Neoliberal Thought and Democracy in Post-Socialist Slovakia
This article examines the moral dimensions of neoliberal economic thought in post-socialist Slovakia, focusing on how local economic experts and intellectuals appropriated Friedrich Hayek’s ideas to articulate a moral justification for market reforms during the transition from state socialism. Rather than framing the shift to capitalism in purely technical or economic terms, Slovak reformers—particularly those associated with the Public Against Violence (VPN) movement and its successor, the Civic Democratic Union (ODÚ)—argued for market liberalization as a means of societal moral renewal. Drawing on archival sources and writings by key figures such as Jozef Kučerák, Alica Kršáková, and Ivan Mikloš, this study explores how Hayekian thought was adapted to the Slovak context to present economic inequality, competition, and entrepreneurship as moral goods essential for democracy building. This article positions this moral discourse against dominant critiques of neoliberalism as amoral or technocratic, instead arguing that the Slovak case reveals a complex interplay of ideology, morality, and democratic aspiration and shows how these translated into political practice. It contends that neoliberalism’s local appeal stemmed not from foreign imposition but from the internal moral logic of post-socialist reformers seeking to build a new democratic order rooted in individual freedom and responsibility.