Hubert Smekal, a lecturer at the Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology, published an article in Journal of Contemporary European Studies, titled ‘Drivers of domestic politicisation of European issues: explaining low politicisation of differentiated integration in Czechia’.
Hubert and his co-author Vratislav Havlik discuss why prominent issues (here, differentiated integration) do not become a part of political debates. They argue that in the Czech case, the lack of politicization is a result of the disinterested public, a path dependency of a mismatch between positions of political parties and significant parts of their electorates on EU issues. Finally, ANO, once a catch-all populist party, prevented a high level of politicisation of EU issues to not antagonise parts of its voters. Czechia served well as an intriguing case in which the mainstream explanations of a low level of domestic politicisation of EU issues did not provide adequate explanation, which opened space for deeper exploration.