What is Behind the Electoral Success of Contemporary Central European Populism?

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

We propose to hold a roundtable on the electoral success of contemporary Central European populism. In Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Britain, France, and even Germany right populist parties have become increasingly competitive in key elections, while the governments of Law and Justice in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary demonstrate the resilience of such parties in power. Understanding their rise is an important political-science and policy question.

What many populists share is an anti-establishment, monist and moralist ideology that is often combined with other ideologies, such as nativism on the right and socialism on the left. And while many illiberal, extreme (left or right), or just besieged governments might copy some elements of the populist playbook around opposition suppression and redistribution, it’s the absence of a monist and moralist ideology that sets them apart from populists.

What accounts for the electoral successes of populists? The proposed roundtable seeks to contribute to and help advance the relevant academic and policy debates in four main ways:
• First, conceptually, using the definition above, we will debate the success of populism in a more disciplined manner than much previous work, which usually lumps together populists and extreme left or right parties and movements.
• Second, theoretically, we seek to explore simultaneously both the supply and the demand side of this electoral equation, asking 1) under what conditions do populist parties a) crop up and b) assume power as well as 2) why do some citizens a) vote populists into power and then b) often re-elect them.
• Supply side: We will build on the work of students of populism who have tended to explain the electoral success of populists and/or extreme parties with reference to: 1) at the macro-level, the macro-economic environment (economic/financial crises, inequality, economy profile, corruption); 2) at the meso-level, weaknesses of the political party or civic association systems (polarization, fragmentation, and representational gaps); and 3) at the micro-level, the prevalence of traditionalist beliefs and intolerance of difference/minorities.
• Demand side: We will also borrow insights from the three broad groups of previous accounts of why voters cast their ballots for populists and/or extreme parties: 1) at the micro-level, focusing on the so-called authoritarian personality; 2) at the meso-level, emphasizing the socio-economic profile (education, income, gender, and age) of certain groups of voters; and 3) at the macro-level, focusing on cultural (ideology and religiosity) changes.
• Third, methodologically, we seek to answer the supply- and demand-side questions posed above from a multi-disciplinary and multi-method framework. The participating authors plan to leverage not only public opinion polls and qualitative case studies but also discourse analysis, observational and experimental surveys to better examine the phenomenon of contemporary Central European populism.
• Fourth, empirically, the proposed roundtable will revisit the alternative—though not mutually exclusive—supply- and demand-side explanations with empirical attention to Central Europe. We will thus examine empirical cases that are relatively understudied under this topic: the Central European members of the EU in which populists have not only grown stronger in the fringes but also breached into the mainstream and seized power; our main focus is on Hungary and Poland but we will also touch on Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Chair

• Joshua A. Tucker New York University

Presenters

• Bart Bonikowski Harvard University

• Abel Bojar European University Institute

• Tsveta Petrova Columbia University

• Bonnie M. Meguid University of Rochester

• Maria Snegovaya Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland