I have rewritten my paper presented at 2nd Annual Workshop of Populism Specialist Group at the Political Studies Association March 23-24, 2018. This new draft has been presented at the ECPR General Conference 22-26 August 2018, Hamburg, Germany.
Abstract
In Eastern Europe the successful populist parties are mostly
Right-wing nationalist (for instance the Hungarian Fidesz and the Polish Law
and Justice) or exceptionally Left-wing populist (for instance Slovak Direction
– Social Democracy in Slovakia) with a huge nationalist sentiment. It seems to
be that in this region populism and nationalism have been closely related or
merged. Moreover, following the traditional literature on populism (Ghita
Ionescu, Ernest Gellner), we can easily say that our contemporary “populist
Zeitgeist” can be seen as some kind of (post)modern nationalism. In this paper,
I am dealing with the problem, how can we define and analyse populism in Eastern
Europe. It is hard to say that populism and nationalism have nothing to do with
each other, but I am convinced that populism cannot be identified with
nationalism. That is why, I introduce the term of historical-theoretical complex of nationalism and populism.
According to
post-Marxist, critical and discursive literature (Ernesto Laclau, Chantal
Mouffe) it is obviously that populism is not just a Right-wing phenomenon and
there is a thing which can be called transnational Left-wing populism (Benjamin Moffitt, Panos Panayotu). This version of
populism is not an unknow phenomenon in this part of Europe, because the
Communist regimes before 1989 a transnational populist agenda has been created (Antal,
2017b), but the Left-wing populism is seriously underrepresented in
contemporary Eastern Europe.
I am investigating here the political theoretical (Antal,
2017a) and historical background of nationalist populism of our time in Eastern
Europe analysing examples from the following countries of this region: Hungary,
Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania. My main thought is that
the politics in this region has always been populist in that sense there is a constant
need to contrast “the people” (as a large powerless group) and “the elite” (a
small powerful group). This “never ending” political tradition of Eastern European
populism turned up in the history once in nationalist and other times in
transnational perspectives. However, the contemporary Right-wing nationalist
populism means a relatively new phenomenon, but it has deeply historical ground
in the interwar Right-wing nationalism. According to my other hypothesis, the
governing Right-wing populist parties (especially the Fidesz in Hungary) use
the nationalist discourse to create permanent political enemies inside and
outside of the nation (Brubaker argues that this kind of nationalism appears as
civilizationsim). These parties
belong to the political elite and use populist discourse to cover up their corrupt
politics which does not serve the interest of the people. In my view there is a
new chapter in historical-theoretical complex of nationalism
and populism in Eastern Europe, this is the emergence of populist entrepreneurs using nationalism to maintain their
governing power based on populism, which raises several dangers.
I will put forward here that the contemporary
Right-wing in Eastern Europe was able to rebuild its nationalism as a 21st
century populism and the Left said goodbye its nationalist and populist roots
and did not reconfigure its populism in transnational scales.
