Post-Millennial Visegrád Four Geopolitics: Illiberalism and Positionality within the EU

Abstract

This research paper analyses shifts in the Visegrád Group’s (Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) identity as a regional integration platform and, in particular, links between Europeanization, illiberalism and V4 geopolitical identity. This provides a background for investigating contested ideas of European integration that discursively frame Central Europe’s ‘illiberal regionalism’. I suggest that this regionalism does not represent a coherent or stable political project. Tensions involved in this regionalist shift are exemplified by ‘revolutionary’ Hungarian and Polish national conservative agendas and their interaction with the more measured pragmatism of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This analysis supports the argument that V4 cooperation represents an adjustable geopolitical space that reflects Hungarian and Polish cultural politics of national identity as well as more issue-oriented Czech and Slovak concerns. Moreover, V4 cooperation remains salient in order to prevent the political marginalization of its members.