Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Perspectives

The word "illiberal" is difficult to associate with democracy according to a Western understanding of politics. Rather, individual freedom is nowadays considered a basic element of this form of government. In some countries of East-Central Europe, however, governments have now established themselves that quite offensively propagate an illiberal version as their own variety of democracy and change the respective states accordingly - first and foremost Poland and Hungary. What understanding of the constitution underlies this? What traditions does it build on? And what does this mean for the entire continent? Eastern European experts from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena want to explore answers to these questions together with colleagues from the Universities of Erfurt, Budapest and Warsaw as well as the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. The Volkswagen Foundation is supporting the international project "Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Perspectives" within the framework of its funding programme "Challenges for Europe" over the next four years with a total of almost 1.5 million euros (376,360 euros for the sub-project at the University of Erfurt). In addition to historians, researchers from sociology, law and political science are also involved.

A case study within the project deals with the interpretation of legality and the rule of law in Poland and in the new German states: In it, Dr Ned Richardson-Little examines how these East Central European experiences can serve to understand processes in the former GDR.