The behavior of mainstream political parties and the politcal elite. Indispensable factor for understanding the rise of contemporary populism

First Name
Cristian
Last Name
Stana
Institution/University
SNSPA
Conference Panels
Paper/Abstract submission

The presence of populist parties, populist movements or populist leaders throughout the European area, but also in the other continents, makes populism a global phenomenon, which is now manifested with a fierce intensity on the political scene. The present paper focuses on identifying and explaining the causes that have made it possible for contemporary populism in Western and Central and Eastern Europe to gain considerable momentum at the end of the 20th century. Through an analysis of the party system in two western states, Germany and France, in the post-war period, and in three Central Eastern European states, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Poland, in the post-communist period, I have identified a number of interconnected causes that are trying to explain the electoral success of populist parties, both in Western Europe and in the new post-communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe. As a first step, I show that populism in Western Europe has emerged by being forced by the mainstream political parties and the political elite, because mainstream political parties have become catch-all parties, lost their ideological substance, and together with the transparty political elite, they have taken over the entire political scene. For this reason, having no chance of competing with parties rooted in the system and having no potential for negotiation or blackmail, the new small or medium-sized parties have moved to the only door open to them in order to ensure their electoral success, namely to attack strong image structures, like the current establishment and the political elite, the new party formations eventually end up becoming populist. Contemporary populism has grown in Central and Eastern Europe in a way similar to that of Western Europe. Therefore, in the Central East European area, after the revolutionary moments in 1989, and after the new political systems were created and developed under Western inspiration, mainstream political parties and the political elite adopted and imitated the same behavior as their counterparts in the west, which has provided populism with fertile ground in this area as well.