In this podcast episode of the Vienna Coffee House Conversations, host Ivan Vejvoda speaks with political scientist Grigorij Mesežnikov about Slovakias’s political developments.

Mesežnikov provides a detailed analysis of Slovakia’s journey from post-communist transition to its ongoing political challenges, characterised by the return of Robert Fico’s populist government.

Grigorij Mesežnikov is a political scientist and the president of the Institute for Public Affairs. He has published expert studies on party systems’ development and political aspects of transformation in post-communist societies, illiberal and authoritarian tendencies, populism, radicalism and nationalism, in various monographs, collections and scholarly journals in Slovakia and other countries. He regularly contributes analyses of Slovakia’s political scene to domestic and foreign media. From 2019 to 2020, Mesežnikov was a Europe’s Futures Fellow.

Ivan Vejvoda is Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) and the director of the Europe’s Futures project of IWM and ERSTE Foundation. He is the host of the Vienna Coffee House Conversations podcast.

„Europe’s Futures“ ist eine Initiative des Instituts für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) und der ERSTE Stiftung, die sich der Wissensbildung und der Entwicklung von Ideen widmet, die sich mit zentralen Herausforderungen befassen, mit denen Europa und die EU konfrontiert sind.