand – came with an interview in September last year with the Czech equivalent of the FT, Hospodářské noviny, in which he spoke out against levels of corruption in the Czech Republic and called for the creation new civic mobilisation akin in some way to the Civic Forum movement of 1989.

He was, of course, a rather unlikely dissident – the son of a Communist foreign trade official, who had lived abroad for periods in Switzerland and North Africa for periods as boy and later embarked on a the same career. And not only was he himself (naturally) a Party member, but he was also listed as a secret police informer.

But, as he explained in a clever folksy, what-you-see-is-what-you-get appearence on Czech TV’s Jan Kraus Talkshow, this was all already well known (no relevations in store then) and his dealings with StB, ever present in an areas dealing with non-communist world,  were do with mismanaged phosphate imports and commerical contacts, not hunting down dissidents.

The result: Akce nespokojených občanů 2011 (ANO2011), the Discontented Citizens’ Initiative, a citizens’ grouping founded  by Babiš, which combined the internet based organising tactics of VV with current vogue for  new political organisation to have catchy numbers-and-letters acronyms (‘Ano’ = ‘Yes’).

ANO2011′s organisation, running straight out of Agrofert headquarters, however seemed to be pure Forza Italia, as does his argument that the Czech Republic could be managed by practical businesspeople in the manner of a firm, although the is also a nod towards liberal reformist rhetoric that has washed around the ex-dissident centre of Czech politics almost as long as anyone can remember: ANO2011 is, for example, to be  ‘a civic movement composed of trustworthy independent personalities’ opposing vested political interests (all other parties, major and minor, including VV and President Klaus)

All this is rather contrast with the time and care Vít Bárta put in creating VV as a party with semblance of autononous existence and a quite serious and detailed political programme, not without some good idea.

The ANO2011 Appeal is a vague document promising in very non-specific terms to fight corruption, make the rule of law work properly and bring about Swedish or Swiss levels of prosperity. Making a virtue of this – like many new parties – it gets round this by presenting it in terms of transparency and openess, promising consultation with the public, appealing to citizens for their ideas about what should be done.

Inevitably, of course, despite predictable early denials, the movement has plans to becoming a party: it will contest the regional elections later this year with an eye to breaking through to national power in 2012.

A programme of roundtables and events has already kicked off and the movement/party is already recruiting political managers in the regions and hoovering up minor parties and regional groupings for a spot of astro-turfing. Given the scale of Babiš’s resources – his personal wealth and the size of Agrofert’s dwarf that of Bárta – and the postive feedback he received in initial polling (around a third of respondents saying they might vote for him), such programme- and party building may yield quicker than experced dividends, making him may be a force to be reckoned with.

Tomio Okamura Photo: Podzemnik/Wikicommons

A second perhaps more intriguing potential newconer, mooted as a possible presidential candidate by the latest issues of the newsmagazine Respekt, is the Japanese-Czech businessman Tomio Okamura. The product of a fractured and difficult bi-cultural background, Mr Okamura – who has lived most of his life in the Czech Republic and is a native speaker of the language, is a self-made businessman best known to the public as spokesman for the Czech tourism industry and to TV viewers as part of the line-up of investors on Den-D, the local version of Dragon’s Den.

Although more modestly resourced than either Babiš or Bárta,  Mr Okamura has been similarly building up his public profile, writing a bestselling book about his life and business and a more recent one with the Macheviallian sounding title The Art of Governing.

This, according to Respekt is a mishmash of reformist go-getting sentiment with a nod towards morality and traditional values, interwar Czechoslovakia and (more worryingly) some of the Czech radical right’s nostrums for resettling Roma -  Mr Okamura’s take on inter-ethnic relations in the Czech Republic seems to be that racism is not an obstacles to success and that  minorities should fit in and get with things (as he has).

Inevitably, there is also the same Berlusconi-eque anti-political rhetoric of bringing common sense business solution to political problems found with Babiš, whose entry into politics Okamura welcomes. As he tells readers of his blog with characteristic up-frontness

… the idea of running the state like a firm (firemního vedení státu)… [is] a proposition that fascinates me… The state is one big firm and there is no better solution than it being run by pros.

Experienced people with a sense of material and criminal responsibility. People who have come through in an open selection process, not through the backstage negotiation of party leaderships or regional party cliques.

Bar some exceptional political events and an injection serious financial and political backing, Okamura is unlikely to be a serious contender for the presidency come the Czech Republic’s first direct elections in 2013. He himself seems to be talking (more realistically) of a running at a Senate seat as an independent.

Okamura on Babiš seen through Wordle.net

But despite some hubris and naivity, Mr Okamura has played skillfully on his unusual status as very recognisably Czech  figure who is also at the same an unusual and somewhat unplaceable outsider. The same kind of play helped make Barack Obama – not for nothing is Mr Okamura’s first book called The Czech Dream -  or, more omenously, Peru’s outsider technocrat, turned authoritarian populist President of 1990s, Alberto Fujimori.

Czechs-  like European voters generally these days I guess -  have weakness for anti-political pitches.  The technocratic ex-caretaker Prime Minister Jan Fischer (a statistician not a businessman by background), for example, is likely to prove a popular presidential candidate

Followers of Czech politics of long memories may even remember that in their earliest days the Civic Democrats  – now  often reviled as corrupt, political hacks – based their appeal on an ethos business-like organisation and professionalism (as Magdaléna Hadjiisky ably explains in a recent issue of Sociologický časopis).

All in all, if you are in the Czech political futures market and looking at the stock of businessman-antipolitician start-ups, I can only say ‘Buy!’.

Hungary's parliament - Photo: Gothika/Wikicommons

The constitutional and institutional changes pushed through by Hungary’s ruling conservative-national Fidesz party following its emphatic election victory in April 2010 have attracted increasing coverage – and almost enirely negative -  from academic and journalistic observers of Central European politic, foreign governments and international bodies such as the European Parliament and Council of Europe.

As well as making multiple amendments to the existing constitution, the Fidesz government has used its huge majority – it has well over the 2/3 of seats in the National Assembly required  – enact a new constitution due to take effect 1 January 2012 and pass new electoral and media laws over the head of other parties, which fundamentally change the rules of the political game, destroying linstitutional checks and balances and embedding its own political influence against future majorities, which puts Hungary on course for at best low quality democracy and at worse some form of semi-authoritarian illiberal democracy.

The new constitution and related chanages, critics say, pares back power of Hungary’s previously

Fidesz European elections poster 2009 Photo: Burrows/Wikicommons

powerful Constitutional Court and made access to it more difficult; engineered a purge of the judiciary  and created a powerful National Judicial Office (headed by its own political appointee) with extensive powers to move and (un)appoint new judges.

New media law – already the target of demonstrations earlier this year (2011) –  have created new media board – staffed by Fidesz supporters and headed by prime ministerial appointee with a nine year term – which can review all media (including perhaps bloggers) for balance and impose heavy fines, resulting in self-censorship for the sake of commerical survival. Other key public appointees have similarly long terms of office and are only replace-able if new post holders are agreed by 2/3 parliamentary majority.

The charges are summarised here by Kim Lane Scheppele, who concludes that

Virtually every independent political institution has taken a hit. The human rights, data protection and minority affairs ombudsmen have been collapsed into one lesser post. The public prosecutor, the state audit office and, most recently, the Central Bank are all slated for more overtly political management in the new legal order  (…)

Fidesz party loyalists …will be able to conduct public investigations, intimidate the media, press criminal charges and continue to pack the courts long after the government’s current term is over..

Hungarian election posters 2010 Photo: Czank Mate/Wikicommons

The new electoral law, ably discussed here by Alan Renwick,  makes a number of changes  to Hungary’s complex ‘mixed’ electoral system, some of which – such as the introduction of a single round of voting in single member constituencies in preference to a French-style run-off – are arguably unpredictable.

But the net effect seems to be to make a strongly majoritarian electoral system more majoritarian and to provide a probable electoral bonus for the right by allowing non-resident Hungarian citizens, which following changes to citizenship law is now likely to include hundred thousand ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia, Romania and Serbia, to vote in parliamentary elections.

The boundaries of the single member constitutencies used to elect most deputies have also, oddl,  been written into the electoral law – rather than subject to periodic independent review – making the changeable only through further constitutional amendment. Simulations linked to by Alan Renwick and Kim Scheppele suggest these are advantageous to Fidesz. More worryingly, changes to the make-up of the national Election Commission overseeing elections have reportedly seen a politically balanced body transformed into one run by Fidesz supporting appointees.

Party politics in Hungary may be further shaken up if proposed constitutional amendments listing the crimes of ruling party during communist dictatorship pass and the statue of limitations is lifted: any court cases brought against the post-communist Socialists, who are the successor party, may, Kim Scheppele suggests, bankrupt Hungary’s main moderate opposition party, leaving the far-right Jobbik as the principal oppositon to Fidesz.

There is, of course, another side the story. Fidesz supporters note the left-liberal bias to academic commentary on Hungarian politics on Hungary, which has never accepted national-conservative politics of Fidesz as legitimate; that the changes are wrongly described or exaggerated or ill informed due to the language barrier; and that some Western democracies to not meet the implied standards that Hungary is being subject to – US congressional districts boundaries, for example,  are extensively gerrymandered. Fidesz  is just clearing up the corrupt mess left by the Socialists, whose electoral collapse is entirely down to their own corruption. One eloquent such voice can be found in my former SSEES colleague, now a second term MEP George Schöpflin, writing in the FT, and in video below.

Some of the comments on Kim Lane Scheppele also reasonably dispute some points of fact.

I have tried to look things over from this angle, but even taking these points on board – and some of them are I suspect are valid – they fail to address the substance of the criticism:  George Schöpflin’s performance stressing misunderstanding and bad faith is sadly unconvincing. It is hard to not to interpret the changes as, whatever else they are, a very illiberal, ill advised and divisive power grab by the Hungarian right.

Who's next? Socialists and far-right in 2nd place in 2010

It is also one which I suspect will rebound both on Hungarian conservative-national right itself: some of the changes, such as the new electoral system will be rather unpredictable. Even allowing for partisan boundary changes – whose partisan effects can change over time quite quickly as the UK experience illustrates – a majoritarian system favours the right only so long as it is politically cohesive and has majority support.  The bad economic weather suggests even with  a tame media, any incumbent is likely to see its support rapidly erode.

The other concerns the divided nature of Hungary. As The Economist suggests there is a large liberal and left-wing Hungary: the Socialists and their liberal allies had, after all, until the 2010 meltdown, offered pretty stiff competition. Although the far-right seems to be offering stiff competion for the votes of the economically disempowered, there is no reason to think that in the longer term,  over a period of years, that a new centre-left bloc of some kind would not emerge. Indeed, the possible demise of the post-communist successor party might be a boon: in Poland the liberal Civic Platform now fills the space once taken by the post-communist left, while in Slovenia a new reformist centre-left bloc stepped almost effortless into the shoes of the discredited post-communist Social Democrats  (SD) and  Liberal Democrats (LDS).

But if – or perhaps when electoral support for Fidesz goes South – any left-liberal majority, will either have to come up with a 2/3 majority of its own (perhaps not altogether impossible) and carry out its own counter-revolution, or bump up the constitutional entrenchments now being put in place. (As George Schöpflin explains above, there will be no provision to change the constitution by referendum. ) The result perhaps five or ten years down the line would seem to be some very high stakes electoral politics – with all the temptations that will throw up – and/or the severest of constitutional crises, possibly attended by a very intense politics of civic mobilisation: this, after all, is way change happens when institutional channels to change are blocked and people sense that democracy has been rigged.

How could all this happen? Hungary, after all, was supposed to be one Central and Eastern Europe’s  most consolidated new democracies, yet suddenly leaves us dusting off our Fareed Zakharia and contemplating the prospects for a kind of Coloured Revolution on the Danube. Could it -  or something like it -  happen elsewhere in the region? Weren’t people like  me telling you that CEE was a region flawed but basically normal democracies?

There seem to several factors which have enabled democratic derailment:

• Majoritarian electoral system, which, if there is a big  electoral win for one side and/or a collapse for the other (Fidesz polled 53% in 2010), would result in a constitutional majority in parliament. In CEE conditions, where electorates are volitile and economies (now) vulnerable, this was, in hindsight, perhaps just a matter of time
• A unicameral parliament, or a least a weak upper chamber. Hungary has no upper house.
• Well organised, cohesive party organisation. Single member districts and majoritarian electoral systems tend to promote this.
• A party with a strong sense of ideological mission: if you are going to seize the chance to remake the constitutional order you need to believe in what you doing. Conservative-national parties in states  like Hungary which had a negotiated, compromise transition in 1989,  see politics as a part of  a ‘thick transition’ – a long-term struggle to finish the revolutionary work of 1989, by eliminating the (ex-)communist nomenklatura from public left.

Elsewhere the region, some other states partially fulfill these conditions: Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) had a similar anti-communist conservative-national outlook, but – like all governing parties – due to PR never had the votes or seats to contemplate giving its vision of a new ‘Fourth Republic’  constitutional form and is now politically on the back foot.

Romania Bulgaria and Slovakia appear slightly riskier propositions: the latter are both unicameral democracies, while the Romanian Senate closely mirrors the lower house. All have strong (soon-to-be) ruling parties seen by some as having illiberal inclinations: however, none seem to have the sense of ideological mission needed – two, Romania’s PSD and Slovakia’s SMER, are loosely social democratic, while Bulgaria’s GERB is a loose knit centrist or centre-right party of power.

GERB press conference 2009 Photo: Vladimir Petkov/ Wikicommons

None seem likely to come near 2/3 majority required to amend or replace the constitution (3/4 in Bulgaria should you merely want to amend), although Bulgaria’s GERB whose electoral support sits around 40% and is suspected by critics of sporadic electoral fraud might just manage an absolute parliamentary majority.

If we think the worst of such parties, then a more informal strategy of co-optation, corruption and politicisation of the state apparatus, spiced with the odd draconian media law, is perhaps what we should expect.

The lessons of  Hungary’s complex and unfolding, but probably unique, situation is that the political and power instincts of CEE parties and politicians are, indeed, be as bad as we feared, but that fragmented and loose parties and PR are like to keep democracy – albeit  corrupt and flawed -  in most places safe from frontal assualt by the region’s politicians.

Probably.

Discussion centres entirely on the one large existing member whose stubborn pursuit of its national interest is obstructing a long-term viable EU: Germany. France admittedly got a lot of what it wanted out of the summit, retaining the basically intergovernmental approach, but conceded the German demand for a reformed treaty of austerity-inducing financial discipline.

Germany and German politics are overwhelming what matter and, in some ways summit and the drama of the British veto-that-might-not-be-a-veto are sideshow compared with how Europe’s biggest and most economic powerful member decides to play it.

Photo: Tage Olsin

Was Angela Merkel playing a kind of high stakes poker waiting for the right moment to fold ‘em and concede some form of Eurobonds? Or was her government determined to press ahead to a possibly very bitter end?  German public debate and perceptions across political spectrum are, unsurprisingly, very different from those in many other places in Europe with little appetite for a Berlin bankrolled Euro bailout after painful and divisive economic restructuring (and the earlier costs of re-unification).

Indeed, some in Germany are apparently toying with the idea of partial break-up of Euro producing perhaps a sharp two-year recession followed by prosperous German-centred ‘small Euro’, which could ‘go global’ playing to Germany’s industrial and export strength. Unlikely, said some: anchoring in EU part of the political DNA of the FRG.  Be careful countered others:  re-united Germany was different country where old assumptions about how things work are  no longer always safe.

 The vision of Treaty-bound austerity Union in which a French-German tandem  (with the Germany as the senior partner) – European institutions have lost power and influence in the current crisis and may not regain it -  would run up against the interests of states normally closely economically and politically aligned with Germany in the EU such as Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Poland and other CEE states (I have the phrase greater ‘Greater Germany’ scribbled down in my notebook – did somebody actually say that?). But none bar Poland  – in the remarkable speech by Foreign Minister Sikorski  – have actually raised these issues openly.

Seems in some ways as if history has run full circle and we back once again discussing the idea of a form of Mitteleuropa, albeit in the context of the more balanced and more democratic structures of the EU (or whatever it turn into)

And those pesky Brits? Well, those British demands were perhaps rather modest – maybe we should give Nick Clegg some credit (did I really just write that?) and in some ways leaning to  greater not less regulation.  The consensus view at the ECFR BCM seemed to be –  diplomatic and strategy of the UK were just a disaster, although the underlying issue of who (EU or UK)  regulates was perhaps the key issue was possibly less easily negotiable

Cameron (rather like Sarkozy) comes out a big short-term winner in domestic politics, but at the more strategic levels the Brits are left needing to improvise ‘creative diplomacy’ to prevent emergence of too starkly Two Speed Europe – perhaps pushing for varied integration, really going against the grain of European politics for more political integration. Underlying British problem is that it wants viable Euro to avoid economic meltdown, but fears the decline in own influence that integration necessary for this will bring.

Perhaps, however, if the politics of Euro rescue were to prove Mission Impossible, integration would painfully rebound, as someone put it, like piece of stretched elastics reverting to something closer to UK vision and/or status quo.

And there was distinct pessimism – reflecting in the dank rainy day visible taking shape outside – as to whether the politics could overcome economic diversity across EU with no underlying European identity or solidarity legitimising redistribution.

We are, it seems, caught in a vicious circle/cycle of technocracy and populism:  populist mood of public anger with elites, politicians and distant, illegitimate looking European institutions leads these elites to, as ever, look for quiet, backdoor technocratic workarounds feeding waves of inchoate (and ultimately unfocused and possibly inconsequential) anti-elite politics.

The weather  outside was dark, dank cold with storm brewing up for later.

So I am grateful to Kevin Deegan-Krause over  at Pozorblog for  taking seriously the Czech Republic’s  newest party, namely  LEV – the National Socialists founded by ex-Social Democrat Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek, while I caught up . For it is now clear that, as new parties go,  the new group is certainly a serious project with serious potential to impact Czech politics over the next 2-3 years.

After last year’s elections Mr Paroubek seemed  pretty much politically finished: the simple, in-your-face  pro-welfare message that had pulled the Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD) back from the political brink  in 2005-6 failed to pull in sufficient numbers of voters – and especially not younger voters – allowing a centre-right coalition to sweep into power. Cold comfort that ČSSD were (narrowly) the largest party so after a brief post-election rant, Mr P stepped down.

But a few months in the political wilderness watching post-election seem to have convinced Paroubek that he has a political role to play after all – and that the party he once led is so awful, inept and corrupt he should found a new one. And, with a 3% rating in the polls, his barely founded new party is not doing too badly.

It’s not altogether an original move. One of the reasons the Social Democrats failed to regain office in 2010 was the inroads made into their vote by new, small left-wing parties, including both the eurosceptic Sovereignty party and the Citizens’ Rights Party (SPOZ) of another former (1998-2002) ČSSD Prime Minister, Miloš Zeman, whose confrontational Mr Paroubek (aka The Bulldozer) emulated.

In other respects too Mr Paroubek has been working straight from the How To Set Up A New Party playbook of Czech politics. In no particular order we have

1. Get A Catchy Acronym Making Feeble Nod Towards Ideological Heritage.

The most successful new centre-right party of 2010 was TOP09 supposedly standing – although I doubt even many party members can still remember it – for Tradice, odpovědnost, prosperita [Tradition, Responsibility and Prosperity] to show that it was a kind of solid and reliable Central European conservative party.

Paroubek’s new outfit is called Národní socialisté – levice 21. století. [National Socialists - 21st Century Left), which can be abbreviated (with a little imagination) to LEV, the Czech word for lion - the lion of Bohemia being a key historic symbol of the Czech nation. Just look at any Czech coin.

Mr Paroubek, has however not gone Nazi. The National Socialists (aka National Socials) were the main historic party of the progressive Czech middle class and intelligentsia preaching a distinct mix of liberalism, democratic socialism and Czech nationalism. They existed in emasculated  form satellite party under communism, re-named  the Czechoslovak Socialist Party, underwent various name changes in 1990s and, despite considerable resources slowly declined into obscurity and bankruptcy. Others, such as Václav Klaus, could offer the voters all the aspirant middle class liberalism and Czech nationalism they could ask for in far more modern form.

Score 8/10

Logo of ČSNS2005

2. Acquire Off-The-Shelf Organisation, Take Over  A Minor Party

Even the most ‘instant’. leader dominated new parties need some semblance of organisation to run lists of candidates and have some kind of legitimacy. Besides Czech law explicitly conceives of parties as national membership organisations. The quickest route here is simply to take over the shell of an enfeebled, minor party or small local group. Businessman Vít Bárta showed how this should be done by taking over a tiny local citizens group called Public Affairs in Prague in 2005, pumping it full of money and PR know-how, and achieving surprise breakthrough into parliament in 2010.

Mr Paroubek was a member of the satellite Socialist Party in 1980s.  He then jumped  ship to the re-founded Social Democrats in 1990, where he was General Secretary until 1993, before being ousted by Zeman who realised that talking moderation and consensus would get ČSSD nowhere (a lesson Paroubek learned well). So it is not totally surprising that Paroubek sought to take over the shell of the old Socialists, now going under the monicker of the Czech National Social Party 2005 (ČSNS2005). This has not gone that smoothly, despite initial overtures, but Mr Paroubek may pull in some ČSNS2005′s couple of hundred members and it hasn’t stopped him using the National Socialist label.

If he plays his cards right, he could also pull in part of the more sizeable Zeman organisation, SPOZ, which seems to be at the end of the road as Zeman lack the energy to campaign consistently. Despite their being no love lost between them, Mr Paroubek has diplomatically said he would back Zeman to become president.

And, of course, he may also win over a few ex-Social Democrats.

He is, however, recruiting just about any politician who needs a political home with some ex-deputies for Public Affairs heading his way. The Czech Republic has an excellent record for recycling.

Score 5/10

Jiří Paroubek Photo" Cheryl Thurby, US Defense Dept

3.  Have A Big Name Celebrity Leader , Preferably An Outsider

Many new parties have had to rely on aristocrats (Karel Schwarzenberg, TOP09) or media profile of ex-TV presenters (Jana Bobišíkova of Sovereignty, Radek John of Public Affairs).  This is one area where Paroubek need have no worries. Everyone knows his name and he is a love/hate figure rivalled only by Václav Klaus, although the balance probably tilts a bit more to the latter.

It’s a bit more difficult for Paroubek to fit into the role of outsider, but he seems to be working hard at it and with a little practice he should manage the trick Václav Klaus does so well: being an ‘inside outer’ totally of the establishment, but claiming somehow credibly to be outside it. After all, how did you get to be well known in the first place.

Score  9/10

4. Find A Political USP

Even in these post-modern times, it seems in the Czech Republic you do actually need to stand for something and offer the voters something  new politically (an least an improvement on the old offering): anti-corruption; nationalism and euroscepticism (perhaps anti-Roma politics); or genuinely red-blooded market reform have all been popular. Being in favour of direct democracy (preferably via the internet) also adds a certain panache.

Here Mr Paroubek is struggling a bit. Taking over the National Socialist brand seemed to suggest he was going to go  for left-wing (or at least non-anti-communist) brand of nationalism with potentially broad appeal to many left-wing voting. A sort of Blue Labour strategy, to borrow from the British political lexicon. This seems precisely the card being played by Sovereignty. And, of couse, the Czech Communists also do a statism-and-nationalism cocktail.

The party’s programme is waffly rehash of musings about the historic traditions of the National Socialists, a sustainable social market economy and the need to watch out in a dangerous globalised world whose only very distinct element is it advocacy of a pro-natal policies (as per the Christian Democrats).

Paroubek’s statements on things like the Euro seem to have been either vague or sensible, long-term stuff you would expect an incumbent PM to spout:  a stout defence of the long-term viabikity if the Euro is not thing that the next Populist Big Thing should offer, although rehashed social-democratic position did not stop Zeman’s SPOZ from picking up 4% in 2010.

Score 2/10

5. Good Timing

The run-in time for a successful new party seems to be about 1-2 years, the time it takes to build up media momentum; a modicim of organisation; and contest (and do unexpectedly well) in some kind of second order election. The idea is then to breakthrough in the months and weeks before the elections: the Czech Greens managed this to perfection in 2006, as did TOP09 and Public Affairs, who benefitted from running Euro-election,  in 2010.

LEV seems to be aiming to do use the regional  and Senate elections of 2012, as a springboard -  demanding organisationally, but probably do-able if it can do well in a reasonable number of regions and scrape a couple of senators by recruiting local independents.

Score 7/10

6. Money

Although momentum goes a long way,  few tens of millions of crowns are  frankly indispensible, for a least a modest billboard campaign, making wealthy individual supporters (Greens 2005/6); contacts in the business world built up in government (ex-Christian Democrats in TOP09); or other mysterious private sponsor acting as Fairy Godmother (Bárta’s ABL security company in the case of Public Affairs in 2010, persons unknown for Zeman’s SPOZ).

The financial background of LEV is, as yet, as mystery, but as an ex-PM and seasoned political operator, who spend a long period in the murky world of Prague city politics before re-entering national government, I personally would be surprised if Mr Paroubek could not sort out sufficient.

Likely score 8/10

By my reckoning,  that is 40 out of a possible 60, or an overall 6.6/10. A credible also ran, I would say , but another source of lost votes for the Social Democrats.

Karel Schwarzenberg

And no sooner do I post on Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg at Chatham House than he decides to make waves in Czech domestic politics by announcing that he will be a candidate for the Czech Presidency, when Václav Klaus steps down from second and final term in 2013.

Media are reporting – in the style of the old Klaus vs. Havel coverage – that it stems from one too many eurosceptic broadside from the current occupant of Prague Castle. I suspect, however, that Mr (I mean Prince) Schwarzenberg is far too canny to make such spur of the moment decisions and that it represents a neat, logical and fitting exit from his unlikely career as party leader: the announcement was made at the second national congress of his TOP09.

If I was a TOPák, however, I wouldn’t be that enthusiastic.  Provided age treats him kindly – he will be 75 in 2013 – Schwarzenberg would, undoubtedly be a distinguished and effective head of state. But his exit as party leader would politically destabilising for TOP09, a loose alliance of local politicians, business interests and ex-Christian Democrats, which would look a whole lot less attractive with an aristocratic anti-politician at it helm. And, as the unhappy experience of Havel and Civic Movement shows, on/off presidential parties rarely prosper.

In the bigger picture, President Schwarzenberg would predictable and a safe choice, a re-assuring avuncular figur

e in times of trouble. But could the Czechs really not find someone younger, and conceivably perhaps – and I know this is a bit shocking – even female? Someone not part of the dissident/technocratic/business/intellectual establishment that has run the CR since 1989? Is there a Czech Mary Robinson in the wings? It’s interesting that, despite being a media darling, Schwarzenberg’s popular rating with the voters is a mere 14%. In a direct election, legislation for which is chugging along uncertainly, he could quickly become an also-ran.

Knowing Czech politics, though – and if it were to be a direct election – it could easily be a Czech Sarah Palin. Of the establishment candidates mentioned here Přemysl Sobotka, the moderate and independent long-time Civic Democrat Senator, and ex-caretaker PM Jan Fischer would safe, if boring choices. Personally, if we’re doing grey ‘n’ technocratic I would go for ex-Social Democrat PM and former EU Social Affairs Commissioner Vladmir Špidla, whose rather grey public persona belies a more interesting and colourful figure. Špidla I have always felt, is one most under-rated figure in Czech politics.

Jiří Paroubek

Two other former Social Democrat PMs, Miloš Zeman and Jiří Paroubek – both populist bruisers of the first order – can also be assumed to have presidential ambitions. Either would be a potentially credible candidate in a popular election capable of pulling in Communist voters any directly elected left-wing president would need, but have too many parliamentary enemies to make it through the current indirect system where only deputies and Senators vote.  Paroubek, however, seems to be more concerned with building up his new LEV21 party and is on the record as urging one-time rival Zeman to run for head of state (probably hoping to hoover up voters and activists  from Zeman’s  own small vanity party SPOZ party, which pulled in an expected 4% in last year’s elections.

Karel Schwarzenberg Photo: Henrich Boell Stiftung

I’m sitting listening to Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg. I look up occasionally at the map on the wall and wonder what projection it is. Europe seems big and fat compared to the more politically correct/geographically accurate cartography I usually see.

But that’s kind of appropriate. Schwarzenberg is, after all, speaking to me – and the rest of a Chatham House lunchtime audience –on the record about the role of smaller EU member sin the post-Lisbon Treaty.

It’s interesting to see Schwarzenberg in person. Presentationally, he conforms to the media stereotype of distracted aristocratic anti-politician:  he looks tired, sports a crumpled-looking bow tie and speaks at  an ambling conversational pace with an unplaceable Central European accent.

 I’ve never bought into all the noblesse oblige hype surrounding Prince Schwarzenberg whose TOP09 party is one of the mainstays of the Czech Republic’s centre-right government and may yet become the dominant force on the Czech right. But a couple of minutes listening quickly highlights that he  has the state of the EU and European politics carefully and subtly thought through.

 The small state angle is a classic Czech motif dating back to Masaryk and beyond, (although as chair William Wallace dry comments the Czech Republic is one of the ‘bigger small countries’ in the Union) but Schwarzenberg uses it to good effect.

 Although it had always had a few small members, until the 2004, he argues, the EU had always functioned – and actually functioned quite well – as a big nations’ club. Eastern enlargement had changed all that bring in an influx small new CEE states, most of which lacked the economic wherewithal to join the Euro.

In harmonious tandem

Paradoxically, however, expansion to 27 upped the power of bigger states, who gained from drive to create more workable decision-making structures, which resulted in the Lisbon Treaty.

 The need for speedy action in current crisis had upped the power of bigger over small states. Indeed, in some sense the euro crisis had made EU governance a tandem of two big states – read France and Germany. (This, Schwarzenberg noted was kind of appropriate given that Maastricht and the Euro were essentially a Franco-German political compromise intended to anchor and clip the wings of a re-united post-Cold War Germany – the contradiction of introducing a common currency without adequate economic governance had been left unaddressed, setting up the current crisis.

 Big states bossing it might be an effective (and necessary) way of running things post-crisis– and the EU had never exactly been run democratically since its foundation – But a big state-driven EU was aggravating an already acute trade-off between efficiency and legitimacy, opening up the democratic deficit (although he didn’t use the term – I have ‘citizenship gap’ in my notebook).

All non-EU traffic turn off here?

 Moreover, the distinct politics of the Euro crisis management being decided by the 17 Eurozone members, splitting the Union into two bloc: although no one had an interest in Euro meltdown, on certain issues the 17 might act as a bloc against the other ten members. As the 17 were likely to adopt steps towards further political/economic governance integration, a two-speed Europe was opening up. As on a motorway, those moving slowly and gradually falling behind might, he suggest, be tempted to turn off at the nearest exit.

 So small states needed some new channels to participate (I presume both in their own interests and for the sake of EU legitimacy, although this didn’t get mentioned). But what channels? One would be to operate in flexible informal blocs. Visegrad (despite having one Eurozone state and three non-Euro states) worked well did similar Nordic, Benelux and Baltic groupings. Another was to be useful and effective especially in niche role: the Czech Republic’s special mission was to be a promoter in human rights – its diplomats had been active over Burma, Cuba. Eastern partnership and the Western Balkans (‘a powder keg’) were also spaces to watch.

 Rather refreshingly Schwarzenberg offered to grand vision or or clear blueprint offered for EU reform. Just the thought – in response to a question from the Swiss ambassador – that the Union had in the fullness time to find itself way to a Swiss style arrangement, but with member states retaining the trapping of traditional statehood (like national armies) for the sake of legitimacy and as part of a system of checks and balance. Democracy mattered less than balance.

Nevedieť, kde je Slovensko, to je také ...

 The Q and A also tracked back to the question of a dual EU with discussion of an inner (Euro-)zone and outer core of members with roughly Danish level of integration. Intriguingly, we didn’t get to hear where the thought the Czech Republic should or would end up, although geography and economics ruled out British style debates about more extensive disengagement.

Overall, it was surprisingly sceptical take for a politician associated with the liberal ex-dissident europhile centre of Czech politics. Indeed, in its basic diagnosis, it didn’t seem that far removed from some of views you could hear Václav Klaus express, at least in his more cautious days in 1990s.

Still, I guess we’re all eurosceptics now.

Slovakia, in case you wondered, was not mentioned once.

Anti-Roma protests in Varnsdorf, Czech Republic

Localised grassroots anti-Roma protests seen in the Czech Republic now seem to be repreated on a somewhat larger scale in Bulgaria: the Novinite agency is reporting clashes between riot police and a crowd of 3000 in the city of Plovdiv resulting in mass arrests with similar confrontations having taken place in the past few couple of days in Varna, Blagoevgrad and Sofia. 

The sequence of events in both countries seems very similar: a violent incident between local Roma and members ethnic majority triggers large-ish scale local protests of hundreds or thousand, sometimes initially peaceful but quickly becoming more unpredictable,  more spontaneous  – Facebook is mentioned in the reports on Bulgaria – and more aggressive, targeting Roma property, local authorities and the police.

The crowds are mostly, but not exlusively young, and mainly male and, unusually, the protests spread. Far right groups are involved and the protests have clearly nationalist flavor with national flags – as well as  predictable  stuff about  Roma crime etc – on display in reports from both states, but there also a  sense of a kind grassroots ‘social movememt’ feel to what seems to be going on, the mobilisation of uncivil society, if you will.  Bulgaria’s far-right party Ataka, for example, seems to have been caught on the hop with calls for emergency measures and hurring to organise its own party-controlled anti-Roma protests.

The question, of course, is why given high and consistent levels of anti-Roma racism in the CEE; huge levels of social exclusion and  the  often dire state of relations between Roma and majority groups, is why such protests have erupted now?  An easy answer , perhaps  rather too easy, is that it is a yet another symptom of the new Europan politics of  Hard Times we seem to be drifting into, a mixture of fear and boredom: an ethnicised East Central  European version of the frustrations and tensions we saw break out on the streets of England cities last month.  Roma are among the socially and most economically vulnerable to price rises, welfare cuts and austerity, but they offer a convenient focus for the frustrations of others feeling the social and economic fallout at first hand.

The Czech news magazine Respekt carries a profile of a young woman, Lenka Zenkerová , arrested during an anti-Roma protest last month for wearing a t-shirt with the home-penned slogan ‘Bring Back Hitler, Gas the Gypsies’.  Such blatant incitement to racial hatred is a crime- triggers action even in the Czech Republic, where anti-racism laws can be somewhat unevenly enforced. Most protesters were savvy enough to frame their sentiments – at least in writing – in terms of crime and social security, rather than repeat this  widely seen Czech skinhead grafitto of 1990s.

Source: Political Capital www.riskandforecast.com

In the profile Ms Zenkerová comes across as odd, but not that odd. Educationally  an average achiever, cut off from her parents in the way some people are. A  few stints at menial jobs, but she can’t stand them or does stick.  Little  money – minimal social security and the odd family handout or bit of internet-based work. Feels bored and trapped in a small town.

The  anti-Roma protests seem for her to be  source of excitement, empowermant and  minor celebrity.

Perhaps in this country she would have just helped trash the local branch of Dixons.  I guess that’s what makes us an advanced democracy.

In CEE, of course, with its weaker parties and institutions  more generally discontented and distrustful citizenry, you have to ask where it will all lead. Whether it will find stronger political expression or just be one of numerous poisonous undercurrents running beneath the region’s social and political development.  Bulgaria came third in the DEREX index of far-right electoral potential put together by the Budapest-based Political Capital Thinktank last year – Turkey and Hungary came top with the Czech Republic mid-table a mere 11th.

As noted in the previous post, far right parties may not ultimately be the big story politically, we darkly image, but  it will interesting , indeed necessary for once to watch  the small town and regional grassroots for  once.

Photo: Piotrus

As in 2007 Poland’s parliamentary elections in two weeks are being followed mainly as a battle between the (now incumbent) liberal Civic Platform (PO) and the conservative-national Law and Justice (PiS), which despite modest electoral revival has been on the back foot for most of the last parliamentary term. Indications are therefore that despite a narrowing in the polls PO’s leader Prime Minister Donald Tusk will become the first Polish post-communist premier to lead his party back into office.

But let’s look further down the likely results list to the smaller fry.

In what was once to be a kaladoscopeic politial system, smaller parties in Polish seem to have been reduced to a political footnote.  Indeed, they were nigh on wiped out by the polarisation between the two  liberal and conservatiive big parties in 2007. The main two stories here are whether the post-communist liberal-left – once the dominant counterweight to the post-Solidarity Catholic conservative – right can advance beyond minor party status and whether the Polish Peasant Party (PSL) can hang on as a niche interest party (indications are that it can, comfortably so in this election).

Elsewhere, observers of populism and extremism breathe easy, although the League of Polish Families is still politically in business, there

Palikot's Movement

seem likely to be no revival of  radical/ultra-conservative nationalist right or of the agarian radicalism once represented by Andrzej Lepper’s Self-Defence. Lepper was founded hanged this August, having apparently committed suicide, leaving his much diminished party in disarray.

But, if opinion polls are to be believe, there is a new party poised to make a (modest) electoral breakthrough – the the movement created by maverick ex-Civic Platform Deputy Janusz Palikot .

Palikot, a businessman first elected for PO in 2005 , cuts a colourful, not to say downright eccentric figure, having appeared at a press conference wearing a T-shirt saying “I am from the SLD” [the main party of the post-communist] on the front and “I am gay” on the back, claiming he wanted to highlight the need to defend of minorities (For factual claridication, he is hetereosexual and not a member of the SLD). Still more oddly he later he produced a gun and a dildo at a press conference called to discuss the case of police officers accused of rape – symbols of state of justice and law enforcement in Poland apparently. No friend of the conservative right, he is also on record as calling the late PresidentKaczybski a yokel (cham) and (after his death) suggesting he bore responsibility for the crash of the presidential flight at Smolensk and  had ‘blood on his hands’.  He left the Platform following this remark to found his own movement in 2010.

Janusz Palikot Photo: Peterson

Although dismissed as  likely to get nowhere by at least Polish politics analyst I spoke to one at the time of its foundation, some polls have Mr Palikot (Palikot’s Movement (Ruch Palikota), formerly the Movement in Support)  on up to 7%.

Critics dismiss Palikot as an oddball  showman and buffoon, complaining of the palikotyzacja of Polish politics in a culture of spin and stunts and general vulgarity. But Palikot, a former vice president of the Polish Business Council and chairman of a parliamentary anti-bureaucracy commission, is at least a semi-serious political figure and his party fills a clear political gap.

It  has a stright-down-the-line socially and economically and radical secular – not say anti-clerical -   programme proising a Modern State, which goes straight for the taboo issues glossed over or ignored by the more conservative and/or pragmatic PO. The Palikot Movement  wants to  scrap religious education in state schools, scrap state subsidies of churches and  introduce free contraception, legal abortion on demand and civil partnerships for same sex couples. It also a mixed electoral system combining first-past-the-post and PR and the abolition of the Polish Senate (oddly self-defeating for a small party but a popular nostrum across the CEE region) as well as a war on bureauracy

Polish voters, more perhaps than anywhere else in the CEE region, are wont to spring surprises. It is entirely possible that come the weekend the Palikot Movement will just be another pre-election flash in the pan.

But the party’s surge in the polls seems well timed and Palikot an archtypical media savvy, semi-celebrity outsider politician of the kind with a mainstream, but anti-establishment message  increasingly successful in contemporary European democracies.

He is certainly more likely to be leading a new party into the Sejm than any on radical right or social populist fringe.

Fright on the right?

Radicalism and extremism, especially of the far-right variety, hold an enduring hypnotic fascination for political scientists and journalists.

Extremist populism and illiberal movements more generally, we are told, relentlessly on the rise in both Western and Eastern Europe.

In countries such Austria or Flanders radical right parties have  stacked up sufficient votes to become as major political players and contenders for government office. Elsewhere  in countries such as France, Norway, Denmark they have sufficient electoral clout to influence the parliamentary arithmetic and help  make the political weather.

And just look the electoral breakthroughs in the past couple of years of the True Finns, the Sweden Democrats or Hungary’s Jobbik.

Or the illiberal leanings of mainstream parties of the right in Poland, Hungary and Latvia.  Remember the brouhaha about the British Conservatives’ East European allies?

Jobbik - the far right Movement for a Better Hungary

Indeed, instability, populism and extremism Central and Eastern Europe is surely where it’s at – or where it will be at. Authoritarian nationalism traditions,  high unemployment, vulnerable open economies, rampant corruption, the end of EU conditionality and minority nationalities and Roma  minorities  acting as functional substitutes for the multiculturalism  Western Europe.

But, of course, it isn’t

Social conditions and ethnic make-up in CEE region as a variable as they are in Western Europe, if not more so.  And, if far right and illiberal populists have recently broken through big time in Hungary and (slightly smaller time) in Bulgaria with the rise of the Ataka bloc in Bulgaria, they are so far going nowhere electorally most other countries in the region.

National Parties in Slovakia and Slovenia  have a maintained marginal parliamentary presence, based on a vote share of around 5% the Greater Romania Party is out of parliament despite a bounce in the 2009 Euro-elections and the Polish populist-nationalist right (or left, I’m never sure) collapsed.

A low-lying Will O the Wisp - look carefully. Photo: Deborah Tilley

As Cas Mudde shrewdly observed in 2002  extremist movements in Central and Eastern Europe have tended – and this trend has, interestingly, so far endured even in the difficult political and economic times we now  live in – to bite the dust as often as they have risen from the deck to sock it  to established parties.

But there is a spectre of populism haunting Central and Eastern Europe, which should give us pause,

But this one isn’t a scary monster, but a political  will-o’-the-wisp that often gets missed:  a new breed of anti-establishment party  lambasting the political class  in time honoured style but which combines mainstream, moderate, modernising priorities with a potent and uneven cocktail of appeals embracing anti-corruption, political reform, e-politics, ethical government, novelty or sheer entertainment value.

Academics, bankers, aristocrats and journos

Led by a diverse array of anti-politicians – aristocrats,  academics, artists, technocrats, bankers,  businessmen, bloggers, journalists, entertainers – such parties have scored a series of  sometime spectacular electoral victories, which can put even the best performing far-right ethno-populists distinctly in the shade, and lead directly to government office: New Era in Latvia in 1998, the Simeon II National Movement in Bulgaria in 2001, Res Publica in Estonia in 2003 and last year TOP09 and Public Affairs (VV) in the Czech Republic.

While often fissiparous and short-lived such ‘centrist populist’ protest parties, to borrow Peter Účen’s phrase,  seem to spreading and growing phenomenon: Lithuania has no fewer than three such coming up through the political mainstream in successive elections: the New Union (2000), the (mis-named) Labour Party (2004) and in the 2008 elections the National Resurrection Party founded by former TV presenter and producer Arūnas Valinskas, who seems to have been a mix between Chris Tarrant and Simon Cowell.

As Kevin Deegan-Krause observed the new breed of anti-political mainstream protest party is a slippery and multifaceted  thing.

…. not exactly a new party family (though in their cultural liberalism and anti-corruption emphases they share significant elements) and not exactly a new party type … but with strong and intersecting elements of both. Nor is it unique to Central Europe alone but elements of it have emerged also in the West

My UCL colleague Allan Sikk and I nevertheless decided to have a go at pinning down this new phenomenon more precisely, focusing in the first instance on Central and Eastern Europe,  presenting some of our findings in a paper  (downloadable here) at last month’s ECPR General Conference in Reykjavik.

Analysing elections in the region since 1998 using Charles Ragin’s Qualitative Comparative Analysis technique  we found no single story.

Different paths. Photo: Bob Embleton

 But we did find that these Anti-Establishment Reform Parties, as we called them, broke through electorally in three distinct  sets of circumstances:

• When relatively narrow core of established mainstream parties, flanked by strong radical outsiders, faces  a deteriorating social situation characterised by rising corruption and/or rising unemployment.
• When established governing parties of the mainstream pro-market right  fail to engage new or re-mobilised voters.
• When the left or market sceptic conservative-nationalist are in office and opposition mainstream pro-market right – and the party system generally – is weakly consolidated and/or fragmented

Sometimes  these circumstance overlap, sometimes they run in sequence, but – while radical outsiders have walk on part – what matters, unsurprisingly, is the abilily of mainstream, big tent governing parties to hold together and retain a grip on corruption and the economy to stem electoral insurgencies, which are likely to be angry, anti-political, often offbear  but  decided – destabilisingly -  mainstream.

And like the patchy rise of the far-right, such trends -  as Kevin Deegan-Krause notes above and shrewder journalists have also  already  spotted are not be confined to the rarified political climate of Central and Eastern Europe. When Silvio Berlusconi and Forza Italia  burst onto the Italian political scene in 1994, people could have been forgiven for thinking it was just a strange denouement to Italy’s unique corrupt post-war politics.

Yes, Prime Minister? Photo: wiki.editor Jonny

Now you could be forgiven for wondering if varieties of personality-centred, broadly  liberal sometimes) neo-liberal anti-establishment poilitics might gradually be infiltrating in way into  more established democracies andbecoming a more Europe-wide phenomenon.

The Pirate Party has just entered the Berlin legislature with 8.5% of the vote and when we met them in a break in the ECPR conference, Iceland’s anarchic Best Party (see trailer for forthcoming documentary) founded by comedian Jón Gnarr which emerged as the city’s largest party last year (33%), turned out to be among the more focused and serious political outfits we had come across professionally.

When UEA’s Sanna Inthorn and John Street rhetorically titled a paper on young citizens and  celebrity politics  ‘Simon Cowell For Prime Minister?‘  they may perhaps not have been so far behind the curve.