Populism in Central and Eastern Europe – Challenge for the Future?

6 Populism in Central and Eastern Europe – Challenge for the Future
They were organised to discuss the collective
publication Populism in Europe, issued by the
Green European Foundation in 2011. The aim of
the publication was to collect and classify the
experiences of West European populism and to
make partial references to its character at the
area of Central Europe. The issues, which are the
outcome of the current understanding of populism
in that region of Europe, were discussed
both during the panel-workshop and the debate.
They were linked by the common title Populism in
Central Europe – Challenge for the Future.
Experts from seven countries: Austria, the Czech
Republic, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland,
Slovakia, and Hungary, took part in the workshop.
All the above-mentioned countries had and have
a substantial experience with populism. That
is why the opinions of the experts from these
countries were a particularly interesting source
of information and an inspiring base for an animated
debate.
It is understandable that during the above-mentioned
open debate, references were made to
the claims formulated during the workshop and
these claims were creatively developed. In the
debate, five experts from three countries: the
Netherlands, Poland, and Slovakia, took part.
During its course they presented their approaches
to local and external sources of populism, mainly,
but not only, in Central Europe, and also discussed
to what degree populist movements are
organised and what the relations between political
culture and populism are.
Both the workshops and the open debate have
proved that there is no uniform perception of
research approaches. This remark is quite understandable
as it is based on different experiences
from many countries. Namely, populism is perceived
by some academic milieus as a concrete
ideology containing right- or left-wing designates
but also able to compile them depending on the
socio-economic-political character of a given
country. From populism perceived as an ideology
derives the adopted form of political strategy. For
other experts’ milieus it may be mainly a amalgamation
of a rhetoric based on a concrete axiology
combined with a form of activeness or simply
political behaviour considered as useful. These
two general approaches are linked by the blackand-white
perception of the socio-political reality
visible in the populist division into ‘us and them’. It
assigns to all the versions of populism a definitely
anti-elitist character, and the notion of elite itself
is frequently and intentionally left imprecise.
A synthesis of these two approaches makes it
possible to formulate one more definition of populism.
Thus it may be understood as a collection
of deliberately selected values of anti-elitist
nature, emerging from various ideologies (and
not from only one separate & cohesive ideology)
and applied in practical activity in order to
achieve political influence on society and state
institutions, including the possession of power,
however not for a very long time.
The populist slogans gain social response especially
when two interdependent processes occur at
the same time. These are: the growing alienation
of the society from the rulers and the increased
oligarchic tendencies within the political class
and thus within the power elite, and within the
legal, namely internal opposition. I understand
the political class mainly as a group distinguished
only according to the stratification principle and
not as a group of people with class, i.e., the ones
verified by a positive social response. This negative
opinion is an outcome of a prolonged observation
of behaviour and statements made by the
people involved in political activeness. I am also
aware of the popular view that politicians are to
a great extent an emanation of their electorate.
On the one hand, this is not a comforting knowledge,
but on the other one, it is the politicians who
are particularly responsible for creating models
legitimating the rulers in the eyes of the society.
It seems quite evident that such a belief is quite
alien to a large majority of the political class in
Central Europe but not only there.
The analysis of the common methods of making
politics allows us to distinguish its several
negative characteristic features. They are very
common, but their presence has had a particularly
negative impact in Central Europe or rather
Central-Eastern Europe. The especially harmful
phenomena also strengthening the processes of
de-legitimisation of the system of power are in
my opinion the following: the political rentierism,
i.e., the profit-oriented, mercantile approach to
politics; the pollocracy, i.e., excessive subordination
by politicians of their activities to the results
of current public opinion polls at the expense of
earlier formulated promises; and the re-election
obsession, which is the outcome of the two former
phenomena. An additional factor is the existence
of two types of political parties: a party-cartel,