HOW FAR DOES NATIONALISM GO? AN OVERVIEW OF POPULIST PARTIES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE (versione aggiornata del testo del 2017)

This chapter aims to provide an overview of populist parties across Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on six countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) between 1990 and 2020. The most recent elections taken into consideration are those in Slovakia in February 2020. The chapter starts with a theoretical section about the ambivalent framing of populism in the region. This section also includes details about the varieties of populist actors and presents their electoral fortunes and general features of development. One caveat must be mentioned. The vast majority of post-communist parties that correspond to the criteria identified in our theoretical part are classified as radical right forms of populism. The supply of inclusionary forms of populism is narrow and blurred. The second section presents a qualitative content analysis of the party programmes of six populist parties, one from each country, in the most recent legislative elections. Then we discuss the ambivalent relationship between discourse and practice by revealing populism’s two major contradictions. In order to broaden the discussion, the final section goes beyond the category of radical right populists. There, we integrate insights into our analysis about left-wing forms of populism and leaders that strategically use a populist-based discourse in order to mobilise their voters – although they cannot be considered representatives of populist parties according to our definition or the consolidated literature on this subject area. These two additional insights are used as so-called control cases in order to frame the peculiarities of populism better in the area of reference of this chapter. The conclusions summarise our main findings and shed light on avenues for further research.