Populist Forces Research Articles

The Counter-Majoritarian Referendum: Popular Voting Processes and Constitutional Change

ABSTRACT On the one hand, it seems important to bring real citizens into the constitutional processes of making and amending constitutions. This is important in order to foster a sense of ownership and commitment to constitutional principles, have those documents reflect the interests and concerns of ordinary people, and fulfill the principles of popular sovereignty and constituent authority of the people. On the other hand, there are many misgivings about handing over decisional power to the people (for example through referendums) on constitutional issues. The worry here is that these means of bringing citizen into the process are easily hijacked by majoritarian or populist forces and may be used to undermine rather than strengthen principles of constitutional democracy. Constitutions are, among other things, supposed to protect individuals and minorities from majorities. This is the classic tension between democracy and constitutionalism. One solution is to shift ideas of popular sovereignty away from voting and towards fostering public dialogue. In this paper, I argue that one of the most effective ways to foster public dialogue about constitutional essentials is through initiating a referendum. Thus I defend constitutional referendums on the counterintuitive grounds that if properly structured they are effective in promoting the recognition of the limits of majoritarianism.

Fugitive Truth: Renewing the Public Sphere in the Age of Post-Truth

In the sixty years since the publication of Jürgen Habermas' magnum opus, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, the public sphere now faces a new threat in the era of “post-truth” politics. The preponderance of lies, mis/disinformation, “fake news”, “alternative facts”, conspiracy theories, and the general breakdown of trust in established sources of knowledge and information has led to the fragmentation and deepening polarisation of the public sphere - a situation deliberately promoted by right wing populist forces intent on fighting the “culture wars”. At the same time, the political space is being disrupted, in a different way, through new social movements and radical activism particularly around issues of climate change, inequality, racial injustice, and police violence. My aim is to show how these contemporary forms of dissent are engendering a new “structural” transformation of the public sphere. They create autonomous and critical spaces of collective engagement that call into question the legitimacy of dominant power structures. Understanding this process requires an alternative rendering of the relationship between truth and politics - something I develop through Michel Foucault's rethinking of the critical impulse of the Kantian Enlightenment and his later work on parrhesia.

Паттерны трансформации партийных систем стран ЕС: направление перемен и причины различий

The article presents an original classification of patterns of transformation of party systems in EU countries under the influence of the institutionalization of a new post-industrial cleavage. Drawing on theories of cleavage and spatial competition and using party positioning databases, electoral indices and statistics, the author attempts to identify the main trajectories of the transformation of the European party systems between 1990 and 2023 and identify factors that explain the differences between them. The study identified five patterns associated with the effects of two key parameters. The first one is the structural specificity of the conditions of party competition in post-communist and other EU countries, associated with the difference between the old structured and new volatile party systems. The second parameter is the type of a country’s party-political system in accordance with Arend Lijphart’s classification — either majoritarian-polarized or coalition-consensus. While under majoritarian system the institutionalization of a new cleavage often gave rise to a radical breakdown of the old configuration of parties with the emergence of powerful populist forces, under consensus system — a smooth increase in fragmentation with the outflow of votes in favor of various new parties and the complication of the process of forming coalitions. For a number of countries other factors, such as the level of socio-economic development, ethnocentricity of politics, the type of electoral system and the stability of the welfare state appeared relatively important. In contrast, hypotheses about the significance of the initial configuration of party systems, the timing of formation of new parties and the geographical proximity of countries were not confirmed.

The perception of Ukrainians about political life in the post-war period and the prospects for the spread of populism

The non-acceptance by the majority of the population of Ukraine of the idea of elections during a full-scale war is a forced prolongation of the legitimacy of existing state institutions. Ukrainians understand all the risks of such elections for the political system under martial law, agreeing to the norms of legislation and compliance with democratic procedures. At the same time, a sufficiently significant number of the population is forming, which does not share the monopolization of power during the war by one political force. Accumulation of political issues, which will be expressed in the post-war period, will become a significant challenge for the political class of Ukraine. The low level of trust in existing political parties and the growing demand for new political forces can become a favorable background for the spread of anti-elitist ideas of populism. In public opinion, there is a demand mostly for politicians from the military environment and to a lesser extent from expert and civil sectors, intelligentsia, and volunteers. Reconstruction of the post-war economy will require non-standard solutions, in particular, optimization of expenditures in the social sphere and maximum liberalization. Several innovations will not have support in the mass consciousness. In particular, Ukrainians are mostly in favor of free medicine and education, a ban on the sale of land to foreigners, and assigning responsibility for increasing people’s incomes to the state, not to the individual. The lack of financial resources after the end of the war can accelerate the growing social deprivation. The combination of these potentially conflicting attitudes with a high level of antagonism and intolerance to a different political point of view can be skilfully «warmed up» by populist forces.

Политико-экономическая теория популизма

The paper presents a cross-disciplinary theory of populism. The first part of the article considers a definition of populism, the main electorate of populist forces, and the economic triggers of protest votes for populist parties. The second part deals with the different types of political populism, the reasons for their actualization in the 21st century, and the institutional consequences of populist power. The demand for populism comes from fragmented social groups that lost out in the social transformations following the neoliberal revolution of the 1970s and experienced the negative shocks of globalization. The protest electorate is organized around charismatic leaders who find 'scapegoats' in the form of traditional elites, migrants, or minorities and claim to speak for the «nation». Populism can contribute to democratization in its early stages. However, once in power, populists tend to undermine the system of checks and balances, leading to a decline in the quality of institutions and a slowdown in economic growth. The third part of the paper assesses the impact of economic populism. It is concluded that the definitional approaches used in academic literature do not meet the requirement of universality and do not imply a sufficient level of operationalization necessary for empirical research. An alternative approach is proposed that develops the «classical» definition of R. Dornbusch and S. Edwards: economic policy aimed at provoking economic shocks in order to increase the political ratings of the authorities and downplaying socio-economic risks. This approach enables economic populism to transcend the ideological framework of «right-left» economic policy, separate it from the economic policy of political populists, and evaluate the populist policies of mainstream parties. The theory of economic populism converges with the theory of political business cycles, but is not limited to elections and focuses on assessing demand rather than supply.

Extended commentary—U.S.‐Asian policy in the throes of McCarthyism, old and new

AbstractThe subtext of this extended commentary for the 2024 Policy Studies Yearbook in Politics & Policy is the crucial role that liberalism and civil rights must play in U.S. foreign policy if America is to be on the right side of history. Our explicit subject is the conflux of elite and populist forces that constantly work against such liberal‐democratic engagement. It is no secret that today's MAGAism (“Make America Great Again”) wears many of the same antiliberal stripes as did postwar McCarthyism, which was its direct progenitor. Thanks largely to the center‐right resistance of President Eisenhower, McCarthyism was ultimately held in check domestically. Unfortunately, that was not the case on the side of U.S. foreign policy, where tenacious strains of antiliberalism had a very long shelf life. Thus, McCarthyism ended up having its most durable impact in the developing world, where cozy relations with highly reactionary regimes were considered necessary in the face of communist inroads. At a time when liberalism was hitting its full stride on American soil, U.S. foreign policy was exporting a very different America abroad, and especially in Asia. Even domestically, the waspish virulence of McCarthyism was never eradicated. It simply hibernated, and in 2016, it came back with a vengeance in the even more truculent form of Trumpism. Once again, xenophobic populism is laying claim to U.S. foreign policy and savaging liberal internationalism. The entrenched progressivism that stood its ground against McCarthyism has long since eroded. MAGAism faces no obstacle comparable to the dynamic liberalism of the 1950s or the counterculture of the 1960s. Seen from the perspective of January 6, 2021, the old McCarthyism looks tame by comparison.Related ArticlesCraig, Stephen C., and Jason Gainous. 2024. “To Vote or Not to Vote? Fake News, Voter Fraud, and Support for Postponing the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.” Politics & Policy 52(1): 33–50. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12577.Haar, Roberta N., and Lutz F. Krebs. 2021. “The Failure of Foreign Policy Entrepreneurs in the Trump Administration.” Politics & Policy 49(2): 446–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12399.Skidmore, Max J. 2023. “Abortion—Reactionary Theocracy Rises in America, While Declining Elsewhere.” Politics & Policy 51(3): 437–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12534.

A tale of multiple crises: Populist and non-populist narratives in European institutions from the Great Recession to the 2024 European elections

In the past decade, the strength of populist forces, especially those of the far right, has grown considerably in Europe, influencing European politics and modifying the composition of European institutions, and in particular the European Parliament. This essay posits that populist and non-populist narratives in EU institutions have evolved through the dynamics of polarization and reciprocal influence across multiple crises, from the start of the Great Recession in 2007 to the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022. Depending on the results of the upcoming 2024 European elections, and especially in the case of a successful outcome of far-right populist parties, there might be more radical changes in the dominant forces and discourses of EU institutions.

The Beginning of Democracy in Eastern European Countries from the 1990s to the 2010s and Its Contemporary Crisis: Poland and the Czech Republic as Examples

In 1989, Poland and the Czech Republic almost simultaneously got rid of the socialist regime and gradually embarked on the road to Western democracy. They persisted in the global economic recession in 2008 and achieved economic leaps; however, under the impact of the refugee wave since 2011, conflicts that had been squeezed for decades broke out. For a time, populist forces were rampant in Eastern European countries. Faced with these populist forces, many people lost hope in democracy. This paper aims to present the beginning of the democratization process in Eastern European countries from the 1980s to the 1990s and the reasons for the rampant populist forces in Eastern Europe. The author believes that Eastern European society experienced triple changes in social structure, economic model, and political system at the end of the Cold War. These triple changes exacerbated the inner insecurity of the Eastern European people, and the insecurity planted the seeds of populism. The Soviet Unions long-term control in Eastern Europe led to peoples resistance to the Soviet Union and even the Russian nation. Since the second decade of the 21st century, with the arrival of the refugee waves and many other events in the international situation, this resistance against Russia rose to xenophobia, popularized by populist thoughts, used, and expanded by power. Finally, by analyzing the current status of populist parties in Eastern Europe, the author believes that these populist parties are trying to establish a contemporary nation-state with authoritarian solid rule in the 21st century.

Is Populism reversible? Evidence from Italian local elections during the pandemic

We study the effect of economic insecurity on electoral outcomes using data on municipal elections in Italy. We implement a difference-in-differences approach that exploits exogenous variation across municipalities in the share of inactive workers due to the economic lockdown introduced by the central government to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. We show that lockdown-induced economic insecurity positively affected the electoral performance of progressive and left-wing parties, while it negatively affected conservative and far-right parties. Conversely, we find no effect for the populist Five Star Movement, local independent parties (i.e., Civic Lists), and electoral turnout. We provide evidence that extraordinary economic measures introduced by the central government to compensate workers for the economic insecurity can explain this shift in partisanship toward the left and the increasing support for pro-EU parties, away from euro-skeptic and populist forces.

Gender Equality in Indonesian Democracy amidst Islamic Conservatism and Islamic Populism

The growth of democracy in Indonesia from 1999 to 2019 was significantly hampered by Islamic populist forces, conservatives, and politicians who discriminated against women. This article aims to explore the challenges facing Indonesian political democracy after the 2014 and 2019 elections, using qualitative methods and interviews with party officials. The study uses the theories of Islamic populism, conservation, and discrimination against women. The article finds that the most dangerous challenges include the presence of populist and conservative Islamic forces that use religious sentiment in elections, political party elites that use women as men's political friends, and women seen as a threat to male politicians. This article emphasizes the importance of considering factors outside the electoral political process, such as religious beliefs and understanding, especially in the Indonesian context.

A populist turn in the European left. What is new, and what is not?

ABSTRACT What is left-wing populism? Is it just populist rhetoric grafted onto a left-wing ideology? How can we distinguish the populist left from the socialist left, the communist left and the radical left? Is the difference between the populist left and the non-populist left one of degree or of nature? How can we explain the populist turn taken by part of the European left in the mid-2010s? What was the breeding ground for these new political forces? And what links do these European left-wing populist movements have with the similar forces that emerged ten years earlier in Latin America? In order to answer these questions, this article draws on a broad review of left-wing populism studies literature and on five years of fieldwork within two prototypical contemporary left-wing populist forces (Podemos and La France Insoumise). The result is a thick conception of the phenomenon and a set of six differences between populist and non-populist lefts.

How citizens’ conceptions of democracy relate to positive and negative partisanship towards populist parties

Although scholars emphasise the contentious relationship of populist forces to (liberal) democracy, less attention has been paid to whether this extends to those who support or oppose populist parties. This article utilises a public opinion dataset from ten Western European countries to analyse how citizens’ conceptions of democracy relate to the behavioural intention to vote for or against populist parties. The empirical analysis shows that positive and negative identification with populist parties is driven by different understandings of democracy: While individuals who are less inclined to liberal democracy but more to direct democracy and authoritarian forms of rule are more likely to sympathise with populist parties, the opposite understanding of democracy predicts opposition to both left-wing and right-wing populists. These findings demonstrate that citizens with positive and negative partisanship towards populist parties are divided in their interpretations about both the conceptual meaning and the normative functioning of democracy.

Gains and pitfalls of coalitions: Societal resources as sources of trade union power in Croatia and Poland

This article explores the experiences of trade unions in Croatia and Poland with societal power resources as a source of trade union revitalisation in the post-2008 crisis period. In the context of limited structural, organisational and institutional power resources, Croatian and Polish trade unions attempted to build their societal power through the revitalisation strategies of coalition building and political action. The paper compares three similar, partially successful campaigns run in both countries, on pensions, Sunday trading and precarious work. Our findings show that gains in societal power alone cannot fully compensate for the erosion of conventional sources of trade union power. Such a configuration of power resources runs the danger of trade union demands being taken up by populist forces wanting to increase their own legitimacy, rather than furthering workers’ interests. Therefore, what starts as an attempt at union revitalisation based on the novel use of societal resources could easily end up as ‘captured innovation’ by populist forces.

CRISES OF THE WORLD, CRISES OF THE SCIENCE EDUCATION? LET´S TAKE A CRISIS AS AN OPPORTUNITY!

The world faces several crises in the last years. There have been more active conflicts presently than at any time since 1945. More than 82 million refugees must live away from their homes. The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide and caused economic and social disruption, whose further consequences related to human health and further aspects of well-being can be only estimated so far. Many countries are fighting climate change for a long time and this “fight” has been disrupted by unprecedented energy crises that changes our energy goals from day to day. We are surrounded by uncertainty and worries about the future which rises of populist forces even in the democratic part of the world. So, there is no doubt that we are living through challenging times. There are many strategies for coping with these challenges, one of them is acceptance. It allows us to see reality in the present moment and to move forward. But still, there will likely be many options to choose. We believe that science education is (can become) a means for explaining possibilities and our chances. At least in some of the above crises. And sustainable development indicators with good narratives can be effective educational and information tools bringing evidence about changes in the society and environment (Janoušková et al., 2022).

Mapping Political Populism in the European Post-Transitional Periphery

This article comparatively analyzes the manifestations and various factors of political populism in the European post-transitional periphery. The main difficulty in mapping political populism in the European post-transitional periphery and defining populist parties most accurately is that, unlike most political forces in developed democracies, such parties do not belong to traditional parties. Moreover, their ideology combines the positions of both right and left parties, which makes it extremely difficult to place them on the classical right-left scale of the party spectrum. The political agenda of the populist parties of the European post-transition peripheral countries has a different content, but it usually comes down to updating issues that are hushed up by the political establishment: protecting national and cultural identity, taking tough measures aimed at combating corruption and crime, protecting traditional family values, and even harsh criticism of the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the EU and their institutions. A distinctive feature of the populist forces was also that in their majority they called for the protection of the rights and interests of ordinary people and the wider use of the instruments of direct democracy, and thus directly opposed one of the fundamental principles of liberal democracy, taking into account the opinion of the minority. The article analyzes the emergence of a populist environment, where the responsibility, trust and dignity of politicians are distorted, which in turn leads to a crisis of understanding and civiliarchic culture. The influence of populist parties has grown and most European post-transitional peripheral countries have at least one successful populist party, and populists are among the most influential parties. It is noteworthy that civil society organizations have identified the activities of populist leaders and their parties as the main threat facing the Eastern Partnership countries. Using populist technologies, mainly in the context of an election campaign, leaders and their political groups seek to manipulate public opinion and change the alignment of political parties in the European post-transitional periphery.

Three central triggers for the emergence of Central and Eastern European anti-gender alliances

The anti-gender movements began in the West but have thus far been most influential and governmentally supported in Hungary, Poland and Russia. Anti-genderism has served multiple functions to entrench what proponents label as traditional values, while promoting specific class and racialised interests in the cloak of rejecting both the communist past and Western European political and social expectations. Why did anti-genderism develop and become pronounced in otherwise different post-communist countries? This article traces the origins of these movements based on news coverage and scholarly sources, arguing that anti-gender movements signal authoritarian trends and thus matter deeply for open, democratic societies. The Hungarian, Polish and Russian cases offer similar but distinct variations in the political trajectory of their respective movements, highlighting the feedback between conservative, expressively patriarchal, and populist forces and their embracing of anti-genderism.

Lessons for Left-Wing Populism from the 2010s Austerity Wave in Europe

Lessons for Left-Wing Populism from the 2010s Austerity Wave in Europe

Interpellating ‘the people’ against environmentalists: The authoritarian populist response to environmental mobilizations in Turkey

The connections between authoritarianism, populism and environmental politics have recently attracted scholarly interest. Yet less attention has been given to the ‘hegemonic’ struggle that populist forces wage in the field of the environment in order to reproduce their power under challenges of environmental mobilizations. This study is an attempt to contribute to filling this gap. Combining the insights of Stuart Hall and Ernesto Laclau on populism, it scrutinizes the ways the authoritarian populism of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government in Turkey was performed against the counter-hegemonic challenges of environmental mobilizations. I demonstrate that the AKP tried to restore its challenged hegemony by securing popular support to its environmentally exploitative and authoritarian practices in two ways. One is the construction of an antagonistic frontier between environmental actors and those interpellated as ‘the people’, and the other is the appropriation of environmentalism. With the former, the AKP aimed both to legitimize the exercise of coercive force against environmental mobilizations, and to obscure the inequalities, injustices, and uneven relations created by its exploitative use of the natural and urban environments, whereas with the latter it endeavoured to rob environmentalism of its subversive potential. The examination of the AKP case shows that populist forces, which come to power by capitalizing on the crises of the previous hegemonic status quo, may also have the capacity to survive the crises during their rule by reshaping their populisms.

Politics of the Debtfare State: Repoliticizing the Czech Debt Enforcement Order and Its Limits

In Czechia, one of the statistically most equal and least indebted states, almost one-tenth of its (mostly low-income) population is entrapped in debt enforcement proceedings. I foreground such a contradiction to investigate the politics of the debtfare state in East-Central Europe (ECE). This nuances the scholarship on the repolitization of the ECE neoliberal state by populist forces and their instrumentalization of its middle-class welfare state strategies in the 2010s. Identifying the Czech debt enforcement industry as a leading poverty industry in ECE, I explore its depoliticizing origins in the Debt Enforcement Order (DEO), a flagship legal framework regulating the creditor–debtor–bailiff relations. Interpreting the political struggle over the DEO-centered debtfare state strategy, I then trace its limited repolitization since the mid-2010s, which redirects its reforms from their original pro-creditor and -bailiff prioritization to a prioritization of low-income debtors. This politics complements the repolitization of the neoliberal state beyond populism.

Right-Wing Populism, Social Identity Theory, and Resistance to Public Health Measures During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Many western democracies experienced significant resistance to public health measures designed to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Although there were complex reasons for this resistance, right-wing populist forces seem to have played a significant role in fueling it. Studies show a strong correlation between right-wing populist support and resistance to COVID-19-mitigating measures including vaccination, and those who supported these populist movements were more likely to suffer and die from the virus. The question thus arises: why do people support these movements which openly undermine their own health interests? This paper addresses this question from a social-psychological perspective. Specifically, it draws on social identity theory to explain the considerable success of right-wing populism’s radical anti-health agenda and to offer some suggestions about how this negative influence may be countered.