Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Peter Učen: Approaching National Populism
Peter Učeň This crude classification, departing from the populist premises, and taking into account a temporal dimension, rests on distinguishing between the two ‘populist situations’ following the fall of Communism - transition populism and transformation populism,9 Transition populism refers to the anti- and illiberal politics reacting to and benefiting from the immediate consequences of transitions (understood as abrupt political acts of departing from communism), their grievances, injustice, and unfulfilled expectations, which provided a space for various “radical” ways of popular mobilisation. Transformation populism, in turn, rising towards the end of the first transformation decade, thrives on mobilising disenchantment with the experience of “life under post-communism”. It feeds itself on long-term injustice of the change of order. Various forms of marriage between nationalism and populism took place within both situations. But first, let’s enumerate all actors which adopted populism as a part of their politics in the period of the transition populism:- Radical Left Unreformed communist parties and the radical splinters from the reformed ones. Their ideology was a combination of populism, authoritarianism and anti-capitalism. Nationalism usually served to underline their anti-capitalist message. With the exception of parties such as the (anti-German) Czech KSČM, it was articulated more in terms of a protection against the capitalist world order rather than stressing the danger posed by some particular nations.- Post-communist radical right. Slovak SNS, Romanian PRM, Serbian SRS, Polish LPR and the like. Those are the counterparts of the Western populist radical right. Their defining ideology is a blend of nativism, populism and authoritarianism. The form of their nativism is, however, not a carbon copy of Western PRR; it is more targeted against indigenous minorities than against foreign immigrants. Nevertheless, we still tend to believe they are the part of the PRR family.- Some communist successor parties: namely in countries where departure from Communism could be seen as the pre-emptive move by the communist elites to retain their grip on power; Bulgarian Socialist Party - BSP, Party of Social Democracy in Romania-ŽPDSR. These parties combined sentiments towards the era of ‘real socialism’ and social demagoguery related to post-transition deprivation of all kinds with authoritarianism, populism and nationalism.- National populists proper, new parties with no organization continuity with either the Communists or the pre-Communist nationalist right, such as Slovak HZDS or Croatian Democratic Community-ŽHDZ.10 Parties in this category thrived on mobilisation of immediate injustice of tran-24
