Central Europe is a laboratory for political trends | Letters
Dr Sean Hanley responds to an editorial on the collapse of social democratic parties as rightwing nationalism flourishes
Your editorial on the politics of central Europe (28 April) rightly notes the collapse of many traditional centre-left parties. But its explanation is incomplete and oddly exceptionalist.
Much of what you describe – the erosion of social democratic parties after market liberalisation, the political aftershocks of the financial crisis, migration-driven cultural conflict and the drift of older and less metropolitan voters towards variegated forms of populism – is visible across much of western Europe. These are not uniquely eastern pathologies.
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