What is to be Done? Framings of Urban Populism in Prague and Warsaw

Connor O’Dwyer

doi:10.47785/urbana.6.2021

Abstract

Resurgent populism in East Central Europe is typically analyzed at the national level. This paper examines populist urban movements in two of the region’s capital cities: Prague and Warsaw. It locates the origin of urban populist grievances in the crisis of urban-planning regimes after communism. At the same time, it argues that the character of populist urban movements, in terms of their mobilizing frames and tactics, varies between cities depending on the openness of municipal institutions to new social actors. The research draws on extensive field interviews, policy documents, academic analyses, and domestic media reports. It sheds light on an under-studied variant of postcommunist populism—one less conservative and potentially more inclusive—and contributes to the literatures on postcommunist civil society, urban planning, and municipal-level politics.

Highlights

Since communism fell in Eastern Europe, an interdisciplinary scholarship has described a distinctive urban type, the “post-socialist city,” whose ongoing restructuring reflects socialism’s economic, political, and cultural legacies as well as the birth pains of the transition (Sýkora and Bouzarovski 2012, 44)
The post-socialist city is typified by party capture of such urban planning institutions as remain for clientelist purposes and, unresponsiveness and unaccountability to the public (Horak 2007)
This paper addresses the question: what kind of populism do post-socialist urban movements espouse and why? If we accept that populism can take various forms, from democratically-oriented “common sense” reformism to contentious critique of the status quo to authoritarian-tending illiberalism, where on this spectrum do the region’s urban movements locate themselves? To what extent does the answer to this question depend on the perceived problems of municipal governance, on the one hand, and on the opportunities available for collective action in the local political system, on the other? My approach is descriptive and inductive

Summary

Introduction

Since communism fell in Eastern Europe, an interdisciplinary scholarship has described a distinctive urban type, the “post-socialist city,” whose ongoing restructuring reflects socialism’s economic, political, and cultural legacies as well as the birth pains of the transition (Sýkora and Bouzarovski 2012, 44). I characterize the predominant strategic orientation of urban movements by analyzing which mobilizing frames and associated tactics resonate most in a given context By virtue of their pre-1989 history and, as I will argue, their history since 1989, Prague and Warsaw represent divergent political contexts for post-socialist urban movements. Geographer Michaela Pixová’s (2020) study of urban movements in Prague and other Czech cities notes their “frequent tendency ...to use populist discourses as a tactic which transforms their grievances into the shared identity of large groups of citizens who are disillusioned by the policy outcomes of post-socialist urban governments” (2020,176) As noted earlier, these movements are more participatory, less professionalized, and more domestically oriented than post-communist civil society groups tend to be. I will focus on “realignment” and “anti-system” master frames since they best describe the contexts facing urban movements in Prague and Warsaw

Inclusion master frame

Urban Planning Reforms

Findings

Conclusion