Understanding of Smer-SD's Rebirth and Return to Power After the 2020 Slovak Parliamentary Elections

The defeat of the Smer-SD party in the 2020 parliamentary elections by Igor Matović's centrist populist movement OĽANO led to a split in the party and the formation of a new social democratic party, Voice-SD, led by former Prime Minister Petr Pellegrini. Smer-SD, led by R. Fico, is a party that governed Slovakia continuously with a short interruption in 2010-2012, even in the only majority cabinet in Slovakia's history after the 2012 elections, and was on the verge of extinction after this defeat. In opinion polls in Slovakia at the turn of 2020/2021, the party's support was at an all-time low of 8-9%. At first glance, the defeat of Smer-SD fit into the broader context of the decline of traditional parties in the Visegrad countries, and both professional and popular discourse tended to discuss the definitive end of an era, the demise of the Smer-SD party, and what Slovak politics would look like in the post-Fico era. However, the political events of the following months in Slovakia brought an unexpected turn and another Smer-SD victory in the 2023 early parliamentary elections, after which R. Fico formed his fourth government with the help of the Hlas-SD and SNS parties. Even though some studies have already offered a partial analysis of the Slovak elections, there is no attempt in the broader discourse to provide an understanding of this actor's unique political return to power. Drawing on the interpretive tradition of political science research, this study offers an in-depth analysis based on the analysis of primary sources and the broader media discourse in Slovakia between the 2020 and 2023 parliamentary elections. The main goal of this paper is to offer a wider picture that can be found behind the rebirth and return to power of the Smer-SD party in the early elections in September 2023. In the following lines, I propose to understand what we might also call "Smer-SD' rebirth" as a process in which a synergy of several simultaneous factors is embodied, combining domestic and external factors. I argue that the regaining of power by this actor was possible mainly because Smer-SD: (i) promptly resolved the intra-party conflict; (ii) carried out a party rebranding and adapted the rhetoric of sovereignty; (iii) made use of its own experience of opposition politics; (iv) instrumentalised a threat derived from ontological insecurity to strengthen its divisive populist rhetoric; (v) was characterised by disruptive illiberalism in addition to so-called ideological illiberalism. Understanding how populist/illiberal actors return to power after being overthrown, as in the Slovak case, can undoubtedly be helpful for future developments in neighbouring countries such as the Czech Republic or Poland.