Democratic transit and internal political development of Visegrad group states

The presented piece seeks to explain the specific processes happening in the Visegrad states within the following years after the EU' accession. The author argues that the rise of populism and nationalism, combined with weak elites and conflicts between different branches of executive power institutions, gives an evidence of the situation which is still far from the «democratic consolidation» described in the IR literature. Our hypothesis builds on the assumption that the Visegrad group states are still under the processes of transitions, which also influence their foreign policy behaviors marked by the shift towards soft balancing with key partners - the EU, USA, and Russia.