Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Introduction
INTRODUCTION Political development in Central European countries took a peculiar turn after their accession to the European Union in 2004 but especially after a series of national elections in 2005 and 2006. They put in driver’s seat politicians whose mode of expression, style of pursuing political goals and attitude to political opponents was - to say the least - unusual for suave politicians from Western European saloons. Analysts, journalists and civic activists openly began to speak of the rise of new populism. The new phenomenon was examined thoroughly; countless publications were issued on the topic, various conferences, seminars, workshops and discussions were organized focusing on populism, its theoretical foundation, its methodological grasping, its modus operandi and its impact on voters. The present publication is one of the outputs of a project titled Challenging National Populism and Promoting Interethnic Tolerance and Understanding in Slovakia that was carried out by the Forum Institute for Minority Research in Šamorín. Its main goal was not to make just another contribution to the theoretical discourse for we believe that the phenomenon of populism has been relatively thoroughly described by a great number of authors. A partial list of their works is included in the bibliography at the end of this publication. The principal ambition of the collective of authors of this book was rather to examine a specific form of populism that is frequently referred to as national populism. In Slovakia, the nationalist scion of populism emerged in the mid-1990s and was closely related to the name Vladimír Mečiar. In his study that forms part of this publication, Peter Učeň poignantly defined what was at the heart of the new type of populism. What is relevant from the perspective of our approach is that Vladimír Mečiar managed to convince a critical mass of the Slovak electorate that he was the best safeguard able to protect Slovakia (and the Slovak nation) against the triple threat of national doom: first, against the Czechs regarding the constitutional model of the dying Czechoslovak federation and just division of its common goods; second, against the Hungarians regarding Slovakia’s territorial 9
