Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Peter Učen: Approaching National Populism
Approaching National Populism 13 More often than not, the life-span of those parties proved to be short; they either vanished or transformed through adopting a more traditional ideological profile. For the fortunes of the parties at issue see Učeň 2007a. 14 For a complete discussion of the transformation populism, we would have to take into account also the ‘delayed’ emergence of the PRR Ataka and the successful anti-establishment drive of Boyko Borissov and his GERB in Bulgaria. 15 We are somewhat uneasy with calling Mr. Mcčiar’s rule a regime but do not exclude it. 16 This attempt could be easily traced in the textual analysis of the newspapers Slovenská Republika and Nový deň, as well as weekly Extra. 17 Or still otherwise: “Among parties representing ethnic Slovaks, Mcčiar’s HZDS propelled the integration of multiple nationalisms into a single, increasingly well articulated message. From a position that Slovaks had faced multiple national threat, HZDS leaders gradually moved to a position that the new country’s enemies were in fact one and the same, because opposition leaders - Slovaks without strong nationalist feelings - had conspired with the Hungarian minority and representatives of NATO, the EU, and multinational corporations to eliminate Slovakia’s independence” (Decgan-Krause, 2004, 691). 18 That politicisation was not to attract the new voters. After all, from 1994 the voting choice based on nationalism has been stabilized - those who were not nationalists would not became them, and vice versa. The politicisation, however, was capable of changing supporters mind as to which kind of nationalist sentiment they ‘approved’ to be cultivated by the ruling group. 19 “[M]any nationalist movements use an emancipatory discourse in which the nation (equated with the ‘true’ people) is to be liberated from foreign domination (as, for instance, in the form of the ‘transfer’ of Western institutions) and domestic subjugation to political élites. In these discourses, an argument is often made for increased popular sovereignty through the granting of absolute priority to the nation, in other words, to the people as an undivided and organic unity, and the expression of its will” (Blokker 2005, 377). 20 We tend to concur with Decgan-Krause that the essence of HZDS’ authoritarianism was an attempt to undermine mechanisms of horizontal accountability in order to eliminate their constraints on furthering the national populist project. 21 Other explanation for the relationship of authoritarianism and nationalism offers Snyder (2000, 332, cited in Hcam 2006, 134): “Democratization produces nationalism when powerful groups within the nation not only need to harness popular energies to the tasks of war and economic development, but they also want to avoid surrendering real political authority to the average citizen. For those élites, nationalism is a convenient doctrine that justifies a partial form of democracy, in which an élite rules in the name of the nation yet may not be fully accountable to its people. Under conditions of partial democratization elites can often use their control over the levers of government, the economy, and the mass media to promote nationalist ideas, and thus set the agenda for the debate. Nationalist conflicts arise as a by-product of élites’ efforts to persuade the people to accept divisive nationalist ideas.” While appreciating the insight, we take the view that explanation of nationalism as a straightforward tool for the authoritarians has a limited power. 22 Recent warm realtionships between Ján Slota and Kia, a representative of not only the foreign but even the ‘foreign race’ capital, is a telling (but not the only one) example of that. 23 Note that the 2006 election camapign of the SNS featured rather vague natioinalist slogans, the most prominent being “Slovak government for Slovaks!”, “We will return Slovakia to the Slovak hands!”, and “We are Slovaks! We vote for SNS”. 24 We have addressed some of those issues in Učeň 2007b (see in particular references to the work of Marušiak and Orogváni) and Učeň 2004. 37
