The center-periphery cleavage revisited: East and Central Europe from Postcommunism to Euroscepticism

The paper examines the evolution of East and Central European party systems from the previous communist/anti-communist conflict to the emergent division between pro-EU and Eurosceptic forces and puts forward a revised view of the traditional centre-periphery cleavage in six countries: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. The first part addresses the question of ‘stateness’ and the second the Rokkan spatial approach while the third develops a revised view of the centre-periphery cleavage in relation to space at the national (minority ethnic groups vs. state), regional (EU vs. East European member states) and global (URSS vs. satellite countries during the bipolar system) levels.