Cambridge Central and Eastern European Forum kindly invites you for a talk and a follow-up discussion with Dr. Sean Hanley (UCL):
The Czech Republic elects its president on 26-27 January in the set of direct elections for the country’s head of state. The incumbent president and former Social Democrat prime minister Milos Zeman is being challenged by the independent Jiri Drahos, who has emerged as a focus of opposition to Zeman’s increasingly illiberal and populist political agenda. In this talk Sean Hanley reviews the presidential election campaign and the election result and discusses what it may mean for the longer-term development of Czech democracy and the Czech Republic’s position in Europe.
Dr. Sean Hanley is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. His major book publication is The New Right in the New Europe: Czech transformation and right-wing politics (Routledge 2007). The underlying concern of his research is extent to which East Central European democracies have come to resemble models familiar from Western Europe – and, contrarily, the possibility that the fluid, elite-centred populist politics of East Central Europe may be a harbinger of things to come in established democracies. He has regularly contributed shorter pieces of comment and analysis on Central and East European for sites such as Policy Network, EUROPP, iHned.czand the SSEES Research Blog and writes for the Economist Intelligence Unit. He also writes a personal academic blog, “Dr. Sean’s Diary,” and can be followed on Twitter @drseanhanley.