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Hungary: Crisis as usual - Populist governance and the pandemic
Get PDFPopulists in Hungary had to manage the crisis from government position. Orbán has shown strong leadership during the crisis and dominated the political context of the issue. However, the usual elements of the ‘populist myth’ characterizing Orbán’s and Fidesz’s ordinary communication were adopted to interpret and frame the COVID-19 crisis. Within this narrative, the leader and its people together fight for ‘the Hungarians’ national interests and freedom against the interconnected international and national enemies who seriously threat these interests and freedom for their own political and economic benefits. The pro-government political and media actors’ communication were characterized by strong people-centrism, criticism towards the EU and the international ‘liberal mainstream’ including NGOs and media, and polarizing narratives that presented opposition actors as serving foreign political interests. As a reversed form of politicization, any criticism coming from social or political actors were immediately labelled as ‘political
The reference to constitutional traditions in populist constitutionalism – The case of Hungary
Get PDFPopulism and Social Media: An introduction into meta-theory; Studia Politica Slovaca, 2-3/2021, Special Issue
Get PDFCOVID-19 and Populism: A Sui Generis Crisis
Get PDFIt is widely believed that populists benefit from crisis situations. This chapter discusses the literature
on crises and populism from a theoretical perspective and provides a novel framework of analysis for
addressing the study of the COVID-19 crisis in the light of its (de)politicization. This framework
allows the study of the politicization of the COVID-19 issue by populists looking at the divide
between the political and the non-political status of the issue, disputes about different stakes and their
relative priority in managing the crisis, and issue-specific and policy-related contentions about
COVID-19. The general research question is whether populists in Europe used the COVID-19 issue
to gain centrality in the political field and/or to push forward new opposition lines. A further related
question is to pinpoint whether populists reacted in a similar way across countries or whether they
adapted their response according to their institutional role
Spain: Is ideology back in populist discourse?
Get PDFThe hit of the pandemic in Spain has been one of the most important in number of deaths and infected people in all Europe and the central government implemented one of the toughest confinement measures. Aside from this government's performance, opposition parties and, particularly VOX have mainly driven the political tension that has filled Spain during the months of lockdown. In this scenario, VOX has sensed this opportunity and has decided to use the pandemic to direct fierce criticism at the Spanish government, to the point of becoming practically an antiestablishment party. In a complete different role, Podemos has been conditioned by its institutional position as part of the Spanish government. While the two parties have adopted differing strategies towards the government's performance, however, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, both have discarded their populist standpoints to a great extent and, instead, highlighted the ideological content of their proposals
Germany: The AfD’s Staggering between Reason and Resistance
Get PDFThis chapter argues that the AfD has not been able to capture the media’s attention and display itself as the centre of protest against the government’s COVID-19 policies. One of the key reasons is that the AfD has limited its critique to highlighting the failures in prevention and to stressing mistakes made in effectively managing the crisis. Consequently, the AfD could not exert the same radical critique as for example during the migration crisis. To be sure, the AfD has refused to participate in the overall COVID-19 consensus by politicizing the issue. It also tried to radicalize its critique by switching from a ‘safety first’ strategy to a strategy of ‘individual rights first’. But with no avail. It seems that the party has been suffering from some ‘outbidding’ by forms of extra-parliamentary opposition (APO), which are much more radical and in some ways also more populist than the AfD itself
