Category Archives: Populism

HODMEZOVASARHELY, Hungary A devout Catholic, he abhors abortion as murder and once voted for Viktor Orban, Hungarys pugnacious populist leader, impressed by his promises to root out corruption and end the disarray left by years of leftist rule.

On Sunday, however, Peter Marki-Zay, the mayor of this town in Hungarys conservative rural heartland, became the most potent threat yet to the decade-long stranglehold on the country by Mr. Orban and his combative brand of far-right nationalism.

Mr. Marki-Zay, 49, victorious in a primary election that brought together six previously squabbling opposition parties, is now the standard-bearer for a rickety political alliance that will challenge and, according to opinion polls, perhaps defeat Mr. Orban and his political machine, Fidesz, in legislative elections next year.

Previous challengers hoping to unseat Mr. Orban, who has been prime minister since 2010, mostly channeled the frustrations and anger of a liberal elite in Budapest. This time, the mayor is fighting Fidesz on its own terms and home turf small towns and villages where many voters, Mr. Marki-Zay included, once found comfort in Mr. Orbans conservative message but grew disenchanted with what they see as his corruption, hypocrisy and authoritarian tendencies.

Orbans only real ideology now is corruption, Mr. Marki-Zay, the mayor of Hodmezovasarhely, (pronounced HOD-may-zur-vash-ar-hay), in southern Hungary, said in an interview in Budapest.

Many voters, particularly in Budapest, he added, do not share his own conservative views, but they know I dont steal and can beat Orban. Im not corrupt.

Janos Csanyi, a 78-year-old former porcelain factory worker who used to vote for Mr. Orbans Fidesz party, scoffed at Mr. Orbans oft-repeated claim that, by demonizing migrants, many of whom are Muslim, and confronting the European Union over media freedom, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and other issues, Hungary is defending Europes traditional, Christian values.

I dont understand what he is talking about, Mr. Csanyi said, resting in the sun on a park bench in Hodmezovasarhelys main square, adding that he had other priorities. There are Ten Commandments and a very important one of these is: Dont Steal.

An anti-corruption stance resonates loudly in Hodmezovasarhely. A former Fidesz mayor and a close associate of Mr. Orban, Janos Lazar, is part owner of a vast hunting lodge on a landed estate outside town, and a contract for an E.U.-funded street lighting project when it was controlled by Fidesz went to a company controlled by Mr. Orbans son-in-law, upsetting many.

The European Unions anti-graft agency investigated the lighting project and in 2018 reported serious irregularities and conflicts of interest in the awarding of contracts. Fidesz-appointed prosecutors declined to take up the case.

The lights dont even work. When the sun goes down you cant see anything, said Norbert Forrai, a local resident who, despairing at Hungarys direction under Mr. Orban, moved to England but recently returned home to be part of the change that I hope is finally coming.

Fidesz still has many ways to block that change. It has a firm grip on most media outlets, and controls an extensive patronage network rooted in jobs in the state sector and in companies controlled by Mr. Orbans associates.

This gives the governing party far more levers to influence voters than the regions other populist strongmen, one of whom, Andrej Babis, the Czech Republics billionaire prime minister, this month suffered an electoral defeat at the hands of a center-right coalition.

Trained to savage Mr. Orbans opponents as traitorous liberals serving the Hungarian-born financier George Soros, pro-Fidesz media outlets have struggled to find a new line of attack against an unexpected conservative opponent. A news portal close to Fidesz gave up trying over the weekend and claimed that Mr. Marki-Zay was also an agent of Mr. Soros.

Fidesz has been so wrong-footed by the primaries that, at its local headquarters in Hodmezovasarhely last week, it was still collecting signatures for a petition denouncing a candidate who had already lost the liberal mayor of Budapest.

The Budapest mayor, Gergely Karacsony, withdrew from the primaries after the first round last month and urged his liberal base to rally behind Mr. Marki-Zay, a former marketing manager with seven children, who lived for five years in Canada and the United States.

We have to accept political reality. It is not liberals or greens who can beat right-wing populists, Mr. Karacsony said in an interview. A future government led by a churchgoing provincial mayor, he added, will obviously have different strategies than those I would pursue, but the important thing is to pick a candidate who can win against Orban.

And, he said, Nationalist populism is most successful in small towns and rural areas where people are afraid. He added, Marki-Zay is a mayor in one of these places and understands the fears and problems of these people.

The populist wave that swept across Eastern and Central Europe and other parts of the world over the past decade was, he said, in the process of passing following the defeat of President Donald J. Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and Mr. Babis in the Czech Republic.

Now it is up to Hungary and Poland, Mr. Karacsony said, referring to his own countrys election next year and elections in 2023 that will decide whether Polands nationalist governing party, Law and Justice, hangs on to power.

While describing himself as first and foremost a Catholic, Mr. Marki-Zay insists he respects the separation of church and state in Hungary and that his personal views on things like abortion will not shape his policies should he become prime minister. Mr. Orban, he added, was never really a conservative, just an opportunist.

He openly betrays Europe, the United States, NATO and Christian values, he said, referring to Mr. Orbans warm relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Chinas Communist Party leadership. He is a crook.

He expressed dismay that right-wing pundits and politicians in the United States like Tucker Carlson, who visited Hungary in August and lavished praise on Mr. Orban, view the country as a bastion of conservative values and a lodestar for those who value liberty. Tucker Carlson forgot to mention where Orban stands on China and Putin, Mr. Marki-Zay said.

Mr. Marki-Zay shocked Fidesz in 2018 when he easily won a by-election in his hometown after the death of the incumbent, a supporter of Mr. Orban. A year later, he won a regular mayoral election with an even bigger margin.

The end of Fideszs previous near-monopoly over local affairs rattled the party faithful.

It came as a big surprise for us all, said Tomas Cseri, a Fidesz member of the municipal council.

If this could happen in a place like this it can happen anywhere, Mr. Cseri added. The longer you are in power the more and more people think it is time for a change.

He acknowledged that Mr. Marki-Zay is a more threatening opponent to the party than the losing left-wing candidate in the final round of the opposition primary, but, echoing a line promoted by Fideszs propaganda apparatus, dismissed him as a Trojan horse for leftists in the six-party coalition and denounced corruption allegations against Fidesz as a lie.

If we had stolen so much I would not be still riding that, he said, pointing to an old bicycle parked against a lamppost.

Still, anger against what many local residents, including former fans of Mr. Orban, see as theft and bullying by Fidesz is widespread.

Imre Kendi, an architect who runs a construction business, used to vote for the governing party and once served as an adviser to Mr. Lazar when Fidesz still controlled the town. But he fell out with the former mayor, and soon found himself not being paid for money he was owed for a government contract, which he said forced him to declare bankruptcy.

Fear is what keeps the whole system together, he said.

But, he predicted, change started here in this small town and now it is going to continue around the nation.

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In Hungarys Heartland, Orban Faces a Unified Challenge to His Rule - The New York Times

136 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2Cloth 2016 | ISBN 9780812248982 | $19.95t | Outside the Americas 14.99Ebook editions are available from selected online vendorsNot for sale in the British Commonwealth except CanadaView table of contents

"Populism is not just antiliberal, it is antidemocraticthe permanent shadow of representative politics. That's Jan-Werner Mller's argument in this brilliant book. There is no better guide to the populist passions of the present."Ivan Krastev, International New York Times

"No one has written more insightfully and knowledgeably about Europe's recent democratic decay than Jan-Werner Mller. Here Mller confronts head on the key questions raised by the resurgence of populism globally. How is it different from other kinds of politics, why is it so dangerous, and how can it be overcome? Mller's depiction of populism as democracy's antipluralist, moralistic shadow is masterful."Dani Rodrik, Harvard University

"The most useful work to comprehend Trump's appeal is What Is Populism? (2016) by Princeton University political scientist Jan-Werner Mller. In this essential book, Mller defines populism's most salient characteristicsantielitism, antipluralism, exclusivityand explains Trump and other populists through that framework. It is a quick read, and worth every page."The Washington Post

In this groundbreaking volume, Jan-Werner Mller argues that at populism's core is a rejection of pluralism. Populists will always claim that they and they alone represent the people and their true interests. Mller also shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, populists can govern on the basis of their claim to exclusive moral representation of the people: if populists have enough power, they will end up creating an authoritarian state that excludes all those not considered part of the proper "people." The book proposes a number of concrete strategies for how liberal democrats should best deal with populists and, in particular, how to counter their claims to speak exclusively for "the silent majority" or "the real people."

Analytical, accessible, and provocative, What Is Populism? is grounded in history and draws on examples from Latin America, Europe, and the United States to define the characteristics of populism and the deeper causes of its electoral successes in our time.

Jan-Werner Mller is Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He is author of several books, most recently Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth Century Europe. He contributes regularly to London Review of Books, the Guardian, and the New York Review of Books.

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What Is Populism? | Jan-Werner Mller

Has Central Europes populist wave crashed? Although populist politicians have been riding high in recent years, this week, two prominent populist prime ministers suddenly fell from power. The billionaire populist who revolutionized Czech politics, Andrej Babi, lost his bid for reelection on October 8 and 9 after the Pandora Papers revealed that he used a series of secretive shell companies to buy luxury real estate in France. In neighboring Austria, the populist-leaning Sebastian Kurz abruptly announced that he was stepping down on October 9 after prosecutors raided his offices in a bribery probe. Suddenly, two key Central European populists were gone.

And just as suddenly, analysts began to question whether Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn, the self-styled guru of Europes national populist right and future CPAC host, might not survive a tough re-election battle in 2022 against a newly united opposition. Orbn joined Babi on the campaign trail in the last days of September, touting their populist alliance, to no effect. Meanwhile, in Germany, the far right AfD party experienced disappointing results in Septembers parliamentary elections, losing 11 of their 93 Bundestag seats.

Its too soon to say that populist leaders are receding as suddenly as they rushed into power in many Central European capitals, but the populist wave has hit some shoals. A combination of corruption scandals, united opposition, and recovering European economies seem to be causing more voters to return to the political center.

Populists rose to power in Central Europe after the global financial crisis, which hit that region hard. As the United States began its slow but steady recovery in 2010, the Eurozone debt crisis prolonged the economic pain and uncertainty on the continent. While other developing regions escaped relatively unscathed, Central European economies did not. Popular hopes and expectations of a prosperous future after communism were dashedagain. Orbn rode a wave of popular discontent into office in 2010 in Hungary when the previous government revealed that it lied about the state of the economy.

Babi, in the Czech Republic, persuaded many voters, especially in less successful outlying regions and small towns, that as a billionaire with a popular touch and a skepticism of elites in the capital, he would look after their interests and not succumb to the corruption that seems endemic to the region. Yet this promise was not fulfilled. The European Union accused him of funneling EU funds to his own personal businesses. And the Pandora Papers provided evidence of tax avoidance, lying, and manipulation right before the election.

Though coalition negotiations are still not completed, and the whole process seems to be on life support while president Milos Zeman lies in the intensive care unit after a post-election collapse, it seems clear that the real victor in the Czech elections was the center-right Spolu (Together) coalition, centered around the Civic Democratic Party that emerged out of the anti-communist opposition. Many Czech voters this time turned to the traditional center-right.

Similarly, in Germany, mainstream center-left and center-right parties fared unexpectedly well. While the center-left Social Democrats have lost a lot of support to the Greens over time, in this election, the Social Democrats were able to re-establish themselves as the second largest party and are expected to lead a coalition with the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats into government.

While in previous elections, voters punished mainstream parties that seemed to sell out the interests of majority nationals in favor of immigrants, neglecting people and regions that felt left behind by globalization, this time that anger seems to have subsided, just a bit. While Babi sought to drum up anti-immigrant support, most voters just wanted him out.

In both the Czech Republic and Hungary, the opposition has learned to unite to face the challenge of authoritarian populism. The Czech election was dominated by coalitions over traditional parties. Coming in just behind Spolu in the vote count was the coalition of Pirates and Mayorsthe good-government Pirates party and the subsidiarity-focused Mayors and Independents partyboth united by the desire to toss Babi out. In Hungary, the opposition has united in a single coalition to contest Orbns rule, including all the major parties from the far-right Jobbik to the left Socialists, and everything in between. Lesson learned: To get rid of populists and protect democracy, a full court press is required.

With the economy improving, some voters may be tiring of the extremist rhetoric of the populist parties as well. In Europe, the appeal of a party that attacks the European Union may wear thin if the EU, with its many economic benefits, actually falls apart or cuts off funds. It doesnt help when populist leaders prove to be just as corrupt, if not more so, than the elites they were fighting. Central Europe may have turned the populist tide. With considerable lessons to be learned by other polities fighting populism.

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Is Central Europes Populist Wave Crashing? - The Bulwark

Right-wing populists are losing elections. Their latest defeat took place a week ago in the Czech Republic, when a fractious coalition of parties prevailed over Andrej Babis, the country's billionaire prime minister.

Something similar happened in the runoff round of presidential elections in France four years ago, when centrist Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right Marine Le Pen. It happened again in Israel earlier this year. Macron hopes to re-enact the strategy in elections next spring as do opponents of Viktor Orbn in Hungary, whose Fidesz Party also faces the voters next year, and those who hope to defeat the Law and Justice party in Poland in 2023.

This has historically been called a popular front strategy even though, when deployed against populists, it sometimes ends up looking more like an establishment front. It entails an ideologically disparate coalition uniting to defeat a specific candidate or party that would otherwise win a plurality of votes. If the right-wing populist is Candidate X, the opponents set aside their differences and combine around a platform of Not X that pulls more votes than the populist.

Kicking populists out of power is good, as is keeping them from winning in the first place. But that doesn't mean the popular front strategy solves the problem that right-wing populism poses to liberal democracies around the world. On the contrary, that problem can fester while the victorious (but ideologically incoherent) coalition attempts to govern, opening a path to a return to power for the right-wing populists the next time elections are held.

We can see this dynamic at work right here at home in the United States.

The American election of 2020 isn't typically thought of as a popular front contest, but it was. Joe Biden won by making the presidential election about the awfulness of Donald Trump and the existential threat he posed to democracy. That had the effect of uniting the left, center left, and a decent portion of the center right in a popular front against Trump. In the end, this Not Trump coalition prevailed by seven million votes and several states in the Electoral College. (In House and Senate races, where Trump wasn't a candidate and the Not Trump strategy couldn't be as effectively deployed, the results were much closer to a tie, resulting in Democratic control of Congress by the thinnest of margins.)

Many centrists remain committed to the strategy and hope to deploy it in 2024 if Trump runs again. Robert Kagan made an appeal for it in his recent long, deeply troubling Washington Post essay about the danger that Trump still poses to American democracy. In Kagan's view, Biden should govern by locking arms with Republican Mitt Romney to his right and as many liberals and progressives as he can to his left so that his winning coalition from 2020 can be reconstituted three years from now to defeat Trump by the widest possible margin.

There's just one problem with this advice: Campaigning and governing are very different things.

The progressive left, center-left liberals, and center-right conservatives who consistently voted for Republicans until 2016 might be able to agree on the awfulness of Trump. But they aren't going to agree on the right size or scope of government spending, let alone on judicial appointments and culture-war issues. To govern is to make choices. Will Biden govern as a moderate and hold on to the support of those former Republicans to his right? If he does, he risks losing the support of the left and inviting a primary challenge in 2024 and/or convincing progressive voters to stay home on Election Day. Or will Biden govern as a progressive and risk losing the center and perhaps inviting a third-party challenge from someone like Andrew Yang who could act as a spoiler and throw the election to Trump?

A CNN poll released this week shows how evenly the Democratic Party is split. The poll asked Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents whether the left or the center is doing more to help the party. Forty-nine percent sided with progressives working to pass an ambitious agenda, while 51 percent said moderates trying to contain spending were proving more helpful at advancing the party's prospects. Both groups probably agree that Trump is a menace. But they disagree deeply about how to wield power once it has been won.

That means that Biden and the anti-Trump cause face a potentially insuperable challenge. Running for president against Trump makes them stronger but governing invariably makes them weaker, with one faction or another in their electoral coalition inevitably feeling snubbed.

Meanwhile, the populists are still there, waiting for their next chance to win power.

Consider France: Macron won easily in the second round in 2017. Four years later, Le Pen is running again, but so, most likely, is Eric Zemmour, a media firebrand who may be even more extreme in his far-right views. Together, Le Pen and Zemmour are polling at about 31 percent close to the 34 percent Le Pen won in her head-to-head with Marcon four years ago.

It's good that the far-right was denied power back then, and it will be good if the same popular-front strategy works again next year. But the underlying problem remains. How long can a Not Populist coalition that's deeply divided on most other issues because it stretches from the far left to the center-right maintain a lock on power?

Not Them isn't a governing agenda.

To the extent that those in power try to govern as if it is, they run the risk of making the populists' case for them, demonstrating that the establishment seeks nothing more than the perpetuation of its own power and privileges. On the other hand, if the victorious anti-populist coalition does what Joe Biden and the Democrats have done and chooses to enact the priorities of one of its constituent factions, it will split the coalition, making it much harder to reconstitute in future election cycles.

Right-wing populists holding power is a problem. But the source of that problem and hence the bigger problem is that a substantial segment of the population in democracies around the world finds the populist message appealing. As long as that remains the case, the popular-front response will be at most a temporary solution and thus no real solution at all.

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Downfall of the anti-populists? - The Week Magazine

In Norfolk, Virginia in 1769 early attempts to vaccinate people against smallpox caused riots. Only the rich could afford to have small amounts of smallpox administered safely by doctors. The rest were left to their fate. Those poorer sections of society those who lived blamed the government, which, like in Ireland at that time, was the British Crown. They rioted because their rulers were perceived to not be representing their interests.

Through the centuries since, the United States (as it became) has been a hotbed of populism.

As early as 1828, citizens elected a populist president, Andrew Jackson.

However, four years earlier, he was deemed by many to be a better candidate than the eventual president, John Quincy Adams, because he had not been educated at foreign courts and reared on sweetmeats from the tables of kings and princes.

Jackson won the most votes in a wide field of candidates in 1824, but did not meet the quota needed to become president, in what supporters called a rigged election against him.

Then at the end of the 19th Century a movement, a political party, rose in the south and the west. The party was actually called the Populist (with a capital P) Party. Old Confederate soldiers and freed slaves, established Americans and immigrants unified to fight the robber barons who underpaid millions of farmers for their goods. They even found a charismatic leader, a virtual demagogue William Jennings Bryan.

But eventually, they caved to accept modest settlements and were subsumed into the Democratic Party. In what was to become a common theme, the Budget populists themselves became the Establishment.

LEGENDARY president Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, who became a progressive, could even be termed a populist though from old money himself.

He believed that multi-millionaires like John D Rockefeller (relatively, no wealthier man has ever lived) and his company Standard Oils wealth was so gargantuan that they were destroying America. He then broke up Standard Oil. Populism, in the greatest democracy and elsewhere has so often been a force for good.

Simply defined, by the Oxford dictionary, populism is a type of politics that claims to represent the opinions and wishes of ordinary people.

Populist movements have always grown from a united belief that a ruler or government no longer represents the ordinary people.

Sinn Fin is the first truly populist movement in our 100-year-old State. The electoral success of the party has grown in more than a decade since the economic crash.

It has grown, partly, because the centrist parties have failed us.

When Sinn Fins finance spokesman Pearse Doherty rose in the Dil to condemn the Coalitions as a con job he will have found many reasonable citizens who agree.

Words he chose to criticise the Government in that speech, that it was out of touch, out of ideas and out of time were straight from the classic populist playbook.

But this column has been saying something similar for six months.

I have been approached by some of Taoiseach Michel Martins advisers in recent months, unhappy that this newspaper has been unkind to him and his Government. But we have often said that Mr Martin is an admirable man and the politician who brought his Fianna Fil an important party in democratic politics back from the brink.

But history shows that populist parties, sometimes reckless, sometimes not, advance only when citizenries become desperate at the inability of Establishment rulers to reform.

Fianna Fil, Fine Gael and the Green Party need to concentrate on their own failings rather than those of the advancing populists.

What this column, guided by briefings from within the centrist parties, of course, has been saying is that it is the decadent, complacent, rudderless Government parties themselves that are responsible for what is coming.

And many fear the advance of an unreconstructed Sinn Fin. For populism can go horribly wrong.

The obnoxious, vicious, malignant Donald Trump was only hunted out of the US Presidency a year ago. Yet, to appropriate a line, he hasnt gone away you know.

Trump and Trumpism rose from the deficiencies of the Establishment. Millions of Americans were ruined by the 2008 crash, gifted to them by the wolves of Wall Street.

The banks recovered but the bluecollar workers the American working class didnt recover.

Trump prospered, no matter what outrage he committed. Thats what anger and disenchantment will do. At one point it was going okay, until he was confronted with a historic challenge, the Covid-19 pandemic, and he failed tragically.

It is seen as almost vulgar to point out that Sinn Fin display characteristics that could be deemed unpalatably unique in most other parties in western democracies.

The party condones and celebrates an illegitimate violent campaign of terrorism. It is a broad church but some members espouse proto- communist beliefs.

Supporters have used social media to turbo-charge the descent into debased political interaction, participating in the use of Trumpian nicknames like #meehole, #leotheleak.

Sinn Fin are late adherents to democracy. It is not long ago that they did not recognise the Dil and it still abstains from taking its seats at in Westminster.

Only 18 months ago, the party hosted a series of rallies in the wake of the 2020 election and before Fianna Fil and Fine Gael had entered coalition with the Greens arguing that Fianna Fil and Fine Gael were planning to carve up power and reject what people voted for.

Still, only 20% of the electorate voted for Sinn Fin. Most of the rest voted for centrist parties.

Some of their TDs espouse conspiracy theories. Tipperary TD Martin Browne supported claims that the 9/11 attacks were faked, using augmented holograms.

The party still opposes certain aspects of the court system.

It might seem like a little thing, but their leader does not give a press conference at their Ard Fheis. (An Irish Mail on Sunday reporter was physically restrained when trying to question her a number of years ago).

Then theres the money. The media cannot obtain a cogent explanation of who in their party is paid the average industrial wage and who isnt. They can use their status as a Northern Irish party to access funding streams not open to other Irish parties.

Ten years ago, I interviewed a Sinn Fin TD, Sandra McLellan, and she claimed that the party took her expenses. The Standards in Public Office Commission held a hearing, at which senior Sinn Fin figures accompanied Ms McLellan, where she dismissed the claims.

Though I had notes and tapes of the interview, I was not asked.

Ms McLellan has since left Sinn Fin, in an unhappy departure. The incident, in microcosm, shows the threat to the many if the guardians of democracy are underfunded. Sinn Fin will come to power in some form because of the somnolent, torpid response of the centre to the disenchantment of an electorate that does not benefit from surging economic growth, multinational profiteering and iniquitous distribution of wealth. If the centre cannot tack its sails quickly enough to avoid the rocks, do we blame its decision not to switch to steam or do we blame the rocks?

Housing For All, the National Development Plan and the Budget were the air, infantry and armoured wings of the Coalitions counterattack against the Sinn Fin invasion. They have failed. So what will they do next?

Link:

John Lee: Sinn Fin are true populists reform is the only way to defeat them - Extra.ie

The European Union is currently facing the double challenge of the rise of radical right populism and the presence of democratic backsliding in several member states. Yet despite the overlap of actors engaged in both processes, Mihail Chiru and Natasha Wunsch show that democratic backsliding has not yet served as a catalyst for populist radical right cooperation inside the European Parliament. Instead, ideological divergences and institutional fragmentation still pose an obstacle to collaboration between populist radical right parties at the European level.

Recent years have seen a strengthening of populist radical right parties across Europe go hand in hand with the emergence of democratic backsliding. While there is ample evidence that populism drives democratic backsliding, it is less clear whether democratic backsliding is inversely facilitating more cohesive mobilisation by populist radical right parties at the EU level.

Given the substantive overlap between the sets of actors engaged in both processes with the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS) and Hungarys Fidesz two cases in point we claim that such a catalytic effect is at least plausible. In ideological terms, populist radical right parties populism leads them to embrace an illiberal view of democracy and oppose the rule of law constraints to which the EUs mainstream forces appeal when attempting to address backsliding.

Moreover, their nativism and authoritarianism contribute to the rejection of any further deepening or widening of European integration, which they perceive as diluting national identities. Perpetrators of democratic backsliding have frequently adopted the same rhetoric. From a strategic perspective, populist radical right actors have an interest in fuelling confrontation between EU institutions and national governments to signal their opposition to supranationalism and weaken the prospects for further integration.

In a nutshell, we contend that increased collaboration to contest EU intervention on instances of democratic backsliding may serve as a springboard towards greater overall populist radical right cooperation, enabling these actors to overcome the ideological and institutional barriers that have hampered their more effective EU-level mobilisation to date.

Limited agenda-setting and vote cohesion

To probe whether democratic backsliding has served to federate populist radical right voices inside the European Parliament, we examine their cooperation on matters directly related to democratic and rule of law violations as well as to broader polity-related issues comprising deepening (constitutional issues) and widening (enlargement) as the two central dimensions of European integration. This enables us to investigate whether the emergence of backsliding and joint populist radical right mobilisation against perceived EU interference in domestic affairs (i.e., reactive cooperation) may also create a context that facilitatesproactive cooperationamong populist radical right actors seeking to challenge European integration more broadly.

Empirically, we study populist radical right collaboration at two distinct levels. First, we analyse the co-sponsorship of parliamentary questions as a measure of agenda-setting efforts by populist radical right MEPs: what issues do they emphasise when co-sponsoring parliamentary questions?Second, we examine populist radical right MEPs ability to coalesce around a common agenda at roll-call votes. Our analysis of patterns and contents of cooperation among populist radical right MEPs over the past decade (2009-2019) reveals only a very low degree of collaboration.

When it comes to agenda-setting, parliamentary questions co-sponsored by two populist radical right MEPs remain extremely rare and, with few exceptions, confined to MEPs sharing not only a European Party Group affiliation, but coming from the same national party. During the 8th term, MEPs from the French Front National/Rassemblement National (FN/RN) alone account for almost 60 per cent of the populist radical right dyads that co-sponsored at least one parliamentary question.

Figure 1: Vote cohesion levels for populist radical right MEPs by topic

Similarly, roll-call vote cohesion remains low for votes on democratic backsliding and constitutional issues and very low for votes on enlargement (see Figure 1). The degree of dissent varies considerably between party groups and is dependent on the size of the populist radical right MEP cohort in each group. While we find great cohesion in the two groups dominated by populist radical right members (Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy and Europe of Nations and Freedom), we record high levels of deviation from a joint populist agenda where populist radical right MEPs represent only a minority (European Conservatives and Reformists and the European Peoples Party).

Enduring obstacles to populist radical right cooperation

Our empirical findings allay fears that the emergence of backsliding trends inside the EU could facilitate more generalised populist radical right contestation of European integration. Instead, our analysis suggests that ideological divergences within the populist radical right camp and the institutional dispersal of MEPs across different party groups continue to hamper their formal collaboration. While ideological proximity enables some instances of co-sponsorship of parliamentary questions, the vast majority of questions co-authored by populist radical right MEPs does not cross national party, let alone European party group lines.

Substantively, the agenda setting efforts of populist radical right parties are spread broadly across multiple policy areas rather than signalling a common strategic agenda. When it comes to roll-call votes, we note greater cohesion among populist radical right MEPs on votes relating to democratic backsliding, but even here, their cohesion remains low. Overall, the fragmentation of populist radical right MEPs over several party groups thus appears not only to be a symptom of their internal divergences, but also acts as an enduring obstacle to their effective cooperation at the EU level.

Rather than observing any marked intensification of EU-level populist radical right cooperation against the backdrop of democratic backsliding, we thus see a much more gradual and partial development towards greater collaboration. This tends to focus on attempts to find sufficient common ground for institutionalised cooperation among populist radical right MEPs, as indicated by the joint manifesto of populist radical right parties in July 2021 contesting the creation of a European superstate.

Our study represents a first attempt to analyse the interactions between democratic backsliding and European integration not through the lens of EU responses to such trends, but rather in terms of the impact of democratic backsliding in member states upon EU-level processes and outcomes. As democracy and the rule of law come under pressure in more member states, and backsliding deepens, we can expect such trends to have an increasingly direct impact on the conduct and orientation of EU policymaking. Our findings therefore highlight the need for further research to address the impact of democratic backsliding on EU-level cooperation.

For more information, see the authors accompanying article in the Journal of European Public Policy

Note: This article gives the views of theauthors, not the position of EUROPP European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: CC-BY-4.0: European Union 2019 Source: EP

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Democratic backsliding has not (yet) united the populist radical right in the European Parliament - EUROPP - European Politics and Policy

The Czech Republic is preparing for a new stage after the defeat in the legislative elections of the populist Andrej Babis, the second richest man in the country, by two large coalitions of different political backgrounds that agreed to join forces to unseat the businessman. Petr Fiala, the leader of the conservative Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and head of the center-right alliance Spolu (Together), is now emerging as the new prime minister. The turn of the wheel may not be 180 degrees, since the trend of its policies will continue to be conservative, although a change in message and forms is expected. Despite the unexpected result, this is not the political end for Babis, who could run for president.

However, the change is not minor. Experts assure that issues such as the Czech Republics membership in NATO and its role within the European Union will no longer be questioned. The discussion about the Checxit the possibility of leaving NATO is out, says Lubomr Kopecek, professor of Political Science at Masaryk University in Brno. The Spolu alliance and the coalition of Pirates and Mayors and Independents (Stan) signed an agreement on election night which states that both groups will negotiate to form a new Government and asked President Milos Zeman to entrust Petr Fiala with the formation of the Government.

The new Parliament will be constituted on November 8, but it is expected that next week the new Government will begin to take shape. The political scientist Fiala, 57, will be the candidate for the position of prime minister, since his party is the one that has obtained the most votes within the coalition. Former rector of his University, Kopecek points out that he is a person who communicates well, skilled at finding agreements on many issues and that is going to be important. The professor warns that within the change that means that Babis is not in the Government a businessman who has been surrounded by accusations of corruption and conflict of interest the ODS is a liberal and eurosceptic conservative party, but being within a coalition with other defending parties of the European Union Fiala will be pragmatic and the EU will not be a problem for that coalition. He is very careful in his political steps.

It was in doubt if the transition would be peaceful after President Milos Zeman, an ally of Babis and the person responsible for commissioning the formation of the Government, warned that it would be entrusted to the most voted party, but the concession made by ANO (Alianza de Dissatisfied Citizens) by acknowledging their defeat points out that the process will be less arduous than expected. We know how to count up to 108 (), so we are counting on us to be in the opposition, said Jaroslav Faltnek, the president of the parliamentary group of the formation, on Tuesday, referring to the seats that the coalition has out of the total of 200 that Parliament has. We dont want to drag this out. We want the new government to emerge within a reasonable time, added Faltnek, a politician who is most trusted by Babis. The magnate, who ruled in alliance with the Social Democrats and the Communists, has been left without allies in Parliament because they did not reach the 5% necessary to have representation. And although finally the far-right formation the Party for Freedom and Democracy (SPD), of the Japanese businessman Tomio Okamura, won 20 seats, in case it had been considered as an option to form a government, the numbers did not come out either.

This will not be the political end of Babis. He will be in the opposition and will be a deputy in Parliament, says Kopecek, who believes that the businessmans expectations could lie in the countrys presidency. Zeman, 77 years old and in poor health, has been admitted since last Sunday. The president is diabetic and suffers from a neuropathy that mainly affects his legs, which forces him to be in a wheelchair. His term ends in early 2023, but he could advance the call for the presidential elections. The political scientist predicts that the next election will probably be soon and [Babis] he will probably be a candidate .

Regarding the countrys change of course, Raquel Garca, a researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute and an expert on the European Union, agrees that Babiss departure is good news given the position of the Czech Republic with respect to the EU and NATO, but he shows moderate optimism when recalling that the ODS led by the Spolu coalition is a conservative party that belongs to the family of conservatives and reformists and shares a political family in the EU with Law and Justice (PiS) in Poland. However, he trusts that being in the coalition he will have to moderate his position in accordance with the other more centrist parties.

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Garca points out that despite the shock caused by the impossibility of Babis forming a government again, his party, which emerged from an anti-system movement, is the one that has obtained the most seats, 72, one more than the center-right coalition, and if it is Broken down by individual political parties, the next one in votes is the ODS with 34 seats, followed by Mayors and Independents, with 33. An abysmal difference that shows that Babis continues to have a faithful base. He with a single party has won more seats than the second most voted party, he points out. So what happened?

The analyst points out the problems that Babis has dragged on since he came to power for the first time in 2017. It presented itself as a leading anti-corruption party and has a conflict of interest in the EU over the business conglomerate led by Agrofert, led to [Viktor] Orbn to the campaign, has appeared in a scandal as the Pandora Papers And, in addition, the Czech Republic has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic. In the end, all that has taken its toll .

As for the analyzes that suggest that the fall of Babis may be the beginning of the end for other populist leaders within the EU such as the Hungarian Viktor Orbn or the Polish Prime Minister Mateuz Morawiecki, he disagrees. Yes, it can serve as an example for the opposition parties in Poland or Hungary to form coalitions with which they can kick out Morawiecki and Orbn, but the main party in the Spolu coalition is Eurosceptic, it is not a very progressive coalition, nor Europhile . Its not Babis, its not the extreme right, but I dont think its going to be a paradigm of support for the EU.

The big hit went to the left with the disappearance of communists and social democrats, and within the Stan coalition the sharp decline of Pirates, which went from the 22 seats obtained in 2017 (which placed it as the third political force) to four. The formation has been the subject of constant criticism from the Babis campaign and the media it controls.

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Legislative elections: Czech Republic prepares to shift from Babis populism to conservative government | I... - Market Research Telecast

Slovakia and Czechia may become closer allies in the Visegrad Group and lead an attempt to depoliticise cooperation with Hungary and Poland.

"Hungarians would be overjoyed to have such a good prime minister," Hungarian PM Viktor Orbn said in the Czech city of st nad Labem during a campaign event he attended to support his Czech counterpart Andrej Babi.

Slovak-born billionaire-turned-politician Andrej Babi, whose campaign was to a significant extent based on the kind of anti-migrant rhetoric that Orbn represents, lost the election to a coalition of three centre-right parties that teamed up with the aim of ousting him as prime minister.

While observers are reluctant to subscribe to the headlines that appeared in some international media announcing the defeat of populism in Central Europe in their Czech election reports, they do expect the new Czech government to have an impact on the cooperation within the Visegrad Group, the regional grouping that includes Slovakia, Czechia, Poland and Hungary.

"Perhaps the Czech-Slovak relations will be stronger within the Visegrad Group and [the two countries] will focus on de-politicising the V4, said Tom Stray, an analyst with the non-governmental think tank Slovak Foreign Policy Association. Orbn's attendance of Babi's election rally is the kind of politics that Czechia and Slovakia may now reject together, he noted.

Observers do not expect the new Czech government, which will most likely consist of the two anti-Babi subjects, SPOLU and STAN with Pirates, to do anything to negatively affect the "above-standard" friendly relations that Czechia and Slovakia have enjoyed ever since their breakup in 1993, regardless of what government is in power on either side of the border.

12. Oct 2021 at 17:58 |Nina Hrabovsk Francelov

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Non-populist forces win in Czechia, but populism in Central Europe alive and well - The Slovak Spectator

This weekend Texas senator Ted Cruz spoke about how we all face the same challenges, including a bold and global left, that seeks to tear down cherished national and religious institutions. Nothing to see here, you might think except that he was not addressing a local branch of the Republican party in Texas, or a conservative US media outlet. He was speaking on screen to an audience of thousands in Madrid, at a meeting of the Spanish far-right party Vox. It was one of many recent outreaches to the global far right by US rightwing figures, which seem to have increased since the ouster of Donald Trump.

Is the so-called Populist International, so often foretold but never realized, finally taking shape? And will the US conservative movement play a leading role in it? Or is this more about domestic politics than global domination?

Unsurprisingly, given that the US conservative movement, like the Republican Party, covers a broad range of different shades of often far-right ideology, different people have spoken to different types of far-right groups. There are at least four major strands of far-right international networks in which US conservatives of all levels participate.

The first and most important is the global Christian right. The US Christian right has long been a global player and has been particularly active in post-communist Europe as is captured well in the Netflix series The Family. They have found influential supporters in Russian president Vladimir Putin and, more recently, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbn. It was at the latters invitation, at the bi-annual Budapest Demographic Summit in Budapest, that Mike Pence recently spoke, together with a broad variety of academics, church leaders and politicians from around the globe, including the French far-right maybe-presidential candidate ric Zemmour.

Budapest has also been the new promised land for the second strand, the so-called national conservativism movement the brainchild of the Israeli think-tanker Yoram Hazony. National conservatism is a kind of far right for people who read, to put it dismissively an attempt to merge the already ever-overlapping conservative and far-right ideologies and create a far-right movement fit for the cultural, economic and political elite. Tucker Carlson gave a keynote at a national conservatism summit in Washington DC in 2019 and recently took his Fox News show to Budapest, where he raved about Orbn and his regime. And the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is said to be hosting its 2022 meeting in Budapest too.

The third strand is the long-standing connections between some far-right Republicans and the usual suspects of the European far right, like the Austrian Freedom Party (FP) or French National Rally (RN), which are built on a shared ideological core of nativism, authoritarianism and populism. Connections between the European far right and Republican members of Congress go back decades; think of people like Steve King, the Iowa Republican, and Dana Rohrabacher, the California Republican. They were fairly marginalized within the party and both have, ironically, lost their seats in the Trump era. It was largely with these groups that Steve Bannon created the Movement, which never moved beyond media hype.

And, finally, we have the party that Cruz sent a supportive video message to, Vox in Spain. Almost completely under the radar, Vox has been building a conservative-far right network in the Spanish-speaking world, partly facilitated by the partys Dineso foundation. Focused mostly on Latin America and piggybacking on the Latin American rights long-standing fight against communism and for conservative Christianity the foundation has published a Charter of Madrid signed by more than 100 politicians and political activists from Europe and the Americas, including US conservative activist Daniel Pipes (anti-Islam) and Grover Norquist (anti-tax), as well as a host of Latin American MPs. The particular meeting Cruz spoke to was attended by various European far-right leaders, including Giorgia Meloni of Brothers of Italy (FdI), currently the biggest party in the polls, and Andr Ventura of Chega in Portugal.

Obviously, these international networks overlap on many issues, most notably in their common opposition to the global left but also, in different gradations, to immigration, Islam and gender ideology. But they also disagree on central issues, from the importance of religious doctrine to the role of Russia, and consequently have very different and shifting memberships. And they differ in the role of the US conservative movement within the network.

With the exception of the Christian right, which has long dominated the global movement, the US does not play a leading role in these networks. Even the national conservatism network is run by an Israeli and increasingly funded by Hungarians. Moreover, the various US Republicans who have recently participated in these meetings seem to use their international connections more for domestic gains most notably in the fight for the Republican nomination (should Donald Trump not run) than for the sake of building a Populist International.

This is not to say there is nothing new to recent developments. In the pre-Trump era, only relatively marginal rightwing conservatives and Republicans had open connections to the international far right. Today, the ties between the broader US conservative movement and the global far right have become mainstreamed, from the Republican party to National Review, with fewer and fewer dissenting voices. Still, steeped in US exceptionalism, the US conservative movement remains mostly inward-looking, using international connections and events primarily for national political struggles. And the Populist International is still more media hype than political reality.

Cas Mudde is Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, the author of The Far Right Today (2019), and host of the podcast Radikaal. He is a Guardian US columnist

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Surprised to see US Republicans cozying up to the European far right? Dont be - The Guardian

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks, Tuesday, September 14, 2021, at the Doral Academy Preparatory School in Doral, Florida. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

As leader of Americas surging right-wing populism, Donald Trump has devilishly and successfully exploited Americans frustrations with the wealth and opportunity disparities that plague the nation. But once he leaves the scenewhether or not he makes a 2024 runwill the movement he controls dissipate, or carry on under new leadership? The answer hinges on whether the polarized political class can overcome their differences and concretely address the underlying conditions feeding the anger and rage that undergirds Trumpism. Failure to do so could have dire consequencesnot excluding civil violence, as we saw on January 6.

Trump and Trumpism are here to stay, the University of Texas lecturer Victoria DeFrancesco Soto told MSNBCs Brian Williams last week. He is growing in popularity among communities of color. Worse yet, political scientists notice a disturbing trend: Republicans arent running away from the perverse brand of politics Trump unleashed; they are doubling down on it. Over the next four years we believe the GOP will solidify the transition to a populist base, write the University of Massachusetts professor Morgan Marietta and the American University professor David C. Barker. The movement, they add, will be led by opportunistic politicians in the model of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley. Polished populismTrumps policies without his personalitymay be the future of the GOPs identity, they write.

That means todays Republican Party is transforming itself in preparation for a post-Trump world. It will move from a cult of personality to a cult of white nationalist grievance.

Jay Ulfelder, a research fellow at Harvards Kennedy School who studies protest movements in the United States, told me hes seeing right-wing rallies focus more on issues of white grievanceopposition to critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, and so onthan on Trump, the man. In fact, since Joe Bidens inauguration, support for Trump has ranked sixth behind cultural war issues at right-wing rallies, according to Ulfelders research. Over the past four years, the top billing at such rallies was Trump himself.

Two Republican pollsters also see at least a modest drift away from Trump. The Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio told The Wall Street Journal that die-hard Trumpers and QAnon conspiracists make up 36 percent of the current GOP; 11 percent are never-Trumpers; while more than half fall into the categories of Trump boosters and post-Trump GOP.

While the boosters hold only a slight preference for Trump in a hypothetical 2024 primary, those who have moved on would prefer to see someone else lead. The pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson told the Journal that a quarter of the Republicans she surveyed said they definitely or probably would vote for another candidate, and 43 percent regard themselves as supporters of the Republican Party over Trump personally. At the same time, a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll last month still showed Trump as the strong front-runner in the GOPs 2024 presidential nomination.

Either way, we are witnessing a dangerous trend toward militancy on the right. Trumpism is transforming right-wing populism into a more aggressive neofascist movement. The Department of Homeland Security warns that potential domestic right-wing violence constitutes a national threat priority for the United States. Dana Fisher, a University of Maryland sociologist, told The New York Times that MAGA activists are foregoing traditional democratic means of seeking change: This is more like intimidating your elected officials by packing assault rifles.

If this drumbeat toward violence continues, and societal changes are not made, who is to say that America wont slide into chaos and civil strife similar to Weimar Germany? I think this movement is, at its core, a reactionary defense of racial, gender-based, and religious privilege, and power, Ulfelder told me. He said he views these trends as the death throes of American racialand, hopefully, religious and sexualapartheid, a vicious phase we have to pass through to get to the better world on the other side.

While some of the movements acolytes are irredeemable bigots who fear the diversification of the United States, the American left cannot neglect the societal ills that fuel such a culture of resentment. To get to the other side Ulfelder describes, the country needs to make major changes that can alleviate the grievances that drive many people to MAGA and QAnon.

The 25 richest Americans pay a federal tax rate of only 3.4 percent, according to a June ProPublica report. By contrast, the median U.S. household pays 14 percent. In multiple years, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, George Soros, Warren Buffet, and other billionaires have paid zero federal income tax. This week, The Washington Post, drawing on the Pandora Papers, reported on how some of the worlds wealthiest people engage in complex offshore accounting schemes to avoid paying taxesoptions not available to ordinary citizens. Last year, the headlines were filled with the college admissions scandal, with the rich and powerful illicitly buying their children entrance into prestigious colleges.

In a rare moment of evenhandedness, Tucker Carlson recently commented, The main problem with America right now is that a shrinking group of people controls a growing share of our nations wealth and power . . . That makes our country unstable.

It appears that many on both the left and the right agree that the yawning wealth and opportunity gap is bad for America. The richest keep getting richer as the working and middle classes have stagnated economically for more than four decades. That vast inequality has helped feed the rise of populism.

So what now? Passing President Bidens ambitious legislative agenda addressing social and wealth disparities, infrastructure, and protecting voter rights is central to mitigating a menacing populism that is growing more toxic by the day.

Donald Trump will be 78 when the next presidential campaign season kicks into high gear. It is an open question as to how long he can reasonably expect to dominate Republican politics. Hovering in the wings to take his place are brazen younger opportunists like Cruz, Hawley, Rubio, Ron DeSantis, and Nikki Haley, who will jump at the chance to take the helm of the MAGA ship. And they have every reason to expect that the movement will continue post-Trump. That is, unless the Democrats can overcome their internecine differences and unite in bringing needed reforms to fruition. If they dont, we can expect to have to keep fighting against the ravages of Trumpism, even after Trump himself is long gone.

Link:

What Democrats Need to Understand About the Future of a Post-Trump GOP - Washington Monthly