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Populist Nationalism, Anti-Europeanism, Post-nationalism, and the East-West Distinction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Paul Blokker

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In the literature on emergent populism and nationalism in post-communist Eastern Europe, two main assumptions regarding the origins of the phenomenon can be distinguished. One line of argumentation holds that the unexpected resurgence of populism and nationalism after the collapse of the communist regimes is a direct result of the ‘valley of tears’ that characterizes the post-communist transformation from a communist, centrally planned system, to a democratic, market society. The ‘social costs’ of the transition and the still ‘incomplete’ nature of modernization make a large number of ‘modernization losers’ susceptible to mobilization by populist movements. The emergence of populist, nationalist movements should be understood as a radical form of protest against the degradation of the quality of life and widespread social dislocation and unemployment. A second explanation for the phenomenon is that populism and its naturalist, exclusivist portrayal of the nation is the result of the re-emergence of deeply, culturally ingrained perception of social belonging, and of the foundations of the polity, in which the social whole is considered prior to the individual, and in which local culture is valued differently from Western culture. In this explanation, the structural difference between Eastern and Western Europe is emphasized, a difference that can only be overcome by the former adopting the political model of the latter.

Type
Articles: Special Issue: Confronting Memories – Anti-European Europeanism: The Rise of Populism
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 2: Article: Special Issue - Confronting Memories: European „Bitter Experiences“ and the Constitutionalization Process , 01 February 2005 , pp. 371 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

2 The temporary suspension of social order, i.e., of being in between two systems, see Zygmunt Bauman, After the patronage state: a model in search of class interests, in: The new great transformation? Change and continuity in East-Central Europe 14 (Christopher Bryant / Edward Mokrzycki, eds., 1994). See for various forms of ‘modernizationist’ argumentation: David Lovell, Nationalism, civil society, and the prospects for freedom in Eastern Europe, 45: 1 Australian Journal of Politics and History 65 (1999); Michael Minkenberg, The radical right in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe: comparing observations and interpretations, 16 2 East European Politics and Societies 335 (2002); Cas Mudde, In the Name of the Peasantry, the Proletariat, and the People: Populisms in Eastern Europe, 14 2 East European Politics and Societies 33 (2000); Andrej Skolkay, Populism in Central Eastern Europe, Thinking Fundamentals, IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences 9 (2000). For a similar critique as mine, see Juraj Buzalka, Is rural populism on the decline? Continuities and Changes in Twentieth Century Central Europe – The case of Slovakia, Sussex European Institute Working Paper 73 (2004); Gerard Delanty / Patrick O'Mahony, Nationalism and social theory. Modernity and the recalcitrance of the nation chapter 7 (2002).Google Scholar

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4 As Minkenberg (note 2), 336, argues with regard to the emergence of right-wing extremism in Eastern Europe: ‘… the overall analytical frame for the CEE radical right is a multiple modernization process, i.e., a transformation from authoritarian regimes to liberal democracies, from state socialist to capitalist market economies, and from industrialism to postindustrialism. The resulting strains of economic and political insecurity, especially the uncompleted process of democratization and consolidation of the new regimes, provide opportunities for the radical right which present western democracies do not…'.Google Scholar

5 Cf., Mudde (note 2).Google Scholar

6 Cf., Minkenberg (note 2).Google Scholar

7 The most well-known expression of this line of argumentation is: Michael Ignatieff, Blood and belonging (1993).Google Scholar

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16 Cf., Schöpflin 41 (note 8).Google Scholar

17 See Schöpflin (note 8); Yack (note 8).Google Scholar

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19 See Hans-Georg Betz, Radical right wing populism in Western Europe (1994); The politics of the extreme right: from the margins to the mainstream (Paul Hainsworth, ed., 2000); Paul Hockenos, Free to hate: the rise of the right in post-communist Eastern Europe (1993); Herbert Kitschelt, The radical right-wing in Western Europe: a comparative analysis (1995).Google Scholar

20 See, in particular, Margaret Canovan, Trust the People! Populism and the two faces of Democracy, 47 Political Studies 2 (1999); Yves Mény / Yves Surel, Populismo e democrazia (2001); Benjamin Arditi, Populism as a Spectre of Democracy: A Response to Canovan, 52 Political Studies 135 (2004); Mabel Berezin, Re-asserting the National: The Paradox of Populism in Transnational Europe, Working Paper 21, August, Center for the Study of Economy and Society (2004). For a rejection of this vision, see Nadia Urbinati, Populism and democracy, 1 Constellations 110 (1998).Google Scholar

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22 Cf., Canovan (note 20), 5.Google Scholar

23 This explains why one can also find some populist arguments in the doctrines of leftist parties (for a Western European example, see the Dutch Socialist Party (see its program for the elections of the European Parliament of June 2004, ‘Wie zwijgt stemt toe!', available at <http://europa.sp.nl>), for an Eastern European example, see the programs of the Romanian Social Democratic Party, the PDSR (Partidul Democraţiei Sociale din România; since 2001 PSD), e.g., its Programul Politic al Partidului Democraţiei Sociale'din România, available at <http://www.pdsr.ro/documente/>). Conventionally, however, populism has been attributed to political parties on the right and extreme right such as Le Pen's Front National, Haider's Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, the Italian Lega Nord, and in Eastern Europe, the Polish Self-Defence Party, the Greater Romania Party, and the Hungarian Party for Justice and Life (MIEP).),+for+an+Eastern+European+example,+see+the+programs+of+the+Romanian+Social+Democratic+Party,+the+PDSR+(Partidul+Democraţiei+Sociale+din+România;+since+2001+PSD),+e.g.,+its+Programul+Politic+al+Partidului+Democraţiei+Sociale'din+România,+available+at+).+Conventionally,+however,+populism+has+been+attributed+to+political+parties+on+the+right+and+extreme+right+such+as+Le+Pen's+Front+National,+Haider's+Freiheitliche+Partei+Österreichs,+the+Italian+Lega+Nord,+and+in+Eastern+Europe,+the+Polish+Self-Defence+Party,+the+Greater+Romania+Party,+and+the+Hungarian+Party+for+Justice+and+Life+(MIEP).>Google Scholar

24 See, for instance, Minkenberg (note 2). Yves Mény and Yves Surel formulate this critique on mainstream approaches to populism as follows: “The road that opens is dangerous, because it would become easy to define as pathological everything that does not enter into the known repertoire of the procedures that benefit from a stamp of democratic respectability”, Mény / Surel 24 (note 20). Yves Mény and Yves Surel identify two principal points of view with such an analysis of populism: its equation with the repugnant ideas of the extreme right (providing a moral condemnation of populism rather than an analysis) and an elitist perception of democracy.Google Scholar

25 Canovan 3 (note 20).Google Scholar

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27 That is, the possibility of human salvation through political action and the idea that society is malleable and thus open to human intervention, in other words, the idea that “through political action society can be transformed in the image of the political” (Delanty / O'Mahony 6 (note 2); see, also, SHMUEL Eisenstadt, Fundamentalism, sectarianism, and revolution: the Jacobin dimension of modernity (1999).Google Scholar

28 Margaret Canovan bases her distinction between the ‘redemptive’ and ‘pragmatic’ faces of democracy on Michael Oakeshott's account of two political styles of modernity: the ‘politics of faith’ and the ‘politics of scepticism'. A similar distinction of two components of democracy can be found in Mény / Surel who refer to populism on the one hand (the fulfilment of popular sovereignty in which the people is understood as a single entity), and constitutionalism on the other (democracy is about the Rechtsstaat which protects specific social spheres against the infringement of the arbitrary power of the state) (Mény / Surel 42 (note 20)).Google Scholar

29 In the words of Arditi (note 20), 138.Google Scholar

30 Mény / Surel 34 (note 20), my translation.Google Scholar

31 Arditi (note 20), 138.Google Scholar

32 Note 20, 140.Google Scholar

33 Populism as a phenomenon should therefore be understood as a possibility within democracy, although the full realization of its demands could lead to the undoing of that same democratic system. As Lefort observes with regard to totalitarian tendencies: ‘democracy is instituted and sustained by the dissolution of the markers of certainty‥. in which people experience a fundamental indeterminacy as to the basis of power, law, and knowledge…'. He goes on: ‘When individuals are increasingly insecure as a result of an economic crisis or of the ravages of war, when conflict between classes and groups is exacerbated and can no longer symbolically be resolved within the political sphere, when power appears to have sunk to the level of reality and to be no more than an instrument for the promotion of the interests and appetites of vulgar ambition and when, in a word, it appears in society, and when at the same time society appears to be fragmented, then we see the development of the fantasy of the People-As-One, the beginnings of a quest for a substantial identity, for a social body which is welded to its head, for an embodying power, for a state free from division', Claude Lefort, Democracy and political theory 19-20 (1988).Google Scholar

34 Arditi (note 20), 137.Google Scholar

35 Přibáň (note 8), 415.Google Scholar

36 Cf., Brubaker (note 15).Google Scholar

37 Mostov, Julie, The use and abuse of history in Eastern Europe: a challenge for the 1990s, 4 3 Constellations 376, 380 (1998).Google Scholar

38 Delanty / O'Mahony (note 2), xv.Google Scholar

39 See, for an insightful account, Michael Walzer, Thick and thin. Moral argument at home and abroad Chapter 4 (1994).Google Scholar

40 The emphasis on the emancipatory features of populism should not be seen to mean that I negate the radical, violent, exclusionary?, and xenophobic attitudes that are often integral parts of populism. Rather, it is an attempt to understand populism in the context of modernity and the latter's inherent openness to interpretation.Google Scholar

41 The Greater Romanian Party, for instance, founds its political program exclusively on the ‘National Doctrine’ and the priority of the national interest: “The National Doctrine is the theoretical and ideological basis of our party, being a synthetic expression of the multi-millenial existence of the Romanians, having its origins both in the Christian-Orthodox religion in which the Romanian people has been formed, as well as in the ideas of liberty, justice, and independence of the major figures of the people. The National Doctrine combines faith, the sentiment of liberty and justice, love for the ancient homeland and ancestral traditions”, available at <http://www.romare.ro/prm.html> (my translation).+(my+translation).>Google Scholar

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46 Fine (note 8). See, also, Can liberal pluralism be exported? Western political theory and ethnic relations in Eastern Europe (Will Kymlicka / Magda Opalski, eds., 2001).Google Scholar

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48 Mudde, See Cas / Kopecky, Petr, The two sides of Euroscepticism. Party positions on European integration in East Central Europe, in: 3 (3) European Union Politics 297 (2002). Formal European integration is criticized for its weakening of Europe, as acclaimed by Istvan Csurka, the leader of the Hungarian MIEP: “Europa ist gezwungen, seine immanenten nationalen Souveränitäten zu beschränken, die Abtretung der nationalen Unabhängigkeiten, der eigenen Kulturen, der örtlichen Selbständigkeiten an Brüssel ist jedoch kein europäisches, sondern außereuropäisches Interesse. Diese Abtretung ist eigentlich eine kosmopolitische Homogenisierung. Ein Prozeß der Gesichts- und Charakterlosigkeit. Für Europa ist es der Tod schlechthin” (“Europe is forced to reduce its immanent national sovereignties, the transfer of national independencies, local cultures and autonomies to Brussels is, however, instead of a European, an extra-European interest. This transfer is in reality a cosmopolitan homogenization. A process of lack of identity and character. For Europe, it is death as such”) (Csurka (note 42)).Google Scholar

49 Canovan (note 20).Google Scholar

50 Cf., Buzalka (note 2).Google Scholar

51 As seems obvious, but perhaps needs to be repeated, the attempt to understand and deconstruct populism and ethno-cultural nationalism do not entail or presuppose normative agreement with the articulated ideas by the researcher.Google Scholar

52 Cf., Mény / Surel (note 20).Google Scholar

53 Habermas, Jürgen, The European Nation-State – Its achievements and its limits. On the past and the future of sovereignty and citizenship, in: Mapping the nation 281 (Gopal Balakrishnan, ed., 1996); Jürgen Habermas, The postnational constellation. Political Essays (2001); Die Einbeziehung des Anderen (1999).Google Scholar

54 Cf, ., Gerard Delanty, Models of European identity: reconciling universalism and particularism, 3:3 Perspectives on European Politics and Society 345 (2002).Google Scholar

55 Fine (note 8), 153.Google Scholar

56 Preamble of the ‘Treaty establishing a Constitution of Europe', 13 October 2004, CIG 87/1/04 REV 1.Google Scholar

57 Habermas, Jürgen, Why Europe needs a constitution, 11 New Left Review 5 (2001); it should be underlined, though, that early nation-building in Western Europe and the United States was certainly not a peaceful process.Google Scholar

58 See, for instance, Will Kymlicka's discussion of the importance of societal culture in Western societies, Will Kymlicka, Western political theory and ethnic relations in Eastern Europe, in: Kymlicka / Opalski 13 (note 43).Google Scholar