In this episode of the Vienna Coffee House Conversations, host Ivan Vejvoda speaks with Grigorij Mesežnikov, political scientist and president of the Institute for Public Affairs, about the political trajectory of Slovakia. Mesežnikov, a 2019/20 Europe’s Futures Fellow of the IWM Vienna and ERSTE Foundation, offers a detailed account of Slovakia’s path from post-communist transition to its current political challenges, marked by the return of Robert Fico’s populist government.

Key topics include:

• The political transformation of Slovakia after the fall of the Berlin Wall
• The rise of Robert Fico and the national-populist coalition
• The impact of Ján Kuciak’s murder on Slovak civil society and government accountability
• Slovakia’s growing pro-Russian sentiment and its implications for EU and NATO relationships
• The current state of Slovakia’s democracy and the potential for future political change

Grigorij Mesežnikov is a prominent political scientist based in Bratislava, Slovakia. He co-founded the Institute for Public Affairs and has served as its president since the 1990s. Mesežnikov is a key commentator on Slovak politics and contributes regularly to both domestic and international media. His research focuses on democratization, political culture, and civil society in post-communist countries.

See more about Grigorij Mesežnikov’s work at Institute for Public Affairs.
Find Mesežnikov on X: @GMeseznikov

Ivan Vejvoda  is Head of the Europe's Futures program at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM Vienna) implemented in partnership with ERSTE Foundation. The program is dedicated to the cultivation of knowledge and the generation of ideas addressing pivotal challenges confronting Europe and the European Union: nexus of borders and migration, deterioration in rule of law and democracy and European Union’s enlargement prospects.

The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM Vienna) is an institute of advanced studies in the humanities and social sciences. Founded as a place of encounter in 1982 by a young Polish philosopher, Krzysztof Michalski, and two German colleagues in neutral Austria, its initial mission was to create a meeting place for dissenting thinkers of Eastern Europe and prominent scholars from the West.

Since then it has promoted intellectual exchange across disciplines, between academia and society, and among regions that now embrace the Global South and North. The IWM is an independent and non-partisan institution, and proudly so. All of our fellows, visiting and permanent, pursue their own research in an environment designed to enrich their work and to render it more accessible within and beyond academia.

For further information about the Institute:

https://www.iwm.at/