Centrist and radical right populists in Central and Eastern Europe: divergent visions of history and the EU

Nikola Petrović, PhD, Višeslav Raos, PhD and Filip Fila, MA are the authors of the original scientific paper titled Centrist and radical right populists in Central and Eastern Europe: divergent visions of history and the EU. The paper is published in the Journal of Contemporary European Studies, indexed in WoSCC in Q2 (Area Studies) and Q3 (International Relations; Political Science), and in Scopus in Q1 (Cultural Studies) and Q2 (Political Science and International Relations; Sociology and Political Science) (2020).

This article compares the politics of history and positions on the EU of six ruling populist leaders and their parties (Fidesz, PiS, SDS, GERB, ANO and OĽaNO) from Central and Eastern European (CEE) EU member states. Through the comparison of leaders’ biographies and longitudinal analysis of party electoral manifestos, an overlap between two types of CEE populism and two types of mnemonic actors in the region is found. Radical right-wing populist parties (Fidesz, PiS and SDS) are more oriented towards national histories, memory wars against ex-communists and critical events for losing or gaining their national sovereignty (mnemonic warriors). Centrist populist parties (GERB, ANO and OĽaNO) largely ignore that kind of narrative and focus on anti-corruption or promises of managing the state more effectively (mnemonic abnegators). Radical right-wing populist parties are also more likely to challenge the Brussels elites by using examples from their national histories. Emphasis on national traumas, anti-communism and their leaders’ vision of politics labelled here as combat tasks politics seems to be contributing to their Euroscepticism. Combat tasks politics, i.e. seeing politics as a constant battle against political enemies, underpins the Eurosceptic narratives of Kaczyński, Orbán and Janša - former dissidents who were politically socialised while challenging militarised communist regimes.

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