Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2019
The reasons for the recent rise of Eastern European populism constitute a puzzling issue in political and scientific discussions. As Paul Blokker shows, Eastern European populism can neither be seen as a mere reaction to communism, nor as the “natural” consequence of the transition from a socialist economy to a liberal market model of production. Nor is populism just another form of ethnic nationalism, developed in Eastern Europe and juxtaposed to civic nationalism. The strong dichotomy between an ethnocultural and exclusive nationalism and a civic and inclusive nationalism does not exist in these terms and is the product of a scientific bias, and not a product of empirical observation.
1 See Paul Blokker's contribution in this issue.Google Scholar
2 Canovan, See Margaret, Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy; Yves Mény/Yves Surel, The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism, both in: Democracies and the populist challenge 25 and 1 (Yves Mény/Yves Surel, eds., 2000); Blokker's contribution.Google Scholar
3 Canovan; Mény/Surel (note 2).Google Scholar
4 Canovan, Margaret, Trust the people! Populism and the two Faces of Democracy, 47 Political Studies 5 (1999).Google Scholar
5 Gerard Delanty/Patrick O'Mahony, Nationalism and social theory. Modernity and the recalcitrance of the nation 6 (2002).Google Scholar
6 See Blokker's contribution in this issue. Another concern for the research would be to find out how some forms of populism have developed in particular situations, appealing to particular histories and how they worked, i.e., how one sort of populism succeeded.Google Scholar
7 Hayward, See Jack, Populist Challenge to Elitist Democracy in Europe, in: Elitism, Populism, European Politics 10 (Jack Hayward, ed., 1996). For Haider and the Austrian FPÖ see: Reinhard Heinisch, Populism, Proporz, Pariah: Austria turns Right 113 (2002); for Bossi and the Italian Northern League see: Hans-Georg Betz, Against Rome. The Lega Nord, in: The new politics of the Right. Neo-Populist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies 45 (Hans-Georg Betz/Stefan Immerfall, eds., 1998).Google Scholar
8 Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse: le systeme totemique en Australie (1912) [English translation: The elementary forms of religious life (1995)].Google Scholar
9 See Emilio Gentile, Il culto del Littorio (1993).Google Scholar
10 On Giovanni Gentile and fascism, see amongst others: Gennaro Sasso, Le due Italie di Giovanni Gentile (1998); Gabriele Turi, Giovanni Gentile. Una biografia (1995); Sergio Romano, Giovanni Gentile. Un filosofo al potere negli anni del regime (2004).Google Scholar
11 Bo Stråth, Introduction, in: Myth and Memory in the Construction of Community, Historical Patterns in Europe and Beyond 19 (Bo Stråth, ed., 2000).Google Scholar
12 See Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge (1972).Google Scholar
13 See Mary Douglas, How Institutions think (1986).Google Scholar
14 See Patricia Chiantera-Stutte, The Ambiguous Heritage of Mitteleuropa, 14:3 Law and Critique325 2003.Google Scholar
15 See Roberto Biorcio, La Padania promessa. La storia, le idee e la logica d'azione della Lega Nord (1997).Google Scholar
16 Patricia Chiantera-Stutte/Andrea Petö, Cultures of Populism and the Political Right in Central Europe, 5:4 CLCWeb Comparative literature and culture (2003), http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/.Google Scholar
17 Taggart, Paul, Populism and the pathology of representative Politics, in: Mény/Surel (note 2), 67.Google Scholar
18 For the dichotomy between a liberal and an exclusionary idea of Mitteleuropa see Wolfgang Mommsen, Die Mitteleuropaidee und die Mitteleuropaplanungen im Deutschen Reich vor und während des ersten Weltkrieges, in: Mitteleuropakonzeptionen in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts 3 (Richard Georg Plaschka/Horst Haselsteiner et al., eds., 1995); See, also, Chiantera-Stutte (note 14).Google Scholar
19 An interesting research would be one that could investigate this phenomenon: the selection of histories by populism and the use of traditions in the political agenda and debates.Google Scholar
20 See Ruth Wodak/Anton Pelinka, The Haider Phenomenon in Austria (2002).Google Scholar
21 See Margarita Gomez-Reino, Ethnicity and Nationalism in Italian Politics (2002).Google Scholar
22 For the recent debate on the politics of identity, see Michael Kenny, The politics of identity, Liberal Political Theories and the Dilemmas of Difference (2004); for the politics of identity and the Northern League see: Oliver Schmidtke, Politics of identity. Ethnicities, territories and the political opportunity Structure in Northern Italian Society (1996).Google Scholar
23 See Adorno, Theodor W., Erziehung nach Auschwitz (1966) and Erziehung zur Mündigkeit (1969), both from Erziehung zur Mündigkeit (1970).Google Scholar
24 See, amongst many others, the “optimistic” view expressed by Ulrich Haltern, Das Janusgesicht der Unionsbürgerschaft, 11:1 Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft (forthcoming, 2005), contra: Philippe Schmitter, Is it really possibile to democratize the Euro-Polity?, WP Arena n. 10 (1996).Google Scholar
25 Claus Offe, The democratic Welfare State: a European Regime under the Strain of European Integration, Political Science Series No. 68 (2000).Google Scholar
26 One example of this kind of rhetoric is the 2004 Northern League's Programme for the EP: Programma della Lega per le elezioni europee 2004, in: http://www.leganord.org/a_1_elezioni_2004.htm (June 2004).Google Scholar
27 “Heute wissen wir, daß viele politische Traditionen, die im Scheine ihrer Naturwüchsigkeit Autorität heischen, “erfunden” worden sind. Demgegenüber hätte eine europäische Identität, die im Licht der Öffentlichkeit geboren würde, etwas Konstruiertes von Anfang an. Aber nur ein aus Willkür Konstruiertes trüge den Makel der Beliebigkeit. Der politisch-ethische Wille, der sich in der Hermeneutik von Selbstverständigungsprozessen zur Geltung bringt, ist nicht Willkür. Die Unterscheidung zwischen dem Erbe, das wir antreten, und dem, welches wir zurückweisen wollen, verlangt ebensoviel Umsicht wie die Entscheidung über die Lesart, in der wir es uns aneignen. Historische Erfahrungen kandidieren nur für eine bewußte Aneignung, ohne die sie eine identitätsbildende Kraft nicht erlangen.” J. Habermas/J. Derrida, Nach dem Krieg: die Wiedergeburt Europas, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 31 May 2003 (translation by the author).Google Scholar