There is a big conversation brewing about the deepening East-West divide in the European Union. Much of this conversation started long before the pandemic. Social scientists like R. Daniel Kelemen have been worried for a long time now about the diverging trajectories in democratic institutions and about the possible roles that European Union (EU) institutions may have played in supporting that evolution. More recent scholarship shows how the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated that tension. This raises questions about whether such developments were always likely to happen, and about how we can better understand East-West relations in Europe. Fortunately, three brilliant new books promise to help in that understanding. The first, by Larry Wolff, examines the role of Woodrow Wilson in help shaping the politics of Central and Eastern Europe. The second, by John Connelly, explores the evolution of East European nationalism. The third, by Lenka Bustikova, examines the problem of extreme right mobilization. The conclusion I take away from these books is that there are important political dynamics at work in Eastern Europe that need deeper understanding; it is not that East and West are fundamentally different. We can learn a lot from the study of Eastern Europe as we struggle to interpret developments elsewhere as well – Western Europe very much included.
