Protest Politics Reveal Trends in CEE Democracies, Cisar Says

Studying protest politics can tell us something new about post-communist democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, according to Ondrej Cisar, senior fellow at CEU Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) and associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Charles University, speaking at CEU March 4 as part of IAS' seminar series. The lecture, entitled “Protest, Politics and Activism in Central Eastern Europe after 1989,” was part of Frontiers of Democracy, a CEU initiative that aims to promote open debate, discussion, and exchange of ideas with a diversity of views about the nature of democracy today. 

Political apathy and resignation have grown among citizens of countries in the region over the past 20 years, Cisar said in a review of reports that identified frustration and disappointment with the actual economic and political performance of these democracies as the source of apathy. Performance sharply contrasted with the high expectations and enthusiasm about democracy as it was seen in the early 1990s, the reports say. However, empirical evidence supporting this disenchantment theory is limited, according to Cisar. 

Cisar called for an examination of civil society organizations and a change in the research perspective. While the skeptical interpretation of civil society’s robustness usually relied on group membership, Cisar focused on inter-organizational networks, which provide postcommunist activism and social movements with a relatively solid ground. Drawing on empirical material from the Czech Republic, Cisar examined the impact of international funding on these organizations. In contrast to the prevailing interpretation, he argued that international organizations' support does not necessarily lead to the de-radicalization, cooptation and fragmentation of social movements and their constituent parts. Although international assistance can hardly contribute to participating citizenry, it nevertheless can help build networks of capable activist organizations promoting liberal values. 

Moving from the organizational to street protest level, Cisar shared some results of his current project focused on post-communist protest politics in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, making use of protest event data covering 20 years of protest in these countries.

Since there is no negative effect of political dissatisfaction on general political protest or positive on radical types of protest, the disenchantment thesis seems not to be supported by protest politics. This can have important implications for our understanding of democracy’s future. While in the traditional transition and consolidation literature, protest was taken as an indicator of antidemocratic resistance and instability, Cisar showed that it could have the potential to preserve democratic values, even if this ethos is challenged in the field of party politics and formal political institutions. 

The lecture concluded with the discussion of the issue composition of political protest in the four countries, which clearly shows a divergent pattern. Building on field theory and the extant work on political space as defined by political parties, Cisar aimed at formulating a coherent theory of political space incorporating not only cleavages articulated by parties, but also fault lines expressed by protest action.