South East European Journal of Political Science

SOUTH-EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE Populism and its Metamorphoses Vol. II • No. 1 & 2 January - June 2014

International Advisory Board Philippe CLARET (Bordeaux), William CONNELL (New Jersey) Ragıp GÖKÇEL (Bucharest), Ron JOHNSTON (Bristol) Anna KRASTEVA (Sofia), Oleg KUDRYAVTSEV (Moscow) Sedat LAÇINER (Çanakkale), Helen MARGARITOU-ANDRIANESSI (Athens) Luigi Mascilli MIGLIORINI (Napoli), Thierry MÉNISSIER (Grenoble) Leonardo MORLINO (Rome), Giovanni SARTORI (New York) Philippe SCHMITTER (Florence), Filip STANCIU (Bucharest) Gheorghe STOICA (Bucharest), Tibor SZABÓ (Szeged) Mario TELÒ (Bruxelles), Jovan TEOKAREVIC (Belgrade) Mümtazer TÜRKÖNE (Istanbul) Editor-in-Chief Andreea ZAMFIRA (LUMINA - The University of South-East Europe) Editorial Board Ioana-Bianca BERNA, Diana CHIRA, Marin DRĂMNESCU, Aurelian GIUGĂL, Eugen LUNGU, Florin-Ciprian MITREA, Adriana Elena STOICAN, Cristina ȘTEFĂNESCU (LUMINA - The University of South-East Europe) Website Administrator: Mihăiă RĂDUCANU Desktop Publisher: Andrei CEBANU Peer Review Board Vasile BOARI (“Babeș-Bolyai” University) Ion BOBOC (LUMINA - The University of South-East Europe) Sorin BOCANCEA (“Petre Andrei” University of Iași) Anton CARPINSCHI (“Al. I. Cuza” University of Iași) Salvatore CINGARI (Università per Stranieri di Perugia) Julien DANERO IGLESIAS (Université Libre de Bruxelles) Dragoș DRAGOMAN (“Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu) Nicola GENGA (“La Sapienza” University of Rome) Francesco MARCHIANÒ (“La Sapienza” University of Rome) Sergiu MIȘCOIU (“Babeș-Bolyai” University) Sorin MITULESCU (LUMINA - The University of South-East Europe) Ciprian NIU (West University of Timișoara) Răzvan PANTELIMON (Universidad Católica de Valparaíso) George POEDE (“Al. I. Cuza” University of Iași) Daniel ȘANDRU (“Petre Andrei” University of Iași) Gabriela TĂNĂSESCU (Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations) Enache TUȘA (Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations) Dragoș VASILE (University of Economic Studies, Bucharest)

This journal is included in

South-East European Journal of Political Science, Vol. II, No. 1 & 2, 2014

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL Marin DRĂMNESCU, Populism and Democratic Values ...................................................... 1

ARTICLES Anca SIMITOPOL, Jean-Claude Michéa’s Populism or “with the Left against the Left” ......... 17 Alexandru RACU, From Ecclesiology to Christian Populism. The Religious and Political Thought of Russian Slavophiles ................................................................................................... 39 Ionuț APAHIDEANU, Religious Populism: The Coup de Grâce to Secularisation Theories .... 71 Dragoş DRAGOMAN, Could Speaking for the People Often Mean Lying to the People? Populism and the Problem of Truth ............................................................................................. 101 Răzvan Victor PANTELIMON, Populism and Neo-populism as the Main Characteristics of the XXIst Century Politics ...................................................................................................... 121 Dragoș COSMESCU, The Authoritarian Credentials of Populist Presidentialism .................. 153 Veton LATIFI, The Populism of the Political Discourse. Metamorphoses of Political Rhetoric and Populism .............................................................................................................................. 173 Ion BOBOC, Populist Parties in Eastern and South-East Europe. Case Studies: Bulgaria and Romania .............................................................................................................................. 193 Cătălin SECĂREANU, Populism and Anti-Occidental Romanian Political Discourse between 2001 and 2012 ............................................................................................................. 217 Marcela Monica STOICA, The European Elections of 2014 under the Sign of Populism ....... 233 Florin GRECU, Critical Analysis of National-Populist Rhetoric of Mihail Ralea, Labour Minister, about Guilds and Corporatism ........................................................................ 249 Cristina NEDELCU, The Metamorphosis of Populism in the Arab World: Gamal Abdel Nasser ................................................................................................................. 273 Taras DOBROVOLSKYY, Populism in Revolutionary Ukraine, between East and West .... 299 Lee Rahel NIREL, Populism or the Fear of Democracy Failure ............................................... 315

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ESSAY Ljubomir Danailov FRCKOSKI, Authoritarian Populism in Transitional Democracies of Western Balkans ........................................................................................................................ 329

BOOK REVIEWS Daniele ALBERTAZZI, Duncan MCDONNELL (eds.), Twenty-First Century Populism. The Spectre of Western European Democracy (Ioana-Bianca BERNA) ........................................................................................................ 341 Jean-Michel DE WAELE (ed.), Partis politiques et démocratie en Europe centrale et orientale [Political Parties and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe] (Andreea ZAMFIRA) ............................................................................................................ 347 Pierre MANENT, Rațiunea națiunilor: Reflecții asupra democrației în Europa [Democracy Without Nations:The Fate of Self-Government in Europe] (Flavia CIONTU) ................................................................................................................... 353 Jean GRUGEL, Democratizarea: O introducere critică [Democratization: A Critical Introduction] (Emanuel Mihai DEACONU) ............................................................................................. 357 Ionel BOAMFĂ, Geografie electorală [Electoral Geography] (Aurelian GIUGĂL) .............................................................................................................. 363

INTERVIEW - EVENT Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Drifts and Metamorphosis. On the New Paths of Populist Movements. (Codrin TĂUT) ....................................................................................................................... 367

SIGNALS Florin MITREA ...................................................................................................................... 375

Notes on contributors ........................................................................................................ 383

Mandatory Submission Guidelines ............................................................................... 395

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South-East European Journal of Political Science, Vol. II, No. 1, 2014

EDITORIAL Populism and Democratic Values Marin DRĂMNESCU LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe Abstract: Populism has become a well defined attitude-movement in

Central and Eastern Europe, integrating this space into a European phenomenon increasingly wide-spread. In most countries of Europe through their discourse, populist politicians exploit social frustration generated by economic problems by showing the main culprits: corruption, political elitism and immigrants. Against this backdrop, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, they systematically attack democratic institutions, the parliament, court decisions, and the justice system in its entirety, central banks, political neutrality of public servants and the independence of the media. And all this in the name of the people, instilling the idea that the decisions made are fair and effective, and trying to satisfy the subjective demands of the population, understood as a homogeneous, unitary body. From this perspective, populism becomes an attitude favourable to the fulfillment of the wishes of the people, against their real interests. Keywords: populism, populist rhetoric, erosion of democracy, charismatic

leader.

1. INTRODUCTION Populism, as a type of manifestation, has always accompanies all forms of government and all political regimes, ever since their beginning, but it has the most profound impact on democratic organisations. It is obvious that in the political landscape of Europe in general populism is increasingly present in both speech and attitude. It 1


appears, emerges and grows ever more strongly in places where representative democracy faces a lack of solutions, partial failures, giving illusions to those who can no longer produce answers within the limits of their power of understanding and adaptation. Populism is a frequently used concept in the study of politics, a concept that has different meanings depending on the context or the author who uses it1. Most experts recognise the difficulty of achieving a consensus on the imposition of a clear definition given to the populist phenomenon, as it presents the quality of being understood differently in different situations. Thus, populist behaviours can be expressed in a diverse political spectrum, either by the right-wing or by the left, they can trigger reforms, may occur either in urban or rural areas, and can engage energies from both the progressive and conservative camp2. These manifestations have no invariant, no specific constant, being multi-classial3, and poorly organised.

2. POPULISM BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND AUTHORITARIANISM Due to the fact that the term of populism is etymologically rooted in the Latin populus (people) it might be assumed that it refers to popular movements, reactions, attitudes, groups or manifestations, or to regimes or leaders who have, claim or voice a certain affinity with the people4. From another point of view, populist rhetoric tends to be a collection of assertions belonging simultaneously to the right and left, with a strong emphasis on leadership, on the one hand, and popular equality, on the other hand. As a rule, the populist message conveyed is illiberal and intolerant to traditional civil liberties5.

Robert H. DIX, “Populism: Authoritarian and Democratic”, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1985, p. 29. 2 Răzvan V. PANTELIMON, “Populismul european post-Lisabona. Mit mediatic sau realitate”, Revista de Ştiinţe Politice şi Relaţii Internaţionale, Vol 9, No. 2, 2012, pp. 15-29. 3 Hans Jürgen PUHLE, “Populismo en América Latina”, Revista de Ciencia Política, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1987, p. 88. 4 Alan KNIGHT, “Populism and Neo-populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico”, Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, 1998, pp. 223-224. 5 Gabriela COLȚESCU (coord.), Vocabular pentru societăți plurale, Polirom, Iași, 2005, pp. 180-187. 1

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It can be stated that the populist leader appeals to the people positioning himself against the existing political system, in an attempt to achieve a project, usually a utopian one1. Depending on the approach and the definition used, different authors have compiled various lists of political personalities that fall into the category of populist leaders, according to certain criteria. In a general sense, the adjective populist defines a person who seeks to gain popularity, to attract followers, supporters and admirers through facile means, through promises not anchored in the concrete daily reality. From a traditional perspective, populism is considered a political doctrine whose stated aim is to defend the interests of ordinary people against an elite who has given up or who neglects or partially fulfills its assumed roles. “If there is anything that binds populists of all countries, it is their anti-system discourse. That is how they all started: challenging the political and social system, the dominant economic structures, and political, cultural or religious institutions. They used their weaknesses or operating flaws, exploited the legitimate discontent of citizens in order to penetrate the system, to take it over and use it in their own interest”.2

The researches in the field of political psychology associate populism with the failure of representative democracy. According to Alexandre Dorna, “The waning of the values of modernity and the collapse of democratic values are the main factors that legitimised the spread to a larger scale of manipulation and demagoguery - favorite tools of populists from everywhere and of all time”.3

Populist attitude, argues the French professor, develops and manifests itself under the pressure of a multidimensional generalised crisis, which facilitates the effortless

Răzvan V. PANTELIMON, “Populism si neo-populism. Concept și practici”, Tendințe Actuale în Filozofia Politică, Institutul de Știinte Politice si Relatii Internationale, Academia Română, Bucuresti, 2006, pp. 213215. 2 Guy HERMET, Sociologia populismului, Artemis, Bucureşti, 2007, p. 1. 3 Alexandre DORNA, Fundamentele psihologiei politice , Comunicare.ro, Bucureşti, 2004, pp. 229-230. 1

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manipulation of masses by “an elite that is losing more and more contact with the concrete reality”.1 According to A. Dorna, today’s society is confronted with a new populist cycle2. The viral expansion of populism was possible due to the globalisation of the market economy which has become the most rapid and most effective way of contamination. The erosion of democratic mechanisms, the dysfunctions of state institutions, corruption, and the growing manifest contempt of political, economic and even cultural elites for ordinary citizens have encouraged the return at full blast of populism. In front of this invading energy governments are paralysed, non-reactive and hesitant. Since current ideologies are reduced to electoral and economic calculations, intellectual elites have withdrawn from political life favoring the penetration into the State’s decisionmaking mechanisms of persons animated by interests other than those of the community. Political strategies are becoming or have become personal in the absence of a rational project, of a coherent vision, or of a collective ideal. As a political phenomenon, populism did not arise from nothing but it is the natural outcome of the culmination of a stage of exhaustion, trivialisation and cultural and ideological exhaustion of the elites in power. Frustration, constant disappointment, repeated deception and expectation without any hope to cling to are the key factors conducive to the recrudescence of this phenomenon. In the essence of its manifestation, populism is not a symptom of the end of a system or of the start of another system, but it appears as an indicator of the corrosion and weakening of the consistency of a democratic governanment. Treating this indicator with indifference can generate the coagulation of the energies of crowds or large groups and their visceral manifestation, without any direction, without a coherent programme, and without precise targets, animated only by “the desire to get rid of the defiance of an arrogant, useless political elite and of the anguish it causes to those masses”.3 In the populist acception, the only element that might cause the dilution of the whole nation’s anguish is the emergence of a strong and charismatic leader, champion of the people and of its will, and whose beliefs, attitudes, behaviours and speeches might depressurise and dissipate the generalised anxiety. Ibidem, p 229. [http://revistacultura.ro/cultura.php?articol=983]. 3 Ibidem. 1 2

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Social cohesion has always a psychological, and not a sociological or economic componant. Against this backdrop the populist leader emerges as the symbolic and heroic embodiment of the crowd’s irrational expectations. Being essentially a charismatic character, his speech addressed especially to those wronged, poor, and humiliated becomes mobilizer, operational and concretised in more often than not undemocratic acts. Through his conduct and the concepts conveyed, he makes more or less deliberately reference to fundamental myths. This manifest urge becomes particularly acute due to the individual’s need of myths. In other words, the need of understandable life models whose presence, even if only symbolic, confers motivation and a higher meaning to human existence and an explanation of or a direction to social action. Yet myth is nothing but an imaginary history. It does not evoke the past as it was (the historical dimension) but as we would have liked it to be (the imaginary dimension). The major problem arises when more or less willingly it is taken for history1. The symbols mentioned in populist speeches spur the collective awakening through re-remembrance, re-recognition and reference to that historical imaginary context with antidepressive impact. Populist rhetoric, sometimes accompanied by demagogy, proposes and supports a vision of a desirable future, built upon emotional images wherein the populist leader assumes the role of agent of transformation by supporting those to whom he proposes a model to identify with2. Having lost trust in institutions, becoming first skeptical and suspicious, and later apathetic, resigned and indifferent as to the behaviour and the lawfulness of the decisions made by these institutions, individuals promptly accept those messages based on early anticipation of what they want to hear. From this point of view, populism is more than a simple movement of the masses, it is rather the reaction of the masses to a critical situation and to the appeal, felt as heroic, of a charismatic leader who opposes the power by mobilising the entire nation. For Philippe C. Schmitter populism is a political movement centred on a leader who claims that he is able to find solutions to problems previously regarded as

1 2

Adrian SEVERIN, “Tranziţia democraţiei către populism” [http://basarabialiterara.com.md/?p=3807]. Ibidem.

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impossible to be solved1. Schmitter examines 14 characteristics of populism, grouped in seven virtues and respectively in seven vices2. Table 1. Populism: virtues and vices Virtues

Vices

Compels traditional system parties to reform, adapt and renew themselves;

By customising politics excessively, populism can have dismantling effects on the party system;

Influences the public agenda, by bringing to the forefront until then ignored issues;

Overstresses the emotional at the expense of the rational;

Mobilises the citizens otherwise politically apathetic;

Arouses oversised expectations;

Emphasises the personal qualities of politicians, bringing them out of the party cocoon;

Extraterritorialises responsibilities that actually belong to the people whom it exalts;

Presents a quick and effective decisionmaking model, for it is not bureaucratic;

Encourages electoral opportunism to the detriment of accountability;

Calls into question a number of external constraints that have become over time legitimate and accepted;

Requires hasty programmatically;

Populist parties, being devoid of political force, disappear rather quickly from the political arena, leaving behind a reinvigorated party system.

It can easily lead to the degeneration of democracy, leading it towards dictatorship.

decisions,

inarticulated

In Philippe Schmitter’s vision, populism comprises in a fair and equal manner both advantages and disadvantages. Schmitter argues that populism destroys established or consented loyalties, affects rational choices between different political programmes without substituting them with something of its own, that it influences and recruits uninformed people without crystallised preferences and who prefer to obtain emotional

Philippe C. SCHMITTER, “Un bilanț al viciilor şi virtuților populismelor europene”, Dilema Veche, ediția online, No. 180, 23.07 2007. 2 Răzvan V. PANTELIMON, “Populismul european post-Lisabona...cit.”, pp. 15-29. 1

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satisfactions from those who lead them at the expense of pragmatic actions, that it makes promises and creates expectations which cannot be fulfiled, and that it identifies foreigners, minorities, immigrants, etc. as determining factors of its own failures. Populists can affect the rules of the democratic game through the support they receive from the Army or security forces, in other words, they cannot be removed peacefully from the helm of the country1. Moreover, the above mentioned author shows that through their actions populists have also positive sides, in that: “[…]populist parties and movements dismantle sclerotic partisan loyalties and dissolve party systems based on illegal, undemocratic collusion, recruit previously apathetic and passive persons, and mobilise them in the elections; by the concern attached to certain disparate or ignored political issues populists encourage the articulation of demands and hidden cleavages, replace political immobilism, and broaden the sphere of possible political solutions to collective problems; finally, when they are defeated in the elections, they leave room to a reinvigorated party system”.2

On the one hand, “Populists call into question the rule of law, the separation of powers and the autonomy of various social bodies, such as universities or religious cults, relying excessively on the dominance of the executive power and not providing guarantees for its limitation. On the other hand, nor do populists’ attacks against the institutions of liberal democracy spare the legal guarantees of rights and freedoms of ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities”.3

1

Philippe SCHMITTER, “A Balance Sheet of the Vices and Virtues of Populisms”, Romanian Journal of

Political Science, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2007, pp. 5-10. Ibidem, p. 11. Bojan BUGARIC, “Populism, Liberal Democracy, and the Rule of Law in Central and Eastern Europe” and Dragoş DRAGOMAN, “Populism, autoritarism şi valori democratice în opinia publică din România”, in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIŞCOIU (eds.), Partide şi personalităţi populiste în România postcomunistă, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2010, pp. 301-302. 2 3

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These groups become quite often targets of extremist manifestations as a result of favorable political conditions, “and of their identification as enemies by populist leaders in search of new groups waiting to be excluded from the narrow ethno-nationalist and conservative definition of the nation in both Western and Eastern Europe”.1 However, populism may promote or exacerbate political extremism, which raises serious questions to the supporters of liberal democracy2: How to define, understand, monitor and manage populism? In what conceptual framework can we talk about populism and from what viewpoint can it be analysed in order to understand it more deeply: ethical, political, sociological, psychological, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary? Can populism be tackled as a distinct, stable ideology, with certain invariants which would define it? Can populism be perceived as a kind of generalised attitude-discourse, structured on a logic belonging to a psychological profile or to a personality exacerbated by the persistence of dominant features which can be identified? To what extent is populism an attitude with contaminating valences, generating certain effects? To what extent is a populist political discourse generated by the transitional stages of societies or by the failures of political regimes, governments or by state institutions or by particular economic and cultural conditions? Is there a recrudescence of populism and which are the correlations that can be deduced from the analysis of the incentive causes and of the stimulating environment?

3. INTERDEPENDENCE BETWEEN DEMAGOGUERY AND POPULISM From a general point of view, the demagogue is an individual whose speech contains false promises and phrases deeply imbued emotionally by dint of which he creates his popularity. The term of demagoguery refers to an actional model of political strategy through which political power can be won and maintained. This type of strategy speculates the public’s fears, anxieties and hopes, by consistently using rhetoric and propaganda techniques, appealing to nationalist or populist themes through which the Grigore POP-ELECHEŞ, “Romania’s Politics of Dejection”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2001, pp 157-166. 2 Marc F. PLATTNER, “Populism, Pluralism, and Liberal Democracy“, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 21, No. 1 2010, pp. 81-92. 1

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demagogue’s popularity and image are amplified. The intention of the demagogic speech is to determine an observer or a listener who is little or not at all informed to draw a conclusion, to form an opinion which would meet his expectations based less on reality and more on his own expectations. From this point of view, in the demagogic discourse can be inserted fallacies, half-truths, omissions or distortions of a message, partial truths, and emotional images in order to obtain political advantages. In the demagogic discourse persuasion is achieved by appeals to emotions rather than to reason. A comparative analysis of the demagogic and populist message (Table 2), led Guy Hermet to identify five main differences that refer to: the type of relation that the emitters of the two speeches claim to maintain with the people; the emotional register in which they are situated; the diagnosis of the risks the people is exposed to; the nature of the political offer and position vis-à-vis democracy. Table 2. Characterisation of political discourse through differentiation1 Criterion

Populist

Demagogic

Relation with the Embodiment of the true people by No embodiment; the emitter is the people the message emitter people’s benefactor Register of the discourse Diagnostic Nature of the political offer Position

Affective and of proximity Reality described in a denouncing manner

The advantages offered are significant, not the discourse No description of reality, no genuine accusation

Simple curative antipolitical solution

Anouncing the immediate benefits with no argumentative discourse

Need of a deep reform

Silence.Privileged framework of demagoguery

As can be seen, populism appears to be less an ideology and more a political attitude-movement which mobilises and directs the population against a government or an institution, with a view to defending it against a real or supposed injustice or aiming to repair some injustice.

1

Guy HERMET, Sociologia populismului, Artemis, Bucureşti, 2007, p. 70.

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Regardless of the political belief manifested in action or discourse (left wing, right wing or center), populism seeks to unite and fight against corrupt dominant elites (usually the political class) and their allies (potentates of the day, intellectuals, national or local celebrities, etc.). The progress of populist actions is animated by the real or declared belief that political and social goals are best achieved through the direct action and involvement of the masses. From the perspective of political psychology, populism appears as a general type of discourse developed by a general human mental typology, which contains within itself difficulties to adapt and integrate the individual in the community, such as: anxiety, rejection manifested to societal change or nostalgic nuances after stages thought to be beneficial. This type of discourse is recurrently expressed on the political scene, in various forms, depending on the context. This speech appears rather as an attitudinal response to the reality of a society that becomes gradually less accessible and more difficult to understand. On the other hand, the populist phenomenon can also be analysed from a historical perspective with reference to various political, social and cultural movements in the context of which it manifested itself. In conclusion, we can say that populism can be seen and understood as a logical expression whereby certain socio-economic conditions are analysed and characterised. The logical construction of the discourse is based usually on the emphasis of the contrasts between backwardness and stagnation, decay and modernisation or the relationship between traditionalism and the imperative for change1.

4. POPULISM IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE Although we are witnessing a recrudescence of the populist phenomenon in Eastern Europe, it transcends this space, and it can be found equally consistent in the Western socio-political environment as well. Thus, the increasing visibility of Western populist parties and movements is obvious, their success being due to the exploitation of social concerns related to the phenomenon of immigration, socio-economic insecurity,

1

Dragoş DRAGOMAN, “Populism, autoritarism şi valori democratice în opinia publică...cit.”, pp. 300-305.

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but also to a certain kind of manifestation of political elitism and corruption. There are voices that point to a specific connection between populism and the emergence and consolidation of right-wing extremism in Western Europe. The worrying amplification of this phenomenon can be quantified by the systematic attacks on democratic institutions and the statements of governments and political parties that increasingly argue that they are and translate into experience the true voice of the people. From this hypostasis they downplay the role of liberal democratic institutions that interpose between them and the will of the people1. In the Eastern European space governments themselves criticise, contradict and despise court decisions which are contrary to their own interests, particularly those of constitutional courts. Political power does not hesitate to limit the freedom of the press if its interest so requires. On the other hand, if the same interest so requires, the professionalism of public servants is affected by their replacement with new officials, who are unqualified, politically obedient, but loyal2. In general, the attention of populists focuses either on certain social categories, ethnic groups, sexual minorities, or other groups that do not fall within the correct definition given to the people3. In Romania too, populism, increasingly evident after joining the NATO and the European Union, engenders certain risks for democracy, risks arising from the extension of this political phenomenon throughout the region. According to D. Barbu, the etiology of this phenomenon can be found in Romania in that “Romanian society persisted, after December 22, 1989, to seek “antipolitical” formulas of aggregation, populism being the first of these which turned up to the call”4. According to the same author, populism delimits itself from nationalist demagogy and authoritarianism, being but an inability or lack of intent to distinguish between the interests of the people whom the government represents and the people’s inclinations to be shaped and channeled in accordance with a previously assumed political

Ibidem, p. 307. Ibidem, p. 312. 3 Lucian TURCESCU, Lavinia STAN, “Religion, Politics and Sexuality in Romania”, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 57, No. 2, 2005, pp. 292-309. 4 Daniel BARBU, Republica absentă. Politică şi societate în România postcomunistă, Nemira, Bucureşti, 2004, p. 153. 1 2

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vision, between what is rationally useful for society and the irrational emotional impulses of the population. Although the effects of populism on democracy are indirect, they are mediated and enhanced by the manifestations of public opinion in the form of extremist antiminority attitudes, and affinity for conservative and socially authoritarian behavioural patterns. Through their non-democratic expression these behavioural and attitudinal patterns can jeopardise the institutions and practices of liberal democracy in Romania. The spread of populism in Europe is acknoledged as a current reality notwithstanding there is still no consensus on its impact on European societies. Ivan Krastev believes that “populism is a direct consequence of the tensions between liberalism and democracy, derived from the acute need for more direct democracy, on the one hand, and the multiplication of charismatic leaders able to coalesce popular dissatisfaction and frustration”.1 According to E. Jones, the common denominator of populists in the European countries is represented by the attacks initiated against political elites merged, in their opinion, into cartels2. In this vision, populists do not form parties but organise political movements, mobilise voters avoiding political activists, draw attention to minor issues but with a great emotional impact, being less interested in the consistency and substance of their political programmes. This way of being and of doing politics represents a real challenge to European democracy. Concurrently with the populist rhetoric of the discourse is stimulated and shaped an authoritarian attitude, or a call for such an attitude. Against this background, in Romania and other countries of Eastern Europe decreases in the quality of democracy were recorded after the accession to the European Union3. Thus, after the first wave of accession to the European Union in 2004, J. Rupnik noticed the establishment of a worrying populism unmeasured as yet by Freedom House

Ivan KRASTEV, “The Strange Death of the Liberal Consensus”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 18, No. 4, October 2007, pp. 56-61. 2 Erik JONES, “Populism in Europe”, SAIS Review, Vol. XXVll, No. 1, 2007, pp. 39-44. 3 Philip LEVITZ, Grigore POP-ELECHEŞ, “Why No Backsliding? The European Union’s lmpact on Democracy and Governance Before and After Accession”, Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 43, No. 4, 2010, pp. 457-466. 1

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Index measuring instruments of democracy1. What became visible were the political understandings of extremist right-wing parties and populists in Slovakia and Poland, consistent populist movements in Hungary or political attacks against the freedom of mass media in Slovenia. Once reached the objective of European integration the policy of several Eastern European governments refused to recognise the separation of powers and the political neutrality of institutions, such as the central bank, the constitutional court, etc. Eastern European populist discourse is directed against political and economic elites, believed to be the heirs of communist centres of power and influence. At the level of the statements, populist speeches support and mobilise the energy of the masses against corruption and failure of a political system deemed as defective but in fact systematic attacks against democratic institutions are not at all something out of the ordinary. As a direct consequence, the Parliament has become, in the Romanian populists’ view, the legally protected space of manifestation of a corrupt political elite, and the justice system, a privileged and untouchable caste. As a direct result of these populist actions against the Parliament, a referendum was organised calling for the reduction of the number of MPs and the appointment to the Constitutional Court of juges sharing particular political preferences. In the same context Statute for civil servants was amended creating the opportunity to appoint loyal people to public offices politicising thereby public administration. It is also noteworthy that the government decided to amend through ordinances and its own resolutions some organic laws while some laws voted in the Parliament by the parliamentary majority were declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. The 2010 Freedom House Report certified a decrease in the quality of democracy in six new Member States, Romania being one of them. The overall FH score worsened noticeably after the elections of 2008, the quality of democracy dropping from the historical maximum of 3.29 in 2007 to 3.46 in 20102.

Jacques RUPNIK, “From Democracy Fatigue to Populist Backlash”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 18, No. 4, 2007, pp. 19-21. 2 Dragoş DRAGOMAN, “Populism, autoritarism şi valori democratice în opinia publică...cit.”, pp. 300-305. 1

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5. CONCLUSION Although populism is not directly linked to the support of non-democratic alternatives, one may say that there is a certain interdependence between populism, antiminority attitudes and the conservative attitudes of society. Through the ability of populism to stimulate public awareness by radicalizing the extremists’ attitude, and by identifying and declaring certain social groups as enemies, the risk of its sharpening in Europe is becoming a major one. It is the main reason why populism is charged of promoting heightened hostility against socially excluded groups, such as migrant communities, sexual, religious or national minorities. From the populist rhetoric it can be noted that the attacks against democratic institutions are radical. This makes the proposed corrective solutions to be as radical, aiming at “a fundamental change”1 rejecting processuality, gradualism and compromise. On the other hand, due to its intrinsic anti-elitism, populism argues that political decisions should belong to ordinary people, i.e. to the people. The result of such a conduct is the reduction of the elite to a formal presence which would uselessly intermediate between the charismatic leader and the masses. Claiming to hic et nunc solve major societal challenges, to provide simplistic, unrealistic solutions, deeply impregnated emotionally, populism shuns rationality, and has recourse to different types of symbols with a powerful impact on social perception. Pe acest fond, în momentele de criză, când sentimentul de comunitate se diluează și diferențele dintre simbolurile propuse și discursurile elitelor politice cresc, populismul se amplifică, se acutizează, devenind operant.

Bibliography BARBU, Daniel, Republica absentă. Politică şi societate în România postcomunistă, Nemira, Bucureşti, 2004.

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[http://bogdanmandru.wordpress.com/doctrine-politice-%E2%80%93-populismul].

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BUGARIC, Bojan, “Populism, liberal democracy, and the rule of law n Central and Eastern Europe”, in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIŞCOIU (eds.), Partide şi

personalităţi populiste în România postcomunistă, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2010. COLȚESCU, Gabriela (coord.), Vocabular pentru societăț i plural, Polirom, Iași, 2005. DORNA, Alexandre, Fundamentele psihologiei politice, Comunicare.ro, Bucureşti, 2004. DRAGOMAN, Dragoş, “Populism, autoritarism şi valori democratice în opinia publică din România”, in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIŞCOIU (eds.), Partide şi

personalităţi populiste în România postcomunistă, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2010. GHERGHINA, Sergiu, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE, Populismul contemporan. Un

concept controversat ș i formele sale diverse, Institutul European, Iași, 2012. HERMET, Guy, Sociologia populismului, Artemis, Bucureşti, 2007. JONES, Erik, “Populism in Europe”, SAIS Review, Vol. XXVll, No. 1, 2007. KNIGHT, Alan, “Populism and Neo-populism in Latin America, especially Mexico”,

Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, 1998. KRASTEV, Ivan, “The Strange Death of the Liberal Consensus”, in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIŞCOIU (eds.), Partide şi personalităţi populiste în România

postcomunistă, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2010. LEVITZ, Philip, Grigore POP-ELECHEŞ, “Why No Backsliding? The European Union’s lmpact on Democracy and Governance Before and After Accession”, in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIŞCOIU (eds.), Partide şi personalităţi populiste în

România postcomunistă, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2010. PANTELIMON, V. Răzvan, “Populismul european post-Lisabona. Mit mediatic sau realitate”, Revista de Ştiinţe Politice şi Relaţii Internaţionale a Academiei Române, Vol. IX, No. 2, 2012. PANTELIMON, V. Răzvan, “Populism si neo-populism. Concept și practici”, Tendinț e

Actuale în Filozofia Politică, Institutul de Știinte Politice şi Relații Internaționale al Academiei Române, București, 2006. POP-ELECHEŞ, Grigore, “Romania’s Politics of Dejection”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2001. 15


PUHLE, Hans Jürgen, “Populismo en América Latina”, Revista de Ciencia Politica, Vol. IX, No. 1, 1987. RUPNIK, Jacques, “From democracy fatigue to populist backlash”, Journal of

Democracy Vol. 18, No. 4, 2007. SCHMITTER, Philippe, “Un bilanț al viciilor şi virtuților populismelor europene”,

Dilema Veche, ediția online, No. 180, 23.07.2007. SCHMITTER, Philippe, “A Balance Sheet of the Vices and Virtues of Populisms”,

Romanian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2007. TURCESCU, Lucian, Lavinia STAN, “Orthodoxy and EU Integration: Opportunity or Stumbling Block?”, Sfera Politicii, Vol. XVIII, No. 4, 2010.

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ARTICLES Jean-Claude Michéa’s Populism or “with the Left against the Left” Anca SIMITOPOL Independent Researcher Abstract: This article discusses Jean-Claude Michéa‟s populism,

centered on the triad: liberalism versus socialism, progress versus tradition, and intellectuals versus people. Michéa maintains that, in order to grasp the dynamics of the modern world, in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, we need to understand first of all two things. The first is that liberalism is the ideology that continually erodes tradition. The second is that ever since economy has been disembedded from the network of social relations, it has become an end in itself. Thus, capitalism, the economic form of liberalism, represents now an allembracing ideology that governs social relations. According to Michéa, the only way out of capitalist regimentation is offered by the political thought of some of the early nineteenth-century socialists and by the political philosophy inspired by it and developed by thinkers like George Orwell or Charles Péguy. Michéa‟s political thought rests on Orwell‟s concept of “common decency”, which institutes the exchange of friendship and generosity. Michéa argues that “common decency” is rooted in “ordinary people”, and that any attempt of the Left to fight capitalism can be successful in so far as it returns to the people. Its refusal to do so can encourage society to turn towards far-right parties. Keywords: liberalism, early nineteenth-century socialism, “common decency”,

Marxism.

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1. INTRODUCTION Jean-Claude Michéa is a philosopher influenced by the different traditions of socialism grounded in the people, from Pierre Leroux, the early nineteenth-century utopian socialist who claimed to have invented the term “socialism”, to Charles Péguy, and from George Orwell to the American Christopher Lasch – but the author to whom Michéa‟s thought is indebted the most is Orwell. Michéa attempts to rediscover the political philosophy of early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers, a political philosophy born out of the pressing needs of ordinary people, especially of labourers, whom the “modern world” (to use Péguy‟s expression), starting with the Industrial Revolution, has deracinated. Michéa would accept Péguy‟s definition of the “modern world”1 as that thing the essence of which is to be against whatever is ancient and, in general, against whatever is different from itself. The “modern world” for Péguy does not have an alternative project of its own; it only gnaws its adversary – that could be called by the general name of “tradition” – while, at the same time, lives on it, in the sense that the “modern world” has no values of its own, and it is tradition, instead, that furnishes the essential values that make the very existence of society possible. Thus, the “modern world”, according to Péguy, instinctively does not want the death of tradition; instead, it needs its adversary barely alive to offer the primary conditions necessary for the existence of society. In other words, the “modern world”, defining itself only in relation to tradition, needs to be able to continually criticize the latter, in order to justify its existence, although tradition could no longer represent a real danger for the “modern world”. Once tradition will be completely ruined, follows Péguy‟s argument, the “modern world” will succumb as well. According to Michéa, the ideology that, from the start, has defined itself in opposition to any tradition and that continually erodes tradition is liberalism, with its triple form: economic, political, and cultural. In Michéa‟s opinion, the rediscovery of the political philosophy of the first socialist thinkers is highly important

When Péguy uses the expression “modern world”, he does not refer to modernity in general but to a specific (negative, in his opinion) set of ideas and practices that have triumphed over others (positive elements, in his opinion) in the aftermath of the French Revolution. The “modern world” is, thus, characterized in particular by a specific understanding of freedom, by elitism, and by intellectualism. 1

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because it represents the only way out of the all-embracing capitalism.1 Michéa‟s political thought is concentrated on the triad: liberalism versus socialism; progress versus tradition; and intellectuals versus people. According to the French author, the electoral landscape in Western countries is dominated by the alternation to power between the liberal Right and the liberal Left that, while separated by minor differences, accede both to the requests of international capitalist institutions to implement neoliberal economic programs.2 Michéa shows that the economic version of contemporary liberalism (which defines itself as the “Right”) and its cultural and political version (which is championed by the contemporary Left) have common origins: the desire for peace and scientific progress, put at the service of one single purpose, i.e. that of individual accomplishment and happiness. The contemporary Right and Left, according to Michéa, are, in fact, the consequences of the principles of classic liberalism. Michéa propounds the definition of “liberalism” as the force that has become active in Western history once the Old Regime, the last bulwark – good or bad – of tradition, was destroyed. He starts from Karl Polanyi‟s thesis according to which, if until the Industrial It must be mentioned from the start that Michéa is somehow ambiguous when he refers to early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers whose thought represents, according to him, the only way out of capitalism. He mentions first and foremost Pierre Leroux as the main reference where we can find the principles that dismantle coherently form a philosophical point of view capitalism. And Leroux is indeed a coherent author from this point of view. We find similar ideas in the thought of Robert Owen and of PierreJoseph Proudhon. But there also are, among early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers, Henri de SaintSimon and the Saint-Simonians, on the one hand, and Charles Fourier and the Fourierists, on the other hand, to mention only a few, and most significant, extremes. The former were enthusiastic about the process of industrialization, which fashioned, according to them, the new humanity, while, at the same time, supported the idea of a dogmatic authority, similar to that of the Pope during Middle Ages, that would account for society‟s unity. Charles Fourier and the Fourierists, on the other hand, believed that individual passions should be allowed to manifest themselves freely because they would spontaneously enter into harmony. Fourier‟s understanding of freedom was a reaction against the “sad and blind” virtue. Saint-Simonian thought supports communism, while Fourierist thought supports liberalism (with its triple form: economic, political, and cultural). Only a part of early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers (mentioned in the beginning of this note), then, support Michéa‟s thesis, but he does not make this clarification, which would be helpful. However, throughout this article I will refer to early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers, in general, because Michéa refers to them in general, but it should be understood that the expression refers mainly to Leroux and, also, at least to some extent, to Owen and Proudhon. 2 Jean-Claude MICHÉA, Les Mystères de la Gauche. De l‟idéal des Lumières au triomphe du capitalisme absolu, Climats, Paris, 2013, pp. 45-46. 1

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Revolution, economy was embedded in society, which had an ultimate end, in the aftermath of this phenomenon, economy has been disembedded from the network of social relations. Economy has become, thus, an end in itself or what Aristotle calls chrematistics, that is, economy that sets as a purpose wealth for the sake of wealth. In this sense, Michéa defines liberalism, like Leo Strauss and John Milbank, as the modern ideology par excellence that, deriving its legitimacy from the abstract, autonomous, asocial, and a-political individual, does not continue the tradition of classical and Christian political philosophy, unchaining, thus, the unlimited desire for power. Therefore, in his opinion, any association between liberalism and the republican ideal (that emphasizes ancient virtues), or that between liberalism and conservatism (that presupposes a holist conception of society incompatible with liberal individualism) is absurd. Although one could contend that there are different types of liberalism – Alexis de Tocqueville and Ludwig von Mises, for example –, Michéa maintains that liberalism could not be accommodated – at least not on the long run – to tradition. Contemporary liberalism (in its economic and cultural-political forms) is, in his view, the coherent liberalism, the logical and historical evolution of classic liberalism, an issue that, nevertheless, remains open to debate.

2. LIBERALISM VERSUS SOCIALISM According to Michéa, liberalism postulates that, if the claim of some individuals or entities to hold the truth about the Good engenders the violent clash between people, it means, then, that the latter cannot live together peacefully unless governed by a Power neutral from a philosophical point of view. Carl Schmitt noticed the same thing before Michéa, and affirmed the fact that it is in the nature of liberalism to neutralize all conflicts by devaluing all values and changing them into market values, setting up an actual “polytheism of values”,1 as Max Weber calls it. There emerges, thus, the “state devoid of ideas and values” that, according to Saint-Simon‟s famous expression, replaces the “governing of people” with “the administration of things”.2 Here lies the origin of Max WEBER, quoted in Jean-Claude MONOD, La querelle de la sécularisation – de Hegel à Blumenberg, J. Vrin, Paris, 2002, p. 146. 2 Jean-Claude MICHÉA, L‟empire du moindre mal, Climats, Paris, 2007, p. 37. 1

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the important role assigned to specialists and managers by our society. Following in the footsteps of Orwell, Michéa maintains that all societies throughout history have been grounded in the unwritten law of “things that should not be done”. This unwritten law, to which traditional societies, as well as ordinary people from any type of society in general, would cling instinctively, engenders the moral sense or the common sense which, in ordinary people, is inherently linked to their spontaneous contact with reality, and, thus, secures the social network of solidarity. This is what Orwell calls “common decency”. The liberal society makes no exception in what concerns the acknowledgment of the fact that there are “things that should not be done” because no society can function in the absence of this. But it has limited extensively these things, so that in the end we arrive at either the neo-liberal-conservative stance, according to which a person cannot exercise her freedom only if she injures directly someone else‟s economic freedom, or the liberal leftist stance, according to which tolerance cannot be infringed. The liberal Left, unlike the neo-liberal-conservative Right, maintains that the economic freedom of the individual can be legitimately limited so that other individuals could enjoy the freedom to do whatever they want from a cultural point of view. According to this perspective, what cannot be limited is the sexual-cultural freedom. Michéa argues that the essence of liberalism consists in removing as many obstacles as possible in the way of individual freedom. This worldview, Michéa believes, is shared by the liberal Left and the neo-liberal-conservative Right, the difference between them being that the liberal Left applies this tenet to the cultural sphere, while the neo-liberalconservative Right applies it to the economic sphere. In Michéa‟s opinion, not only that both perspectives are incoherent, but they support one another: the liberal Left provides the cultural foundation to economic liberalism, while the latter is perfectly consubstantial with cultural liberalism. In either case, there is no common good acknowledged above the individual will because, as David B. Hart puts it, “we have made a decision as a society that unfettered personal volition is (almost) always to be prized, in principle, above the object towards which volition is directed”.1 Eventually, individual wills, as well as individual rights, enter into conflict. Therefore, the liberal state derives its legitimacy only from its role of arbitrator in the Brownian motion of competing atom-individuals, protecting an individual from the direct injury of another or making sure that, in David B. HART, “The Pornography Culture”, The New Atlantis, No. 6, Summer 2004 [http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-pornography-culture]. 1

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principle, no individual, irrespective of what her/his claims are, is subject to intolerance – although tolerance is intolerant of the intolerant, therefore not all citizens can equally enjoy tolerance. But, Michéa asks himself, how does the liberal state distinguish between direct and indirect injury? Or, for instance, on what criteria does the liberal state decide that the mockery or the criticism of a religion does not injure the freedom of believers? Or what guarantees does the liberal state have that people will make rational (that is, “good”) choices and society will not be transformed into a society of “devils”? After all, does the Kantian idea, that good institutions can make functional even a society of devils, not contain the ultimate essence of liberalism? Both the contemporary liberal Right and Left, according to Michéa, profess their devotion to a specific and limited understanding of freedom: “the power the human person has to act without being, essentially, determined by external factors”.1 To this has been added the Sartrian metaphysical conception of freedom, according to which one could become oneself and, hence, authentically free, once one realized (s)he owed nothing to anyone and began a painful process of deracination from “the family, the social or the geographical background, supposed, by definition, to be hostile and alienating”.2 The liberal Left has taken this metaphysical tenet and transformed it into a political one, or rather into a political demand stating that authentic political freedom means that the individual should be offered the right and the possibility to become her/his “own guinea pig”, as William Connolly puts it. This, Michéa argues, means that the Left has betrayed its initial mission of working for the benefit of “la classe la plus nombreuse et la plus pauvre”, as the early nineteenth-century French socialists would say, and has, instead, smoothed the path for capitalism to an extent that the latter had not even dreamed of. Thus, according to Michéa, the tragic process of deracination and of “Exilement” of the individual, initiated forcefully by the Capital, has become the joyful symbol of the “human condition, or rather its Redemption”, “the solved puzzle of human freedom and the accomplished end of History”.3 What could better serve the “global unified Market” than the individual who willfully makes a tabula rasa of her/his background and is an enthusiast of global mobility? According to Michéa, even if the Jean-Claude MICHÉA, Orwell, anarchiste tory, suivi de À propos de 1984, Quatrième édition, Climats, Paris, 2008, p. 92. 2 Ibidem, pp. 92-93. 3 Ibidem, p. 93. 1

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liberal Left were full of good intentions and wanted to stand against capitalism, it could not accomplish its purpose because it rests on a flawed understanding of freedom. Early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers criticized particularly the process of deracination initiated by the Capital and apprehended the importance of the definition of freedom. Leroux, one of the authors who informed Michéa‟s thought, argues that freedom should be defined in relation to the notions of fraternity and equality, and that otherwise, separated from the other two notions, freedom becomes identical with the right of the strongest. Leroux propounds the following definitions of freedom, fraternity, and equality, which are implicit in Michéa‟s thought. Man‟s strongest desire, according to Leroux, is to make his presence felt in the world and to act upon the things in his possession. This is freedom, which Leroux also calls sensation, in as much as it is purely subjective. Others, then, feel an individual‟s presence/action in the world and are affected by it to different degrees. This means that the human being is not only active, but also sentient, that (s)he not only influences others directly or indirectly through her/his actions, but is herself/himself influenced directly or indirectly by others. Consequently, an individual feels the need that others would acknowledge sentiments born in her/him as a result of their actions. The awareness of these sentiments, which is the consequence of the mutual impact of our actions, represents the grounds for fraternity. The latter is, thus, a way of living, grounded in solidarity and in the Evangelical postulate, “just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise” (Luke: 631). The encounter between my sensation and the other‟s sentiments, or the relation between freedom and fraternity, engenders reflection. And this is the meaning of equality: although people do not possess the same depth of thought, they all reflect on the surrounding reality; in other words, their experience as subjects within the human community engenders their reflection on justice and injustice, on suffering, life, and death. As in the case of Leroux, Michéa notes, freedom, in Orwell‟s socialist thought, is inseparable from common decency or from that instinctive popular civility contained within “a code of conduct which is understood by almost everyone, though never formulated”.1 This code represents, in Orwell‟s vision, the primary background against which is informed people‟s respect for nature, for others, and, in general, “our intuitive

1

George ORWELL, The Lion and the Unicorn, p.77, quoted in Ibidem, p. 89.

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sense of what is due to each person”.1 Like Orwell later, Leroux, who, as Michéa rightly notes, propounded the notion of socialism as a response to that of individualism, saw in the liberal conception of freedom the danger of disbanding the idea of community-life itself. The liberal who denounces all popular traditions and all forms of belonging as oppressive arrives at the affirmation that “le monde est ma tribu” – but, in the absence of any form of belonging, what remains from “le monde” is the global market2 that shows, in fact, a complete indifference for any individual drama. The liberal ideology that smoothes the path for the global market and that derives its legitimacy from its criticism of both “oppressive” traditions and utopias becomes, then, the most pervert form of utopia that claims to be adored as the “realm of lesser evil”. Thus, the most important meaning of the liberal state‟s claim to guarantee the peaceful coexistence of individuals, says Michéa, consists in the fact that the individual Right replaces the Good and the selfregulated Market dictates the social content. The fact that the liberal state claims to be neutral means that the market assumes the active role to educate individuals, through its huge advertising industry. During early nineteenth-century there existed, in Western Europe in general and in France in particular, a vivid debate between the conception of a society of rights, which liberals attempted to present as the just society, and the conception of a decent society, which was fashioned within the context in which masses of labourers (former disinherited peasants) had been moved into towns artificially constructed around factories – a phenomenon continued later and implemented much more violently by communism. This is the background against which are formulated the first socialist criticisms of liberalism and of the society fashioned by this ideology that, according to Michéa, “was encouraging, in fact, indecent behaviors evidently opposed to human dignity”.3 Michéa emphasizes that early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers warned everyone against the fact that in a society that demands from its members only “the respect of their mutual indifference”, while “the members of society do not share a minimal common sense, the postulate vivre et laisser vivre changes, in fact, into vivre et laisser mourir”.4 Jean-Claude MICHÉA, Orwell, anarchiste tory...cit., pp. 89-90. Guy SORMAN, quoted in Idem, Les Mystères de la Gauche...cit., p. 36. 3 Jean-Claude MICHÉA, L‟empire du moindre mal...cit., p. 44. 4 Ibidem, p. 54. 1 2

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3. PROGRESS VERSUS TRADITION Early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers view tradition and progress in dialectical terms. As for them, modernity represents, for Orwell and Michéa, a tension: they refuse, on the one hand, the hierarchy characteristic to the Old Regime, and want, on the other hand, to join the tenets of freedom and equality, put into practice by modernity, with the holist principle that characterized traditional societies. From this specific point of view, Orwell and Michéa are, like early nineteenth-century socialists, anti-progressivists and claim to remain anchored in the Christian European tradition, steadfast in their belief that it accounts for the fundamental feature of humanity, that is, common decency that, according to Orwell, is deeply rooted in “ordinary people”. In Orwell‟s view, unlike the grandi, as Machiavelli names them, and the progressivist intellectuals who surround them, “ordinary people” are instinctively attracted by the virtues of righteousness, steadfastness, and truth, a natural attraction quenched by the social engineering put into practice in the name of abstract ideas, as Orwell shows in 1984, or perverted by the mechanisms of the self-regulated market. In what concerns early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers, it can be argued that, specifically because of their steadfast resolve to defend common decency, they were also able to champion an idea of progress contained within the limitations of human life. Early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers spontaneously criticized a society that conjoined conspicuous forms of injustice with deadened and hypocrite moral norms, Michéa argues, and championed an idea of progress rooted in the Enlightenment. Their hope was that, materially, the technological progress would furnish all members of society with decent living conditions1, and that, spiritually, all members of society would become able, through education, to actively acknowledge one another as free and equal human beings.2 Early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers like Leroux were aware of the distinction between tradition and convention. In his Idea of the Good in PlatonicAccording to Michéa, this positive conception of progress made sense during the incipient stages of modernization, when it added to the old world a fresh perspective. Idem, Orwell, anarchiste tory…cit., p. 126. 2 Ibidem, pp. 123-124. 1

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Aristotelian Philosophy, Hans-Georg Gadamer explains clearly that, while tradition is employed in the justification of, or in support of, our moral decisions, convention is employed in self-justification. “Conventional morality”, then, serves “unequal individuals whose sense of solidarity and community with each other has vanished. What is convened here is what is convenient for the most powerful”.1 For early nineteenthcentury socialist thinkers, the fundamental question was the same as the “human question” identified by Gadamer in Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy: “what is the good for us” or “the good in human life”,2 in other words, not an abstract question but a practical one. They found part of the answer in classical and Christian traditions, that is, in the holist conception of individual and of society, on the one hand, and in the Evangelical postulate of doing to others what you want others to do to you, on the other hand. Tradition informs in individuals, from generation to generation, that primitive attachment to community-life and to the primary conditions that keep the former alive, that is, the logic of the gift and the sense of belonging. According to early nineteenthcentury socialist thinkers like Leroux, the hierarchical system (where one is kept in a permanent position of receiving the pity of the one who is in the permanent position of giving from his abundance) and the spirit of conquest (developed in the name of the sense of belonging to a culture considered superior to other cultures) represent conventions used in support of power, which parasitize tradition. Progress, for them, represents the active force that purges tradition of its parasites and brings into actuality its potential. In this sense, they argued that stupid and profitable (for some) conventions, such as accepting huge differences in status and fortune as natural, marrying someone against her/his will, or teaching some that their only vocation in life was to be burdenbeasts, should be thrown away – for no one, unless pathological, enjoys being in that situation –, while tradition, with its rich social content, should be preserved. One can legitimately argue that it is at least naïve to believe that hierarchical relations and the rich social content of traditional societies are not interwoven, but it is equally legitimate to argue, like Orwell and Michéa, that hoping for the discovery of a new “communitycontent” in the aftermath of the destruction of the traditional one is a mere abstraction Christopher SMITH, translator‟s note, in Hans-Georg GADAMER, The Idea of the Good in PlatonicAristotelian Philosophy, trans. Christopher Smith, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1986, p. 1

36. 2 Hans-Georg GADAMER, The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy…cit., p. 30.

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that has nothing in common with human life. The Enlightenment philosophy contains in itself a double conception of progress. Beside the one already mentioned, according to which progress should serve human life, there is also the one according to which progress should reinvent human life, to replace what is organic, in as much as it is inherited from tradition, with an artificial new creation. This latter conception originates, on the one hand, in the endeavor, begun by Thomas Hobbes, to fashion a “social physics”, that is, to organize society on the grounds of “scientific and impartial” rules, without drawing on citizens‟ virtues – thus, without any need to resort to traditional ancient and Christian sources. On the other hand, it also has its origins in the traumatic experience of sixteenth- and seventeenth-, century religious wars, which has engendered the unquenchable desire for peace1, a peace which has been considered as dependent on the liquidation of the religious tradition that has led to the religious wars. Liberal philosophy, thus, is rooted, according to Michéa, in this notion of progress that has been later adopted also by the Left. Citing Christopher Lasch, Michéa shows that this notion of progress is closely related to the prosaic desire that each individual could take care of her/his own business in order to better her/his own condition.2 In this context, argues Michéa, the only acceptable war is the war against nature, meaning that the human being does no longer relate to nature through the philosophical and the theological virtue of being astonished, but by taking it into possession with the help of science and technology. As argued by Michéa, already in the second half of the nineteenth century and in early twentieth century, (a part of) the Left has taken over this “metaphysics of Progress”, “the hard kernel of all bourgeois worldviews”, which has led to the progressive dissolution of the “original peculiarity of […] popular socialism in what will further on be called le „camp du Progrès‟ ”3, that is, the party of intelligentsia. According to Michéa, the belief that big industry represents the only grounds for the organization of production, “capable of satisfying the requirements of the” future “communist society”, has raised a fundamental problem that marked the rupture between the Left and “ordinary people” – early nineteenth-century socialist thinkers criticized particularly the industrialization brought about by capitalism. First and Jean-Claude MICHÉA, L‟empire du moindre mal...cit., pp. 21-22. Ibidem, p. 29. 3 Idem, Les Mystères de la Gauche...cit., pp. 23, 20-21. 1 2

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foremost, according to Michéa, it was clear for Marx and Engels that there was no place at all for “either the artisanship, or the small enterprise, or the peasant agriculture […] in this abundance society that had to correspond inevitably to the communist mode of production”.1 This, Michéa continues, could not but encourage in Marx‟s disciples a negative valuation of these traditional classes.2 The fundamental question, for Marxist intellectuals, then, is no longer “what the good in human life is”, but, says Michéa, what the Sense of History is, and who does and who does not fit in it. These traditional classes would fit in to the extent to which they would be subject to Progress and be transformed into proletariat. Otherwise said, these traditional classes do not fit in. It is in this suspicion with which the Left regards these traditional classes or “ordinary people” – characterized by whatever is “small” and “archaic” – that lies the profound and legitimate suspicion, according to Michéa, with which “ordinary people” regard the Left, as well as their consequent turn towards the conservative Right of the time (end of nineteenth century, beginning of twentieth century) and, starting with the 1929 crisis, towards fascism.3 There might seem to be something ambiguous or incoherent here, in Michéa‟s argument. Marx distinguished between traditional classes and the proletariat. While the latter were “reactionary” and attached to traditional, outmoded values, the proletariat, according to Marx, had no attachment to the values of the traditional classes, and in this sense it was a “revolutionary” force. There is raised the question, then: does not Michéa include the proletariat among “ordinary people”? But Michéa presupposes that Marx‟s proletariat, just like the anti-conservative class, does not exist, in fact. What actually exists is the disinherited, traumatized peasant, changed into proletarian, who has, nonetheless, kept the values of “common decency”, characteristic to traditional classes. Michéa‟s argument, then, is that the proletariat, despite urban changes, has remained a traditional category that – it is true – has been subject to change, but that, most importantly, has much more in common, in what concerns its values and ideas, with the (traditional) peasantry than with Marxist intellectuals. Moreover, Michéa believes, in Marx‟s time it could make sense to argue that “the capitalist mode of production contributed indirectly to the collective wealth” that would

Ibidem, p. 25. Ibidem, p. 26. 3 Ibidem, pp. 27-28. 1 2

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serve as a basis for the communist society to come.1 Although, unlike traditional modes of production, capitalist economy never had as a purpose the production of goods that simply responded to real human needs, its historical development, during Marx‟s time, still forced it to produce such goods. In this context trade-unionism itself made sense, writes Michéa. Protesting against the closing of their factory that produced goods that satisfied real human needs of society, labourers knew that they were protecting not only their interest, but also that of society.2 Michéa argues that, once capitalism has been released from moral and religious limitations, and the market has become “free to produce, sell and buy anything that may be produced or sold at all”, as Hayek puts it, endlessly stimulating, thus, imaginary desires, it has been more and more difficult to see where the emancipative potential of capitalism, preparing the path for the communist society, could be. Michéa asks himself what kind of emancipated society could be the one born out of a world “devastated by concrete, large-scale industrial agriculture, radioactive wastes, omnipresence of cars and airplanes, or the never-ending multiplication of sophisticated and alienating gadgets”.3 Particularly under fire here is Antonio Negri. Marx noted that capitalism destroyed, with always greater intensity, social relations and nature, but, at the same time, developed the productive forces and increased productivity, preparing, thus, the material grounds for communism. Therefore, Marx would not have argued that we should go hand in hand with capitalism up to the end, because there was a moment when capitalism would reach the climax of its development, and, from then on, could no longer be a factor of progress because productivity would begin to decrease. Negri maintains that capitalism dismantles, as well, the institutions of the old, reactionary world, one of the most important being the nation-state, emancipating, thus, individualities and turning them towards “mobility” and “flexibility”.4 Once capitalism will have destroyed these bulwarks, it will destroy itself and will make place to communism. Capitalism reaches, then, the point where it inhibits productive forces and, at the same time, is no longer grounded in an ideology (that is, does no longer present

Ibidem, p. 29. Ibidem, p. 70. 3 Ibidem, p. 72. 4 Michael HARDT et Antonio NEGRI, Empire, trans. Denis-Armand Canal, Paris, Exils, 2000, p. 402, quoted in Gilles LABELLE, “Que des „bonnes nouvelles‟…? Lecture critique d‟ Empire et de Multitude de Hardt et Negri”, Science et Esprit, Vol. 62, No. 1, Janv.-Avril 2010, p. 34. 1 2

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itself as a domination exercised for the benefit of its subjects), but becomes sheer force. Thus, capitalism might have already reached its climax from the economic point of view, and might, as well, have already dismantled the nation-state. But, according to Negri, the main force that withstands communism now is represented by those identities informed by the nation-state and by the institutions of the old world, that is, the reactionary forces, or what Gilles Deleuze calls “microfascisms”, which are gradually eroded, but not yet destroyed, by capitalism, and which attempt to defend the reactionary nation-state and are, thus, caught in a nostalgic utopia, slowing the evolutionary process of history.1 This is, in fact, the reason why the Left associates itself with liberalism and defines itself as multicultural and anti-classic in what concerns culture: it fights against the identities that withstand the “multitude” and slow the historical process. The idea of Progress represents, in fact, the triumph of Reason, the historically victorious answer to the question: on what purely immanent grounds could society be founded? Reason (or Method, in Cartesian philosophy) represents this foundation. This idea has been inherited from the Enlightenment philosophy and has been initially put into practice by capitalism, according to Michéa – the victims of the Industrial Revolution, as they appear in Dickens‟ novels, for instance, having been sacrificed in the name of Progress. From a scientific or technological point of view, Galileo is superior to the ancients, Einstein to Galileo etc., in general the moderns are necessarily superior to the ancients. This scientific idea of Progress has been introduced by the liberal Left in the educational process too. Thus, because Progress is, evidently, in the future, truth also is in the future, while the latter is represented by children. In this sense, the purpose of education is no longer that of transmitting knowledge from older to younger generations. Education presupposes, instead, that adults should be reeducated by children. Following in the footsteps of the Enlightenment philosophy, the liberal Left associates the idea of progress with that of individual emancipation from any type of authority, because, according to the liberal Left, any type of authority fashions authoritarian personalities, on the one hand, and offends human dignity, on the other hand. According to Michéa, this unbridled devotion to the idea of progress means that our society “turns away from the sinister past of the humanity that existed before us” and simultaneously works at the

1

Gilles LABELLE, “Que des „bonnes nouvelles‟…? Lecture critique d‟Empire et de Multitude…cit.”, p. 35.

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“deconstruction” of all previous ways of living.1 Michéa agrees with Lasch‟s affirmation that the “deconstruction” of all types of traditional authority (family, school, society, and church) does not mean complete freedom, but, on the contrary, greater authority because “in the absence of adults we run to experts”, allowing them “to define our needs for us and then” wondering “why those needs never seem to be satisfied”.2 At the same time, the market appears as “the only instance of „socialization‟ compatible with individual freedom in so far as it does not ask of the individuals whom it brings together any particular moral or emotional commitment, neither, a fortiori, any counter-gift”.3

4. INTELLECTUALS VERSUS PEOPLE Since Reason or Method represents the only legitimate foundation of society, it follows, then, according to Michéa, that there is a method or a rational solution for any human problem. Michéa argues that, in this context, the intellectual elites that run such methodological programs resemble more and more with one another – be they from New York or Tokyo (an idea borrowed from Lasch‟s Revolt of the Elites) – and less and less with their own people, forced to undergo their social engineering. Consequently, the school can by no means continue to be the institution that transmits knowledge, or at least that attempts to educate good citizens for the republic. Instead, it prepares the labour force for the supreme authority, the Market. And this labour force, according to Michéa, represents the grounds of classic liberalism, i.e., the abstract, autonomous, asocial, and a-political individuals, whom the Left prepares for the Market by emancipating them from any traditional authority and, thus, transforming them into individuals unable to distinguish between good and evil or between Mozart and Lady Gaga. After all, who has the authority to decide what good and evil are, or what intellectual and artistic values are? The individual right to live exclusively by one‟s own standards, argues Michéa, makes sense only in the absence of a minimal consensus on the good life, and, therefore, from this point of view, there is absolutely no reason why

Jean-Claude MICHÉA, Les Mystères de la Gauche...cit., pp. 32-33. Christopher LASCH, The Culture of Narcissism, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1979, p. 25. 3 Jean-Claude MICHÉA, Les Mystères de la Gauche...cit., p. 36. 1 2

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anyone should conclude that solidarity is morally superior to egoism.1 Michéa maintains that Orwell identified two historical origins of socialism. One is represented by the people, more specifically by its instinctive ethical attachment to generosity and solidarity, and its hatred of privileges. The other is represented by the intelligentsia, more specifically by its rigid conceptual frameworks, independent of “elementary moral imperatives” that intellectuals despise as products of mystification.2 If “ordinary people” rebel against an existing social order on the grounds of the fact that they, as well as those around them, undergo injustice, exploitation, and domination, intellectuals rebel against an existing social order in the name of scientific knowledge (or rather a dogmatic belief?) concerning the Sense of History. In his analysis of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, Gadamer argues that, when scientific expertise outstrips its own sphere of action and replaces moral judgment, it changes into an immoral art of pursuing self-interest or will-to-power – the most subtle form of self-interest, as we know from Dostoevsky. Orwell shares this perspective, believing that the essential divide within socialism is that between those who struggle for justice and those who struggle for power. The intellectual alienated from the people and from its moral sense, argues Michéa in his analysis of Orwell‟s 1984, is a person caught between the awareness of her/his own value and the indifference with which capitalism tramples down any value, experiencing, thus, the drama of the fact that society does not offer her/him the status (s)he deserves. At the same time, (s)he despises the “stupid” masses in whose morality (s)he sees a reactionary force that capitalism uses, in fact, in support of its own domination – the leftist intellectual believes that, unlike communism, capitalism does not openly declare that “old generations are always wrong”, but, on the contrary, relies on conventional hierarchical structures that, in his view, are essential for its survival and also inherently linked to tradition.3 It is, then, not justice the intellectual craves for, but recognition. This indifference of society against which stumbles the “desire of

Ibidem, p. 122. Idem, Orwell, anarchiste tory…cit., p. 34. 3 The paradox underscored by Marx is that, at the same time, capitalism erodes the traditional structures on which it rests. The reserve force of capitalism is represented by the peasantry and the nobility, but, in its historical evolution, capitalism transforms more and more individuals from these categories into proletarians. 1 2

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recognition of the humiliated conscience” engenders resentment.1 The latter, in turn, is the backbone of the will-to-power, as Dostoevsky argued before Orwell, because, Michéa states, “power fascinates, in general, only those who discover in it a radical way of taking revenge for endured humiliations”.2 There are, then, rebellions with a legitimate cause that are, nevertheless, doomed to failure because of illegitimate means and purposes. The fundamental question, according to Orwell, in what concerns rebellions, is what one is willing to sacrifice, and for what. Winston Smith, from 1984, is willing to sacrifice others and even to trample down innocence for the mysterious cause of a mysterious organization that has nothing in common with the proletariat – he would be prepared “to throw sulphuric acid in a child‟s face […] if, for example, it would somehow serve” the interests of the supposedly dissident organization.3 His failure, as Michéa argues, comes from the fact that he is prepared to do “things that should not be done”, Winston Smith being not a representative of the people – and not sharing, thus, their moral sense – but of “the inferior strata of the elite”.4 Despising the moral sense of the people, the intelligentsia looses contact with material reality and, thus, succumbs to abstraction. It is the strong sense of limitation that keeps “ordinary” people, instead, anchored in material reality. This sense of limitation originates in the moral sense or in the “common decency”, that primitive background characteristic to traditional societies, which revolves around the prohibition or “things that should not be done”.5 At the same time, “common decency” presupposes the triad: to give, to receive, and to offer a counter-gift, whose meaning has become full when the modern idea of freedom – actually inherited from Christianity – has been added to it. As Michéa writes, the logic of the gift rests on the intuition that the counter-gift is not taken for granted, but is rather the manifestation of the other‟s free will to return the gift. This exchange, accompanied by the freedom of exchange, institutes the exchange of friendship and generosity.6 The unconscious anchorage of “ordinary people” in this primitive background is inseparable from “ordinary people” ‟s relation to tradition, or

Jean-Claude MICHÉA, Orwell, anarchiste tory, p. 40. Ibidem, p. 158. 3 George ORWELL, 1984, n.p., 1949, p. 102 [http://libcom.org/files/1984.pdf]. 4 Jean-Claude MICHÉA, Orwell, anarchiste tory...cit., p. 157. 5 Ibidem, p. 33. 6 Idem, Les Mystères de la Gauche...cit., p. 93. 1 2

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from their essentially conservative attachment to places and human beings.1 Their attachment to ancestors engenders the feeling that they have the moral responsibility before older generations to pass on to younger generations what they have been offered, a feeling diametrically opposed to that, presented above, of progressivist intellectuals. This feeling of “ordinary people” informs the desire to preserve the “primary conditions for all authentically human and common life”.2 The “sense of limitation and the symbolic debts”, combined with freedom, represent, according to Michéa, the true and only way out of the world of sterile human relations regulated by the notion of individual right and by the market. Michéa‟s thesis is that socialism, that is, the ideal of a “free, equal and decent 3 society” , can be accomplished only on the grounds of this primitive background because it depends on what people have in common, a common language, a common idea of the good life etc. And we do not understand anything from this thesis if we do not understand Michéa‟s vision of human nature. On the one hand, he refutes the conception according to which human nature is fundamentally good and all evil originates in civilization. The conclusion that follows from here is that civilization should be destroyed so that “le bon sauvage” would be emancipated from any authority. According to Michéa, this approach ruins, in fact, the very idea of common, and implicitly human, life – it is hardly conceivable that a society that brings together atoms that share nothing in common except for the fact that they are human can be a “free, equal, and decent society”. On the other hand, Michéa refutes the conception according to which human nature is fundamentally bad and destructive, and the world can be preserved only through hierarchy. The conclusion that follows from here is that progress should be continually undermined. According to Michéa, this approach is meant to justify positions of power and ruins, too, common life. Instead, Michéa believes that human nature is potentially good, just as it is potentially bad. Humanity struggles for unity and harmony while, at the same time, is threatened with disunity and lack of harmony by its own passions. It has produced different forms of domination, from Oriental despotism to capitalism, while, at the same time, has struggled throughout history to realize an authentic community. Therefore, the primitive background of Idem, Orwell, anarchiste tory...cit., p. 95. Idem, Les Mystères de la Gauche...cit., p. 52. 3 The expression belongs to Sonia Orwell and is quoted Idem, Orwell, anarchiste tory…cit., p. 158. 1 2

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humanity, good in itself, can be used both in a good and in a bad sense. At the core of the socialism embraced by Michéa, as by Leroux, Péguy, or Orwell, lies the belief that all people are capable of reflecting on justice, life, suffering, and are potentially capable of simultaneously pursuing the ideals of freedom, equality, and solidarity. In the socio-political sphere, everyone is entitled to an opinion, especially on the most important question, “the good in human life”. As Gadamer puts it, “in the question of the good, there is no body of knowledge at one‟s disposal. Nor can one person defer to the authority of another. One has to ask oneself, and in so doing, one necessarily finds oneself in discussion either with oneself or with others”.1 But so that such a discussion could be possible, people need to have first of all a common language, as Michéa maintains, a common language that could be “understood and accepted” by public servants, people working in private sectors, freelances, immigrants, in short, all kinds of people.2 Michéa‟s socialist project rests, thus, on the dialectic of heteronomy and autonomy. Under Orwell‟s influence, Michéa affirms that people are born in a society that offers them the tradition of common sense, but, at the same time, society cannot exist in the absence of people‟s critical reflection on it and on themselves. Society, thus, permanently reflects critically upon itself – and here lies the anarchic dimension of Michéa‟s and Orwell‟s socialism – but its reflection always rests on tradition, the fountain of “common decency” – and here lies the conservative dimension of their socialism.3 In this sense, it is clear that Michéa, like Orwell, does not defend the past as a value and an end in itself, but the people, without succumbing nevertheless in a facile or demagogic idealization.

5. CONCLUSION In general, according to Michéa, “ordinary people” tend to accept those elements of progress that correspond to and promise to accomplish the traditional values to which they are attached or the good potential present in tradition. Nevertheless, the primitive background, which can be used in a good sense, can be used, as well, in the Hans-Georg GADAMER, The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy…cit., p. 41. Jean-Claude MICHÉA, Les Mystères de la Gauche...cit., p. 16. 3 Idem, L‟empire du moindre mal...cit., p. 163. 1 2

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opposite, bad, sense. When “ordinary people” feel their traditional values to be under attack – that is, when not only their being, but also the common world inherited from old generations and the heritage of young generations are threatened – they spontaneously react against the liberal (economic, political, and cultural) force. And, Michéa maintains, under circumstances of crisis, it is expectable that their reaction would be more or less aggressive. Thus, according to Michéa, if today we witness a reorientation of “ordinary people” towards right-wing parties, it is not because they are nostalgic of Grand Inquisitors, of the patriachal family, or of the absolutist monarchy, but because it is there that they believe their traditional values can be defended. But we should be aware, Michéa warns us, that, as it happened in the past, the “supposed attachment to traditional values of the contemporary Right” can be easily “manipulated” in favor of “most dangerous political driftages”1, especially in a historical moment when almost all conditions are met for the Left to gain ground. After all, Polanyi‟s argument in The Great Transformation is that fascism represented society‟s reaction of defence against the allembracing and dissolving force of capitalism. When “ordinary people” feel threatened by the “cult of Progress”, manifested in particular through “compulsory and generalized mobility” and through “moral and cultural transgression” – that is, when they are desperate and lack the proper education, which should have been the responsibility of the Left, as Michéa affirms –, they easily fall for political forces that promise to supposedly protect their traditional values – actually changing them into conventions – and to provide them with a corporatist capitalist economic model that offers them a certain amount of stability, while taking away their freedom. The “eternal lesson of anarchism”, Michéa concludes in Les Mystères de la Gauche, is that no “cult of Progress” and no “Sense of History” can provide society with the good. Only the minute daily effort of being engaged in the quest of “the good in human life” and of continually examining one‟s own relation “to the will-to-power and to common decency” can bring about a little change.2 This effort begins and ends with the unity of thought and deed.

1 2

Idem, Les Mystères de la Gauche...cit., pp. 49-50. Ibidem, p. 132.

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Bibliography GADAMER, Hans-Georg, The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, translated by Christopher Smith, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1986. HART, David B., “The Pornography Culture”, The New Atlantis, No. 6, Summer 2004 [http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-pornography-culture]. LABELLE, Gilles, “Que des „bonnes nouvelles‟…? Lecture critique d‟Empire et de Multitude de Hardt et Negri”, Science et Esprit, Vol. 62, No. 1, Janv.-Avril 2010, pp. 17-37. LASCH, Christopher, The Culture of Narcissism, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1979. MICHÉA, Jean-Claude, L‟empire du moindre mal, Climats, Paris, 2007. MICHÉA, Jean-Claude, Les Mystères de la Gauche. De l‟idéal des Lumières au triomphe du capitalisme absolu, Climats, Paris, 2013. MICHÉA, Jean-Claude, Orwell, anarchiste tory, suivi de À propos de 1984, Quatrième édition, Climats, Paris, 2008. MONOD, Jean-Claude, La querelle de la sécularisation – de Hegel à Blumenberg, J. Vrin, Paris, 2002. ORWELL, George, 1984, n.p., 1949 [http://libcom.org/files/1984.pdf].

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From Ecclesiology to Christian Populism. The Religious and Political Thought of Russian Slavophiles Alexandru RACU Independent Researcher Abstract: This article represents an analysis of the religious and political

thought of Slavophiles and concentrates on the way in which Slavophile ecclesiology and epistemology lead to a form of Christian populism and to a messianic vision of history in which the key role is played by the Russian people. The article emphasises the paradoxes of the Slavophile theological and political thought, as well as its political implications at the level of the 19th century Russian society. Keywords: Slavophilism, Orthodox Christianity, populism, ecclesiology,

epistemology.

1. INTRODUCTION According to Stéphane Vibert, when compared with other European nations, “Russia presents the exceptional advantage of having turned her relation to modernity as Western ideology into the essential, major, unavoidable problem of her reflection concerning her own identity”1. In the aftermath of Russia‟s encounter with the modern West, whose concrete manifestation was the age of reforms of Peter the Great, the interrogation concerning the relation between modern Europe and the Russian national identity will give birth to an ideological cleavage that will divide the Russian intelligentsia of the first half of the nineteenth century into two opposite camps: the Westernizers and the Slavophiles. In essence, the two camps were divided by two different projects of Stéphane VIBERT, “Pravda: Vérité et justice. Essai sur le devenir théologico-politique de la Russie”, Société, No. 24-25, 2005, p. 194 (my translation – with the exception of the quotations from Joseph de 1

Maistre and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, all French sources have been translated by me).

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society that reflected two different views concerning the relation between Russia and the West. While the Westernizers argued that Russia‟s import of the exterior civilisation of the modern West should be accompanied by a cultural revolution, which would replace traditional Russian principles with superior modern ones such as liberal individualism and scientific rationalism, the Slavophiles claimed that Russia‟s traditional institutions, and in particular her Orthodox faith, sustain a culture that is superior to the culture of the modern West. Moreover, for the Slavophiles, Russian Orthodoxy was capable of subordinating to itself the exterior achievements of the modern West, conferring the latter a higher meaning, which by themselves they did not possess. Thus, far from representing an appeal to a narrow nationalist closing of Russian society upon itself, Slavophilism claimed instead that Russian Orthodoxy had the capacity and the mission to become the new religious principle of a new and higher universal civilisation, which would replace what the Slavophiles considered to be the bankrupt civilisation of the secular West. Thus, from the very beginning, it should be underlined that the opposition between Westernism and Slavophilism does not represent an opposition between modernisation and integral conservatism, but the opposition between an uncritical and a critical modernisation, the critique being articulated from a traditionalist position that is open towards modernity. Nor can the above mentioned opposition be translated as an opposition between nationalism and universalism. On the contrary, we have the opposition between two forms of universalism. If for the Westernizers, the universal culture of the modern West, based on the universality of human rights and the rational faculty of judgment, had to be embraced by renouncing Russian national specificities, for the Slavophiles, a new universal culture had to be based on Russian national specificities. The term of Slavophilism itself represents a caricatural label attached to Slavophiles by their ideological adversaries. For all the Slavophiles have specifically emphasised the fact that Russia‟s superiority in relation to the West did not derive from any inborn national characteristics of the Russians, but from the fact that the Russian people has preserved the Christian faith in all its (Orthodox) purity1. As such, Isabelle Grimberg rightly emphasises the fact that, when speaking of Aleksei Khomiakov, Ivan Kireevsky, Iuri Ivan KIREEVSKY, “On the Nature of European Culture and on its Relationship to Russian Culture”, Boris JAKIM, Robert BIRD (trans. & ed.), in On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader, Lindisfarne Books, Hudson, New York, 1998, p. 216. 1

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Samarin, Konstantin Aksakov and the other less significant Slavophiles from the first half of the 19th century, “it will be […] more logical to speak of orthodoxophiles rather than slavophiles”1. Khomiakov and the Slavophiles think of modernity in theological-political terms. In this respect, in order to understand the Slavophiles‟ political thought, and more specifically its populist dimension, one must first understand their theology. Therefore, in the first section of this article I will present the theological views of the Slavophiles, by analysing their key notions of organic togetherness (sobornost) and integral knowledge (tselnost), while in the second section I will present the Slavophile political philosophy, emphasising the way in which the latter results from the former.

2. ORGANIC TOGETHERNESS AND INTEGRAL KNOWLEDGE The cornerstone of the Slavophile theology is a certain ecclesiological conception tightly associated with a certain critique of rationalism articulated in the name of faith. As stressed by Father Albert Gratieux, Joseph de Maistre‟s Du Pape is “the book most radically opposed to the Slavophile theory concerning the unity of the Church […] To the same extent that […] Maistre values the visible unity of the Church and the institution which symbolises it”, the papacy, “so does Khomiakov stress its inner unity, the fruit of the living faith expressed through love”2. A fierce critique of the French Revolution and of the Protestant Reformation nonetheless, which considered that the former has been the inevitable consequence of the latter, Maistre argued in Du Pape that “no human society can exist without government, nor government without sovereignty, nor sovereignty without infallibility”3. The Catholic Church, Maistre insisted, is governed like any other society, and this requires the existence of a supreme personal authority Isabelle GRIMBERG, “La recherche d‟une identité qui se dérobe”, in Wanda DRESSLER (dir.), Eurasie: espace mythique ou réalité en construction?, Bruylant, Bruxelles, 2008, p. 64. 2 Albert GRATIEUX, A.S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile , Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 1938, vol. 2, 1

pp. 115, 138. 3 Joseph DE MAISTRE, The Pope, in The Collected Works of Joseph de Maistre, translated by Richard Lebrun, [http://pm.nlx.com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/xtf/view?docId=maistre/maistre.08.xml;chunk.id=div.maistre.pop e.14;toc.depth=1;toc.id=div.maistre.pope.14;brand=default], p. 108.

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whose decisions on contentious issues are accepted as infallible even if they are not so. “Infallibility in the spiritual order of things, and sovereignty in the temporal order” being “two words perfectly synonymous”1, without infallibility, argues Maistre, the social body, whether political or ecclesial, is inevitably destroyed by an endless war of factions corresponding to the war of opinions and interests, and, at a pinch, it can be decomposed into as many competing opinions and wills as there are individuals. This is the reason why, for the representatives of the French theocratic school, Joseph de Maistre and Louis Ambroise de Bonald, liberal modernity with its concept of individual rights ultimately means “the end of society”2. Authority is then the essence of Catholicism, according to Maistre, and by contrast, the essence of Protestantism is anarchy, the inevitable spiritual and political consequence of the founding principle of Protestantism: the right of individual judgment in matters of faith3. For Aleksei Khomiakov however, the essence of Orthodoxy is represented by sobornost, a term that is best translated as organic togetherness, or as freedom and unity reconciled through love. Nikolay Berdyaev argued that while the catholic counter-revolutionaries possessed the genius of authority, the Slavophiles possessed the genius of freedom4. But, as underlined by the same author, “the modernists too often oppose freedom to the Church and want to correct the defects of the Church through the free effort of the individual person”. Khomiakov, on the other hand, was identifying the Church with freedom, but a freedom that was accomplished “through catholicity (sobornost) and not through individualism”5. As indicated by John Romanides, “within Orthodoxy, as expounded by Khomiakov […], the individual” does not have “to give up his freedom in return for salvation. On the contrary, the individual is called upon to be free, to accept the fact of his freedom from the principles of Ibidem, p. 1. Louis Ambroise de BONALD, quoted in Gerard GENGEMBRE, La Contre-Révolution ou l‟histoire désespérante, Éditions Imago, Paris, 1989, p. 281. 3 Joseph DE MAISTRE, Reflections on Protestantism in Its Relation with Sovereignty, in The Collected Works of Joseph de Maistre, [http://pm.nlx.com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/xtf/view?docId=maistre/maistre.13.xml;chunk.id=div.maistre.relig ious.3;toc.depth=1;toc.id=div.maistre.religious.3;brand=default], pp. 65-66, 93. 4 Nicolas BERDIAEV, Khomiakov, translated by Valentine et Jean-Claude Marcadé, L‟Age d‟Homme, Lausanne, 1998, p. 87. 5 Ibidem, p. 63. 1 2

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necessity, by realising his membership within the organic unity of the Church through the principle of selfless love”1; or to put it another way, the individual discovers in the ecclesial community of love the freedom from the selfishness that rules over fallen human nature. For Khomiakov, freedom and unity were reconciled in the catholicity of the Church, which presupposed the free submission, triggered by love, of each believer to the totality of the Church2. Or, in other words, freedom and unity, viewed as mutually exclusive by Maistre, were reconciled in the Church, the Slavophiles argued, through a unanimity whose foundation was love. For Iuri Samarin, as well as for the other Slavophiles, “the Church is not a doctrine, system, or institution”. “The Church”, Samarin continues, “is a living organism, an organism of truth and love, or more precisely truth and love as an organism”3. According to Khomiakov, the Church is not an institution because “the body and blood are not a symbol”4. The body and blood are the very life of the Church and, consequently, of all of its members. Thus, the unity of the Church is not an institutional exterior unity but an inner unity that derives from the unity of the Triune God5. Khomiakov affirms that not only “the Church is” not “an authority”, but neither is this the case with God Himself. For “an authority is something external”, while God and the Church “are the truth: They are the life of the Christian – the inner life […], to the extent that Christians themselves live the universal life of love and unity, which is the life of the Church”6. Thus, the unity of the Church is a living and inner unity that does not require, and moreover, cannot tolerate, an exterior principle of unity, such as the principle of papal supremacy and infallibility. The Church, Khomiakov argues, “does not recognise

1

John S. ROMANIDES, “Orthodox Ecclesiology according to Alexis Khomiakov (1804-1860)”, The Greek

Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, Easter, 1956, p. 63. Khomiakov stressed the fact that in the initial understanding of the term, catholicity did not mean geographic universality but unanimity: kath‟ olon, that is, according to all. 3 Yuri SAMARIN, quoted in Georges FLOROVSKY, Ways of Russian Theology , translated by Robert L. Nichols, Nordland Publishing Company, Belmont MA, 1979, vol. 2, p. 53. 4 Aleksei KHOMIAKOV, “The Church is One”, in On Spiritual Unity…cit., p. 39. 5 Ibidem, p. 31. 6 Aleksei Khomiakov, “Some Remarks by an Orthodox Christian Concerning the Western Communions, on the Occasion of a Brochure by Mr. Laurentie”, in On Spiritual Unity…cit., p. 58. 2

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any power over her except her own”1. When a universal bishop has authority over the Church, as in Roman Catholicism, sobornost is replaced with a forced aggregation of distinct individuals, reunited under an authority that is both exterior and juridical. As a consequence, unity is no longer experienced as a living fact, being instead enforced by a transcendent authority that becomes the logically necessary premise for the prevention of anarchy. Thus, as indicated by Romanides, who summarises the ecclesiology of Khomiakov, non-utilitarian freedom and love [are] replaced by rationalism and a juridical concern for external things such as organisation. This separation of the moral principle from unity automatically gave rise to the suppression of liberty for the sake of preserving unity. The Church of the West was thus doomed to follow the ways of all other worldly organizations and institutions2. In response to this Roman Catholic redefinition of the Church, a reaction naturally set in, and those who reasserted their liberty gave rise to the Protestant revolution. Both Protestantism and Romanism, however, represent a basic failure to unite and harmonize liberty and unity because these have been separated from the moral principle of non-utilitarian love, and subjected to the […] principles of material necessity and rational analysis3. As a consequence, Romanides underlines the fact that “Khomiakov does not see in Romanism and Protestantism two contrary extremes, but rather two sides of the same coin”4. According to Khomiakov, both Protestantism and Catholicism “see in the Church only individuals, who do not become less isolated for being scattered or agglomerated”5. In Catholicism there is unity without freedom. And this is false unity. In Protestantism there is freedom without unity. And this is false freedom. Both freedom and unity, the Slavophiles concluded, existed only in Orthodoxy; for true freedom cannot exist without unity, just as true unity cannot exist without freedom.

Aleksei KHOMIAKOV, “The Church is One”, in On Spiritual Unity…cit., p. 44. John S. ROMANIDES, “Orthodox Ecclesiology according to Alexis Khomiakov (1804-1860)…cit.”, p. 68. 3 Ibidem. 4 Ibidem. 5 Aleksei KHOMIAKOV, “Some Remarks by an Orthodox Christian Concerning the Western Communions, Communions, on the Occasion of a Letter Published by the Archbishop of Paris” , in On Spiritual Unity…cit., p. 93. 1 2

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For the Slavophiles, it is only in the unity of love, which is realised by the free submission of each member to the totality of the Church, that the overcoming of rationalist epistemology and, consequently, the knowledge of the divine truth becomes possible. According to Father Gratieux, “the key to all of Khomiakov‟s theology and philosophy” is represented by the belief that “the real escapes reason reduced to itself”, for “life can be truly known only by that which lives”1. Opposing Kantian transcendentalism, the Slavophiles regarded knowledge “as a part and function of our „existential‟ penetration of reality”. Thus, the Slavophiles considered that we „unite ourselves‟ cognitively with reality not by thought alone but with our whole being. The chief condition for the preservation of cognitive intimacy with being is then the connection of man‟s cognitive processes to his whole spiritual sphere – i.e. wholeness of spirit. When this wholeness of spirit is weakened or lost, when the cognitive function becomes „autonomous‟, there is a generation of „logical thought‟ or „rationality‟ which is totally isolated from reality2. Distinguishing between separated reason and integral reason, the Slavophile authors do not contest the conclusions of separated reason, but they contest the definition of truth that is presupposed by the rationalist thinker. The Slavophiles insist on the fact that “the abstract logical faculty”, separated from the other faculties of the soul, is insufficient for the knowledge of truth; for “the wholeness of truth needs the wholeness of reason”3. And man, the Slavophiles argued, can be whole only by overcoming the selfishness of his heart through integration in the community of the Church, realising thus the ecclesial presuppositions of knowledge. Ultimately, for Kireevsky, the Church does not confront reason with rational arguments, but confronts separated reason with the integral person, just as it is confronting the partiality of the sect, always rationalist and reductionist in its approach to faith, with the fullness of truth. “Not abstract reason alone”, Kireevsky argues, “but the sum total of man‟s intellectual and spiritual forces stamps with one common imprint the credibility of the thought

Albert GRATIEUX, A.S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile…cit., Vol. 2, p. 135. Vladimir ZENKOVSKY, A History of Russian Philosophy, translated by George L. Kline, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1953, vol. 1, p. 219. 3 Ivan KIREYEVSKY, “On the Necessity and Possibility of New Principles in Philosophy”, in James M. EDIE, James P. SCANLAN and Mary-Barbara ZELDIN (eds.), Russian Philosophy, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1965, vol. 1, p. 200. 1 2

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which confronts reason – just as on Mount Athos each monastery bears only one part of the seal which, when all its parts are put together at the meeting of the monastic representatives, constitutes the one legal seal of Athos”1. Thus, sobornost (organic togetherness) represents the icon of tselnost (integral knowledge) and vice versa. If “intelligence, like perfect holiness, belongs only to the unity of all the members of the Church”, then, as argued by Khomiakov, the Church “does not recognise a teaching Church other than herself in her totality”. If communion is the precondition of knowledge, then those “who set themselves up as judges of the Church” essentially deny the principles of Orthodox epistemology, for they claim “perfect reason and perfect holiness for themselves”2. The definition of dogmatic truth cannot belong to all the reunited bishops any more than it can belong to a single bishop. For the assembled bishops only declare what the whole Church believes. The totality of the believers reserves for itself the right to verify whether the teaching of the college of bishops is truly expressing the inner truth of the Church or not3. Invoking a common declaration of the reunited Greek speaking Patriarchs of 1848, which referred to the role of the people in preserving the purity of the Orthodox faith, Khomiakov concludes that “the unvarying constancy and the unerring truth of Christian dogma does not depend upon any Hierarchical Order: it is guarded by the totality, by the whole people of the Church, which is the Body of Christ”4. The reorganisation of the Roman Catholic Church on the juridical pattern of statehood inherited from the Roman Empire, through the proclamation of papal infallibility, and the implicit repudiation of sobornost, has triggered, the Slavophiles claimed, the Protestant rebellion against the exterior unity enforced by the Roman Pontiff. But taking into account that the force of the Reformation was strictly negative, no new unity could have been established on the individualistic principles of the latter. Instead, these, as Maistre also insisted, have been at the origin of modern rationalism and liberal individualism, or in other words, at the origin of the modern process of

Ibidem, p. 201. Aleksei KHOMIAKOV, “Some Remarks by an Orthodox Christian Concerning the Western Communions, on the Occasion of a Brochure by Mr. Laurentie”, in On Spiritual Unity…cit., pp. 59, 62. 3 Idem, “Some Remarks by an Orthodox Christian Concerning the Western Communions, on the Occasion of a Letter Published by the Archbishop of Paris”, in On Spiritual Unity…cit., p. 98. 4 Idem, “Fifth Letter to William Palmer”, in On Spiritual Unity…cit., p. 157. 1 2

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secularisation whose ultimate consequences, the Slavophiles believed, could have been only ethical nihilism and man‟s dehumanisation through the complete loss of his spiritual dimension. “Only one serious thing”, Kireevsky argued, was “left to” contemporary Western “man: industry”, which “unites and divides people [...], determines one‟s fatherland […], delineates classes; it lies at the basis of state structures; it moves nations; it declares war, makes peace, changes mores, gives direction to science, and determines the character of culture […]. It is the real deity in which people sincerely believe and to which they submit”1. Kireevsky argued that “it is hard to see what European culture may come to” without an “inner change”, “a change in” the “basic convictions”. As it appeared to him at the moment when he was writing, Western civilisation was heading towards “the unlimited domination of industry”, in a “world without faith and poetry” where everything will be reduced strictly to “the physical being”2. Therefore, as indicated by Zenkovsky, the Slavophile “struggle with the spirit of secularism became a struggle with the spiritual world within which this movement had developed”3, the Slavophiles possessing “a dialectical vision of Western history, perverted in its essence”4. The theological opposition between Orthodoxy and Western Christianity becomes then, as pointed out by Stéphane Vibert, the basis for “two paradigmatic models: Russia/Europe, the basis for a whole series of binary oppositions: spiritual/material, freedom/necessity, faith/reason”5.

3. CHRISTIAN POPULISM In this respect, if wholeness of being was the anthropological premise of the Slavophiles, the division of the soul between rationality and life/faith represented for the same group of authors the anthropological premise which, being common to both Western confessions, essentially defined the Western culture as a whole. Consequently, this anthropological division was reflected in all aspects of Western existence. In the

Ivan KIREEVSKY, “On the Necessity and Possibility of New Principles…cit.”, pp. 195-196. Ibidem. 3 Valdimir ZENKOVSKY, A History of Russian Philosophy…cit., vol. 1, p. 206. 4 Isabelle GRIMBERG, “La recherche d‟une identité qui se dérobe…cit.”, p. 59. 5 Stéphane VIBERT, “Pravda : Vérité et justice…cit.”, p. 195. 1 2

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West, faith was in conflict with reason, the individual was in conflict with society, social classes were also in conflict and so on. In Russia, however, it was exactly the other way around. Wholeness of being manifested itself in all aspects of Russian life1; more precisely, it was everywhere present in Old Russia and it was still present in that section of Russian society which had remained immune to the modernising reforms of Peter the Great. This brings us to the populism of the Slavophiles for, of course, at the time when they were writing, while the leading circles of the Russian society to which the Slavophiles themselves belonged had passed through the process of Westernisation, the social class which had remained immune to the process of Westernisation was the peasantry. The implicit consequence of the superiority of Russian Orthodoxy in relation to Western confessions and the worldview of the modern West was that, in essence, it was the educated elite which had to be re-educated by the people who have kept the purity of the ancient truth, and not the other way around. This idea is clearly present in the thought of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a descendant of the Slavophiles, whose thought has been described by Gratieux as a type of Evangelical populism2. “We must bow”, Dostoyevsky wrote in The Diary of a Writer, “before the people‟s truth like prodigal children who, for two hundred years, have been absent from home”3. But echoes of the idea can be heard beyond Dostoyevsky in the thought of the Russian populists (narodniks) who also believed that the return to the people was essentially the method for overcoming the alienation of modernity. Before we move any further, we should mention two important aspects. First of all, although the Slavophiles have been criticised for an allegedly uncritical idealisation of Russia, in fact, whenever they praised the Russian virtues by comparison with Western decay, the Slavophiles were not referring to the social reality of Russia as such, but to what was for them the essence of Russia, and the essence of Russia was the Russian people‟s ideal. The Slavophiles were very firm in their critiques of the misgivings of the Russian past and present. So in this sense, it would be inaccurate, or rather simply unfair, to refer to the populism of the Slavophiles in the pejorative sense which is often Ivan KIREEVSKY, “On the Nature of European culture and on its Relationship to Russian Culture”, in On Spiritual Unity…cit., p. 229. 2 Albert GRATIEUX, A.S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile…cit., vol. 2, p. 249. 3 Fyodor DOSTOYEVSKY, The Diary of a Writer, translated by Boris Brasol, Octagon Books, New York, 1973, Vol. 1, p. 204. 1

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associated with the term, and which suggests a demagogic praise of an inherently virtuous people, that neglects and implicitly feeds the latter‟s vices. Referring to one of Khomiakov‟s articles, in which the latter was basically demolishing the myth of old Russia, Berdyaev has argued that “even in Western literature one cannot find such an excessive and categorical reference to the sombre aspects” of Russia. And yet, as underlined by the same author, although just like Dostoyevsky, Khomiakov was seeing “clearly the defects of the Russian peasantry, its obscurantism, its excesses, its barbarism […], despite all, [for him] the ideal image of the Russian pilgrim coming from the people will remain eternally characteristic of the ideal essence of our people, just as characteristic of the ideal essence of the Russian Church will remain the ideal image of the Russian starets that raises himself above the defects of the Russian Church hierarchy”.1

Judge not “the Russian people”, Dostoyevsky wrote, “by those villainies which they frequently perpetrate, but by those great and holy things for which they long amidst the very villainy”2. Compared with a “German drunkard”, Dostoyevsky wrote, “the Russian drunkard (…) is more abominable than the German; still, the German drunkard is unmistakably more stupid and ridiculous than the Russian”. For while the former, although “drunk as a fiddler” is nevertheless “proud of himself”, the latter, in the depth of his heart, is painfully aware of the fact that “he is nothing but a scoundrel”3. Although sinful, the Russian people recognise sin as sin, refusing to lower the standards of moral actions so that they would fit with their despicable behaviour. Their ideal remains Christ and the saints of the Orthodox Church. And unlike the mind of the Westernised Russian elite which had enslaved the people, and lived of its toil, “the people‟s mind” was “not

Nicolas BERDIAEV, Khomiakov…cit., pp. 125, 144, 147-150. Fyodor DOSTOYEVSKY, The Diary of a Writer…cit., Vol. 1, p. 202. 3 Ibidem, pp. 36-37, 202-203. This nationalist anthropological thesis had already been formulated by Ivan Kireevsky, who argued that, unlike Russians, who always ask more of themselves in terms of virtue, and always regard sin as sin, “Western people, generally speaking, are nearly always satisfied with their moral state […]. If their overt acts should happen to come into variance with the generally accepted notions of morality, they will invent their own, original system of ethics, and thus once more pacify the conscience” (Ivan KIREEVSKY, On the Nature of European Culture and on Its Relationship to Russian Culture, in On Spiritual Unity…cit., p. 227). 1 2

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bifurcated to such an extent as to cherish, side by side with a noble idea, its dirty little antithesis”1. Furthermore, one should also emphasise that, for the Slavophiles, who after all were representatives of the Russian gentry who had benefited from a Western education and were very knowledgeable as to the most recent evolutions of Western thought, learning from the people was in fact a two ways process. When Dostoyevsky declares that “we must bow before the people‟s truth like prodigal children who, for two hundred years, have been absent from home”, he immediately adds: “however, we must bow on one condition only, and this – sine qua non: that the people accept from us those numerous things which we have brought with us”2, in particular “Western sciences”, which, Dostoyevsky believed, “will not dim the image of Christ, as in the West, where, however, it was dimmed not by science, as liberals maintain, but by the Western Church itself”3. The ideal of integral reason meant that the Slavophiles sought to reconcile the Western philosophy and science assimilated by the Westernised upper classes of the Russian society, with the living faith of the Russian peasantry. And their belief in the possibility and necessity, to paraphrase Kireevsky, of the reconciliation between reason and faith, also had important political consequences, being at the origin of the Slavophiles‟ opposition to the regime of censorship imposed by the government of Nicholas I. Believing that free argument was the best way to overturn the authority of modern Western philosophical systems, and that freedom in general was the sine qua non precondition of Christian life, the Slavophiles demanded freedom of opinion not only for the upper classes, but also freedom for the people, defending as it was a free public/popular opinion in front of a bureaucratic state constructed according to the Western model, and further supporting, once again against the tendency of the reactionary ruling circles, the universal access to education. As we have said, their staunch defence of freedom of thought - sometimes when reading Samarin, one has the impression that one reads John Stuart Mill - and universal education reflects their belief that the historical evolution of modern rationalism itself

Ibidem, Vol. 2, p. 702. Fyodor DOSTOYEVSKY, The Diary of a Writer…cit., Vol. 1, p. 204. 3 Ibidem, Vol. 2, pp. 984. 1 2

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was leading to abstract reason becoming aware of its own “limited one-sidedness”1. Abstract reason arrived at the end of its journey, the Western mind was realising that it was in need of religious belief, and yet, it could not go back to its old religious belief since the latter was itself the source of the West‟s rationalism. In this sense, Kireevsky regarded Schelling‟s critique of Hegel, and Schelling‟s final philosophy of revelation as “the most convenient point of departure on” Russia‟s journey “from borrowed systems to an independent philosophy that will correspond to the basic principles of ancient Russian civilisation and be capable of subordinating the divided civilisation of the West to the integral consciousness of believing reason”2. Kireevsky wished to realise a synthesis between the Orthodox tradition and “the highest and most valuable fruits of contemporary enlightenment”. His ultimate goal, which defines the spirit of the Slavophile philosophy as a whole, was nothing less than an “Orthodox Enlightenment”3. The Slavophiles were seeking the reconciliation between Christianity and modernity, and through this reconciliation, they were seeking to practically save modernity from itself – to neutralise its nihilist potential that was related to its secular dimension, itself an unfortunate historical accident provoked by the spiritual degeneration of Western Christianity, and by its inner crisis. In fact, just like Dostoyevsky, as we shall see, the Slavophiles believed that Russia‟s historical existence was justified by this theological-political project that it had to accomplish, thus liberating “mankind from the one-sided and false development that its history had taken under the influence of the West”4. This reconciliation, the Slavophiles argued, had to begin in Russia herself with the reconciliation between the Westernised elite and the God-bearing people5. In this sense, the Slavophiles believed that by reconciling Western contradictions in their own country, the Russian people had to fulfil a missionary mission, essentially turning Russia into the land of the future civilisation and thus, into a Lighthouse that will

1

Ivan KIREEVSKY, “On the Nature of European Culture and on its Relation to Russian Culture”, On

Spiritual Unity…cit., p. 192. Ivan KIREEVSKY, “On the Necessity and Possibility of New Principles in Philosophy…cit.”, p. 213. Ivan KIREEVSKY, in Vladimir V. ZENKOVSKY, A History of Russian Philosophy, vol. 2, p. 211 (reference not given). 4 Ibidem, p. 203. 5 Albert GRATIEUX, A.S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile…cit., vol. 2, pp. 45-46. 2 3

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guide the West and all the nations of the world out of darkness and towards the light of Orthodoxy1. The Slavophiles had vituperated against Peter the Great‟s brutal modernisation, that included an attack against the Church and its strict subordination to state power, modernisation through which the Russian elite and Russian institutions were converted to an exterior and formal civilisation (the typical case of an artificial modernisation) that rested on theological errors. Thus, the Russian aristocracy and Peter‟s bureaucratic state, particularly loathed by the Slavophiles, had become alienated from the people and subject to the contradictions of the West. Divided between a Westernised elite and an Orthodox popular culture, Russian civilisation was suffering, as it had lost the unity of old Russia. This division was sealed by the worsening of the servitude of the Russian peasantry during the eighteenth century2. For the Slavophiles, Peter‟s Reform was a top to bottom

Fyodor DOSTOYEVSKY, The Diary of a Writer…cit., vol. 1, p. 63. Although already in the 11th century certain Russian peasants were serfs, the number of serfs grew and the conditions of the regime of serfdom worsened throughout the next centuries. By the middle of the 17 th century the vast majority of the Russian peasants had become serfs. During the eighteenth century, under the influence of Western European Enlightenment, the successors of Peter the Great enacted a series of liberal reforms whose purpose was the emancipation of the nobility, culminating with the Charter of the Gentry issued by Catherine the Great in 1785, a document that codified the rights and privileges of the Russian aristocracy. If before these reforms, ownership of land by the Russian aristocracy depended on military or civil service rendered to the Tsar, in 1731, through an ukase (decree of the Russian Tsar having the force of law) of Tsarina Ann, the property rights of the nobility will become inalienable and independent of the military or civil service, which in its turn will be abolished in 1762 through an ukase of Tsar Peter III. The Charter of the Gentry confirmed these reforms as well as others, which included the right of the nobles to be judged only by a Court formed of their equals. However, it seems that the cost of the emancipation of the nobility was the worsening of the regime of servitude of the peasantry, “classe dont la relative liberté dans la Russie moscovite n‟était pas due à des droits spécifiques mais plutôt à la dépendance des nobles par rapport au pouvoir tsariste” (Stéphane VIBERT, “Pravda: vérité et justice…cit.”, p. 261). If previously the peasants had the right to complain to the Tsar for the treatment to which they were submitted to, beginning with the reign of Catherine the Great (1762-1796), the peasants lost this right. Moreover, the eighteenth century policies meant to strengthen the nobility also included the periodical offering of crown serfs as gifts to the representatives of the nobility (during her reign, Catherine the Great, an enlightened monarch, admired by Voltaire and Diderot, had offered to the nobility more than a million serfs), something that in most cases implied the worsening of the regime of servitude. Throughout the eighteenth century, while the strength of the aristocracy had been growing, the state of the peasants constantly worsened. In 1747 the nobles acquired the right to sell their peasants without land. In 1760 they acquired the right to arbitrarily exile their peasants 1 2

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Revolution in which the imported absolutist state was the revolutionary agent, while the people were the representatives of the old order. No wonder then that, unlike the aristocratic and clerical conservatism of Maistre and Bonald, Slavophile conservatism would be essentially populist, both from a religious and a political point of view. And, one direct consequence of this vision of modernity and of Russia was the fact that the Slavophiles have fervently supported the liberation of the peasants1. As stressed by Walicki, Khomyakov regarded the Westernised Russian aristocracy as “a colonial class in their own country”2, while the most radical of the Slavophiles in what concerned the peasant issue, Konstanin Aksakov, “gives the impression” in his writings “that the peasants could exist quite well without the nobility”3. This anticipates “Tolstoy‟s view of the „upper classes‟ as an unnecessary and artificial growth on the body of the people”4. The Slavophiles did not reject hierarchy in itself, but insisted that it should be open to all and based on merit, and that it should bring with it not more rights and privileges, but more obligations. In the Epistle to the Serbs, the reunited Slavophiles gave their Serbian Orthodox brothers the following advice: “Let the judge judge, the administrator administer and the prince be prince, as it is necessary to society ; but apart from his social function, let each Serb, now and always, be equal to his brothers”. Moreover, “let there be on the Serbian land such a sacred luxury that the working man is not in need and does not experience privations. And let richness and glare adorn the temples of God”5.

to Siberia, and, five years later, the right to sentence them to hard labour, a punishment that until then applied only to criminals. 1 To be more precise, although all the Slavophiles were in favour of the liberation of the peasants, there were differences among them with regard to the way in which this should be accomplished. Thus, as indicated by Walicki, while Konstantin Aksakov, “the most fanatical and least practical of the Slavophiles”, wanted to proceed immediately with a radical reform, Ivan Kireevsky proved to be the most cautious and “thought that all changes should be put off until the upper classes had become converted to Slavophile ideals”. Khomiakov and the other Slavophiles were somewhere in the middle between these two positions (Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in the Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975, pp. 229-230). 2 Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., p. 228. 3 Ibidem, p. 281. 4 Ibidem. 5 Aleksei KHOMIAKOV et al., “Aux Serbes – Epître de Moscou”, postface to Nicolas BERDIAEV, Khomiakov…cit., pp. 176, 188.

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Commenting on Tocqueville‟s L‟Ancien Régime et la Révolution, Iuri Samarin made some crucial observations, which indicate the popular, anti-elitist, and antibureaucratic nature of Slavophile conservatism, as well as the specific position that the latter occupies in the context of nineteenth-century European conservatism. Samarin stressed the fact that like here, also in France, in England, in Germany, there is ultimately, in the forefront, a single question: is the full and absolute power of reasoning in the organization of the human soul, of civil society, of the state, legitimate ? Does reasoning have the right to crush and mutilate the religious beliefs, the family and civic traditions, in a word, to correct life in accordance with its presuppositions? The tyranny of reasoning in the fields of philosophy, of life and of science corresponds, as far as the practice applied to social life is concerned, to the tyranny of central power. The obsession to

administer everything, to regulate everything, to substitute everywhere a rule deduced from an abstract principle which is alien to tradition and the free inspiration. State power and society are in the same relation as reasoning and the human soul1. Samarin argued that “the tyranny of reasoning” determined “a legitimate feeling of boredom and disgust” of authors such as Tocqueville and Montalambert. Up to this point we can notice the similarities with Burke‟s or Maistre‟s critique of the revolutionary ambition to reorganise society according to abstract rational principles, a conservative critique that opposes the shallowness of the modern legislating rationality to the complex social order that has resulted from centuries of historical evolution. Nevertheless, Samarin stresses the fact that, by defending the freedom of life and tradition […], Tocqueville, Montalembert, Riehl and the others […], address themselves preferentially to the aristocracy, because in the historical context of Western Europe, the aristocracy embodies better than other parties the vital torysm […]. We, on the contrary, address ourselves to the people, but for the same reason that makes them sympathize with the aristocracy, for in our country it is the people that preserves in itself the gift of selfsacrifice, the freedom of the moral inspiration and the respect for tradition. In Russia, the only refuge of torysm is the black izba of the peasant. In our administrations, in our universities dwells a putrid whiggism2.

Yury SAMARIN, Œuvres complètes de Samarin, I, 394, quoted in Albert GRATIEUX, A.S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile…cit., vol. 2, p. 3. 1

2

Ibidem.

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For the Slavophiles, just as sobornost was a faithful reflection of inner wholeness, likewise, Catholic ecclesiology was a reflection of the dictatorship of reason at the level of the psyché. Samarin‟s analogy between the dictatorship of reasoning and the tyranny of the modern centralised and bureaucratic state indicates the fact that, for the Slavophiles, the institutional prototype of the modern centralised and bureaucratic state was the Roman Catholic Church. Florovsky noted that if we identify an analogy of structure between the theocratic traditionalism of Maistre and the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon (bureaucratic, hierarchic, and centralised), in its turn, the traditionalism of the Slavophiles – in which one can observe “an evident aftertaste of a certain distinctive anarchism, a hostility towards deliberate interference in the course of organic processes” – “unexpectedly joins ranks with socialist radicalism”, or, more exactly, with the anarchist expressions of the left1. Attracted in particular by the Slavophiles‟ defence of the Russian village commune and of its system of collective property, a revolutionary atheist like Nikolay Chernyshevsky declared that he appreciated the Slavophiles much more than the outdated Westernisers of the 1840‟s. Expressing an idea that was shared by Alexander Herzen, Chernyshevsky argued that “[a]ll the theoretical errors made by the Slavophiles, and all their fantasies, [were] more than compensated for by their conviction that our village communes ought to remain unaffected by all changes in economic relations”2. Although he did not use the term, Berdyaev regarded the Slavophiles as a group of “Tory anarchists”3. For the Slavophiles, self-organised through the spontaneity of love, the Russian peasant commune, with its system of collective ownership of the land, was a living cultural incarnation of the principles of Orthodox ecclesiology. In the words of Aksakov, “the council of the commune (mir)” was “in effect a little sobor, the supreme authority which no one”, except God, “can judge”4. On the contrary, the state, with its bureaucratic rationality and hierarchy, was an object of exorcism. One may argue that for the Slavophiles, the synthesis between state absolutism and social individualism, which characterised political modernity, and the subsequent replacement of the spontaneous

Georges FLOROVSKY, Ways of Russian Theology…cit., vol. 2, p. 17. Nikolay CHERNYSHEVSKY, quoted in Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., p. 465 (reference not given). 3 Nicolas BERDIAEV, Khomiakov…cit., p. 52. 4 Konstantin AKSAKOV, Zamechaniya na novoe administrativnoe ustroĭstvo krest‟yan v Rossii, Leipzig, 1861, p. 107, quoted in Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., pp. 260-261. 1 2

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social order with a capitalist/contractualist order supervised and organised by the state, was more or less reflective of a truly demonic synthesis between the Catholic principle of formal authority and the anti-ecclesial/anti-social Protestant freedom. While for Konstantin Aksakov the organic togetherness of the Russian peasant commune was nurtured by a living spiritual tradition, in the United States, “a country without natural ties of kinship […], shared recollections or traditions […]”, or “a common faith”, one could not encounter “a living people” but “a state machine constructed of human beings”1. For the Slavophiles there was no doubt that the constitutional artificialism of the United States of America represented the “purest expression of European principles”2. Andrzej Walicki has defined Slavophilism as a as a romantic anti-capitalist retrospective utopia3. According to Walicki, the Slavophile conception of the social bond, with its distinction between organic and formal/legal order, is actually encountered in the thought of Ferdinand Tönnies, more exactly in Tönnies‟ distinction between two types of social bond: Gemeinschaft that characterises traditional societies, and Gesellchaft, the type of social bond that characterises modern societies. The first type is organic and implies a “community of moral values”, while the second is mechanical and implies a “community of interests”4. Thus, in the second case, underneath the surface of social convention society remains in a state of generalised conflict. Gemeinschaft excludes the idea of absolute property and its corollary, “the depersonalisation of interhuman relations”, while Gesellchaft is characterised not by an organic law but rather by regulation, that is, by conventional laws framed according to the model of commercial contracts5. Furthermore, while Gemeinschaft excludes the conflict between individual and community, Gesellchaft reveals arbitrary anarchical will and arbitrary despotism as two sides of the same coin6. For Tönnies, while Gemeinschaft was the traditional order that was defining the way of life of the “people” (understood as organic community), Gesellchaft was the order specific to capitalism and to “society” (understood as

Ibidem, p. 245. Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., p. 168. 3 Ibidem, pp. 167-168. 4 Ibidem, p.170. 5 Ibidem, pp.171-172. 6 Ibidem, p.173. 1 2

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aggregation of individuals)1. Both Kireevsky and Tönnies identified Roman law, inherited by the Catholic Church, as the source of the destruction of Gemeinschaft and of its replacement with Gesellchaft, that is, as the source of modernisation. Finally, Walicki underlines that while the German conservative thought of the first half of the 19th century essentially represents a defence of Gemeinschaft against Gesellchaft, the Slavophile thought may be regarded as “a more consistent defence of Gemeinschaft”. The reason for this is that, unlike German romantic conservatism, which had a pronounced aristocratic and hierarchical component, Slavophilism defended the conception of a “popular monarchy”, while attacking “aristocratic licence” 2. Indeed, one should not make the mistake of believing that the Slavophile opposition to the state brought with it an opposition to the monarchy. On the contrary: the Slavophiles were fervent defenders of Russian autocracy. But for them, as underlined by Berdyaev, “the autocracy is connected to the anarchical, anti-statist spirit of the people”. Slavophile absolutism, Berdyaev argues, “was an anarchism of its own kind”. Conceiving the relation between the Tsar and the Russian people as a paternalist, familial relation, the Slavophiles “manifested an unlimited aversion for the bureaucracy that separated the people from its chosen one, the Tsar”3. The same idiosyncratic feelings were stirred by the interposition of the aristocracy between the Tsar and the Russian people. One can notice here a typical characteristic of populist ideology, which often appeals to a direct relationship between the masses and a charismatic leader, shortcircuiting the mediation of an elite labelled as decadent and corrupt. More interesting perhaps are the connections which can be established between the Slavophile anarchomonarchism and the insurrectional imaginary of the Russian peasantry. As indicated by Stéphane Vibert, between the 17th and the 19th centuries, Russia experienced many peasant rebellions led by so called impostor tsars. More precisely, in the midst of the Russian peasantry was widespread the myth that the oppressive regime of serfdom, exercised over it by the nobility, came as a consequence of the fact that the true inheritor

Ibidem, p.172. Therefore, Walicki argues, according to Max Weber‟s terms, the Slavophiles would situate themselves in the category of patrimonialism, a category that for Weber was closer to the ideal type of traditional authority than feudalism, which involved class domination (Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., pp. 175176). 3 Nicolas BERDIAEV, Khomiakov…cit., pp. 52, 127. 1 2

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to the throne, the just Tsar, had been replaced by an impostor. For example, the legend circulated that Peter the Great was actually a Swedish impostor (and in fact the Antichrist himself), who took the place of the true Peter when the latter had made his trip to Europe. In general, it was believed that the true Tsar, who could not agree with serfdom, had been the victim of an assassination attempt, which he miraculously survived; or it was believed that he was in exile as a result of a plot, and that in any case, he would return to liberate his people from the oppression of the nobility, this act of justice being considered among the peasantry as a sign of the Tsar‟s authenticity. In many cases, the leaders of the peasant uprisings pretended to be the legitimate Tsar, the case of Emelian Pougatchev, who pretended to be Peter III, a Tsar killed by the partisans of Catherine II, being the most notorious1. One can notice here the dangerous potential (to which we shall return shortly) that Slavophile political thought presented for the existing Russian monarchy and understand why the Slavophile “Tory anarchism” and anarchomonarchism were not at all appreciated by the regime of Nicholas I. “All that”, Berdyaev underlines, “was incomprehensible for people like Count Zakrevski and his entourage”. For them, “conservatism was comprehensible only as bureaucratic hierarchy and servile attitude, and was incomprehensible as free expression of the national soul”2. Nicholas I himself did not enjoy at all the idea of a monarchy circumscribed by a living tradition. Independently of the official slogan of his regime, Orthodoxy, Nationality, Autocracy, Nicholas I wanted to remain a European monarch and a heir of Peter the Great3. The Slavophile defence of Russian autocracy is accompanied by a specific theory concerning the origins of the latter. Dimitri Khomiakov, the son of Aleksei Khomiakov, argued that even though Western nations cannot stand political autocracy, they easily accept religious autocracy. According to the same author, the exactly opposite phenomenon occurs in Russia. In Russia, people easily accept political autocracy but they will not condone religious autocracy4. In other words, according to the Slavophile vision, if the West has a political and therefore material understanding of freedom, Russia instead understands freedom in spiritual terms. According to Khomiakov and Aksakov, this Russian understanding of freedom explained the absolute power of the Russian Stéphane VIBERT, “Pravda: Vérité et justice…cit.”, pp. 259-267. Nicolas BERDIAEV, Khomiakov…cit., p. 52. 3 Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., p. 147. 4 Albert GRATIEUX, A.S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile…cit., vol. 2, p. 185. 1 2

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monarch. The unlimited power of the Tsar did not result from the divine nature of his office, but was owed instead to the fact that the Russian people were not interested in political freedom. Thus, the Slavophiles argued that the sovereignty of the Tsar originated in a social contract, but in the kind of social contract that could be made only by the Russian people, the most Christian people on earth. According to this theory, Russians had transferred power to the Tsar completely and definitively, without demanding any guarantees in exchange and without trying to draw any limits to the exercise of sovereignty. One could argue that the purpose of the Slavophile social contract was not to end the state of nature but to preserve the state of grace. For the aim of the contract was not the defence of any natural rights, as in the modern understanding of political contractualism, but the liberation from the burden of politics, whose mundane nature was considered to be incompatible with authentic Christian existence1. In the Slavophile view, only a people liberated from all political preoccupations was able to live a truly Christian life and, therefore, to experience authentic freedom2. Thus, for Aksakov, “political liberty cannot be called freedom”. Instead, “only where the people have nothing to do with government, only where there is an absolute and unrestricted monarchy which safeguards the people‟s freedom in the moral sphere, only then can you speak of true freedom on earth”3. And while Western man “grovels before the idol of rebellion as formerly he grovelled before the idol of authority”, the Russian “regards the rebel as only another incarnation of the slave”4. Only Russians, who are immune both to the constitutional and the revolutionary spirit, two forms of materialistic enslavement, are truly free. And in order to preserve this freedom, they refuse to rebel even in case they are oppressed by somebody like Ivan the Terrible. Accepting this fact as God‟s will, and committed to the law of love, they only pray that God will change the heart of the Tsar5. But this fact, Khomiakov argued, did not imply that the Tsar possessed any authority whatsoever in spiritual matters. The Tsar did not receive from the people any powers in matters that concerned “questions of conscience, of ecclesiastical diocese, of dogmatic Nicolas BERDIAEV, Khomiakov…cit, p. 129. Albert GRATIEUX, A.S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile…cit., vol. 1, p. 162. 3 Konstantin AKSAKOV, quoted in Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., p. 250. 4 Konstantin AKSAKOV, “On the Same Subject published in 1860” (the title refers to an earlier essay entitled “Fundamental Principles of Russian History”), 7-17, quoted in Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., p. 243. 5 Albert GRATIEUX, A.S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile…cit., vol. 2, p. 97. 1 2

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teaching, of ecclesiastical administration”. According to Khomiakov, the people does not regard the Tsar as a prophet inspired by an invisible force, in the way in which the bishop of Rome is viewed by the Latins. We believe that, being free, the Sovereign can err, like any human being, and if by the will of God such a misfortune would occur despite the constant prayers of the sons of the Church, the Emperor will not by that lose any of his rights to obedience from his subjects in secular matters; but, as far as its greatness and plenitude are concerned, the Church would not suffer any prejudice, for its true and only Head will never betray her. Should this be the case, there will only be one Christian less in the bosom of the Church and nothing more1. In fact, as emphasised by Vibert, given its particular theological-political premises, the Slavophile defence of Tsarist autocracy implied a desacralisation of the imperial office. While the spiritual plenitude experienced by the Russian people grants to the latter the status of a self-sufficient community that does not require a mediator for its salvation, the political power that is abandoned as a result of its impure nature inevitably becomes the subject of a radical devaluation. For this reason, as argued by Vibert, the imperial office is deprived “of any mystical connotation, of any sacral mediating vocation inherited from the byzantine model”. Thus, “the slavophile movement, constantly judged by its main commentators as conservative, reactionary, patriarchal, reveals itself – an aspect confirmed by its judgment of the relations between power and society – as being strongly impregnated by modern ideas and values”2. Opposing revolution as the greatest evil and despising constitutional reforms, the Slavophiles believed that the authentic transformation of the Russian society into a just society, free from oppression and censorship, could have occurred only as a result of the collective exercise of freedom in love, and not through the imposition of political rights by force. The people had to reconvert the elite and the Tsar through their living moral example, whose highest expression was the meekness and resignation with which they endured the oppression of the nobles, regarding the latter not as class enemies but as strayed brothers. Thus, unlike the Westernisers, who argued that the liberation from oppression required a previous Westernising cultural revolution, the Slavophiles could see the end of serfdom only as a fulfilment of Russia‟s Orthodox culture; only by living Aleksei KHOMIAKOV, Œuvres…cit., t. 2, pp. 36-38, quoted in Nicolas BERDIAEV, Khomiakov…cit., pp. 71-72. 2 Stéphane VIBERT, “Pravda: Vérité et justice…cit.”, pp. 206-208, 218. 1

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according to the ideals of Orthodoxy, which were cherished by the people despite their sins, true freedom was accessible. This was achievable only through the inner change of the Russian society, and not through the change of exterior institutions. Thus, for Khomiakov, socialism and communism were absurd ideological expressions of the exterior and materialistic civilisation of the West. The Slavophiles have been accused of having produced an ideological drug in support of oppression by depicting an idyllic picture of the relation between the Tsar and the people, by being almost psychotically attached to the utopian vision of a Russian land without class conflict and by basically abandoning all political and republican virtues in the name of a complete withdrawal into an unhistorical, and therefore perverted, ecclesial life1. Criticising some of Khomiakov‟s views, Nicholas Koshëlev, defined by Walicki as a heterodox Slavophile, has underlined the fact that “it was strange” that the Slavophiles “claim[ed] a monopoly on brotherliness for the only nation in contemporary Europe that imposed on its brothers the slavery of serfdom”2. However, Aksakov‟s idyllic view of Old Russia functions as a discursive device that articulates a condemnation of the real social relations of the Russian nineteenth-century society3. If for Aksakov the anti-political spiritual freedom of the people and the refusal of rebellion were two sides of the same coin, this presupposed absolute freedom of opinion for the people. More exactly, for Aksakov, one could not be a Christian without freedom of conscience and freedom of opinion. Although for the Slavophiles such freedom found its accomplishment only through the voluntary submission of the weak and insufficient individual to the unanimous consciousness of the Church4, nevertheless submission had to be voluntary. One could not be forced into submission by the group. In the worst case scenario one could only be ostracised. Thus, following the pattern of the Slavophile understanding of According to Alain Besançon, the Slavophiles have “construct[ed] a fictional reality, a fictional history, a fictional religion and fictional politics in every field” (Alain BESANÇON, The Rise of the Gulag: Intellectual Origins of Leninism, translated by Sarah Matthews, Continuum, New York, 1981, p. 65). In this sense, situating Slavophilism in the genealogy of Leninism, Besançon argues that Slavophilism is essentially related “to the fundamental falsehood of Bolshevism in power” (Ibidem, p. 77). 2 Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., p. 480. 3 Ibidem, p. 254. The government circles reacted vehemently to some of Aksakov‟s articles that praised the people, while rebuking the aristocracy, considering the latter articles as an invitation to popular uprising (Ibidem, pp. 271-272). 4 Aleksei KHOMIAKOV et al, “Aux Serbes – Epître de Moscou…cit.”, p. 175. 1

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the Church, Aksakov was arguing that the peasant commune, although an organic community that did not originate in a social contract between individuals, did not represent either an instinctive gathering eluding individual reflection1. If one may say so, for Aksakov, the Russian peasant commune appeared as traditional and modern at the same time. Like the Church, the Russian peasant commune was seen as organic unity accomplished through freedom, and not at the expense of freedom. Given all these aspects, the Slavophile claims for freedom of conscience and freedom of speech come close to the justification of political insurrection. In a memorial addressed to Tsar Alexander I and entitled Quatre Chapitres sur la Russie, Joseph de Maistre was urging the latter not to liberate the peasants and to maintain the strictest level of censorship. For, taking into account the fact that “there is no man who wills as passionately as the Russian”, the taste of freedom once gained, Maistre argued, will instantly lead to “a general fire that would consume Russia”, to a revolution led by a “university Pugachev”2, far more radical and destructive than the French one. Some forty years later, in a memorial addressed to Tsar Alexander II, assuring the Tsar that the Russian people does not rebel for it regards political rebellion as spiritual slavery, Aksakov was emphasising the crucial importance that freedom of thought and speech had for the spiritual life of the people. Criticising state censorship and the control of the Church by the state, completely contrary to what Maistre was recommending to Tsar Alexander I, Aksakov tried to convince Alexander II that the only thing that was necessary to prevent the evil of Revolution (a perspective that horrified Aksakov just as much as Maistre) was the elimination of censorship. Underlining the fact that it was the spirit of the people that kept Russia from falling into political turmoil, after the Russian upper classes had been infected by the poisonous culture of the West, Aksakov warned however that if spiritual oppression continues, and the people is deprived of the necessary premise of its spiritual life, namely freedom, then the popular insurrection will come one day and that day will be terrible3.

Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., pp. 257-258, 260. Joseph DE MAISTRE, Four Chapters on Russia, in The Collected Works of Joseph de Maistre, [http://pm.nlx.com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/xtf/view?docId=maistre/maistre.12.xml;chunk.id=div.maistre.russ ian.22;toc.depth=1;toc.id=div.maistre.russian.22;brand=default, pp. 288-291]. 3 Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., pp. 249-254. 1 2

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According to Vibert, “ultimately, the Slavophiles have to defend on the one hand a communal integration through unanimity and unquestioned custom, unique source of authentic freedom, and on the other hand a series of individual rights (freedom of expression, freedom of conscience) that can endanger at any moment the harmony of the collective”1. From this point of view, the Slavophile theological-political project may ultimately appear as utopian. In its attempt to overcome what may be an unsurpassable opposition, between the ideal of individual freedom, and the ideal of an organic society, Slavophilism may then be characterised by its lack of realism. As we remember, Maistre insisted that there was no middle way between papal infallibility and religious anarchy. In other words, for Maistre, there was no middle way between the integration of the individual into the religious society – grounded on the infallibility of the religious authority – and individual rights. At the moment when the voice of authority spoke, the individual conscience had to bow down in obedience or otherwise the religious society ceased to exist. The contestation of the principle of infallibility in the spiritual sphere was inevitably bringing with it political instability and ultimately Revolution. That is the reason why Maistre argued that the absolute control of the Church by the state – control against which Aksakov and the other Slavophiles were vituperating – was perfectly legitimate and absolutely necessary wherever Catholic unity was absent2. Thus, freedom of conscience in religious matters, which was regarded by Aksakov as the fundamental condition for being a Christian, represented instead for Maistre the fundamental principle of Protestantism, the irreducible enemy of sovereignty and the begetter of Revolution. In his reflections on Greek Orthodoxy from Du Pape, Maistre had stressed the fact that Orthodox ecclesiology was contaminated by the Greek spirit of division, the same philosophical spirit that had contaminated the West beginning with the Reformation. Moreover, in the same volume, Maistre had argued that no Russian would be able to write against the Roman Catholic Church without reigniting this essentially anarchical spirit, or, in other words, without betraying the fact that the substance of his discourse was ultimately Protestant3. As indicated by Walicki, in the opinion of a Catholic theologian who has analysed Khomiakov‟s ecclesiology “from an orthodox Catholic point of view”, Khomiakov‟s ecclesiology represents an extreme version of the Stéphane VIBERT, “Pravda : Vérité et justice…cit.”, p. 271. Joseph DE MAISTRE, The Pope…cit., note 113, p. 272. 3 Ibidem, pp. 300-303, 315. 1 2

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ecclesiological democratism and liberalism that can be encountered in contemporary Catholic modernism. Thus, as stressed by Father Pawlovski, Khomiakov “dimiss[es] the authority of instruction bestowed on the hierarchy by the will of our Lord […], [and] believes that the guarantee of infallibility […] is to be sought directly, without any intermediary, in mutual love or the altruistic fellowship of the faithful; and acknowledges the Holy Spirit alone as the only intermediary and source of the infallibility of the church”1. This kind of criticism can already be encountered in a written attack directed against Khomiakov‟s ecclesiology, whose author was the Russian Orthodox priest and theologian Pavel Florensky. According to him, in his opposition against the Catholic conception of authority, Khomiakov has also “[torn] the wheat of Orthodoxy out of the soil”. “By getting rid of the apparent chaff of authority in the Church, which supposedly does not exist in Orthodoxy”, Khomiakov jettisons “the principle of fear, the principle of power and the obligatory nature of the canonical order”. Ultimately, this reflects the fact that, for Khomiakov, truth is not received by the believer from above, as the revelation of the transcendent God, but rather represents the autonomous creation of human consensus. Khomiakov therefore “leaves the impression that the decrees of the whole Church are true because they are the decrees of the whole Church”, and that the “decrees of Western councils” are not condemnable for their “falsity”, but for the fact “that they represent violations of unity”. Florensky concluded that “Khomiakov‟s theories” reflect the “same spirit of immanentism that constitutes the essence of Protestantism, although in an immeasurably improved form – chiefly through the introduction of the idea of sobornost”. It is likely that Maistre would have argued much the same thing with regard to Khomiakov‟s theology, and, most certainly, he would have agreed with Florensky‟s conclusion concerning the political effects of such a theology: namely, the fact that, from a political point of view, far from being “a faithful servant of autocracy”, Khomiakov was in fact “the creator of the most popular and therefore the most dangerous form of egalitarianism”2. A. PAWLOWSKI, Idea Kósciola w ujeciu rosyjkiej teologii i historiozofii (The Idea of the Church in Russian Theology and Philosophy of History), part 2, Warsaw, 1935, pp. 238-239, quoted in Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., pp. 196-197. 2 Pavel Florensky, “Around Khomiakov”, in On Spiritual Unity, pp. 321-325. Father Gagarin, a Russian Jesuit and contemporary of the Slavophiles, argued that the nationalist ideology of the Slavophiles was 1

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However, with the purpose of clarifying the meaning of the liberalism and democracy of which Khomiakov is accused by his opponents, Walicki underlines the fact that for Khomiakov the concept of „the church as a whole‟ by no means meant the total sum of formal adherents of Orthodoxy; sobornost was not a synonym for „parliamentarism‟, nor should the always infallible standpoint of the „entire church‟ be interpreted as the sum of the private opinions of its individual members. In order to understand Khomiakov‟s ecclesiology properly, we must realize that what he had in mind when he spoke of the freedom of the church was not the personal „Protestant‟ freedom of individual believers, but the freedom of the church as a supra-individual organic whole1. It is not hard to notice here the intersection between Rousseau‟s democratic ideal and the Slavophile model of the ecclesial community. In his critique of Rousseau, Maistre had argued that the unity of the sovereign will, whose necessity was affirmed by both authors, excluded the possibility of democracy which for Maistre could only end in anarchy and individualistic dissolution. Instead, for Maistre, the unity of the people required the submission of the people or, in other terms, the transcendence of monarchical authority, which in its turn rested on an equally transcendent but superior religious authority2. Faced with the paradox that, in the strict sense, in order for freedom (which for Rousseau, as for the Slavophiles, was the collective experience of the people) to exist, “the social spirit, which should be created by [the] institutions, would have to preside over their very foundation; and men would have to be before the law what they should become by means of law”, Rousseau was forced to admit that at the origin of the people‟s freedom stood a legislator who, not being able “to appeal to either force or reason” (itself the fruit of education which presupposes authority), “must have recourse to an authority of a different order, capable of constraining without violence and

nothing more than “the Oriental version of the 19th century revolutionary idea”. According to Gagarin, this Russian version was much more effective than what the Western revolutionaries had been able to create. Once the monarchy gone, Gagarin argued, the nationalism of the Slavophiles was set to give birth to “very radical, very republican and very communist political doctrines” (Gagarin, op. cit., 72, quoted in Albert GRATIEUX, A.S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile…cit., vol. 2, pp. 147-148). 1 Andrzej WALICKI, The Slavophile Controversy…cit., p. 197. 2 Joseph DE MAISTRE, The Pope…cit., p. 124.

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persuading without convincing”1: religion. The paradox of freedom being begotten by “an authority that is no authority”, and yet, whose exercise is “too difficult for human powers” in as much as it has to “[change] human nature”2, determines Rousseau to affirm that “if we take the term in the strict sense”, the regime which he champions, democracy, has never really existed and will never exist, for this would imply “a people of gods”3. More precisely, Rousseau‟s democratic utopia presupposed two things. It called for the miraculous reconciliation of the multiplicity of individual freedoms in a single collective will, excluding both individualist fragmentation and the distinction between subject and government, and at the same time, required a religious authority that would be both transcendent and immanent; that is, an authority that would be identified with the freedom of the individual over which this authority was exercised. For Khomiakov, the Russian people was not only the most Christian people in the world, but also the most democratic people in the world4. Khomiakov‟s conviction practically reflects the fact that the Slavophiles regarded the sacramental reality of the Church as the environment in which Rousseau‟s democratic ideals could be transfigured and fulfilled. For Maistre, Rousseau‟s political philosophy was refuted by an unsurpassable horizontal division, which separated individuals from each other, and by an unsurpassable vertical division, which separated the governing authority and its transcendent basis from those who were governed. However, for the Slavophiles, in the Church, freedom and unity are reconciled through love. Likewise, the authority of love is not an exterior authority, and in this sense, it completely identifies itself with the freedom of the individual. “A people of gods” exists, and therefore, democracy becomes possible, because, as Khomiakov stressed, the Church, and God Himself are not authorities, for ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, trans. G. D. H. Cole, [http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon_02.htm#007], Book II, Ch. 7. 2 Ibidem. More specifically, if on the one hand Rousseau argues that “according to the fundamental compact, only the general will can bind the individuals”, on the other hand, he argues that “there can be no assurance that a particular will is in conformity with the general will, until it has been put to the free vote of the people”(Ibidem.). Thus, in principle, only the general will, and not the legislator, has the authority to compel individuals. But the conformity between the work of legislation and the general will can be decided only by a free vote of all the individuals reunited as a people, given that only the work of legislation turns a sum of individuals into a people. The contradiction is obvious. 3 Ibidem, Book III, Ch. 4. 4 Albert GRATIEUX, A.S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile…cit., vol. 1, p. 99. 1Jean-Jacques

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authorities are something external1. Instead, through the Holy Spirit, the very life of God becomes the life of the people/church. Thus, if in the case of Maistre, the Church is the model of the absolute monarchy and, consequently, the legitimating source of all reactionary politics, for Khomiakov, on the contrary, the Church is the model of the democratic community and the source of any authentic democratic movement. In the case of Maistre, the accomplishment of the monarchic ideal depends on the authority exerted by the Church over the monarchy. In the case of the Slavophiles, the democratic ideal can be accomplished only as manifestation in all the aspects of human existence, including politics, of the life of the Church. In its most profound understanding, democracy appears as a superhuman condition, made possible only through grace.

4. CONCLUSION Rooted in a theological vision centred on the principles of sobornost and tselnost, the Slavophiles have rejected both the Catholic notion of authority as well as the Protestant notion of freedom. For them, Catholicism meant unity without freedom and Protestantism meant freedom without unity, the two notions being reconciled only in the Orthodox Church whose ecclesiology was based on the concept of organic togetherness. The Slavophiles believed that the conflict between freedom and unity, which was paralleled by the conflict between faith and reason, has essentially shaped the whole culture of the modern West and was responsible for the inner division and spiritual crisis of the latter. To this model of civilisation, the Slavophiles were opposing the Russian Orthodox civilisation, grounded on the principles of sobornost and tselnost, civilisation whose essence, they believed, had been preserved by the Russian peasantry that had remained immune to the Westernisation process which had transformed the upper classes of the Russian society. Yet, far from rejecting modernity, the Slavophiles sought to reconcile Western philosophy and science with the Russian Orthodox faith, laying thus the foundation for a new and superior universal civilisation. This process had to begin in Russia itself with the return to the people of the educated segments of the Russian society. From this point of view, rooted in the Orthodox tradition, the Slavophile Aleksei KHOMIAKOV, “Some Remarks by an Orthodox Christian Concerning the Western Communions, on the Occasion of a Brochure by Mr. Laurentie”, in On Spiritual Unity…cit., p. 58. 1

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doctrine should not be regarded as a counter-modern project, as it is the case with other forms of traditionalism, but rather as an alternative Christianised modernity. The political philosophy which results from the theological and historical vision of the Slavophiles is a peculiar type of Christian populism or tory anarchism, which is conservative and yet opened towards modernity, anti-aristocratic but not necessarily antihierarchical, community centred and yet strongly attached to the ideal of freedom and, last but not least, opposed to state bureaucracy but strongly attached to Tsarist autocracy. The latter is justified not by virtue of a divine right but by a sui generis theory of the social contract which locates the origin of monarchical power in the people but insists that the motivation of the transfer does not have anything to do with the securing of some natural rights, being instead the means through which the people liberates itself from politics in order to experience the spiritual fullness from which derives its messianic vocation. Viewed by Stéphane Vibert as a hybrid combination of traditional and modern principles, the Slavophile theologico-political project ultimately reveals itself as a Christian democratic utopia, a fact which also explains why it has not at all been viewed well the leading conservative circles of the regime of Nicholas I.

Bibliography BERDIAEV, Nicolas, Khomiakov, trans. Valentine & Jean-Claude Marcadé, L‟Age d‟Homme, Lausanne, 1998. BESANÇON, Alain, The Rise of the Gulag: Intellectual Origins of Leninism, trans. Sarah Matthews, Continuum, New York, 1981. DE MAISTRE, Joseph, Collected Works, trans. Richard Lebrun, [http://pm.nlx.com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/xtf/view?docId=maistre/maistre.15.xml;ch unk.id=div.maistre.biblio.1;toc.depth=2;toc.id=div.maistre.biblio.1;hit.rank=0;brand= default]. DOSTOYEVSKY, Fyodor, The Diary of a Writer, trans. Boris Brasol, Octagon Books, New York, 1973. FLOROVSKY, Georges, Ways of Russian Theology, trans. Robert L. Nichols, Nordland Publishing Company, Belmont MA, 1979.

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GENGEMBRE, Gerard, La Contre-Révolution ou l‟historie désespérante, Éditions Imago, Paris, 1989. GRATIEUX, Albert, A.S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile, Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 1938. GRIMBERG, Isabelle, “La recherche d‟une identité qui se dérobe”, in Wanda DRESSLER (dir.), Eurasie : espace mythique ou réalité en construction?, Bruylant, Bruxelles, 2008. JAKIM, Boris, Robert BIRD (eds.), On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader, Lindisfarne Books, Hudson, New York, 1998. KIREYEVSKY, Ivan, “On the Necessity and Possibility of New Principles in Philosophy”, in James M. EDIE, James P. SCANLAN and Mary-Barbara ZELDIN (eds.), Russian Philosophy, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1965. ROMANIDES, John S., “Orthodox Ecclesiology according to Alexis Khomiakov (18041860)”, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. 2, No 1, Easter, 1956. ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract, trans. G. D. H. Cole, [http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon_02.htm#007] VIBERT, Stéphane, “Pravda: Vérité et justice. Essai sur le devenir théologico-politique de la Russie” Société, No. 24-25, 2005. WALICKI, Andrzej, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in the Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975. ZENKOVSKY, Vladimir, A History of Russian Philosophy, trans. George L. Kline, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1953.

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Religious Populism: The Coup de Grâce to Secularisation Theories Ionuț APAHIDEANU Doctoral School of Political Science, University of Bucharest Abstract: The present article argues that spectacularly proliferating

forms of religious populism as a contemporary easily recognisable phenomenon worldwide, Europe included, have administered a deathblow not so much to the classic secularisation paradigm, which has been rather comatose since the early 1990s, as - especially and crucially so - to the updated, narrowed-down, “macro” version of secularisation behind which “neosecularists” within the sociology of religion comfortably barricaded themselves about two decades ago. In the development of this argument, I shall: firstly operationalise “religious populism” as a conceptual and phenomenological subset of populism; secondly I shall provide an overview of the two secularisation theoretical versions; finally I shall address religious populism worldwide in terms of secularisation and specifically isolate the sub-phenomenon of Islamophobic populism which has been increasingly manifesting itself at the societal level in contemporary Western Europe, i.e. the very (supposedly) “heartland” of secularity, and which I consider to be the last, and this time decisive, confutation to secularisation theories. Keywords: religious populism, secularisation, Islamophobia,

Western Europe.

1. OPERATIONALISING THE INDEFINABLE: (RELIGIOUS) POPULISM Approximating “religious populism” seems quite a challenge for the social scientist, considering that over half of century of literature in the field did not yet succeed in providing an at least majoritarily, let alone consensually, accepted standard meaning of 71


the very paternal term of “populism”. Regrettably similar to other crucial concepts in political sciences such as “democracy”, “power”, or “self-determination”, populism also belongs to a category of umbrella-terms whose frequency of usage, in both the academic and political realms, seems inversely proportional to the accuracy of its meaning; in the diagnosis phrasing of a leading authority on the theme, “[a] persistent feature of the literature on populism is its reluctance – or difficulty – in giving the concept any precise meaning. Notional clarity – let alone definition – is conspicuously absent from this domain”1. Indeed, constitutively ambiguous2, highly volatile in time and space depending on a variety of political, social, cultural and economic factors3, the term4 of “populism” seems to elude, if not openly defy, “any comprehensive definition”5, at least any aiming at genus proximum – differentia specifica standards. Illustratively, it has been used in probably over a dozen ways to alternatively refer to: an ideology; a socio-political expression of (a) certain social class(es); an anti-modernist reaction; a type or instrument of political organisation; a scientific (sub-)discipline; an electoral discourse strategy or technique of a manipulative type; a category of political parties6; an analytical instrument in approaching the direct vs. representative democracy conceptual dichotomy; a descriptive antonymous term for elitism; a macro-economic program; a normative label of political behaviour; a general socio-political-cultural anti-intellectual standing, etc. Starting from this predicament and envisaging the beneficent conceptual clarifications provided by the other contributors to the journal‟s current thematic issue on populism, this article avoids any theoretical-analytical approaches of the subject and,

Ernesto LACLAU, On Populist Reason, Verso, London and New York, 2005, p. 3. Yves MÉNY and Yves SUREL, “The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism”, in Yves MÉNY and Yves SUREL (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Palgrave, New York, 2002, pp. 1-21. 3 Angus STEWART, “The Social Roots” in Ghiţă IONESCU and Ernest GELLNER (eds.), Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, Macmillan, New York, 1969, pp. 180-196. 4 Redundant to emphasise in light of the heuristic problems implied, I shall subsequently use the word “term” (or, alternatively, “notion”), instead of “concept”. 5 Ernesto LACLAU, On Populist…cit., p. 3. 6 An amphiboly which explains the term being frequently used, from the Freedom Party of Austria to the Greater Romanian Party, interchangeably with other labels such as “extreme / far right”, “anti-system”, “anti-establishment”, “neo-Nazi”, or “neo-fascist” (see also Yves MÉNY and Yves SUREL, “The Constitutive Ambiguity…cit.”, p. 4). 1 2

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employing around two dozens of specific researches, operationalises “populism” as a borderline category of ideology. This quasi-ideology may subsequently be addressed didactically in four fundamental dimensions: descriptively, normatively, explicatively, and prescriptively. Descriptively, populism lays out a holistic and organic conceptualisation of its fundamental, irreducible unit – the people, who feature a “general will” which transgresses quite a few other classic cleavages envisaged in political sciences, i.e. leftright, urban-rural, gender, frequently religious denomination, etc.1 In terms of identity and identification, this inclusivism is accompanied by a double (antagonistic) exclusion, the people being differentiated: on the horizontal from non-members of the people; on the vertical, from the elites, who – as I shall detail below – do not, or no longer, represent the people. Normatively, populism revolves around the “intrinsic and immediate validity”2 and undisputed and mandatory supremacy3 of vox populi on which “good” politics and society necessarily centre on; the people being apriorically presumed as a source of virtue4, the only valid claim to legitimacy “rests on the democratic ideology of popular sovereignty and majority rule”5, so that a “just” society is characterised by an unmediated and asymmetrical relationship between people and their government, the latter serving fully and solely the first6. Inherently to this evaluative framework, non-members of the people are at least irrelevant, not worthy of consideration in the building of society and politics, and at the most undesirable, so that any form of populism involves a certain Ibidem; Margaret CANOVAN, “Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy”, in Yves MÉNY and Yves SUREL (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Palgrave, New York, 2002, pp. 25-44; Cas MUDDE and Cristobal ROVIRA KALTWASSER, “Populism and (Liberal) Democracy: A Framework for Analysis”, in C. MUDDE and C. ROVIRA KALTWASSER (eds.), Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat of Corrective for Democracy?, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2012, pp. 1-16. 2 William KORNHAUSER, The Politics of Mass Society , Free Press, New York, 1959, p. 104. 3 Peter WORSLEY, “The Concept of Populism”, in G. IONESCU and E. GELLNER (eds.), Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1969, p. 244. 4 Dani FILC, The Political Right in Israel: Different Faces of Jewish Populism, Routledge, New York, 2009, p. 8. 5 Margaret CANOVAN, “Taking Politics…cit.”, p. 25. 6 I.e. the direct type of democracy fostering imperative political mandates, as opposed to the representative type. 1

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degree of xenophobia1. On the vertical, elites (usually political, but intrinsically also anti-intellectual2) are demonised antagonistically, being portrayed, in populism‟s fundamental explicative dimension, as having escaped popular control and betrayed the (genuine) people‟s interests3. Often explicitly or implicitly correlated with a form of nostalgia for a mythical past4, i.e. some sort of “golden age” of direct democracy and hegemony of the people, the explanation thus suggests a negative historical evolution, a gradual deterioration of the political, whose nadir is the modern, representative democracy type of political system, which is only a façade “which conceal[s] autocracies dominated by the oligarchic interests of corrupt elites”5. Logically subsequent, the prescriptive dimension allows the classification of populism as anti-system, or anti-establishment6, since it advocates not merely that “the primacy of the people has to be restored [… and that] the elites in power have to be ousted and replaced by leaders capable of acting for the good of the community”7, but, essentially, a radical change of the political system‟s structures and procedures. As such, populism as a quasi-ideology further assumes three cumulative characteristics which analytically enhance the isolation of its theoretical and phenomenological essence: (a) it is intrinsically anti-modernistic, not only by the antagonism between its collectivism and holism on the one hand and the individualism

Dani FILC, The Political Right…cit., p. 8. For more details see Richard HOFSTADTER, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Vintage Books, New York, 1963, pp. 151-169. 3 Yves MÉNY and Yves SUREL (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge…cit., p. 12; Margaret CANOVAN, “Taking Politics…cit.”, p. 27. 4 Dani FILC, The Political Right…cit., p. 8 5 Yannis PAPADOPOULOS, “Populism, the Democratic Question, and Contemporary Governance”, in Yves MÉNY and Yves SUREL (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Palgrave, New York, 2002, p. 47. 6 Andreas SCHEDLER, “Anti-Political-Establishment Parties”, Party Politics, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1996, pp. 291312; Guy HERMET, “Populisme et nationalisme”, Vingtième siècle, Vol. 56, 1997, pp. 34-47; Paul A. TAGGART, Populism, Open University Press, Buckingham, VA, 2000. 7 Yves MÉNY and Yves SUREL (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge…cit., p. 13. 1 2

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and pluralism promoted by modernity1 on the other hand, but also because it psychologically involves a response to rapid societal changes that threaten “to destroy a hitherto stable and secure identity”2; thus, prescriptively, populism recommends an alternative to the unsatisfactory “standard path from traditional to modernity”3 (b) interrelated, it intensely builds on emotionality4, manipulating “the passions of the ordinary people”5; (c) its organizational form of expression is highly fluid in time and space6. Approaching the second key-term, the very fact that, from Jesus to Mohammed and from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr., religious leaders “have rarely been outside politics”7, combined with the “quasi-religious qualities”8 of political ideologies may offer a generic explanation of why “populism seems to spill over so easily from the secular to moral fundamentalism with its quasi-religious imagery”9, in a tendency highlighted by the fact that “in countries as diverse as Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey, Israel, Sudan, Sri Lanka,

Cyril Edwin BLACK, The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History , Harper & Row, New York, 1966, p. 25; Steve BRUCE, God Is Dead. Secularization in the West, Blackwell, Oxford, 2002, pp. 2-4. 2 Betz, 1990, p. 146, apud Dani FILC, The Political Right…cit., p. 15. For a discussion of the same effects of modernity on identities, see Samuel P. HUNTINGTON, Ordinea politică a societăţilor în schimbare, trans. H. Stamatin, Polirom, Iaşi, [1968] 1999. 3 Benjamin ARDITI, Politics on the Edges of Liberalism: Difference, Populism, Revolution, Aggitation , Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2007, p. 6. 4 Christopher B. CHAPP, Religious Rhetoric and American Politics: The Endurance of Civil Religion in Electoral Campaigns, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2012; Karen KAMPWIRTH, Gender and Populism in Latin America: Passionate Politics, Pennsylvania State University Press, Philadelphia, PA, 2010. 5 Nathan O. HATCH, The Democratization of American Christianity, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1989, pp. 4-5. 6 William KORNHAUSER, The Politics…cit.; Richard HOFSTADTER, Anti-Intellectualism…cit.; Robert WUTHNOW, Experimentation in American Religion: the New Mysticisms and Their Implications for the Churches, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1978, p. 196; Charles A. REILLY, “Latin America‟s Religious Populists”, in Daniel H. LEVINE (ed.), Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1986; Ernesto LACLAU, On Populist…cit. 7 John R. HINNELLS, “Why Study Religions?”, in John R. HINNELLS (ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, Routledge and Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, UK, and New York, 2009, p. 7. 8 Margaret CANOVAN, “Taking Politics…cit.”, p. 31. 9 Paul A. TAGGART, “Populism and the Pathology of Representative Politics”, in Yves MÉNY and Yves SUREL (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Palgrave, New York, 2002, p. 78. 1

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Algeria, and the United States, ostensibly secular state actors sought to co-opt the ideas and activists with religious fundamentalisms”1 (Hibbard 2010: 4). Both religion and political ideology ultimately advancing a Weltanschauung meant to comprehensively orientate man in his existence, it seems only natural that populism as a (nominally) political phenomenon also more or less frequently embraces a religious dimension. In this sense, I operationalise “religious populism” as a subtype of populism manifested in two frequently overlapping dimensions: mainly as “religious politics” (i.e. a “religiosization of politics”, meaning a populist usage by politicians of religious elements) and, less often and analytically less accurate, but not negligible, as “political religion” (i.e. a “politicisation of religion”, directed mainly by religious actors increasingly involved in politics). In the first dimension, religious populism represents a specific, visibly populist, albeit not always clearly distinguishable, subtype of religious politics. The latter, broader, category covers a variety of forms, from the Bosnian genocide to the rise of the Christian right in contemporary United States and from the emergence of Hindu nationalism to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the Middle East and South Asia2, some sociologists actually considering it a distinct shape within typologies of religious organisation – “politicised religion”3. In its specific difference, it involves a populist exploitation of religious elements, especially in electoral campaigns; the Romanian readers of this article might for instance recall Emil Constantinescu‟s “golden bullet” of the final presidential electoral debate of 1996, when he unexpectedly cornered his selfdeclared “free thinking” opponent, Ion Iliescu: “Mister Iliescu, do you believe in God?”4; similarly, during the last presidential elections campaign, the Social-Democrat candidate Mircea Geoană seemed to have acknowledged his predecessor‟s vulnerability and consequently rushed into visiting the holy relics then displayed at the Orthodox Scott W. HIBBARD, Religious Politics and Secular States: Egypt, India, and the United States, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2010, p. 4. 2 Idem, p. 5. 3 Peter F. BEYER, “Social Forms of Religion and Religions in Contemporary Global Society”, in M. DILLON (ed.), Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 45-60. 4 See a fragment of the debate‟s transcript in Jurnalul Naţional, November 16, 2006 (at http://jurnalul.ro/special-jurnalul/marea-confruntare-crezi-n-dumnezeu-domnule-iliescu-7869.html, accessed Febr. 2014). 1

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Patriarchy in Bucharest, however unhesitatingly skipping, in front of the TV cameras, the thousands-long queue of (genuine) believers1. In its second dimension, applicable par excellence in Latin America2, religious populism refers to a politicisation of religious actors, which become increasingly involved in politics and society. In Latin America, in the broader context of the Liberation Theology3 gradually unfolded in the post-war years, local churches began manifesting an increasing identification with the poor, a de-clericalisation of leadership, experimentation with new organisational forms, and a rejection of rigid hierarchical authority4. Thus operationalised, religious populism fluidly covers a phenomenological area that idiosyncratically combines religious revitalisation and political and social activism, modernity-related identity crises, and an increasing disillusionment with (post-) modernity and with the currently mainstream political philosophy on good government and society, the latter manifested locally as Euroscepticism. Essentially, it represents a subtype of populism, whose dimensions it fully replicates, but in a specific religious key: descriptively, the fundamental unit is still the people, but one further specified according to religious identity and as such distinguishable from outsiders; normatively, there is or should not be a higher imperative than this religious people‟s view, which, explicatively5, is thought to be an ideal disrespected by current elites6; prescriptively, these elites must, ProTV, Oct. 26, 2009 (at http://m.stirileprotv.ro/lbin/mobile/index.php?article_id=3209071, accessed Febr. 2014). 2 But manifested also transnationally in pressures of religious institutions on political actors to adopt certain public policies, e.g. the Romanian Orthodox Church on the issue of biometric passports (http://www.spc.rs/eng/holy_synod_romanian_orthodox_church_calls_alternative_biometric_passports, accessed Febr. 2014), or the Greek Orthodox Church on the issue of mentioning religious belonging on identity cards (see Yannis STAVRAKAKIS, “Religion and Populism in Contemporary Greece”, in Francisco PANIZZA (ed.), Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, Verso, London and New York, 2005, pp. 224249). 3 Christian SMITH, The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social-Movement Activism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1991. 4 Charles A. REILLY, “Latin America‟s Religious Populists…cit.”, pp. 42ff. 5 See for instance the reaction of Archbishop Christodoulos of the Greek Orthodox Church in the religion – identity cards scandal of 2001: on the issue “only one factor exists, and this is the people, that cannot and should not be ignored” (italics in the original quotation in Yannis STAVRAKAKIS, “Religion and Populism…cit.”, p. 224). 6 Which is why, common to religious-motivated Euroscepticism, the EU bureaucratic leadership is accused of no longer acting in the European (Christian) citizens‟ interests (Jack HAYWARD, “The Populist Challenge 1

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obviously, be overthrown and replaced by duly servants of the (religious) people. Specifically in comparison to other types of populism, the religious one bears an additional anti-modernist emphasis, one explainable by the significantly dialectical nature between traditional religion and secular modernity; in Yoshua Yates‟ words, “[g]lobal modernity has transformed the nature of religious belief and the practice of religion. One crucial change has been the resurgence of publicly active religious populism. However, policy makers and social scientists, burdened with a secularist bias, have failed to grasp the full nature of this phenomenon”1. Finally, empirically, the frequency of the term “religious populism” seems still to have increased during the last decades in the fields of both political sciences and (the) sociology of religion. In the sense I am using in this article2, the term was arguably coined by Fred Halliday in a 1982 book on the Iranian Revolution of 19793. In Latin America, the „80s witnessed the emergence of “a new form of populism […] significantly affected by religion”4, one qualitatively different from the previous, rather secular and extensively studied forms of populism, such as the ones characteristic to Juan Peron in Argentina, Getulio Vargas in Brazil, or Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico. Nowadays, the phenomenon of religious populism in Latin America seems generalised5. In the Middle East, aside from innumerous studies covering the complex relation between Islam and local politics, scholars have begun to use the term in reference to Israeli forms of populism such as the one promoted by Avigdor Lieberman and his right populist party Yisrael Beitenu6. In Europe, populism in general is on the rise7, including – as I shall develop – its religious subtype. Across the Atlantic, religious populism seems indeed “endemic to North

to Élitist Democracy in Europe”, in Jack HAYWARD (ed.), Élitism, Populism and European Politics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2004, p. 10). 1 Yoshua J. YATES, “The Resurgence of Jihad and the Specter of Religious Populism”, SAIS Review of International Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2007, p. 127. 2 As different from the acception R. WUTHNOW (op. cit.) had previously used in 1979. 3 Fred HALLIDAY, “The Iranian Revolution and Religious Populism”, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 36, No. 2, 1982, pp. 187-207. 4 Charles A. REILLY, “Latin America‟s Religious Populists…cit.”, p. 42. 5 See Andres OPPENHEIMER, “Religious populism spreads in Latin America”, Miami Herald, Dec. 7, 2006 (at http://wwrn.org/articles/23620/?&place=south-america§ion=church-state, accessed January 2014). 6 Dani FILC, The Political Right in Israel…cit. 7 Yves MÉNY and Yves SUREL (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge..., p. 2.

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American culture”1 and especially so in the United States, where, according to Nathan Hatch, “religious populism […] remains among the oldest and deepest impulses in American life”2: starting with the rural-social-gospel version of populism during the 1890s3, “the emotive language of religious identity” being “a significant part of populism‟s success”4 explains the locally recurrent manifestation of religious populism; aside from the peculiar and prominent symbiosis of religion, family and patriotism in the American political discourse of the Cold War Era5 and also aside from the notorious “Messianism” of American foreign politics, even in contemporary times, both Democrat and Republican presidents conclude their prominent speeches with the classic ending “God bless (you and) America”6.

2. THE SECULARISATION THEORETICAL CONSTRUCTS: AN VERVIEW Although traceable back to the Age of Enlightenment7, the “long standing

John M. BADERTSCHER et al., Religious Studies in Manitoba and Saskatchewan: A State-of-the-Art Review, Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, Wilfried Laurier University Press, Toronto; Waterloo, ON, 1993, p. 52. 2 Apud Richard W. SANTANA and Gregory ERICKSON, Religion and Popular Culture: Rescripting the Sacred, McFarland & Co, Jefferson, NC, 2008, p. 17. 3 Paul HARVEY, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925, North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1997 (p. 91). 4 Christopher B. CHAPP, Religious Rhetoric and American Politics…cit., p. 36. 5 Charles TAYLOR, A Secular Age, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007, p. 506. See for instance former president‟s Eisenhower stated opinion that “[o]ur government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply religious faith – and I don‟t care what it is” (apud Wuthnow, op. cit., p. 194). For such a post-Cold War public statement, see the one of Senator Bob Doyle in 1996 (in CHAPP; op. cit., p. 39). 6 See George W. Bush‟s second inaugural address of 2005 (at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/politics/20BUSH-TEXT.html?pagewanted=3&_r=0, accessed Jan. 2014), or Barrack Obama‟s second address (at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2013/01/21/inaugural-address-president-barack-obama, accessed Jan. 2014) 7 Pippa NORRIS and Ronald INGLEHART, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004, p. 3. 1

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consensus”1 in socio-humanistic sciences that had reunited the leading authors in philosophy, psychology, anthropology and sociology around the conviction that, as societies modernise, religion, especially Christianity, will in the best case be “privatized”2 and in the worst case scenario disappear altogether3, was only articulated and formalised in a theoretical construction during the 1960s, when secularisation was integrated by sociologists of religion into the broader family of modernisation theories. In this thematic and discipline context, the leading secularist Bryan R. Wilson also provided one of the – judging by the number of quotations - reference definitions of secularisation as the process whereby religious “thinking” / “consciousness”, “practice” / “actions” and “institutions” “lose their social significance”4. Similarly in its far reaching scope, at the turn of the millennium, Steve Bruce‟s definition of secularisation seems noteworthy: “[…] a social condition manifest in (a) the declining importance of religion for the operation of non-religious roles and institutions such as those of the state and the economy; (b) a decline in the social standing of religious roles and institutions; and (c) a decline in the extent to which people engage in religious practices, display beliefs of a religious kind, and conduct other aspects of their lives in a manner informed by such beliefs”. 5

In between these two definitions and moments in time, the sociology of religion witnessed the gradual aggregation of what was to become known as “the classic secularization paradigm”, a broad theoretical construct which, given the considerable Mark CHAVES, “Secularization as Declining Religious Authority”, Social Forces, Vol. 72, No. 3, 1994, p. 749. 2 Thomas LUCKMANN, The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society, Macmillan, New York, 1967; Peter L. BERGER, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Anchor Books, New York, 1967. 3 Frank J. LECHNER, “Secularization”, in Hans J. HILLERBRAND (ed.), Encyclopedia of Protestantism (Vol. 4), Routledge, New York, 2003, 1701-1707. See, among innumerous such “prophecies of secularization”, C.J. Mills: “In due course, the sacred shall disappear altogether except, possibly, in the private realm” (The Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1959, pp. 32-33). 4 Bryan R. WILSON, Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment , C.A. Watts, London, 1966, p. xiv, and Religion in Sociological Perspective, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982, p. 149. 5 Steve BRUCE, God Is Dead…cit., p. 3. 1

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differences among secularist authors1, I analytically represent in the table below along three levels of analysis and corresponding to the two major traditions of the discipline, i.e. Durkheim‟s functional differentiation of societies, and Weber‟s rationalization of human activity: Table 1. Operationalisation of the “classic secularization paradigm” at three

levels and along two traditions pertaining to the sociology of religion2

Relatively predictable, such an epistemological ambition of building a “metanarrative”1, a “story about large-scale social change”, meant to comprehensively

Some critics such as Jeffrey K. Hadden have even gone so far in this regard as to consider that there actually is no “secularization” theory, but rather “a hodgepodge of loosely employed ideas” (J.K. HADDEN, “Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory”, Social Forces Vol. 65, No. 3, 1987, pp. 607, 598). 2 Based on the summarization in Ionuţ APAHIDEANU, “An Empirical Revisiting of the Secularization Debate at the Micro Level: Europe‟s Heterodox Religiosity over the Last Two Decades”, EuroPolis, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2013, pp. 38-41. 1

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explain no less than “one of the greatest changes in social structure and culture: the displacement of religion from the centre of human life” starting with the Middle Ages2, opened a spectacularly wide and interdisciplinary array of criticism paths. This criticism, initiated in the 1960, exponentially intensified and amplified thematically during the next two decades3, gathering arguably whole libraries of critical books and articles that were contesting the secularisation paradigm in all possible regards: its taxonomical and theoretical disjointedness; its fundamental premises4; its methodological approach5; its empirical support; (somewhat conclusively) its dogmatism. Subsequently and consequently, the aforementioned long-standing consensus among secularists rapidly crumbled down, as more and more authors concluded that, globally, God was not at all “dead”, per a contrario, religion6, magicians7, sorcerers8, and God9 were all back. As harsh critics began to even ask openly for the term “secularization” to be “dropped from all theoretical discourse”10 and, in light of “three centuries of utterly failed prophecies”, for the “secularization doctrine” to be taken to “the graveyard of failed theories”11, the classic secularization paradigm seems to have

Bryan R. WILSON, “The Secularization Thesis: Criticism and Rebuttals,” in R. LAERMAN, B.R. WILSON and J. BILLIET (eds.), Secularization and Social Integration: Papers in Honor of Karel Dobbelaere, Leuven University Press, Leuven, 1998, p. 47. 2 Steve BRUCE, Secularization: In Defense of an Unfashionable Theory, Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. vi, 4, 6. 3 Ionuţ APAHIDEANU, “An Empirical Revisiting of the Secularization Debate…cit.”, pp. 37-38. 4 E.g. the incompatibility of rationality and religion, or the supposed secularising effect of religious pluralism. 5 E.g. the empirically not confirmed reference to the Middle Ages as a “golden age” of faith, the Euro- and Christ-centric particularism of the approach, or the confusions among levels of analysis and among dimensions of religiosity. 6 Jean-Louis SCHLEGEL, “Revenir de la Sécularisation?”, Esprit, Vol. 113-114, No. 3, 1986, pp. 9-23. 7 Regis DEBRAY, God: An Itinerary, Verso, London, 2004, p. 259. 8Hansjörg HEMMINGER, ed. Die Rückkehr der Zauberer. New Age. Eine Kritik, Rowohlt, Reinbeck bei Hamburg, 1987. 9 John MICKLETHWAIT and Adrian WOOLDRIDGE, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World, Allen Lane, London, 2009. 10 Rodney STARK and Laurence R. IANNACCONE, “A Supply-side Reinterpretation of the „Secularization‟ of Europe”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 33, No. 3, 1994, pp. 230-252 (p. 231). 11 Rodney STARK, “Secularization, R.I.P.”, Sociology of Religion, Vol. 60, No. 3, 1999, pp. 269, 270. 1

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entered a “coma”; in the lament of one of its eponymous advocates, albeit probably the only one left, nowadays “it is assumed that all right thinking people are against it”1. In this context, some authors of the besieged secularist camp, such as Mark Chaves, Oliver Tschannen, Karel Dobbelaere, Frank J. Lechner, or David Yamane2, regrouped around the fundamental premise that Durkheim‟s theorisation of societal differentiation was still valid and of heuristic value, and correspondingly redefined secularisation in a “macro” version strictly confined to the societal level and definable grosso modo as “the declining scope of religious authority” in society3. Conveniently enough, such a narrowing down of the argument, combined with the redundant explicit emphasis that the “religiosity of individuals in not a valid indicator of societal secularization”4, eludes any controversy, since the overwhelming majority of modern sociologists of religion unconditionally support the validity of Durkheim‟s foundational thesis of societal differentiation: “If this were all that secularization means, there would be nothing to argue about”5. For the sake of the argument, let us assume here that it does (only mean that). In this logic, state and church are expected to be completely separate, the public discourse and the public policies should be a-religious, with religion progressively marginalised from the public space into the private, individual, realm, on an observable declining trend at the societal level. Furthermore, this should be applicable par excellence in Western Europe, an area consensually considered among sociologists to be the secularised part of the globe, tributary to its peculiar historical evolution (i.e., the Renaissance, the

Steve BRUCE, “What the Secularization Paradigm Really Says”, in Manuel FRANZMANN, Christel GÄRTNER, Nicole KÖCK (eds.), Religiosität in der säkularisierten Welt: Theoretische und empirische Beiträge zur Säkularisierungsdebatte in der Religionssoziologie, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden, 2006, p. 39. 2 Ionuţ APAHIDEANU, “An Empirical Revisiting of the Secularization Debate…cit.”, pp. 37ff. 3 Mark CHAVES, “Secularization as Declining Religious Authority…cit.”, p. 749. 4 Karel DOBBELAERE, “Toward an Integrated Perspective of the Processes Related to the Descriptive Concept of Secularization”, Sociology of Religion, Vol. 60, No. 3, 1999, pp. 229-247 (p. 239; italics in the original). Predictably enough, such a “revisionism” was promptly denounced by critics as both “insincere” and “historically false”, since “those who employ it revert to celebrating the demise of individual piety whenever they see a fact that seems to be supportive or whenever they believe they are speaking to an audience of fellow devotees” (STARK, op. cit., p. 252). 5 Rodney STARK, “Secularization...cit.”, p. 252. 1

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Protestant Reformation, the political secularisation, the high levels and rates of modernisation, etc.). Let us see in the following whether this hypothesis is verified.

3. RELIGIOUS POPULISM IN THE FIEF OF SECULARITY: Western Europe’s mainstreamed Islamophobia Although still applied predominantly in Latin American studies, the term of “populism” has been increasingly associated with European leaders, movements or parties1, starting with the re-emergence of right-wing extremism/populism somewhere during the „90s2, or even the „80s3, in the broader context of multiple various contemporary trends locatable analytically at three levels: (a) at the global level, the aforementioned worldwide “resurgence of religion”, catalysed by the emergence of various political actors “with avowedly religious agendas”4, fatefully prophesied by Huntington‟s 1996 seminal The Clash of Civilizations, only to be seemingly confirmed by the “9/11” turning point in international relations; (b) at the sub-systemic non-regional level of the Western world, an increasing disenchantment with the hyper-rationalised secular (post-/ultra-)modernity5, right-wing populists exploiting this trend by playing nationalist and xenophobic prejudices against complexity and cosmopolitanism6; (c) at the sub-systemic regional level of (especially Western) Europe, the deepening perception of a not only EU institutional, but generally political, “democratic deficit” of the modern representative systems7, one aggravated by the dismantling of the welfare state systems Yves MÉNY and Yves SUREL (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge…cit ., p. 2. Simon BORNSCHIER, Cleavage Politics and the Populist Right: The New Cultural Conflict in Western Europe, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA, 2010, p. 1. 3 Lars RENSMANN, “The New Politics of Prejudice: Comparative Perspectives on Extreme Right Parties in European Democracies”, German Politics and Society Vol. 21, No. 4, 2003, p. 95. 4 Craig CALHOUN, Mark JUERGENSMEYER and Jonathan VanANTWERPEN, “Introduction”, in C. CALHOUN, M. JUERGENSMEYER and J. vanANTWERPEN (eds.), Rethinking Secularism, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011, p. 3. 5 Jean-Paul WILLAIME, “Religion in Ultramodernity”, in James A. BECKFORD and John WALLISS (eds.), Theorising Religion. Classical and Contemporary Debates, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006, pp. 77-89. 6 Benjamin ARDITI, Politics on the Edges of Liberalism…cit., p. 36. 7 Jack HAYWARD (ed.), Élitism, Populism and European Politics…cit., p. 10ff.; Ralf DAHRENDORF, “Mediocre Élites Elected by Mediocre Peoples”, in J. HAYWARD (ed.), Élitism, Populism…cit., pp. 1-9. 1 2

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starting with the „80s and, simultaneously, the increase in Muslim immigration rates into “old Europe”. In this context, Europe‟s populist radical right gradually developed a new, religious, dimension of political discourse and practice, innovating itself under an ideological umbrella which Cas Mudde calls “nativism” and considers to hold prescriptively that “states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group” and that “non-native elements (persons and ideas) are fundamentally threatening” to the idealised homogeneity of the native group1. Somewhat predictable in the same context, considering for instance that, except for Ulster, an inter-confessional Protestant versus Roman-Catholic conflict seems long forgotten history throughout Europe, the new “enemy” threatening the religious identity of the state-people unit was rapidly, integrally, and definitively identified as the Islam. Thus, a new form of religious populism gained hegemony in modern Western Europe: Islamophobic populism. This new form is religious populism by all aforementioned taxonomic criteria: descriptively, it im- or ex-plicitly refers to a native Christian collectivity (nation or continental population), “invaded” by Muslims, who are depicted holistically (Islam), antagonistically and normatively negative (as violent and retrograde); explicatively it accuses the corruption of national or EU political elites, who are supposed to have encouraged or at least turned a blind eye on the infamous Muslim immigration; prescriptively, it advocates the restriction of religious rights for Muslims (from banning the construction of mosques to prohibiting specific religious costumes such as female headscarves) and some kind of restoration and duly observance of Christian roots2; analytically, massively building on Huntington‟s book3, it exploits passions and emotions, as suggested by the very word “phobia”; furthermore, it is profoundly anti-modernist in that, as any type of (religious) populism, it rejects pluralism, minority rights4 and the very

Cas MUDDE, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, p. 19. 2 For a noteworthy and relatively similar analytical approach of Islamophobic populism, see Farid HAFEZ, Islamophober Populismus: Moschee- und Minarettbauverbote Österreichischer Parlamentsparteien, VS Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2010, pp. 60-68. 3 Cas MUDDE, Populist Radical Right…cit., p. 84, n. 10. 4 Cas MUDDE and Cristobal ROVIRA KALTWASSER, “Populism and (Liberal) Democracy…cit.”, p. 17; Robert WUTHNOW, Experimentation in American Religion…cit., pp. 197-198. 1

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“defining trait of contemporary progressive thought”, i.e. “the right to be different” – ethnically, linguistically, sexually, or in this specific case, religiously1. Empirically, the phenomenon seems widespread across contemporary Western Europe. Not aiming at a systematisation, nor at a quantification of party-related Islamophobia, which I consider misleading2, let me briefly indicate a few relevant cases. In Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party is not only xenophobic and homophobic, but “also religious[ly] fundamentalist3. In the Netherlands, once an Eden of religious pluralism and tolerance, the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid), led by notorious Geert Wilders, who openly states that Islam is not a religion, but an “ideology of a retarded culture”4 , holds at the moment of writing 10 of the 75 Senate seats and 14 of the 150 of the House of Representatives5, being the fourth largest party of the country; in the same country, the equally notorious politician Pim Fortuyn, who had called Islam a “backward culture”6, was assassinated during the 2002 national elections campaign by a fellow Dutch environmental activist who blamed him of using Muslims as a scapegoat7. In the neighbouring Belgium, The Flemish Interest (Vlaams Belang), which “violently attacks Islam”8, describing it as an “inherently fundamentalist and imperialist religion-cum-ideology”9, currently holds around 17% of the regional Benjamin ARDITI, Politics on the Edges of Liberalism…cit., p. 5. Not so much because, in the anecdotal phrasing attributed to Mark Twain, “there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”, but mainly, and seriously so, because I consider religious populism not a dichotomous variable (i.e. being or not religiously populist), but one of degree on a continuum (i.e. more or less religiously populist), so that a strict binary exclusion-inclusion of parties would be oversimplifying and heuristically deficient. 3 Cas MUDDE, Populist Radical Right…cit., p. 55. 4 The Guardian, Febr. 17, 2008 (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/17/netherlands.islam, accessed, together with all links below, February 2014). 5 See the party‟s website at http://www.pvv.nl/. 6 Katrin SCHMIDT, Populism and Euroscepticism in the Netherlands: Pim Fortuyn and the Dutch NeeCampaign against the European Constitutional Treaty, GRIN Verlag, Noderderstadt, 2006. 7 The Telegraph, March 28, 2003 (at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/1425944/Fortuyn-killed-to-protectMuslims.html). 8 Sarah L. DE LANGE and Tjitske AKKERMAN, “Populist Parties in Belgium: A Case of Hegemonic Liberal Democracy?”, in C. MUDDE and C. ROVIRA KALTWASSER (eds.), Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat of Corrective for Democracy?, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2012, p. 35. 9 Cas MUDDE, Populist Radical Right…cit., p. 84. 1 2

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Flemish Parliament‟s seats1. One step farther, in France, the Front National set up in the „70s by Jean-Marie le Pen (who came in second in the presidential elections of 2002) and currently led by his daughter Marine, seems to have reverted its declining trend of the 2000s, scoring 12% of the national votes at the regional elections of 20102 and being ranked first in the electoral preferences for the upcoming elections this year as measured in polls of the 2013 autumn3. Across the English Channel, the hard eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) currently holds 12% of the European Parliament seats allocated to the Kingdom, whereas its leader has repeatedly expressed his support for outlawing Islamic headscarves in Europe, and one of its officials blatantly called Islam “a cancer which needs to be cured with radiation”4. Farther north, in Norway, a terrorist like the infamous Anders Behring Breivik, a self-proclaimed Crusader against cultural Marxism and Islam, does not simply appear ex nihilo, in a country where his opinions are not at least marginally shared. Italy‟s Lega Nord, that once “used to largely ignore the issue of religion”5, nowadays “plays a significant role in emphasising xenophobia against Islam” in the country6. In the German cultural realm, the Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs), whose former leader Jörg Haider had decreed already in the „90s that “the social order of Islam is opposed to our Western values” has abandoned its long-standing anticlerical position, to become one of the staunchest supporters of orthodox Catholicism7. In Germany, former Christian Democrat politician Rene Stadtkewitz recently founded the Liberty Party8 around his conviction that Islam is “the opposite of a free society”9. Finally, without exhausting the examples, Switzerland‟s Official website at http://www.vlaamsparlement.be/vp/index.html. The Telegraph, March 15, 2010 (at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7448051/Far-Right-National-Frontperforms-well-in-French-regional-elections.html). 3 The Guardian, Oct. 10, 2013 (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/10/french-polls-surgesupport-national-front). 4 Daily Mail, May 14, 2013 (at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324335/UKIP-councillor-EricKitson-said-Islam-cancer-racist-Facebook-page-step-down.html). 5 Cas MUDDE, Populist Radical Right…cit., p. 85. 6 Euro-Islam (http://www.euro-islam.info/country-profiles/italy/). 7 Cas MUDDE, Populist Radical Right…cit., pp. 84, 85. 8 Whose website speaks for itself (http://diefreiheit.org/home/). 9 The National, Febr. 7, 2011 (http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/europe/new-german-anti-muslimparty-calls-islam-totalitarian). 1 2

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People Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei), which had gradually transformed itself from a conservative agrarian party into an exponent of the populist right1, has become in 2003 the country‟s strongest party and currently holds 54 of the National Council‟s 200 seats2. The last example brings me to the following, and by far more relevant, argument in favour of religious, mainly Islamophobic, populism having delivered the deathblow to the two secularisation versions. One might, considering electoral performances, argue that the above-listed examples are only marginal, of “extremist” parties, hence irrelevant to Western European societies. I argue that, aside from the relativity of interpreting electoral scores, Islamophobic populism has actually and critically been – in the phrasing of A. Kallis3 – “mainstreamed” from the extremes of the political spectrum to conventionally pro-system, mainstream parties and politicians. Switzerland‟s People Party offers, as said, a first relevant, but by no means singular, example of this trend. It was members of this governing party, together with members of the Federal Democratic Union, who launched a Constitutional revision initiative in 2007 towards prohibiting the construction of new mosque minarets in Switzerland, in what was to become popularly known as “the minaret controversy”. The origin of the crisis may be traced back to 2005, when the Turkish Cultural Association in Wangen bei Olten applied for the local construction of a minaret. The request was rejected by the local authorities, which determined the applicants to sue them and finally win their case before the Federal Supreme Court in July 2009. During this timeframe however, the crisis escalated gradually, both on the horizontal, and on the vertical, and in 2007 the aforementioned politicians set up a committee aiming at a Constitutional ban on building new minarets in Switzerland4. Noteworthy enough, opposition to the popular/populist initiative seemed generalised:

Simon BORNSCHIER, Cleavage Politics and the Populist Right…cit., p. 11. Party website at http://www.svp.ch/. 3 Aristotle KALLIS, “Breaking Taboos and „Mainstreaming the Extreme‟: The Debates on Restricting Islamic Symbols in Contemporary Europe”, in Ruth WODAK, Majid KHOSRAVINIK, and Brigitte MRAL (eds.) Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse, Bloomsburry Publishing, London and New York, 2013, pp. 55-70. 4 Other than those already existing (i.e in Zürich, Geneva, Winterthur, and, since 2009, the one in Wangen bei Olten). 1 2

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not only did both the federal Executive1 and the Legislative2 recommend the rejection of the legislative project, but the initiative was extensively criticised by various NGOs, lawyers3, Catholic bishops4 and essentially all locally represented religious institutions, aside from dozens of repudiations at the international level. However, consonant with populism‟s elites versus the people dialectic, some journalists suggestively labelled the controversy under the title “When the state doesn‟t understand the people anymore”5 in trying to somehow explain why the initiative maintained its procedural course, despite the establishment‟s opposition, and why the November 29, 2009 was – for some observers “shocking and largely unexpected”6 – eventually approved by a national majority of 57.5% of the votes (that is over a million and a half voters)7, given a total turnout of 53.4%. Among the international reactions, aside from the enthusiastic and predictable greetings of the result by right-wing European populists (e.g. the French Front National, the Belgian Vlaams Belang, the Danish People‟s Party, the Italian Lega Nord, the Dutch Partij voor de Virjheid), some of the European leaders were not at all unitary in condemning the ban. Within EU‟s Franco-German nucleus for instance, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner denounced the referendum as an “expression of intolerance”8, but president Sarkozy however fatefully asserted: “Instead of irrevocably condemning the Swiss People, let‟s also try to understand what it sought to express and

See the press release of the Federal Department of Justice and Police (August 27, 2008) at http://www.ejpd.admin.ch/ejpd/en/home/dokumentation/mi/2008/2008-08-27.html. 2 See the press release of the Federal Assembly (March 27, 2009) at http://www.parlament.ch/d/mm/2009/Seiten/mm-spk-s-2009-03-27.aspx. 3 SwissInfo, July 8, 2008 (http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng//Specials/Islam_and_Switzerland/Minaret_vote/Voters_to_decide_on_con troversial_minaret_ban.html?cid=668762). 4 SwissInfo, Sept. 10, 2009 (http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news_digest/Catholic_bishops_oppose_minaret_ban.html?cid=1007632). 5 Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 17, 2010 (http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/minarett-verbot-wenn-der-staatdas-volk-nicht-mehr-versteht-1.133875). 6 Aristotle KALLIS, “Breaking Taboos…cit.” p. 62. 7 Official results on the Federal Council‟s website, at http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/va/20091129/det547.html. 8 Deutsche Welle, Nov. 30, 2009 (http://www.dw.de/european-politicians-react-to-swiss-minaret-ban/a4946616-1). 1

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what so many peoples in Europe, including the French, feel”1. Similarly, in Germany, senior (governing) CDU member Wolfgang Bosbach rejected criticism of the result as “counterproductive” and attributed it to a growing fear of Islamisation which “must be taken seriously”2. These aren‟t mere marginal reactions of insignificant extremists, but convictions openly expressed by leaders of the governing parties within EU‟s “heart”. Moreover, and not at all alarmist, the referendum might have set up a trend; both Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Pia Kjaersgaard (leader of the Danish People‟s Party) announced they would press their governments towards organising similar referendums3. The second category of examples also started from Switzerland, but already entered the space of the European Union, and refers to the wearing of Islamic headscarves in public institutions, especially state schools. In its significance captured by a constitutionalist, “the emergence of the constitutional issue of the hijab in the decisions of European courts indicates the expansion of a problem that had seemed to be confined to the extra-European area”4. It all started in the 1990s from a Muslim female teacher in Châteaine (Swiss canton Geneva) whose case eventually reached the European Court of Human Rights, which upheld the decision of Swiss authorities5 and thus diagnosed an “imaginary disease” to which it also prescribed an “antidote”6. This case too shows signs of “mainstreaming”. In neighbouring France, where the state does not officially recognise religious minorities, only citoyens, the same problem arose on the public agenda in 2003, when the “Stasi commission” successfully recommended the political authorities the adoption of a ban on wearing religious symbols in schools, the main target being the hijab, and its “collateral victims” the Jewish kipot and “large” Christian The Telegraph, Dec. 8, 2009 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/6761632/Nicolas-Sarkozy-defends-Swissminaret-ban.html). 2 See note 116. 3 RFERL, Nov. 30, 2009 (http://www.rferl.org/content/Danish_Dutch_Populist_Parties_Want_Referendum_On_Minaret_Ban/189 1427.html) 4 Ioan STANOMIR, “Libertate, politică şi religie: câteva observaţii introductive”, in Camil Ungureanu (coord.), Religia în democraţie: O dilemă a modernităţii, Polirom, Iaşi, 2011, p. 401. 5 ECHR website, “Dahlab vs. Switzerland” (http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=00122643#{"itemid":["001-22643"]}) 6 Camil UNGUREANU, “Introducere - Religia în spaţiul public european: dileme şi conflicte”, in C. Ungureanu (coord.), Religia în democraţie. O dilemă a modernităţii, Polirom, Iaşi, 2011, p. 8. 1

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crosses1. Eventually, in April 2011, the French authorities extended the ban on both facecovering and full-body covering versions (niqabs and burqas) in all public circumstances. In what might signal an incipient domino effect, Belgium followed three months later, whereas a similar bill in the Netherlands was almost adopted in 2012, only to be temporarily dropped following the government collapse2. The third and, for reasons of parsimony, last case selected here refers to what has been labelled EU‟s “most difficult enlargement ever”3, specifically to the autumn 2004 public Europe-wide controversy on whether to open or not accession negotiations with Turkey at the December European Council of the same year. Although in most of the cases, EU officials framed the issue in neutral, structural-technical terms, the Huntington-inspired “civilizational” dimension was quite often a strident one, not only in mass media comments, but also in the statements of political leaders, especially – sic – Christian Democrats, former and incumbent. Similar for instance to CDU and European Parliament member Wolfgang Bosbach, who warned that Turkey‟s membership would “completely change the EU‟s structure”4, the at that moment European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Frits Bolkestein, feared that if Turkey were to join, the EU would “implode”5; he nevertheless added that the EU had already become “more Muslim”, warned of an – expressis verbis – “Islamisation of Europe” and its “loss of identity” and even expressed his fear that the 1683 relief of Vienna might have been “in vain”6. Among the supporters of negotiation opening, the EU Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, nevertheless framed the issue in the same religious terms when he warned that a new refusal would “send a message to the Islamic world

Ahmet T. KURU, “Passive and Assertive Secularism: Historical Conditions, Ideological Struggles, and State Policies towards Religion”, World Politics, Vol. 59, 2007, p. 568; UNGUREANU, op. cit., p. 9. 2 Huffington Post, Sept. 18, 2013 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/veil-bans-bycountry_n_3949110.html). 3 Ioannis N. GRIGORIADIS, “Turkey‟s Accession to the European Union: Debating the Most Difficult Enlargement Ever”, SAIS Review of International Affairs, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2006, pp. 147-160. 4 Hurriyet, Sept. 9, 2004 (http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=eu-risks-muslimanger-if-turkey-kept-out-2004-09-09). 5 The Guardian, Sept. 8, 2004 (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/08/turkey.eu). 6 The Guardian, Sept. 22, 2004, la http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/22/eu.turkey. 1

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which confirms much of what many people think about the inevitable clash of civilizations”1. Outside the European political leadership, the opposition‟s tone rapidly radicalised, the prospect of Turkey‟s accession being deemed in a variety of terms spreading from “unrealistic” (e.g. former German chancellor Helmuth Schmidt) to “disastrous” (e.g. former German foreign minister “Joschka” Fischer2). Relevantly, even the soon-to-be Pope, at that moment influential Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, joined the debate; recurrently stating his conviction that Europe is not a mere geographic reality, but “a cultural and historical concept” with Christian roots3, he stated that “Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe”4. True enough, the European Council eventually voted in favour of opening accession talks, but public statements as the ones listed above, as to the previous two types of cases, suggest an revitalised and widespread awareness of religious collective identities which seems to have been exploited not only by marginal right-wing populists, but, increasingly so, by what would normally be considered mainstream politicians. Restrictive measures against the right of European Muslims to dress up in public in accordance with their religious prescriptions and the obstruction of their very right to free religious practice by banning the building of minarets is proof of anything but the tolerant, liberal and enlightened spirit the European political construction so frequently claimed to be its defining, foundational characteristic. As for the specific case of Turkey‟s EU integration, considering not only recent evolution both within the EU, and in Turkey, but also the very fact that the country first applied for associate membership to

See note 126. In the same sense, Turkish newspaper Sabah had expressed already in 1997 the deep belief of many Turkish citizens that “Christian-Democrats were trying to isolate Turkey because of religious biases” (http://www.fas.org/man/nato/national/97031401rmr.htm). 2 The New York Times, Oct. 9, 2004 (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/news/09ihtglobalist_ed3__1.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0). 3 Joseph RATZINGER, “Europa. Bazele ei spirituale, astăzi, mâine”, in Camil Ungureanu (coord.), Religia în democraţie: O dilemă a modernităţii, Polirom, Iaşi, [2004] 2011, p. 199ff. 4 Times of Malta, Aug. 22, 2004, italics added. (http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20040822/religion/ratzingers-no-toturkey.114465#.UtPxodJdUVA). 1

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the European Economic Community more than half a century ago (more precisely in 1959), one might safely argue that accession could be procrastinated sine die.

4. CONCLUSION To sum up the argument, two apparently unrelated trends manifested at different levels of analysis during the last two-three decades have eventually met in a phenomenon which I consider at least a serious dubitation, if not a frontal and definitive rebuttal of the secularisation meta-narrative that has dominated social sciences for almost three centuries. On the one hand, at the systemic level, no well-intended scholar can any longer dispute what has been frequently labelled as a “global resurgence of religion”. Not aware of the peripheral role secularists had prophetically prescribed it, religion seems to not merely resist, but often actually “thrive”1 in the contemporary public realm. As such, the long-standing consensus around the classic secularisation paradigm rapidly crumbled down starting with the beginning of the 1990s, and nowadays more and more sociologists of religion speak of a “desecularisation”2 or “resacralisation”3 of the world. Nevertheless, “neosecularists”, visibly discomforted by the variability of individual religiosity in space and time, have been barricading themselves for about two decades behind the “macro” version of secularisation, which quintessentially maintains the declining scope of the religious faith in the public realm – a thesis that remained mainly unchallenged at least in its narrow reference to Western Europe, the cradle of Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, and Enlightenment, and subsequently the very “heart” of secularity. On the other hand, and apparently disjointedly, the sub-systemic continental level of Europe, especially in its Western part, witnessed over the same timeframe a gradual re-emergence of right-wing populism, in a reaction to what has become known as

N.J. DEMERATH, III., “Secularization and Sacralization Deconstructed and Reconstructed”, in James A. BECKFORD and N.J. DEMERATH III. (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Sage Publications, London, 2007, p. 57. 2 Peter L. BERGER, (ed.) The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics , William B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, MI, 1999. 3 N.J. DEMERATH, III., “Secularization and Sacralization…cit.”, p. 66. 1

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the “democratic deficit” of the European Union, and at a larger scale, a generalised disillusionment with the secular (post-) modernity. Purely secular and of strict politicaleconomic nature in its beginnings, this new populism however quickly embraced a religious dimension and became almost exclusively Islamophobic, pari passu with increasing Muslim immigration rates registered throughout Western Europe. This Islamophobia is religious populism by all employable criteria: it is descriptively collectivist, normatively antagonistic, explicatively oriented against political elites and liberal intellectuals and prescriptively advocates an ousting of the political leadership by duly servants of the religiously defined people‟s will. Furthermore, it is constitutively antimodernist, organisationally fluid and exploits the passions and emotions of its adherents. Finally – and therein lies the coup de grâce delivered to the neosecularist theory – out of a pragmatic fear of alienating (more) voters, this Islamophobic subtype of religious populism, initially confined to a few marginal and electorally irrelevant parties and political leaders, seems to have been increasingly “mainstreamed” from the periphery to the very pro-establishment medium segment of the political spectrum. Not only do “traditional” religious populists score increasingly higher scores in national elections, but, when it comes to issues such as Islamic headscarves, the building of mosque minarets, or Turkey‟s seemingly never-ending EU accession story, the mainstream public political discourse displays a vivid religious dimension, one regrettably often undeniably and stridently Islamophobic. Religion in the very fief of secularity thus seems rather synchronised to evolutions worldwide, on a trend of genuine “deprivatisation”1 instead of the privatisation neosecularists so often prophesied.

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BADERTSCHER, John M., Gordon HARLAND, Roland E. MILLER, Religious Studies in Manitoba and Saskatchewan: A State-of-the-Art Review, Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, Wilfried Laurier University Press, Toronto; Waterloo, ON, 1993. BERGER, Peter L., (ed.) The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, William B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, MI, 1999. BERGER, Peter L., The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Anchor Books, New York, 1967. BEYER, Peter F. “Social Forms of Religion and Religions in Contemporary Global Society”, in Michelle DILLON (ed.), Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003. BLACK, Cyril Edwin, The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History, Harper & Row, New York, 1966. BORNSCHIER, Simon, Cleavage Politics and the Populist Right: The New Cultural Conflict in Western Europe, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA, 2010. BRUCE, Steve, Secularization: In Defense of an Unfashionable Theory, Oxford University Press, 2011. BRUCE, Steve, “What the Secularization Paradigm Really Says”, in Manuel FRANZMANN, Christel GÄRTNER, Nicole KÖCK (eds.), Religiosität in der

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WILLAIME, Jean-Paul, “Religion in Ultramodernity”, in James A. BECKFORD and John WALLISS (eds.), Theorising Religion. Classical and Contemporary Debates, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006, pp. 77-89. WILSON, Bryan R., “The Secularization Thesis: Criticism and Rebuttals,” in Rudi LAERMAN, Bryan R. WILSON and Jaak BILLIET (eds.), Secularization and Social Integration: Papers in Honor of Karel Dobbelaere, Leuven University Press, Leuven, 1998, pp. 45-66. WILSON, Bryan R., Religion in Sociological Perspective, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982. WILSON, Bryan R., Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment, C.A. Watts, London, 1966. WORSLEY, Peter, “The Concept of Populism”, in Ghiţă IONESCU and Ernest GELLNER (eds.), Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1969, pp. 212-250. WUTHNOW, Robert, Experimentation in American Religion: the New Mysticisms and their Implications for the Churches, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1978. YATES, Joshua J., “The Resurgence of Jihad and the Specter of Religious Populism”, SAIS Review of International Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2007, pp. 127-144.

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Could Speaking for the People Often Mean Lying to the People? Populism and the Problem of Truth Dragoş DRAGOMAN Department of Political Science, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu Abstract: The recent developments in Romanian politics have raised a

series of questions related to the special relationship between populists and the people. How could one explain that populists are no longer popular? One explanation put forward here is that politics, and especially populism, bear a moral component that affects the political system, in that populists turn democracy into what Sartori would label as “demolatry”. This means that populists keep speaking for the people, but with no real attention paid to the people, and finally, with a total despise for the real people. This changing context, with the populist leader challenging the established power system by mobilising dissatisfied citizens only to accommodate and successfully integrate the power structures previously challenged, and the subsequent moves against the real people, is exemplified for the period between 2008 and 2012, when the populists consolidated in power and were finally and ironically challenged by the people. Keywords: populism, democracy, legitimacy, violence, truth.

Far from being a clear scientific concept, populism has become an integral part of polemical rhetoric. Loaded with negative connotations, populism has no shared scientific definition, as it touches a wide range of social, political and moral issues1. Despite its vagueness and multidimensionality, acknowledged by the majority of political researchers, what is at stake here is its moral component. How could one otherwise explain why populism has been assimilated with a pathology, a syndrome, yet it continues 1

Margaret CANOVAN, Populism, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1981.

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to be largely supported by significant shares of voters in many developed countries1. The way populist movements conceive people and speak for the people, how they define their social bases and represent them form one of the most intriguing moral issues in contemporary politics. In fact, populism‟s ambiguous relationship with the real people is less related to the range of promises and actions, but rather to the moral values it claims to embed and defend. The aim of this article is to explore the moral dimension of the linkage between populist politicians and the people that support them and to exemplify the ambiguous concept of “people” by a series of claims and actions of populists in Romania. Of course, this is not a pledge for morality in politics, as one could argue that such a claim is just a wish. At the same time, this is neither a legitimation of the unscrupulous use of persuasion and brutal use of power, otherwise it could have been published in the previous issue of the journal that celebrates Machiavelli‟s seminal writing. It is rather an attempt to clarify the essential relationship between populists and the people that lies in the core of the populist ethos, with the rapid change between adulating the supporting people and despising, mocking and repressing the opposing people. Using people in order to fight populists‟ political adversaries, depicted as rogue elites acting against ordinary people, then consolidating in power and repressing the same people, is at the heart of recent populism in Romania. The political schizophrenia, the ambivalent boundary between legitimation and abuse, electoral campaign promises and the exercise of real power, ideal representation and real political constraints, all raise the question of truth in politics. In the end, can speaking for the people often imply lying to the people? In an insightful article, Schmitter argues that we have to take into account both vices and virtues of populism2. On the one hand, populists dissolve partisan loyalties and rational choices among various political programmes without replacing them with something of their own, they recruit uniformed persons with no clear political preferences and who look for emotional rather than programmatic political satisfactions,

Yannis PAPADOPOULOS, “National-populism in Western Europe: An Ambivalent Phenomenon”, Institut d‟Etudes Politiques et Internationales, Université de Lausanne, [http://www.unil.ch/webdav/site/iepi/users/epibiri1/public/papadopoulos1.pdf] (accessed 28 January 2014). 2 Philippe C. SCHMITTER, “A Balance Sheet of the Vices and Virtues of „Populisms”, Romanian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2007, pp. 5-11. 1

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they make promises and raise expectations that generally cannot be fulfilled, they identify aliens and alien powers as scapegoats for their own political failures and, most important of all, they can undermine democracy by the support provided by the army or security forces, which make their democratic removal from office unlikely. On the other hand, populist politicians and parties help destructure sclerotic party loyalties and dissolve party coalitions that are based on secret agreements, and they recruit and mobilise previously apathetic persons. By focusing on disparate and hidden political issues, they help articulate previously neglected cleavages and demands; they replace political immobilism and widen the range of possible political solutions to collective problems. The purpose of this article, which takes its evidence from Romanian politics following the 2004 campaign, is not to prove that pre-campaign promises differ by and large from post-campaign policies. This is somehow common and is not connected exclusively with populist practices. What is specific to populism is the struggle against power elites allegedly grouped into cartels1, the appeal to the “pure people” against the “corrupt elites”2, and its self-proclaimed mission to protect people from those elites, by removing all intermediate liberal democratic institutions that mediate representation and by directly speaking for the people3. Thus populists persistently purport to promote direct democracy and channel social discontent against elites whom they depict as hostile to ordinary people4. Whereas populism may in fact help remove political immobilism by articulating neglected cleavages and demands, as Schmitter argues, it is the very mechanism of speaking for the people that raises the moral question of how populists imagine people and how much people value for populists themselves. Since populists use emotional, simplistic, and manipulative discourses directed at the “gut feelings” of the people, or put Daniele ALBERTAZZI, Duncan MCDONNELL (eds.), Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2007; Eric JONES, “Populism in Europe”, SAIS Review, Vol. XXVII, No. 1, pp. 37-47; Linda BOS, Wouter VAN DER BRUG, Claes DE VREESE, “How the Media Shape Perceptions of Right-Wing Populist Leaders,” Political Communication, Vol. 28, No. 1

2, 2011, pp. 182-206. 2 Cas MUDDE, “The populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, Vol. 32, No. 3, 2004, pp. 541-563. 3 Bojan BUGARIC, “Populism, Liberal Democracy, and the Rule of Law in Central and Eastern Europe”, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2008, pp. 191-203. 4 Ivan KRASTEV, “The Strange Death of the Liberal Consensus”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 18, No. 4, 2007, pp. 56-63; Eric JONES, “Populism in Europe…cit.”.

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in place opportunistic policies aimed at “buying” the support of the people1, the question seems pertinent. Moreover, as disclosed by the Romanian case-study, persistently claiming to speak for the people may turn into what Sartori would label a “demolatry”, a permanent discussion about the people with no real attention paid to the people, and finally, a total despise for the real people2. The changing attitude towards people, who turns from a very source of legitimacy into a bitter political enemy, lies at the heart of populist politics in Romania between 2004 and 2014.

1. SPEAKING FOR THE PEOPLE: “THEY STAND BY THEM, WE STAND BY YOU!” In Romania, as in other countries in the region, populism largely consolidated in power by exploiting people‟s legitimate expectations for political change, fairness, transparency and accountability. Confronted with difficult negotiations for joining the European Union that exposed its multiple weaknesses, Romania was preparing in 2004 for a general electoral campaign. By promising a more acerbic fight against endemic corruption and state institutions‟ inefficiency, Traian Băsescu (president of Romania since 2004) and his party, the populist Democrat Party (PDL), won the 2004 elections under the banner of state reinvigoration, modernisation and constitutional reform. This electoral victory marks the beginning of an alliance between populists and the people which is very clearly stated by the next electoral campaign slogan in 2008, “they stand by them, we stand by you!” Where “they” refers to the corrupt elite, “we” epitomises populists and “you” the supporting people. One cannot understand this campaign slogan with any reference to the populists‟ fight against political elites between 2004 and 2008. Often accused of pervasive corruption, the power elites are fought by populists everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe3. In Romania, those political and economic elites are seen as inheriting their Ivan KRASTEV, “The Strange Death…cit.”, p. 59. Giovanni SARTORI, A Theory of Democracy Revisited, Chatham House, New York, 1987. 3 Ilya PRIZEL, “Populism as a Political Force in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine”, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2000, pp. 54-63; András BOZÓKI, “Consolidation or Second Revolution? The Emergence of the New Right in Hungary”, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition 1 2

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influence from the previous power networks of the communist regime and are accused of outright ruling with the support of the judiciary system and of a large part of mass-media, which they actually own. By labelling parliament as the expression of the most corrupt and obsolete power elite, the courts of justice as the very expression of a privileged and disrespectful interest group and the free media as a pressure instrument used to manipulate the “people”, Romanian populists strongly emphasised these issues during their 2008 successful campaign. One cannot understand this campaign slogan with any reference to the populists‟ fight against political elites between 2004 and 2008. Often accused of pervasive corruption, the power elites are fought by populists everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe1. In Romania, those political and economic elites are seen as inheriting their influence from the previous power networks of the communist regime and are accused of outright ruling with the support of the judiciary system and of a large part of mass-media, which they actually own. By labelling parliament as the expression of the most corrupt and obsolete power elite, the courts of justice as the very expression of a privileged and disrespectful interest group and the free media as a pressure instrument used to manipulate the “people”, Romanian populists strongly emphasised these issues during their 2008 successful campaign. The failed impeachment consolidated the populists‟ claims of fighting corrupt power elites and strengthened the image of the president as a victorious hero. After the impeachment, the populists claimed that the parliament‟s allegedly privileged position had to be challenged through a new institutional design. Launching his counteroffensive by pitting his personal popularity against the low esteem for the parliament2, and according to his constitutional right to appoint referendums, the restored president called for a serious change in the composition of the parliament. A referendum was therefore settled Politics, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2008, pp. 191-231; Krzysztof JASIEWICZ, “The New Populism in Poland: The Usual Suspects?”, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 7-25. 1 Ilya PRIZEL, “Populism as a Political Force in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine”, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2000, pp. 54-63; András BOZÓKI, “Consolidation or Second Revolution? The Emergence of the New Right in Hungary”, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2008, pp. 191-231; Krzysztof JASIEWICZ, “The New Populism in Poland: The Usual Suspects?”, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 7-25. Cosmin G. MARIAN, Ronald F. KING, “Plus ça Change: Electoral Law Reform and the 2008 Romanian Parliamentary Elections”, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2010, pp. 7-18. 2

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out to accompany regular presidential elections in 2009. The wording of the referendum included the populists‟ proposal of reducing the number of MPs from 471 to no more than 300, and the passage to a mono-cameral representative body. The majority of the electors (50.16%) voted in favour of the referendum, accompanying a very small majority of voters who confirmed Traian Băsescu back in office. The 2008 successful campaign marks not only the vigorous advance of populism, but the strong professionalisation of electoral campaigning. Popular music, for instance, was acknowledged for its communication potential and seriously taken into account by populists as a valuable electoral vehicle in order to mobilise generally undereducated and disengaged young people. As those young people form a political target generally difficult to reach by ordinary means, as will be emphasised below, populists ingeniously used a very popular music genre in Romania, called “manele”1. Thus the privileged relationship between the populist leader and the people, in the early stages, is to be also found in popular music. As an essential social product, popular music offers compelling insights into the social world we live in. Popular music is a social sign because it creates an effect in the perceiver that is not only aesthetic, but also socially meaningful. Moreover, popular music is a sign because it appeals to the emotions of a generation, particularly a young generation2. Thus popular music is the bearer of cultural images and symbols that surround the music and generate a particular narrative3. It can act as any other vehicle carrying images and symbols in order to reach an objective. Popular music may also serve as vehicle for frustration, anger and protest against the established values and norms4, since music is probably the most appropriate way for young people to express not only

Dragoş DRAGOMAN, Sabina-Adina LUCA, Bogdan GHEORGHIŢĂ, Annamária KÁDÁR, “Popular music, social capital and the consolidation of public space in post-communist Romania”, Sociologie Românească, Vol. X, No. 2, 2012, pp. 113-133. 2 Jonathan MATUSITZ, “Semiotics of Music: Analysis of Cui Jian‟s „Nothing to My Name,‟ the Anthem for the Chinese Youths in the Post-Cultural Revolution Era”, The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2010, pp. 156-175. 3 Jon STRATTON, “Beyond Art: Postmodernism and the Case of Popular Music”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1989, pp. 31-57. 4 Theodor ADORNO, The Philosophy of Modern Music, Seabury, New York, 1980. 1

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their identity1, but their political knowledge and orientations, in indirect or more direct ways2. In our particular case, popular music is epitomised by “manele” (singular: “manea”), a series of widely popular songs that are considered to accurately express the citizens‟ social and political knowledge and orientations3. Those songs are widespread cultural items, especially among young people, since the beginning of the postcommunist transition in 1990. It is not at all unusual to hear “manele” in buses or in railway stations, in taxis or in restaurants. The general perspective emphasised by manele is gloomy, as it depicts remote social forces that tend to overwhelm marginal individuals. Those forces are conceived as an impersonal social environment largely defined by hatred, a general environment labelled as a “mean world”, where no one can be trusted and where marginal single individuals feel powerless. Whereas visible enemies work as a booster for social competition, with individuals strongly motivated to overcome and defeat their covetous enemies, the “mean world” is full of uncertainty. This is a gloomy world, where even close friends and allies may turn into bitter enemies, and where reigns the constant suspicion that close friends might attempt to outsmart, seduce and dupe. Covetous, ungrateful and misleading friends thus add new significance to the “mean world”, helping to intensify the powerlessness and hopelessness feeling. This is exactly the political environment exploited by populists in order to predicate the difference between the populist hero and his alleged enemies. It is worth noticing that, on the other hand, manele largely express a process of differentiation of the hero, the one who finally defeats its enemies and manages to overpass life‟s difficulties. In the predication process, the manele singer, who embodies the hero, generally portrays himself as “cooler”, cleverer, richer, more hard working. The difference is predicated by comparing the manale hero to his social rivals, who generally envy him for his social success. By translating this social pattern of rivalry into the political field, populists forged the image of the populist leader, the president Băsescu, Christine E. GRIFFIN, “The trouble with class: researching youth, class and culture beyond the „Birmingham School‟”, Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2011, pp. 245-259. 2 Ambrose LEUNG, Cheryl KIER, “Music preferences and civic activism of young people”, Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2008, pp. 445-460; Catherine BAKER, “Popular Music and Political Change in Post-Tudman Croatia: „It‟s All the Same, Only He‟s not Here?‟”, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 62, No. 10, 2010, pp. 1741-1759. 3 Dragoş DRAGOMAN et al., “Popular Music…cit.” 1

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who finally manages to overcome his political enemies and keeps fighting them once back in office, despite their attempt to impeach him. This image was constructed and spread out by means of various vehicles, including manele. In the “manea” (singular for “manele”) written for the 2008-2009 campaigns, the incumbent president Băsescu is portrayed as the true “people‟s” hero.1 This assertion of certain popularity is based in the “manea” on the first name of the president, which is Traian, emphasised in the text as a Latin name, echoing that of the Roman Emperor Trajan2. In connection with the gloomy social world put forward by this popular music genre, the populist hero is forced to experience once again the drama generally depicted by the “manele”. He is betrayed by his closest ally, namely by the prime-minister Tăriceanu, a rogue and ungrateful (former) “brother” that has been seduced with large sums of money by the president‟s worse enemies. Those enemies are, in fact, specific to Romanian populist discourses, and they are a number of interest groups. Since interest groups that allegedly attempt to control Romania are common place in the populists‟ discourse, it is not surprising to find them pointed out in the “manele” texts as president Băsescu‟s sworn enemies. They have thus plotted against him and unfairly attacked him from behind, while impeaching him in 2007. The special “manea” composed for accompanying PDL and president Băsescu‟s electoral campaigns in 2008-2009, is to be taken as the climax of populism, when the people was supporting the populist hero in his bitter fight against the people‟s enemies, regrouped under the large banner of interest groups plotting against ordinary people. In fact, “manele” strongly underline a dimension that is inherent to populists‟ discourse, namely the ultimate conflict with a terrible enemy. In their reductionist view, the institutional conflict of 2007 between democratic institutions, the parliament and the government, on the one hand, and the president, on the other hand, turned out to be a savage conflict for political survival. This is, in the end, how PDL‟s slogan is to be Florin BABOI, “Maneaua lui Băsescu” (“Băsescu‟s manea”). The subtitle of this „manea‟ reproduces exactly the slogan used in the 2004 campaign by then the challenger candidate Băsescu, which was “Long live well!” Later on, the president Băsescu declared that it was definitely a wish (as people make at birthdays or holidays) and not a promise. Only the people have to be blamed if they have taken it as a serious campaign promise (Romania Liberă, 6 January 2014, [http://m.romanialibera.ro/actualitate/politica/pentru-basescu-sa-traitibine-este-o-simpla-urare-si-acum-spun-oricui-din-toata-inima-229815.html], accessed on January 28, 2014). 2 The Romanian national anthem, dating from the 1848 Revolution, also refers to the historical origin of the Romanian people, starting with the Roman conquest in the second century AD by the emperor Trajan. 1

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understood, as the logic of the bitter conflict between “us” and „them‟ that spreads across the whole society, opposing the populists and “them”, the opposition parties in toxic alliance with a large array of interest groups, power elites and people‟s enemies.

2. CHALLENGING THE PEOPLE: THE ENEMY FROM WITHIN Following highly controversial presidential elections organised by his own party in government, Traian Băsescu was reconfirmed in office in 2009. This time, the supporting people were reduced to a narrow margin, but still enough to put him back in office1. Nevertheless, the previous relationship between the populist leader, strongly backed by his populist party, and the people was deteriorating rapidly, due to economic choices. Confronted with the alternative of increasing taxes for companies in order to support the state budget and keep the pace with public investment, the PDL government chose in May 2010 to adopt the hardest social cuts at that time in the European Union. In one fell swoop, the VAT increased by 25%, whereas salaries in the public sector suffered a 25% cut and pensions in the same public sector a 15% drop2. The move was long prepared with a large public campaign conducted by PDL denying any social cuts or tax increase. Although the law that was adopted by the PDL majority in the parliament for reducing pensions was considered anti-constitutional by the Constitutional Court and was finally withdrawn, the VAT increase and the severe cut of public salaries seriously undermined social security and fuelled deprivation3. Moreover, the pensions were Minutes after winning the second round of the presidential elections on a very narrow margin, the incumbent president Băsescu addressed his opponents: “Piece of cake! (I took a gun and) I shot them all!” (“Băsescu, la plecarea de la sediul PDL: “E un fleac, i-am ciuruit!”, România Liberă, 7 December 2009, [http://www.romanialibera.ro/actualitate/politica/basescu-la-plecarea-de-la-sediul-pdl-e-un-fleac-i-amciuruit-171866.html], accessed on 28 January 2014). 2 Although it was not a presidential prerogative, the cuts were made public by president Băsescu in a televised address. 3 The vote at the pension law was a fake, since the president of the Chamber of Deputies and a PDL leader, Roberta Anastase, counted more deputies voting in favour of the law than were actually present, stirring a huge public scandal (“Sfidare. O lege majoră de reformă este compromisă de scandaluri jenante. Negociere pe Legea pensiilor: fraudă contra şantaj”, România Liberă, 22 September 2010, [http://www.romanialibera.ro/actualitate/politica/negociere-pe-legea-pensiilor-frauda-contra-santaj200273.html], accessed on 28 January 2014). 1

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reduced by a flat tax of 16% on every pension surpassing a given threshold and by a supplementary social insurance tax of 15.5%. From then on, populists had to adopt a different strategy of coping with public demands. The first strategy was to divide the people by publically unmask a bitter enemy from within. Those to be pinpointed as enemies were employees in the public sector who constitute an unfair burden on the shoulders of the private sector. The enemies who were previously external to the people, namely corrupt elites and sinister interest groups, are now internal: doctors and nurses who unfairly demand higher salaries instead of leaving the country and working in foreign hospitals, teachers from Romanian schools who were producing but idiot graduates, desperate mothers with babies in their arms crying for unfair social benefits1. None of them deserve to benefit from public support, since they are not socially significant2. The second strategy was to compensate the loss in direct social benefits by promising essential indirect benefits from huge public investments, some of them in relation with campaign promises made back in 20083. When cutting the social aid for supporting mothers with children under the age of two, back in 2010, PDL promised a visible increase in the construction of new kindergartens. When the PDL government decided to close down dozens of public hospitals in 2011, it promised to turn every single

The declaration made by PDL leader in parliament, Mircea Toader, that all people killed by blizzard in one of the worse snowfalls in 2012 were no more than miserable drunk men, produced a vivid reaction of opposition parties (“Declaraţie şocantă a pedelistului Mircea Toader despre victimele frigului: Unul singur a murit în maşină, restul au băut şi au adormit acolo “, Gândul.info, http://www.gandul.info/stiri/declaratiesocanta-a-pedelistului-mircea-toader-despre-victimele-frigului-unul-singur-a-murit-in-masina-restul-au-bautsi-au-adormit-acolo-9232315, accessed on 28 January 2014). 2 In a televised interview, president Băsescu was annoyed by the shortage of qualified waiters and car repair personnel (" Premierul" Băsescu scrie şi programa şcolară: „De tinichigii şi mecanici avem nevoie. Noi facem filosofi, şi ăia neintegrabili în câmpul muncii”, Gândul.info, 14 June 2009, http://www.gandul.info/stiri/premierulbasescu-scrie-si-programa-scolara-de-tinichigii-si-mecanici-avem-nevoie-noi-facem-filosofi-si-aianeintegrabili-in-campul-muncii-4549799, accessed on 28 January2014). 3 During the electoral campaign, the PDL leader economist, Theodor Stolojan, former prime-minister, set up a number of targets for the governing period, including essential increase of public salaries from a mean of 450 up to 905 euro, of public pensions from a mean of 160 up to 405 euro and no less than 836 km of brand new highways (“Stolojan: Program de guvernare cu trei scenarii. În cel mai rău caz, creștere economică de 4%”, Ziarul Financiar, 4 November 2008, [http://www.zf.ro/zf-24/stolojan-program-de-guvernare-cu-treiscenarii-in-cel-mai-rau-caz-crestere-economica-de-4-3429067/], accessed on 28 January 2014). 1

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hospital into a special unit for elderly care. In the spring of 2012, when the last PDL government was dismissed by the parliament, there were hardly a couple of kindergartens and hospitals turned into social care units and less than 100 kilometres of motor highways. The investments were turned instead into very controversial and costly projects of sports and tourist facilities, including a new tourist national branding campaign and several football pitches in rural country-side1. No green-field general hospitals or significant brand new sports arenas were actually built. The accusations of widespread official corruption, made by the independent Romanian media and experts against high government officials, including the head of the Fiscal National Agency and the minister of Youth in the PDL government2, were largely reflected by the public opinion. The Transparency International Corruption Perception Index for Romania indicates setbacks in 2011 and 2010, as compared to 2009 and 2008. The last option taken by populists was to finally confront the people by denying its legitimate right to inquire into and express on public issues.

3. DESPISING THE REAL PEOPLE: DENYING PEOPLE’S LEGITIMATE POWER The beginning of 2011 was marked by one of the tensest situations involving populists and the people, once taken as the ultimate source of their legitimacy. The public protests sparking in the major Romanian cities were the most unusual scene for populists, namely facing the real people.3 Whereas confronted by people in the streets, PDL

Due to serious financial misconducts, the European Commission decided in 2012 to suspend payments for a great number of projects supervised by the Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism during the 2010-2011 period. 2 Laura ŞTEFAN, Dan TAPALAGĂ, Sorin IONIŢĂ, “Romania”, in Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2010: Democratization from Central Europe to Eurasia, Washington DC, 2010, pp. 413-431. 3 The protest originated in Târgu-Mureş, where people descended in the streets in February 2011 in order to defend doctor Raed Arafat, a sub-secretary of state in the Health Ministry, publically humiliated and threatened by president Băsescu when he dared to oppose PDL‟s plans to privatise the emergency services in Romania. Although he was not prime-minister, president Băsescu threatened Raed Arafat with his removal from office. The abuse triggered an unprecedented wave of protest in dozens of cities in Romania that lasted for months. Băsescu‟s propensity to meddle in government‟s affairs and encroach upon the prime minister‟s 1

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retrenched in parliament and let police and the security forces to deal with demonstrators. Using the government‟s right to automatically pass laws by assuming its responsibility, the PDL government adopted the most controversial laws concerning the judicial reform, education, health and social care systems by means of the automatic legiferation. Although it is not illegal, this mechanism used no less than 13 times by PDL was set to avoid public debate on the matter. Moreover, the access of ordinary citizens was restricted, despite their constitutional right to attend the parliament‟s sessions. It was customary as citizens attend important parliament sessions from the balcony of the plenary session room. Despising its own deputies, who have been elected in order to represent citizens from electoral constituencies, PDL decided in 2010 that MPs were not allowed anymore to stand up, express their views or vote in parliament votes of confidence, in favour of or against the government1. They were forced to be seated and wait for the end of the plenary session, which generally ended with the defeat of the opposition and the confirmation of the PDL government in office. The most extreme decision against MPs was taken in April 2012, when many PDL elected deputies and senators were not allowed to enter the plenary session room and vote, following another responsibility assumed by the government. To complicate furthermore the tense relationship between the populists and the real people, which seriously questioned the populists‟ legitimate role of speaking for the people when the real people opposed them, the second time when the parliament suspended the president witnessed the quest for the answer at the meaningful question who and where the people was. What “people” really means for populists, since the people do no longer support populists in office? Back in 2007, the president Băsescu was activities is partially due to his personality, with a high need for power and direct control over policy areas, combined with a low cognitive complexity (see Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MISCOIU, “The Failure of Cohabitation: Explaining the 2007 and 2012 Institutional Crises in Romania”, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2013, pp. 668-684). 1 This move was made in order to avoid unpleasant situations that sometimes occurred during the confidence vote, while a very limited number of PDL MPs overtly voted against their government. This was the case of deputy Teo Trandafir, former TV star, who overtly confronted PDL‟s decision to censor MPs political expression and turned her protest vote into a show-case (“Moţiunea de cenzură a fost respinsă. Guvernul rămâne în funcţie, salariile şi pensiile scad”, România Liberă, 15 June 2010, [http://www.romanialibera.ro/actualitate/politica/motiunea-de-cenzura-a-fost-respinsa-guvernul-ramane-infunctie-salariile-si-pensiile-scad-190215.html], accessed on 28 January 2014).

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put back in office with people voting “no” to the referendum for dismissal, with no concern regarding the participation threshold. In order to secure his second presidential mandate, the PDL majority voted in parliament a change to the law regarding the referendum and imposed an absolute majority as threshold for the referendum‟s validation. For then on, it would be enough for a president to be elected by a mere simple majority, but not enough to be dismissed. The legitimacy of the president can derive from a simple majority, yet the people are not legitimate to remove the same president from office unless it converges into a qualified majority. The definition of “people” and the way the president Băsescu addressed this people were at the heart of the political dispute in 2012. When the parliament suspended him for the second time, in regular plenary session, he condemned the move and labelled it as a coup. Despite protests from some European officials and politicians from several EU states who embraced the allegations, the president was forced to confront the real people. Before the parliament‟s decision, he made an appeal to his electorate to keep on supporting him and to vote into a future referendum, since he would not desire to be put back in office by a Constitutional Court decision that would have invalidated the referendum, due to the lack of qualified majority at the polls1. When finally suspended, he made a televised appeal for the boycott of the referendum, viewed as a sinister coup against democracy and even against Europe itself2. Following the referendum that surprised by the large participation, compared to regular elections, the Constitutional Court decided that the presence was not sufficient and invalidated the referendum, putting the president Băsescu back in office. The Court founded its decision on an essential democratic question: who is the people? According

In another televised interview, the president Băsescu warned PDL not to adopt resolutions calling for the boycott of the referendum. Otherwise, he would split from PDL and present solely to confront the people at the referendum (“PDL decide marţi dacă boicotează referendumul”, România Liberă, 23 July 2012, [http://www.romanialibera.ro/actualitate/eveniment/pdl-decide-marti-daca-boicoteaza-referendumul271243.html], accessed on 28 January 2014). 2 The boycott appeal was to be renewed on the day preceding the referendum. It was especially directed towards the ethnic Hungarian population in Transylvania, whose party (the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania – DAHR) was PDL‟s strong political ally in parliament during the 2009-2012 period. Both PDL and DAHR are members of the European People‟s Party (“Băsescu: Îndemn românii să nu se prezinte la vot la referendum”, cotidianul.ro, 25 July 2012, [http://www.cotidianul.ro/basescu-indemnromanii-sa-nu-se-prezinte-la-vot-la-referendum-189599/], accessed on 28 January 2014). 1

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to Sartori, the people can be defined as the totality of citizens or as a majority, expressing accurately enough its sovereignty1. In order to calculate the threshold majority, the Court decided to use the available public data of the 2002 general official census2. Based on this benchmark, the presence acknowledged by the Court counted for only 46%. The Court refused to take into account any other legal, practical or sociological consideration, namely the severe demographic drop of the overall population and high figures of emigration, with millions of people establishing their permanent residence in Western Europe, especially in Spain, Italy, France and Germany, making thus impossible to expect them to vote in large shares in a referendum. Although legal, the Court‟s decision frustrated the overwhelming share of citizens voting for the president‟s dismissal (more than 7.4 million people, almost 90% of those who voted) and shed new light on the relationship between populists and the real people. As emphasised by Sartori, the demolatry turns “people” into a fiction, with no concern for the real people. Following the Court‟s final decision, president Băsescu praised in an official televised statement the victory of the democracy and of those who did not express their views by refraining from voting3. Moreover, he accused widespread irregularities in casting the ballots and pinpointed his adversaries‟ misconduct, who allegedly falsified no less than 2 million votes4. The judicial subsequent tribulations, including the penal inquiries against hundreds of peasants who were accused of electoral misconduct, are to be seen as the president‟s struggle to overcome a democratic

Giovanni SARTORI, A Theory of Democracy Revisited…cit. Though conducted in 2011, the new census‟ data were not made public by the PDL government. When finally presented to the public in 2013, it made clear that the Court used a wrong benchmark when invalidating the 2012 referendum on the basis of the 2002 official census. 3 The Venice Commission, an institution of the Council of Europe, used this case to strengthen its recommendations for Council‟s member states not to use legal thresholds to referendums, since a scant minority of 2% could overrule a 49% majority, if it decides to boycott a referendum which is validated by absolute majority. 4 These figures were also put forward by Laura C. Kovesi, the General Prosecutor, who started a countrywide penal campaign against voters suspected to have irregularly casted their ballots. Although several thousands of people have been inquired, especially in the rural country-side, very few cases of fraud were finally judged. The move was rather made in order to support the president‟s effort to restore his legitimacy, tarnished by the massive 7.4 million votes asking for his removal from office. 1 2

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contradiction: how to safeguard legitimacy and to conciliate a 5.2 million vote in his favour back in 2009, with a crashing 7.4 million in favour of his dismissal1.

4. POPULISM AND THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH: A CONCLUSION The problem of truth that is addressed here is not a moral claim, as underlined since the beginning of the article. Hence it is not about morality in politics, which is a difficult issue when it comes to deal with real politics. This is only about how populists conceive people as the very source of direct and true democracy, and the subsequent uses (and misuses) of “people” for political legitimation, when “demolatry” turns people from a democratic principle into a neglected category. Speaking for the people thus leads to neglect and despise the “people”, populism becoming a permanent discussion about the people, with no real attention paid to the people. This conundrum lies at the very heart of democratic politics. By contrasting democracy with personal dictatorship, Canovan underlines the threats that occur when democracy becomes more and more inclusive2. The democratic paradox is a contradiction between “bringing the people into politics” and “taking politics to the people”. The more successful is the inclusion, the harder is for particular individuals to figure out the location of power and the path conducing to it. And ideology, which reduces the complexity of politics to dogmatic simplicity, is ill-fitted here to deal with the paradox, despite the fact it is essential for mass-politics. Finally, because the ideology of democracy is full of populist themes that stress the sovereignty and the rule of the general will against compromise and accommodation, collective unity against individual diversity, majority against minorities, directness against mediation,

This democratic dilemma could also be seen as a failed recall, a failure of direct democracy in competition with elected officials fighting for their seats (Mark BALDASSARE, “The Role of Public Opinion on the California Governor‟s Recall in 2003: Populism, Partisanship, and Direct Democracy”, American Politics Research, Vol. 33, No. 2, 2005, pp. 163-186). This is a situation which does not fit with populist leader‟s image of someone proud of never having been defeated in popular elections (Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MISCOIU, “The Failure of Cohabitation…cit.”, p. 681). 2 Margaret CANOVAN, “Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy”, in Yves MÉNY, Yves SUREL (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002, pp. 2544. 1

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simplicity against political complexity, this is a standing invitation for populists1. This is the perfect situation for populists to demand the restoration of democracy that has been betrayed by elites and interest groups and to mobilise dissatisfied citizens. In fact, populism can be conceptualised as a way of political practice, as populist mobilisation2. Unchallenged by democratic forces, populists can easily use this invitation to consolidate in power, undermine representative institutions, and decisively attack their political rivals. Finally, they even manage to recombine existing and novel political and social resources and to accommodate the claim for direct democracy with the most hegemonic neoliberalism, thus re-conciliating irreconcilable factors as populism, nationalism and harsh neo-liberalism3. The recombinant populism in Romania has finally shown how speaking for the people, there is forging an image of directness and transparency, can happily coexist with profound neo-liberalism, by turning the “people” from the very source of any legitimacy into a neglected category at the periphery of a system based on the need for power, pure personal will, high-official corruption and opaque business interests. Although winning the elections as embodying the hero challenging the established political order4, as all populists generally do when people do not trust institutions,5 populists in Romania have rapidly accommodated and successfully integrated the power structures previously challenged6. It soon became obvious that the real people would benefit no more of real Ibidem, p. 26. Robert S. JANSEN, “Populist Mobilization: A New Theoretical Approach to Populism”, Sociological Theory, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 75-96. 3 This victory of populism on the ground of the political left, which could have led the struggle against neoliberalism after the beginning of the economic crisis, is to seriously inquire into the solidity of the left and the essential political damages done by the hegemonic neoliberal ideology in Central and Eastern Europe (see Stuart SHIELDS, “Neoliberalism Redux: Poland‟s Recombinant Populism and Its Alternatives”, Critical Sociology, published online before print October 15, 2013, doi:10.1177/0896920513501349). 4 Robert F. KING, Paul E. SUM (eds.), Romania under Basescu: Aspirations, Achievements, and Frustrations during His First Presidential Term, Lexington Books, Lanham, 2011. 5 David DOYLE, “The Legitimacy of Political Institutions: Explaining Contemporary Populism in Latin America”, Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 44, No. 11, pp. 1447-1473. 6 Asked about the rapid and contradictory changes, president Băsescu claimed that he has been forced to thoroughly “re-evaluate” people and contexts. For example, he strongly supported politically Gabriel Oprea as vice prime-minister, although he had previously referred to him as the “chief mafioso” of former primeminister Adrian Năstase cabinet between 2000 and 2004. 1 2

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attention and that any conflict opposing the people and the new establishment would be solved with a clear preference for the establishment, and not for the people. This goes for political matters, but most essentially for social and economic issues, as a general trope of our times1. Populists in Romania are now at a cross-road, trying to recombine resources and to overcome a chain of dilemmas: truly speaking for the people, or often lying to the people and looking primarily at themselves? Challenging the established elites or replacing them? Finally, these questions remain: how could it be that populists are no longer popular? Who will be the next populist leader and what political establishment will he/she challenge, since former populists turned so easily into predatory elites?

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Populism and Neo-populism as the Main Characteristics of the XXIst Century Politics Răzvan Victor PANTELIMON Instituto de Historia, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso Abstract: This article tries to analyze the concepts of populism and neo-

populism. We start by presenting some of the most famous definitions of these concepts, and then we shall analyze their characteristics and possible causes. The second part of our paper is dedicated to a comparative analysis of the two concepts of populism and neo-populism in order to understand the differences and the similarities between them with a view to clarifying whether there are two distinct concepts or the same concept but in different temporal moments. In the last part of our work we applied the theoretical model on the European case in order to see if we can speak of a European populism. Keywords: populism, neo-populism, leader, populist speech.

Populism is one of the categories used extensively by sociologists, historians, political analysts and economists who study societies. There is no doubt about the importance of the concept for social sciences, and especially for the political ones 1. The resurgence of populist practices (political movements, speeches, symbols and mythology) is seen by some analysts as the main feature of politics after the Cold War2. However there is still no consensus on what the term actually means, and although there are numerous studies on this topic, it was not until today that it made the

Ghiță IONESCU, Ernest GELLNER (eds.) Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969, p. 1 2 Vladimir TISMĂNEANU, “Hypotheses on Populism: The Politics of Charismatic Protest”, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2000, p. 10. 1

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object of a rigorous theoretical analysis (as were the other -isms, such as feudalism, capitalism, liberalism, socialism, etc.)1. Populism is one of those concepts (another is for example democracy) commonly used in the study of politics and it has different meanings depending on the context or the author2. All experts recognize the difficulty, if not the impossibility of finding a definition capable to cover the common characteristics of some very different events in time and space3. Meanwhile, it is precisely this possibility to define different realities, often contradictory, that made the term of “populism” to be used intensively and to gain popularity among researchers. Only a concept as vague and indefinite as populism can give us the ability to perceive and analyze the radical political transformations that take place in a lot of places in the world. More than any other concept frequently used today, populism captures the type of trials (tests) through which democracy is going today4. The difficulty to define it comes from the fact that “populism” as a doctrine or movement is complex and protean, appearing all over the world, in various and contradictory contexts5. Populism presents the feature of being able to apply to various or hybrid situations, thus giving doubt regarding the possibility of defining it6. This confirms Isaiah Berlin‟s claim that populism suffered from the Cinderella complex: we have this shoe in the form of populism, but no foot to fit in7. Some authors even state that it is a concept void of meaning and utility8. Populist movements may belong to a diverse political spectrum, of both right and left-wing, can be conservative or progressive or both at the same time, can preserve 1

Alan KNIGHT, “Populism and Neo-populism in Latin America, especially Mexico”, Journal of Latin

American Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, May 1998, p. 225. Robert H. DIX, “Populism: Authoritarian and Democratic”, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1985, p. 29. 3 Guy HERMET, Les populismes dans le monde. Une histoire sociologique XIX – XX siècle, Libraire Arthème Fayard, Paris, 2001, p. 19. 4Ivan KRASTEV, “Momentul populist”, CriticAtac, 13 of January 2011, avaible at [http://www.criticatac.ro/3817/momentul-populist/]. 5 Ghiță IONESCU, Ernest GELLNER (eds.) Populism…cit., p. 1. 6 Guy HERMET, Les populismes dans le monde…cit., p. 18. 7 Ivan KRASTEV, “Momentul populist…cit.”. 8 Ernesto LACLAU, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism-Fascism-Populism, Humanities Press, London, 1977. 2

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or reform, sometimes revolutionize the society, and may have its origin in both urban and rural areas. As such these movements known as “populist” do not have a specific class character, because they are multiclass, with a low degree of organization, and want the promotion of social change oriented in a particular direction1. The only point of agreement regarding the term of populist is that it has its etymological origin in populous, therefore it applies to those movements, regimes, leaders or leadership styles that claim a certain affinity with “the people”2. The very term of “people” is not clearly defined and understood, so Ernest Laclau could say that “the people is a concept with a defined theoretical status, and despite its frequent use in political speech, its precise conceptualization doesn‟t go beyond the metaphorical or allusive level”3. Another major difficulty in defining the term of “populist” is that this ambiguous and evasive concept sometimes becomes an anathema, being perceived as possessing pejorative connotations4. For a long time populism was a category of analysis used to illustrate the realities of developing areas, especially those from Latin America or Africa, the European countries being considered too advanced from the political point of view and as such difficult to be attracted by this mirage. In the last decade, however, populist practices began to appear more and more in European parties and leaders, most of them touched by this “virus” so that many researchers consider populism one of the most important features of current European policy. Although in general the appearance of populism was associated with crisis periods, of intense social and political mobilization, recent studies show that this phenomenon can occur also in periods regarded as “normal”. The wave of pessimism that is felt today in European societies does not bode well. Amid the widespread pessimism more and more populist movements are beginning to take shape. We can understand why populist movements or leaders are present in the European political space even if it did not necessarily cross a period of deep crisis. The rise of populism Hans Jürgen PUHLE, “Populismo en América Latina”, Revista de Ciencia Política, Vol. IX, No. 1, 1987, pp. 88-89. 2 Alan KNIGHT, “Populism and Neo-populism…cit.”, p. 224. 3 Ernesto LACLAU, Politics and Ideology… cit., p. 165. 4 Alexandre DORNA, Le Populisme, PUF, Paris, 1999, p. 4. 1

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does not necessarily equate with the end of democracy, but rather a readjustment of democracy with the new realities of the time. In this article, we shall intent to define and analyze the concepts of populism and neo-populism, to explain the differences which can be traced between them, their characteristics and causes, and to apply them to a specific European context. Edward Shils, in 1956, believed that: “[…] populism is an ideology that proclaims that the will of the people reigns supreme over all the other rules, both those of traditional institutions and those from other social levels will. Populism identifies people will with justice and morality”.1

Shils insists in his definition on the role that the people as a whole have in populism, without mentioning anything about the role of the leader, his strong personality in his relation with the people. Most common definitions of the concept of populism come from those who have analyzed the realities of Latin America. So, Torcuato di Tella saw populism as: “A political movement which enjoys mass support from urban workers or peasant class, but not resulting from the ability to self-organize of any of them. She is supported also by social strata not in working class but who support antistatus quo ideology”.2

Di Tella identifies more clearly the social bases of populism, but just like Shils, he does not mention anything about the leader. From another perspective Hệlio Jaguaribe believes that: “[…] populism is a nontraditional relationship, directly between mass and a leader who brings to the last one the active support of the first in his search for power, according to his charismatic ability to raise hopes and confidence of the masses in order to achieve rapid social problems if they get enough power. Edward SHILS, The Torment of Secrecy, Dee, Chicago, 1956, p. 98. Torcuato di TELLA, “Populism and Reform in Latin America”, in C. VELIZ (ed.), Obstacles to Change in Latin America, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1965, p. 47. 1 2

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What is typical of populism is therefore the direct nature of the relationship between the masses and the leader, the lack of mediation by some intermediate echelons and the fact that is based on the hope of quick achievement of objectives”.1

We can see in this definition that Hệlio Jaguaribe gives a major importance to the leader and his direct relationship with the people, who just like Shils, is seen as a whole, without giving a special role to a class or another as did di Tella. The first systematic theoretical work dedicated to populism is edited by Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Gellner in 1969, being today also the fundamental reference study of populism. The research organization manor is extremely interesting, so, with no previously well established theoretical basis for analysis of the concept is based on the presentation of case studies (U.S., Latin America, Eastern Europe, etc.) and then, in the second part, it tries to conceptualize and theorize the notion of populism. In the chapter on Latin American populism it is defined as “an organizational weapon that synchronizes divergent group interests and applies to any movement that is not based on a specific social class”.2 In the same work, Peter Wiles believes that populism is not a doctrine but “all faiths or movement based on the following major premise: virtue is rooted in ordinary citizens, who are the vast majority, and its collective traditions”.3 As such for Wiles populism is more of a syndrome than a doctrine or concept. Recent analyses generally use the same terms to define this concept. Thus Vladimir Tismaneanu defines populism as: “A political strategy that generates mass mobilization and enthusiastic support for a leader and a party (or movement) among heterogeneous social groups in opposition to the existing political establishment, demanding its regeneration,

Hệlio JAGUARIBE, Problemas do desenvolvimento latinoamericano, Civilização Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, 1967, p. 168. 2 Alistair HENNESSY, “Latin America”, in Ghiță IONESCU, Ernest GELLNER (eds.) Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics., Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969, p. 29. 3 Peter WILES, “A Syndrome, not a Doctrine: Some Elementary Theses on Populism” in Ghiță Ionescu, Ernest GELLNER (eds.) Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969, p. 162. 1

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often on the expense of the human rights and freedoms or a minority, of the political, social and economic life”.1

In a research on Alberto Fujimori‟s regime features in Peru, populism is defined as “an attempt to represent all social sectors through leader-mass scheme and with an approach which addresses the parties, the government and the institutions of liberal democratic inspiration”.2 An experienced sociologist as André Touraine states that: “[…] populism is the call made by a leader towards the people against politicians and intellectuals who betrays them. A call to the simple people against evil representatives; the evocation of what defines and unites against what divides and against the oblivion of what is essential”.3

We can see that this definition of Touraine emphasizes the conflict component of populism. This raises the dual character of the populist phenomenon, on one hand he separates masses and “traitor” elite and on the other hand it is used as a means to identify the affiliation to a large community, therefore it refers to the people. Defining populism is different depending also on the area of interest of those who perform it. Thus, for economists, populists are those political leaders who apply neoliberal policies in trend, generally associated to the Washington Consensus, as such economic policies applied when exercising political power that determines whether or not a leader is a populist. For political analysts populist are those leaders who achieved political campaign built on populist premise, so this term is associated more with a style of doing politics than the politic itself.4 This idea of populism as style of politics and not necessarily as a particular ideology or a specific set of policies is quite old, as she appeared in the study coordinated by Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Gellner, and then making career. And also in the present it Vladimir TISMĂNEANU, “Hypotheses on Populism….cit., p. 11. Mercedes GARCÍA MONTERO, “La década de Fujimori: ascenso, mantenimiento y caída de un líder antipolítico”, América Latina Hoy, No. 28, Salamanca, August 2001, p. 53. 3 André TOURAINE, La parole et le sang, Jacob Odile, Paris, 1988, p. 117. 4 Patricio NAVIA, “Partidos Políticos como Antídoto contra el Populismo en América Latina”, Revista de Ciencia Política, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, 2003, p. 20. 1 2

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often talks about populist style of some leader or politician, even if he is not ideologically or programmatically a follower of this phenomenon. One last definition given here is that of Kurt Weyland whom considers populism as a political strategy with three main features: a leader who appeals to a heterogeneous mass of adherents who feel excluded and as such are available for mobilization; the leader interacts with adherents directly, almost personal, eliminating the intermediaries, especially parties; if the leader uses a political party, it remains a personal vehicle with a low level of institutionalization.1 It can be seen that Weyland in its definition of populism emphasis on the leader and its role, without mentioning anything about the social basis of the phenomenon without using the concept of people. For the purposes of this study we believe that the most relevant meaning is the one that identify populism as a heterogeneous political movement without a well-defined social base, characterized by the existence of a leader more or less charismatic, trying to make a direct contact with the masses by applying a particular style of politics that combine the call to the people as a whole with criticism and rejection of existing political establishment and with the promise of dealing with various problems, especially social ones. Otherwise expressed, in populism the leader turns to the people against the existing political system in order to achieve a utopian project2. Analyzing the appearance of Latin American populism, Alistair Hennessy reveals a number of conditions that favored the emergence and development of this phenomenon. Thus, the inability of the middle classes to fulfill the historic role of generating their own values and stimulating economic growth; the adaptability to change of the large landowners who have admitted among themselves nouveaux riches and continued to provide a behaviorist model for medium classes imitators; the incapacity of the urban workers class to develop autonomous and independent organizations and the delay in the development of a culture of the working class; the acceleration of the

Kurt WEYLAND, “Neoliberal Populism in Latin America and Eastern Europe”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 31, No. 4, July 1999, p. 381. 2 Răzvan Victor PANTELIMON, “Populism şi Neo-populism. Concept şi practici”, in Tendinţe Actuale în Filozofia Politică, Editura Institutului de Ştiinţe Politice şi Relaţii Internaţionale al Academiei Române, Bucureşti, 2006, p. 223. 1

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emigrants wave to the big cities, which allowed the accumulation of a large unassimilated marginal groups here, are some of the causes of populism in Latin America.1 Another interpretation of the same study argues that populism has emerged as a response to the problems of modernization and its consequences in societies that have been put in contact with forces and ideas associated with a higher level of development.2 Alexandre Dorna interprets psychologically the factors that led to the populist processes because, in his view, the emergence of this phenomenon is generally associated with a syndrome of disappointment. When you reach a certain cultural exhaustion, lack of confidence in the future when traditional markers are no longer functioning, and the great national institutions (government, parliament, political parties, etc.), are drained of contents, then appears the possibility of a populist current development. The same author notes that populism is associated with the failure of democratic regimes, therefore the democratic disillusion push the masses to choose other ways, one of which being populism.3 Pierre-André Taguieff believes that the main “condition for the emergence of a populist mobilization is a crisis of political legitimacy that affects the whole representative system”.4 The emergence of populism is seen as a response to the growing (and not always unjustified) mistrust in the democratic institutional system and the disappointment caused by the political class performance.5 Although in general the appearance of populism was associated with periods of stress, intense social and political mobilization, recent studies show that this can also occur in periods considered “normal”. Because the populist phenomenon as a whole is difficult to define and to be included between precise boundaries, even more the different interpretations of the characteristics of the phenomenon are difficult to fit into a unified typology. Very often

Alistair HENNESSY, “Latin America…cit.”, p. 30. Angus STEWART, “The Social Roots”, in Ghiță Ionescu, Ernest Gellner (eds.), Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969, pp. 180-181. 3 Alexandre DORNA, Le Populisme…cit, p. 8. 4 Pierre-André TAGUIEFF, “Le populisme et la science politique du mirage conceptuel aux vrais problèmes”, Vingtième Siècle, No. 56, Oct.-Dec. 1997, p. 10. 5 Vladimir TISMĂNEANU, “Hypotheses on Populism…. cit., p. 14. 1 2

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the characterization of the populist phenomenon resume in a greater or smaller way specific definition parts of its process. Peter Wiles listed a number of features of the concept of populism in his attempt to demonstrate that this phenomenon is more a syndrome than a doctrine. Thus in his view populism is rather moralistic than programmatic, which makes the logic and the ability to be effective less valuable than the right attitude or spiritual appearance. Populism tends to put leaders in mystical contact with the masses, while having an unorganized and undisciplined character. His ideology is poorly developed and any attempt to define or clarify ends either ridiculous or through a hostile response. Generally populist movements are anti-intellectual nature, even among intellectuals who adhere to them. Other favorite targets of populists are: the establishment, the economic elites (especially accountants), the military, religion (though while traditionalists are also religious), etc. Populism opposes social inequalities produced by institutions, but accepts structural inequalities.1 A synthetic construction of populism is offered by Garcia Montero, comprising five key areas: political leadership of a personalized and paternalistic type, but not necessarily charismatic, a multiple classes coalition, heterogeneous, which gather the lower sectors of society, a process of political mobilization from top to bottom, which eliminates institutional forms of mediation or subordinates them to a personal ties, an amorphous or eclectic ideology characterized by a speech that exalts lower sectors or is anti-elitist and anti-establishment, an economic project using redistributive and clientele generalized methods in order to obtain the support of popular sectors.2 A “sketch” more complex of populism is conducted by Alexandre Dorna in a series of papers dedicated to this topic.3 According to French author populism is a syndrome at the same time confusing and exuberant which is associated with several signs. This is only a model to which may report real populisms, which will never fit entirely perfect into this model. Peter WILES, “A Syndrome, not a Doctrine…cit.”, pp. 167-171. Mercedes GARCÍA MONTERO, “La década de Fujimori…cit.”, p. 54. 3 See Alexandre Dorna DORNA, Le Populisme…cit,; Alexandre DORNA, Le Neopopulisme et le charisme, Text, colloque – Université de Grenoble: La tentation populiste, September 2001; Alexandre DORNA, La democracia: un espejismo?, Lumen, Buenos Aires-Mexico, 2003; Alexandre Dorna, “Quand la démocratie s‟assoit sur de volcans: l‟émergence des populismes charismatiques”, @mnis Revue de Civilisation Contemporaine de l‟Université de Bretagne Occidentale, No. 5, Caen, 2005. 1 2

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There is not necessarily needed prior a collapse of the political system to the emergence of populism. It is enough to have a crisis of representation from which a large part of society to feel that none of the existing political parties no longer represent their interests. The main expression way of populism is the critic of the status quo and the establishment. When the citizens realize the gap between reality and the speech of those who govern, when they feel that they have no effective way to be listen, when realizes that elites do nothing to alleviate their changing situations, then the number of unsatisfied people increases until reaches a critical mass capable of erupting. It is not necessary that this eruption to occur, more often populism is just a warning and not a violent explosion against authority. The fact that the main feature of populism is the existence and the active presence of the charismatic leader whose personal style marks his situation and his era, him incarnating the providential man, the savior, the mythical hero, is undoubtedly. His relationship with the people is direct, warm, spontaneous, making him not only his speaker, but also its vivid symbol. His style is rhetorical, but not demagogic, because his speech links a real diagnosis with an emotional vision which offers hope. For most researchers this charismatic character is a sine qua non condition of the existence and definition of the concept of populism.1 A characteristic feature of populism is its multiple class nature. Populism is therefore a powerful integration engine that can give birth to a temperate nationalist attitude. The lack of a strong structured organization is a constant of populism. Mass movement, rather than mass party populism is characterized by a lack of organized unit strongly structured, the only solid connection being achieved through the leader and not through intermediate levels. Unlike other current political movements populism has a lack of a strong ideology, well defined, its ruling ideas being vague and in a permanent construction. Even if populism acquires political power, its programmatic feature is a popular pragmatism. The cause of this lack of ideology can be found in its original intention, that of addressing the whole nation against the dominant oligarchy, its claims being simple and concrete.

1

See Alexandre DORNA, Le Populisme…cit.

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The populist leader is in this case of absence of an ideology and a clear political program, the main catalyst of popular claims. A final feature of populism is that addressing the entire nation, by necessity has to use each nation's great founding myths, so the symbols and collective imagination itself plays a definite role in a populist speech. To summarize the main features and characteristics of populism we may say that it is addressed to people who contrasts the elite, the request is made in the direction of the simple, common human been and not to a precisely defined class or professional or interest group; most of the time the exponents of populism have a lack of comprehensive and concrete political program, but a powerful moral compromise that has its starting point in some programmatic aspects; populism prefers direct relationship between people and leaders; has always multiple classes character.1 We previously saw that most of those who analyze the populist phenomenon sustain the lack of ideology, its doctrinal and programmatic poverty reducing the ideological basis to a genuine people's idealization, idealization that serves as doctrine. Populism, unlike a number of other political families, has neither prominent theorists nor elaborated doctrine. There are however a number of common elements to all populist phenomenon which by their frequency can be seen as some exclusive ideological themes of populism. The main ideological orientation of populism can be considered the one that is his “negative” nature which must be understood as total rejection of all those who exercises a different credo, seeking dialog partners just inside its loyal audience. Populist projects and speeches reject almost all principles, institutions or political and social practices existing in that society. No specific political practice is challenged or a political leader but rejects in its entirety the existing system and challenge the legitimacy of the existing political and social order. In general, in its essence, the populist speech is one of complete renewal: political system cleaning; corrupt and mediocre politicians elimination; anti-bureaucratic revolution; the emergence of a new really popular order thanks to the efforts and merits a providential leader, selfless, heroic and patriot.2

1 2

Hans Jürgen PUHLE, “Populismo en América Latina…cit”, p. 88. Vladimir TISMĂNEANU, “Hypotheses on Populism…. cit.”, p. 12.

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The appearance of this savior leader can weakened and even removes the democratic institutions because the populist ideology favors direct relationship between the leader and the people, without recourse to institutional channels. Once they‟ve reached the government, populists seek to generate dependency and loyalty relationships to the leader and not towards institutions, because they prefer the respect and admiration for the leader much more than the actual position that the leader occupies. For example, it is not the presidency as an institution that generates respect and loyalty, but the person of the President, so that in the moment that leaves the function, the loyalty of the followers will follow the person and not the institution itself.1 From this absolute and utter denial results another ideological feature of populism its anti-elitist attitude, targeting bureaucrats and technocrats, held responsible for a number of problems in the functioning of that society. Appears also an antiintellectual attitude, intellectuals being seen by populist as “servile and perfidious” propagandists who propagates an orientation in favor of the interests and desires of those which represents the rejected system. Although enemies of the existing administration, populists are at the same time, because of their multiple class nature, supporters of a “large national union” that would bring together all social classes and strata, the only ones to be really excluded being the corrupt politicians and the inefficient and incompetent bureaucrats. The populist movements are not anti-state nor in ideology nor in action, they oppose the state in its current forms, especially the type of specific parliamentary system policies.2 For a better illustration we quote here the words of Juan Domingo Peron, one of the leading representatives of populism, which stated: “We are democrats, but not from that democracy in which freedom, justice and law are tools that oppressors use to maintain power. We recognize the existence of one true and genuine democracy: social democracy”.3 Often the populist vision is a short-term one, their programs supporting immediate objectives, tangible and rapid gains being of a greater interest than major structural changes or the proposal of a well defined project for development or modernization of the society. Besides, although often populist movements were Patricio NAVIA, “Partidos Políticos como Antídoto… cit.”, p. 26. Angus STEWART, “The Social Roots…cit.”, p. 192. 3 Guy HERMET, Les populismes dans le monde… cit., p. 82. 1 2

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considered as modernizing, in most cases they self-proclaim their major affinity to traditional political culture of those countries. There are also situations where populist movements attempts to outline a rational program of economic, social and political development.1 Another dimension of populist ideology is the solidarity, nationalistic and moralistic one, which has as a corollary the support of the existence of a perpetual conspiracy against the people, which implies and justifies the establishment of a state of emergency, which actually hide the authoritarian temptation of populism. The appeal to the people, as holder of sovereignty that needs to be protected, has as real aims legitimizing negative and critical messages towards the existing structures and institutions, because speaking on behalf of the people, populist deemed to have a superior authority to that of their opponents. One last feature of populist ideology is given by its futuristic, utopian, even millenarian nature. All populist ideology is based on the promise of a bright, positive future in which all society's problems will be solved and all the people's hopes will be fulfilled. Populist utopia constitutes as an ideal of life, social justice, respect of the other, security and especially as a founding national unity ideal.2 We have talked before about the concept of “populism” and about its various aspects and will continue with analyzing the concept of neo-populism. A very current issue is the one trying to discover whether current forms of populism can be regarded as modified versions of the so-called “classical populism” or gives birth to a new kind of doctrine or ideology, which can be call the neo-populism. As the concept of “populism”, neo-populism too is difficult to define and analyze. There are a number of scientists who support the clear differences between neopopulism and populism3, while others believe that this phenomenon is simply a version of populism and we have seen that4 there are a number of authors who disputes the relevance of this concept and even its existence.

Robert H. DIX, “Populism: Authoritarian and Democratic”, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1985, p. 40. 2 See Alexandre DORNA, Le Populisme…cit. 3 Marcos NOVARO, “Los populismos latinoamericanos transfigurados”, Nueva Sociedad, No. 144, JulyAug. 1996, p. 7. 4 See note 9 and 10. 1

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We consider a very simplistic approach the idea that the neo-populism is a natural change that is a result due to the normal evolution of the concept of populism, toward a renovate form of populism which keeps the populist essence, which appeals to the people, and where everything revolves around a leader with more knowledge of charisma.1 In our opinion the neo-populism corresponds to a much larger change in the current social structures, precisely because we must takes into account the changes in other related fields of politics: technology, computer science, mass communication; and the developments through which have passed in recent years various populist experiences entitle us to speak about a new form of populism, which has a number of new traits and features and can be called neo-populism. This concept should not be understood as totally different and independent from previous populisms, but as an evolution of those from which varies in some aspects. We do not talk about a complete break from previous experience and about a totally new form of politics, so our analysis will focus on those issues in which the new manifestations of populism differs from what we might call “classic populism”. We will try to analyze this concept through analogy with features, characteristics and specificities that have previously mentioned for the populist model. In the 80's there were a number of major social changes, which on long term interacted with the social repercussions of neoliberal inspiration economic reforms, causing thus a series of political effects, such as: increased political apathy and a weakening of all social and political organizations. At the same time increased the demand for structures and mechanisms of social integration. With the neo-liberal policies, the role of the state suffered a major change, which had important implications on the part of the political parties as a mediator between the state and society. Thus the parties have seen affected a number of their previously held functions: intermediating the direct popular demands, reducing the cost of information for voters and structuring electoral politics, influencing public management, mediating between state structures and civil society, maintaining a social control over officials, etc. One of the results of this political and cultural transformation was the emergence of new political leaders, anti-political leaders, outsiders, etc. They seek to build a political Alexandre DORNA, “Faut-il avoir peur du populisme ?”, Le Monde diplomatique, November 2003, available at [http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2003/11/DORNA/10680]. 1

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space in which the fundamental separation will be the one between the political class and the people, supporting the people and presenting themselves as the incarnation of the popular will, as saviors of the nation, etc. Therefore one of the main features of these leaders is authoritarian trends, messianic and paternalistic attitudes, Manichaeism and opposition to all forms of organization with precise rules. They try to obtain the support of the masses through a speech which is messianic, protector, interpersonal, directly and without intermediaries.1 The emergence of this new kind of populism is explained as a result of the tensions that arise between an economy that marginalizes and politics which require integration. Neoliberal policies have eroded class identities and created amorphous masses, that needs to be integrated into society. This is one of the major differences of the new model, applying exclusivist neoliberal policies, compared with classic populism which develops and implements inclusion policies for the popular sectors.2 Like the initial concept of populism the neo-populism is difficult to define. From an institutional perspective he gains a number of features listed below. The neo-populism is seen as a high form of political voluntarism and decisionism, developed in the context of a weakening of institutions and decadence of politics, rooted in a deep crisis of democratic institutions (political parties, the executive and parliament etc.). This phenomenon exacerbates an authoritarian and anti - institutional style of politics, which in turn derives from a paternalistic political culture which feeds undoubtedly from the presidential regime type.3 A synthetic definition of neo-populism is that it assimilates with: “[…] a style of action perceptible through specific forms that assume speech and political action: a primacy of personal charisma in political representation, poor formal institutional mechanisms, the influence of cultural factors in political changes and ideological precariousness”. 4

Mercedes GARCÍA MONTERO, “La década de Fujimori… cit.”, p. 52. Ibidem, p. 55. 3 René MAYORGA, Antipolitica y Neopopulismo, Centro Boliviano de Estudios Multidisciplinarios, La Paz, 1995, pp. 17-20. 4 Fernando MAYORGA, “Neopopulismo y democracia en Bolivia”, Revista de Ciencia Política, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, 2003, p. 99. 1 2

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It can be seen that on defining the neo-populism, compared with populism, the emphasis is put on the idea that this phenomenon is a style of politics, characteristic of certain political leaders. Other definitions of neo-populism focus on how the politics is made through the use of media and other modern techniques. Thus Guy Hermet believes that this term designates: “[…] populist electoral techniques on the political marketing level, but liberal and fair to democratic orthodoxy in which regard the intentions of the leaders who use them. This media marketing is the common denominator of a neopopulism media-liberal which is only a technical resource. This neo-populism merely cultivates a citizenship based on facile emotions using seductive proposals and particularly photogenic candidates for election”. 1

The causes of this new type of political behavior are also different in some way from those who led previously to the emergence of populist processes. Perelli believes that the emergence of neo-populism can be explained by the following factors: the crisis of political parties, the lack of confidence in prior political leaders, the need of a large part of the population to receive a message of hope, the existence of a person who can easily communicate with the masses, mainly by means of mass communication and proposing vague actions involving especially a symbolic activity oriented towards taking into consideration the interests of the people.2 One of the main causes of the emergence of neo-populism is the lack of a consolidated party system, which allows non-political leaders to easily attract popular support without necessarily integrating a political organization and without having to compete with them, by appealing to those voters who lack a party identification. The constant turmoil within the parties, their frequent changes, discredits classical political bodies and leaves a breeding ground for neo-populist leaders who does have to overcome too many organizational obstacles in their race toward power.3 Guy HERMET, Les populismes dans le monde… cit, p. 147. Carina PERELLI, “La personalización de la política. Nuevos caudillos, „outsiders‟, política mediática y política informal” in Carina PERELLÓ, Sonia PICADO and Daniel ZOVATTO (eds.), Partidos y clase política en América Latina en los 90, IIDH-CAPEL, San José, 1995, p .192. 3 Kurt WEYLAND, “Neoliberal Populism…cit. ”, p. 384. 1 2

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Others think that on the contrary, the strengthening of political parties, resulting in the creation of a “partidocracy” and a “cartel party system”, is one of the causes of neo-populism.1 Thus, analyzing the case of Venezuela, Ramirez Roa believes that switching to partidocracy, the primacy of political parties, was achieved at the expense of the individual will of the voter that is required to vote only what the parties offers him without having a choice. On the other hand, the process of decision making disregards completely the will or interests of citizens. Thus appears a crisis of political representation, which deepens the fracture between the government and the governed and creates an environment for the development of neo – populism.2 In another opinion the causes of neo-populism are considered the follows: the economic crisis and social exclusion implied by the crisis, plus the crisis of political parties and a general distrust and disappointment to party politics and it aggregates the effects of the presidential system and of the institutions that fosters and nurtures the emergence of this type of political leaders who, at their turn, are part of a tradition of politics that belongs to societies with serious social inequalities.3 Harry E. Vaden believes that raising the level of education, expanding suffrage, bigger gender equality, a more sophisticated political culture and an extensive involvement in politics led to the necessity of new forms of political participation, which did not found their satisfaction in the traditional populism.4 This view contradicts the general opinion that populism and neo-populism are specific for poor societies with low levels of education and culture, where the population does not participate actively at the political life. Analyzing the neo-populist phenomenon from a psychological perspective, Alexandre Dorna believes that among the causes of this phenomenon are: the absence of a joint project for the future of humanity, the failure of both liberal and communist explanatory theories, the monopolistic presence of a neo-liberalism at the governmental For an analysis of the two concepts and their appliance at the Romanian case, see: Răzvan Victor PANTELIMON, “Partidele au murit, trăiască partidele! Apariţia partidului-cartel în România”, Studia Politica. Revista Română de Ştiinţă Politică, Vol. VI, No. 2, 2006, Bucureşti, pp. 403-449. 2 Rosaly RAMIREZ ROA, “La política extraviada en la Venezuela de los años 90: entre rigidez institucional y neo-populismo”, Revista de Ciencia Política, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, 2003, p. 142. 3 Mercedes GARCÍA MONTERO, “La década de Fujimori … cit.”, p. 58. 4 Harry, E. VADEN, Gary PREVOST, Politics of Latin America, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 2006, p. 310. 1

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level, the erosion of solidarity bases, the increasing demand for security in an more dangerous world, plus the demand for providential leaders and charismatic figures able to oppose the status quo that oppresses the silent majority.1 Following Dorna in the analysis of neo-populism characteristics compared with those of classical populism, we discover a number of common elements to both processes, but also fundamental differences. In the first category are: a personal call launched by a charismatic leader towards the people, this call being addressed to the people as a whole (less to the illegitimate elites suspected of plotting) and thus have a unifying character. The people targeted by this call are genuine, remained himself, who retain his national identity and the required change involves a purifying rupture with the present (the system being considered corrupt). The main differentiator element is that the vector of the new populism is the perverse use of the media and especially television.2 For Guillermo O'Donnell the neo-populist phenomenon appears as “delegate democracy”. In O'Donnell's vision delegate model has the following features: popular sovereignty delegation towards the President, who is seen as the embodiment of the nation and as the main pursuer of the national interest, the presidential paternalism, intense mobilization, the decreasing role of the legislative and judicial power, the elected president being authorized by delegation to govern as he considers.3 Regarding the characteristics of neo-populism, the most interesting one is that the new populist leaders are demonstrated to be more fragile and ephemeral (temporary) than those of classical populism period. Since there are no longer derived strong identities nor stable aggregate interests, both being currently more diffuse, neo-populist leader is obliged to make a constant effort to translate into public policy the demands and expectations of the voters, to build and maintain images able to mobilize. The ability of these leaders to stay in power depends on their ability to govern effectively, to have tangible results and continuously build their image according to the requirements and wishes of the masses.4

Alexandre DORNA, “Quand la démocratie s‟assoit sur de volcans…cit.”, p. 12. Ibidem, p. 13. 3 Gulliermo O‟DONNELL, “Democracia delegativa?”, Cuadernos de CLAEH, Issue 17, No. 61, Montevideo, 1992, p. 17. 4 Marcos NOVARO, “Los populismos latinoamericano…cit. ”, p. 8. 1 2

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In classic populism the leader stands and wins elections by the intrinsic attraction it possesses and which is reflected in a stunning over the masses. As we have seen in most studies, the populist leader is presented as a self-made man1 who needs no outside power structure except his unshakable conviction. His attitude is that of a close older brother, who seek direct contact and dialogue with everyone. Communication is horizontal, which gives the illusion of natural and direct approach. Dialogue is always accompanied by big open gestures and charming words, spoken with vivacity and spontaneity often worthy of a renowned actor, which leaves, even in the memory of unknown interlocutors, a lasting impression of sympathy. Enthusiasm is continually revived due to the multiple forms of contact: from the blinking of an eye or friendly handshake to direct interpellation2. A very important role in this equation lies in the massive use of mass-media communication. Besides, as we previously noted, the use of new techniques and of the media is one of the defining characteristics of the new populism, constituting also an important element of differentiation from previous populist experiences.3 But neopopulist strategy seeks to overcome this elective routine so that once in power the neopopulist leaders have the ambition to retain a wider audience relying on a personal style, on bringing in the public discussion of issues rejected or not addressed by the previous political parties.4 Neo-populist leader now relies heavily on the use of the innovations in the field of mass communication and, in particular, that of television. But it required that the leader know how to use these tools to meet their interests, how to make them "work" for him and how to be always vigilant in order not to let the media turn into a double-edged weapon. Given this interdependence between the leader and the media, especially television, many experts have labeled as neo- populism, in fact, a tele-populism.5 We observe, therefore, that the neo-populism has made the transition from a direct address to one mediated by technical means from new technologies of mass communication.

Alexandre DORNA, Liderul carismatic, Corint, Bucureşti, 2004, p. 58. Ibidem, pp. 58-59. 3 Diana BURGOS-VIGNA, “Alberto Fujimori: le populisme de l‟efficacité”, @mnis Revue de Civilisation Contemporaine de l‟Université de Bretagne Occidentale, No. 5, Caen, 2005, p. 2. 4 Ibidem, p. 6. 5 Alexandre DORNA, “Faut-il avoir peur du populisme?...cit.”. 1 2

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The electoral campaign, especially how it is designed and conducted, is another indicator of the cleavage between the two trends. If, for example, in “classical populism” were sufficient direct meetings with voters, speeches impregnated with well-chosen words, highly motivational and prefigured saving solutions to existing social problems, now the approach is slightly different. Different approach is a result of the fact that the crowd, however irrational and impulsive as it is today, is taken his few moments of reflection to discern between all the utopias and promises that are circulating. Therefore it is necessary for motivational speeches and vibrant leader of the neo-populist to be coupled with a continuous stream of information coming from the media to reiterate the words of the leader and fixed in the collective mind of this proposed new course. This idea is supported by Alexandre Dorna going up there saying that “technological innovation and mass-media communication are so commonly used in electoral campaigns of neo-populist orientation that it has become virtually inseparable one from each other”.1 Just like in the case of populism, neo-populist movements do not have a well defined ideology, they advocating for a number of transformation of the economic and political model. Many of the issues presented for populism it repeats also in the neopopulist model. Ideologically the neo-populist speech reveals itself as ambiguous and eclectic. It is a mixture of elements which appeal to the masses, to the oppressed people and to the nation threatened by internal and external enemies, and which at the same time show their support for neo-liberal values and economy transformation strategies based on the market economy. Here is a new differentiation from classical populism as neo-populist abandon themes like anti-imperialism, economy nationalization, development based on own resources and distributive ideas, to provide a set of policies which restrict the role of the state in the economy; which militate for privatization, the export orientation of the economy and towards the opening to world trade.2 It preserves, however, a number of elements of classic populist speech. Thus, these leaders proposed themselves as an ultima ratio to the people‟s confidence in the institutions as a guarantee that modernization (and its accompanying reforms) will be effective and at the lowest possible social cost. In other words, neo-populists present themselves at the same time as the personification of order, of the ability to govern and 1 2

Ibidem. René MAYORGA, Antipolitica y Neopopulismo...cit., pp. 17-20.

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to take decisions, but also as paternalistic protectors of the people, watching for those that represent and protect against the rigors of economists and technocrats (mostly brought to power by themselves), compared to a world insensitive to the suffering of people and a society where the inequalities have been deepened by the competition and free market and generalizing thus the feeling of uncertainty and personal insecurity.1 The combination between political populism and economic liberalism, specific to neo-populism is one of the most important features of the new process and the one that differentiate fundamentally neo-populism from classical populism. The latter was associated with nationalist, protectionist and distributive economic policies, centered on domestic market, based on increasing government spending, which at their turn lead to higher inflation. Another difference between the two processes is the targeted social sectors addressed by them and represented by them. If populist addressed all sectors with an integrated vision, neo-populists choose as the target of their speeches, which use considerable technological resources that are based on fears, anxieties and frustrations of those that who now feel threatened their status and position due to globalization, the latest avatar of modernization, particularly the marginalized sectors, excluded and discriminated economic, political, racial, cultural, social, etc. This explains the importance gained in the neo-populist movements of social groups such as indigenous people, mestizos, immigrants, unemployed, etc.2 At the same time neo-populist no longer refer to sectors that were crucial for populists, such as trade unions or big industrialists.3 Despite the differences between various models of neo-populism, and also between neo-populist leaders, there are some recurring linguistic, behavior and semantics markers common to all these speeches, which were analyzed by Alexandre Dorna.4 Thus neo-populist language is simple, with few technical terms, easily comprehensible for all. The style is direct, with a frankness which put in inferiority traditional wooden language used by politicians, officials and technocrats. Discursive logic is one belonging to common sense, the arguments used are not in any case abstract Marcos NOVARO, “Los populismos latinoamericano…cit. ”, p. 15. Fernando MAYORGA, “Neopopulismo y democracia…cit.”, p. 104. 3 Michael L. CONNIF, “Neo-populismo en América Latina. La década de los 90 y después”, Revista de Ciencia Política, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, 2003, p. 32. 4 Alexandre DORNA, “Quand la démocratie s‟assoit sur de volcans…cit.”, pp. 15-23. 1 2

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and the gestures are large and warm. There is a strong presence of promises, constructed in the passive voice, that describe with energy and passion a positive future. Speech is the bi-polarized type: we and the others, the latter often receiving negative connotations. People praise and identification, sometimes folkloric, of its roots, is crossing permanently the speech. Criticism of the ruling elite becomes a leitmotif correlated with its fight against the status quo imposed by the establishment, by the political class and the illegitimate forces that have seized people power. The main terms used are: nation, people, “we”, the elite (with negative connotation), the motherland, our country, the powerful, the rich, the weak, the poor, work, family, national effort, sovereignty, traditional values, individual security and so on. Heavily use of rhetorical figures such as: repetition, metaphor, allegory, irony, antithesis, parable, permanent reference nation's history to emphasize the participation to a community, the call to national cohesion around the symbols and the keywords that refer to the old ideological cleavages, the evocation of the great founding myths and the skillful exploitation of legends and popular imagery. The vocabulary, grammar and semantics are so used to produce a musicality of speech, an exhilarating rhythm. An interesting analysis of the differences between “historical populism” and “advanced populism” is carried out in a paper published in the Romanian space.1 Trying to define the conceptual differences between populism and neo-populism Sergiu Mişcoiu consider eight criteria of comparison between historical and advanced populisms features (as he called the new forms of populism)2. We will analyze these criteria and how they are present in the new types of populism, because we will see that are very applicable to the European space. The first criterion for comparison is popular identity. Thus, “[…] advanced populism relies less on a founding act, on the original and consistent identification of the people and more on ad hoc (for this) identity

Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Populismul contemporan, Ed. Institutul European, Iași, 2012. 2 Sergiu MIȘCOIU, “De la populism la neopopulism? Câteva repere empirice pentru o delimitare conceptuală” in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Populismul contemporan…cit., pp. 25-43. 1

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reunion of individuals, groups and social classes, of ideas and political trends, of ethnic minorities or caste interests, passions, tastes and individual provisions.”1

According to the author this is the case of Western Europe where populists were required to synthesize the multiple identities of the masses, and the best example is the case of Silvio Berlusconi and his political parties, that have tried and succeeded for a period of time, to put together middle and popular classes by offering a model which was in the same time pragmatic, modern and progressive, but also a speech about respecting the national values of the people.2 A second comparison element concerns the way in which is realized the reference to the past and the future. Thus modern populism contains references to the past, the dominant trend is the orientation towards the future, the reform and the existing establishment removal. More the potential adherents are dissatisfied with the present and how they are represented by the political class, more the references to the future are stronger. Sergiu Mişcoiu present the Dutch populists case, which increased their percentage amid a speech that addressed the issues of insecurity, immigration, defense of traditional values against multiculturalism and Islamisation threat.3 The next element of differentiation is linked to neo-populist mission. Thus they give up many of the transcendental ideas of redemption, the salvation of the people, etc., and returns to solve more concrete issues: cleaning the political world, reducing taxes, strengthening the citizens powers of referendum, helping poorer regions, to return elderly dignity, supporting the integration of young people, passing the corrupt thru the people‟s courts, restricting the waves of immigrants, etc.4 Regarding doctrinal coherence advanced populism is more flexible, showing heterogeneity and adaptability. It is common that leftist leaders or party propose rightist measures, and vice versa.5 Ibidem, p. 28. Italy is one of the famous cases of neo-populism, the presence of this phenomenon in the actuality is a constant of Silvio Berlusconi politics. For a more detailed analysis which prove without any doubt the populist character of the Il Cavaliere see Marco Tarchi, “Italia: tărâmul populismelor” in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (editori), Populismul contemporan…cit., pp. 375-400. 3 Sergiu MIȘCOIU, “De la populism la neopopulism?... cit.”, pp. 29-30. 4 Ibidem, p. 31. 5 Ibidem, p. 33. 1 2

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Leader‟s position is also a different one, without the previous separation or barrier where classic populist leader was admired and seen as belonging to a higher class. Neo-populist leader is generally a simple man of the people, who tries to establish feelings of camaraderie and closeness to the people, which often makes the language and speech to be of a low level, perhaps even vulgar, to establish this connection and communion with people.1 These changes reach also the communication area that becomes more one of “relation‟s” than of “tribunes”. We have already seen extensively the features of the new communication mode, so we will not dwell on this differentiating feature.2 The last two comparison criteria are related with the logic of neo-populism in power, which is one of controversy, a permanent rift and rupture; and also to the longevity of populism effects, that are temporary.3 In conclusion of this comparative analysis it states that: “On one hand there are not enough features to make neo-populism a discursive register that works by other principles than those followed by populism; on the other hand, between classical and advanced populism there are enough points of differentiation for the latter to be considered the most important stage in the historical evolution of the great populist family”. 4

Populist movements have been labeled for long as belonging to Latin America, and extrapolation to other areas were heavily controlled. In the last years, however, begins questioning whether: Can we talk in Europe about the existence of a space conducive to the development of populist movements? The answers are as usual different, so some authors dispute the possibility of populism in Europe because the democratic tradition and the functionality of the system is too strong to allow disturbances; while other researchers (which we rally) believe that Europe has not escaped this phenomenon, which is increasingly present in the post – Cold War European society.

Ibidem, p. 35. Ibidem, p. 36. 3 Ibidem, p. 37-40. 4 Ibidem, p. 41. 1 2

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In the first category falls Bela Greskovits explaining the surprising lack of “populist episode” in post-communist societies in Eastern Europe compared to the events unfolding in Latin America since the '70s, continuing in the '80s and even in the ' 90. While the economic crisis in Latin America led to violent protests and created favorable prerequisites for neo-populist leader‟s affirmation, in Europe a similar situation has left no trace. The explanation can be found in the primacy of neoliberal theory throughout the European area (fully justified explanation to the author, considering the fact that Bela Greskovits is an economist by excellence). Its findings are not decisive, leaving room to speculations and interpretations. He states that although there was no full convergence yet of economic and political factors favorable to emergence of populist movements in the European space, this may occur in the future.1 We seen in the beginning of the article that one of the difficulties of defining and analyzing a process so complex as the populism or neo-populism is the bad image created around it, this concept was transformed, especially in the public discourse, in an insult use to qualified the enemy. We see a lot of people which in a simplifying process take only the negative parts of the populism and rejected totally, but also there is a small category of researchers which intended to take a closer and a more objective look at this reality. If the first category is extremely vocal and present both in the public or political space, as well as academic, the second is less visible, but so much more interesting and therefore we try to analyze further the thereof positions. One of the best analyzes about the positives and negatives characteristics of populism was conducted by Philippe C. Schmitter, and I will present in extenso this analysis because it allows us to understand why the mermaid song of populism is so attractive to the European parties and political leaders. For Schmitter, “[…] populism is a political movement that seeks support beyond or ignoring the boundaries of dispute between the existing political parties and makes it focusing

Bela GRESKOVITS, The Political Economy of Protest and Patience. East European and Latin American Transformations Compared, CEU Press, Budapest, 1998, apud Cas Mudde, “Populism in Eastern Europe”, East European Perspectives Vol. II, No. 8, March 2000, available at 1

[http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1342548.html].

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on the person of a leader who claims to be able to solve a set of problems previously considered impossible or undesirable to deal with”.1

Subsequently, Schmitter examines 14 characteristics of populism, points which are distributed as follows: 7 virtues and 7 vices, so we see that the vision of Philippe Schmitter about populism includes in an equal and equitable manner both advantages and disadvantages. The first virtue would be that “Populisms weaken sclerotic partisan loyalties and simultaneously weaken closed party systems, forcing the entry of new political formations”. A second virtue that compete with the first in terms of importance, promotes the idea that “Populisms recruit persons who were previously apathetic citizens and mobilize them to participate in the electoral process”. Therefore, one of the great qualities of populist movements is that enlarges the electoral mass, which is certainly a great addition to any political movement and an additional merit for the populist ones. The following three virtues, in order of importance, present a positive image of these movements. Thus, “[…] rising political issues ignored by the classical parties, populisms help to a fairer relocation of conflicts and expectations from the society; Populisms confronted "accepted" external constraints and put in discussion the existing dependencies and often exploitive of foreign powers; Populisms replace party programs or the outdated and formal ideologies with a call based on the personality of leaders.”

In the same direction that places populist movements in a favorable light can enroll also the last two virtues, from a series of seven proposed, by Schmitter: Populisms exercise “decisions” replacing political impotence and increasing “politically possible” solutions area and Populisms need continuous popular ratification which makes them always be mindful of social needs.

Philippe C. SCHMITTER, “Un bilanţ al viciilor şi virtuţilor populismelor europene”, Dilema Veche, on-line edition, No. 180, 23 of July 2007 – [http://www.dilemaveche.ro/sectiune/la-portile-occidentului/articol/unbilant-al-viciilor-si-virtutilor-populismelor-europene]. 1

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Populism vices or defects are analyzed in direct antithesis to the seven virtues in order to see more clearly how complex can be the facets of the same phenomenon. The first vice grants a big minus to populisms by the fact that they undermine party loyalties

and the ability to choose between competing partisan programs, without replacing them with alternative programs. The second flaw on the Schmitter‟s list rejects the way of recruiting individuals: Populisms recruits misinformed persons who do not have consistent preferences and seek in politics rather 'the emotional' than program elements. Another criticism is that Populisms arouse expectations that cannot be met. The last 4 vices fits perfectly the last four virtues listed above: “Populisms use foreign powers as a scapegoat for domestic problems and weakened external links necessary for national security; directing attention from the people the Populisms introduce an chaotic and opportunistic element in politics; Populisms can lead to faster adoption of decisions, but their decisions tend to be poorly designed and do not take into account long-term effects” and not least and perhaps the most alarming “Populisms may be capable of altering the democratic mechanisms and to win the support of the military, so after that they cannot be peacefully removed from power”. 1

For Schmitter most important point in characterizing populisms is obvious the seventh point, both on the vices column and that of virtue. If a populist democracy cannot be replaced, the other virtues become irrelevant. Therefore, populism is very different in countries with liberal democracy to the one which appeared in the nascent democracies. In stable democracies, the ones which are defied in the election keep a chance next time, and a populist is not able to handle military forces against opponents. Schmitter's provisional conclusion highlights the important role that it plays in liberal democracies populisms: “Populisms have a legitimate place in liberal democracies”. We could even say that in a probabilistic perspective there are inevitable given the nearly intrinsic dynamism of these regimes. They have their virtues as well as vices, and is not a law that automatically last prevail. To paraphrase James Madison, “any effort to exclude them from competition would be worse than the harm they could cause.”2

1 2

Ibidem. Ibidem.

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Philippe Schmitter expresses unequivocal his political creed: “I do not think that populism is a good thing, but I just say that populism is a normal reaction in a democracy, it happened also in the U.S.”.1 Here is the first distinction between Schmitter and the specialists from the pessimistic wave: populism is a normal process and not a danger or a negative event which must be stopped at all costs. Schmitter certifies that the populism can take different forms, but take a constructive effort to establish constant socalled “generic forms”2 of populist movements. Another researcher of European space, Ivan Krastev shares almost the same opinion as Schmitter. He draws first of all a general expression of European populisms, emphasizing those particular cases which give a touch of specificity phenomenon in the context under discussion. According to Krastev the “populism” is often associated in current debates with an impressive speech, simplistic and manipulative, addressing “primary emotions” of people with opportunistic policies aimed at “buying” support. But appeal to people's emotions is banned in democratic politics? Or who decides which policies are “populist” and which are “reasonable”? As Ralf Dahrendorf observed “the populism of one‟s is the democracy of the others and vice versa.” Thus, according to Ivan Krastev's view “the core challenge is represented by the rise of populist political parties and movements that appeal to "the people" to the detriment of the alleged representatives of the people, thus threatening the political parties, the interests and values which are consolidated.”3 In essence, what defines populism is the idea that society is divided into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups “ordinary people” and “corrupt elite”. Thus, argues that political populism is the expression of the general will of the people and that social change is possible only through a radical change of elites.4 It is vicious, but true, that today, European elites secretly dreams to a scheme which will deprive the irresponsible voters of their power to undermine the rational

Cristian GHINEA, interviu cu Schmitter C. Philippe, “Nu ai nevoie de revoluţie, de asasinat, poţi folosi regulile democratice”, Dilema veche, electronic edition, No. 180, 23 July 2007, available at: http://www.dilemaveche.ro/sectiune/la-portile-occidentului/articol/inu-ai-nevoie-de-revolutie-de-asasinatpoti-folosi-regulile-democraticei. 2 Ibidem. 3 Ivan KRASTEV, “Momentul populist… cit”. 4 Ibidem. 1

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politics and are more than willing to use the European Union to achieve this dream. At the same time, most people are convinced that they have the right to vote, but not the right to influence the decision making process, so they oppose the enlargement process of the European Union. The result is a politics in which the populists become manifest illiberal, while the elite secretly build an anti–democratic resentment. This is the real danger of populist moment. In the era of populism, the front is not between Right and Left, nor between reformers and conservatives. It can rather say that we are witnessing a structural conflict between elites who are increasingly distrustful of democracy and the public anger that is becoming increasingly anti-liberals. The fight against corruption, the "war against terrorism" and anti - Americanism are only three of the emergent new populist politics.1

Bibliography BURGOS-VIGNA, Diana, “Alberto Fujimori: le populisme de l‟efficacité”, @mnis Revue de Civilisation Contemporaine de l‟Université de Bretagne Occidentale, No. 5, Caen, 2005. CONNIF, Michael L., “Neo-populismo en América Latina. La década de los 90 y después”, Revista de Ciencia Política, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, 2003. DIX, Robert H., “Populism: Authoritarian and Democratic”, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1985. DORNA, Alexandre, “Faut-il avoir peur du populisme ?”, Le Monde diplomatique, November 2003, available at http://www.mondediplomatique.fr/2003/11/DORNA/10680. DORNA, Alexandre, La democracia: un espejismo?, Lumen, Buenos Aires-Mexico, 2003. DORNA, Alexandre, “Quand la démocratie s‟assoit sur de volcans: l‟émergence des populismes charismatiques”, @mnis Revue de Civilisation Contemporaine de l‟Université de Bretagne Occidentale, No. 5, Caen, 2005. DORNA, Alexandre, Le Neopopulisme et le charisme, Text colloque Université de Grenoble: La tentation populiste, September 2001.

1

Ibidem.

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DORNA, Alexandre, Le Populisme, PUF, Paris, 1999. DORNA, Alexandre, Liderul carismatic, Corint, Bucuresti, 2004. GARCÍA MONTERO, Mercedes “La década de Fujimori: ascenso, mantenimiento y caída de un líder antipolítico”, América Latina Hoy, No. 28, Salamanca, August 2001. GHERGHINA, Sergiu, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Populismul contemporan, Institutul European, Iași, 2012. GHINEA, Cristian, interview with Philippe C. Schmitter, “Nu ai nevoie de revoluţie, de asasinat, poţi folosi regulile democratice”, Dilema veche, electronic edition, No. 180, July 23rd 2007, available at http://www.dilemaveche.ro/sectiune/la-portileoccidentului/articol/nu-ai-nevoie-de-revolutie-de-asasinat-poti-folosi-reguliledemocratice. GRESKOVITS, Bela, The Political Economy of Protest and Patience. East European and Latin American Transformations Compared, CEU Press, Budapest, 1998, apud Cas Mudde, “Populism in Eastern Europe”, East European Perspectives, Vol. II, March 8th 2000, available at http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1342548.html. HENNESSY, Alistair, “Latin America”, in Ghiță IONESCU, Ernest GELLNER (eds.) Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969. HERMET, Guy, Les populismes dans le monde. Une histoire sociologique XIX–XX siècle, Libraire Arthème Fayard, Paris, 2001. IONESCU, Ghiță, Ernest GELLNER (eds.) Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969. JAGUARIBE, Hệlio, Problemas do desenvolvimento latinoamericano, Rio de Janeiro, 1967. KNIGHT, Alan “Populism and Neo-populism in Latin America, especially Mexico”, Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, May 1998. KRASTEV, Ivan, “Momentul populist”, CriticAtac, January 13th 2011, available at http://www.criticatac.ro/3817/momentul-populist/. LACLAU, Ernesto, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism-FascismPopulism, Humanities Press, London, 1977. MAYORGA, Fernando, “Neopopulismo y democracia en Bolivia”, Revista de Ciencia Política, vol. XXIII, No. 1, 2003.

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MAYORGA, René, Antipolitica y Neopopulismo, Centro Boliviano de Estudios Multidisciplinarios, La Paz, 1995. MIȘCOIU, Sergiu, “De la populism la neopopulism? Câteva repere empirice pentru o delimitare conceptuală”, in GHERGHINA, Sergiu, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Populismul contemporan, Institutul European, Iași, 2012. NAVIA, Patricio, “Partidos Políticos como Antídoto contra el Populismo en América Latina”, Revista de Ciencia Política, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, 2003. NOVARO, Marcos, “Los populismos latinoamericanos transfigurados”, Nueva Sociedad, No. 144, July-Aug. 1996. O‟DONNELL, Gulliermo. “Democracia delegativa?”, Cuadernos de CLAEH, Year 17, No. 61, Montevideo, 1992. PANTELIMON, Răzvan Victor, “Populism şi Neo-populism. Concept şi practici”, in Tendinţe Actuale în Filozofia Politică, Editura Institutului de Ştiinţe Politice şi Relaţii Internaţionale al Academiei Române, Bucureşti, 2006. PANTELIMON, Răzvan Victor, “Partidele au murit, trăiască partidele! Apariţia partidului-cartel în România”, Studia Politica. Revista Română de Ştiinţă Politică, Vol. VI, No. 2, Bucharest, 2006. PERELLI, Carina, “La personalización de la política. Nuevos caudillos, „outsiders‟, política mediática y política informal”, in Carina PERELLI, Sonia PICADO and Daniel ZOVATTO (eds.), Partidos y clase política en América Latina en los 90, IIDH-CAPEL, San José, 1995. PUHLE, Hans Jürgen, “Populismo en América Latina”, Revista de Ciencia Política, Vol. IX, No. 1, 1987. RAMIREZ ROA, Rosaly, “La política extraviada en la Venezuela de los años 90: entre rigidez institucional y neo-populismo”, Revista de Ciencia Política, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, 2003. SCHMITTER, Philippe C., “Un bilanţ al viciilor şi virtuţilor populismelor europene”, Dilema Veche, online edition, No. 180, July 23rd 2007, available at http://www.dilemaveche.ro/sectiune/la-portile-occidentului/articol/un-bilant-alviciilor-si-virtutilor-populismelor-europene. SHILS, Edward, The Torment of Secrecy, New York, 1956.

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STEWART, Angus, “The Social Roots” in Ghiță IONESCU, Ernest GELLNER (eds.) Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969. TAGUIEFF, Pierre-André, “Le populisme et la science politique du mirage conceptuel aux vrais problems”, Vingtième Siècle, No. 56, Oct.-Dec. 1997. TARCHI, Marco, “Italia: tărâmul populismelor” in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Populismul contemporan, Institutul European, Iași, 2012. di TELLA, Torcuato, “Populism and Reform in Latin America”, in C. Veliz (ed.), Obstacles to Change in Latin America, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1965. TISMĂNEANU, Vladimir, “Hypotheses on Populism: The Politics of Charismatic Protest”, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2000. TOURAINE, André, La parole et le sang, Odile Jacob, Paris, 1988. VADEN, Harry E., Gary PREVOST, Politics of Latin America, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 2006. WEYLAND, Kurt, “Neoliberal Populism in Latin America and Eastern Europe”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 31, No. 4, July 1999. WILES, Peter, “A Syndrome, not a Doctrine: Some Elementary Theses on Populism” in Ghiță IONESCU, Ernest GELLNER (eds.), Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969.

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The Authoritarian Credentials of Populist Presidentialism Dragoș COSMESCU Independent Researcher Abstract: This paper approaches the issue of the authoritarian features

exhibited by various incumbents of the office of president, who choose to enhance their own power at the expense of other democratic institutions and ultimately, at the expanse of the quality of democracy itself. Many presidential and semi-presidential republics have opened the way for populist leaders to seize the office and use various authoritarian tools, such as coup d‟état, discretionary control of institutions, obstinate conflict with the parliament, involvement in mishandling of elections, altering the constitution. Most of such populist leaders operate in Latin America and the space of the former Soviet Union and have managed to incur significant successes over the years, despite their blatantly unrepresentative agenda. A particular solution to such a threat to democracy would certainly be the insulation offered by a parliamentary system. Keywords: populism, presidentialism, leader, parliamentarianism.

The concentration of power in the person of a directly elected head of state raises certain concerns about the quality of democracy. In many democratic regimes, the powers of the office of president were constantly pushed beyond the interpretation of the constitutional provisions by populist political leaders. Accordingly, in the context of similar constitutional provisions, typical for a presidential system, some heads of state acknowledged and acted within the limits of their function, while in other cases others have consistently campaigned for gaining as much power as possible into their own hands, by circumventing and even ignoring the constitution: involvement in internal affairs beyond the limits of the constitution, unilateral initiation of plebiscites, the appointment of prime ministers in spite of the parliamentary majority, failing to respect the separation of powers in the state of law. To 153


various degrees, this is the case of heads of state like Alberto Fujimori, Alexander Lukashenko, Boris Yeltsin, Hugo Chavez or Vladimir Putin. Actions such as the expansion of presidential powers, the desire to overcome the limitations of the political office, the intention to change the institutional design, all these aspects lead to alterations of the democratic social contract. The institutional structure of democracy determines the way in which the organized political actors can come to power. It also sets the framework within which they can implement their policies in the state. Government effectiveness determines citizen‟s satisfaction that can manifest their political opinions within the constitutional framework - usually through elections - and this can provide such support and stability to the democratic regime. Guillermo O'Donnell noticed1 that there are certain regime forms, which he calls “delegative democracy”, where the president considers that the popular vote gives him the right to do whatever he desires while in office. Although O'Donnell considers this delegative system as a type of democracy, in fact it is much closer to personal authoritarianism. In her turn, Marina Ottaway starts to analyse semi-authoritarian regimes, but her characterization is more suitable for actual authoritarian regimes that use electoral institutions to legitimize themselves: “the existence and persistence of mechanisms that prevent the transfer of power through elections”2. Although they kept some formal democratic institutions (especially elections), most such regimes do not reach the moment of democratic consolidation, becoming instead electoral authoritarian regimes3. Certainly, such states are not outright authoritarian, nor exactly democratic. Moreover, such regimes can ensure the existence and maintenance of mechanisms that effectively prevent the transfer of power through elections, from the hands of a party or of the leaders in power in favour of a new elite or political organization4. The purpose of 1

Guillermo O‟DONNEL, “Delegative Democracy?”, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies,

Working Paper, No. 172, 1992. Marina OTTAWAY, Martha BRILL OLCOTT, “Challenge of Semi-Authoritarianism”, Carnegie Paper, No. 7, Oct. 1999, p. 2. 3 Andreas SCHEDLER, “Elections Without Democracy: The Menu of Manipulation”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2002, pp. 36-50; Steven LEVITSKY, Lucan WAY, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2002, pp. 51-65. 4 Marina OTTAWAY, Martha BRILL OLCOTT, “Challenge…cit.”, p. 3. 2

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the politic elites is to grasp the power; during the transition period, this struggle for power must take place within the democratic game, in order to ensure the success and stability of the democratic regime change. Formal democratic electoral systems block the access to other elites in power and secure their own permanence in government. Starting from the issue of the use of elections, there is a distinction that is worth noticing: there are semi-democratic regimes where elections are not the source of legitimacy of the executive, which is not dependent on the outcome of the vote, after which voters cannot transfer the power to another political actor, the source of political power being unchallenged (Iran, Kazakhstan) and on the other hand there are hybrid regimes where leaders succeed to remain in power by winning democratic elections, but using unfair – therefore undemocratic - competition: limiting the opposition‟s funding, harassing opponents, limiting their presence in the media (Russia Venezuela). Although there have always been in history authoritarian regimes which held the elections, today, even if these are free, the result is sometimes known before the official results are posted. Perhaps a compelling proof of irregularities in the management of elections is the fact that a president, like Yeltsin, for instance, enjoyed popularity only on election day, otherwise faring miserably in most opinion polls between 1992 and 1999 (basically his entire presidency over independent Russia). This became clear in 1996, when he rose from one digit approval rates in February, to win the presidential election in July, with 50.4% of the votes, at a moment when his only visible supporters were the state structures of control, a dozen Oligarchs (people raised from rags to riches by the fraudulent privatization program and the rampart corruption of his first term as president) and, more disturbingly, the Western democracies, particularly the US, chose to ignore his blatant authoritarian credentials and solely focus on his non-communist party affiliation. Even in Africa, starting with the 90s, many countries have experienced political liberalization, allowing the formation of opposition parties, freedom of the press and even multiparty elections. However, if holding free and fair elections is, indeed, a necessary condition for democracy, it is not a sufficient condition. Many authoritarian leaders responded international demands for democratization by holding multiparty elections, which, however, they have also won, most times without any problem. In Ghana, after a period of authoritarianism (1981-1993), Jerry Rawlings

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held free elections (starting in 1992), and always won them, although he indeed yielded the power after reaching the two-term limit. In Benin, President Mathieu Kérékou, after an apparent authoritarian government (1972-1991), organised and won multiparty elections (1996-2001), as did Omar Bongo in Gabon (1967-2009), who won the elections in 1993, 1998, 2005, and in Congo, Denis Sassou, who ruled between 1979-1992 in an authoritarian fashion, and returned to politics by winning the elections in 1997, 2002, 2009. Likewise, in Guinea, although there was no previous authoritarian regime, President Lansana Conte remained in power between 1993 and 2008. These mandates, although obtained through elections deemed free, ought to be classified in the category of formal democratic regimes, because the election results of the president in power are significantly influenced by the wide range of policy instruments at its disposal in order to surpass competitors and to stay in power. For instance, the importance of controlling the intelligence apparatus was understood by many such presidents; as soon as he came to power, in 1999, Hugo Chavez nominated a close ally, from his own party, as head of the secret police. The same thing happened in Peru, where Alberto Fujimori named his friend Vladimir Montesinos as de facto head of the intelligence community, in 1990, right after having won the presidency. In Russia, Vladimir Putin was actually in charge of the main intelligence agency immediately before becoming prime-minister in 1999. An element recurrently appearing present in all these cases recognized as belonging to these manifestations of authoritarian presidentialism is the fight against the free press. Both Putin and Chavez strove to control the media, especially the powerful TV stations, or simply push-out the independent channels. In Russia, Venezuela, presidents were able to shut down media companies, TV broadcasters mainly, just because they aired views opposing the government. Actually, it is natural that the media be a target of presidential attacks in such regimes, because, since we speak of political systems which functioned initially on the basis of the separation of powers, the media incurs the risk of exposing various perspectives on social and political realities, and this diversity cannot be accepted by a non-democratic president. In such political systems, contrary to the democratic spirit, to the rule of law and the separation of powers, the presidential executive proves the most important source of legislation. Like all the presidents with authoritarian tendencies, Chavez was exhorted to 156


issue legislation himself, and used habilitation laws to govern without the Venezuelan Congress for a total of four years out of his 13 in office. The most important parts of the legislation are passed ignoring the will of the parliament, thus emasculating the purpose of the house of representatives and so eliminating the democratic attributes of the decision-making process. This presumption that the presidential executive should exact legislation is what brings the head of state at odds with a solid modern democracy, so naturally the fight of the presidents for more power becomes a fight against the national parliaments. Since political power is a zero sum game, in order for a political actor to gain more power, then another actor or group of actors will lose some of its power. Each institutional design provides enough power to fulfil each policy objective (legislative, executive, administrative, electoral). There is no need to increase the power of an actor so that it can fulfil a goal: the power such an actor demands exists already in the institutional arrangements of the regimes, either in the hands of other institutions, or even of the individual political actor: the citizen. For example, when a head of state demands more power, for any purpose – be it one of national reform and state modernization (Getulio Vargas, Porfirio Diaz, Benito Juarez, Juan Peron, Hugo Chavez, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) - this means that he takes more power from other political actors, who would be in a position, either independently or in coalition, to achieve the same objectives themselves. But the concentration of more power in the hands of a single person is not good for democracy. Increasing the power of one political office means that at least one other political actor loses some of his. The mere intention to increase the powers of a political office is undemocratic in itself, because it assumes the weakening of the rights of another democratic office. When the increase of power is in favour of an individual actor (the most visible and common example is that of the president), the non-democratic character and intention of this action are more pronounced. In contemporary democracies, the rule of law requires institutionalised and articulated coherent organisations. The Parliament is a forum for debate and enactment of key laws and the judicial system is where conflicts of interests are tackled and decided upon. Together, the parliament and the judiciary institution are perceived as organisations providing the efficiency of social laws. So it is understandable to find Parliaments

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everywhere trying desperately to save democracy from authoritarian figures riding high on misplaced popular emotions. In Russia, the entire year 1993 was marked by a confrontation of the president with the opposing parliament, and when it looked like he might lose or at least not win, he illegally disbanded the legislative, and when the latter resisted, he send the military to fire on it, killing almost 200 people over a few days in early October 1993. This shows the endemic failures of the mixed system, when faced with a person bent on a dictatorial administration of the country, although sometimes cloaked in the mantle of populist discourse, such as the greater economic good or the fight against the corruption of every other politician than himself or his cabal. The constitutional crisis of 1993 was not an event in favour of Boris Yeltsin, whose every action was against the fundamental law or other adjacent legislation; he had absolutely no legal basis for repudiating the constitution of the state and for dissolving the parliament. This highly disproportionate use of force is anti-democratic to its core, especially when the target is the only representative national institution of a state (the Parliament). Despite unlimited support from the West in all his authoritarian moves, being the poster child for Anti-communism in its very home, in 1993 it was exactly the lack of involvement from the Communist Party, led by Zyuganov, that dwindled the support for the democratic stance against Yeltsin. The solution of the crisis meant that Yeltsin could issue decrees and thus bypass the legislative, and his powers were further increased with the new constitution forced through at the end of 1993. In the „90s, in Latin America (first in April 1992 in Peru) and then in some former Soviet countries (Russia, Belarus), a new form of coup d‟état emerged, instigated and run by the presidential incumbent, against the very construction of democratic institutions: autogolpe (self-coup). Such presidents have dissolved the parliament, suspended the constitution and tried various means - more or less constitutional - to endow themselves with increased executive powers. Boris Yeltsin even ordered tanks to shoot at the Parliament building, just two years after the collapse of the USSR had presented him to the world as the champion of democracy. Autogolpe is a euphemism for a new type of dictatorial aggression exerted by the president against the legislative and the other institutions of the state of law. The self158


coup is just as anti-democratic as any other coup. Basically, the term itself – autogolpe – encapsulates the idea that the usual coup would happen against a president, who also tries to tone down the non-democratic reality of the actions of President Fujimori. At the other end is Honduras (and perhaps Venezuela in 2002), when the military intervened instead for the protection and restoration of democracy. According to the constitution of Honduras, the military can act in defence of constitutional provisions, and called to do so by certain institutions of the state, which is what happened in 2009: the role of legal guardian of democracy rested with the army, both under the terms of the democratic constitution, and under a direct mandate of legislative (Parliament) and legal powers (the Honduran Supreme Court). In the case of the deposition of President Manuel Zelaya, state institutions (Supreme Court, Parliament, army) reacted in defence of democracy, threatened his unconstitutional intention to extend his presence in office. The Supreme Court deemed illegal his actions to stay in power beyond his term, and thus the Court acted in the defence of democracy. Zelaya‟s intention to eliminate a presidential term limit is identical to Chavez‟s action to remove the two-term restrictions in his country. Any extension of attribute or temporal limits of an office is undemocratic, because, in extremis, this extension could be indefinite1. A similar case was that of President Alvaro Uribe, who managed to persuade the Columbian Congress to validate his intention of re-election, by amending the constitution (2004). Even in such a case, when all relevant institutions acted lawfully, amid consensus between different political camps, the president‟s action still bodes ill. In Russia, Putin did not try to alter the constitution to suit his needs, but plied his tactics to suit the constitution. Since he was limited to only two consecutive mandates, he made sure he chose a docile successor, and teamed with him in the president-premier pattern to rule the country from that position. While indeed granting Alexander Medvedev all the exposure endeared in the office of president, it was obvious that the real executive leader of Russia was still Putin. The concordat worked perfectly and in 2012 they switched places, and the presidency was handed over to Vladimir Putin.

Arturo VALENZUELA “Latin American Presidencies Interrupted”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4, October 2004, pp. 5-19; Daniel N. POSNER, Daniel J. YOUNG, “The institutionalization of Political power in Africa”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 18, No. 3, July 2007, pp. 127-140. 1

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Unfortunately, this loophole - although certainly constitutional and therefore democratic – could mean that Putin might rule for life. In Niger, in February 2010, the military staged a coup d'état, removing incumbent Mamadou Tandja who intended to remain in power after the expiration of the legal number of mandates, claiming popular support to back up his action. Tandja had even managed to organize a referendum to turn the previous semi-presidential political system into a presidential one. In fact, half of the members of the junta in place in Niamey included prominent officers involved in the coup of 1999, in which another personal regime was toppled, and these officers indeed withdrew from power once the elections had taken place, as promised, just three months later. In Honduras and Niger the military coup has actually overturned two autogolpe, has replaced the enemy of the democratic regime, and has allowed their respective states to return to a democratic government, holding free elections in 2009 and in 2011. In Europe, after the collapse of the USSR and its satellite regimes, it seemed that it would not witness again the experience of non-democratic regimes. Moreover, such optimism was the key note of the theory of the third wave of democratization, launched by Samuel Huntington in 1991, and was in fact largely justified at that time. However, soon after, in the ex-Soviet area, a series of presidential regimes drifted towards formal democracy (Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan) or openly authoritarian regimes (Kazakhstan, Belarus). The Francophile calling of many Eastern European societies could produce but a Gaullist model, a monarchical-republic, which is, despite its name, lacking the political and social dialogue of a genuine democracy. The pitfall is confusing Gaullism with democracy and is thus aggravating the dangers of presidentialism. Government effectiveness is preferred to democratic values, even at the risk of authoritarian manifestations from the highest office. Another French-inspired concept is the presidential party, as a simple vehicle to support a strong leader, an organization with no clear ideological identity, only with opportunistic affinity, whose sole purpose is to ensure the logistics of the campaign and provide the staff to fill positions in the public administration solely on political criteria. In such ruling parties, internal elections are contested mostly by just one real candidate and most of the times there are no other candidates. Such presidents build upon the French example and set-up presidential parties that offer them a vehicle of mass campaigning and the appearance of mass support. 160


Essentially, such a party has no real power or even no role, other than to satisfy the needs and decisions of this person. For example, the Unity Party of Russia was created in September 1999, after it became official that Putin would be the successor of Yeltsin, and in just three months it gained 23% of the votes for the Parliament, subsequently supporting Putin‟s drive for president in March 2000. Eventually, this meteoric rise was interrupted upon the decision of the president, who demanded and obtained the merger of the Unity Party with another major party (Fatherland Party), in April 2001, to form the presidential party of United Russia, which, to this day, offers Putin the platform to simulate party – therefore mass, rather than personal – rule over the country. To a certain extent, the personal leadership accompanied by a single actual party is a mobilizing regime, in search of a national community, the classless society (Peron‟s Argentina, Nasser‟s Egypt, Getulio Vargas‟ Brazil, Kemal Ataturk‟s Turkey). Populism is in fact a central strong feature of such presidents. In Venezuela, Chavez was true to his populist agenda, scrapping the presidential limousine or giving away his entire presidential wage to a scholarship fund1. The populist image Putin created is reminiscent of the performances of Benito Mussolini, but he has the common sense to be brought up to date with modern times. Putin was seen flying military jets, competing in martial arts, swimming in a Siberian river or using a tranquilizer gun on wild tigers. There are even the Putin-branded products like vodka, canned food and caviar. In 1999, Chavez launched his own morning radio show, Aló Presidente, on the state radio network, and a Thursday night television show, Face to Face with the President, which are still off the charts for colloquialism and hands-on approach from a head of state: the president took calls from the viewers, discussed his policies and, basically, talked about whatever crossed his mind. Chavez had even an active Twitter account (@chavezcandanga) with millions of followers back when he was alive and well (2012). In October 2013, his successor, Nicolas Maduro created the office of Vice Minister of Supreme Happiness, in charge of coordinating social programs, with a pompous name uncharacteristic of democratic designs. In a democracy, the constitutional framework is created by the specific nature of the system, providing the means to maintain it, and to implement the state policies. The Bart JONES, Hugo! The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution, Steerforth Press, Hanover, New Hampshire, 2007, p. 234. 1

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latter creates satisfaction or dissatisfaction amongst the population, which has the means to express political approval or disapproval. Thus, the constitutional design is important for politicians and citizens alike. A good design maximizes the results of democratic governance, while in the opposite case, the democratic regime may be perceived as inefficient, even corrupt. Dictatorship in today‟s Belarus is the outcome of a failed transition dominated by representatives of the former Soviet regime, but contrariwise, Lukashenko installed his personal dictatorship after defeating in the elections precisely those who had tried the real democratization of the country from 1991 to 1995. The fight against corruption was the stepping stone used by Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus when he gained popularity and won the presidency back in the early 1990s. Lukashenko made a name for himself while in parliament through his harsh anti-corruption rhetoric, so that he was elected chairman of the anti-corruption committee of the Belarusian Parliament, in 1993. From this position, he launched fierce diatribes against politicians he accused of corruption, included top officials, who, incidentally, were would-be presidential candidates for the elections of early 1994. Lukashenko ran as independent, on the highly effective and populist anti-corruption platform, and gained more than double the votes of his runner-up in the first round, and went on to a landslide 80% victory in the second round, in July 1994. When his authoritarianism became clear, the Parliament of Belarus tried to impeach Lukashenko in 1996, only to prompt the president to demand a new constitution significantly enhancing his powers, and this was passed by a referendum still, to date, unrecognized by the international community. Finally, the original two-term limit for holding the presidency was removed in the 2004 referendum. In fact, the referendum is every president‟s favourite tool for passing populist legislation. A specialist of the referenda, Chavez, lost only one of the 5 he called (also winning one recall referendum in 2004), and waited a little over a year to hold it again, win, and expand his powers, by extending the term of the presidency to 7 years, and, especially, by eliminating the two-term limit for all public offices. In Venezuela, Chavez called for a referendum just two months in office. Like so many other presidents democratically elected, immediately after coming to power he set about to change the constitutionals design of the country to grant himself even more power, to the detriment of the parliament (for instance, Chavez reduced the legislative to 162


one chamber, from two previously). The ease with which such presidential plebiscites pass, all over the world, and most times against the better judgment, should undoubtedly be put down to effective populist campaign. Either by coup, or by referendum, many presidents seek unrelentingly to rob powers away from the representatives of the nation. What‟s interesting is that most of these conflicts between presidents and parliaments in the last two decades, revolve, one way or another, around the issue of the implementation of neo-liberal policies in the economy, as advocated worldwide, virtually not customized, by the IMF. In Russia, the period of Yeltsin‟s legitimacy lasted so little it can hardly be called having existed at all. In December 1991, he unlawfully extricated Russia from the USSR and thus forced the dismemberment of the Union (something most of the other 14 republics hardly wanted). Merely two months after his tenure of president of the newly independent state of Russia, his announcement of his plans of reforms for the economy prompted the vice-president Alexander Rutskoy to call it an “economic genocide”1, which eventually proved to be the case: high interest rates, liberalization of prices, foreign trade and currency, austerity. This type of economic change is known as the Washington Consensus, or better known in Eastern Europe as shock therapy, is advocated, to this day, by the IMF, and focuses on one-sided decomposition of the economy of the country, in the name of privatization of every possible asset, but without meaningful features to genuinely foster the individual enterprise. Basically, it‟s based on a drawing-board assumption that once left without previous means of subsistence each individual will strive to start on the path of competition-driven private enterprising that would, in turn, bring about a perfect, textbook, market economy. There are too few success stories of this shock therapy, since it is meant to be very quick, but, in turn, almost every time when dealing with centralized economies (perhaps with the exception of Poland) the economic transition was, in fact, a slow and agonizing parade of consuming-numbing austerity, raised taxation and credit crunch. The result of this economic transition, especially in Russia and other Eastern European countries, was a sharp reduction of the living standards, which surely can‟t possibly be considered a success story of the free market economy. Celestine BOHLEN, “Yeltsin Deputy Calls Reforms Economic Genocide”, The New York Times, February 1992. 1

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Faced with the lack of efficiency of governance, the cost was borne by the major social groups (pensioners, civil servants, teachers, doctors, law enforcement). Moreover, the presidential administration announced the elimination of the welfare state to justify their budgetary policies. (In fact, democracy cannot exist outside the welfare state and the European Union is centred precisely on this objective, which outweighs any ancillary economic objectives.) In fact, the only policy agenda of Boris Yeltsin in common with that of his western backers was the implementation of a market economy at - literally - any cost. But he lacked any kind of commitment, other than token pretence, to any of the democratic values. He constantly tried to accumulate more and more executive powers and to create a network of supporters whose fortunes were owed entirely to him (the oligarchs), therefore dependent on his person. The crisis in a transition state can come in three dimensions1: the lack of trust in the efficiency of bureaucracy, in its laws and in the plausibility of the claim that state agencies orient their decisions based on the public good. Daron Acemoglu speaks of a “captured democracy”2 where democratic institutions exist and function, but are structured so that the result favours the interests of the elite institutions: here is how “weak democracies are threatened by progressive erosion of government performance and of the democratic structures by domestic agents”3. Basically, over the entire tenure in office of Boris Yeltsin (except his last year when he clashed with the US over Kossovo), he received unlimited and unwarranted support from Washington, which naturally was grateful for the implosion of the Soviet Union triggered almost unilaterally by Yeltsin himself in late 1991. After 1992, his only significant policy centred on the economic reform, to which every other executive aspects were subsumed, including his fight for power with the Parliament. Considering these reforms brought about the virtual annihilation of any economic power, in just 2-3 years, of a country that only recently has ranked second to the US, their wisdom is questionable,

Guillermo O‟DONNEL, “On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems (A Latin American View with Glances at Some Post-Communist Countries)”, World Development, Vol. 21, No. 8, Aug. 1993, pp. 1355-1369. 2 Daron ACEMOGLU, James A. ROBINSON, “Persistence of Power, Elites, and Institutions”, American Economic Review, Vol. 98, No. 1, 2008, p. 290. 3 Devra MOEHLER, Staffan LINDBERG, “Narrowing the Legitimacy Gap: The Role of Turnovers in Africa‟s Emerging Democracies”, Afrobarometer Working Papers, 2007, p. 4. 1

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at best. More conspicuously so is the unbridled support of Washington, directly, or that of the IMF and other such institutions; this support chose to overlook all his dictatorial actions from sending soldiers to fire on Parliamentarians in 1993, to his very surprising electoral victory of 1996. Wayne Merry, a retired diplomat who served at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow at that time1, showed that Washington was only committed to the neo-liberal program of macro-economic reform and fell deaf to questions of legality and constitutional legitimacy in Russia. When acting in Eastern Europe, even to this day, the US has shown many times it consistently prefers economic ideology to the fostering of participatory democracy and the rule of law. This was normally a trademark of the republican administrations of the Cold War era, but, unfortunately, it perpetrated again when faced with the crisis situation slowing down many world economies. Oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven joined in the Davos Pact of February 1996, initiated by the first two, to offer unlimited financial or other support for the re-election of Yeltsin at all costs. Thus, to the backing of state-controlled institutions, Yeltsin could now add all the media owned by these oligarchs, which virtually left nothing available for his main rival Vladimir Zyuganov. Financially, the tap was opened for Yeltsin to the billions accrued by the oligarch during his fire sale of his country assets. Even the US jumped in his boat, and urged the IMF to quicken a 10 billion dollars loan in early 1996, which was mostly used to pay long overdue salaries in an ailing economy. Other populist authoritarian regimes, with an average level of modernization, have practiced other forms of interactions with the capital, characterized by a coalition of national economic interests and trade unions (corporatism). In Latin America, starting with the interwar years, economic cooperation between the bourgeoisie and the unions was extended to the political sphere, and the industrial bourgeoisie worked with unions in the attempt to diminish or even eliminate the old landowning elite‟s leading role in South American politics (Getulio Vargas in Brazil and Juan Peron in Argentina even succeeded), although this alliance proved short lived and conjectural.

Wayne MERRY, “Autumn 1993 through American Eyes”, Russia beyond the Headlines, [rbth.co.uk], October 3, 2013. 1

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In a quite interesting scientific collaboration of three classics of comparative politics scholars - Seymour Martin Lipset‟s, Juan Linz‟s and Larry Diamond‟s Democracy in Developing Countries (1989) - they identify such systems as democracy where “real power of elected officials is so limited, so small the partisan competition and freedom and fairness of elections so compromised, that the electoral results strongly deviate from popular preferences, and/or where civil liberties and policy are so limited that some political interests cannot organize and express”1. The issue with this popular preference is that, in fact, a president does not represent all the citizens, but only those who voted for him, exactly because he is elected in a uninominal constituency, by majority vote. He comes in office with a political program, which is supported only by his voters, and so only they will be represented and have their interests protected. The president, like any politician, cannot be the representative of those who did not vote for him. Only in a proportional representation system is everybody represented, in varying degrees, of course. For example, in a constituency where the proportional system applies, if a party wins 60% of the votes, and another 40% who chooses the winner has roughly 60%2 of the representatives of the constituency, but the losers are also represented, although, obviously, by fewer delegates. Thus, their political demands are being heard and - even though it may seem improbable to implement, because they are promoted by minority voices - there may be circumstances in which they are put into practice (negotiations, changing the composition of the executive). The chances of implementing policy demands coming from a minority are quite significant, while in the case of the majority system, with its winner-takes-all principle (used for the direct election of the president), any of the demands of the defeated minority, however large it may be, will not be taken into account. Once he becomes president he is supposed to represent everyone, then there would be no reason for the other candidates in the campaign to engage in electoral disagreements; but his different sporting and, most likely, antagonistic platforms cannot be simultaneously put into practice, so the supporters of the defeated program cannot be represented by the elected president. 1

Larry DIAMOND, Juan J. LINZ, Seymour Martin LIPSET, Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin

America, LynneRienner, Boulder, 1989, p. xvii. 2

Of course, the actual figure is the result of more complex calculations.

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In a presidential system, this contradiction is not visible, because the president is also the leader of the cabinet of ministers, which obviously implements administrative policies consistent with the policy platform of the party supporting the president. On the other hand, the mixed systems empower the elected president, although there is also a premier invested and supported by a majority in parliament. This leads, of course, to differences of opinion, policy conflicts and institutional deadlocks. For instance, Russia has a complicated constitutional arrangement, which de facto is a presidential one, but features both a directly elected president with mandate unhinged by anybody (i.e. the Parliament), and the office of the prime-minister, who has, officially, a co-dependency status. This formal division between head of state and head of government could put Russia in the semi-presidential category, but the fact is that the premier operates like a Deputy prime-minister to the actual leader of the executive. This is facilitated by the fact that, under Putin, this office holder was carefully selected in the person of Medvedev. Basically, with a docile premier, any mixed system operates virtually like a presidential system, with all powers grasped in the hands of just one person. In the case of the mixed system, constitutional provisions, such as those striving to impose the president‟s role as mediator and representative of all the citizens, are clearly inconsistent: he can only be the representative of his own voters because he will always try to implement – if he counts on the support of the government – only those policies expressly manifested in his electoral campaign. He cannot implement the policies championed by his opponent and desired by the electors who voted against his own agenda. The direct election of the president of the state in a majority constituency annuls his claim to have a mandate from the entire nation. Just as a MP elected in a majority constituency, he represents only his own voters and will try to implement only those policies promised in his own campaign. The most recent example is that of Ukraine, where a president is faced with the option between two radically antagonistic choices of policy, makes a decision, and realizes he only represents half of the country, while the other half decides to express it gave no such a mandate. In fact, the latter half discovers that all its feasible options converge to forcing, by any means, the incumbent to step down and call for elections. Unfortunately, the reality of the intrinsic failure of the presidential and semi-presidential system is that this will never solve such a devious issue: the next office holder will equally represent little above half of the electorate.

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The solution would be the option for the parliamentarian democracy. The main issue in the building of democracy lies in the choice between the presidential and parliamentary system, since the former exhibits inherent problems that can inflict irreparable damage to the quality of democracy in that polis. Contemporary democracies are of three types: parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential (a combination of the first two types), and their description is implicit in the name itself. Parliamentary democracies tend to increase the level of freedom that facilitates the vital tasks of economic and social restructuring met by the new, emerging democracies, while simultaneously vying to strengthen their democratic institutions1. Steven Fish‟s study, Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies (2006), shows2 that the legislative power in constitutional design is directly proportional to the degree of democracy in the state, measured by the Freedom House score. Thus, countries with a strong parliament, such as Latvia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, are proven more democratic, obviously, than Belarus or Kazakhstan, both presidential regimes. Figures show that, between 1946 and 1999, the likelihood of parliamentary democracy to succumb in any given year was of 0.0171 (one out of 58), while the probability for the failure of the presidential system was of 0.0516 (one out of 24)3: “the higher performance of the parliamentary democracy throughout history is not an accident”4. According to Juan Linz, the parliamentary system is more durable than the presidential, and Adam Przeworski also shows that presidential democracies have a shorter lifetime than their parliamentary counterparts5. In fact, the critique raised by Juan Linz stems from the majority voting system used for the election for the office of head of state, which induced the winner-takes-all political culture. Linz is not necessarily advocating a parliamentary system, but rather 1

2

3

4 5

Alfred STEPAN, Cindy SKACH, “Constitutional Frameworks and Democratic Consolidation: Parliamentarianism versus Presidentialism”, World Politics, Vol. 46, No. 1, Oct. 1993, p. 4. Steven FISH, “Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies”, Journal of Democracy, 17, Jan. 2006, pp. 520. José Antonio CHEIBUB, Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007, p. 21. Juan LINZ, “The Perils of Presidentialism”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 1 No. 1, 1990, p. 52. Jose Antonio CHEIBUB, Adam PRZEWORSKI, Sebastian SAIEGH, “Government Coalitions and Legislative Success under Presidentialism and Parliamentarism”, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 34, 2004.

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praises the parliamentary coalition as a result of proportional voting systems. Like him, Mark Jones believes that “presidential systems that repeatedly fail to provide sufficient legal support to the president are doomed to failure”1. Arend Lijphart‟s critique in Models of Democracy (2000)2 goes along the same lines, since democracy itself requires dialogue, negotiation, therefore compromise. The position of single winner is extremist and irreconcilable. The win-lose game is a zero sum game. The majoritarian structures, found mainly in presidential systems, are not compatible with plural societies, as demonstrated by Lijphart. This is so because the respective systems are based on the principle of winner-takes-all, which reduces to zero the voice of the defeated candidates, when in fact their actual support could reach up to 50%. In a parliamentary system, the loss of legislative support shows, indirectly, the loss of the citizens‟ support and leads to the replacement of the government coalition. Thus, indirectly, the electorate chooses, at any time whatsoever, the composition of the executive, regardless of the actual date of general elections. Instead, in the presidential system, the head of state has a fixed term and is impossible to remove directly (by the electorate) and very hard indirectly (by its representatives in the parliament), regardless of his behaviour during the mandate. The president may even act and be insensitive to the results of his policies, since there is almost no chance that the citizens punish him for his failures. Even in a semi-presidential system, the trends to increase the powers of the president amount to changing the constitutional design to produce a pure presidential republic. For example, a pure majoritarian electoral system at district level, with high threshold, would produce a two-party system, that is a single-party government, most likely from the president‟s party, which is the exact effect of a presidential cabinet. Thus, even small legal changes would produce a presidential regime, in its classic Latin American form.

1

2

Mark JONES, Electoral Laws and the Survival of Presidential Democracies, Notre Dame University Press, Notre Dame, 1995, p. 38. Arend LIJPHART, Modele ale democraţiei. Forme de guvernare şi funcţionare în treizeci şi sase de ţări , Polirom, Iaşi, 2000, pp. 32-33.

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All these aspects of presidentialism and parliamentarianism should be taken into consideration in the recent issue of Romania and the constitutional improvement of its political system, meant to perfect its democratic features.

Bibliography ACEMOGLU, Daron, James A. ROBINSON, “Persistence of Power, Elites, and Institutions”, American Economic Review, Vol. 98, No. 1, 2008. BOHLEN, Celestine, “Yeltsin Deputy Calls Reforms Economic Genocide”, The New York Times, February 1992. BROWNLEE, Jason, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007. CHEIBUB, José Antonio, Presidentialism, Parliamentarianism, and Democracy, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007. CHEIBUB, Jose Antonio, Adam PRZEWORSKI, Sebastian SAIEGH, “Government Coalitions and Legislative Success under Presidentialism and Parliamentarianism”, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 34, 2004. COSMESCU, Dragoş, Regim politic şi tranziţie politică, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2013. DAHL, Robert, Democracy and Its Critics, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1989. DIAMOND, Larry, Juan J. LINZ, Seymour Martin LIPSET, Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, 1989. ELGIE, Robert (ed.), Semi-presidentialism in Europe, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007. FISH, Steven, “Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 17, Ian. 2006. JONES, Bart, Hugo! The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution, Steerforth Press, Hanover, New Hampshire, 2007. JONES, Mark, Electoral Laws and the Survival of Presidential Democracies, Notre Dame University Press, Notre Dame, 1995. LEVITSKY, Steven, Lucan WAY, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2002.

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LIJPHART, Arend, Modele ale democraţiei. Forme de guvernare şi funcţionare în treizeci şi sase de ţări, Polirom, Iaşi, 2000. LINZ, Juan, “The Perils of Presidentialism,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1990. LINZ, Juan, Alfred, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1996. MCFAUL, Michael, “The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World”, World Politics, No. 54, 2002. MERRY, Wayne, “Autumn 1993 through American Eyes”, Russia beyond the Headlines, (rbth.co.uk), October 3, 2013. MOEHLER, Devra, Staffan LINDBERG, “Narrowing the Legitimacy Gap: The Role of Turnovers in Africa‟s Emerging Democracies”, Afrobarometer Working Papers, 2007. O‟DONNEL, Guillermo, “Delegative Democracy?”, Working Paper, No.172, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, 1992. O‟DONNEL, Guillermo, “On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems (A Latin American View with Glances at Some Post-Communist Countries)”, World Development, Vol. 21, No. 8, Aug. 1993. OTTAWAY, Marina, Martha BRILL OLCOTT, “Challenge of Semi-Authoritarianism”, Carnegie Paper, No. 7, Oct. 1999. POSNER, Daniel N., Daniel J. YOUNG, “The Institutionalization of Political Power in Africa”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 18, No. 3, July 2007. SCHEDLER, Andreas, “Elections without Democracy: The Menu of Manipulation”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2002. SCHEDLER, Andreas (ed.), Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, 2006. STEPAN, Alfred, Cindy SKACH, “Constitutional Frameworks and Democratic Consolidation: Parliamentarianism versus Presidentialism”, World Politics, Vol. 46, No. 1, Oct. 1993. THOMPSON, Mark, Philipp KUNTZ, “More than Just the Final Straw: Stolen Elections as Revolutionary Triggers”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 41, No. 3, Apr. 2009. VALENZUELA, Arturo, “Latin American Presidencies Interrupted”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4, October 2004.

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The Populism of the Political Discourse. Metamorphoses of Political Rhetoric and Populism Veton LATIFI South East European University, Macedonia Abstract: While historically populism has been tended to be an attribute of

the right oriented political parties, since the ideological shifting of ideological orientation of the parties and its disrupted relevance in the last few decades across Europe, today at some segments populism is more and more present in the political discourse of parties attempting to achieve their goals regardless of their ideological orientation or heritage. Populism seems to be a new-old means for the conquest of hearts of the people by those political parties in government or opposition that may be left, right or central oriented. The transformed approach of the political actors has been transforming as well as the concept of the populism from an ideological label toward a mean for a massive winning of votes and support for candidates in the political campaigning. The latter more and more is conducted with uninterrupted rhetoric through the entire period of political activity and not only in front of elections. Especially with the enormous grow of the use of social networks in the political campaigning, populism is finding its way within the political discourse of political actors and programs transforming itself into a fast-track way to come to power via practicing the symbolic politics. Keywords: populism, political discourse, political rhetoric.

1. INTRODUCTION The general approach in trying to explain the contemporary forms of populism of the 21st century via the central role played by „„the people‟‟ in the political discourse of

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political parties and programs, seems to be short in addressing the complex notions in the studies of the populism in recent political theory as far as a the new transformed forms of populism and its derivatives are scattered. The growth of the relevance of global politics, state‟s reshuffled concepts and increased frequencies of transcendent political processes are shaping other kinds of grounds and scopes for the massive rhetoric policies in the 21st century, different from those traditional concepts treating populism as a label to distinguish the authoritarian rule and a way of right wing parties to mobilize „„the people‟‟ against an undemocratic elite. The transformation of the political landscapes has been reflected with the transformation of populist concepts and forms that seems to be more demanding within the political process and transforming the politics of masses mobilization to an indicator for the types and forms of the rhetoric use within the political discourse and as a reference to an attribute to the new political cultures. The classical conception of populism via the central and cause of „„the people‟‟ may seem too nebulous and too emotive. Today it is difficult to imagine the concept of populism as not worth analysing without the associated populist rhetoric within the political discourse. Instead of traditional approach in studying it as term that refers to the recurrent phenomenon of a manipulative movement directed by an authoritarian or totalitarian leader in the attempt of keeping the control of the masses with aggressive and not-accountable policies, today the new way of populism may refer to the recurrence of the phenomena directed by a charismatic leader who is able to mobilize both urbanized and rural masses with promises of inflationary public spending, seasoned by rhetorical attacks on the power of the local elites and of foreign corporations1. In this view the transformed populism does not anymore necessarily recall the ancient ambiguity that made Roman and Greek democracy seem a short cut to tyranny. Not only as Shils would raise the question that the themes of inflationary economics and inflammatory rhetoric are close enough to some aspects of populism to have allowed hostile critics to cast doubt on the latter‟s democratic credentials, but rather rhetoric and populism are almost merged to a common practice and it is more and more difficult to recognize any form of populism or rhetoric without each other.

Torcuato S. DI TELLA, “Populism into the Twenty-First Century”, Government and Opposition, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1997, pp. 187–200. 1

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The transformed populist conception of the 21st century is pretending to position itself as a substantial element of the new political culture of many nations even with a liberal economy and democratic tradition as in more and more countries for instance of today‟s Europe nationalists have developed within their political programs an equally revolutionary discourse about the people characterized by a mixture of forms of cultural populism and ethnic nationalism. Consequently, the political programs of the political parties are being substituted by empty discourses of what are called popular aspirations, destined to control the masses and to impose a political regime with varying degrees of authoritarian undertones1. The transformed conception and practices of populism and their fused cycles with the rhetoric within the political discourse are becoming more frequent and in their conquest they call to “the people” in a sophisticated way whatever this collective group might be, and use it for the purpose of political mobilization. From a political tradition once especially prevalent in Latin America through various European and North American movements, in today‟s politics populism tends to mobilize masses of various segments of society against the existing institutions of the state all around the world. All this is accompanied by a strong psychological control of a quasi- democratic or quasiauthoritarian leader disguised under the clothes of the popular charismatic leader.

2. THE COMPONENTS OF POPULISM IN THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH POLITICAL RHETORIC Populism is a form of mass politics. Historically, its essential idea resides in a representation of or acting in the name of ordinary or common people and masses and opposing those elites, privileged groups, the establishment, etc.2. Populism means having 1

Margaret CANOVAN, “The People”, in John S. DRYZEK, Bonnie HONIG & Anne PHILLIPS (eds.),

Political Theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, p. 350. Apart from populism as a mass politics, in the political process and political studies, two other major forms of mass politics traditionally dominate: pluralism which is based on multiple, shifting, overlapping interest groups and a rejection of the populist dualism that stresses the representation of the general will of the people vs. some minority; and class politics that is based on class organizations of unions and social democratic parties. 2

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mass popular support, or acting in the interests of the people, hence its derivation from the Latin „populus‟. The use of the term of „populism‟ varies widely, having tenuous connections with one or another of these aspects. For many analysts „populism‟ became a convenient general term to cover any kind of radicalism based on or aimed at rural rather than urban populations1. While the „classical‟ Latin American populism initially represented by Peron in Argentina, Haya de la Torre in Peru, Cardenas in Mexico and Betancourt in Venezuela initially emerged in the 1930s–40s as a strategy to win political support among the unionized proletariat within the struggle by arousing urban elites to attain or consolidate power, in the 21st century a „populist‟ phenomenon is no longer considered to represent threats to democracy arising inflexibly out of the masses‟ political emancipation. In the latter context, populism means a power in the hands of the people to be practiced in a direct way by voting in referendums that are usually initiated by popular initiative. In political science literature this sort of devices is known as „direct democracy‟2, implying that in this respect the populist cause is the cause of democracy. And that opens a road to the use of political rhetoric and oratory even by nonauthoritarian leaders in the sense that with the growth of communication and especially the enormous growth of the use of social network platforms like Facebook and Twitter a linkage between the leader and the mass is more and more developed in a direct way, rather than mediated through organizations or media outlets. Ironically, this context of populist democracy (balancing democracy with the people‟s unmediated decisions) has been criticized by one of the main theoreticians in the field of democracy studies, Robert Dahl, even in the mid of the 20th century when he was rather offering a model of political equality, popular sovereignty and majority rule that was too simple to have much application to the real world of politics3. In essence the contemporary populism of the 21st century doesn‟t differ so much from the previous practices and concepts of populism, however it differs in terms of its

Paul Barry CLARKE and Joe FOWERAKER (eds.), Encyclopedia of Democratic Thought, Routledge, London and New York, 2001, p. 674. 2 For more details on this topic see Ian BUDGE, The New Challenge of Direct Democracy, Polity, Cambridge, 1996, who is estimated to be one of the leading authors in the field. 3 Robert A. DAHL, A Preface to Democratic Theory, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1956, p. 55. 1

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manifested forms, its perception in terms of the style of leadership and its role in terms of democracy. It is taking more and more ground within the political discourse of political actors and concepts through attempts of sparking and shaping some polarized agendas and practicing some highly irrational form of politics in the sense that it attracts advanced level of support on an emotive or moralistic basis rather than an interest or programmatic framework. For instance, many political organizations that are fast developing all around the world are following the trend that despite their own rhetoric a manifestation of their traditional components of the populism, transform themselves or re-start up as a political organization mass-based, populist, supported mainly by the urban environment and lower classes, using a cell-based structure, embracing religious reformism and using social network platforms as tool of communication, operation, training and recruitment. The latest case is that of the Arab Spring movements at the beginning of 2010 in Northern Africa which subsequently continued with various forms of protests and networking in certain parts of Asia and Europe. And even before them the political discourses of these kinds of movements have emphasized political empowerment, lack of corruption, culturally „authentic‟ values, transparent distribution of public resources, etc. Despite their currently waning popularity, it is important to note that this emphasis mirrors precisely that of nationalist and socialist groups, and it is no coincidence that all these movements, despite their ideological differences, emerged in opposition to both authoritarian regimes domestically and the interference of great powers internationally1. Many winners of electoral processes in many post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe and even within members states of the EU owe their victories of winning the power to the new metamorphosed way of populism, rhetoric and oratory that is characterized by an anti-theoretical and anti-intellectual speech rather than by a coolly analytic, expository, explanatory, or abstractly elaborated theory or ideology from one side and due to the support base constructed by a discourse that attempts to promote an identity as the „people‟ rather than a class, and sometimes aimed at neutralizing class identities. The metamorphosed cycles of populism and political rhetoric Jeffrey HAYNES (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics, Routledge, London and New York, 2009, p. 103. 1

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is associated with a political discourse delivered by a particular leadership style that is specifically personalized, strong and sometimes quasi- charismatic leadership. The metamorphosed populist rhetoric has a tendency to be a set of threads for both right- and left-wing concepts, with a strong focus on leadership on the one hand, and calls for popular equality on the other hand and in most of the cases associated with a high level of intolerant position on the traditional conception of civil liberties. The rest of the traditional components of populism has prevailed furthermore within the political discourse of populist governments and political parties in a typical way almost all around as a set of forms of political rhetoric and continue to manifest themselves as: o Mobilization or collective action from below, with deep roots in local communities. o A reform or anti-status quo movement. o A multi-class or non-class based coalition. o A heteronymous or politically subordinated, mass-support base, lacking autonomous power and subordinated to the leader and/or the interests of another class in the coalition. o A set of economic policies or an economic model that emphasizes growth, distribution, and demand-side stimulation, and deemphasizes fiscal and market constraints.1 Contemporary populism of the 21st century generally consists of electoral support mobilization by leaders who make strong direct, rhetorical appeals to the „people‟ unmediated by organizations and the trend continues beyond that with a very dynamic populist discourse associated with some forms of personalized political campaigns, symbolic politics and direct links to the people through social network platforms of communication. Different from the traditional cases of populism, the contemporary transformed populism occurs in the context not of a state interventionist economic model unswerving with distributive policies, but of the global move to symbolic politics which is not always necessarily popular.

1

Veton LATIFI, Politikologjia, IDD, Skopje, 2008, pp. 461-462.

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3. THE ACCOMMODATION OF THE POPULIST RHETORIC WITHIN THE POLITICAL CULTURE During the 1990s, the vote share of Christian Democratic Parties declined in most Europe as the population became more secular1, although there is some evidence of resurgence in recent years2. Electoral volatility has increased, with new social movement parties and populist parties playing an increased role3. Some of these new populist parties have strong positions against immigration fluxes alongside religious lines. Under new European political conditions, Christian Democratic Parties have behaved in different ways. Some have sought to co-opt support for rightist and populist parties, and staked their identity around the Christian heritage of Europe, while others have opened themselves to other non-Christian groups and sought to attract younger voters who are not drawn to the party‟s religious heritage. As Haynes would say “some of these parties for instance have broadened their agenda to become „catchall‟ parties of the centre and centre-right, whereas others have criticized neo-liberal economic reforms that have occurred across the continent”.4 However, more frequent forms of populism manifested via a nationalistic and cultural rhetoric of many major European parties competing not only for a national but also for the supra-national elections and as far as it showed to be often a winning chip in their campaigning it has contributed to more common situations that populism is seen as a regular and to some extent a normal rhetoric tool and part of the culture of the political parties.

Russel DALTON, “Political cleavages, issues, and electoral change”, in L. LeDUC, R. G. NIEMI and P. NORRIS (eds.), Comparing Democracies 2: New Challenges in the Study of Elections and Voting, Sage Publications, London, 2002, pp. 189–209; K. R. LUTHER, “A framework for the comparative analysis of political parties and party systems in consociational democracy”, in K. R. LUTHER and K. DESCHOUWER (eds.), Party Elites in Divided Societies, Routledge, London, 1999, pp. 3–19. 2 Steven Van HECKE and Emmanuel GERARD (eds.), Christian Democratic Parties in Europe since the End of the Cold War, Leuven University Press, Leuven, 2004, pp. 3-19. 3 Jens RYDGREN, “Explaining the emergence of radical right-wing populist parties: the case of Denmark”, West European Politics, Vol. 27, 2004, pp. 474–502. 4 Jeffrey HAYNES (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Religion…cit., p. 218. 1

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Many right wing oriented political parties in many countries of the world including those within the EU region are creating recognizable labels of their political landscapes for running for an office with a populist discourse in series of electoral processes and gradually co-opting it as an accommodating element of the political culture. Later on centre and even left parties gradually accept it as a style of the competition. The post-modern theoretical approaches on the political culture set apart the political culture differentiating all the segments of the political and cultural phenomena under the conditions of domination and contesting for power. The phenomenon of mobilization through the populist rhetoric as a guiding force of the political discourse of political parties is getting a seat gradually more and more altogether with the other fundamental labels of the political cultures of many nations. The political culture is usually a result of the individual and group activity after the adoption, evaluation, change and regulation of the principles of political relations in a society. And the societies following the reflections of the communities, with shaking waves of emotional expressions of frustrations and demands via group public statements in the first year of the second decade of the 21st century starting from protests to the sharing group political messages via the social network platforms, are reflecting themselves as well as nationalist, religious and cultural rhetoric. And that is one more proving example of the political behaviour hypothesis that the various types of the political cultures are usually dynamic ones having in mind that they are located in various historical, social, economic, cultural and political environments which they shape and change. The linkage of these variables is dialectic and it determines the multi-complex causality of challenges including the division line between the populist leadership and authoritarianism. A populist culture based on sophisticated rhetoric with quick, short and frequent messages and campaigns rather than traditional rhetoric long speeches is spreading widely in various zones. The political culture painted by the new colours of the populist rhetoric within the political discourse all around should be viewed firstly from the perspective of the fact that the unrealistic expectations of the populations are increasingly higher. Usually those populations targeted by the populist rhetoric belong to the low-capacity societies that have limited experience as to the public sphere and they correspond to the low-capacity 180


state. For instance in the South-East, Central and Eastern Europe the legacy of MarxismLeninism is relevant and, as Schöpflin would say, the societies which have lived with failed utopias are the most likely ones to need considerable time to readjust1. In essence, large numbers of people have no clear idea of what politics is about, what can be achieved through politics and what cannot. They expect immediate results and are resentful when this does not happen. The outcome may be passivity, simply waiting for an external agency to act as saviour, at any rate as far as the public sphere is concerned. And that is then a perfect ground for launching the populist political discourse and for populism to become more and more part of the political culture of certain nations. In the case of post-communist South-East Europe even if there are not typical forms of populism, but these are rather populist attempts and improvisations and in fact they are actions of political marketing that in the end, in the best case scenario, reach the status of rhetoric, but again they are not typical manifestations of populism. However, still being accommodated as populist elements within the political culture of the nations of the region during their campaigning which is not any more like in the first decade of multi-party systems with a campaigning only few weeks before the elections but rather with more focused mobilization aims and rhetoric in continuity during the entire period of running the governments or competing for power. So, the empty populist propaganda easy compatible with inherited the communist-socialist propaganda and conceptions it has been gradually replaced by the polarized discourse in the first phase and in the second phase by more sophisticated rhetoric and attempts for populism again in combination between rhetoric and political marketing and with a risk that some rising trends of accommodating a populism alongside nationalistic, cultural and religious rhetoric lines to be introduced in systematic way in the already turbulent political landscape of South-East Europe. Within several political scenes of the European Union members states many debates are going on regarding the upcoming EU parliamentary elections of May 2014 as to whether or not populism is a threat to, or an opportunity for, building a firmer

George SCHÖPFLIN, The New Politics of Europe: Nations, Identity, Power, Hurst & Company, London, 2nd ed., 2002, p. 68. 1

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European Union following the recent high-profile warnings of a populist backlash. Ironically, a few high level officials, including European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and European Parliament President Martin Schultz, have warned the voters that the populist radical right groups have the potential to prevent Europe from functioning1. As the populists are gaining strength, a significant part of Europe remains today in a prolonged period of economic stagnation and high unemployment rate, the antiEuropean sentiment is on the rise in Europe especially if one has in mind the fact that the anti-EU parties have apprehended this opportunity to take advantage of the dramatic fall of the popular support for European integration. Under these circumstances of fear that across Europe right-wing and nationalist parties are gaining strength with all its possible threats, populism serves an important function2. Although the leading major parties may dislike the arguments and style of populism, it is obvious that the antidemocratic political extremism as an alternative seems to be much worse3. Most European countries are guided by the democratic rules and a large attention is paid to the public opinion of people‟s attitude in shaping policies and priorities and to this point having attached a political rhetoric and populism to the political culture of several nations is not a threat, but the rhetoric is being replaced by the nationalist and eventual racist rhetoric in the political discourse or most extreme in the political discourse then the European project is in danger. Furthermore, the danger increases if the growth of the nationalistic and radical parties is going to be followed up by the tendencies for making decisions on strategic issues based on the public polls where the radical transformed rhetoric and discourse of these parties, which would be the most threatening scenario.

Christina SCHORI-LIANG, “Afraid?”, The Role of Populism in the EU, TheEuropean.eu, 31.01.2014. Ibidem. 3 For instance, in Eastern Europe the most extreme variant of anti-European populism has reinforced nationalism and fostered racism and xenophobia. 1 2

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4. TRANSFORMING POPULISM AND POLITICS: POPULIST RHETORIC AS A REPLACEMENT ATTEMPT FOR THE IDEOLOGY OF DEMOCRACY With the transformative forms and styles of populism, consequently the transformed political discourse raise some important issues for the theories of the political sciences on democracy as far as it draws attention to the central symbol of the democracy, the sovereign people. The populist theories on democracy involve unnecessary and unrealistic assumptions about the political interest, knowledge and rationality of the average citizen. The transformative conception of populism means among others that the traditional conceptions of populist theories are being replaced by more pragmatic theories based on empirical evidence about the requirements of democratic systems. Without necessarily accepting the superiority of the populist approach there are grounds for doubting the claim that a pluralistic dispersal of political influence in a political unit can be equated with democracy1. Recalling Lincoln‟s memorable Gettysburg Address may be of help as it suggested the three key elements of democracy. First, that it is „of‟ the people not only in the sense of being „over‟ all the people but that it derives its legitimacy from their commitment to it (government by consent). Second, that it is „by‟ the people in the sense that they participate extensively in governmental processes. Third, that it is „for‟ the people in that it seeks to realize the common welfare and safeguard the rights of the individuals. This kind of quick, effective and meaningful rhetoric is the core structure of the contemporary models of the transformed populist concepts of the political actors and movements that are widely accepted even by the liberal democracies. However, many controversy remains about the interpretation of these principles and their relative weight where they conflict. When we have a look at these three poles, it is obvious that the liberal democracies stress the safeguarding of individual rights, and the idea of the rule of law; communist regimes stress popular participation and the pursuit of the interests of

Anthony H. BIRCH, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, Routledge, London and New York, 2007, p. 115. 1

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the common folk and the populist nationalist leaders stress their legitimacy as the leaders by consent of the people and as interpreters of the national destiny1. Altogether with the metamorphosed transformation of populism in terms of forms and intensity of the political rhetoric and its reflection in the political discourse, as well as it has undergone a substantial transformation in terms of the ways of populists to come to power or strengthen their impact on the people‟s massive mobilization to follow them. The main factors in this shift are coming from the globalization impacts in terms of easier ways of following trends and networking and especially the transformative ways of populists to come to power it has been taking more side and more platforms with the permeation of the internet. But, the transformative ways using populists all around the world do not necessarily mean that there may be meanwhile major differences in the styles of populism as compared to the original components of populist styles. Today in the era of the social internet communication – networks - the size of modern democracies is no longer a barrier to the exercise of Athenian democracy and as a result the populism apart from its transformation under these factors as well as it is taking an advantage, too. The idea of involving as many citizens as possible in the governmental process via the electronic platforms remains an important element in the concept of democracy, helping to support the maintenance of the government system from one side and open more ground for sophisticated and quick forms of the populist rhetoric from another side. Even the issue of calls for referendums on strategic issues against the time factor is seen more and more as a normal part of the political processes rather than as a populist rhetoric of actors with less sense of the democratic accountability and courage. Namely, one of the main indicators of the wired forms of the transformed populism today is the discourse of threat with proclaiming on certain issues referendums of the political leaders and authorities. Referendums are enable political elites to appeal directly to the „masses‟, thus bypassing democratically elected representatives.2 It is then another question that if the masses are becoming potentially dangerous with referendum opportunities because they are persuaded by emotion rather than reason or by the quick ways of mobilization C. B. MACPHERSON, The Real World of Democracy: The Massey Lecture, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966, cited in Stephen TANSEY, Nigel JACKSON, Politics: The Basics, Routledge, London, 2008, p. 171. 2 Gary D. RAWNSLEY, Political Communication and Democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005, p. 131. 1

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and empty rhetoric that turn on then to go out of the plans. Referendums in democratic systems may encourage populism, but at the same time as well as it may keep not always the realistic spirit of the democracy especially when there are many failures of democracy as concerns and democracy is seen by populist leaders to be promoted by the opportunities and occasions for people to run for referendums. Cochrane1 say that the referendums may also help feed the illusion of participation in political decision-making. Regardless many critics on populism coming from scholars of democratic theories (including the leading Robert Dahl2) who in one or other way assume that populism may be bad for democracy, however populism and their radical discourses seem to be of help to promote democracy in certain regions versus other alternatives such nationalistic, racist and xenophobic rhetoric who as well via populism attempt to mobilize the masses. Firstly at all, populism and especially its transformative populist rhetoric can increase democratic accountability and it can press the authorities to be more transparent and less corrupt which traditionally seems to be one of the major concerns of the populist causes. In its annual report, the World Economic Forum identified among the top ten trends of 2014 in the EU countries the following topics: a lack of values in leadership; widening income disparities; and the diminishing confidence in economic policies. The report argues that “a generation that starts its career in complete hopelessness will be more prone to populist politics. Accordingly, there‟s a disassociation between governments and the governed”3. According to Schori-Liang, populism can address these sentiments by allowing the ideas and interests of more marginalized sections of the electorate to be integrated into the political process and as well as it can provide an ideological bridge that supports the importance of building political coalitions. Populism can also give a voice to groups that do not feel represented by the elites and can help put forward topics that are important to the silent majority4.

Allan COCHRANE, “From Theories to Practices: Looking for Local Democracy in Britain”, in D. KING & G. STOKER (eds.), Rethinking Local Democracy, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1996, p. 209. 2 See Robert A. DAHL, A Preface to Democratic Theory, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,1956. 3 See The World Economic Forum‟s Newsletter, World Economic Forum, Köln/Geneva, January 2014, p. 9. 4 Christina SCHORI-LIANG, “Afraid?”, The Role of Populism in the EU, TheEuropean.eu, 31.01.2014. 1

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5. RESHUFFLING POPULISM IN THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE While right-wing movements and political parties use populist politics as their platform of justification with their rhetoric following the decline and shift of ideological concepts, the transformation of the populist rhetoric and the quick possibilities for presenting the causes and messages via social networks, the line of differences in the political discourse of right-wing and left-wing parties and movements is somehow vanishing. In both cases the appeals of the discourses no longer aim at uniting a target group against another target. The reshuffled political discourses of the two ideological poles seem to pose equal possibility of social networking and political differences and divisions, as well as fostering cultural and political warfare, rather than aiming at the widening or uniting those social and political differences and ceasing the warfare. When one has in mind the contemporary widespread upsurge of protest movements and political action from the Arab Spring and ahead and the XXI protests in the European countries then it is obvious that the ideological affiliation doesn‟t matter so much anymore as in both cases left and right-wing movements have equally absorbed some of the reshuffled populist agenda, and prospered among groups who felt they were wronged or left out by the system regardless of their affiliation but rather united under a same political discourse, but maybe with a different load of rhetoric. This is most evident in those countries in transition and it is even more obvious in those post-communist countries in Eastern, Central and South-East Europe where the populist rhetoric is more frequently used not only for using it as a platform doomed to provide more support (votes), but it is rather reshuffled to populist discourse often to hide lack of programs and a substantial offer. Both right and left-wing parties in these landscapes instead of coming with real political offers, they exhibit their populist rhetoric associated more with a sharply polarized rhetoric and mutual accusations among rival political leaders rather than promote the political discourses of their parties. There are more reflections on the personal blames, threats and improvisations for some kind of big projects (in essence often empty projects) and less focus and concentration on the real issues related to the life of the people whom they pretend to mobilize and they are successful in this view for many years. 186


Recalling the folklorist records and slogans within the political culture of several post-conflict Balkan nations for instance unfortunately is not helping the modernization or democratization of political parties and institutions, but it is functioning for the populist rhetoric of political parties to mobilize the people and keep them as a stable electoral body for a longer period regardless of the fact that people read less and are aware of the political programs of governments and parties and become more familiar with the idea of accepting the populist political folklore. The audience is either not informed about the decisions or even if it is informed it is informed in quite an impulsive and emotional way. This reshuffle of the balancing between populism and finding a decision and a solution in an unpopular way often seems to be dangerous and with potential for accumulating the explosion mass in the society. Consequently, this way of reshuffling political populism is reflected in unstable and inconsistent governments associated with frequent elections and over-powerful state legislatures. Regardless of their ideological backgrounds and settings they often tend to be irresponsible governments with frequent changes of the law, resulting in unjust laws (by which they attempt populist attacks on property) and interference in the courts. With the metamorphosed transformation of the political rhetoric and political discourse with populism the political apathy is guiding a threat. Citizens are deprived of access to the political process consequently they are cautious and trust politicians less. They are not interested in current political programs and most frequently they are not well-informed about the issues that are on the top of political party agendas. The issues promoted by political parties and the issues on which citizens are asked to contribute by involving themselves are simply not at all related to their needs and interests, but they are rather some kind of improvisation, leading points and vocabulary of the political discourse of political parties. In this view, two major phenomena are raising in a casual linkage:  Membership of parties is declining, though explanations are multi-causal;  Party activism is declining as well. Explanations are again multi-causal with electoral outcomes being particularly significant1.

1

Veton LATIFI, Politikologjia…cit., p. 383.

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This casual linkage is characterized by several additional problems as follows. First of all, under a significant shift and reduced relevance of the traditional ideological discourse and aside from the influences of transnational actors and movements frequented more easily due the globalization opportunities, the political scene is not well defined in many countries of the world where there are numerous political parties with unclear and undefined political programs, and the political scene overflows with reshuffled populist political discourses. However these may be seen as an advantage by the political actors for running the politics with domination of the personalized items, still there is at least one disadvantage that there is a higher lack than ever of a propensity for partnerships within the political scene of these countries or eventually not-stable and not coherent partnerships. Furthermore, in this context are insufficiently being developed the internal party capacity, the lack of professionals, the lack of knowledge and a higher degree of institutional disorganization. The political activism is thus reduced mainly to an electoral enthusiasm and personal benefiting, the temporary interest of the voters is marked by a multitude of electoral improvisations which is not able to mobilize the people anymore in a classical populist way but rather merely to use or trade their votes, yet not like one or two decades ago only for limited time intervals, but rather and paradoxically with a strong and constant populist rhetoric and polarized political discourses but with no real offer or programs and instead only with obvious intentions for the mobilization of masses for the required moments. This way of launching the rhetoric is somehow choking the normal process of political communication and rather it is faded communication with the electorate and not with the people focused concepts of classical populism propaganda rather than attempts for meaningful political discourse under an influence of the populist effective transformed rhetoric. Among the new political systems of Eastern, Central and South-East Europe emerging from an ideology of post-communist/post-socialist setting and legitimated by the language of democracy, there are discrepancies in terms of political discourses between those that have completed their transition in a quicker way (those of Central and eventually some of Eastern Europe) and those undergoing more slowly their transition process (most of them from South-East European countries). While the former societies identify democracy as understood or at least similarly to those already established 188


democracies of Western liberal-democratic systems, it is not the case with the latter as the seemingly irrelevant bickering, the empty contests for symbols and moral purity that had no bearing on everyday existence, above all the rapid and continuing economic deterioration1 that opens widely the gates for various transformed cycles of populist rhetoric for some longer period and re-discussing the transitions with a lot of dilemmas about the strategic post-transition orientations. These are the same initial indicators like in recent post-Arab Spring movements in North Africa and especially in Egypt. Egypt‟s based Brotherhood, despite its own rhetoric that was not a manifestation of traditional Islamism but rather a typical hope example of a modern political organization with mass-based and populist characteristics supported mainly by the urban middle and lower classes, using a cell-based structure, and embracing religious reformism, however in a later phase the radical populist rhetoric proceeded further in the reconciliation phases with unfortunate failures and dilemmas about the country‟s future strategic democratic orientation. It attempted during the Arab Spring to reform primarily Egyptian politics, not the universal Islamic community in the region, but still at some stage of the transition two years later in the dangerous forms of the radical populists rhetoric continued to struggle at a crucial phase of expected progress of transition and with that bringing Egypt back to the edge again.

6. CONCLUSION Under the internet era, the political concepts of running and crafting politics are transformed and consequently so is the political discourse. At this phase of the ideological shifts and political transformations of the political landscapes and discourses, from an infantile disease typical for the non-modernized societies and immature democracies as populism used to be seen by its numerous critics, today the transformative populism is regarded by its supporters2 as an authentic democratic participation as its characteristic discourse is one that democratic politics cannot do without and with perspectives likely to persist as long as democracy itself. George SCHÖPFLIN, The New Politics of Europe: Nations…cit., p. 197. Paul Barry CLARKE and Joe FOWERAKER (eds.), Encyclopedia of Democratic Thought, Routledge, London and New York, 2001, pp. 674-679. 1 2

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While prior to the internet era, the political rhetoric used to be mainly characterized by full-blown campaign speeches, today the political rhetoric in each of its forms is more and more guided by the transformative populist premises, with quick messages, frequent and longer campaigning, not only during the electoral periods but also much in advance during most of the phases of the political process. Instead of the long speeches through all these changes the political rhetoric has been transformed as well to effective propagandistic campaign information conveyed to voters but still in the same populist spirit of mobilizing masses in frequent periods although that with transformed populist practices with advanced styles: by very short messages on social network platforms (mainly Facebook and Twitter), short TV and radio spots and bites or even few words sms-texts on mobile phones sent to the target groups. And all that within much heavy exposed populist discourse without any attempt to hide it as the transformative populism is not necessary estimated as any dangerous ideology for the democracy when it comes to be compared to the rhetoric of the other radical alternatives such as racism or xenophobia for instance. Although, it is obvious that much more than ever before fast information is available to contemporary voters, with opportunities to learn in a direct way of communication about the attitudes and messages of the political actors and organizations through the social network platforms, plenty web sites and other instant access to news the political discourse does not aim to reach the individuals but rather to mobilize people in a massive way through populist methods and full-blown rhetoric. The political rhetoric of today‟s political actors and organizations can‟t be noticed without at least certain dozes of populism all around. Populism is more and more popular in the 21st century politics. Moreover it is further transformed to sophisticated forms of attracting the support of masses for running for the office though with different methods and platforms of mobilization, with the advanced set of the transformative styles and methods of populism. Though often populist attempts seem to remain only at the level of improvisations with more labels of the political marketing rather than with real populist components, however under the political transformation of the ideological relevance and with the quick internet opportunities, the core outline of populism is aiming to apply quick and more effective marketing premises of the transformed political rhetoric.

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Bibliography BIRCH H., Anthony, The concepts and theories of modern democracy, Routledge, London and New York, 2007. BUDGE, Ian, The New Challenge of Direct Democracy, Polity, Cambridge, 1996. CANOVAN, Margaret, “The People”, in John S. DRYZEK, Bonnie HONIG, Anne PHILLIPS (eds.), Political Theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006. CLARKE, Paul Barry, Joe FOWERAKER (eds.), Encyclopedia of Democratic Thought, Routledge, London and New York, 2001. COCHRANE, Allan, “From Theories to Practices: Looking for Local Democracy in Britain”, in D. KING, G. STOKER (eds.), Rethinking Local Democracy, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1996. DAHL, A. Robert, A Preface to Democratic Theory, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1956. DALTON, Russel, “Political cleavages, issues, and electoral change”, in L. LeDUC, R. G. NIEMI and P. NORRIS (eds.), Comparing Democracies 2: New Challenges in the Study of Elections and Voting, Sage Publications, London, 2002. DI TELLA, S. Torcuato, “Populism into the Twenty-First Century”, Government and Opposition, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1997. HAYNES, Jeffrey (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics, Routledge, London and New York, 2009. HECKE VAN, S., E. GERARD (eds.) Christian Democratic Parties in Europe since the End of the Cold War, Leuven University Press, Leuven, 2004. LATIFI, Veton, Politikologjia, IDD, Skopje, 2008. LUTHER, K.R., “A framework for the comparative analysis of political parties and party systems in consociational democracy”, in K. R. LUTHER and K. DESCHOUWER (eds.), Party Elites in Divided Societies, Routledge, London, 1999. MACPHERSON, C. B., The Real World of Democracy: The Massey Lecture, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966, cited in Stephen TANSEY, Nigel JACKSON, Politics: The Basics, Routledge, 2008. RAWNSLEY, D. Gary, Political Communication and Democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005.

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RYDGREN, Jens, “Explaining the emergence of radical right-wing populist parties: the case of Denmark”, West European Politics, Vol. 27, 2004. SCHÖPFLIN, George, The New Politics of Europe: Nations, Identity, Power, Hurst & Company, London, 2nd ed., 2002. SCHORI-LIANG, Christina, “Afraid?” in The Role of Populism in the EU, TheEuropean.eu, 31.01.2014. SHILS, A. Edward, The Torment of Secrecy, Heinemann, London, 1956.

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Populist Parties in Eastern and South-East Europe. Case Studies: Bulgaria and Romania Ion BOBOC LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe Abstract: In the following article we make an analysis of populism in

South-East Europe, taking Bulgaria and Romania as examples. In this regard, we present arguments in favour of the idea that the populist phenomenon has grown in the two countries, as observed by other researchers, with the difference that in the case of Bulgaria populist parties had already reached power in 2001, whereas in Romania, they had not reached the same level of access by then. Simultaneously, we account for the correlations between decreasing participation in elections and the growing number of votes for populist parties in the two countries in the framework of the severe economic crisis of the last decade. Finally, the article intends to clarify several aspects regarding forced classifications of parties in the South-East Europe area in general and in the two studied countries specifically, by certain researchers who are themselves involved in ideological partisan disputes on one side or the other of the political environment in the area. The article draws several basic conclusions and makes some proposals for diminishing the populist phenomenon among political parties in South-East Europe in the present and in the possible future. Keywords: populism, populist political parties, people versus political

elites, soft populism and hard populism. Motto: “Sir, our Lord is the People: box populi, box dei! We have no other faith, no other hope than the people. We have no other policy than the sovereignty of the people; that is why in our political struggle, we have said and will repeat 193


continuously to all citizens: „Either you all die, or we all are free!‟” (Rică Venturiano, main character in the play “O noapte furtunoasă” (“Stormy Night”), by I.L. Caragiale

1. INTRODUCTION In the specialized literature, the populist phenomenon (originating from the Latin “populus” - people) is ambiguous: some consider it a political doctrine, others, only as strategy or political style (for speeches) used by certain leaders who attack the existing multi-party political establishment (including the democratic system), others consider it only a socio-political movement with historical and cultural roots (some such movements reject democracy, others cultivate it and yet others ignore it)1, and others see it as a meta-doctrine which acts as a parasite for classic doctrines. The most invoked definition of populism as a form of democracy is the one given by Cas Muddle: “An ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people”. A more concise definition of populism as a socio-political movement employed by several researchers in the field investigated here is given by Robert R. Bar: “A mass movement led by an outsider or maverick seeking to gain or maintain power by using anti-establishment appeals and plebiscitarian linkages”2. Interpreting a famous Marxist expression, researchers Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Ghelner said: “A spectre is haunting the world: populism”. The two authors were

Philippe C. SCHMITTER, A Balance Sheet of the Vices and Virtues of “Populism”, European University Institute and Central European University, 2006, p. 124. 2 Robert R. BAR, “Populists, Outsiders and Anti-Establishment Politics”, Party Politics, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2009, p. 44. 1

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referencing a different post-communist ideological behaviour of certain parties in Eastern Europe1. Isaiah Berlin speaks of a “Cinderella Complex”: “there is a shoe in shape of populism, but no foot that will fit into”2. The separation that populist parties make is between “we, the party that represents the people” versus “they, the other parties and representatives of those who are the enemies of the people”. Usually, in political programs and speeches “the people” does not represent all citizens on a given territory but rather a selected part of them who support the acts of the proponents (specifically “those above” through corrupt governance and seeking riches through the results of “those below”). Additionally, there is also a “governance populism” and a “neo-populism”, but even these have confusing connotations in terms of terminology and organizational policy practice in the political speeches of those who employ it. In short, at the political party level, populism is manifested as a defender of “the exploited people” against the “exploiting elite”. Regarded as such, populist parties can join – or are associated by others – various ideologies, left (communists, socialists, ecologists) but also of the right (nationalists, extremists). Populism is then associated with charismatic political figures who appeal to the afore-mentioned antagonistic relationship. These figures can exist outside of populist parties, also being a part of different types of neo-populist parties (and as an effect, tend to be transformed or classified as such), or in other positions of power such as “presidential populism”3. But the reverse can also be true, in the sense that a certain populist leader determines the classification or perception of the entire party he/she leads

Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sorina SOARE, “Introducere: Populismul, concept sofisticat şi realităţi politice diverse”, in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Populismul contemporan: Un concept controversat şi formele sale diverse, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2012, p. 5. 2 Apud Ivan KRASTEV, “The Populist Moment, New Presence”, The Prague Journal of Central European Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2008, p. 43; Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sorina SOARE, “Introducere…cit”, p. 10. 3 Terri BIMES, Quinn MULROY, “The Rise and Decline of Presidential Populism”, Studies in American Political Development, Vol. 18, 2004, pp. 136-159. 1

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as being populist: as was the case of the Labour Party in Great Britain under Tony Blair, Forza Italia under Silvio Berlusconi, United Russia under Putin1. In South-East Europe, the populist phenomenon has surpassed its post-modern phase (neo-populism) and is in full ascension, especially following the structural crisis that the countries in this region have undergone in the period following 2008 and up to the present. It has deeper roots, not only in the form of communism which has been endured more or less voluntarily but also with origins from the remote past (especially the Russian version which had a great influence in the region). Therefore, nowadays there is no South-East European version of populism, but rather a classification of what specialists refer to as “neo-populism”.

2. THE HISTORIC INHERITANCE OF POPULISM IN SOUTH-EAST EUROPE AND FORCED CLASSIFICATIONS Slogans from the pre-capitalist period which sound like “we are the country” or “the country is the people not the prey of robbers” and the type of direct political communication of the communist period such as the “man to man work” (through “worker cells” from factories coordinated by the communist nomenclature which alternately served the “working class” interests or the “entire people”2), have represented very effective forms for manipulating the masses, being imprinted into the mass mentality specific to post-communism. Fortunately, such forms of non-democratic, manipulative communication efforts have diminished gradually in the countries of South-East Europe, however some of them have yet not been replaced with convincing democratic forms, promoted by real democratic parties, but rather by a “fake democracy” with parties

Matthijs ROODUIJN, Teun PAUWELS, “Measuring Populism: Comparing Two Methods of Content Analysis”, West European Politics, Vol. 34, No. 6, 2011, pp. 1272-1283; Mara MORINI, “Populismul vechi şi nou în politica rusă”, in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Populismul contemporan: Un concept controversat…cit., pp. 463-472. 2 We offer a single example here, specifically a 62 page document encompassing the “22 nd PCR Congress directives with regards to the development of Romania for the five year plan spanning 1981-1985 and the perspective orientations up to 1990”. Reading it indicates that 25 of the 62 pages (40.3%) invoke „the people‟, and the „party‟ is mentioned 5 times (Editura Politică Publishing House, 1979). 1

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without an ideological identity, with populist leaders, with or without parties to support them in the post-communist period. The causes of the current expansion of populism (associated with left or right extremism) in South-East Europe have been examined especially in the last few years. Characterized by financial crises, these causes determine other phenomena, such as emigration from the East to the West, favourable to the ascension and even generalization of the populist phenomenon. As such, Vladimir Tismăneanu observes that the post-communist man is rather a demagogue and a populist, who does not assume risks and responsibilities, simply refusing pluralist values out of a lack of political culture1. Jiri Melich considers that the legacy of communism resides in intolerance and hypocrisy, in the need of “the powerful state” having authoritarian behavioural rules in society2. Nationalist-communism has transformed itself rather quickly in national-populism. Ion Iliescu declared that Romania switched quickly from the indignation that “Ceausescu betrayed the noble ideals of communism” to “the opposition is trying to undermine the sovereignty of the people”. A general cause of the ascension of populism is represented by ignorance as to current party ideologies or in other words their transformation into catch-all-parties which has led to a type of neo-populist catch-all-parties. Such is also the case of Romania where “it is impossible to identify any difference between ideologies or policies of major parties”3. It is also noteworthy the direct connection between the success of certain personalized parties and those derived from television shows on one hand and the populist ones on the other – the People‟s Party – Dan Diaconescu (PPDD) being such a

Vladimir TISMĂNEANU, “The Leninist Debris or Waiting for Perón”, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 10, No. 3, 1996, pp. 504-505. 2 Jiri MELICH, “The Post-Communist Mind: Socio-Psychological and Cultural Aspects of the Communist Legacy and the Transformation Processes in Eastern Europe”, in Ševic ZELJIKO, Glendal WRIGHT (eds.), Transition in Central and Eastern Europe, YASF-Student Cultural Centre, Beograd, 1997, p. 21. 3 Jean-Michel DE WAELE, “Faces of Populism in Central and Eastern Europe”, in H. SWOBODA, J. WIERSMA (eds.), Democracy, Populism and Minority Rights [http://www.socialistsanddemocrats.eu/sites/default/files/2632_EN_democracypopulism_ANTILOPE_1.pdf], 2008, pp. 49-56. 1

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case: personalized, highly televised (by proprietary television channel DDD TV) and populist1. Ex European deputy Adrian Severin will dissociate the populism in the entire area of South East-Europe from several existing myths in the area, more specifically: populism works hand in hand with a lack of education, with poverty, with aged populations (in the sense that young people are less vulnerable to populist messages), with nationalism or with extremism. In reality, the author demonstrates that there are populists with higher education, rich, young, non-nationalist and non-extremist. The conclusion of the author (himself a corrupt populist) is that the moral decline and lack of social cohesion would be the only causes that lead to corruption, this being at the origin of populism throughout South-East Europe2, which is only a partial explanation of the particular populism in this area. Andrej Skolkay (in the case of Slovakia)3, Jacek Kucharczyk and Olga Wysocka (in the case of Poland) see even the existence of certain “sub-styles” of populism in their countries, in the sense that each country in this region has had a different experience of post-communism, although all have been confronted with the lack of a middle class and have favoured a small group of very rich people, a fact which has led to a rapid break between the great mass of those impoverished and those few people who have become rich through questionable and fishy means, in most cases with the help of political decision-makers. For numerous other specialists in the field, there are different “sub-styles”, such as: economic populism; radical anti-communism; anti-modern and “identity”, anticorruption, agrarian populism, xenophobe, inclusive and exclusive4.

Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sorina SOARE, “From TV to Parliament: Populism & Communication in the Romanian 2012 Elections”, Paper prepared for delivery at the XXVII Congress of the Italian Society of Political Science, University of Florence, 12–14.09.2013 [http://www.sisp.it/files/papers/2013/sorina-soaree-sergiu-gherghina-1507.pdf]. 2 Adrian SEVERIN, “Romania: The Transition from Democracy to Populism” [http://www.socialistsanddemocrats.eu/sites/ default/files/2632_endemocracy-populism _Antilope_1.pdf, 2008, pp. 101-110]. 3 Andrej SKOLKAY, “Populism in Central Eastern Europe,” IWM Working Paper , Wien, No. 1, 2000. 4 Cas MUDDLE, Cristobal Rovira KALTWASSER, “Voices of the Peoples: Populism in Europe and Latin America Compared”, Working Paper, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, No. 378, 2011. 1

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There are also correlations between populism and economic development to be taken into account, with media implications favouring populists and the economic crisis, electoral laws, the role of parties and charismatic leaders in the life of South-East European society. The primary causality of neo-populism in South-East Europe is represented especially by poor governance and generalized political corruption among a small number of party leaders who rotate to power, regardless of the organizations they represent (eventually migrating from one to another) and who have already been a part of the government versus the need for quality of life of the masses, of the impoverished population who feel marginalized. These are real phenomena which have imposed, even before the crises, the anti-elitist impersonal or tailored discourse, including in Central Europe1. Finally, there are also studies that find positive aspects in the existence of populism inasmuch as it provokes parties in the area to speed up the rhythm of authentic democracy, previously almost inexistent here, which is why populism is to grow among the population rather than sentiments related to the fear of lack of democracy (ademocracy), for which one must fight, rather than the fear of existing democracy as a danger (anti-populism versus democracy, so populism is perceived as being antidemocratic)2. In this case, populist parties should contribute to decentralize old party structures along the 20+ years in South-East Europe (see Annex 3 with the virtues and vices of populism). Ivan Krastev too shares the same opinion: “Populist parties are antiliberal but not anti-democratic3. However, popular masses continue to invade the streets of capitals in South-East Europe under the leadership of new populists who speak in the name of liberty (such as in the case of ex-bodyguard Boyko Borisov in Bulgaria, who subsequently became a Marian L. TUPY, “The Rise of Populist Parties in Central Europe: Big Government, Corruption, and the Threat to Liberalism”, Development Policy Analysis, No. 1, The CATO Institute, Washington D.C., 2006. 2 André GERRITS, “Democratic Regression, Rising Populism and the pitfalls of European Integration”, 2008, pp. 57-66 [http://www.socialistsanddemocrats.eu/sites/default/files/ 2632_ ENdemocracypopulism_ANTILOPE_1.pdf]. 3 Ivan KRASTEV, “The Strange Death of the Liberal Consensus”, 2008, pp. 67-76 [http://www.socialistsanddemocrats.eu/sites/default/ files/2632_endemocracy-populism _ANTILOPE_1.pdf]. 1

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prime-minister or more recently, world boxing champion, Vitali Klitschko in Ukraine, who even agreed to appeal to paramilitary organizations so that he might participate in presidential elections after the “dictator” is removed). Therefore, popular masses do not seem to be happy with their quality of “agitated consumers, seeking a stock clearing sale”, as Krastev believes but instead are moving to direct action, simply ignoring parties, be they populist and occupying central zones of cities or entire countries. Also of note here are the forced classifications of the so called impartial researchers of the populist phenomenon. Perhaps the most obvious example of classifying through publications (under the pretence of scientific study) certain parties in Romania and Hungary as populist is that of Michael Shafir who claims no more and no less that he does impartial political science from the position of a social-democrat1. In such a situation, which implied media scandals as the one related to the “Marga – Anti-Basescu case” of 2012, positioning himself against Basescu, Shafir categorizes parties from the conservative right, such as PDL (Romania) and Fidesz (Hungary), as being populists, just because these parties are or have been founded or led by a populist president, such as Traian Basescu, or a prime minister, such as Victor Orban respectively2. Michael Shafir is not the only case in Eastern Europe to preferentially classify certain parties as populist. Most political analysts in Romania and South-East Europe (be they political scientists, sociologists, engineers or journalists without studies in the field) declare themselves impartial despite the fact that their political analyses related to the populist phenomenon in political parties scale on the side of the parties they serve and are employed or receive a pay check from.

The author simply affirms his implied social-democratic affinity in overt accusations of populism addressed to ideological adversaries on the right, not extreme right from the two countries, of which one (Romania) is his adoptive country: “In the social sciences there is no gender, which is why you can never be neutral. The last impediment can be reduced (not eliminated!) only through a pre-emptive act of sincerity. I underline, as a result, that the perspective of my analysis reflects the values of social-democracy, which to my eyes include relative egalitarianism and (political) liberalism (Michael SHAFIR, “Neopopulismul sub semnul postcomunismului”, in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Populismul contemporan…cit., p. 430”). 2 Michael SHAFIR, “Neopopulismul sub semnul post-comunismului”, in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Populismul contemporan…cit., pp. 401-444. 1

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3. CASE STUDIES: BULGARIA AND ROMANIA In the following pages we shall refer to two examples of populism in South-East European countries, also studied by other political science researchers, specifically, Bulgaria and Romania. In both countries, the initial phase of populism manifested through a “declarative war” between the representative political organizations of the countries, namely between socialist parties (ex-communist) on the one hand and those declared as being anti-communist on the other (left-oriented parties, especially the Socialist Party in Bulgaria and FSN-FDSN-PDSR – today the Social Democratic Party, PSD in Romania – versus the right-oriented parties, mainly the liberals and conservatives). The former declared themselves as being anti-elitist (employing a part of the discourse of communists regarding “the working class”), while the others pretended to be the spokespersons of the millions of martyrs who opposed the rise of communism in their countries. Populism entered a new phase and developed especially after all the “coalition between enemies” experiments had taken place. For example, in Bulgaria, The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MDL, liberals representing the martyrs of the Turkish ethnicity) always blamed the “communists in disguise as socialists”, therefore forming a coalition only with anti-communists from the right oriented parties only to later form a coalition with the “enemy” (first with the socialists and later with the “royal cabinet”) in 2001 and again with the socialists in 2013). Moreover, the socialists also experimented, during Prime Minister Stanisev‟s term in 2005, a greater coalition with the liberals of the “Simeon the 2nd” National Movement and the liberals of MDL. In Romania, the citizens have witnessed all possible combinations of “adversaries” who have fought ceaselessly after 1990: a). Partidul Naţional Liberal (National Liberal Party – PNL) with Partidul Democrat (Democratic Party – PD), Partidul Umanist Român (Romanian Humanist Party – PUR) and Uniunea Democrată a Maghiarilor din România (Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania – UDMR) (under the first Tariceanu cabinet in 2004); b). between PSD and Partidul Democrat Liberal (PDL) and Partidul Conservator (Conservative Party – the former PUR) (under the first Boc cabinet in 2008); c). between PSD, PNL, PC and then with UDMR (in 2012 and 2014 respectively). Each time, after having broken the coalition, these representative

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parties accused each other of the worst offenses, exposing corruption and undermining political life in their countries.

3.1. Bulgaria Svetoslav Malinov marks the debut of populism in Bulgaria immediately after the country won her independence in 1879 with the discourse of Petko Slaveyekov (18271895), a strong opponent of the new constitution of that time, considered as conservative and through which a “barrier between the government and the people” would be instituted1. Current populism debuted in 2001, with the creation of the party of the ex-king Simeon the 2nd, a vehicle through which he would speak of the need for unification of the Bulgarian people. Researchers Blagovesta Cholova and Jean-Michel De Waele use an “analysis matrix” imported from Richard Barr (see the aforementioned paper), according to which there are 3 differentiating elements between populist and non-populist parties in all South-East Europe, as follows: Location (the former are newcomers to the political scene, the latter are well structured either of the left or right which have ensured their political establishment); Linkages (the former are of a plebiscitarian linkage, not having solid institutionalized structures in the country, whereas the latter have these structures and therefore are of a client nature; Appeals (the former always mention the people in their discourse, which are presented in opposition to the elites, which are accused of representing the parties that have been at least once in power at the time of their establishment2. Applying this model, the authors identify 4 populist parties in Bulgaria: 1. “Movement Simeon the Second” – NMSS; 2. “Ataka”, after 2001 and more recently 3. “Order Law & Justice” (OLJ) and 4. GERB (Citizens for a European Development of Bulgaria). Svetoslav MALINOV, “Radical Demophilia: Reflections on Bulgarian Populism”, Eurozine, 22.01.2008, available at [http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-01-22-malinov-en.html], accessed on 03 March 2014. 2 Blagovesta CHOLOVA, Jean-Michel De WAELE, “Bulgaria: A Fertile Ground for Populism?”, Slovak Journal of Political Sciences, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2011, pp. 25-50. 1

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Professor Daniel Smilov, of the Sofia University, considers that there are 3 waves of populism in Bulgaria: the first wave was in 2001 – represented by the return of king Simeon the 2nd in the country; the second wave was “the Ataka shock”, of the renowned extremist party; the third wave was in 2007 – represented by the new populist wave of the GERB party and the personality of its leader, Boyko Borisov, mayor of Sofia and then prime minister1. Other studies confirm the fact that in post-communist Bulgaria, there have been at least 2 stages of populism2: Stage 1 – Ephemeral populism (1989-2001), voiced by the businessman Gheorghi Ganchev, of the small party Bulgarian Business Block (BBB), who attacked the post-1989 parties which were branded as corrupt and disconnected from the people; Stage 2 – Populism in power (starting with 2001), represented by kingprime minister Simeon the 2nd and through his personalized party NMSS but also other “pretenders” to the status of populists such as extremist Volen Siderov from Ataka or Iana Ianev from Order Law & Justice (OLJ), as well as Boyko Borisov from GERB. The electoral results after 1989 demonstrate the existence of these stages of populism proposed by researchers:

Daniel SMILOV, “The Rise of Populism in Bulgaria”, in G. MESEŽNIKOV, O. GVÁRFÁŠOVÁ, D. SMILOV (eds.), Populist Politics and Liberal Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, Institute for Public Affairs, Bratislava, 2008, pp. 13-36. 2 Christiana CRISTOVA, “Populism: the Bulgarian Case…cit.”, pp. 221-232; Igor NOVAKOVIČ, “‟European‟ and „Extreme‟ Populists in The Same Row: The New Government of the Republic of Bulgaria”, Western Balkans Security Observer, Year 5, No. 17, 2010, pp. 63-76. 1

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Table 1. Performance of populist political parties in Bulgaria after 1989

Year

Party

1990

–

Participation in elections (%) 90.60

1991

–

84.82

–

1994 1997 2001

BBB BBB NMSS

75.34 62.40 66.01

4.73 4.93 42.74

Results (%) –

NMSS 2005

2009

Ataka GERB Ataka

19.88 55.76 Total

60.20

Ataka

4.13 53.21 7.3

GERB

30.5

OLJ

2013

8.14 28.62 39.72 9.36

OLJ Voice of the People

Total

51.30

1.7 Total

1.3 40.8

Source: Christiana CRISTOVA, “Populism: the Bulgarian Case”, Sociedade e cultura, Vol. 13, No. 2, Universidade Federal de Goiás Goiania, 2010, p. 228 [http://www.parliament.bg/bg/electionassembly] – accessed on 14 October 2013. The smaller the participation in elections of citizens voting for traditional parties (which compose the political establishment), the more will be the votes for populist parties, thus increasing the risk for a real democracy in Bulgaria.

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Figure 1. Correlation of results in general elections (parliamentary)

with votes given to populist parties in Bulgaria

Source: [http://www.parliament.bg/bg/electionassembly] – accessed 14 October 2013.

3.2 Romania If we take into account Giovanni Sartori‟s ideas regarding “relevant parties”, namely that they can be regarded as such only if they affect the competition amongst parties and that the “ideological continuity of parties is a good predictor of governmental coalitions”1 and considering that populism can be an ideology (of the centre or extremes), or if we use Richard Barr‟s model used by the Bulgarian researchers, then we may say that Romania has not reached the second level of populism observed in Bulgaria (“populism in power”).

Giovanni SARTORI, Partis et systèmes de partis, Bruxelles, Editions de l‟Université de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, 2011, p. 429. 1

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If we take into account the extremist populist parties, considered thus by specialists such as “Partidul România Mare” (PRM - Greater Romania Party), “Partidul Unităţii Naţionale Române” (PUNR – The National Romanian Unity Party) and “Partidul Socialist al Muncii” (The Socialist Labour Party – PSM), to which the recently created Partidul Poporului Dan Diaconescu (People‟s Party Dan Diaconescu – PPDD) is added, all of these parties have not reached the level of governance parties in Romania (although the first two have participated to one of the PDSR governments but held insignificant functions of state secretary in the first Vacaroiu Government of 1992). PPDD obtained in the last elections (9th Dec. 2012) 14% of the votes in the Chamber of Deputies (47 seats) and 14.58 % in the Senate (21 seats). However, out of the total of 68 MPs, the party remained with only 22 deputies and 3 senators in February 20141. In his discourses, Dan Diaconescu speaks of the “people‟s dictatorship” versus the “elite”, of punishing the political class who have betrayed the people and judging the guilty of robbing the fortune of the people2 (see also “the 20 points the People‟s Party must impose upon coming to power”, in Annex 1.2.). A politically reformed Romania with a ruined economy (the second poorest in the EU) but with a high degree of corruption (with 24 politicians and dignitaries in prison or under arrest and with 23 lawmen behind bars), has a small chance of diminishing populism during the next elections3. The diverse combinations between populist and extremist speeches (of the left or of the right-wing) of parties in post-communist Romania have gained throughout the transition to democracy unique undertones, especially during the economic and social crisis but also in radicalizing their own members in electoral campaigns with negative messages. The president, Traian Basescu was often accused of populism through his public manifestations of counter-attacking the parties that demanded his resignation or

Collected from [http://www.machiavelli.ro/stiri.php?art=53867], accessed 12 Feb. 2014. Valentin Quintus NICOLESCU, Sabina BASIUL, Dan DIACONESCU, “The Politics of Bread and Circuses”, Challenges of the Knowledge Society, Vol. 3, 2013, p. 1142. 3 Sam CAGE, Luiza ILIE, “Populism takes spotlight in Romania power struggle”, Reuters, November 22, 2012. [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/22/us-romania-politics-idUSBRE8AL0IN20121122] (accessed on 22 Feb. 2014). 1 2

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suspension. The appeal to the people has brought him numerous supporters during his first 5 year mandate, but his image worsened during his second on account of the economic recession, a time when he was very active on the political stage. However, as in the case of populist parties, presidential populism is rather “soft” (condemning only some aspects of the dysfunctional political environment through the exaggerated appeal to the people in an institutionalized framework). The rising extremism of the Attacka party cannot be found currently in Romania not even in the case of “Partidul Romania Mare”, which is politically decimated, including in terms of representation in the European Parliament. The on-going decrease of trust in parties (Fig. 1) and political leaders, corroborated with the high level of corruption and poverty of the population have been key factors in the rise of populism in Romania and predictions are not optimistic in this respect, taking into account the continuing political crises determined by the endless conflicts between the president and the political leaders of the main 3 parties (PSD, PNL and PDL), on the one hand, and among these parties that cannot manage to build or especially effectively maintain governmental coalitions that can perform in governance. The electoral results have constantly diminished in Romania, the loss of voters being greater than in the case of Bulgaria, though the results obtained by populist parties have been lower than in Bulgaria in the same electoral interval of 1989 up to today.

Year

Table 2. Populist parties‟ performance in Romania after 1989 Party Results (%)

PRM PSM

7.7 (Chamber of Dep.); 8.1 (Senate) 3.9 (Ch. of Dep.); 3.9 (Senate) 3.0 (Ch. of Dep.); 3.2 (Senate) 14.6 (Ch. of Dep.); 15.2 (Senate)

PRM

4.5 (Ch. of Dep.); 4.5 (Senate)

PUNR


PUNR 1992

Total 1996 Total 2000

8.9 (Ch. of Dep.); 8.7 (Senate) PRM

19.5 (Ch. of Dep.); 21.0 (Senate) 207


PUNR Total PRM 2004

Partidul Noua Generaţie – CreştinDemocrat (New Generation Party – Christian Democratic) – PNG-CD)

21.0 (Ch. of Dep.); 22.4 (Senate) 13.0 (Ch. of Dep.); 13.6 (Senate) 2.2 (Ch. of Dep.); 2.4 (Senate) 15.2 (Ch. of Dep.); 16.0 (Senate)

Total PRM 2008 PNG-CD Total PRM 2012 PPDD Total


3.20 (Ch. of Dep.); 3.57 (Senate) 2.30 (Ch. of Dep.); 2.53 (Senate) 5.50 (Ch. of Dep.); 6.10 (Senate) 1.24 (Ch. of Dep.); 1.47 (Senate) 13.98 (Ch. of Dep.); 14.63 (Senate) 15.22 (Ch. of Dep.); 16.10 (Senate)

Source: [http://www.roaep.ro/ro/], page consulted on 10.02. 2014.

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Figure 2. Correlation of participation to vote of citizens after 1992

with votes for populist parties in Romania

Source: [http://www.roaep.ro/ro/], page consulted on 10.02. 2014. Note: The votes for populist parties were calculated as an average percentage taking into account the votes for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. In any case, the latest results of the populists from the PPDD in Romania are smaller than half of those gained by GERB in Bulgaria which demonstrates that the magnitude of populism is itself approximate at the same comparative level. Although ephemeral at the moment, populist parties in Bulgaria and Romania tend to multiply and obtain increasingly more support from confused, disappointed citizens, who are unhappy with the “fake democracy” in the two countries, and the hope in an increased quality of life as an effect of adhering to the EU through socio-economic and political integration can become in real life a chimera.

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4. CONCLUSION We support the conclusions of specialists in the field who have studied the phenomenon of populism in South-East Europe, especially in Bulgaria and Romania, conclusions which we shall present hereunder1:  Populism is not synonymous with “radicalism” or “extremism” in the area but it is observed that there is a high potential for rapid association of these terms especially in times of socio-economic and political crisis (correlated also with the decrease of trust citizens have in parties and leaders “rotating” to power in the past 24 years of post-communism);  There is a “soft” populism (condemning only certain aspects in a constitutional framework) and a “hard” populism (the threat of the entire constitutional framework); the former is more present in Romania (through PPDD and PRM, represented by journalists such as Dan Diaconescu and Corneliu Vadim Tudor) and the latter, more active in Bulgaria (through the extremist-photographer Volen Siderov on behalf of the Ataka party or through Iane Ianev from the “Order Law & Justice” party);  Populism has grown massively after the adherence to the EU of South-East European countries (especially in Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus and Slovenia) as an effect of austerity policies in the period of economic crisis;  The rise of populism was also due to the failure of a system of parties existing throughout the entire post-communist period reaching power in Bulgaria (after 2001), not the same though in Romania;  Nationalist identity strategies are used by populists to increase their existing electorate, being also strengthened by the communist ideology which persists in the collective memory and especially in the old leaders now become “democrats”;  Populism in South East Europe is mainly against new elites (those benefiting from the transition from the directed economy to the market economy, especially those who became rich through less than legal means) rather than against democracy itself; Daniel SMILOV, Ivan KRASTEV, “The Rise of Populism in Eastern Europe. Policy Paper”, in G. MESEŽNIKOV, O. GVÁRFÁŠOVÁ, D. SMILOV, (eds.), Populist Politics and Liberal Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, Bratislava, Institute for Public Affairs, 2008, pp. 7-12; Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Populismul contemporan…cit. 1

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 Populism focuses more on the media and pronounced political personalities in the area (and sometimes on issues of combating corruption and preserving an environment threatened by aging technologies);  In South East Europe in general, but especially in the two analysed countries, populism continues to worry civil society, as well as the political environment (parties with well institutionalized structures), the minimum requirement being the isolation of populist parties through a “security barrier” instituted by democratic parties.

ANNEXES 1. Discourse and Populist Programs in Romania

1.1. The Populist Discourse of Corneliu Vadim Tudor (PRM) During his mandate in the 2010 Congress, he threatened that: “It is high time I repeat something I have already said several times: thieves should not delude themselves, they will ALL go to prison! And in some cases they will go to prison in order to be protected from the anger of the crowd. And we shall confiscate their fortunes, both those in the country, as well as those beyond the borders. And we shall keep them with bread and water for several weeks, a few ex-Secret Service and ministry leaders, to tell us everyone‟s bank accounts, including those opened on behalf of relatives, lovers and friends. And we shall discover where the 140 billion euros we borrowed are gone but also the almost 700 billion euros that should have been received through privatization” (http://www.prm.org.ro/node/8, accessed on November 15, 2010).

1.2. “The 20 points that the People’s Party must impose upon coming to power”, from the program documents of the PPDD (http://ppdd.ro/content/20-de-puncte-alepartidului-poporului, accessed on January 20, 2014):

1. 2. 3. 4.

20.000 euros for each Romanian starting a business; Increase of all salaries and pensions; Cancelling all current taxes; Introduction of a single income and property tax; 211


5. Confiscation of illegal assets obtained through business with the state; 6. Trial by a People‟s Tribunal of all members of government who have robbed Romania;

7. 8. 9. 10.

Reduction of the VAT to a quota of 10% (minimum for the EU); Outlawing financial support for political parties; Elimination of salaries for MPs, Ministers, Prime Minister and President; Evacuation of dignitaries from the Parliament, Victoria (governmental) Palace and Cotroceni (presidential) Palace;

11. Establishment of the national “People‟s Fortune” company. The leader of this company will be elected directly by the people;

12. “The people‟s fortune” will distribute equal monthly dividends to all citizens; 13. The state will purchase abandoned agricultural properties and invest massively in bio agriculture;

14. Simple citizens will become jurors in courts along with judges; 15. Introduction of material responsibility for judges and attorneys who make mistakes;

16. Citizens will not pay credit to banks for 12 months; 17. Interdiction of preventive arrests (and handcuffs) with the exception of violent acts;

18. Companies will be audited only once every year; 19. The state will build 200.000 homes which will be rented to the poor; 20. Outlawing the radio-TVR tax.

2. Populist Parties in South-East Europe in Studies by Specialists

Table 3 Authors Muddle (a)

212

Style of communication, including in elections (f) Attack (Bulgaria);  Alarmists; Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS,  Exclusivists; Greece);  Demagogues; Populist Parties


Anastasakis (b)

Halikiopoulou & Vasilopoulou; Doxiadis & Matsaganis (c) Stoica (d) Smilov (e)

PRM and PUNR (Romania); Serbian Radical Party (SRS); Croatian Democrat Union (HDZ, Croatia). PUNR (Romania); SRS (Serbian Radical Party (Serbia). Golden Dawn (XA), Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) & LAOS (Greece); National Popular Front (ELAM – Cyprus). PRM, PNG-CD, PPDD (Romania) Attack, NMSS (Bulgaria)

and

    

(Over)simplifiers; Taboo proponents; Ultimatists; Opportunists; With speeches such as: “people versus elites”, “friends versus enemies;  Negative campaigns.

GERB

Sources: Cas MUDDLE, “In the Name of the Peasantry, the Proletariat, and the People: Populisms in Eastern Europe”, East European and Societies, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2000, pp. 33-53; Cas MUDDLE, “Who‟s Afraid of the European Radical Right?”, Dissent, 2011, pp. 7-11; Cas MUDDLE, “Radical Right Parties in Europe: What, Who, Why?”, Participation ,Vol. 35, No. 1, 2011, pp. 12-15; Othon ANASTASAKIS, “Extreme Right in Europe: A Comparative Study of Recent Trends”, London School of Economics & Political Science, 2000 [http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/3326/1/Extreme_Right_in_Europe.pdf]; Daphne HALIKILOPOULU, Sofia VASILOUPOULU, The Rise of The Golden Dawn [http://bit.ly/1bWcSzW], p. 124; Aristos DOXIADIS, Manos MATSAGANIS, National Populism and Xenophobia in Greece, Open Society Foundation, 2012 [http://counterpoint.uk.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/507_CP_ RRadical_Greece_web-1.pdf]; Gheorghe Lencan STOICA, “Populism in Romania”, in Hedwig GIUSTO, David KITCHING, Stefano RIZZO (eds.), The Changing Faces of Populism Systemic Challengers in Europe and the U.S., FEPS – Foundation for European Progressive Studies, Bruxelles, 2013, pp. 191-206; Daniel SMILOV, “Populism of Fear: Eastern European Perspectives”, in Hedwig GIUSTO, David 213


KITCHING, Stefano RIZZO (eds.), The Changing Faces…cit., pp. 227-254; Karsten GRABBOW, Florian HARTLEB, “Mapping – Present-day Right-wing Populists”, in K. GRAOW, F. HARTLEB (eds.), Exposing the Demogogues: Right Wing and National Populist Parties in Europe, The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Bruxelles, 2013, p. 21. Table 4. Virtues and Vices of Populist Parties Virtues Vices Populisms de-consolidate sclerotic partisan Populisms undermine existing party loyalties and dissolve collusive party loyalties and stable choices between systems opening them up for the entry of competing partisan programs without new political formations replacing them with alternative ones Populisms recruit persons who were Populisms recruit ill-informed persons who previously apathetic & passive citizens and do not have consistent preferences and mobilise them to participate in the electoral who seek “emotional” rather than process programmatic satisfactions from politics Populisms by raising and combining disparate and/or ignored political issues encourage the articulation of suppressed cleavages and expectations

Populisms raise expectations that cannot be fulfilled and pursue policies than are incompatible, both of which produce negative externalities for everyone

Populisms challenge “accepted” external constraints and call into question existing and often exploitive dependencies upon foreign powers

Populisms use foreigners an foreign powers as scapegoats for their own failings and weaken external linkages necessary for national welfare and security

Populisms replace out-dated and formulaic party programs and ideologies and replace them with appeals based on the personality of the leaders Populisms exercise “decisionism” replacing policy immobilism and expand the range of “politically possible” solution to collective problems

Populisms by shifting attention from issues and policies to persons and personalities introduce an erratic and opportunistic element into politics Populisms may be more decisive, but their decisions can have ill-conceived and disrespectful and long term effects that are passed on to the later generations

Populisms need continuous popular Populisms may be capable of altering the ratification and are eventually defeated at rules and/or of gaining the support of 214


the polls, leaving in their place a military and security forces such that they reinvigorated party system cannot be peacefully remover from the power

Source: Philippe C. SCHMITTER, “A Balance Sheet of the Vices and Virtues of „Populism‟ ” (unpublished article), European University Institute, Firenze, 2006, p. 124.

Bibliography BARR, Robert R., “Populists, Outsiders and Anti-Establishment Politics”, Party Politics, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2009. CHOLOVA, Blagovesta, Jean-Michel DE WAELE, “Bulgaria: A Fertile Ground for Populism?”, Slovak Journal of Political Sciences, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2011. CRISTOVA, Christiana, “Populism: the Bulgarian Case”, Sociedade e Cultura, Vol. 13, No. 2, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiania, 2010. GHERGHINA, Sergiu, Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Populismul contemporan: Un concept controversat şi formele sale diverse, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2012, IONIŢĂ, Sorin, “În numele poporului: Scurtă analiză a populismului, ieri şi azi”, in Alina MUNGIU-PIPPIDI (ed.), Doctrine politice: Concepte universale şi realităţi româneşti, Polirom, Iaşi, 1998. KRASTEV, Ivan, “The Populist Moment. New Presence”, The Prague Journal of Central European Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2008. MAIR, Peter, “Populist Democracy versus Party Democracy”, in Yves MÉNT, Yves SUREL (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Basingstoke, Palgrave, London, 2002. MATEEVA, Maria, “Varieties of Contemporary Populism Boundaries of „The People‟ in Bulgarian Political Discourse”, XXII World Congress of Political Science Madrid, 812 July 2012, Paris II Pantheon-Assas, 2012. MALINOV, Svetoslav, “Radical Demophilia: Reflections on Bulgarian Populism”, Eurozine, 22.01.2008, available at [http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-01-22malinov-en.html].

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MUDDLE, Cas, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government & Opposition, Vol. 39, No. 4, 2004. MUDDLE, Cas, Cristobal Rovira KALTWASSER, “Voices of the Peoples: Populism in Europe and Latin America Compared”, Working Paper, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, No. 378, 2011. NICOLESCU, Valentin Quintus, Sabina BASIUL, Dan DIACONESCU, “The Politics of Bread and Circuses”, Challenges of the Knowledge Society, Vol. 3, 2013. ROODUIJN, Matthijs, Teun PAUWELS, “Measuring Populism: Comparing Two Methods of Content Analysis”, West European Politics, Vol. 34, No. 6, 2011. SCHMITTER, Philippe C., “A Balance Sheet of the Vices and Virtues of „Populism‟ ” (unpublished article), European University Institute, Firenze, 2006. SKOLKAY, Andrej, “Populism in Central Eastern Europe”, IWM Working Paper, No. 1, Wien, 2000. SMILOV, Daniel, “The Rise of Populism in Bulgaria”, in G. MESEŽNIKOV, O. GVÁRFÁŠOVÁ, D. SMILOV (eds.), Populist Politics and Liberal Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, Institute for Public Affairs, Bratislava, 2008. SMILOV, Daniel, Ivan KRASTEV, “The Rise of Populism in Eastern Europe. Policy Paper”, in G. MESEŽNIKOV, O. GVÁRFÁŠOVÁ, D. SMILOV, D. (eds.), Populist Politics and Liberal Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, Institute for Public Affairs, Bratislava, 2008. TISMĂNEANU, Vladimir, “The Leninist Debris or Waiting for Perón”, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 10, No. 3, 1996. TUPY, Marian L., “The Rise of Populist Parties in Central Europe: Big Government, Corruption, and the Threat to Liberalism”, Development Policy Analysis, No. 1, The CATO Institute, Washington D.C., 2006.

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Populism and Anti-Occidental Romanian Political Discourse between 2001 and 2012 Cătălin SECĂREANU University of Bucharest & Université Montesquieu Bordeaux 4 Abstract: The aim of the below article is to propose a theoretical frame

for exploring the link between discourse at the level of Romanian political elites and the country’s foreign policy, arguing that antioccidental discursive stances represent populist manifestations with the domestic market (of voters) as recipients, but without any effect in influencing the “Occident” referential of the Romanian foreign policy. Keywords: culture, populism, foreign policy decision-makers, referential,

discursive performance. “We do not want to remind our European partners how they have conditioned our accession to the EU by the privatization of our banking sector”. 1 (Traian Băsescu, President of Romania, November 24th, 2011)

“I do not accept for us to be used (…) Romania mustn’t behave like a colony, like a vassal. Romania is not just a country, but the 7th largest in Europe, with an outstanding geostrategic position, with energy resources, cards to play. Those who govern Romania must be aware of such aspects”2. (Crin Antonescu, Ad-Interim President of Romania, August 17th, 2012)

1

Traian Băsescu’s Declaration, [consulted on 30.06.2012 on http://economie.hotnews.ro/stiri-finante_banci-

10776156-basescu-avertisment-adresa-bancilor-nu-vrea-aducem-aminte-prietenilor-nostri-europeni-catconditionat-admiterea-privatizarea-sistemului-bancar.html]. 2 Crin Antonescu’s Declaration, [consulted on 22.08.2012 on http://www.realitatea.net/antonescu-pe-planextern-romania-nu-trebuie-sa-se-comporte-ca-o-colonie_990296.html].

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1. INTRODUCTION Beginning with the 21st century we find Romania involved in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, taking the side of an international coalition consisting mainly of Occidental powers and fighting the “War on Terror” under the United States leadership. But the Romanian attachment for the Occidental1 space has manifested earlier than the 2000s. Soon after the 1989 Revolution, Romania has clearly manifested her desire to “return to the Occident” after the unfortunate communist disruption. In this respect, the country’s intention to join the structures of NATO, CEE – soon to be European Union or Council of Europe - is given voice during the mandate of the first president after the Revolution - Ion Iliescu. This aim is indirectly manifested, judging by the numerous visits and agreements concluded between Romania and Occidental parties (states and organizations)2, but it is also expressed clearly by the representatives of the new Romanian regime3. The pro-Western attitude of Romania continues during the entire decade of the 1990s, with events such as the Snagov Declaration4 or Romania’s sideling with NATO during the Kosovo war, when Romania has given NATO the right to use Timisoara airport for its air bombardments against Belgrade5. Romania’s goal is accomplished de jure in 2004 and 2007, with the adhesion to NATO, respectively the EU. But, paradoxically, once in the Occidental club, an anti-occidental type of discourse takes shape at the level of the Romanian high political elite. Such displays, unconceivable The connotation I am referring to “Occident” during the article is not only cultural, that of “occidental civilization”, but as well I am including NATO, the European Union or main Western Powers like the United States, France, Great Britain, Germany, etc. in the term of “Occident”. 2 See the events of years 1990-1992 in Stan STOICA, România după 1989. O istorie cronologică, Ed. Meronia, Bucureşti, 2007. 3 For instance, the Romanian government’s request that Romania be admitted in the Council of Europe as a member with full rights (March 20th 1990) or the request of the Romanian representative in the EEC that the EEC begin negotiation with Romania for the country’s adhesion to EEC (May 30 th 1991). In Stan Stoica, 1

op.cit. In 2005, all Romanian parties ratified the “Snagov Declaration” which stated the consensus of all political forces (it included PRM, extreme right party) as to the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration. 5 It should be mentioned that in the Romanian collective mental, Serbia has a very good image and is considered to be the “best neighbour Romania has, other than the Black Sea”. The saying refers to the fact that throughout history, Romania never had disputes of any sort with Serbia, as opposed to all her other neighbours. 4

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before 2004, culminate in the summer of 2012 with aggressive verbal attacks aimed at the US ambassador, EU’s Jose Barroso, Angela Merkel and EU institutions. These come from the highest level: they are formulated by Crin Antonescu, President Ad-Interim of Romania at that time and, at the moment when this article is written, the second man in the State, as Chief of the Senate, credited with major chances to become the newly elected president of Romania in this year’s (2014) elections. The background of anti-occidental outbursts of 2012 lies in the events that led to the suspension of the President in exercise, Traian Băsescu, by the newly elected majority in the Romanian Parliament, unfavourable to Băsescu. During the referendum campaign conducted to reconfirm Băsescu as president, Western institutions were accused of overtly taking Băsescu’s side, and rather than being impartial, interfering in the internal policy of Romania. But, one may observe such verbal anti-occidental outbursts before the events of 2012, and one may discover such declarations at president Băsescu himself - the alleged “man of the Occident” in 2012. Why and how this sudden change in the way of perceiving the Occident by the Romanian political high decision makers? Is this a discursive “disenchantment” with the Occident manifesting de facto as well as in a change of the Romanian foreign policy attitude towards Occident? The topic I discuss in this article refers to the link between the negative images of the Occident, as are constructed in the discourse of Romanian high decision makers, and populism. The period I am addressing for this analysis is 2001-2012. More precisely, my interest lies in the evolution of the (anti-)occidental images in the afore-mentioned period. The aim of the article is to propose a theoretical frame for analysing whether indeed the culture shared by the Romanian decision makers with respect to the West shifted during this period or, rather we are having to do with displays of a populist discourse that illustrates a “doublespeak”1, a discourse not rooted in beliefs or intellectual convictions, but malleable according to circumstances and oriented to immediate goals. In other words, my main research question centres around the “speech-act” doublet: is there any connection between the anti-occidental speech of the Romanian political high decision makers and Romania’s foreign policy behaviour? My argument is that no such link may be deduced, this act does not relate to speech in what I refer to the sense coined by George ORWELL in his 1984 for the term, which should not be confounded with “double-talk”. 1

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concerns my selected case study, and this will be proven by focusing my attention on the unit of analysis represented by foreign policy decision makers that will be further developed below. From the methodological standpoint, the approach I am planning to use is rooted in the constructivist current of international relations and the symbolic interactionism theory1. In accordance with the constructivist theory, I shall discuss firstly the cultures of anarchy, their degrees of internationalization and the potential evolution of the cultures of anarchy via symbolic interactionism. Then I shall be assessing, via the concept of discursive performance of Charles Morris, the link between speech and act in the chosen case study: Romania between 2001 and 2012. The stake of my article is to demonstrate that the anti-occidental discourse to be found at the level of Romanian decision makers during 2001-2012, doesn’t explain a change in the shared culture of anarchy with regards to the Occidental space: the foreign behaviour of Romania didn’t modify at all, despite her anti-occidental outbursts. In other words, Romania’s referential in foreign policy in relation to the Western space remains unchanged; hence, the anti-occidental speech is simply a (passing) populist flare, without substance, and not translated into further action.

2. THE VERBAL “DISENCHANTMENT” WITH THE OCCIDENT. A THEORETICAL FRAME FOR ANALYSIS The approach I suggest for researching this proposed topic is rooted in the foreign policy analysis (FPA) tradition. FPA represents an extremely versatile research tool, especially at a time when more and more social scientists plead for interdisciplinarity. Like in Europe, the case of Gerard Dusuoy, but who is not a singular voice, “we cannot afford the cosiness of a separate specialization between social

I will be making reference mainly to the works of Alexander Wendt for constructivism and George Herbert Mead and Charles Morris for symbolic interactionism. 1

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sciences and, no matter how difficult, an effort of synthesis should be made when explaining, no matter how imperfect the results”1. One of the pillars of the FPA frame I am intending to use is rooted in the constructivist school of International Relations (IR). According to Nicholas Onuf, a leading representative of this school, social reality per se doesn’t have an objective fabric. But its sense and thus “objectivity” may be regarded differently and understood subjectively different, depending on the decipherer. Thereby, constructivists claim that social reality, of which international environment is part, is socially constructed. For constructivists, the laws that govern social reality present a certain degree of relativism and should be assumed in this manner. This is a crucial point where the constructivists’ path radically separates from realists’ or liberal internationalists’, the exponents of the two other major schools in IR theory. Because, for these last two, social reality is governed by laws somehow objective and that may be identified - a tribute realism and international liberalism bring to the science of economics, a major hub of ideas, for both these currents. At the same time, for constructivists, language has a constitutive function, not just a descriptive one. Taking as basis the linguistic-turn model, developed by philosophers of language such as J. Habermas, J.L. Austin, J.R. Searle to name just a few, constructivists affirm that: “Language does not only serve to represent the world as it is. Language also has a constitutive function. By speaking, we make the world what it is”2. Through the language, constructivists say, we also provide others with a perspective on the culture we are anchored in. Thus, culture is being expressed and constructed by language with the meaning given by Alexander Wendt3 of “shared ideas forming the subset of the social structure known as culture”4. Thus, culture is a form of shared knowledge both common to and connecting individuals. This involves the idea that culture is not a sector or sphere of society distinct from economy or politics for Gerard DUSSUOY, Les théories de la mondialité: gagnants et perdants du sans-frontiérisme, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2009, p. 11. 2 Nicholas ONUF, Worlds of Our Making: The Strange Career of Constructivism in International Relations , in Donald J. PUCHALA (ed.), Visions of International Relations, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 2002. 3 Alexander WENDT, Teoria socială a politicii internaț ionale, trans. Mihai Cristian Brașoveanu, Polirom, Iași, 2001, pp. 250-256. 4 Ibidem, p. 253. 1

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instance, but is present anywhere shared knowledge exists. In fact, “if economy or politics are spheres of society institutionally distinct, as in capitalism, it is because they are constituted by culture this way”1. From this meaning of culture, Wendt describes three types of “shared cultures of anarchy” dominating the international system at its macrolevel. They function by attributing (to an Other) the roles of enemy, rival or friend. Based on the distinctions proposed by Wight/English School of IR, Wendt names these structures of anarchy: Hobbesian, Lockean and Kantian. These labels explain a social structure, in which actors are taking themselves in consideration when they are assigning to one another roles based on their ideas of the nature and role of the Self, respectively the Other. Why do actors internalize certain cultures of anarchy, assuming certain norms and in consequence certain comportments? Wendt answers: either because they are forced, because it is in their interest, or just because they perceive the norm as legitimate2. We hence have 3 degrees of internalization of a norm, which in turn generates 3 ways by which the structure is accepted: force/coercion, price/interest or legitimacy. The roles of enemy (Hobbes), rival (Locke) or friend (Kant) are perceived by the Self and internalized each in turn on the basis represented by coercion, interest and legitimacy3. Cultures of anarchy represent not just simple structures allowing a decipherment of the socially constructed international setback according to an individual operational code4, but at the same time, they directly influence the positioning of the Self. The internalization of a certain type of culture generates certain role “attributions” for the Other and a certain type of behaviour in consequence. From this standpoint, culture is a self-fulfilling prophecy5, because the Self behaves in accordance with the expectations he has regarding the Other and the way he will react. Ibidem, p. 157. Ibidem, p. 253. 3 Ibidem, p. 261. 4 Alexander George, the introducer of this term together with Nathan Leites, defines the operational code as: “A political leader’s belief about the nature of politics and political conflict, his views regarding the extent to which historical developments can be shaped, and his notions of correct strategies and tactics - whether these beliefs be referred to as operational code, Weltanshauung, cognitive map or an elite’s political culture - are among the factors influencing that actor’s decisions”, in Alexander GEORGE, “The Operational Code: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-making”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2, p. 11. 5 Alexander WENDT, Teoria…cit., pp. 195-199. 1 2

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But what is the mechanism by which cultures of anarchy evolve or involve, how does the operational code of the decision maker change? At this moment I shall bring into question the second pillar I am founding on my FPA endeavour, namely the perspectives developed by the theories of symbolic interactionism. My point of departure is the model proposed by G.H. Mead, which explains the cultural evolution via cultural selection1. Cultural selection influences role attributions, respectively identities, in two main ways: by imitation and social learning. As mentioned, role attributions are built and evolve via cultural selection. This includes two stages: imitation and social learning. Imitation, the process which takes place first, consists in copying the meanings attributed to those perceived as successful, of the model internalized as legitimate or to be pursued. The second stage, social learning, appears when actors start interacting. In this way, by repeated valuations generated during the interactions between the Self and the Other, the perspective on the Other evolves. Rooted in the tradition of symbolic interactionism, is as well the concept of discursive performance that I am planning to use for the assessment of the speech-action relations. The discursive performance was developed initially in the writings of Charles Morris2 and I find it very useful because it traces a link between discourse and behaviour, focusing in particular on the efficiency of discursive acts and their being put into practice. Last, but not least, depositaries of culture are not empty vessels or abstract concepts. In the end, the foreign policy decision maker may be identified in the person of the individual making the decision engaging the state politically or just from a symbolic point of view in relation with its peers. In this respect, the approach I am assuming is nominal, thus the actors to be researched are the individuals representing the bureaucracies that form the state. For our case study, which has to do with the referential in the Romanian foreign policy, one should first see what actors have representation power in such matter, thus what is the locus of foreign policy decision-making. In Romania, “foreign policy decision making is located in the institutional triangle formed by the President, Prime-minister and the Foreign Affairs Minister. Other factors within the political system, like political parties or public opinion, have little influence on the George Herbert MEAD, “The Social Self”, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, No. 10, 1913, pp. 374-380 and George Herbert MEAD, Mind, Self and Society, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1934. 2 See Charles MORRIS, Signs, Language and Behavior, Prentice Hall, New York, 1946. 1

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decision making process”1. We have thus identified as well the locus of foreign policy decision making, hence we have shaped our field of analysis.

3. “DISENCHANTMENT” WITH THE OCCIDENT OR POPULISM? Beginning with the second half of the 1990s, Romanian foreign policy’s target, assumed by the political class in its entirety, was the country’s integration into the EuroAtlantic structures: NATO and EU. Acceding to the membership statute of NATO and EU was assimilated in integrum by Romanian political elites as an indivisible objective. In fact, at the beginning of 2000s, the Romanians were hardly able (in an overwhelming proportion) to differentiate between the two institutions which meant for them one and the same thing: the Occident2. The aim was reached with the accession to NATO in 2004 and then, in 2007, to the EU. The historical burden of the moment was obvious. It was more than mere membership to NATO or the EU; it was the mythical return of Romania to the Western civilization after 50 years of communism. The political goal of “returning to the Occident” was embraced unanimously by the Romanian political establishment, proving its internalization as legitimate3. And, for reaching it and receiving the membership card of EU and NATO, strict conditions to reform State institutions, the economy, by respecting democratic values, etc. were accepted and implemented by Romanian elites, thus providing us with a proof of the legitimacy of the Occidental model at the level of Romanian elites. Then, why the negative change in the discursive attitude towards the West, from the second half of the years 2000? What were the reasons of this discursive “fall from legitimacy” of “the Occident”? The reasons were multiple. We may at least look for evidences by studying the negative perceptions around certain controversial episodes (with a clear discursive manifestation) that generated feelings of fortuitousness and unjust conditionings imposed to Romania by the Occident, in order to accede to NATO or the EU. This is what I

Ruxandra IVAN, La politique étrangère roumaine (1990-2006), Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, 2009 p. 14. 2 CSOP Poll, accesed – 30.09.2012, [ www.csop.ro/arhiva/967975]. 3 See footnote 6, concerning the Snagov Declaration. 1

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name the internal level interaction. To this, the change of the perception with regards to the external level - the international situation - is to be added. On the one hand, what kind of internal level interactions that generated change of perception into negative one may refer to? I shall not detail, but only briefly mention some of the episodes that produced an outstanding discourse material at the level of Romanian decision makers and generated a negative role attribution for the Occident. One such example is the Petrom case (2004). It refers to the sale of the Romanian national oil company to the Austrian company OMV. It was intensely speculated that the sale was a concession made to Austria by the Romanian government. At that time, Austria having the presidency of the EU, it lobbied to help closing more easily some chapters of negotiation with the European Union. Even more vocal was the Bechtel Affair (2004) which refers to a massive motorway construction contract offered by Romania to the US construction giant, Bechtel. People said, even the former primeminister of those days, Adrian Nastase, stated in his later memoires, that this was the concession needed for Romania to be accepted in NATO. In 2006, Romania was involved in the so-called Frigate Business. It was speculated that Romania bought two old war frigates at an overvalued acquisition price from Great Britain so as to gain the latter’s support, again in order to close some negotiation chapters with the EU. In 2006, takes place the privatization of the Romanian Commercial Bank, the largest banking institution in Romania. It was later denounced by President Băsescu himself that the respective privatization was a condition imposed for Romania’s accession to the EU. This impacted Romania especially during the financial crisis from 2009 onwards, when all financing lines of the foreign banks operating in Romania were harshly reduced. The lack of available credits affected Romanian business in consequence. Last but not least, the tensions around the accession to the Schengen space in 2011 gave birth to funny episodes like the “tulip war” between Romania and the Netherlands, the fiercest opponent against Romania’s accession to the Schengen space. Other than internal type of interactions that influenced the discourse of Romanian decision makers, starting from 2008 onwards, an increased awareness that international environment changes compared with 2001 becomes obvious. The prolonged economic crisis in which the West still languishes as opposed to the dynamic Asia makes things even more noticeable and influences the discursive manifestations of Romanian decision makers. What in 2001 was a US single-pole world, turned now into a

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multipolar environment. In this new world, emerging states, especially in Asia, led by China, offer a totally new modernization model, different from the Occidental one. In this world, Romanian decision makers perceive the interaction with the new external environment as one forcing them to act on a discursive logic towards pursue of interest. I am only exemplifying, in this respect, the very recent declaration of president Traian Băsescu regarding the Nabucco pipeline (Băsescu, who is known as an ardent EU supporter): “Romania will redefine her energy policy based on her resources and not waiting for anybody’s approval. Certainly, Romania would have had advantages if Nabucco had been constructed. And I am not at the age of puberty to believe that both parties have won, that from TAP extensions will be made… I have passed the age of political puberty. These are just consolation words and Romania must take her faith regarding strategic energy into her own hands. The most important message in this brief analysis is that Romania doesn’t want to remain dependant of a single supplier and we will self-define our energy policy taking into consideration the failure of the European project. We cannot wait for Europe’s new project, which again we don’t know if will succeed”1. What is in the end the discursive performance of all these negative position takings with respect to the West of high Romanian decision makers, such as the President? Does the negative speech influence the foreign policy referential of Romania with respect to her Occidental path or to her Occidental partners? The answer is assuredly no, judging by the facts. In this regard, it is worth remembering the various events denoting actions in total opposition with the anti-occidental discursive stances. We are thus confronted with concretely pro-occidental actions on the background of anti-occidental statements. Let us recall in this sense a series of such events that I shall only pass in review. I would mention first of all the signing, in 2006, of the bilateral agreements between Romania and the United States by which the US were allowed to install American military facilities in Romania. This materialized into the “Mihail Kogalniceanu” US military base of 1

Declaration of Traian Băsescu, [consulted in 30.06.2013 on http://economie.hotnews.ro/stiri-energie-

15086792-traian-basescu-despre-esecul-nabucco-informat-consiliul-european-romania-isi-redefini-politicaenergetica-fara-astepta-aprobareanimanui.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hotnews%2Fyvoq +%28Hotnews.ro%29].

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Constanta at the beginning of 2007. Then, in 2008, the choosing of Bucharest to host a major NATO summit, in which all the important Western chiefs of state and government participated, including G. W. Bush, N. Sarkozy, etc. The discussions focussed on momentous issues regarding NATO’s future, such as the decision to halt the further Eastern expansion of the Alliance, while choosing the Romanian capital as a host city, was considered an important indicator for the country’s importance within the Alliance. Then, let us recall the agreement signed by Romania and the United States in 2011 named “A Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century” which led to the decision of choosing Romania to host elements of the US antiballistic-missile defensive shield. It is also worth noting Romania’s participation together with the international coalition led by Europe in the events that followed the Arab Spring, more specifically Romania’s participation in the military intervention in Libya – all these aspects represent an undeniable proof of Romania’s affiliation to the Western club. It should be remembered as well that Romania was among the first states accepting to sign the “European Fiscal Treaty” in 2012, according to which the EU’s supranational power is enforced and gives EU institutions the right to intervene in national legislations regarding various measures related to economic stability and governance.

4. CONCLUSION My analysis tries to establish a link between the anti-occidental speech of Romanian political high decision makers and Romania’s foreign policy behaviour with respect to the Occident. But there is no such link between negative discourses and actions in our case. The anti-occidental discursive outbursts coming from time to time, either from the President, the Prime-minister or other important figures of the Romanian political establishment, do not influence the political referential represented by the “partnership” of the country with the Occidental club. Such declarations should rather be considered and interpreted taking into account the particular local context in which politicians have made the statement, seeking to profit by stigmatizing the new scapegoat in town, the West included, if this is at reach. In the end, this is all intended for the domestic public in a purely politically populist, catch-all and hit-all type of argumentation.

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In his famous Disenchantment of the World, Marcel Gauchet proposes an original and radical vision on the West from a religious perspective. More precisely, he describes the socio-human universe re-composition outside religion, the universe being now free from its profound dependence on Gods and their immutable laws (the Divine survives, what dies is its power!). According to Gauchet, the world disenchantment took place (maybe) paradoxically, initially based on a religious logic that backfired. In a similar and also paradoxical sense, the anti-occidental and even Occidentalist1 discourse of Romanian decision makers generates sometimes a verbal “disenchantment with the Occident” which actually signifies exactly the opposite. The disenchantment with the West expresses the need of Romania for the Occident, the main the Other to which, throughout her history, Romania has longed to belong.

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MEAD, George Herbert, “The Social Self”, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, No. 10, 1913. MICU, Mircea, “An Alliance Dilemma: Understanding Romanian Foreign Policy in the Context of Transatlantic Divergences”, Romanian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 7, No. 7, 2007. MORGENTHAU, Hans, La Politique entre nations, Polirom, București, 2007. MORRIS, Charles, Signs, Language and Behavior, Prentice Hall, New York, 1946. MOTOC, Iulia, Şerban CIOCULESCU, Manual de analiză a politicii externe, Polirom, București, 2010. MOTOC, Iulia, “Politica externă a României față de NATO”, Polis, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1997. MOTOC, Iulia, Teoria Relaț iilor Internaț ionale. Sursele filosofiei morale ș i ale dreptului, Paideia, București, 2001. NIEBUHR, Reinhold, The Structure of Nations and Empires, NYU Press, New York, 2006. ONUF, Nicholas, “Worlds of Our Making: The Strange Career of Constructivism in International Relations”, in Donald J. PUCHALA (ed.), Visions of International Relations, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 2002. ONUF, Nicholas, Worlds of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 1989. PHINNEMORE, David, “Stuck in the Grey Zone? – Fears and Frustrations in Romania’s Quest for EU Membership”, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Koninklije Brill NV, Leiden, 2001. SINGER, David, “The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations”, World Politics, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1981. SNYDER, Richard, Herbert BRUCK, Burton SAPIN, Decision-making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1954. STAN, Valentin, România ș i eș ecul campaniei pentru Vest, Ed. Universităţii Bucureşti, Bucureşti, 1999. STOICA, Stan, România după 1989. O istorie cronologică, Meronia, Bucureşti, 2007. TRUBOWITZ, Peter, “Foreign Policy Analisys”, in Nicholas J. SMELSER, Peter B. BALTES (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elsevier Ltd Publishing, New York, 2001. 230


VAN EVERA, Stephen, “Offense-Defense and the Causes of War”, International Security, Vol. 22, No. 4, 1998. WALT, Stephen, The Origins of Alliances, Cornell University Press, 1987. WALTZ, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics, McGraw Hill, 1979. WENDT, Alexander, Teoria Socială a Politicii Internaț ionale, (trans. Mihai Cristian Brașoveanu), Polirom, Iași, 2001. ZAKARIA, Fareed, The Post-American World, W.W. Norton&Company Inc, New York, 2008. ZEHFUSS, Maja, “Constructivisms in International Relations: Wendt, Onuf, and Kratochwil” in Karin M. FIERKE, Knud Erik JORGENSEM (eds.), Constructing International Relations: The Next Generation, Armonk Sharen, New York, 2001.

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The European Elections of 2014 under the Sign of Populism Marcela Monica STOICA “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Faculty of Political Sciences Abstract: The present paper deals with the issue of populism in the

European Union within the frame of the elections for the European Parliament that will take place in May 2014. The study aims to find an answer to a few questions: how will be the participation of European citizens‟ in the elections and which will be the impact of nationalist and populist leaders‟ messages on the electoral choice. We consider this year to be a test for European and national elites in their ability to reinforce and to give a new impulse to the European integration project. The results of these elections will have a great political significance because they will reshape the configuration of parties‟ system and will lead to a rethinking of the governmental coalitions in Europe. So, this excurse analyses, on one side, the causes of this growing phenomenon of populism in Europe because the political battle in these elections will enact the old myth of the saviour, in the dichotomist relationship scapegoat-hero. On the other side, we try to find what strategies could be used in order to reduce the huge gap between European institutions and their citizens and to make the participative democracy effective. Keywords: elections, democracy, populism, scapegoat, political elites.

1. INTRODUCTION. SHORT CONSIDERATIONS ON NATIONALISM AND POPULISM AS AN IDEOLOGY The actual economic crisis is a fertile ground in which, unfortunatelly, the seeds of nationalism and populism can sprout and bring fruit. The populist brand is associated with political actors such as political leaders and parties. But this phenomenon could be used in order to explain the development and consolidation of modern democracy, 233


especially in the South and Eastern European countries. To attend this goal we have to analyse the spread of nationalism and the varieties faces of populism1. We have to clarify if we talk about an ideology or a pseudo- ideology given the facts that there are different aproaches among the specialists, so some brief conceptual clarifications are necessary. What constitutes the „core” in ideological terms? Ideology is a set of ideas, views and beliefs concerning how politics, economic and society should be constructed and organised.2 As it is known, Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836) defines ideology as the “science of ideas”. There is some agreement that nationalism is an ideological movement speaking in the name of a self-defined nation and aiming at controlling political institutions within a specific territory. Michael Billig considers the daily impact of nationalism as an ideology3. He describes nationalism as „the most successful ideology in human history”, although this does not exclude the parallel dominance of other ideologies addressing internal policy issues4. Nationalism seems to advocate strong egalitarian values proclaiming the equality of all citizens or, rather, all the members of the nation. Therefore, a whole set of unreflexive habits can be thought as expressions of ideology. In the public and private discourse, the “casual intolerance” is a common occurrence. This term is used in Billig‟s work on banal nationalism and it refers to day to day discursive practices displaying

On populism, as an ideology, see more details in the works of Hechwig GIUSTO, David KITCHING and Stefano RIZZO (eds), The Changing Faces of Populism. Systematic Challenges in Europe and the U.S., O.GRA. RO, Roma, 2013; Paul TAGGART, Populism, Open University Press Buckingham/Philadelphia, 2000; Cas MUDDE, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007; Ralf MELZER Ralf, Sebastian SERAFIM (eds), Right-Wing Extremism in Europe, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Berlin, 2013; Guy HERMET, Sociologia populismului, Artemis, București, 2007. 2 Roger EATWELL, “Introduction: the New Extreme Rights Challenge” in Roger EATWELL and Cas MUDDE (eds.), Western Democracies and the New Extreme Right Challenge, Routledge, London, 2004, pp. 1-16. see also Roger EATWELL, “Ideologies: Approaches and Trends,” in Roger EATWELL and Anthony WRIGHT, Contemporary Political Ideologies, 2nd reprint, Pinter, London, 1996. 3 For an introduction to the phenomenon of nationalism, see Michael BILLIG, Banal Nationalism, Sage, London, 1995; Ernest GELLNER, Nations and Nationalism, Blackwell, Oxford, 1983; A. D. SMITH, Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2001. 4 Michael BILLIG, Banal Nationalism, Sage, London, 1995, p. 22. 1

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embedded intolerance that often go unnoticed but have the negative effect of reinforcing stereotypes1. Elsewhere, Anthony D. Smith reiterates that ideology is a key element in the success of nationalism as “it serves to unify and focus the many grievances and aspirations of different social groups within a particular community or state, and to explain to and activate the people”2. The core ideology or belief system of nationalism is composed of at least six crucial interconnected ideas or “basic propositions”, namely that: (1) the world is divided into nations, each with its own character, history and destiny; (2) the nation is the sole source of political power; (3) loyalty to the nation overrides all other loyalties; (4) to be free, every individual must belong to a nation; (5) every nation requires full self-expression and autonomy; (6) global peace and justice require a world of autonomous nations3. Some other authors argue that nationalism could be described as “the dominant operative ideology of modernity” since “nearly all contemporary socio-political orders... tend to legitimize their existence in nationalist terms” 4. Renan (Ernest Renan, Oeuvres complètes, Calmann –Levy, 1947) asserts that nationalism is central to the political legitimacy of modern societies, and in every continent the nationalism has become the main legitimating belief system and the nation has its roots in the right of the populations to decide their own destiny5 . But authors such as Ernest Gellner disagreed with the importance of ideology, arguing, instead, that nationalism needs neither modernism and nationalism intellectuals, nor an ideology. In his view, nationalism is a semi-spontaneous response generated ex-machina by a fragmented social system disrupted by the uneven impact of industrialization. Yet, he also acknowledged that nationalism first developed in the West6. Radu CINPOES, “Romania”, in Ralf MELZER, Sebastian SERAFIM (eds), Right-Wing Extremism…cit., p. 171. 2 A. D. SMITH, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, Routledge, London, 1998, Ref. 13, p. 116. 3 Idem, Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2001, p. 22. 4 S. MALESEVIC, “Nationalism and the power of ideology”, in G. DELANTY and K. KUMAR (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism, Sage Publications, London 2006, p. 317. 5 Apud Evelyne PISIER (coord.), Istoria ideilor politice, Amarcord, Timișoara, 2000, p. 306. 6 Ernest GELLNER, Nations and Nationalism…cit., p. 36; See also Ernest GELLNER, Thought and Change, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1964. 1

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In the classic formulation of Gellner, “[…] nationalism is, primarily, a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent. Nationalism as a sentiment or as a movement can best be defined in terms of this principle”.1

Gellner considers that nationalism is “the organization of human groups into large, centrally educated, culturally homogeneous units”2. Unlike other ideologies, nationalism was rarely formulated through a coherent system of thought and via a clearly identifiable program. The nationalism does not belong, exclusively, to the political right or left3. To sum up, the literature on this phenomenon abounds in all kind of labels. The extreme rights will be used with reference to groups that display nativism, authoritarianism and populism as key ideological commitments4. The extreme rights exhibit “exclusionary representations of the nation” as well as anti-parliamentary, anti-pluralist and anti-systemic tendencies, even when operating within the norms of liberal-democratic politics5.

2. EUROPEAN UNION – WHAT KIND OF DEMOCRACY? The new Treaty of European Union, the Treaty of Lisbon, puts the democratic and the European governance system on the double legitimacies, intergovernmental and

GELLNER, Nations and Nationalism…cit., p. 1. Idem, p. 35. 3 Eugen WEBER, “Dreapta”, in Hans ROGGER, Eugen WEBER (coord.), Dreapta europeana, Minerva, București, 1995, p. 7. 4 Cas MUDDE, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, pp. 20-23, apud Radu CINPOES, “Romania”, in Ralf MELZER, Sebastian SERAFIM (eds), Right-Wing Extremism…cit., p. 171. 5 P. HAINSWORTH, The Extreme Right in Western Europe, Routledge, London, 2008, pp. 11-12, apud Radu CINPOES, “Romania”, Right-Wing Extremism in Europe…cit., p. 171. 1 Ernest 2

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civic.1 The Treaty of Lisbon is officially recognized the national parliaments as important actors at the level of European Union. An actor with a meaningful role becomes the European Parliament (EP), an institution with a democratic character, whose spectacular evolution meant also the evolution and the strengthening of the democratic process of EU from an elitarist democracy to a representative democracy and, today, to a participative democracy2. European Parliament elections were an indication of interest of European citizens for European integration and a tool for measuring democratic effectiveness and performance of communication between the EU and its citizens. Since 1979, the European elections were marked by an emphasis on national stakes and low electoral participation. European elections were appreciated, therefore, since the„80s, as “second order elections” because turnout was always lower than in national elections, political parties obtaining election results lower than in the national elections.3 According to the official data from EU website, one can remark, at European level, a decrease in participation rate from 61.99% in 1979 - the first elections4 - to 43.00% in 2009 - the last election - so, a significant increase in absenteeism5. This low level of participation in European elections could be explained by the perception of limited powers of the European Parliament and the low knowledge of European political parties. The European system of political parties was not modernized and adapted to the European requirements and also can be added the lack of the direct link between the European and national elections and the absence of a clear distinction between the government parties and the opposition ones. In comparison with the parliamentary activity and electoral democracy at the national level, where the political

Francisco Aldecoa LUZÁRRAGA, Mercedes Guinea LLORENTE, Europa viitorului. Tratatul de la Lisabona/The Europe of Future. The Treaty of Lisbon, Polirom, Iaşi, 2011, p. 69. 2 Zoltan HORVATH, Handbook on the European Union, Reference Press, Budapest, 2002, p. 87. 3 John PINDER, Uniunea Europeană- Foarte scurtă introducere/ European Union. A very Brief Introduction, trans. Cristian Iulian Neagoe, Editura Bic All, București, 2005, p. 164. 1

In the first free and direct elections for the European Parliament, in 1979, took part the citizens from the 9 Member States: France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark and in 2009 took part the citizens of 27 countries, current members. In 2014, will participate the citizens of 28 countries, as Croatia became member of EU in 2013. 5 Special Euro-barometer 299. The 2009 European Elections, EU, pp. 17-18, consulted at: [ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_299_en.pdf (04.02.2014)]. 4

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game is more strongly felt, also the absence of a traditional power-opposition relationship is a cause for confusion for the European citizens. Surveys in the EU confirm that few citizens know who are their elected representatives, what benefits are within their mandate. Also, knowledge regarding the organization and functioning of the European Parliament, the importance of what is happening in EP for their daily life are dramatically reduced.1 On the other hand, it was argued that low voter participation in European elections revealed the weak support of the European integration process by citizens, a triple deficit: the absence of a collective identity feeling, the absence of real political debates and the absence of a powerful communitarian political infrastructure. In the new elections, the UE will have to deal with the relation of representative democracyparticipatory democracy. And here, come the political parties. In a representative democracy it is indispensable to have at least some degree of congruence between the opinions of voters and their parties on salient political issues. In most parliamentary democracies there is indeed a strong connection between voters and parties on the traditional left-right dimension; however, the situation is much less clear when it comes to issues concerning European integration. In the case of the member states of the European Union, the problem of representation is exacerbated by the process of deepening European integration, whereby an increasing number of policy competences are being transferred to the European level. On the one hand, this would lead us to assume that the relevance of the EU-level in the eyes of the voters would correspondingly increase. Furthermore, in line with the parallel significant expansion of the competences of the European Parliament, one would assume that this would increase the stakes for political parties, which field candidates at the EPelections every five years2.

Source: [www.europeanparliament.eu.int.be/eurobarometru/]. Robert LADRECH, “Party Change and Europeanisation: Elements of an Integrated Approach,” West European Politics, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2012, pp. 578–579. 1 2

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3. THE POLITICAL ACTORS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE SCAPEGOAT. THE DICHOTOMIST RELATIONSHIP GUILTY – SAVIOR As with any elective process, the European political parties have played a decisive role in achieving democratic debates within the European Union and European elections have enabled citizens to participate in EU politics. At this stage of their development, European political parties have gained a clear status that gave them a greater role, being recognized their specific multinational entities, with a particular organization and coherence. At the same time, their role is enhanced by their quality of institutionalized form of communication between elected and electors1. They provide to the voter a range of ideas and symbols thus strengthening their adherence to democratic values and creating a sense of involvement in decision making. They also aggregate their interests and passions and channel citizens‟ expectations by offering specific programs.2 Political parties, at European level, contribute to form European political awareness and to express the will of the Union‟s citizens.3 In Europe, after 1990, nationalist and xenophobic sentiments began to reassert themselves, more forcefully. They were directed, especially, against Roma, but also against national minorities, Jews and homosexuals. Nevertheless, Eastern and Central Europe hardly have a monopoly on the right-wing extremism. In Western Europe, more frequently, Muslim immigrants today encounter negative stereotyping, discrimination and rejection, a tendency that right wing populist forces increasingly are trying to exploit4.

1

Marcela Monica STOICA, “From Representation to Participation: A more Democratic European Union?”,

7th Edition of International Conference “The European Integration – Realities and Perspectives”. EIRP Proceedings, Vol .7, Danubius University Press, 2012, pp. 812-817. 2 Jean-Michel DE WAELE, Petia GUEORGUIEVA, Sorina SOARE, “Analiza partidelor politice în Europa Centrală”, in Jean-Michel DE WAELE (ed.), Partide politice şi democraţie în Europa centrală şi de est/ Political Parties and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2003, p. 8. 3 The consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union - Jurnalul Oficial al UE C 115/13 din 9.5.2008; art.8 (4).For more details see also Bernard DENNI, Patrick LECOMPTE, Sociologia politicului, vol. 2, trans. Marta Nora Ţărnea, Eikon, Cluj-Napoca, 2004. 4 Ralf MELZER, Sebastian SERAFIM (eds), Right-Wing Extremism in Europe…cit. (Editor‟s Preface, p. 7.).

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Right-wing radicalism is the effort to undo or combat modernization by radicalizing inclusionary and exclusionary criteria of belonging. The criteria of exclusion in far-right discourses can be based on ethnicity, culture, religion and/or gender1. If something unifies the populists from all the countries, this is their anti-system discourse. This is the way they all started: contesting the social or political system, the dominant economic structures and the political, cultural, religious institutions. They used the weaknesses or vices of functioning, they exploited the legitimate discontents of the citizens in order to penetrate the system, to overtake it and use it in their own interest2. The populist leaders engaged themselves to overthrow the “corrupted elites” and to fight for the poor and to bring in front the ordinary, common people. The populism is associated with the failure of representative democracy, their favourite instruments being the manipulation and the demagoguery. They use emotional, simplistic and manipulative discourses, or put in place opportunistic policies aimed at “buying the support of the people”.3 The populist attitude develops under the pressure of the masses looking for a saviour to release them from elites that lost the contact with the genuine reality. Or about elites having exiled themselves in an “ivory tower”4. Losing their trust in institutions, the peoples accept the messages of those who tell them what they want to hear. If we talk about politics, we have to emphasizes, as Mudde wrote, that politic is all about perceptions5. The difference between a political leader and a demagogy is given by the accountability of the discourse in the public sphere6. The best-known technique of communication and identification used by nationalist and populist parties and leaders is to promote, to bring in front of the stage a scapegoat: holding an economic actor or an easily-recognizable group of people responsible for most social problems. For these political actors there are a lot of enemies Ralf MELZER, Sebastian SERAFIM (eds), Right-Wing Extremism in Europe…cit., p. 11. HERMET, Sociologia populismului, Artemis, București, 2007, p. 1. 3 Cas MUDDE, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, Vol. 32, No. 3, 2004, pp. 541-563. 4 Nathan HARTER, “Elite Theory”, in Antonio MARTURANO, Jonathan GOSLING (eds.), Leadership. The Key Concepts, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, London & New York, 2008, p. 48. 5 Cas MUDDE, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007. 6 Guy HERMET, Sociologia populismului…cit., p. 2. See also Céline BELOT, Bruno CAUTRES, Vers une espace public européen? Les élections européennes de juin 2004, Etudes et Recherches No. 40, Notre Europe. 1

2 Guy

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against who fight the heroes, the saviours. This friend-enemy rhetoric could be an efficient tool for political elites, both at national and European level. There are politicians who make efforts to turn minorities into scapegoats for societal problems. For examples, anti-immigration campaigns, as the populist leaders claim, simply represent the will of the people. Ordinary citizens, in this respect, reject the provisions imposed by technocrats in Brussels, who are guilty of having expose EU member states to this invasion of foreigners. The catch-all parties constituted an evolution in the nature of political party development. Previously, political parties reflected the narrow and limited interests of their leaderships within national legislatures, leading to elite parties. Democratisation and increasing suffrage meant that party elites had to appeal to wider electorates, including the newly enfranchised working class1. This led to mass parties and „catch-all parties‟ in Europe and North America. Catch-all parties were distinct from mass parties as a result of their emphasis on governing rather than acting a representative organisation of a particular social group (as mass parties had tended to be, usually in relation to the working class) and through the use of modern technology and media as its primary form of communication.2Authors like Mudde suggested that the populist parties in the East are catch-all parties to their counterparts in Western Europe.3 Since the members of the European Parliament are elected directly by the citizens of the EU, to an overwhelming extent from among the candidates of the same political parties that also contest national elections, we could expect that it is in the best interest of both the voters and the political parties that they provide adequate policy alternatives, and therefore, represent the preferences of their constituents also on European issues. But the reality is more complicated. For one, genuinely European issues rarely feature prominently in the political discourse of the EU‟s member states (with the exception of thematic referenda, crises directly related to the EU, etc.), especially when it Bernard DENNI, Patrick LECOMPTE, Sociologia politicului…cit., p. 64. Otto KIRCHHEIMER, ȚThe Transformation of the Western European Party System” in Joseph LaPALOMBARA, Myron WEINER (eds.), Political Parties and Political Development, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1966, pp. 177-200; Bernard DENNI, Patrick LECOMPTE, Sociologia politicului…cit., vol. 2, p. 91; Rod HAGUE, Martin HARROP and Shaun BRESLIN, Comparative Government and Politics: An Introduction, 4th ed., Macmillan Press, Basingstoke, 1998, p. 132. 3 Cas MUDDE, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007. 1 2

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comes to national elections. For a number of reasons, both voters and parties attach far less importance to EP-elections than to national contests, which decide the fates of governments. With a few exceptions, both the parties and the campaign topics are generally the same in national and European elections, and thus, the governmentopposition dynamic might prevail even at EP-elections. Consequently, EP-elections can more often than not be regarded as “second-order national elections”1. In any case, neither parties, nor their voters seem to prioritize EU-related issues, whether in EP- or national elections, and conflicts directly relating to European integration are only taken up by a small minority of parties. In other words, the EU-issue has only to a very limited extent been politicised.2 Many studies and surveys have concluded that opinion congruence between parties and voters on EU-related issues is rather weak (or, from a normative perspective, too weak), first of all because voters are insufficiently informed, or outright ignorant when it comes to the question of European integration (as opposed to key domestic policies), but also due to the fact that parties, in most cases, are strategically counterinterested in politicizing the EU-issue, and therefore fail to provide adequately differentiated policy alternatives. Some authors regard this as lack of representative of (trans-European) political parties on the EU-dimension, rather than the widely criticised democratic deficit as the “correct diagnosis of the European legitimacy crisis”.3 According to some opinions, in the Eastern European space, the changes that took place were called “the consolidation in power of a non-ideological populism that completely changes the perspective on ideology consolidation within the political arena4. Schmitter argues that we have to take it into account both vices and virtues of populism.5

Simon HIX and Bjørn HØYLAND, The Political System of the European Union, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2011, p. 147. 2 Robert LADRECH, “Party Change and Europeanisation: Elements of an Integrated Approach,” West European Politics, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2012, p. 583. 3 Jean Paul JACQUÉ, Droit institutionnel de l‟Union Européenne, ed.a 4-a, Paris, 2006. 4 Dragoş DRAGOMAN, “Post Accesion Backsliding. Non-ideological Populism and Democratic Setbacks in Romania”, South-East European Journal of Political Science. Ideologies and Patterns of Democracy, Vol. I, No 3, 2013, p. 28. 5 Philippe C. SCHMITTER, “A Balance Sheet of the Vice and Virtues of Populism”, paper prepared for the Conference “The Challenge of the New Populism”, 10-11 may 2006, Sofia. 1

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On the one hand, populists dissolve partisan loyalties and rational choices among various political programs without replacing them with something of their own, they recruit uninformed persons with no clear political preference and who look for emotional rather than programmatic political preferences. They make promises and raise expectations that generally cannot be fulfilled, they identify aliens and alien powers as “scapegoats” for their own political failures and, most important of all, may undermine democracy by the support provided them by the army, security, forces which make their democratic removal from office unlikely. On the other hand, populist politicians and parties help dismantle sclerotic party loyalties and dissolve party coalitions that are based on secret agreements, and they recruit and mobilize previously apathetic persons. By focusing on disparate and hidden political issues, they help articulate previously neglected cleavages and demands. Also, they replace political immobilism and widen the range of possible political solutions to collective problems. All in all, when electoral defeated, populism leaves behind a reinvigorated party system. Thus, this perspective is more like a symptom of democracy, rather than a defect of democracy1. In the case of Romania, although they partially engaged in a profound revision of the whole political system as a response to society‟s claims, especially after the elections of 2000, their efforts were less oriented towards widely negotiated and fully legitimate changes and more towards consolidating their power on serious undemocratic costs. In Romania, the new populist elites address the citizens with no emphasis on ideology, which they disdain as obsolete, organize movements rather than parties and search the pure power, disregarding the constitutional framework or patterns of democracy2. As some Romanian authors clearly argue, populist parties and leaders despise representative democracy, parliamentarism and the rule of law, they continue their attacks against neutral and independent bodies so appears the possibility of increasing the radical political movements.

Jean-Michel DE WAELE, Anna PACZENIAK, (eds), Populism in Europe – Defect or Symptom of Democracy, Oficyina Naukova, Worsaw, 2010, apud Dragos DRAGOMAN, “Post-Accession Backsliding: 1

Non-Ideological Populism and Democratic Setbacks in Romania…cit.”, pp. 27-46, Ref. 1, p. 30. 2 Dragoş DRAGOMAN, “Post Accesion Backsliding…cit.”, p. 42.

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Thus, it could be the case of radical populist movements and radical extremists, or even for authoritarian regimes who might attempt to take political control, often in the very name of direct democracy and people‟s genuine will. At the same time, the populist‟s road to power questions furthermore the relevance and accuracy of ideologies within a political framework dominated by the struggle for „pure power”1. Populism is both a reaction to and a product of, the growing distance between citizens and their institutions of governance, whether that is at state or European level. Populist movements accuse EU institutions of elitism and remoteness from the everyday lives of ordinary citizens. Populists play on fear and demagoguery instead of engaging in constructive dialogue to help improve public life. In many European countries the public discontent against traditional political parties is rising, and, at the same time, there is a growing consensus for anti-establishment protests movements with populist accents. Furthermore, we cannot fully understand the crisis of political parties without taking into account the growing supremacy of economics over politics, which has considerably weakened them, transforming them and eroding their grass-roots base, social ties and identity2.

4. CONCLUSION Throughout its history, in the European Union there have always been ups and downs and successes are inevitably followed by crises. The European Union is one of the institutional constructions preoccupied by its democratic legitimacy, by the transparency of the institutions‟ activity and by a close link with the national political systems. Nationalism and populism are hardly new phenomena but gained field in the last decades as the European Union countries confront themselves with the challenges of globalization and mass-immigration. The failure of the EU to give clear, effective and socially reasonable answers to the economic, social and democratic crisis is having a Dragoş DRAGOMAN, “Post Accesion Backsliding…cit.”, p. 43. Massimo D‟ALEMA, “Introductions”, in Hechwig GIUSTO, David KITCHING and Stefano RIZZO (eds), The Changing Faces of Populism. Systematic Challenges in Europe and the U.S., O.GRA. RO, Roma, 2013, p. 7. 1 2

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profound political impact, leading to rising of nationalism, Euro-skepticism, populism, political extremism and delivering an unrealistic narrative where Europe is the scapegoat for all problems and nation states are the saving solution. Today, in times of crisis, we run a high risk that these achievements fall victim to rising extreme tendencies and budget cuts. At the same time, comes again into discussions the idea of European democracy and of the reality that EU is a public space where the people are part of the decision making process and have the right to be active, to have the guarantee that their opinion counts and they could have a full participation in the political debates. Therefore, the European institutions must develop a greater transparency and reduce the remoteness facing the citizens. According to Almond and Verba, reluctance to involve citizens in solving public problems is the prerogative of inefficient institutions to allow free access of citizens. 1 In terms of EU-citizens relationship, the Union has undergone a process of democratization from a democracy of elites to a representative democracy, the people choosing their representatives in Parliament, and, today, by the expressed provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon, it was established a participative democracy having in its centre the European citizens with a civic culture. The EU is at the crossroads and the future elections will have to have as stake the fulfilment of the expectations of European citizens concerning their material needs and rights.

Bibliography ALMOND, Gabriel , Sydney VERBA, The Civic Culture, Little Brown, Boston, 1965. D‟ALEMA, Massimo, “Introductions”, in Hechwig GIUSTO, David KITCHING and Stefano RIZZO (eds), The Changing Faces of Populism. Systematic Challenges in Europe and the U.S., O.GRA. RO, Roma, 2013, pp. 5-13. BILLIG, Michael, Banal Nationalism , Sage, London, 1995.

1

Gabriel ALMOND, Sydney VERBA, The Civic Culture, Little Brown, Boston, 1965, p. 39.

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DENNI, Bernard, Patrick LECOMPTE, Sociologia politicului, vol. 2, trans. Marta Nora Ţărnea, Eikon, Cluj-Napoca, 2004. DE WAELE, Jean-Michel, Petia GUEORGUIEVA, Sorina SOARE, “Analiza partidelor politice în Europa Centrală”, in Jean-Michel DE WAELE (ed.), Partide politice şi democraţie în Europa centrală şi de est, Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2003, pp. 7-15. DRAGOMAN, Dragoş, “Post Accesion Backsliding. Non-ideological Populism and Democratic Setbacks in Romania”, South-East European Journal of Political Science. Ideologies and Patterns of Democracy, Vol. I, No. 3, 2013, pp. 27-46. EATWELL, Roger, “Introduction: the New Extreme Rights Challenge”, in Roger EATWELL and Cas MUDDE (eds.), Western Democracies and the New Extreme Right Challenge, Routledge, London, 2004, pp. 1-16. GELLNER, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism, Blackwell, Oxford, 1983. GIUSTO, Hechwig, David KITCHING and Stefano RIZZO (eds), The Changing Faces of Populism. Systematic Challenges in Europe and the U.S., O.GRA. RO, Roma, 2013. HAINSWORTH, P., The Extreme Right in Western Europe, Routledge, London, 2008. HARTER, Nathan, “Elite Theory”, in Antonio MARTURANO, Jonathan GOSLING (eds.), Leadership. The Key Concepts, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, London & New York, 2008. HERMET, Guy, Sociologia populismului, Artemis, București, 2007. HIX, Simon, Bjørn HØYLAND, The Political System of the European Union, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2011. HORVATH, Zoltan, Handbook on the European Union, Reference Press, Budapest, 2002. JACQUÉ, Jean Paul, Droit institutionnel de l‟Union Européenne, 4th ed., Dalloz, Paris, 2006. KIRCHHEIMER, Otto, “The Transformation of the Western European Party System”, in Joseph LaPALOMBARA, Myron WEINER (eds.), Political Parties and Political Development, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1966. LUZÁRRAGA, Francisco Aldecoa, Mercedes Guinea LLORENTE, Europa viitorului. Tratatul de la Lisabona/ The Europe of Future. The Treaty of Lisbon , Polirom, Iaşi, 2011.

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MELZER, Ralf, Sebastian SERAFIM (eds), Right-Wing Extremism in Europe, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Berlin, 2013. MUDDE, Cas, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, Vol. 32, No. 3, 2004, pp. 541-563. MUDDE, Cas, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007. MALESEVIC, S., “Nationalism and the power of ideology”, in G. DELANTY and K. KUMAR (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism, Sage Publications, London, 2006, pp. 307–319. PINDER, John, Uniunea Europeană- Foarte scurtă introducere, trans. Cristian Iulian Neagoe, Editura Bic All, București, 2005. PISIER, Evelyne (coord.), Istoria ideilor politice, Amarcord, Timișoara, 2000. SCHMITTER, Philippe C., “A Balance Sheet of the Vice and Virtues of Populism”, paper prepared for the Conference „The Challenge of the New Populism”, 10-11 May 2006, Sofia. SMITH, Anthony D., Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2001. SWOBODA, Hannes, Jan Marinus WIERSMA (eds.), Democracy, Populism and Minority Rights, Renner Institut, Belgium, 2008. STOICA, Marcela Monica, “From Representation to Participation: A more Democratic European Union?”, 7th Edition of International Conference “The European Integration – Realities and Perspectives”. EIRP Proceedings, Vol. 7, Danubius University Press, 2012, pp. 812-817.

Other Sources Special Euro-barometer 299. The 2009 European Elections, EU, pp.17-18, consulted at: [ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_299_en.pdf] (04.02.2014) The consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union - Jurnalul Oficial al UE C 115/13 din 9.5.2008; art.8 (4).

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Critical Analysis of National-Populist Rhetoric of Mihail Ralea, Labour Minister, about Guilds and Corporatism Florin GRECU “Hyperion” University, Bucharest Abstract: Corporatism, in the Romanian variant, under the monarchical

authoritarian regime in 1938, was synonymous with Statism consisting in “unifying” the syndicates’, by means of a new institution called “guild” (meaning “breasla” in Romanian). The purpose of the guild law was to exercise the best control over the activity and life of the syndicates’ union, because it was considered that the workers were exposed to the ideological influences of that period of time. The guild was nothing more than a reproduction of the corporate law in fascist Italy. Moreover the Guilds, together with the single party, the National Renaissance Front, were the instrument, through which the state reorganized the syndicate unions resorting to nationalist and populist rhetoric. The latter one was used to disputing the former democratic regime’s institutions and to simplistically promoting collectivist values by means of the Government’s members. The guilds had the political role to replace the political parties by sending their representatives in a new legislative body made up from professional categories structured as corporations. The message of the new regime was centered on denying the ancient multiparty political regime and inducing political resentment. Ordinary citizens were misled by promoting enduring distrust related to the former democratic political class. Keywords: guilds, syndicates, corporatism, populism, State, Mihail Ralea.

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1. INTRODUCTION This article aims to analyze the populist rhetoric advocated by the Romanian authoritarian monarchy regime using Mihail Ralea’s ideas. Ralea was a sociologist and Minister of Labour. In this matter, the proposed scientific methodology is grounded on primary sources such as archives as well as parliamentary speeches published in the Official Gazette. There will be quoted critical seminal writings of the authors having studied the populist phenomenon specific to the authoritarian regimes. The work hypothesis of our article argues that the populism promoted by the elites of the regime and the high-ranked officials of the single party were not just ideologically-doctrinaire but also economic. Thus, the economic corporatism principles are to be found in the syndicate’s new form of organization bearing the name of “guild”. Otherwise, this is to be analyzed from legislative and discursive perspectives as well as by critical analyses compared to the economic liberalism and individualism principles characterizing democratic societies. Therefore, can the ideological principles of the guild be considered as populist through its speeches and promises? This is the primary question that this paper seeks to answer in the following pages. The analysis is grounded on the deconstruction of the ideological clichés of the rhetoric of the time and the reason why is due to the reality of the fact that the collectivism introduced the ideological monopole of elites. In 1938, for example, the populist speeches of the regime’s representatives were focused on the critics of the parliamentary regime, the political parties and democracy which were demonized and seen as the scapegoat1 for the generation of political disorder and endangering the state’s existence. Populism as a general type of political speech comes from the nostalgia of the past, the gold ages, presenting the former democratic order as compromised and decaying. On the contrary, it praises the present and the future as representing the authoritarian order established by the new regime. The messages of the époque and the rhetoric of its representatives were impregnated with nationalist and populist metaphors and epithets against democracy and the principles of freedom and in order not to let one seduced by this type of speech it is a logical thing that one critically approaches the parliamentary and governmental speech of the times. The analysis of ideological elements Raoul GIRARDET, Mituri şi mitologii politice, trans. Daniel Dimitru, Editura Institutul European, Iaşi, 1997, pp. 47-75. 1

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from the guilds and National Renaissance Front (NRF) puts into light collectivist, statist and corporatist concepts strongly promoted by the new regime and by its representatives in order to modify people’s perceptions. Therefore, the authoritarian regimes with military valences control the governing act which thus misses any specific ideology and react on pragmatic bases in the limits of bureaucratic mentality of military and civilians in the presence of a single mass party sponsored by power itself. They act together with the goal to occupy the political space in order to reduce the population’s participation to the political life rather than for the purpose of a popular, even controlled mobilization”1.

2. CORPORATIST ORGANIZATION OF THE ROMANIAN STATE The institutional architecture of the new authoritarian regime was completed by the promulgation of the Law for recognition and functioning of workers, particular clerks and employees guilds, published in the Official Gazette no. 237 in October 12, 1938. The guilds law abolished the syndicates’ law of 1921 restraining the democratic liberal rights and liberties proclaimed by the 1923 Constitution as the right to associate and gather. The Law of May 26, 1921 conditioned the organization of syndicates for solving professional, economic and social problems of the member and particularly of the syndicate leaders and forbade the syndicates to undertake political activities, precisely specifying that the leaders could not be members of a political party. The new guilds law conferred to the new authoritarian regime the right to dismantle syndicates, and gave the cabinet the right to interfere in the organizational issues of the guilds and patronages as well as in their functioning. All the guilds were subordinated to the Labor Ministry and the juridical statute was granted only by Royal Decree to the proposal of the Ministries Council. The guilds law introduced the corporative organization of syndicates identifying with the state. The Romanian state organized on economic corporatism principles rallied to the fascist ideological principles which contradicted the principles of current economic liberalism in the Old Kingdom until the installation of Carol’s authoritarian regime in February 10/11, 1938. Therefore, the new constitutional principles advanced the doctrinaire orientation of the new regime by means of the corporatist way. From an Domenico FISICHELLA, Ştiinţa Politică. Probleme, Concepte, Teorii, trans. Victor Muraru, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 2007, p. 364. 1

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ideological perspective, the corporatist state was meant to be “total” in the sense of fulfilling all the roles in the society, such as the economic ones, which were to direct the national economy and harmonize the relation between labour and capital. Also, from a political perspective, the corporatist state militated for the installation of a single party reuniting all the society’s elite. The incompatibility of corporatism with liberalism represented the project itself of authoritarian state construction and promoted by the populist rhetoric of the regime’s representatives. The centralized and authoritarian leadership of the economy by the creation of the Superior Economic Council was compatible with the social-political regime of corporatism. The goal was to fulfill new economy directed by the state in order to reach the general interest by offering illusions to the individuals and workers organized in syndicates as well as their leaders. The institution of planned economy by state policies highlighted the regime’s intention to suppress liberal democracy and economy and the plan of installing a new tough policy over the political parties and syndicates. Nevertheless, from a liberal perspective, the failure of market did not justify the governmental intervention but represented the main source of economic disturbances due to arbitrary policies. “Therefore, there was no reasonable guarantee for the conventional opinion according to which the economic planning could have better results than on the free market”.1 Concerning the guilds law, the regime’s representatives supported the idea that it was no plagiarism of foreign ideologies, peculiarly of the Italian fascist one. The Minister of Labour, the sociologist Mihail Ralea, argued that the guilds law was not an imported ideology; today, he contended to say that “we do not import directly ideas from the times spirit but we adapt them to our manner of being”2. By the same token, Alexandrescu Roman, professor of public law, argued that the guilds law took into account the realities and spirit of Romanian life by settling professions. In conformity with it, “the professional conception confined by the 1938 Constitution imposed to the lawmaker a first and necessary measure: revision of the syndicate juridical system and the framing of

John GRAY, Liberalismul, trans. Anca Gheauş, Editura Du Style, Bucureşti, 1998, p. 100. Mihail RALEA, “Lămuriri asupra proiectului de lege pentru recunoaşterea breslelor”, “Desbaterile parlamentare”, Deputies Assembly, Meeting on July 10, 1939, Official Monitor, No. 10, Part III, Imprimeria Centrală, Bucureşti, 1939, p. 43. 1 2

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professions in the spirit of the new Constitution”1. The “novelty” that the guilds institution wanted to introduce grounded the corporatist idea of Statism. The Constitution of February 27, 1938 installed the corporatist state principles by introducing the profession, as a principle of selection and election of the new parliament, supposed to be corporatist too. Although it was copied from the Italian law of corporations, the law for guilds settlement was to be adapted to the Romanian realities, the common denominator being represented by the surveillance of syndicates, presumably exposed to the ideological communist danger and the partisan influences of political parties. If the old regime of political parties did not encourage the work but the political fight with consequences on both syndicates and workers’ life, then the populist corporatism promoted by the new regime intended to revive the syndicate spirit. It was considered that the workers did not know what it was like in the old democratic regime of political parties considered by the new exponents as being “private enterprises2”, in the opinion of Andrei Bentoiu, the general secretary of the single party – the National Renaissance Front. From this perspective, the Ministry of the Interior and the PrimeMinister built their parliamentary speeches about the new regime through a virulent and populist critic against the democratic regime, on the one hand, and the system of political parties, on the other. Armand Călinescu stated at the Guilds’ Congress that “all that the pretended democratic regime could not do for the workers, it is today fulfilled by an authoritarian regime. What the old Constitution did not accomplish, it was released today by a new Constitution the target and sign of which was, more than anything else, the labour”3. The liberal democracy and the system of parties were considered a factor of instability, the source of which being the 1923 fundamental law itself on which was built the edifice of the democratic regime. The apparent fixing of democratic malfunction consisted in the introduction in the constitutional text of the principle of the effective labour4. P. Alexandescu-ROMAN, “Consideraţiuni asupa legii breslelor”, Revista de Drept public, No. 1-2, Edituta Institutul de Arte Grafice „Marvan”, Bucureşti, 1939, p. 238. 2 Aurelian BENTOIU, “Orientări în Ideologia Frontului Renaşterii Naţionale”, Zece ani de domnie ai M.S. Regelui Carol al - II-lea, Organizarea Politică, Juridică şi administrativă, Vol. I, Editura Cartea Românească, Bucureşti, 1940, pp. 83-84. 3 Armand CĂLINESCU, Noul Regim, Imprimeria Centrală, Bucureşti, 1939, p. 149. 4 G.G MIRONESCU, “Inovaţiile Constituţiei din 1938”, Analele Facultăţii de Drept din Bucureşti, No. 2-3, iunie-septembrie, 1939, Tipografiile Române-Unite, Bucureşti, 1939, p. 31 1

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The parliamentary populist speech of the Minister of Labour against democracy and fight for power of the political parties highlighted the corporatist ideology with collectivist valences of the Romanian authoritarian state in-between 1938-1940. The guild was intended to be the workers’ institution of professionals effectively fulfilling a job. On the other hand, the politicking, the electoral agents of political parties were meant to be eliminated from the new syndicates’ architecture. This was the reason why the new institution was introduced, namely the guild, “often, the politicians used the workers and whenever the fight conditions worsened, they should offer themselves as victims. [...] Therefore, the leaders’ election should not be done from among the unprofessional leaders but from among the best elements of the guild”1. Vilification of parliamentary democracy, decay and immorality of political parties represented the main type of speech offered by the regime to those enrolled in the new forms of state syndicalism and without economic solutions the regime used ideological formulas with empty and populist content. The composition of the corporative parliament reflected the elitist nature: social, political and cultural of interwar Romania. The election of the nation’s representatives in the new corporatist parliament was strongly related to their enrolment in the National Renaissance Front which proposed the candidates conferring to the one enrolled in the guild a parliamentary position. The profession effectively exercised should reflect a minimum ethic from which the candidate got officially and legally their income by practicing a profession. The goal of this measure was represented by the fact that it was tried in a demagogical and populist manner to eliminate politicking. By exercising a job the guild wanted to be the institution controlling the candidates to parliamentary functions. The corporative organization of the parliament was grounded on the constitutional principle of exercising a profession. The candidate and future parliamentary was sent in the corporation in which they professionally participated: agriculture and manual work, commerce and industry and intellectual occupations. Labour was the constitutional term on which the new regime tried to support. The labour represented the definition of the regime offered to the workers but also to parliamentarians of the authoritarian monarchy. At this concern, Paul Negulescu considered in his public law courses that “it was the constitutional law that put the

1

Mihail RALEA, “Lămuriri...cit.”, p. 46.

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Labour at the basis of the State grounded the Labour-State and intends to encourage the individuals, to show them that their labour product belongs to them and their property right is guaranteed. Thus, the lawmakers in 1938 especially inspired from the organization of the Portuguese state which considered that property and capital must be used in collective property, for the new organization was grounded on both economy and the social interest as well as on individual interest which needed to be harmonized”1. The duality of these two concepts, property-collectivism, represented one of the ideological aspects of the regime because either the property or the capital were not submitted to the collective property. The individualist conception on property of liberal inspiration was not in accordance with the vision of the regime’s representatives on collective property. The latter did not even exist in the form of organization of the Romanian state inbetween 1938-1940. Moreover, it was even criminally condemned. The guild represented the instrument through which the control over the workers and syndicates was fulfilled in the new regime. Mihail Ralea, using a populist and nationalist rhetoric in his speech of July about the new corporatist parliamentary, considered: “Through this law the Romanian country lives a revolution by installing a new party, the profession is the single social means to send away class fight and the fight among individuals by creating a common field of collaboration, by professionalizing people being bound to work and fight”.2 On the other hand, George Alexandrescu considered that: “The law aimed the simplification of syndicates’ life into a single organization. While in democratic countries, the syndicates concentration was fulfilled by the majority confederation, in authoritarian countries the concentration was done by the State. In the Italian corporation, the federations and the national syndicates are grouped in confederations regarding the criterion of the main branches of economy: agriculture, industry, liberal professions, to which are added the branch of credit and insurances. There are two confederations: workers and employers and the free professionals”.3

Paul NEGULESCU, Curs de drept Român. După principiile Constituţiei de la 27 februarie 1938. Ţinut la Facultatea de Drept în anul şcolar 1938-1939, Edited by Ion. I. Borşan, Bucureşti, 1939, p. 257. 2 Mihail RALEA, “Lămuriri”...cit.”, p. 42. 3 George P. ALEXANDRESCU, Corporatismul mussolinian, Tipografia Ion C. Văcărescu, Bucureşti, 1940, p. 23. 1

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The elimination of syndicate life and the creation of a single syndicate organization were the expression of the dictatorship behind. The syndicate leaders were assigned by royal decree in order to exercise a better control. The government by decrees represented the main characteristic of Carol’s regime. The members of the National Renaissance Front and all the leading elites were named by royal decree from among the trusted persons of the king or from among those faithful to the new regime. The political life focusing on a single state organization, the monism of syndicate life by a syndicate organization called Union shed light on the political and syndicate dictatorship, conceived by the authoritarian populist regime coordinated by its patron, Carol II.

3. CORPORATION: STATE’S INSTRUMENT Corporation, in conformity with Delsol, could be defined as an organization having a monopolist character and dependent on the state because behind each corporation is hidden the dictatorship. The main characteristic of the corporatist system consists in the impossibility for many corporations to exist in the same branch1. The Corporations Council’s president, echoing the Italian law, was the Prime-Minister himself, who was supposed to harmonize interests, discipline and conflicts. The Commissar for war industry was present in all the corporations2. The corporation’s council in conformity with the Italian law of corporation was conditioned by three main elements: the syndicates, the State and the party3. In order to fulfill its mission, the corporation was actuated by an agenda set by the President, which was previously submitted to the attention of the interested ministers. The goal was that they should make comments and let the agenda be approved by the chief of the government. The agenda provisioned the elements discussed by the corporation’s council and set the date for the meeting of this Council4. This description reveals that the government acted similarly to a corporation managing ministries, which in their turn directed the industries Chantal MILLON-DELSOL, Ideile politice ale secolului XX, trans. Velica Boari, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 2002, p. 120. 2 George P. ALEXANDRESCU, Corporatismul...cit., p. 29. 3 Ibidem, p. 30. 4 Ibidem, p. 39. 1

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that they controlled. The state was the corporation itself and the corporation was the state itself. The corporation’s intension was to have a collective and unitary character in order to offer better economic solutions. The deliberation and the adopted solution were the result of a fusion between the wills of collegiums’ members into the single will of the corporation itself, supposed to be the depositor of the general interest. Thus, the corporation appears to be as a kind of a laboratory and a regulatory of the state’s economic life, whose diverse elements know and particularly interpret the general interest ending by tutoring collectively and unitarily the superior interests of the national economy1. From one case to another, the application of the corporative will had the purpose to meet the needs of the state, through special instituted bodies, syndicates and more than that, directly to the producers and consumers, meaning the co-operative economy2. The regime installed on February 11, 1938 had no intention to be associated with the Italian fascist corporation. In this regard, the regime’s doctrinaires tried to offer populist explanations. In respect to Alexandrescu Roman, by the adoption of guilds as the new definition of the syndicates, “the authors of the law of October 12, 1938, far from aiming at the resettlement of corporations rather wanted to revive the spirit of Romanian solidarity around the department, to remake the professional group as an instrument to protect Romanian labour”3. Furthermore, the justification of legality for the new institutions represents the theme developed by Alexandrescu Roman, professor of public law. In this sense, “the law was not meant to suppress the syndicates’ freedom and neither is police law because the present Constitution of February 27, 1938, by Art. 26, recognizes the liberty to associate. In this concern, the juridical personality was given to a single guild”4. Juridical personality was given to a single guild in each administrative county. There could get recognition only the guilds able to group together at least a tenth of the workers from the respective craft of that county because it was only in this way serious and representative syndicates could consolidate. The guild with juridical personality could Ibidem, p. 40. Ibidem, p. 42. 3 P. Alexandescu-ROMAN, “Consideraţiuni...cit.”, p. 245. 4 Ibidem, p. 247. 1 2

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have sections in counties. The guilds in the counties could have a union in the county’s capital. The impossibility for all the other professional associations to gain juridical personality and to benefit from all the rights resulting from the recognition seem to lead to a sensitive diminution of the liberty of association proclaimed in the new Constitution1. In the corporatist regime, the individual freedom disappears but, in conformity with all the classical liberal thinkers, the engagement related to the individual freedom involves the adoption of private property institutions and the free market2. In exchange, in the corporatist-fascist order, the individual is connected to a common group which offer protection but to which he owes obedience3. The individual initiative is considered a generator of injustice and conflicts in the corporative order. Accordingly, the liberal order is suppressed and replaced with a corporatist order where the dominant role is played by the state which is considered to be the exponent of superior overall interests. Thus, Chantal Millon Delsol, while analyzing the corporatist state, reaches the conclusion that corporatism is considered to be the only normal form of organization related to the voluntary systems. From the doctrinaire perspective, corporatism rejects liberalism and socialism but wants to synthetically recover the positive aspects of one or another. Corporatism promotes solidarity and equality inherited from socialism but without the omnipresent state. It guarantees the liberty of initiative of liberalism but without the injustice generated by the unlimited competition. By institutionalizing social bodies, it was thought it could evade the perverse effects of one or the other, materializing the wish for freedom and solidarity4. The instrument used by the Italian fascist government to do away with the deficiency of liberalism and to create a strong economy working for the national interest, was the corporatism5. In this regard, George Alexandrescu emphasized that corporatism did not choke capitalism, nor the private initiative or the property. It does not expropriate the economy in favour of the state but neither does it become prey to an

Ibidem, p. 247. John GRAY, Liberalismul...cit., p. 90. 3 Chantal MILLON-DELSOL, Ideile politice...cit., p. 120. 4 Ibidem, p. 119. 5 George P. ALEXANDRESCU, Corporatismul...cit., p. 6 . 1 2

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anarchic liberty. It simply organizes, arranges and leads in the state framework1. The new populism asks for obedience and compliance, fundamental characteristic of authoritarian regimes and under the new conditions for a guild to be recognized showed the propensity of the regime toward control. Therefore, “the condition asked for guilds calling for recognition referred to the obligation they had to protect the professional interests, moral and patriotic education of its members. The law also asked the syndicate members guarantees of honour, capacity and national feelings they had to offer to the guilds’ leaders”2. The body of guilds was the Ministry of Labour; this body having a general and permanent right to keep watch and control, in accordance with Art. 27 in the guilds’ law. Thus: “The conditions to exercise the right to control provisioned by the juridical entities are also acquired by the guilds law. Our lawmaker’s getting close to the Italian system is the tutorship law enactment. Certain acts of guilds’ leadership are submitted to the preliminary approval of the Ministry of Labour: the acts for patrimony disposal, the modification of statutes, the affiliation to the union, the fusion with other guilds and the elimination or dissolution of the guild”.3

The state chooses the corporation’s leadership and actively participates in his election, the state decides the creation or abrogation of a corporation, the state has the legitimacy to recognize or not a corporation. The corporative organization in Italy assumed attributions of supremacy, surveillance, control manifested in different forms and occasions by: the discretionary recognition of professional associations, the right to withdraw the syndicates’ juridical entity, the approval of assigning the syndicates’ exponents, the surveillance and control of syndicates’ activity management, the members’ assignment for the corporation’s council by decree of government chief on the grounds of syndicates’ assignation, the agreement of the chief of government as to the

Ibidem, p. 20. “Legea pentru recunoaşterea şi funcţionarea breslelor de lucrători, funcţionari particulari şi meseriaşi”, Official Monitor, No. 237 October 12, 1938, p. 13. 3 P. Alexandescu-ROMAN, “Consideraţiuni...cit.”, p. 255. 1 2

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corporations’ agenda, the compulsoriness of the corporatist norms ever since they have been published, which is done on the basis of the chief of government decree1. Concerning the recognition or dissolution of guilds, the Law of October 12, 1938 provided similar dispositions to the ones already provisioned by the Italian law. The recognition as well as the dissolution resorted to the executive power unlike the juridical entity law submitted, for the granting and loosing of juridical entity, to the judicial instances. Article 26 from the Law of guilds’ organization stated that in serious situations the dissolution act comes from the cabinet. The recognition is awarded in the guilds’ law system by royal decree at the proposal of the Minister of Labour on the basis of the notification of the Committee for guilds’ recognition. “The withdrawal of juridical entity is decided by royal decree but on the grounds of a Journal of Ministries Council following the report of the Ministry of Labour on the basis of the same committee notification”2. The liberal order totally contradicts the corporatist order. For the liberal state, the government’s power and authority could be limited by a system of rules and constitutional practices through which the liberty and equality of persons before the law3 are respected. If the corporatist order does not leave the freedom of action to the individuals because the state’s role is omnipresent in all the social life sectors, the liberal order presumes “the decentralization of making a decision process and its bringing to the individual level, as in the fully liberal system of possessions. It also allows the individuals to act in conformity with their own values and to use the knowledge being less constraint by the other individuals4. The corporatist order suppresses the liberty of decision of individuals by syndicate unification and exercise of absolute control over the individuals. The guilds’ law is close to the April 2, 1926 Italian law wherein “the free syndicate is replaced with the recognized association or guild. The initiative to create guilds comes to the workers because the state does not create guilds. It must have juridical entity. Thus, the guilds proving they gather by voluntary adhesion at least 1/10 of the employees in the category of corresponding profession”5. The guild dissolution could have been done by the decision of the general assembly or by fully right. For the dissolution, the procedure George P. ALEXANDRESCU, Corporatismul...cit., p. 45. “Noua lege a breslelor”, Universul, No. 118, 3 May, 1939, p. 3. 3 John GRAY, Liberalismul...cit., p. 103. 4 Ibidem, p. 92. 5 Alexandescu-ROMAN, “Consideraţiuni...cit.”, p. 249. 1 2

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provisioned by the law is the one of the juridical entities in article 39 reproducing for the dissolution the paragraph 2 of article 33 specifying that the guild loses its juridical entity by: a) the withdrawal of recognition; b) the general assembly decision; c) of fully right. Article 34 states that “in case it is considered that a guild carries on its activity against the Constitution and the country’s laws against the statutes of the Ministry of Labour settled on the grounds of notification of the Labour Committee it will be able to decide the withdrawal of juridical entity recognition of the respective guild, consequently confiscating its patrimony dissolution. The dissolution decision is done by royal decree on the grounds of the Council of Ministries’ journal”1.

4. THE GUILD’S ARCHITECTURE The first tier of syndicate architecture, which developed on a vertical plan, was represented by the “Guild”. The second tier was occupied by the “Union”, a supra organization as in Italy. By comparison, in France functions such an organization called syndicate federation which does not fit Romania’s, argued Mihail Ralea. Thus, “the authoritarian state creates a mentality and a certain balance and this is why it could be dangerous to associate many professions which can form many rival organizations, increasingly diminishing the authority of the organizations of state”2. Alexandrescu Roman develops and compares the Union concept. The professor of Public Law underlines that regarding the organization of guilds on groups, our law maintained the spirit of syndicate and juridical entities laws by keeping the union as opposed to the Italian law in regard to which the professional associations are commonly national, regional or confederations. “The guilds’ law recognizes a single Union per county for each category of profession or annexed professions. It enjoys certain rights of representation in justice and administration”3. The unions have the feature of grouping all the interests in the district in a single body. Over the Unions there is a third tier and the top of the pyramid formed by the “National Council of Guilds which is a Romanian innovation and half administrative body presided by the Prime-Minister. Here are to be 1

Monitorul Oficial, No. 237, 12 Octomber, 1938, p. 16.

2

Mihail RALEA, “Lămuriri...cit.”, p. 43. P. Alexandescu-ROMAN, “Consideraţiuni...cit.”, p. 251.

3

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found the Minister of Labour, the National Economy Minister, the Ministers of Agriculture and Communications, of National Education, delegates of the Union for Professional Chambers, representatives of industry and commerce, intellectuals and specialists in social law. The National Council of Guilds joins fourth times per year and coordinates different interests of overall social policy, assigns directives and adjusts conflicts” 1. The corporations, namely the guilds in Romania’s case, play a crucial political role by providing support to the regime. Corporations have on long term the political role of replacing political parties by the creation and sending of representatives into a new legislative body composed by corporative professional categories. The corporative organization of the Parliament wanted to be consensual at political level avoiding the conflict and thus eliminating the liberalism and its legislative arm, the parliament. Corporations gain a political role, states Delsol, or at least the project of corporatist and fascist state is to determine them to play this role in the future. They must replace on long term the dismantled parties by sending their representatives in a new type of Chamber: “the chamber will give up its place to the National Assembly of corporations which will be constituted by fascias and corporations chamber, said Mussolini”2. Without announcing the presence of future corporations, the guilds law maintains itself at the level of Professional Statute organizing only the particular clerks, workers and craftsmen in guilds and consequently avoiding each measure effecting on the guilds’ institutionalization: “until now, the lawmaker proceeded only to a partial concentration on workers’ forces, a concentration of course more real than the one achieved by Labour Chambers”3. On the other hand, George Alexandrescu considered that: “[…] corporations, as a whole, gather, contain or represent the entire economy of the unitary country reuniting al the physical and juridical persons exercising economic acts4. Corporations have the role to discipline the economy in all its production, distribution and consumption manifestations 5. The tutorship of

Ibidem, p. 250. Chantal MILLON-DELSOL, Ideile politice...cit., p. 121. 3 Ibidem, p. 252. 4 George P. ALEXANDRESCU, Corporatismul...cit., p. 35. 5 Ibidem, p. 36. 1 2

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national economy is the core element of the entire corporatist system and the aim pursued.1

In Italy, the corporation was a mix body composed of patrons and employees classified on production units, corporations in agriculture, industries and transportations. Mihail Ralea says that certain body in our country with no tradition whatsoever, with no previous human training in approaching both patrons and employees, without the precise affirmation of economic units enrolled before in law would be an innovation if it presented artificial character and satisfied the need for coordination and solidarity between the guilds which is situated on horizontal line. In opposition to the syndicate (a recruitment group on horizontal and thus generating the class fight – workers’ syndicate against leaders syndicates), the corporation recruits vertically and reminds of the medieval body with the same name, said Delsol2. The corporation is responsible in its branch of all human labour problems: young people’s formation, salary conflicts, innovations, labour programs. The state plays the role of moderator, arbiter and guarantor of public interest when a corporation issues regulations opposed to the national interest3. The surveillance and control requested by the corporation introduced into the organizational framework the corporative discipline representing the form of state interventionism in private economy. Furthermore, the corporative discipline is totalitarian because it comprises all the persons with economic activities on the one hand and it has the possibility to know and guide all the economic manifestations and disciplines a sector on the other hand. The corporative discipline is systematic because it emanates from and is applied to institutions by using simple and quick procedures by a diminished bureaucracy4. The Romanization of corporation was done by the introduction of “novelty character” of the guilds’ institution, the Professional Chamber, Universul newspaper, the officious of the regime:

Ibidem, p. 37. Chantal MILLON-DELSOL, Ideile politice...cit., pp. 119-120. 3 Ibidem, p. 120. 4 George P. ALEXANDRESCU, Corporatismul...cit., p. 46. 1 2

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“Instead of corporations a series of national institutions experimented in this regard will be used which proved their significance in the economy and in the social organization of the country which will make the connection between guilds by the Professional Chambers. In each county will be created a Professional Chamber which will have five sections: 1) industrial section; 2) commercial; 3) labour; 4) agriculture and 5) an intellectual section”. 1 [The professional chambers’ goal was] “to find in each of these sections a reunion so that each economic or social field could discuss together and to reach compromise solutions and conciliations without subsisting as before that separation between different Chambers. All will be conciliated in a common committee of professional Chambers on district which will coordinate their activity. The county chambers remain in the direct competence of their respective ministries and under their control. Over the professional chambers stands the Union of Professional Chambers of Bucharest, a single one, coordinating all these efforts”.2

The guilds’ law endowed the guild with some prerogatives also found in the Italian law of April 3, 1926 as follows: “the monopole of representation in justice due to the damages caused to some individual rights and with collective interests; the monopole of administrative representation in the Labour Chambers, the monopole of closing collective labour contracts as well as actions born from collective labour convention or from an individual labour contract”. The guilds will be able to have a patrimony and will be able to stand in justice for the facts arising from the individual or collective labour contracts. They will assign representatives in the commissions for conciliation or arbitrage. They will have exclusive rights to assign elected representatives between their members in the Labour Chambers. These guilds have the right to assign delegates to join the inspection bodies of the Minister of Labour during inspections3. In the Labour Ministry’s vision, “[…] corporatism started to dominate all the modern history of the nations and our state should integrate in the new conception of organization. This integration requires new efforts, years of detailed directing of social laws, 1

Universul, No.118, p. 3.

2

Ibidem, p. 3. P.Alexandescu-ROMAN, “Consideraţiuni...cit.”, p. 248.

3

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integral revision of present syndicate system, new gatherings of professional bodies, long and sustained work of educating the masses. Theoretically, corporatism is an attractive formula yet in conformity with the new formulas of Romanian economic and social realities great problems in the future will still persist”.1

5. THE PRINCIPLES OF GUILDS’ LAW The idea of guild was articulated by the Minister of Labour as being in conformity with the spirit and intentions of the new regime. According to Mihail Ralea the idea of guild is the following: “The individual cannot live alone; people cannot live solitarily and isolated; they need to be included in a group wherein to feel the need for collaboration with the other members in order to be able to accomplish the economic mission for which their profession is meant”.2

The corporatist order transformed the individual into a mass presumably educated. From such a populist perspective, the principles of the liberal state were diluted in front of interventionist principles of a planned economy where the free initiative is slowed down and able to be fulfilled only in the group framework, i.e. in the state. The planned economy from the liberal critics’ perspective against the collectivist systems represents “an experience of crisis, wrong investigations, black market, and the dependence on western capital, technology and food”.3 The second principle of the guild’s law consisted in their depoliticization principle. Thus, the syndicates were used in electoral fights for promises which never took into account the workers’ interests. Different parties created electoral cartels deceiving the good faith of workers and coopting into their fights also the syndicates’ chiefs. Through this law a concrete content it was given to the electoral law anticipations and to the direct provisions of the Constitution. The Constitution provisioned a Mihail RALEA, “Lămuriri....cit.”, p. 47. Ibidem, p. 43. 3 John GRAY, Liberalismul...cit., pp. 98-99. 1 2

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corporatist vision. It was necessary to observe this spirit of the Constitution in order to reach an organization to serve as ground for the new constitutional settlement, demagogically and populist, argued Mihail Ralea in his exposition of the law project as to the guilds. The functioning of the Romanian state in-between 1938-1940 in regard to the ideological principles of corporatism represented a minus for the political, economic and social evolvement. The corporatist organization of guilds took effect in the fulfillment of syndicates’ centralization and their control. Thus, corporatism was just a surrogate because the political class did not believe in it as they did not believe in the organization and functioning of the single party. Therefore, in the corporatist order “the economic liberty is not respected more than in the socialist state because the innovation and competition were restricted to internal laws for each branch”1. The corporatist way of organization of syndicates did not represent the key to solve the Romanian economic problems as neither could plan and direct economy the Economic Superior Council together with the apparition of the institution. Still, the fights between the syndicates’ leaders continued although the dismantling of political parties and the apparition of single party presumed also the elimination of syndicate conflicts. The goal of syndicate life unification represented the fulfillment of harmony for which the old regime was dissolute even if the new regime failed to install the economic and syndicate order nor was it more successful in promoting the needed principles. Social order and professional harmony were made possible by promoting the principle of syndicates’ depoliticization intending to do away with the class fight promoted and supported by the exponents of the communist trend. The principle announced by the new organization of guilds, the fights, syndicate conflicts would not take place in the new regime of would-be corporatist authority where the overall interests passed before the individual ones. Expelling politics gave the possibility to the state to prove that it could administrate in a corporatist manner the syndicates by means of moral associations and persons selected to lead while the parties were demagogically considered as being associations representing narrow group interests. The tutorship of superior interests which attributed the corporation from social perspective they should lead to the enhancement of the people and nation state2. The 1 2

Chantal MILLON-DELSOL, Ideile politice...cit., p. 120. George P. ALEXANDRESCU, Corporatismul...cit., p. 38.

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growth of national patrimony was requested by the corporation wishing for this growth to be equal in conformity with the social justice guaranteeing to working individuals a redistribution capable to provide a decent living1. The fabrication of a guild by law and governmental speech of divergent interests proved to be populist and served to the illusions of workers because the patrons did not consider themselves as being equals to workers and requested the dismantling of professional chambers alongside the Minister of Labour. The third principle of the guilds’ law is constituted by the adaptation of workers’ organization to the new regime. The executive importance in the present regime made necessary to get the juridical entity by royal decree following the notification of Labour Superior Council proposed by the Minister of Labour and not by a simple verdict of the Court. Thus, by the corporatist-authoritarian organization, the executive power could interfere in the professional committee’s activity. The executive primacy over the syndicate organization intended to increase the political power of state over those organizations of workers and patrons. Therefore, “the political aspect of the corporative state claims a tutorship of superior interests of production to lead to a growth of political power. The political sector along it dominates the economic and social sectors combined into a whole of concrete accomplishment of its preset plans of production2.

The fourth principle of the guilds’ law consisted in the nationalization of guilds: “In the old organization of guilds, the professional preoccupation of workers consisted in their affiliation to international organizations from which they often received suggestions and guidance. The guild organization must be inspired from the great imperative of national solidarity. The guilds cannot take part and less to affiliate to organizations or international congresses then with the special permission of the Minister of Labour”.3

The guilds’ nationalization represented the method by which the state intended to eliminate the syndicate and political anarchy from the workers and syndicate chiefs’

Ibidem, p. 38. Ibidem, p. 39. 3 Mihail RALEA, “Lămuriri...cit.”, p. 46. 1 2

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rows. In this regard, the draft law introduced the imperative of guilds’ non-affiliation to international organizations and the goal of this interdiction was represented by the diminution of right and left extremes ideologies’ influences. The Romanian state by its law aimed to eliminate the disturbing factors able to change the authoritarian royal order. The fifth principle considered by Mihail Ralea had as effect “the stimulation of syndicate mentality”. By “syndicate stimulation” the Minister of Labour suggested the elimination of foreign ideological trends from the workers and professional organizations thinking. The populist manner used “to stimulate the syndicate mentality” was represented by the intensification of propaganda to the new conception of the Romanian state wherein the dominant de innovative principle from constitutional perspective was represented by labour. “The syndicate mentality stimulation” signifies the labour encouragement despite the political interests. The syndicate education was encouraged into the guild not inside it but also inside the state and the state fabricated the workers’ mentality. Outside the state, the guilds were exposed to danger of being politicized as was the situation of democratic regime. The regime regarded that: “By the depoliticization of professional interests into the nation’s framework, the guild’s prestige was considered to grow. The existent syndicates which will understand the commandment of the moment and which will join the law’s conditions, will be able to form the basis of the present reorganization”.1

The release of syndicates from the influences of political parties represented the new direction to be embraced by the guilds because for this were created, if not they were exposed to the danger to be dismantled. Thus, the regime promoted and practiced the political dictate by which asserted to the syndicate organizations the affiliation to the new institution of guilds. The policy of conformation was imperative for the syndicates. Thus, the interventions of the Prime Minister, Armand Călinescu, since May 1, 1939, held at the First Congress of the Guilds represents the same type of demagogical and populist speech against the former politicized syndicates as well as against the former democratic political parties before 1938. The Prime Minister’s interrogations and answers are suggestive:

1

Ibidem, p. 47.

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“What has this law of guilds accomplished for the workers? It fulfilled the fact that instead of the yesterday divided workers, today we have united workers. Instead of workers who yesterday fought for political interests, today we have workers working for their professional interests. By this law, concrete content was given to the electoral law anticipations and to the direct provisions of the Constitution. Only persons effectively exercising a craft and enrolled in one of the third chambers (agriculture and manual work, commerce and industry and intellectual occupations) can enroll on the electoral lists of National Renaissance Front, in order to be eligible”.1

The critical analysis of the guilds’ law, in regard to Roman-Alexandrescu, reveals the lack of substance with which was invested the new corporatist institution because it “regarded only crafters and private clerks leaving outside the other categories of employees and intellectual and agriculture workers as well as the whole patronage which remained under the regime of free associations”2, and Sorin Alexandrescu observes “the corporatist ideology does not get shape in the Romanian reality because the guilds and social statutes represented in its Parliament are rather similar to the Italian ones than local convincing organizations”.3

6. CONCLUSION This study has shown that the guilds’ law represented the instrument, used by the state to influence and suppress the guilds by organizing their functioning according to Italian corporatism criteria. Thus, the guilds’ law allowed the executive intervention in shaping the new syndicate organization by asserting the state’s corporatist ideological principles wherein dominated the collectivist organization despite the individualist one, as characteristic of the old liberal regime until 1938, particularly because the syndicates’ chiefs had to be recognized by the Ministries Council and the people elected or assigned cannot deal anymore with conducting the strives for bigger salaries or for better working conditions for the workers because they were consequently employees of the regime. The Armand CĂLINESCU, Noul...cit., p. 148. P. Alexandescu-ROMAN, “Consideraţiuni...cit.”, p. 253. 3 Sorin ALEXANDRESCU, Paradoxul roman, Univers, Bucureşti, 1998, p. 130. 1 2

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same as the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Labour occupied on the surveillance and control of syndicate and professional organizations still the creation and dissolution of guild resorted to the executive power. The functioning of the State as a corporation answered the times commandment but it was in a total contradiction with the corporation and economic body and the corporation as state construction. The corporatist state could be identified with the paternalist state since it intended to deal with all the social processes of workersemployees. The corporatist order asserted protectionist social policies and intended to direct the economy by centralist policies in the branches it manages. Corporation in the fascist vision functioned as a government because it intended to control all the state sectors, peculiarly all the economic life. The constitutional-corporatist organization of the single party and the Parliament highlighted the intention of the regime to gather the political and economic interests in the framework of the same monolithic and state structures. The guilds’ law inspired from the fascist ideologies had the aspiration to eliminate its adversaries which were naming the syndicate leaders or exponents of different trends and political guidance. The struggle of the new authoritarian regime to organize the social, political and syndicate life according to Italian corporatism principles proved to be populist and demagogical because the old politicians of the new regime, new elites, remained with the mentalities of the old regimes wherein the political fight between the parties for power was promoted with influences in the spheres of economic syndicate life. The new politicians were elected by the regime for their past offering all the safety elements to the authoritarian monarchy. The authoritarian regime and corporatism promoted as guild represented a step back in modern Romania’s evolution and put the competition economy of liberal inspiration before the state policies promoted by Carol’s governments in-between 19381940. The political institution of Carol’s regime, the guilds of workers, private clerks and craftsmen will be dismantled on December 18, 1940 by the next leader of the state, General Ion Antonescu, after the abdication of King Carol II.

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Bibliography ALEXANDRESCU, George P., Corporatismul mussolinian, Tipografia Ion C. Văcărescu, Bucureşti, 1940. ALEXANDRESCU, Sorin , Paradoxul roman, Univers, Bucureşti, 1998. BENTOIU, Aurelian, “Orientări în Ideologia Frontului Renaşterii Naţionale”, în Zece

ani de domnie ai M.S. Regelui Carol al - II-lea, Organizarea Politică, Juridică şi administrativă, Vol. I, Editura Cartea Românească, Bucureşti, 1940, pp. 83-84. CĂLINESCU, Armand, Noul Regim, Imprimeria Centrală, Bucureşti, 1939. FISICHELLA, Domenico, Ştiinţa Politică. Probleme, Concepte, Teorii, translated from Italian and introduction by Victor Muraru, Polirom, Iaşi, 2007. GIRARDET Raoul, Mituri şi mitologii politice, trans. Daniel Dimitru, Institutul European, Iaşi, 1997. GRAY, John, Liberalismul, trans. Anca Gheauş, Du Style, Bucureşti, 1998. MILLON-DELSOL, Chantal, Ideile politice ale secolului XX, trans. Velica Boari, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 2002. MIRONESCU, G. G., “Inovaţiile Constituţiei din 1938”, în Analele Facultăţii de Drept din Bucureşti, No. 2-3, Tipografiile Române-Unite, Bucureşti, June-September 1939. NEGULESCU, Paul, Curs de drept Român. După principiile Constituţiei de la 27 februarie 1938. Ţinut la Facultatea de Drept în anul şcolar 1938-1939, edited by Ion. I. Borşan, Bucureşti, 1939. ROMAN, P. Alexandescu, “Consideraţiuni asupa legii breslelor”, Revista de Drept public, No. 1-2, Editura Institutul de Arte Grafice „Marvan”, Bucureşti, 1939.

Official Monitors: “Legea pentru recunoaşterea şi funcţionarea breslelor de lucrători, funcţionari particulari şi meseriaşi”, Monitorul Oficial, No. 237, (12 )October 1938. Mihail Ralea’s speech, “Lămuriri asupra proiectului de lege pentru recunoaşterea breslelor”, în “Desbaterile parlamentare”, Deputies Assembly, Meeting – (10) July 1939, Monitorul Oficial, No. 10, Part III, Imprimeria Centrală, Bucureşti, 1939.

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Newspapers: Universul, No. 118, (3) May 1939.

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The Metamorphosis of Populism in the Arab World: Gamal Abdel Nasser Cristina NEDELCU Faculty of History, International Relations Department, University of Bucharest Abstract: The paper deals with the way populism manifested in the Arab

World. The best example of populism is provided by Gamal Abdel Nasser, who exceeded the borders of his country and managed to mobilize a large part of the Middle East. The paper analyses his legitimation mechanisms, which endured his access to masses, thus turning him into the voice of the Arabs for a decade. The emergence and legitimation of Nasser‟s political movement was possible due to the interaction of local and global factors, which had in the background the process of modernization, and the outburst of 1952 was produced by the events of the previous decades. These events were: the development and spread of Arabism, the consequences of World War I, Egypt‟s formal independence in 1936 and 1948 Arab-Israeli war. All these favored the implementation of a populist ideology in Egypt, an ideology considered not only by Egyptians, but also by other Arabs from the Middle East, as their voice, the heal for past‟s wounds and the solution for a successful future. Keywords: legitimation, Arab World, Nasserism, ideology.

1. INTRODUCTION: EGYPT AT A GLANCE The July 23 Revolution marked Egypt‟s break with the past and its authors said that it was directed against the corruption and inefficiency of the political class. The creation of the revolutionary group was gradual and encouraged by the development of Egyptian society during the early twentieth century. Regardless of the nature of the

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occupation (Ottoman, British), at all times, Egypt maintained its distinctiveness, which was strengthened especially in the age of Muhammad Ali and an increased autonomy in its relations with regional powers1. Muhammad Ali was a turning point in the modern history of Egypt because he was the first leader who had the ambition to transform the country into a regional power (he conquered Sudan, sent military expeditions in Saudi Arabia, destroying first the Wahhabi state, started war with the Sultan occupying the Levant) based on its own resources. During his reign, he initiated a policy of industrial and military modernization. Innovations in education led to a strong class of educated people, who wanted to turn Egypt into the center of the Arab world. In the late-nineteenth century the Egyptian capital witnessed a real expansion2, based on the increased flow of those who moved from rural to urban areas. Therefore this expansion, coupled with population growth, triggered the spread of political and cultural ideas. Population growth was a new phenomenon for Egypt in the nineteenth century, which led to the emergence of latent tensions in society, manifested by frequent revolts of the population3. After the Second World War, the Arab world was divided into a plurality of weak states, all of them still under the umbrella of Western powers. People‟s connections with these newly created states were weak and political loyalties often crossed the boundaries established by Europeans, preventing the consolidation of national systems. Arab elites became more and more fragmented and failed to establish a tradition of joint action and had a leading center4. In a diplomatic report made by the Romanian Charge d‟Affaires from Egypt, Caius Franţescu, we find an exhaustive description of Egypt that starts by presenting the geographical, administrative, political and cultural background. He noted that it was Elie KEDOURIE, Egypt, the Arab World and the Suez Expedition, in Keith M. WILSON (ed.), Imperialism and Nationalism in the Middle East. The Anglo-Egyptian Experience 1882-1982, Mansell 1

Publishing Limited, London, 1983, p. 123. 2 Vincent F. COSTELLO, Urbanization in the Middle East, Cambdridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977, p. 31. 3 A. Chris ECCEL, Islam and Social Change: al-Azhar in Conflict and Accommodation, Klaus Schwartz Verlag, Berlin, 1984, p. 61. 4 Raymond HINNEBUSCH, “Egypt, Syria and the Arab State System”, in Yehuda LUKACS, Abdallah M. BATTAH (eds.), The Arab-Israeli conflict. Two Decades of Changes, 1967-1987, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, London, 1988, p. 180.

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difficult to talk about public opinion in Egypt, a country with about 12 million illiterate, primitive and untouched by any social propaganda Fellahs1. Because of this lack of a true public opinion, the essential factors of public life in Egypt were composed of political parties, media and embassies, foreign legations respectively2. The role of the press was important, being one of the few tools to educate the masses. From “The essay on Egypt” we find out that most of the Egyptian people were very poor and could not afford to buy books and had to settle for a newspaper. In this context, media had to modernize Classical Arabic, adapting it to the needs of contemporary life3. If today the understanding of the Arabic language by the educated population is high, it is due to the movement initiated by elites and journalists in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. They managed to create a language tailored to the needs of expression of the cultural elite. This was the context in which Nasser was born and educated in the spirit of true independence, which was equivalent to prestige and recovery of glory that enjoyed the old Arab Empire. As a young student he participated in the demonstrations in Cairo during the 30s, when he was even injured, and this experience made him set the country‟s liberation as main priority. The failure of traditional elites in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 was sanctioned by the generation that reached maturity in the 50s. This generation was the product of nationalist unrest developed during the interwar period, a period which was under the influence of nineteenth-century ideas of Arabism. They had the belief that progress would come only after the expulsion of foreign domination. Egypt got its formal independence in 1936, but its political structures had produced little change and, therefore, the young generation perceived the old politicians as allied or representatives of British colonialism. Although formal, independence forced Egypt to expand its military structures and this contributed to the apparition of a new group of young officers inspired by national ideas. From 1936 the military service became compulsory and the Egyptian government was willing to take credit to increase arms quantities4. Peasants. AMFA, Problema 210, Fond Egipt, Politică internă, 1948-1949, Referat asupra Egiptului, p. 5. 3 Ibidem, p. (fila) 15. 4 AMFA, Fondul 71/Egipt, vol. 1, General, Raport diplomatic din lunile ianuarie-februarie 1936, p. 234. 1 2

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Among these young officers was also Gamal Abdel Nasser, the descendant of a modest family (his father was Post employee), who was accepted at the Military Academy in Cairo in 1937, and in 1938 was sent to the military unit of Mankabad as a lieutenant of Infantry. Egypt‟s need to train fast many young officers in order to replace the officers withdrawn by Great Britain allowed a large number of young people to get access to higher education, for which reason they subsequently started to seek positions of more and more responsibility within the state structures. Nasser wanted to study law (generally preferred by the children coming from aristocratic families), but eventually he enrolled at the Military School in order to escape the hardships of families with many children. To some extent, his decision was encouraged by the extremely cold relationship he had with his father1. In the military unit of Mankabad, Nasser and other young officers were concerned with problems such as the political corruption of the system represented by King Faruk, foreign domination and its effects and the poverty of a large segment of society. The result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war deepened the gap between the young officers and the political regime, which was seen by the officers as corrupt and unrepresentative. Military response came in July 1952 when, after a revolution – coup d‟état, King Faruk was forced to abdicate, and power was taken over by General Neguib. In the new structure, Nasser became Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister.

2. POWER TAKEOVER AND LEGITIMATION In 1955, Nasser took the power easily, but the real problem was his legitimation. Prerequisite in this regard was to propose a system of ideas compatible with population‟s needs and expectations. Having in mind the final outcome, Nasser‟s legitimacy has to be analyzed differently: in Egypt and the Arab world. He was a charismatic leader who first mobilized around him Egyptian masses, and then using a discourse where he emphasized the ideas of unity and past glory recovery, he appealed to the Arab masses as well. From our point of view, when Nasser assumed power in Egypt, he had not clearly structured Robert STEPHENS, Nasser. A Political Biography, Allen Lane-The Penguin Press, Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd., London, New York, 1979, p. 36. 1

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the intention to develop a regional policy. The decisive moment in this respect was the Bandung Conference, when he noticed that he enjoyed great popularity among Arabs. As a leader, he reflects the “mentor” model according to Gustave Le Bon‟s typology: energetic person with a strong will, obsessed with an idea, whose apostle he became1. Having assumed the position of charismatic leader, the power of example and prestige played a fundamental role in his process of legitimation. Prestige conservation, both within the country and outside, became synonymous with legitimate leader status. If legitimacy is the situation when government enjoys the citizens‟ acceptance and support, we can say that if a leader intends to legitimize himself in a wider area than his own country, he has to propose an ideology that responds to at least one common need of the people living in that wide area. Such ideology is difficult to formulate in certain geographical areas, but in the Middle East, the Arab common past was a contributing factor in this regard. However, in this context, it may appear the risk of weakening the leader‟s relation with the citizens of his own state. Equally dangerous is the fact that such an ideology which aims at a larger space can be used by a leader to call for the loyalty of other states‟ citizens, so undermining the legitimacy and stability of other systems from the area. Conflict is endemic in the Middle East and requires a very high level of interstate activity, therefore Arab regimes which wanted to legitimize inevitably reached external actions2, thus keeping alive the shadow of the former Arab empire and the need of only one ruler. In domestic policy his legitimacy has found expression in Arab socialism, while Pan-Arabism, Arab nationalism and neutrality towards the conflict between the two superpowers led his foreign policy actions. At his peak in the Arab world, Nasser followed Muhammad Ali‟s plans to turn Egypt into a regional power. Having their background in the lower social strata, the people in power after 1952 was interested in reforming the social domain. General Neguib‟s tendency to postpone the social aspect because he was interested more to monopolize the political scene3 and his decision to return to the Western model parliamentary system, regarded as corrupt by Egyptian masses, caused his removal by a group of “Young officers” led by Ibidem. Adeed DAWISHA, Arab Regimes: Legitimacy and Foreign Policy, în Giacomo LUCIANI (ed.), The Arab State, Routhledge, London, 1990, p. 284. 3 He suspended the 1923 Constitution and postponed the elections for 3 years. 1 2

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Nasser. Unlike his predecessors, Nasser understood his people‟s concerns for the past glory and that the most important element for maintaining power was to retain the control over the army, and then to convince the masses to provide him support. Nasser assumed power easily also because the timing was propitious. In the Arab world, the „50s was a decade of coups, initiated in 1949 by Colonel Za'aim in Syria. Those who took the power belonged to the military group or were allied with it, and were members of the generation that reached adulthood in the 30s-40s, and had been excluded from political life by those removed now through violent action1. The alliance with the army was absolutely necessary because access to power meant the use of force and the army, which was a necessary tool for action, was also the symbol of dignity and national pride, as well, elements necessary for the subsequent legitimation in front of the masses. National armies were still new elements in Arab society. In Egypt, up to the Second World War, Egyptian origin soldiers had a lower status in the military structures, high positions being occupied by British officers, and therefore, were located in terms of status at the margins of high society. After the 1952 Revolution, they became the center of social and political life. Nasser has assured its support through his military background and by promoting former colleagues in leadership positions. This was the case of Abdul Hakim Amer, Abdul Latif Baghdadi, Anwar el- Sadat, Hussein es-Shafei, Zacharia Mohieddin, Salad and Gamal Salem. Nasser obtained and maintained the masses‟ support by appealing to the glorious Arab past, declaring his intention to restore it. After seven years from the Revolution, he said that: “[…] the Egyptian people and the army are those who in a very short time achieved glorious pages in history including the king‟s expulsion, responsible for spreading corruption in the country, the expulsion of the imperialists and laid the foundations of glory, freedom and dignity”.2

Hisham B. SHARABI, Nationalism and Revolution in the Arab World, D. van Nostrand Company Inc., New Jersey, 1966, p. 60. 1

Address by President Gamal Abdel Nasser on the Anniversary of the July 23 Revolution, President Gamal Abdel Nasser‟s Speeches and Press-Interviews 1959-1960, vol. 1, Information Department-UAR, Cairo, 2

1961, pp. 252-253.

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He claimed in his speeches that he worked for the people and therefore obtained their support. Nasser introduced a new model of legitimacy in the Arab world: through propaganda and manipulation (he established various mass organizations giving people the illusion of participating in the political mechanism) he created firstly in the mind of Egyptians, and then of the Arabs in the Middle East, the image of local hero who was defying the West and was winnig the confrontation with it.

3. DOMESTIC POLICY AS ARENA FOR POPULIST ACTIONS In the domestic policy, through the principles of “Arab socialism” (along with ideas such as equality of all “classes”, social improvement of labor legislation, implementation of social policies), Nasser stimulated the idea of progress, based on technical modernization and removal of “feudalism” from rural society structures. Socialism was a new phenomenon in the Middle East and the Arab type of this ideology was an adaptation to the needs and specificities of Egypt. Before the „60s, the ideology was present only among the intelligentsia, because the main problem facing the political scene was political independence, on its background appearing the state of society. Socialism was attractive to young officers because they came from families of middle or lower classes, categories previously ignored by political leaders. In Egypt, the officers observed the corruption of liberal democracy and Islamic fanaticism present in the actions of “Muslim Brotherhood” in the interwar period, and considered that a solution can be found in a new ideology, which, in their view, argued true democracy and social justice. For them socialism was: 1. The symbol of real independence against Western powers. As European companies continued to dominate Middle Eastern economies even after the independence, nationalization and establishment of the socialist planned economy were seen as justified actions for these new governments in order to declare their political and economic independence. 2. A symbol of modernity. It was an ideology that had never been tried before, so it was thought that it was a proof that the country was not backward anymore.

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3. An affirmation of a new set of values, specific to the Arab world (equality, sharing of resources, cooperation) which was considered superior to the capitalist, where the individual was emphasized at the expense of the community1. The construction of the Aswan Dam, industrialization and land reform are the examples which Nasser thought were the most important contributions of his regime in order to improve the living conditions of the population. They were needed to prove to the people that he was the leader who acted in the interest and well-being of citizens. The constructions started during his rule were loaded with symbols designed to flatter the people. The Aswan Dam was a “symbol of the will and determination of the entire Arab nation to carry out the self-imposed task to build a great free home”2. Nasser‟s interest in the welfare of the Egyptian society was a genuine one, but the size of his achievements is questionable. If in speeches or interviews that were running in the country, Nasser first spoke about foreign policy issues, in the materials for Western media, he emphasized the internal problems of the Egyptian society, and only later mentioned the foreign policy issues. In an interview with Robert Stephens, in January 1967, Nasser said that “the most pressing issue for him was that another 175,000 people would be born in the country that month, and they must be fed”3, therefore, he was aware of the plight of the Egyptian economy, but decided to keep it unapproached in front of local audiences. Nasser could not present the real situation of the country (economic problems, dependence on external financial support for its modernization projects) in the speeches delivered to Egyptians, because the “social revolution” realized in 1952 would have lost its substance. Several factors, among which we mention the rapid population growth and changes in political and economic system, reduced the impact of his “revolutionary” measures.

Bruce Maynard BORTHWICK, Comparative Politics of the Middle East. An Introduction , Prentice Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1980, p. 73. 1

Speech Delivered by President Gamal Abdel Nasser on January 9, 1960, on the Occasion of the Laying of the Foundation Stone of the High Dam, in President Gamal Abdel Nassser‟s Speeches and Press-Interviews, 2

Information Department, UAR, vol. 2, Cairo, 1961, p. 2. 3 Robert STEPHENS, Nasser. A Political Biography...cit., p. 8.

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When people became distrustful of the regime‟s achievements, Nasser called on two themes to explain the persistence of social problems: simultaneity of two revolutions and the external enemy. In “Philosophy of the Revolution”, he assumes that all peoples in the world go through two revolutions: a political revolution, which helps to regain the right to selfgovernment from the hands of a despot who subjugated them and a social revolution, which was a class conflict, ultimately ending in achieving social justice for all the people of the country1. Egypt faced difficulties because it had to bear with two parallel revolutions. Although Nasser was speaking of great achievements, such as the elimination of feudalism and privileges, corruption destruction, etc., we can conclude that, to some extent, the need for such type of revolutions demonstrates that he was aware of Egypt‟s peripheral role in the world system, but as a populist leader, he couldn‟t state it clearly in front of the masses. A leader, who considers that his state must pass through a revolution to catch up with other countries, actually perceives his position as one of inferiority in relation to global hierarchies. Nasser dressed his goal (getting a level of welfare for the Egyptian society comparable to that of Western societies) in a sophisticated expression with noble connotations appropriate to Arab mentality, because if he had presented a speech similar to Western leaders‟ he would have endangered his legitimacy in the Arab world. The social issue with its various aspects (galloping population growth, lack of food, poor health and social services, job scarcity, etc.) led to the shaping of domestic policy. Nasser knew there was a serious social problem in Egypt, which he tried to solve, but especially not to complicate it. He tried to prevent the Egyptians from aggravating a feature specific to many other Arab societies in the Middle East: social cleavage based on religion, economy or clans. Intending to prevent the occurrence of new cleavage lines, Nasser resorted to the theory of “the existence of an external enemy” against which the Arab masses had to unite, since solidarity and unification was the essence of panArabism. The topic of “foreign enemy” was easily accepted by the Egyptian society, where the belief that all evil was due either to British rule or to Ottoman rule. The role of the “enemy” those days was given to the West and to Israel. Nasser proposed the

Dragoş GHEORGHE (selection and trans. by), Gândirea politică africană. Antologie, Editura Politică, Bucureşti, 1982, p. 125. 1

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concept of solidarity both internal and regional (Arabic) as the best way to fight the “threat”, while in this context Egypt was to play the role of the center of Arab resistance. The idea of solidarity applied all over the country asked for clotting the whole people around the leader, and it was translated into practice by centralizing the power. Gradually, all the levers of power were taken by Nasser, and the political parties which he regarded as possible constituents of cleavage lines were abolished, while he preferred to create a single party (it had various names: Liberation National Assembly, the National Union, Arab Socialist Union) which had as primary responsibility the political mobilization of the Arab masses. Nasser‟s foreign policy was structured around three principles: Pan-Arabism, Arab nationalism and neutrality. They are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. As Pan-Arabism could not function without Arab nationalism, because it gives the basic element, that of the nation, nor would neutralism be successful without pan-Arabism, because to be neutral in relation to the two ideologies (communism and Western democracy) implies an ideological vacuum that must be filled with a stream of own thinking specific to a particular culture, in this case, the Arab-Islamic cultural space. Pan-Arabism or Nasserism resumed the nineteenth-century principles of Arabism, which emphasized the need to distinguish the Arab world from the rest of the world, and added to them the personality of a charismatic leader. It is necessary to make a remark on terminology: in Egypt, Nasser spoke of pan-Arabism, but in the Arab world it was more commonly used the term of “nasserism”, which developed in Levant. Nasser was attracted to the ideas of solidarity and unity of the Arab world which Arabism promoted half a century before and he decided to use them as basis for the modern pan-Arabism. Unlike his predecessors (Muhammad Ali and kings Faruk, respectively Fuad), he understood that the success of the doctrine could be obtained if two conditions were met: 1) If the above-mentioned ideas were promoted by those who actually held the power. In the nineteenth century Arabism circulated among men of culture, such as professors at the Academy in Beirut or among politicians who lacked a solid legitimacy in the Arab world like kings Feisal and Abdullah. 2) If he got the support of Arab masses. He obtained mass mobilization in support of pan-Arabism by mentioning in his speeches the theme of the “danger” posed by Israel, which required that all Arab states should unite and get involved in solving the 282


situation in Palestine. The creation of Israel served Nasser in two ways: on the one hand, it demonstrated to the population the inefficiency of the old political class, thus justifying his intervention to seize power by force, and on the other hand, it transformed panArabism into a viable political movement, since the very existence of Israel showed that there is an “external threat”. In order to tackle this threat a leader was needed, who could guide the entire Arab world. By launching pan-Arabism/Nasserism Nasser proved that he proposed a program of struggle, and that he came with solutions.

4. FOREIGN POLICY AS LARGER ARENA FOR POPULIST ACTIONS Arab nationalism was the main support of pan-Arabism. The movement assumed Arab unification on the basis of common language, culture and a religious majority (Islamic faith). Nasser was influenced by Arabism and by the work of “Young Egypt” (Misr al-Fatah), which argued the necessity of winning the independence of the Egyptian nation, in the first phase, and then followed by the liberation of the whole Arab world. The triumph obtained with the negotiation of British troops withdrawal from Egypt (1954), the purchase of arms from Czechoslovakia (1955), the successful participation in the Bandung Conference (1955) and the nationalization of the Suez Canal turned Nasser into a hero of the Arab world. From this position of hero, Nasser could argue that there was an Arab world with its own characteristics, which had to be unified and whose prestige had to be restored by a leader. The paragraphs below show political activities which propelled Nasser to the status of Arab world leader. Basically, these are the periods when the leader had the support of the masses, being obliged to make minimum efforts of coercion even against radical political opponents. For Nasser, a successful period was 1956-1967, although some tense moments (eg Yemen war, which erupted in 1962) could be mentioned as well. Inside Egypt, Nasser enjoyed popularity even since 1952, being one of the main organizers of the Revolution. Its popularity in the Arab world was acquired, at first, involuntarily, while later he struggled to maintain the leadership of the entire Arab community. The actions that have secured this position were made especially in foreign policy, each representing one of the principles of his ideology. These actions were:

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

His participation in the Bandung Conference (1955); The arm deal with Czechoslovakia (1955); Rejection of Baghdad Pact (1954-1955); Building the Aswan Dam; Suez Canal Company nationalization (1956); The union with Syria (1958-1961); Egypt‟s involvement in the Palestinian Question.

4.1. The Bandung Conference The event took place in April 1955 and it was the first conference of independent states from Asia and Africa. Its initiators were the Prime Ministers of India, Pakistan, Indonesia Southeast Asia and Ceylon: Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali, Ali Sastroamidjojo, U Nu, and Sir John Kotewala. The meeting was attended by delegates from 29 countries, 23 Asian and six from Africa, nine of them representing Arab states. The conference marked a new stage in international relations, because it stated the abolition of colonialism. The attendees accepted the “Five Principles” formulated by Nehru (accepted by China‟s Chou En-Lai in 1954), which went on the line of neutralism: a. mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states (Nasser insisted on this idea, having in mind the Palestinian question); b. exclusion of aggression in international relations; c. non-interference in internal affairs of states; d. equality of states; e. peaceful coexistence. This was Nasser‟s first international public appearance, at that time Prime Minister. His participation in the Bandung conference is considered to be the beginning of a very active Egyptian foreign policy phase. For Nasser the conference represented a new opportunity to oppose colonialism. His first success in this regard was in 1954 when, following negotiations with Britain for a new treaty, he obtained a complete withdrawal of British troops from Egypt and the abolition of the 1936 Treaty provisions and privileges for British citizens. Fundamental to his future evolution were the meetings with Tito and Nehru in February 1955. Mohammed Heikal tells about those meetings and their mutual admiration. The relationship between Nehru and Nasser improved considerably after the 284


latter mediated the conflict between India and China1. Therefore, Nasser‟s participation in Bandung coincided with the Egyptian foreign policy trends of the time: the fight against all forms of foreign domination.

4.2. Arm deal with Czechoslovakia The contract was signed in 1955 and it had the endorsement and support of the USSR2. In his statement of 30 September 1955, after signing the contract with Czechoslovakia, Nasser attempted to dissociate USSR‟s role, emphasizing the commercial side, not the ideological one: “we agreed the weapons transaction, which was proposed by Czechoslovakia just as a purely commercial agreement. Therefore, there is no need for an agreement with the USSR”.3 Nasser hinted that he would have preferred to obtain weapons from other sources; he mentioned in his statement that he had requested them from the U.S., Great Britain, Belgium and Sweden, but he received only words and promises4. In fact, a contract with the West implied his renuncing to neutrality and joining the Baghdad Pact and Nasser was building his reputation exactly on combating foreign domination. This is the context which the reader should have in mind, namely that 1955 was the moment when the crisis between him and General Neguib deepened, resulting in the removal of the latter. Since his position wasn‟t well consolidated, Nasser had to avoid any gesture that would have compromised the image of liberation hero/decolonization hero, and the signing of an agreement with a Western state (especially with Great Britain) would have been perceived by the Arabs as a betrayal of his stated principles.

Mohammed HEIKAL, Nasser. The Cairo Documents, New English Library, London, 1972, p. 262-263. Yacoov SHIMONI, Evyatar LEVIN (eds.), Political Dictionary of the Middle East in the Twentieth Century, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Jerusalem, 1972, p. 101. 3 Thurlow G. FRASER, The Middle East, 1914-1979 (Documents), Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd., London, 1980, p. 87. 4 Ibidem, p. 86. 1 2

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4.3. Rejection of the Baghdad Pact The treaty was denounced by Egypt, because it was considered a way to bring the Cold War in the Middle East. In his book Révolte sur le Nil, whose foreword was written by Nasser, Sadat stated that the main fear of the Egyptians was the alliance between feudal and imperialist1. According to Nasser, the world where Egypt was supposed to work had three levels (Egyptian, Arab and African), and any other external element was seen as a risk factor. The Baghdad Pact appeared during his first contacts with neutralism and Nasser considered it a form of intrusion into the internal affairs of the Middle East, or even a new form of oppression. In making this image, an important contribution had the fact that at that time Nasser was negotiating a new treaty with Britain, which was presented to the Egyptian masses as a true declaration of independence, so it was impossible to sign a new alliance with the state branded as the imperialist oppressor. In the statement of 16 April 1955, the Foreign Minister of the USSR emphasized the idea of North Atlantic bloc aggressiveness, stressing that “the Soviet Government has always supported the legitimate demands of Middle East countries, whose objective was to strengthen national independence and sovereignty state”.2 Nasser‟s attention was captured by this declaration, which apparently did not include any ideological conditioning for the Soviet support. It was the impetus for the revaluation of Egyptian policy towards the USSR.

4.4. Building of the Aswan Dam The Aswan Dam was a domestic achievement, but Nasser used it in foreign policy as well. In the speech occasioned by the starting of the construction, he presented the dam as a symbol of the entire Arab world determination, saying: “This is your grand

Anwar el-SADAT, Révolte sur le Nil, Pierre Amiot, Paris, 1957, p. 15. W. Bruce LINCOLN, Documents in World History, 1945-1967, Chandler Publishing Company, San Francisco, 1968, p. 225. 1 2

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dam, that you have waited so long for and you‟ve worked so hard for, and for which the whole Arab nation with all its peoples fought to see turning into a concrete reality”.1 The project was difficult, especially after Britain and the U.S. withdrew their support, claiming that it was not feasible2. The project was resumed after the Suez crisis and finalized due to Soviet support. In our view, the withdrawal of US-British financing, and hence the introduction of the USSR into the equation was Egypt‟s first step to positive neutrality towards the East and it increased Nasser‟s prestige because he demonstrated once again to the Arab masses that he could overpass Western obstacles.

4.5. Canal Suez nationalization The withdrawal of the U.S. and British financial support for the Aswan dam caused an unexpected reaction from Nasser. When the U.S.‟s statement was issued, Nasser was attending a conference in Brioni3, and after he returned to Egypt he began to plan the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company, action announced on 28 July 1956. From his point of view, “the gesture was a way to get back the national dignity and true liberation”.4 Soon after Nasser‟s announcement, the British government began to prepare for military action against Egypt. Evelyn Shuckburgh, an expert in the Middle East in the period 1954-1956 and close to Eden, noted in his diary on July 30: “It‟s time to show our strength and Nasser should be removed”.5 The nationalization of Suez was only the beginning of the crisis, which culminated in military confrontation between Israel and Egypt. The U.S.‟s firm position prevented Britain and France from involving in the conflict and helped Nasser to turn a defeat on the battlefield (Egypt lost the Sinai Peninsula) into a political victory. The U.S.‟s President Gamal Abdel Nasser‟s Speeches and Press Interviews, vol. 2, Information Department, UAR, Cairo, 1961, p. 1. 2 Thurlow G. FRASER, The Middle East…cit., p. 86. 3 Meeting between Tito, Nasser and Nehru which took place on the Brijuni Islands (Croatia) in July 1956. 4 President Gamal Abdel Nasser‟s Speeches and Press Interviews, vol. 2, Information Department, UAR, Cairo, 1961, p. 4 5 Evelyn SHUCKBURGH, Descent to Suez. Diaries 1951-1956, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1986, p. 360. 1

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attitude during the Suez crisis (influenced by the Hungarian crisis) forced Israel to return the Sinai Peninsula and Nasser presented this event as a vote of support given by America to his policy. Therefore, the Suez crisis was perceived by the Arab world as the beginning of restoring the old glory of the Arab Empire.

4.6. The union with Syria The United Arab Republic (UAR), formed in February 1958 from Egypt and Syria, represented the application of Arab unity ideal present in both Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism principles. The initiative belonged to Syria1, while Egypt was looking for a way to dominate the Arab world. Nasser agreed with the union provided that it was in conformity with his wishes. Syria accepted the condition, but misunderstandings appeared when the political system ended, being dominated by Egypt. The entire structure was under the Nasser‟s influences, who appointed half of the members of the National Assembly of UAR and hold the executive powers within the central government, institution made up of 14 Egyptians and seven Syrians. The situation deteriorated rapidly when Nasser refused to shape the policy in accordance with the Ba'ath Party ideology (which self-dissolved to smooth the formation union) and he decided to place the Egyptian officers in key positions in the Syrian army2. After the union with Syria, the Egyptian constitution of 1956 was abolished. Nasser announced that the government of UAR would be made up of four deputy prime ministers, assisted by two regional councils of ministers. Subsequently, the number of Egyptians exceeded that of the Syrians and Syrian political parties were dissolved and replaced by the National Union, a mass party3. In our opinion, Nasser pursued a policy of embedding Syria in the united Arab world dominated by Egypt. The American administration decided to support freely consented union plans, was wary of UAR, fearing the spread of positive neutrality towards the East, but saw the John F. DEVLIN, “The Ba‟ath Party: Rise and Metamorphosis”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 96, No. 5, dec. 1991, pp. 1399-1400. 2 Yaacov SHIMONI, Evyatar LEVIN (eds.), Political Dictionary of the Middle East…cit., p. 402. 3 Panayiotis J. VATIKIOTIS, The History of Egypt, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1980, p. 399. 1

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bright part which consisted in the complete elimination of Communist influence in Syria.1. Nasser‟s tendency to dominate Syria caused the dissolution of the union in 1961, but he didn‟t abandon the principle of the Arab world unification.

4.7. Egypt’s involvement in the Palestinian Question Egypt was involved in the wars with Israel before Nasser took the power. In fact, the Arabs‟ failure in the first war (1948) paved the way of “young officers” to power, because they didn‟t assume any responsibility although they were members of the military, but placed full blame on the political class. During Nasser‟s leadership, two confrontations took place between Arabs and Israelis: in 1956, which was presented by the Egyptian leader as a victory, and in 1967, when Arab armies were clearly defeated. Nasser‟s interest in the Palestinian question was a special one, if we consider that his decline was due to a war with Israel, thus changing the legitimation model of the Arab system, where the tendency of Arab leaders was to legitimize their actions through foreign policy, namely through the need to involve in the Palestinian question. Was Nasser fighting for the Palestinians? In our opinion, the answer to this question varies from case to case. In the 1948 war, Nasser was an officer in the Egyptian army and he was convinced that the fight was for his “Palestinian brothers”. His duty was to follow his superiors‟ instructions but apart from this, his memoirs show that he really involved himself emotionally in this struggle. The situation of 1956 was perceived by Nasser as a confrontation with colonialism in general and the British in particular. He didn‟t declare war on Israel motivating his gesture with an explanation about the Palestinians situation. The crisis erupted after his decision to nationalize the Suez Canal Company and to reject the Franco-British ultimatum of 30 October 1956. In the ultimatum, the two countries requested the ceasefire between Egypt and Israel and Egypt‟s acceptance of temporary

F.R.U.S., Arab-Israeli Dispute; United Arab Republic; North Africa , vol. XIII, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1992, p. 408. 1

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employment of British and French military in key positions in Port Said, Ismailia and Suez1. Two years before the Suez crisis Nasser negotiated British troops evacuation from the Suez, action which endowed him with the much needed prestige to candidate to the Arab leadership, yet he could not accept in any way the requirements of the above mentioned document. In his reply of November 1, 1956, he talked about “a conspiracy between Britain, France and Israel” and he announced that foreign troops occupying Egyptian territory were equivalent “to the violation of freedom, sovereignty and dignity of the Egyptian people”.2 Therefore, in 1956 he struggled to defend Egypt and his position. At the outset of the 1967 war, the Palestinians had an indirect role. By mid-„50s, the number of guerrilla organizations proliferated, a phenomenon connected with the taking over of the political duties by a new generation, made up of children of the defeated and the expelled in 1948. This generation‟s activism, often manifested through violent actions, unofficially supported by neighboring Arab states, forced the Arab leaders to pay more attention to Palestinians. Thus, in 1964, following the Arab Summit in Cairo, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded and it was led by Ahmad Shukayri, Nasser‟s choice. The creation of PLO gave a start to inter-Arab hostilities to take over its control. Even in the eve of the conflict, Nasser was forced to mediate the conflict between Shukayri and King Hussein of Jordan. At the meeting of May 30, 1967, Nasser told Hussein that he could take the leader of PLO with him, and if he made him any troubles he would close him in a tower and thus escaping him from this problem3. Although Shukayri was forced to declare that he considered the King of Jordan as the Palestinian leader, before he embarked on the same plane with Hussein, from the tone of the discussion appears more than obvious who controlled the Palestinian leadership. The Palestinians contributed to the breaking of the 1967 war by increasing the number of violent activities, especially after 1964, when they got important financial resources from the Arab states struggling to dominate the PLO. However, despite these Thurlow G. FRASER, The Middle East…cit., p. 91. Ibidem, p. 92. 3 Hussein of JORDAN, My "War" with Israel as Told to and with Additional Material by Vick Vance and Pierre Lauer, William Morrow and Company Inc., New York, 1969, p. 47. 1 2

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inter-Arab rivalries, Nasser maintained control over many PLO groups and the activities deployed in Gaza Strip. Until 1967, he was the sole authority to decide on Palestinians because he was the “voice” of the Arab world. All foreign policy actions have increased Nasser‟s popularity so much that he could be named among world leaders, although he was younger and inexperienced as compared to most of them1. Since foreign policy made him a leader, Nasser continued to act in this direction in order to maintain his popularity. In his view, the strength of the Arab nation was based on three sources: the common Arabic tradition, the geographical and strategic position and the oil. The Arab world had a close connection with Africa, the continent-country for tens of millions of Arabic populations. The third area for defining the Arab world was Islam. For Nasser, the pilgrimage to Mecca had political power, being regarded “as a political conference of heads of all Islamic countries - leaders, academics, and prominent industrialists, businessmen gathered in the Islamic world parliament to draw the general lines of their countries‟ policies and to establish the principles to ensure close cooperation until their next meeting”.2 Islamic principles were put into the service of pan-Arabism and pan-Arabism was in his opinion the expression of neutralism towards the two superpowers. It was not enough to argue that he didn‟t wish to be involved in the conflict existing between the two superpowers for spheres of influence, but he had to offer an alternative to Arab populations, their own ideology. His attitude toward Israel served his political purposes. Nixon argued that if Israel hadn‟t existed, Nasser would have invented something to keep his place. Arab unity needed a common cause and the destruction of Israel had become the goal that filled this gap3. Nasser was aware of the serious economic problems which Egypt had to face, and for an increasingly technological world, oil was vital. The Aswan Dam offered new Anwar el-SADAT, In Search of Identity. An Autobiography, Collins St. James‟s Palace, London, 1978, p. 136. 2 Dragoş GHEORGHE (selection and trans. by), Gândirea politică africană…cit., pp. 129-130. 3 Richard NIXON, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Grosset and Dunlop, A Filmway Company Publishers, New York, 1978, p. 249. 1

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land for agriculture but mechanized exploitation involved fuel. Egypt hadn‟t had financial possibilities to buy oil on the international market or sufficient internal resources. Until 1967 Nasser viewed oil as a good of all the Arabs1, whose leader was meant to be. He thought he could use Arab oil for the internal development of Egypt, mainly because for an economic developed country it was easier to play the role of a regional leader. Nasser claimed that resources should be used to fight with Israel for the Palestinian brethren; therefore, he demanded oil transactions to be placed under his direct control. This action gave rise to strong comments among the substantial oil resources Arab states since they were in search of political independence and of finding their vantage point in the system Arab. The confrontation between the superpowers led him to publicly claim that the existence of the Arab world was in danger due to Israel / the West and communism threats. One of the problems mentioned by Arab historians was Nasser‟s relations with the communist ideology. In our opinion, Nasser used the Soviet factor in his plans. He wasn‟t sympathetic to communism, which he considered incompatible with the Arab world, or with the idea of Soviet domination. From his point of view, the liberation from foreign domination was the most important accomplishment of the Egyptian people. The liberation struggle was, according to his confessions, “the most severe in history ... it has allowed the Egyptian people to reveal themselves, their abilities and their potential”.2 Only after the liberation from foreign domination was Nasser concerned with the economic aspect. He believed that the real freedom was brought by the 1952 Revolution, because then were removed the old exploiting elites. From his point of view, all the evil in Egyptian society was because of foreign domination (instituted by Muhammad Ali, who had Albanian origins), hence the desire to avoid a position of inferiority in relation to any other state. Nasser advocated the minimization of foreign intervention in the Middle East, especially their involvement in the Palestinian question. Communism was considered a threat comparable to Zionism. In a speech of March 17, 1953, during the signing of the Treaty of technical and financial assistance between USSR and Iraq, Nasser said, “our Bassam TIBI, Conflict and War in the Middle East. From Interstate War to New Security, St. Martin‟s Press, New York, 1998, p. 87. 2 Anouar Abdel MALEK, La pensée politique arabe contemporaine, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1980, p. 116. 1

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campaign against communism is meant to defend our country from a new form of imperialism, and to rebuild our country on a national foundation freed from imperialism”.1 From his point of view, Soviet support was welcomed in various fields, but in the political sphere Soviet-Egyptian relations had to be established on an equal footing. However, Nasser‟s attitude in 1956 allowed USSR to become an important factor in the Middle East diplomatic game2. But Nasser did not allow Soviet communists to take control of Egyptian foreign policy. In 1956, Moscow backed Egypt. The first favorable comments made by Moscow with regard to the Egyptian leader were made 36 hours after the onset of the Suez blockade. Nasser rejected the communist ideology because it opposed Arab nationalism and Islamic religious precepts, in the spirit which both he and the majority of the Egyptian population had been educated. He said: “I accept the fact of a material life. But how was life created? Maybe I am ready to accept the theory of evolution. But tell me how were created the earth and the universe? Until then I'll believe in God”.3 In 1958, a state of tension emerged between Khrushchev and Nasser after the first had criticized the Egyptian leader during the XXI Congress of the Communist Party for his refusal to provide support to communists in Iraq. Nasser replied with a speech and an official letter sent to the Soviet ambassador in Cairo, Kisiliev, clearly dissociating himself from communism: “I‟m not a communist. I am a nationalist. I am progressive; at least I think I am progressive. I consider myself a socialist. I think that there are some abnormal issues in communism. I‟m not saying that all communists are bad, because some of my best friends are communists. Tito is a communist and he is a good friend of mine ... For I attack communists from the Arab world does not mean that I criticize Soviet Union”.4

President Gamal Abdel Nasser‟s Spechees and Press-Interviews, 1959-1960, vol. 1, UAR-Information Department, Cairo, 1961 p. 159. 2 L. Carl BROWN, “The June War: A Turning Point”, in Yehuda LUKACS, Abdallah M. BATTAH (eds.), The Arab-Israeli conflict…cit., p. 136. 3 Mohammed HEIKAL, Nasser. The Cairo Documents…cit., p. 26. 4 Ibidem, p. 197. 1

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So, Nasser perceived his doctrine as opposed to communism, both for religious reasons and nationalism, and both inconsistent in his opinion to communism. The alliance with the Soviet Union could only be one dictated by the needs of the Egyptian military and economic development, not by ideological affinities. It cannot be said that Nasser was tempted to give Islam a special status in state structures, but he did not take the risk to a total break of Islamic tradition in order not to lose the support of a significant segment of society. When the “Muslim Brotherhood” became an additional opponent to his political plans, Nasser banned the organization and ordered the arrest of its members, notwithstanding that, during his search to legitimize himself, he had their support. The hostility towards the Western world was even more obvious. Britain and France were former colonial powers, the source of humility of Arab people in the last century, and in this context the war of 1956 was regarded as a new declaration of independence. The United States had a privileged status because they fought against colonialism too, opposed the Franco-British intervention of 1956 and promised financial support for the construction of the Aswan Dam. However, the U.S.‟s decision to withdraw its financial offer for funding Aswan and the pressure on Nasser to join the Baghdad Pact, led him to include USA in the group of imperialist states, in which no Arab leader should trust. Western democracy values (emphasis on the individual, private property and competition) and Western lifestyle were considered threats to Arab societies.

5. CONCLUSION Nasser‟s position towards the confrontation between the superpowers was expressed through non-alignment policy, backed by Third World leaders at the Bandung Conference (1955). Nasser wanted to make the Arab world and the Afro-Asian a “corpus separatum” in international relations and his alliance with Nehru helped him to legitimize his position as the leader of the Arab world. The Suez crisis gave him the opportunity to show the Arab world and international public opinion that neutralism and pan-Arabism were resisted attitudes in dealing with the external environment. The rejection of the Baghdad Pact and the victory of the 1956 war (as it was presented by Nasser) were true 294


declarations of independence. The prestige gained after 1956 paved the way for the unification of Egypt with Syria in 1958, the first step of the new project of establishing a unified Arab world. Gradually, the new set of values introduced in the Arab world turned into a constraining factor. The level of institutional development and economic politics was reduced, so Nasser could establish a centralized leadership and enjoyed full powers. Over time, the enthusiasm of the masses decreased and the risk of rival centers became possible given the fast development of Gulf countries. In 1967, Nasser was forced to take dramatic action to keep alive the enthusiasm of masses, hoping to revive the 1956 episode. Yet, the general background changed and he had to face a dramatic failure. If we need to resume the factors that contributed to the success of his populist ideology, then we had to mention: 1. The presence in the Egyptian collective mind, but also in the Arab mind of the idea of a glorious past, which needed to be restored. This idea can compel the leadership to initiate dramatic actions which, if successful, would prompt him directly in the spotlight of the entire Arab world. 2. Geographical position (the Nile Valley), which since ancient time required centralized management to plan the use of the irrigation system, has determined that the Egyptian mind would easily accept a strong even dictatorial leader. 3. The ethno-religious homogeneous society and low political culture level made it easy to mobilize the masses only with speeches full of promises. 4. In certain cases, a favorable international environment: Cold War was perceived in Egypt as a menacing element to regional stability because it required a possible danger (Western imperialism or communism), against which the leader had to fight, and the masses need to provide support. 5. The colonial past identified in the collective mind with an age of oppression and humiliation. The leader could always appeal to the idea of a threat and mobilize society around him and around the alliances chosen by him. 6. The structure of Arab societies in general. They are naturally hierarchical and authority is concentrated at the top. Nasser‟s death in 1970 came at the right time if judged from the perspective of his myth preservation. Richard Nixon believed that his regime‟s achievements in the

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benefit of the Egyptian people were minor, however his sudden death in the fall of 1970 caused one of the greatest manifestations of pain that mankind ever saw: five million people went out in Cairo‟s streets1. Behind him, it remained the same Arab system based on the same language and history, economic complementarity, geographical location and common historical experiences, but Nasser‟s disappearance deprived it of political events in the direction of unification and a personality that could coordinate this system. Populist ideologies declined after 1967 and a type of pragmatism in politics reduced the insecurity of Arab regimes.

References

Archive sources Archive of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (AMFA), Fondul 71/Egipt, vol. 1, General, Raport diplomatic din lunile ianuarie-februarie 1936. Archive of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (AMFA), Problema 210, Fond Egipt, Politică internă, 1948-1949, nepaginat, Referat asupra Egiptului.

Edited sources F.R.U.S., Arab-Israeli Dispute; United Arab Republic; North Africa, vol. XIII, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1992. FRASER, Thurlow G., The Middle East, 1914-1979 (Documents), Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd., London, 1980. GHEORGHE, Dragoş (selection and trans by.), Gândirea politică africană. Antologie, Editura Politică, Bucureşti, 1982. HEIKAL, Mohammed, Nasser. The Cairo Documents, New English Library, London, 1972.

1

Richard NIXON, Lideri, Editura Universal Dalsi, București, 2000, p. 364.

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MALEK, Anouar Abdel, La pensée politique arabe contemporaine, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1980. President Gamal Abdel Nasser‟s Speeches and Press Interviews, vol. 1&2, Information Department, UAR, Cairo, 1961.

Memoirs el-SADAT, Anwar, In Search of Identity. An Autobiography, Collins St. James‟s Palace, London, 1978. HUSSEIN OF JORDAN, My "War" with Israel as Told to and with Additional Material by Vick Vance and Pierre Lauer, William Morrow and Company Inc., New York, 1969. NIXON, Richard, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Grosset and Dunlop, A Filmway Company Publishers, New York, 1978. SHUCKBURGH, Evelyn, Descent to Suez. Diaries 1951-1956, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1986.

General bibliography BORTHWICK, Bruce Maynard, Comparative Politics of the Middle East. An Introduction, Prentice Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1980. COSTELLO, Vincent F., Urbanization in the Middle East, Cambdridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977. DEVLIN, John F., “The Ba‟ath Party: Rise and Metamorphosis”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 96, No. 5, 1991. ECCEL, A. Chris, Islam and Social Change: al-Azhar in Conflict and Accommodation, Klaus Schwartz Verlag, Berlin, 1984. el-SADAT, Anwar, Révolte sur Nil, Pierre Amiot, Paris, 1957. SHIMONI, Yacoov, Evyatar LEVIN (eds.), Political Dictionary of the Middle East in the Twentieth Century, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Jerusalem, 1972.

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LINCOLN, W. Bruce, Documents in World History, 1945-1967, Chandler Publishing Company, San Francisco, 1968. LUCIANI, Giacomo (ed.), The Arab State, Routhledge, London, 1990. LUKACS, Yehuda, Abdallah M. BATTAH (eds.), The Arab-Israeli Conflict. Two Decades of Changes, 1967-1987, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, London, 1988. NIXON, Richard, Lideri, Editura Universal Dalsi, București, 2000. PODEH Elie, Onn WINCKLER, Rethinking Nasserism, University Press of Florida, 2004. SHARABI, Hisham B., Naţionalism and Revolution in the Arab World, D. van Nostrand Company Inc., New Jersey, 1966. STEPHENS, Robert, Nasser. A Political Biography, Allen Lane-The Penguin Press, Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd., London, New York, 1979. TIBI, Bassam, Conflict and War in the Middle East. From Interstate War to New Security, St. Martin‟s Press, New York, 1998. VATIKIOTIS, Panayiotis J., The History of Egypt, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1980. WILSON, Keith M. (ed.), Imperialism and Nationalism in the Middle East. The AngloEgyptian Experience 1882-1982, Mansell Publishing Limited, London, 1983.

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Populism in Revolutionary Ukraine, between East and West Taras DOBROVOLSKYY Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest Abstract: This article emphasizes the external interference in what we

may call Ukrainian sovereignty. Who could say that Ukraine doesn‟t have her choice? Many would say that this poor country is full of talents and freedom, which weren‟t given by Russia or the EU, but by the people of Ukraine. In this revolutionary moment, as author of this article, I would say that my opinion is not objective or rational. My opinion is dear... to the people which desire to make their own future. Populism is cheap, but it‟s not rational nationalism. In rational nationalism the true love prevails, and not hatred. Love to your country, women, children and ancestors. God bless the revolutionary events in Ukraine! Keywords: populism, Ukraine, revolution, Ukrainian sovereignty, the

European community.

1. THE REVOLUTION’S BACKGROUND Revolutionary Ukraine represents a good example of a population mobilized by its own forces and indignant in the face of the wrongdoing committed systematically to her by her authorities. All crimes are being perpetrated in conditions of a semi-feudal system and based on a profound ignorance of total economic and political elites versus the people‟s requests. At least this seems to be the opinion shared by the majority of the supporters of the Maidan. On the other side of the political-ideological spectrum, fervent supporters of Ukraine‟s integration into Russia‟s major ideological project (Customs Union) or of the current Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, are presenting themselves to the public with accusations against “stray” revolutionaries, that they endanger the integrity and sovereignty of the Ukrainian State and come up with angry looks and with xenophobic responses to “the Russian brothers”. It is a populist 299


interpretation of the current events in Ukraine, where we can easily realize the extent of the conflict. Many share the opinion that the conflict could degenerate into a civil war and culminate with the dissolution of Ukraine into two states. The conflict, however, is not essentially ethnic, religious. Beyond the populist vision on Ukrainian events, one can assume that it is a riot, a political-ideological confrontation, originally started due to the Ukrainian policy-makers‟ relinquishing the European vector of development, which subsequently turned into a great battle of a considerable part of the population against the regime. This confrontation is not taking place in terms of a civil war, because we do not have violent clashes between demonstrators, occurring systematically in Kiev or in other regions of the country. In order to distance ourselves from the populism of revolutionary events and to understand the problem itself, it is not enough to keep oneself abreast only with recent developments. The key issue should rather be understood. Or, in terms of revolutionary Ukraine, it is important to make historical arguments for the hypothesis according to which that country is now the victim of a political confrontation unparalleled in the recent history of the Ukrainian people. After the initial stage of the political and ideological detachment from the structures of the former Soviet Union, the Ukrainian leadership has started creating a national state structures and institutional mechanisms of generating and promoting new rules and values. A major challenge was, at first, the establishment of a new type of political authority, different from previous experiences, as well as the initiation of democratization processes. Other challenges were the need to consolidate the processes of reforming the economy, democratic development and social integration of all citizens of the new State and in the presence of latent internal and external problems, just as happened in other former Soviet republics, heiresses of a difficult communist legacy. Today, after the imperial protection fell apart and the Russian minority explicitly lost their political dominance, their self-awareness remained imperial, at least in the case of some of them. In many respects, the control over Ukraine was interpreted as a natural law that Moscow could enjoy in her relationship with Kiev. Hence the myriad of geopolitical projects supported by Moscow, in which Ukraine was a part, in spite of the dissatisfaction expressed by a large segment of the population. For that category of Ukrainian citizens who were dissatisfied and even outraged by finding Ukraine under the

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“protective wing” of Moscow, the country‟s path was essentially European, in accordance with the principles and rules of the European Community. This politico-ideological cleavage grew during the 1990s, when the majority of Ukrainian citizens consisted of the so-called “homo Sovieticus”. During the 2000s, especially in the second decade of the new millennium, the situation changed dramatically to the detriment of Moscow‟s views on the fate of Ukraine. The new generation required increasingly clear the Europeanization of Ukraine and the final disposal of the communist past and the “protecting” attitude of Moscow. Political events precipitated and degenerated in the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005. The factors and first effects of the Orange Revolution have to be researched and connected with Ukraine‟s current situation. The factors that triggered the revolution in 2004 resemble in many ways the origins of phenomena that are developing nowadays – the discontentment of a population which is disappointed with politicians acting in favour of the Eastern vector, the forces that “stood and continue to stay behind” the revolution and have received/will receive its effects (being speculated the theory of geopolitical confrontation between Moscow and the West which was extended in Ukraine and which has major stakes linked to the outcome of the presidential election at the end of 2004 and the possible early parliamentary and presidential elections in 2014). Unlike Westerners who are less accustomed to truly revolutionary political events and delight themselves with measured and predictable political processes, the citizens who voted for Viktor Yushchenko in 2004 had really astronomical expectations, remembering the revolutionary atmosphere of the Independence Square, the populist promises made by orange leaders on the welfare growth and combating orange old oligarchic clans and the allegations they released regarding the governors who were soon to be sitting on the opposition side. The paradox of those past events seems to be found in the theory of the communist leader in Kiev, Piotr Simonenko, on the subsequent evolution of Ukraine, namely the perpetuation of a “Bermuda triangle” composed of Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yanukovych and Viktor Yushchenko. According to the communists‟ leader, these three political leaders represented the same oligarchic system of leadership of the country, but behind which each could be identified by different interest groups1. So, if we agree with

1

Sanylo YANEVSKYI, The Face of Orange Revolution, Falio, Charkiv, 2005, pp. 77-78.

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Simonenko, the theory of conflict between those who have the power and those who struggle to get control of the country (both supporting the same system resource management) finds confirmation in Ukraine. Although Ukraine has made efforts to create a legal, economic and social framework for protecting human rights, reality demonstrates that the achievements in this regard did not fully satisfy the needs of society. Faced with the acute economic and social difficulties, many citizens leave their country in search of better paid jobs, transforming the depopulation phenomenon into a serious threat to economic and societal stability. Ukraine‟s population has dropped from 51 million in 1991 to 46 million in 20131, which means a real tragedy for this country. The massive export of labour and the human trafficking have broken many communities and families in Ukraine, and have undermined human capital. Many Ukrainians believe that the main responsibility for these dramatic changes in the recent history of Ukraine belongs to the Kremlin because of the policy of deterring the integration of this country in Europe and of economic and political pressures, including energy shakedown. From this to revolution can be just a single step. Sometimes, if the revolution is analysed according to the defined objectives starting from the populist statements of the parts involved in the great battle for the country‟s rule, the revolution is a sudden and drastic change. It refers to the changes that may take place in the political and social system, but also at cultural and economic level. A great political revolution constitutes a forced replacement of a set of laws and institutions with others, while a social revolution consists in changing the social structure of a society. Often, political revolutions are to be accompanied by social revolutions, as associated objectives2. Nowadays many “big names” are mentioned in the press - Viktor Yanukovych, Vladimir Putin, Mykola (or Nikolai) Azarov, Catherine Ashton, Yaroslav Katczynski, John McCain and ultimately revolutionary leaders like Vitali Klitschko, Oleg Tiagnibok

Mark ADOMANIS, Everyone Needs to Remember That Ukraine Is Not a “Prize” But an Enormous Liability, Forbes.com, 13.12.2013, [http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2013/12/13/everyone1

needs-to-remember-that-ukraine-is-not-a-prize-but-an-enormous-liability/]. 2 Bogdan TEODORESCU, Dan SULTĂNESCU, Petru BERTEANU, Diana CIURCIU-SULTĂNESCU, Arthur SUCIU, Leonard SULTĂNESCU, Andrei ŞIREPCO, Revoluția portocalie în România, Editura Fundația PRO, București, 2006, pp. 393.

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and Arseni Yatseniuk (or Arseniuk – the way the liberal-democrats‟ leader in Russia, the controversial Vladimir Zhirinovsky, refers to him). All these characters actively participate in the great confrontation that takes place in Kiev‟s Independence Square and other regions of the country. Each camp comes with certain prescriptions for a dignified life, for Ukraine‟s true prosperity. If we give credence to one of the sides, changing or keeping the political status quo is the stake of the confrontation, but also a precondition for the true prosperity of the Ukrainian people. Some qualify it as a nation. It is certain that, in a populist context, the revolutionary moment represents a salvation or an immediate settlement of all issues. However, the process of democratization, especially if it is deployed in a country like Ukraine, is not always compatible with the immediate and steady paced economic growth. In addition to the modernization of political life and democratization, the political instability and economic depression are the natural effects of the regime change. Along with taking power, the new political forces find themselves with a series of problems inherited from the previous administration, many of which stem from the very mentality of Ukrainians and reflect a crisis of the social and economic system of the country as a whole, and not just a result of the activities of political elites that ceded the power. Not incidentally, even in the first year after changing the administration as a consequence of the Orange Revolution of 2004, some newspapers have begun to use more often the phrase “Orange depression” and allusions that the revolution was in fact the replacement of an oligarchy with another one which is becoming more and more numerous. At least for the time being, the lesson seems to break Ukraine out of the textbooks on the theory of democracy. It is unrealistic to imagine that you can strengthen democracy with a single revolution1. What is certain is that the exaggerated enthusiasm specific to the authors of a revolution (be it peaceful, simulated or bloody) is gradually replaced by some degree of population dissatisfaction against the measures taken by the new power in the postrevolutionary period, but also by misunderstandings within the new team of the Government. Moreover, the current stage might be characterized by multiple divisions within the opposition leaders‟ team in Kiev. It is lacking a recognized leader of an absolute majority. Each forms an electorate that feels relatively comfortable and

1

Ibidem, pp. 406.

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sometimes refuses to recognize the methods practiced by his fellow opposition supporters. There are also differences between opposition leaders with regard to the content of the constitutional reform, although all of them argue that its implementation should not be delayed1. In another sense, UDAR party leader, Vitali Klitschko, who speaks Russian and is having difficulties of expression in Ukrainian, would have few common elements in addressing the crowd with an ultra-nationalist leader as the Svoboda party leader, Oleg Tiagnibok.

2. RELIGIOUS SOLIDARITY, IN SUPPORT OF THE REVOLUTIONARIES Despite the differences between opposition leaders, we cannot ignore the fact that the events in Ukraine reflect the tremendous support of the population in order to achieve a historic goal. This assumption is confirmed by the presence of demonstrators in Central Kiev, the insistence on promoting their ideas and, not least, the religious solidarity with the Maidan stage. A group composed of representatives of various denominations in Ukraine climbed the Maidan stage on 21 January, refusing to comply with the Government‟s “shameful” orders. They prayed together and morally supported the protesters. Memorable is the presence of religious leaders who in other circumstances would not unite in this manner, on the stage being present representatives of the main religions in Ukraine – the protestant Bishop and pastor of the “New Life” Church, Anatoly Kalyuzhniy, the representative of the Muslim community in Ukraine, Ahmad Tamim, the leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), Bishop Vladimir, Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk2. The representative of the Protestants prayed for Ukraine to be able to get the leader that would be able to save her, while Ukrainian Muslims‟ leader had a longer speech: “Today is the time when our leaders need courage. We have assumed the 1Макаричев

ОЛЕГ, “Оппозиционеры рапортуют наперекор друг другу из-за новой Конституции”, Vesti.ua, 6.02.2014, [http://vesti.ua/politika/36283-v-oppozicii-nametilsja-raskol-na-fone-konstitucii]. 2 “Религиозные лидеры Украины продолжают призывать к мирному выходу из политического кризиса”, Religion.ua, 24.01.2014, [http://www.religion.in.ua/news/vazhlivo/24650-religioznye-lideryukrainy-prodolzhayut-prizyvat-k-mirnomu-vyxodu-iz-politicheskogo-krizisa.html].

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responsibility to provide courage to political leaders. Yesterday I had a meeting with Vitali Klichko, we will meet with the representatives of top universities, with other activists. We want our leaders to be unshakable, because it is inadmissible to continue to stall. We can say to the Power that no one will meet its “shameful” orders. The authority of the Church is much larger than that of politicians. May God and Allah help us. So all of us we will win”1. The presence of religious leaders on the Maidan stage is a powerful call to action. This religious solidarity provides revolutionary forces with the coveted justification of the actions undertaken against the forces of order. Just as well-justified is the occupation of administrative buildings both in Kiev and in other regions of the country, forcing regional officials to resign under the pressure of the crowd. Revolutionaries‟ actions are more determined in the Western regions of the country, where clerical support for the demonstrators is even stronger. Representatives of the Greek Catholic Church in these regions are almost unanimously on the side of rebellious crowds. If the demonstrators‟ actions are directed towards the justification of continuing protests by attracting on their side several Ukrainian authoritative organizations, policy makers need less this ideological weapon. They have administrative tools. Ukrainian authorities threatened that they would put an end to the activities of the Greek Catholic Church, accusing the priests of being located along with the pro-European protesters in the centre of Kiev and arousing thereby the wrath of the faithful. A letter from the Ministry of Culture arrived, in which the representatives of the Greek Catholic clergy were accused of “having broken the law” by offering religious services outside of places of worship. This was immediately followed by numerous accusations addressed to the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, incriminated by the opposition that he was behind this letter. The fact is that although it was banned during the Soviet era, today the Greek-Catholic Church is the third largest religion in Ukraine, claiming 5.5 million parishioners in a country with a population of 46 million people, as well as 1.5 million believers in the Ukrainian diaspora in Europe, the United States and Australia2. “Духовенство Майдана отказывается выполнять приказы власти”, Risu.org, 23.01.2014, [http://risu.org.ua/ru/index/exclusive/reportage/55058/]. 2 Valentin VIDU, “Kievul avertizează Biserica Greco-Catolică, activă în cursul mişcării de contestare proeuropene”, Mediafax, 14.01.2014, [http://www.mediafax.ro/externe/kievul-avertizeaza-biserica-grecocatolica-activa-in-cursul-miscarii-de-contestare-proeuropene-11899383]. 1

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The solidarity of which Ukraine this denomination‟s representatives have manifested confirms the hypothesis that the events are based on an essentially revolutionary script, in which one can speak of a truly popular movement, and not about a simulated revolution in terms of control exercised by some non-systemic opposition leaders on several hundred violent demonstrators. Among the protesters there are numerous persons with appropriate behaviour and eager to continue the protests if not in an eminently civilized and peaceful manner, at least without casualties and without actions which endanger the very existence of the Ukrainian State.

3. EXTERNAL PRESSURES The events in Ukraine have major implications on the international environment and have revealed many aspects of the traditional conflict between the West and Moscow. As a result of starting hostilities in the Ukrainian capital, each side has mobilized human and material resources to achieve strategic advantages in this confrontation of major geopolitical interests, carried out over a number of decades and described by two distinguished authors, Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman. The Revolution itself seems to be one of the manifestations of the confrontation between two of the world‟s power centres. According to Mackinder, maritime powers are vying for securing the control of the “Heartland” (which has an impressive economic potential), while Russia is trying to expand her influence over the sea areas. In case one party will seize the area for which they are fighting, it will come to a rupture of the world power balance. At the same time, Mackinder argues that he who will end up by controlling the “Heartland” will dominate the world1. Halford Mackinder‟s theory, according to which the world would be an unstable equilibrium between the continental interior and exterior maritime powers, provides us with an explanation for the recent events and presents Ukraine as a country crippled by powerful political and ideological cleavages. While the West shows vigorous sympathies for the Western vector, traditionally the East feels strongly attached to Byzantine political

1

Sergiu TĂMAŞ, Geopolitica. O abordare prospectivă, Noua Alternativă, Bucureşti, 1995, pp. 75-76.

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values. The only difference is the methodology applied by each of the two sides involved in the conflict. The Ukrainian crisis aggravates the tensions existing between policy makers in Moscow and senior European officials, many of whom have visited Kiev and announced unconditional support for the Ukrainian opposition. We are referring to “great names” of the European establishment. The Maidan Square was visited by the European Council President, Herman Van Rompuy, and by the European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso. The head of European diplomacy, Catherine Ashton, has also gone to Ukraine. The other side is Russia, with a methodology different from that of the Europeans. Moscow prefers to come with financial pressures. For the Kremlin‟s leader, Ukraine has made the choice in late November 2013, preferring to accept from Russia a credit of 15 billion dollars instead of a long-term political and trade agreement promoted by Brussels. The Europeans seem to try to take advantage of the difficult situation in Ukraine, as well as of the weakening of the Ukrainian President‟s positions for the purpose of winning back the strategic advantage to Moscow‟s detriment. The message has been sent to Kiev by EU Enlargement Commissioner, Stefan Fule: either Yanukovych manages to reach a compromise with the opposition that has reinforced its position or the contesting-repression spiral continues, and may attract penalties upon the regime from the EU. He even evoked the idea of early parliamentary and presidential elections entailing the removal from power of the current Ukrainian President, a process that in the vision of the continent is democratic and allows the accession of an acceptable power in Kiev1. An important component of this confrontation of interests is the political and financial one, being applied in various methods of pressure to the Ukrainian establishment and sometimes by formulating extremely cogent arguments as to the situation in that country. An additional component of the conflict could be the one related to information. First of all, the fight is for the conquest of souls; in other words, in order to influence the behaviour and the vector you will accept Ukraine. Obviously, in this serious confrontation most tools are applied at the level of the mass media. D.G., “Criza ucraineană accentuează tensiunile dintre președintele rus Vladimir Putin și înalții oficiali europeni, reuniți pentru SUMMITUL RUSIA-UE”, Revista 22, 28.01.2014, [http://www.revista22.ro/crizaucraineana-accentueaza-tensiunile-dintre-pre537edintele-rus-vladimir-putin-537i-nal539ii-oficiali-europenireuniti-pentru-summitul-rusiaue-37173.html]. 1

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We should be aware of the fact that against the power of Kiev is directed the West‟s media machine. Through world class companies, whose goal is the conquest of the planet (NBC, CNN, Fox News)1, topics such as “murder”, “demonstrators assaulting journalists”, “persecution of opposition members”, “protestors kidnapping”, etc. can be indefinitely publicized Many of these subjects are sometimes intentionally sold in the information environment, causing among news consumers feelings favourable to the idea of war with “the big bully of the Orient”. In their turn, Russian newspapers abound in news and critical commentaries as regards the Ukrainian opposition, speaking about “the serious interference” of Europeans in the internal affairs of Ukraine. Mainly the incidents with the forces of order are publicized, who are later victimized in front of a crowd which appears to be out of control. If we are to explain the occurrence of this information and its intentional change according to certain civilization and geostrategic criteria, it remains to clarify the context in which they were being expanded, taken from other publications. And here it is of help the hypothesis developed by Alexis de Tocqueville, according to whom humans have the ability and tendency to mimic fear, and not to remain isolated and to be in tune with the public opinion2. In a country like Russia it can sometimes be very difficult to turn against the regime or against a majority of one‟s fellow citizens. It ends up by influencing the media consumer‟s behaviour in this country therefore eventually the tough position of the Kremlin leadership can be justified. There is also a constant search for an external enemy, as well as in the West, so at the level of mass media, there is an exaggerated hysteria against Russia and her foreign policy. In analysing this confrontation of interests, the information gaps theory can be successfully applied, developed by American researchers from the University of Minnesota, according to which increasing the amount of information can have the effect of accentuating the differences in pre-existing knowledge. Depending on the civilization model that influenced his/her life and value system, each consumer and producer

Ignacio RAMONET, Geopolitica haosului, trans. Banu Matilda, Doina, Bucureşti, 1998, p. 142. Elizabeth NOELLE-NEUMANN, Spirala tăcerii. Opinia publică – învelişul nostru social, trans. CucuOancea Vlad, Editura Comunicare.ro, Bucureşti, 2004, p. 61. 1 2

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interprets specific news information in his/her own way, having a tendency to disregard that information and interpretation which run counter to his/her convictions. If a person like Arnold Schwarzenegger, with so much visibility and authority worldwide, says he supports the Ukrainian people, making allusions concerning the opposition, media consumers tend to gravitate more and more around these opinions shared by successful people, but without involvement and activity undertaken systematically by the foreign policy of some Western countries. On the other hand, the presence of some persons as well as Kiev‟s republican Senator John McCain or the Polish President‟s brother, who died in an air crash in Russia, Yaroslaw Kaczinsky, seems to bring even more heat. It is obvious that the presence of these characters among the protesters is as if pouring gasoline on the fire of radical protesters.

4. MORE BLOOD AND LESS DIALOGUE Indeed, we are witnessing now a revival of the radical segment of the revolutionary movement, the segment that increases the authorities‟ inquietude in the event of a confrontation at the country level, which may create precedents for triggering a civil war. Even more impressive, an important segment of the demonstrators detaches from the association with the EU and increasingly speaks of a national revolution. While the power and the opposition are seeking in vain a compromise solution and are not able to conclude a political agreement with a view to halting the tensions, the street enters the action through its most radical demonstrators, more specifically the members of the movement "Правый Сектор" (“the right”). They took the initiative and assumed full responsibility for the revolution. Just as important as the actions of the demonstrators in the street is their participation in the discussions and the spread of the revolutionary messages through social networks, including Russian ones. The number of members of such networks is skyrocketing, as more and more manifest the revolutionary spirit of those who do not want a peaceful change of power and are, to a greater or lesser extent, blood-thirsty. There are more political organizations that joined their efforts in the Right sector. Trizub, UNA-UNSO, Patriots of Ukraine, Belâi Molot and other movements and

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patriotic groups in the country are on the positions and mobilize combat units very well organized against the forces of order1. Besides the excessive populism of the demonstrators, their revolutionary attitude, namely Ukraine‟s totalitarian history, the political-ideological cleavage that divided the country into two over the past two decades best explains the discontent of the population with the power and passivity of the Kiev authorities in dealing with issues related to economics, human rights, European integration. Although Stalinist repression was gradually replaced with a milder form of domination, which opened during the period of Mikhail Gorbachev to reform the prospects for political and economic system of the Soviet Union, the efficiency, transparency and accountability of the Soviet authorities towards the average citizen could never compare with those of leading Western style. Hence the enormous distance between a Western development model, in which the individual is the priority of State institutions, and a corrupt system, not revolutionized in terms of reforms and democratization processes, without shock therapies. Precisely because of all that, a large part of the population of Ukraine preferred to opt for the European vector. In this way, the political criterion of integration presupposes the existence of stable democratic and functional institutions (legislative, executive, judiciary), but also the exercise of human rights. In achieving the objectives set in the action plan, the focus is mostly on the rights and freedoms enjoyed by the individual. The basic hypothesis is that without free and happy individuals the State cannot fully meet the requirements of Community institutions with respect to rights, even if the state of the economy as a whole is good. The inability of the State to ensure the security of the individual, especially amid these revolutionary events, can be intensely publicized and even used to certain political goals. It is the so called “titushki” – a new word entered the lexicon of the Ukrainian language and with which everyone is familiar amid the revolutionary events in Ukraine. This name is given to strong and resistant young people, purportedly State employees who receive money to cause trouble at public gatherings and get involved in various

“‟Правый сектор‟ взял на себя ответственность за „революцию‟ в стране”, Novosti MK, 28.01.2014, [http://novosti-n.mk.ua/ukraine_article/read/7290.html]. 1

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illegal actions. These groups of violent youths are working under police protection or with the tacit agreement of the forces of order1. And in the case of the Maidan these young people represent an impressive force that can be used by the authorities to deprive the opposition of legitimacy. Not accidentally Russian channels make public and broadcast everything that happens in connection with these “titushki”, especially their clashes with security forces. The EU condemns the excessive violence exercised by the security forces in Ukraine, Berkut Police and hooligans groups about which there are accusations that might be supported by the Government, against the Euro-Maidan protesters. They asked Ukrainian authorities to investigate and punish those who committed acts of violence, citing the case of the leader of the protesters, Dmytro Bulatov2, disappeared in January 22, abandoned in a forest near Kiev, after having been confined in an unknown place and tortured for over a week. Obviously, nor did the opposition miss any opportunity to take advantage of this event, so that the UDAR party leader, Vitali Klitschko, visited him at the hospital and denounced the acts of intimidation perpetrated against political opponents. On the day of the disappearance of Dmytro Bulatov, a corpse was found in a forest, with traces of torture. It was Iuri Verbitski‟s, a militant disappeared a few days before the kidnapping of Bulatov3. Despite the violent clashes with the forces of order, the majority of the protesters is a segment that insists on the peaceful political change of the country. Perhaps that is why President Viktor Yanukovych agreed to talk with the opposition and even offered them jobs in the Government in exchange for ending the protests. The legitimacy of these opposition leaders rests however on the idea of continuing the protests until the final political change is accomplished. Yet if they accept new positions,

Lesia MAZANIK, “The Titushki Generation”, Sean‟s Russia Blog, 01.02.2014, [http://seansrussiablog.org/2014/02/02/titushki-generation/]. 2 “Vinovaţii de uciderea protestatarilor din Ucraina, interdicţie în UE?”, Curierul Național, [http://ro.rsspress.info/article/61624bb7eb0ce96d611f7b27131b0514/Eveniment++vinovatii+de+uciderea+protestatarilor+din+ucraina,+interdictie+in+ue%3F+.html]. 3 “Un militant ucrainean a fost torturat și aruncat într-o pădure: M-au crucificat, mi-au tăiat o ureche, mi-au crestat fața. După accent, păreau ruși”, Hotnews.ro, 31.01.2014, [http://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-international16518680-militant-ucrainean-fost-torturat-aruncat-intr-padure-crucificat-taiat-ureche-crestat-fata-dupaaccent-pareau-rusi.htm]. 1

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they are likely to lose the support of the Maidan. It is precisely this juncture that is keeping revolutionary populism among the protesters‟ movement at very high rates.

5. INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION There are many similarities between the 2004 Orange Revolution and the current revolutionary events. A common element would consist in populism which, in conjunction with other factors, is impossible for the transformation of Ukraine and solving problems faced in a short term or at least medium. That‟s why highlighting the hypothesis according to which the revolutionary enthusiasm will be consumed within a few months of government is an idealistic vision of “controlled revival of Ukraine”, “Ukrainian people‟s immediate return to the great European family”, “punishment and final removal of the pro-Russian oligarchs”, etc. Because if even in the bosom of the protest movement conflicts have emerged which might lead to its division into several interest groups, many of the problems and wishes of ordinary Ukrainians will not find a solution. Acts of protest and populism of revolutionary leaders (sometimes exaggerated promises thereof) must be replaced with civilized meetings with political opponents in order to find a compromise and define the proper management of State resources for the benefit of the citizen. It is extremely important, in the present context, the legitimacy of the new team in the eyes of the voters. Although there is rather a relationship of adversity between the Western interpretation of the position of the leaders of opinion in Russia against the Ukrainian people‟s situation, that there should be two separate Ukraine, any politician in Kiev should not launch more arguments in favour of Moscow or Brussels. Ukraine‟s interest should be thought of primarily in line with the preferences and desires of the citizens of this country, a situation which was only partially due to the lack of a real compromise between the political forces in Kiev.

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Bibliography BALABAN, Delia, Comunicare mediatică, Tritonic, Bucureşti, 2009. NOELLE-NEUMANN, Elizabeth, Spirala tăcerii. Opinia publică – învelişul nostru social, trans. Cucu-Oancea Vlad, Comunicare.ro, Bucureşti, 2004. RAMONET, Ignacio, Geopolitica haosului, trans. Banu Matilda, Doina, Bucureşti, 1998. TĂMAŞ, Sergiu, Geopolitica. O abordare prospectivă, Noua Alternativă, Bucureşti, 1995. TEODORESCU, Bogdan, Dan SULTĂNESCU, Petru BERTEANU, Diana CIURCIUSULTĂNESCU, Arthur SUCIU, Leonard SULTĂNESCU, Andrei ŞIREPCO, Revoluţia portocalie în România, Editura Fundaţiei PRO, Bucureşti, 2006. YANEVSKYI, Danylo, The Face of Orange Revolution, Falio, Charkiv, 2005.

Electronic sources: ADOMANIS, Mark, “Everyone Needs To Remember That Ukraine Is Not A 'Prize' But An Enormous Liability”, Forbes. com, 13.12.2013, [http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2013/12/13/everyone-needs-toremember-that-ukraine-is-not-a-prize-but-an-enormous-liability/]. MAKAREVICI, Oleg, “Liderii opozitiei raporteaza controversat datorita noii Constitutii”, Vesti.ua, 6.02.2014, [http://vesti.ua/politika/36283-v-oppoziciinametilsja-raskol-na-fone-konstitucii]. MAZANIK, Lesia, “The Titushki Generation”, Sean's Russia Blog, 01.02.2014, [http://seansrussiablog.org/2014/02/02/titushki-generation/]. VIDU, Valentin, “Kievul avertizează Biserica Greco-Catolică, activă în cursul mişcării de contestare proeuropene”, Mediafax, 14.01.2014, [http://www.mediafax.ro/externe/kievul-avertizeaza-biserica-greco-catolica-activa-incursul-miscarii-de-contestare-proeuropene-11899383].

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Populism or the Fear of Democracy Failure Lee Rahel NIREL The Interdisciplinary Centre (IDC), Herzliya Abstract: Populism is for many observers unconceivable without a

strong, direct relationship between a charismatic, anti-system-oriented leader and the citizens who feel or are neglected by the main leading political parties. Nevertheless, in populism, leadership is much overestimated. If we consider the extent of populism as a political phenomenon, correlated with the fact that populism is an appeal to direct democracy and that the populists may only protest but never govern – this point of view should be challenged. Populism, unlike liberalism, has no coherent system of distinct political ideas. But it should not be defined simply as any political movement which stirs up the masses by fostering the simplistic policies proposals. We might rather say that populism cannot be understood at the level of policies, as it is more of a special way of imagining politics. A populist leader who can promote a purely moral image of an elite directs the voters to a set of expectations. The voters who support the populist movements accept this fact, because they believe that the current elites actually fail to represent them. In fact, they are not against representative democracy as such, but they want the change of their representatives with persons whom they deem as the closest to the image of moral purity proposed by the populist leader. This characteristic of populism – i.e. people want only one thing and that only their elected representatives may satisfy this wish – evokes symmetry between populism and technocratic governing. Similarly, the technocrats also assume that there is only one correct solution for every social challenge and consequently a political debate is no longer necessary. But the democratic exercise involves the very opposite: political alternatives and varied solutions generated by different perspectives.

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Keywords: populism, political symbolism, social image, referential

symbol, condensation symbol.

At present, most of the representative democracies are facing serious problems caused by the erosion of values, of original ideological partisanships, wide scale political migration and a pronounced distrust of the electorate of the political parties1. The issue of the deficit of confidence in political parties and in politics in general, may be understood in the classical terms of political science, as a consequence of the adverse economic context which spurs populist movements2. But from a sociological and socioeconomic point of view, the reluctance and more often than not the rejection of the population of parties becomes intelligible when considering the asymmetric distribution of resources, either material or of any other nature3. On the other hand, more and more ruptures and distances occur between the symbols and the culture of the elites and those of the society as a whole4. A real political community is more and more difficult to identify irrespective of society or political system. The common ideals or purposes which might enable a relatively unitary direction between the politicians are almost non-existent. The persistence on the privatization of natural resources and bank loans from various international financial authorities cause an acute feeling of deprivation of minimum social security among the masses. From this point of view, economic efficiency may be attained only by a transfer of responsibility from the public to the private sector, while the state abandons gradually accountability and final liability for the sectors of major public importance: health, social insurance, education etc.5

Emanuel COPILAȘ, “Simbolistica politică românească: între populism și cinism”, Sfera Politicii, Vol. 174, 2013. 2 Pierre BRÉCHON, Partidele politice, trans. Marta Nora Tărnea & Adina Barvinschi, Eikon, Cluj-Napoca, 2004, pp. 189-192. 3 Nicholas ONUF, World of our making. Rules and rule in social theory and international relations, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 1989. 4 Murray EDELMAN, Politica si utilizarea simbolurilor, trans. Ruxandra Nichita, Polirom, Iași, 1999. 5 Emanuel COPILAȘ, “Simbolistica politică românească…cit.”. 1

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1. POLYMORPHISM OF THE POPULIST PHENOMENON Political symbolism may provide for a certain understanding of populism reality. Thus, the composite elements of the political process become intelligible and coherently articulated rather than symbols, than immediate material realities. Political symbolism appears as an inseparable unit of images and actions1, that the individual acknowledges first affectively and only later rationally, trying to schematize it and integrate it in his/her own psyche. The tendency to avoid or ignore the information that contradicts personal schemes, the tendency to take over non-critically any information confirming or supporting such schemes is the basic level where populism may be developed2. According to Edelman, political symbolism consists of two types of symbols: referential symbols, which include objective and verifiable elements from daily experience, (statistics, survey data, official information) and condensation symbols, which contain emotions, feelings, sentiments, and subjective moods, associated to a concrete situation. They mark a concrete situation with a certain emotional tone received at the subjective level under a binary form: tensed – relaxed, frustrating-liberating, successfailure, i.e. in the end as being pleasant or unpleasant3. What stimulates and potentiates the manifestation of populism in all the democratic societies is the scratchy way of establishing human groups of these societies. They vary both in point of size and of interests but in point of access to information, in particular, and the result is very small groups characterized by a well-defined internal coherence, having their own strategies of functioning, well-structured and able to access and control most of the public property in relation with other groups of larger sizes, more heterogeneous and more diluted in point of internal consistency, which fail to articulate efficiently their interests. These small groups, elitist actually, have and foster in their relationship with other groups a hortative language4, i.e. a language based on the conviction of the others of the fairness of the policies and directions adopted at a certain

Idem. David KERTZER, Ritual, politică si putere, trans. Sultana Avram and Teodor Fleseru, Univers, București, 2002, p. 93. 3 Marin DRĂMNESCU, “Postmodern Society and Individual Alienation”, Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy, Vol. 16, No. 63, September 2013, p. 55. 4 Murray EDELMAN, Politica…cit., pp. 127-129. 1 2

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time, such policies and directions that are singular, unique and without any alternative in the given context. The term is semantically close to populist rhetoric which does the same thing, proposing in the end simplistic, reductionist solutions to complex social problems. The constant use of the concept of populism either in the media or in political disputes finally led to an alteration of its semantic contents. The analysis of the type of relationship between populism and democracy should start from a conceptual clarification. Just like other disputed or multivalent concepts such as the concept of democracy, in the case of populism also a minimum definition will prove useful. The advantage of a minimum definition is that it will allow the understanding of the basic aspects of this phenomenon, thus enabling a comparative analysis1. In the concrete case of populism it enables the distinction of collateral elements which tend to manifest at the same time with populism (e.g., attacks to the state institutions in Eastern Europe, xenophobia in Western Europe and not only, or clientelism in Latin America, etc.), in various national/regional contexts. These elements activated by the populist phenomenon are not decisive for the phenomenon per se, but become operational after triggering such phenomenon. Essentially, there are well argued reasons to be skeptical in relation with adding too many defining attributes to the concept of populism2. Considering the above background, populism may be understood first as a set of ideas. According to Cas Mudde, “populism is a thin-centred ideology, that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps: the pure people and the corrupt elite, and which argues that politics should be the expression of the general will of the people”.3 If populism may be understood as a set of ideas then various subtypes may be identified: populist manifestations consistent with the set of initial ideas, populist manifestations in disagreement with the initial set of ideas, extremist, xenophobic, authoritarian attitudes, etc. All these subtypes may be subsequently grouped depending on various criteria providing for an articulate image of populism as a dynamic phenomenon. Cristóbal Rovira KALTWASSER, Populism, its opposites, and its contentious relationship with democracy, 18 October 2013, [http://www.opendemocracy.net/]. 2 Idem. 3 Cas MUDDE, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, Vol. 39, No. 4, 2004, pp. 541–63. 1

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If we refer to political symbolism a distance between popular social representations may be found on politics and those of political elite. This rising distance correlated with the hortative language explains the recent more and more intense populist manifestations. According to Guy Hermet, populism as a political phenomenon has no consistent ideology or doctrinaire program. Due to the hypertrophied presence of the emotional factor, populist rhetoric often manages to inflame some nationalist and even extremist passions which may organize around a charismatic leader1. As an invariant of populism we may consider the assumed special relationship of the latter with the people, with the masses, whose will it represents, directly, imperatively, applied, reproaching to the governors the inability to resolve the people’s wishes. The hypostasis of populism in the role of fast, efficient, immediate solution of the major social problems manages in a first stage to conquer and seduce human groups, to persuade or incite them to act by appealing to the condensed symbols that Edelman was talking about. The use of referential symbols by the political elite to justify certain measures taken (measures of austerity, bank loans, privatizations, etc.) only enhances the populist appeal to condensed symbols, relying on affective, irrational or force reactions of the masses. Populism is a polymorphic phenomenon, which may result in the varied interpretations of the people. In a wider sense, in the case of populism two extreme forms may be detected. The people may be represented as a stable, trans-temporal, transspatial, metaphysical and moral unit, which preserves and has the same features in time. This people-image which must be protected against the external and internal enemies may be represented by a charismatic leader. According to the second form of manifestation of populism, the people is a sum-up of the millions of more or less free citizens, each of them having his/her own aspirations and purposes, objectives, ideals and projects, which should be harmonized with a coherent legislative or normative framework. If the first form becomes operational we can speak about a fascist populism due to the ethnic approach of the notion of people. The second approach leads to a libertarian-like manifestation of populism2. In this respect, we cannot clearly dissociate populism from the demagogic aspect of 1 2

Guy HERMET, Sociologia populismului, trans. Dan Burcea, București, Artemis, 2007, p. 52. Emanuel COPILAȘ, “Simbolistica politică românească…cit.”

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discourse by reproaching it even a considerable extent of lack of scruples and a minimalist ethics in attaining its objectives. All these derogatory nuances derive from the urgent appeal to the masses by avoiding the democratic process mechanisms, from the multitude of promises which are not observed, are not translated into a finite act and from the utopia more or less deliberate of the provided solutions.

2. ELITISM, ANTI-ELITISM, EGALITARIANISM, AUTHORITARIANISM In another train of thoughts, from a conceptual perspective the opposite of the term populism is elitism. The common element between the two opposed concepts is given by the pejorative contents both terms have in the usual discourse. Being an elitist in the current society is as bad as being deemed as a populist. The two terms are intensely used either by the intellectual, or by the political elite improperly due to the strong impact they have in the etiquette assigned to others and due to their hardly definable and vague contents. Unlike populism and elitism, pluralism is based on the very idea that the society is composed of different individuals and groups. Therefore, the pluralists affirm that democratic politics is to take into account the diversity and conclusion of agreements between different positions avoiding moral or Manichean distinctions. The persons who join pluralism consider that popular sovereignty is a dynamic and open-ended process, rather than an inflexible and unified will of the people. A recurrent argument of the debates referring to populism is related to the association of the populist forces with demagogy, with the opportunistic emotional and behavioural manifestations. But this argument is no longer valid unless they are understood as attributes of populism. “Without a doubt, there are many examples of populists who act in a demagogic way (Geert Wilders’s withdrawal of support to the minority government in 2012 due to differences over budget cuts), appeal to emotions (Hugo Chávez’s political rallies) and are masters of opportunism (Silvio Berlusconi’s legal reforms in his favour). However, there are several nonpopulist political leaders who show signs of demagoguery (Nicolas Sarkozy’s 320


presidential campaigns), emotionalism (Nelson Mandela’s approach of national reconciliation) and opportunism (Angela Merkel’s decision to close down nuclear energy in Germany after the Fukushima disaster)”. 1

The recent crisis Europe is facing has shown a fact that is relatively obvious from politics observers of the USA and Latin America, in its dynamics it can be both rightwing and left-wing. As an argument for this idea, Greece may be seen as a case study in this respect. Thus, in this country, “[…] austerity policies promoted by the EU have facilitated the electoral rise of both leftist populism (SYRIZA) and rightist populism (Golden Dawn). Not without reason, some have raised the question of whether it makes sense to use the same label (i.e. populism) to study these political formations. In fact, these two political parties advance extremely different policy proposals. The same can be said about contemporary left-wing movements in Latin America and current right-wing populist forces in Europe: whereas the former is characterised by an inclusionary approach, the latter is distinguished by an exclusionary approach”. 2

On the other hand, it is difficult to equate populism with an authoritarian ideology. While in democracy there is an intrinsic principle according to which the people is the sovereign and its will prevails, then no internal or external element should constrain this will. If democracy means (demos, people + kratos, power) rule by the people then obviously, neither the elites, nor the aristocrats, experts, religious authorities or foreign powers should make decisions that violate popular sovereignty. According to this logic, instead of treating populism as an irrational phenomenon supported by a group of people as irrational, it should be accepted that there is some truth in the claims advanced by those who adhere to the populist set of ideas3.

1

Cristóbal Rovira KALTWASSER, Populism, Its Opposites, and Its Contentious Relationship with

Democracy…cit. Cas MUDDE and C. Rovira KALTWASSER, “Inclusionary versus Exclusionary Populism: Contemporary Europe and Latin America Compared”, Government and Opposition, Vol. 48, No. 2, 2013, pp. 147–174. 3 Cristóbal Rovira KALTWASSER, Populism, Its Opposites, and Its Contentious Relationship with 2

Democracy…cit.

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Populism is not always oriented against the establishment. Populist forces become extremely vocal, for example, in the electoral districts where they do not feel represented by the existing political elite. This shows that there is some truth in the populist attack against the establishment1. The populist discourse becomes more and more legitimate and pervasive in certain social sectors where political elites fail to take into consideration the ideas and interests of the electorate. This elitist attitude may result in a similarity between the left-wing and right-wing populism: besides their different policy proposals, “[…] both types of populism are inclined to politicize certain topics that intentionally or unintentionally are not being addressed by the political establishment. Whereas in the case of right-wing populism in Europe this process of politicization is related mainly to immigration policies, in the case of left-wing populism in Latin America this process of politicization is linked chiefly to economic policies”.2

Certainly, this is not an exculpation of the populist phenomenon or that it should not be criticized, monitored, challenged, particularly when the populist actions endanger the democratic functioning of the society. The management of the populist phenomenon remain the same, a challenge of contemporary democracies. According to Jan-Werner Müller the populist phenomenon is a matter of urgency, over which the supranational institutions, such as the European Union, should think about and try to defend liberal democracy both from populists in opposition and populists in government.3 On the other hand, anti-elitism has the same essence as populism4. He refers to a people in the position of provider of physical work in particular. Although anti-elitists are essentially also intellectuals, they affirm that the elites are the fruit of the vanity of some to the detriment of others5. Actually, the elites are in any democratic society the outcome Idem. Idem. 3 Jan-Werner MÜLLER, “Defending Democracy within the EU”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2013, pp. 138-149. 4 Nicolae MANOLESCU, Dicţionar politic: populismul şi suratele lui [adev.ro/mptxpj]. 5 Idem. 1 2

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of a natural selection. It is unanimously acknowledged that societies evolve mainly due to their elites1. Egalitarianism is an alternative to populism, which inserts the delusive idea of natural equality among all people. It is the equality of chances which is really important. The individuals of a society are not born equal but they may become equal provided that the environment, society in particular, should provide equal chances for them. Populism insists that only by popular will can all the problems of society be solved focusing on the correctness and fairness of this assertion. The referendum is one of the major symbol-concepts that the populist leaders resort to. Some of the problems may certainly be solved by popular consultation, but others cannot. For example, the problems related to economic programs, health or education strategies or the problems referring to scientific, research and art activity. For this type of problems the required solutions imply specific competences, the criteria for solving them being valuable and efficient and not of easy success. Invariably, the popular solutions provided for such social problems-challenges will be false, inoperative. Populism is placed in opposition with elitism because the elite sets the rule, the criterion, the canon.2. The selection according to value is imposed by all these. For all these reasons, the selection of the value cannot be submitted to a referendum, as it is the result of the critical spirit of the elite3. The rejection of the idea of elite, typical for antielitism and implicitly for populism, has negative effects if it becomes more and more applied because it blocks and delays progress in all domains, including the political domain. Abandoned to popular will, the elite of any nature (political, economic, cultural) is doomed to dissolution, disappearance and art along with it, culture being reduced to folklore4.

Idem. Idem. 3 Idem. 4 Idem. 1 2

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3. CULTURAL POPULISM From the cultural point of view, populism is present under a dissipated form, less outlined and less substantial. Thus, populism is much more frequently used in political discourse than in the cultural discourse. Nevertheless, the more frequent use does not imply also an enhancement of the extent of conceptual precision. Yet, there is a constant in the sense that giving the label of populist implies almost invariably negative connotations, with meanings related to the mobilization of the political majority around a set of simple slogans and, probably, the hypocrisy of discourse, the offer of easy, unrealistic solutions to severe social problems, emotional impregnation of the messages and avoiding their rationality, etc. Cultural populism is not a strictly analytical and semantically well-articulated category. Cultural populism refers in particular to the propagation of some associated political feelings in a way specific for culture rather than a phenomenon which might generate a paradigm. Any form of culture which appeals to popular symbols or which takes into consideration the popular masses in point of satisfactions, emotions, wishes, trends, etc. may be called, without pejorative nuances, a populist culture1. Two interdependent forms of manifestation may be distinguished in cultural populism: the first type aims at primary cultural production, and the other type refers to a secondary practice, of educational nature, where popular cultural texts are studied as an extension of literary criticism. The first of these forms was called by some authors2 aesthetic populism. Cultural populism is not a unitary phenomenon. After the answer from the elitist sector of society to the criticism of mass culture, two positions are highlighted: an attitude of production related to mass culture, and a second one aims at an elimination of consumerism, of the production meant for the masses, a production is disregarded from the aesthetic point of view though the non-critical endorsement of the popular artistic taste is in accordance with the economic liberalism of the consumer’s sovereignty3. The cultural debates on popular topics are actually also a type of intellectual manifestation where the participants in the cultural, education, art, etc. fields try to make Jim McGUIGAN, Cultural Populism, Taylor & Francis e-Library, London and New York, 2003, p. 3. Idem, p. 13. 3 Idem, p. 18. 1 2

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themselves heard, to seduce by their discourse, by the artistic creations so as to win the symbolic power in the confrontation of rival ideologies. It is noteworthy that the phrase popular culture, and the related idea, is intellectual because this type of culture was not identified by common people but by intellectuals: popular culture was not identified by

common people, but by others1. The discovery of popular culture was in fact a political movement in the true sense of the word, in relation with the ideas of nation. This aspect is in direct relation with the formation of national identity, besides industrialization and democratization and, therefore it represents a constituent of modernity2. As for cultural populism we may say that unlike real, genuine populism, sociopolitically manifested, it emphasizes the visible trends of the cultural spectrum with a view to highlighting the subsequent dilemmas of the cultural and political space.

4. CONCLUSIONS Populism coexists with democracy and uses the rules of movement of the system it denies3, which justifies the presence of populists both in opposition and in the government. The negative effects of the populist manifestations will be invariably found at the level of the democratic system it corrodes. For this reason, democratic filters are needed which might interpose between the populist actions and the democratic mechanisms. These filters have the role to dilute, mitigate or convert the populist attack under a desirable form or, at least, socially accepted form. . Contemporary debates, studies and research made in the sense of quantification, monitoring and finally managing this phenomenon are important because: “[…] on the one hand, they show the limited efficiency of certain remedies otherwise deemed as exceptional – such as the increase of the general level of R. Williams, Television, Technology and Cultural Form, Fontana, London, 1974. Jim McGUIGAN, “Reaching for control – Raymond Williams on mass communication and popular culture”, in W. MORGAN and P. PRESTON (eds.), Raymond Williams – Education, Politics and Letters, Macmillan, London, 1992. 3Adrian SEVERIN, Tranziţia către populism [http://www.fisd.ro/PDF/mater_noi/Tranzitia%20catre%20populism.pdf]. 1 2

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education and information of the population– and on the other hand, they indicate the high hazard level whose forms of complacency towards populism or of cohabitation and cooperation with them. Fighting populism cannot be done by taking over […] the populist slogans, themes or methods but by providing with distinct agenda able to inspire the masses and by developing certain different attitudes but which should disengage the same inflexible authenticity that populism is only mimicking”.1

On the other hand, the moral decline and the decrease of the level of confidence in the governing elites, the corruption of social cohesion, the promotion, acceptance or non-critical takeover of some political models may be correlated providing for the populist forces a really remarkable volitional, motivational and action resource, which may become at some point a serious risk for a democratic society2. In the absence of some democratic filters which might protect them from populist attacks, the governments become reactive and more often than not unable to manage the crisis, and populism will not represent only a symptom of a political body in crisis of credibility and legitimacy, but it will open new opportunities for arbitrary authoritarianism, and even for extremism.

Bibliography BRÉCHON, Pierre, Partidele politice, trans. Marta Nora Țărnea & Adina Barvinschi, Eikon, Cluj-Napoca, 2004. COPILAȘ, Emanuel, “Simbolistica politică românească: între populism și cinism”, Sfera Politicii, No. 174, 2013. DRĂMNESCU, Marin, “Educational Psychology. Trends and Developments”, 6th Silk Road International Conference “Globalization and Security in Black and Caspian Seas Region”, București, 2011.

Idem. Marin DRĂMNESCU, “Educational Psychology. Trends and Developments”, 6th Silk Road International Conference “Globalization and Security in Black and Caspian Seas Region”, București, 2011. 1 2

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DRĂMNESCU Marin, “Postmodern Society and Individual Alienation”, Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy, Vol. 16, No. 63, 2013. EDELMAN, Murray, Politica ș i utilizarea simbolurilor, trans. Ruxandra Nichita, Polirom, Iași, 1999. HERMET, Guy, Sociologia populismului, trans. Dan Burcea, Artemis, București, 2007. KERTZER, David, Ritual, politică ș i putere, trans. Sultana Avram & Teodor Fleșeru, Univers, București, 2002. McGUIGAN, Jim, Cultural Populism, Taylor & Francis e-Library, London and New York, 2003. McGUIGAN, Jim, “Reaching for control – Raymond Williams on mass communication and popular culture”, in W. MORGAN and P. PRESTON (eds.), Raymond Williams – Education, Politics and Letters, Macmillan, London, 1992. O’CONNOR, A., Raymond Williams – Writing, Culture and Politics, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1989. OBER, J., The Original Meaning of 'Democracy': Capacity to Do Things, not Majority Rule, Constellations, Stanford University, 2007. ONUF, Nicholas, World of our making. Rules and rule in social theory and international relations, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 1989. ROSS, A., No Respect – Intellectuals and Popular Culture, Routledge, New York & London, 1989.

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ESSAY Authoritarian Populism in Transitional Democracies of Western Balkans Ljubomir Danailov FRCKOSKI Faculty of Law “Iustinianus Primus”, Saints Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje Abstract: The present text is dealing with a new form of populism,

namely authoritarian populism in countries of the Western Balkans. The big picture of reforms processes taking place in some of them in a 10 year period toward the EU enlargement finished with more authoritarianism than democracy. The EU technocratic officials miss the real conclusions in this situation, and turned out to be supporters of the new generation of authoritarian rulers who are impressed more by Putin than EU-values. Brussels‟ conclusion that something is wrong in this region is not followed by a scrupulous analysis of what is going on and in which direction! Bureaucrats generally underestimate the seriousness of authoritarian populism as an “alternative” to democracy in the region. Keywords: authoritarian, populism, democracy, leadership, government

by law.

1. SHORT INTRODUCTION Populism is today an important topic in Europe, in different societies and degrees. In the developed democratic world, such a topic is a topic about the entering of the extreme right in the mainstream politics, like Le Pen in France, Geerd Wilder in the Netherlands, the clownish populism of Berlusconi in Italy, or leftist mushroom populist Pepe‟s movements and others. There, it is a matter of serious pressure on the institutions of democracy (the outcome of which is uncertain). 329


In contrast to that and such a case, authoritarian populism in the countries in transition, especially in the Western Balkans represents a danger of completely warping the young democratic institutions in the very beginning of their establishment. This populism appears as a lethal threat to them and to democracy too, especially a threat to the rule of law and human rights. There are several common themes among these cases of populism from different settings: immigration, minorities (in a word “the others”), nationalism, anti-Europeanism, etc. are not sufficient reasons to ignore the large picture, the substantial difference and power of each of them to individually endanger the institutions of democracy.

2. SHORT HISTORY OF ORIGIN Clear and well-known are the bases on which populism in transitional democracies occurs: The existence of an illiberal society framework, with the burden of communism and single-party culture of statism, often associated with nationalism and bad history towards ethnic minorities and the religious diversity of the “other”; Operating of Irresponsible political elites, which take the easier means of political mobilization on the line of ethnic homogeneity (instead of the civil society context), fear and conspiracies directed toward imaginary-specific enemy, the “other”; On-going economic crisis, corruption, and collective culture of “letting the state solve everything”; Economic markets distorted by the ruling party and state penetration, corruption, and absence of any predictable legal certainty. Absence of entrepreneurship culture and initiatives; Cynicism of the ruling elites towards democratic values, and especially towards values such as human rights and the set of criteria required to come closer to the EU (as their symbol). Their skilful utilization and construction of a complete authoritarian system with “European money”, keeping the rhetoric of “coming closer” (anti-European Europeanism) in a single Limbo; Breaking up of the civil society sector by organized state intrusion in it and filling this sector with division along the lines of patriots and traitors; Obsession with the media and imagined policies of populism - the media are becoming a constitutive part of the organization of power of the authoritarian populism (Giorgio

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Agamben)1; Finally, unclear strategy and tactics of the EU diplomacy towards baking up its own values (especially Copenhagen criteria) during the process of enlargement in transitional countries and hesitancy in the use of coercive diplomacy (more stick than carrots). This hesitation is used by skilful autocrats for developing the culture of cynicism and dissatisfaction with “EU-values” among a broad segment of the population. Also the clientelistic principle of the EU (some of the EU countries) towards the Western Balkans comes to the surface. Finally, there is the easy exploitation of the entire project of enlargement and it being placed under other priorities of the EU. In the region of the Western Balkans, there are different degrees of developed authoritarian populism: from Macedonia, where the system has been completed (in the last 7 years), to Serbia where the elements of the system can be detected in the judiciary, academies, etc... Montenegro, Albania under Berisha‟s rule, Kosovo, and Bosnia too (a broader region of Hungary, Turkey). The global shape of authoritarian populism is hard to spot at a first glance. However, it has penetrated everywhere and therefore a common EU strategy towards this phenomenon is necessary and sustainable. Such a strategy is the only guarantee of the success of real reform in these countries.

3. BACK TO BASIC DEFINITIONS What are the characteristics of the authoritarian populism of the Balkans (should we name it - cannibalistic populism)? Like populism in a broader sense, authoritarian populism is not a concept of coherent policies. It is more like a bag that collects imagined policies. In that sense, it is a patchwork, but it is characterized by a specifically connected political dogma: first, it exploits the thesis that “it is closely related to the people”. That is the key and the connecting tissue of so diverse policies or imagined policies, so that they can be presented in a single party platform.

Giorgio AGAMBEN, Language, Media and Politics, Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication, Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland, 2011, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tfv2Hmj6lE]. 1

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The second part of that political dogma is the well-known anti-intellectualism, in other words: the elites are buried in their own trenches and are corrupt, so “they do not hear” the voice of the people. But carefully, authoritarian leaders of this transitional type are today more shrewd than historical examples, so there populism is fully procedural (by this and in this, it prevents the opposition from attacking, especially the Social-democracy, which is procedural in the history of its creation). This type of populism develops an undemocratic proceduralism (authoritarian or empty proceduralism: Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Giorgio Agamben). Everything is in accordance with the law - and the law is in accordance with them1. It opposes legalism against legitimacy of the law and especially of the Constitution as such. Such type of populism achieves this objective in such a manner that it makes procedures and laws with two combined techniques: The first one is the production of a huge number of laws, and a vast legislation. This legislation is often overlapping and internally controversial - but this has been done so intentionally, so that the instrument of application and interpretation of the laws is in the hands of the administration and only of the administration. Thus, the presumption of innocence and honesty of the citizen disappears. Everybody is “guilty”, as the law is violated by somebody somewhere (Kafkaesque situation), but this guilt has still not been processed and is at the mercy of the administration when it will be done so. The second technique is the vagueness of the key legal norms. What is legal and what is punishable is not clear and things change all the time. Again, the basic demiurge of the implementation of such vagueness legislations is the government and the administration. The ability of such populism to draw European money for legislative projects (and their intensive rhetoric softens toward various Euro-officials claims and suggestions) - and at the same time to remain the same, or to strengthen its authoritarian power,

Slavoj ZIZEK, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology, Verso, London & New York, 1999, pp. 109-148; Alain BADIOU, Alberto TOSCANO, “An Essential Philosophical Thesis: „It Is Right to Rebel against the Reactionaries‟”, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2005, pp. 669-677; Giorgio AGAMBEN, Language, Media and Politics, Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication, Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland, 2011, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tfv2Hmj6lE]. 1

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makes it a cynic as to European values, and Europe as political actor. They use EUofficials focusing on legislation as key weakness and it openly calls for the legitimacy of such fraud. The result is that on the spot we have a double reality. Some kind of sub-rules under which you could only interpret formal rules and informal rules knowing which person could solve everyday problems. Those sub rules matter, and not the formal ones! I could push this argument further and say: the fact that we are talking only of “problems” that these countries have on the path to EU (legislation level) and do not see this double reality of developed authoritarianism – there is the most significant success. The primary purpose of authoritarian populism (something you clearly identify and recognize) is its attack upon the independent institutions of constitutionalism (the Constitution). Here, it is lethally consistent. Authoritarian leaders with institutions create “room of mirrors”, or “room of echoes”, destroying the independent position of the institutions and make them movable mirrors that portray and reflect the shape of the leader towards each of them. There is total arbitrariness in their operation based on party-leader instructions. A separate devastating attack is made (and completed in Macedonia) on the judiciary. The judiciary is completely partisan and highly unqualified. The Constitutional Court is also a special target of such devastation. In brief, as Alain Badiou would say, it is a matter of dreadful misunderstanding of the procedure and its meanings, which should be the rule of law1. The second clear difference of this regional authoritarianism from historical predecessors is the very obsession with the media. Since we have said that its policies are “simulacrums”, finally they depend on their display to the public (rather than accomplishment). That is why the media is a key tool to this policy. Here the media (according to Agamben) is not only an instrument of the government, but also a constitutive pillar of the power of such a government. Through them, the power is consolidated and carried into effect2.

1

Alain BADIOU, “We Need a Popular Discipline: Contemporary Politics and the Crisis of the Negative”,

Critical Inquiry, Vol. 34, No. 4, 2008, pp. 645-659 and Alain BADIOU, Alberto TOSCANO, “An Essential Philosophical Thesis…cit.”. 2 Giorgio AGAMBEN, Language, Media and Politics…cit.

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Hence, proponents of such populism are so preoccupied with the freedom and control of all possible media. They do not make any compromises whatsoever. Here there should be the strongest EU counter-game. Next, authoritarian populism does not believe in elections, even though it is obsessed with them and turns everything into election campaign (election paradox). It believes only in its verification at the elections and in no other results whatsoever, and especially not in the plurality of options and alternatives. Hence, it is so obsessed with abuse of the police at elections, electoral lists, corruption, and blackmail of the administration at elections, and with other electoral fraudulent activities. In transitology, there is the thesis that in transitional countries, after 4 electoral rounds, the electoral culture will be probably consolidated. In our examples after 14 electoral rounds – they still have not developed electoral culture. In order to attain success in this objective, this populism generates the next dangerous phenomenon. It occupies the public space and fully contaminates it with partisan, abrasive speech - creating permanent lines of division of and among the citizens (and even when it is not necessary) along party lines that become bloodthirsty. The public space is completely “under adrenaline” being in a constantly conflictive situation. The regime channels this adrenalin and controls/directs toward detecting traitors and spies, while appealing at the same time for the organic unity of the people under its leadership. The system is turned fully into a majoritarianism, which is not a democracy, and especially not the rule of law. At this point, the authoritarian populism in the Balkans aims to repeat the position, as defined by Carl Schmitt, for the people as non-political mass that strives towards organic unity (the Lacanian lost object) - a unity which has an ideal object, a “zero point” somewhere in the past, when the entire nation had “been together” in harmony. That place has been lost and with the help of the dictator, it should be brought back. In this respect, authoritarian populism is anti-liberal, anti-individualistic and antidemocratic, irrational, culturally regressive – zombifying. The governing party of authoritarian populism aims (if it has been successful) to convert itself into a movement of such lost unity of the nation. It is a classic example, according to Agamben, of the crisis of democracy and the policy and implementation of Schmitt‟s thesis about the people as a non-political formation who have a corporate state.

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Their main action in that position is to search for and eradicate enemies outside and inside1. What I consider the most dangerous element of the authoritarian populism of the Balkans is its ability to create its own people, i.e., not to depend on the free will of the voters, but to create its own voters as such. Through violence and fear, conspiracy theories, preparing its own people-victim of neighbouring countries – it penetrates and transforms violence and repression into “values” (like in the movie “The Alien” in the intestines of the stuffed segment of the individual-mob- people). It enables the reproduction of populism on longer term. Notably, such populism manages to sell its own story connecting it with history and with fear (the fear of the lost unity)2. Such populism makes this, by definition and formula, by searching for roots in the past, with a policy of selective, most often forged memories. The power of that operation should not be underestimated! (Let me remind you of the text by Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever, 1996)3. The intention is to re-interpret history in order to get verification of the role of authoritarianism presently and in the future. Control over the archives and books used in education gives it power in the context of re-reading and re-assessing history4. Authoritarian populism produces a particular flashback in history. Most often than not it is done in the context of a remote past (it skips recent history) and such populism requires the establishment of a zero point at the starting unity of the nation which has been lost (Lacanian lost object)5. It produces political mythology (the examples of Gruevski, Orban, and Erdogan) into two controversial myths: the heroic myth and the myth of the victim (all Balkan nations have such a logic of a victimized nation, not willing to compromise, they are harsh with minorities, and subject to manipulation about conspiracies). History has been cut into pieces and it has been decided which of them will be considered important and glorified as the ultimate fantasy. Such history must make Giorgio AGAMBEN, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1998, p. 72. 2 Daniele ALBERTAZZI, Duncan McDONNELL (eds.), Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2008, p. 219. 3 Jacques DERRIDA, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression , Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1996, p. 4. 4 Ibidem. 5 Ernesto LACLAU, On Populist Reason, Verso, London, New York, 2005, pp. 67-119. 1

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discontinuity with everything previous and be based on the “zero point” of the said national harmony somewhere in the remotest past. Then, from that point in history, there is a construction of a mystic bridge connecting such a point with the heroic dictatorship of today as a continuation or revival of that heroic age. This is the construction, the product which is the ideological basis of authoritarian populism and which is being sold, in the meantime, to the crushed and intimidated citizen. (In the case of Erdogan, it is going back to the long-ago glorious sultans; in the case of Orban, it is a historic leap backwards, via the Habsburgs, to the Asian four ancestors of the Hungarian tribes; for Gruevski, it means antiquity and Alexander the Great). Quite interesting, all these examples of phantasm have an anti-European flavour. None of them is of European history (which exists with their nations respectively). The orientation is toward some pure and heroic primordial civilization that created them out of nothing (ab nihilo) - such examples of phantasm contain contempt towards the present European discourse. They repeat the sidelined dream for “penetration into the whore of Babylon, Europe”, crushing it, showing the proper place, and getting what is deserved (a classic pornographic dream). Let me conclude. Authoritarian populism is dangerous because of its ability to reproduce inside people, through crime and repression (trading democracy and freedom for safety), the “values” of a zombified individual and zombified mob. Thus, the proponents of this populism secure “their own people” and hence their own (political) reproduction. The first result of this trend is peoples‟ dissatisfaction and disconnection from the “EU values” they show on public polls and elections. Thus, an absurd situation is created: there exists the regime and its dark, perverted side (which the regime itself produces). There is no credible democratic alternative. Rulers of this kind are selling their policy surprisingly successfully to Eurocrats working together on the policy of enlargement!? They find the fabulous G-point of EU policy-fears in the region of the Western Balkans: security before democracy. In addition, the result is the stabilocracy of the authoritarian rulers, too long tolerated to abuse the rights of their own people and which developed itself into a system of autocratic populism – challenged EU values - policy in a substance. An important number of EU officials working on the Western Balkans are obviously unable to construct from the data they collect a better global picture of how 336


the entire autocratic machine works. They are not “cold administrators” but naive benefactors who move around like elephants in a porcelain store.

4. WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS? What could be the exit strategy of the EU, faced with such a development of events? The first thing I must say is that this “new strategy‟‟ does not demand more money from those now spent, by the EU and it does not demand any further human resources. However, it certainly demands a better knowledge of what it is happening

“down below” and a better plan! The EU should seriously take into consideration its own values that it promotes and demands to be achieved by the candidate countries. It is OK to grant time for adaptation, but it is not OK to make rotten compromises on substantial points. That especially means the first packet of Copenhagen criteria. These values will be taken seriously, if the EU keeps open this first packet until the very end of the enlargement of a particular country. From the previous experience it is clear that criteria are very hard to fulfil in reality (especially rule of law, freedom of expressions, independence of the judiciary, basics of the merit system in administration...). That needs a permanent enhanced plan for monitoring the reforms and a new plan for aid and for intervention in some of them. In my opinion, a few hot spots: freedom of expression and of the media; autonomy of the judiciary and of all independent control bodies; merit system in the state administration – included new methodology of interventions: possibility to consider judiciary board for the selection of judges and implementation standards, intervention in commissions for recruitment in administration, special monitoring, freedom of media and missuses of budget money for pre elections campaigning, etc.). In relation to this particular segment of reforms, the EU must not make any compromises whatsoever. The EU should even blackmail, make pressure, get involved, penalize, and finally kick out, if necessary. That means the conditionality approach must be improved and enhanced with a better prioritization of controlling issues and, secondly,

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strict monitoring and control: what is the reality of the implementation of new proEuropean legislature in a particular country? Additionally, the EU needs to offer (sometimes to insist on accepting) support to these countries in a form of soft arbitration, insisting that sovereignty means serving the citizens of the country, not authoritarian regimes.

Bibliography AGAMBEN, Giorgio, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1998. AGAMBEN, Giorgio, Language, Media and Politics, Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland, 2011, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tfv2Hmj6lE]. ALBERTAZZI, Daniele, Duncan McDONNELL (eds.), Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2008. ARDITI, Benjamin, Politics on the Edges of Liberalism: Difference, Populism, Revolution, Agitation, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2007. BADIOU, Alain, “We Need a Popular Discipline: Contemporary Politics and the Crisis of the Negative”, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 34, No. 4, 2008, pp. 645-659. BADIOU, Alain, Alberto TOSCANO, “An Essential Philosophical Thesis: „It Is Right to Rebel against the Reactionaries‟”, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2005, pp. 669-677. BETZ, Hans-Georg, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe, St Martin‟s Press, New York, 1994. BETZ, Hans-Georg, Stefan IMMERFALL (eds.), The New Politics of the Right: NeoPopulist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies, Palgrave Macmillan, USA, 1998. CAPUTO, John D., The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion, Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 1997. 338


DE RAADT, Jasper, David HOLLANDERS, Andre KROUWE, “Varieties of Populism”, paper prepared for the panel “Populism and the New Europe” at the ECPR Second Pan-European Conference on EU Politics, Implications of A Wider Europe: Politics, Institutions and Diversity, Bologna, Italy, 24-26 June 2004. DERRIDA, Jacques, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1996. HELD, Joseph (ed.), Populism in Eastern Europe: Racism, Nationalism and Society, East European Monographs, Columbia University Press, 1996. KUZMINSKI, Adrian, Fixing the System: A History of Populism, Ancient and Modern, Continuum International Publishing Group, London & New York, 2008. LACLAU, Ernesto, On Populist Reason, Verso, London, New York, 2005. LACLAU, Ernesto, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism, New Left Books, London, 1977. MANOFF, Marlene, “Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines”, Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 4, No.1, 2004, pp. 9-25. McGUIGAN, Jim, Cultural Populism, Routledge, New York, 2003. McKIM, Robert, Jeff McMAHAN (eds.), The Morality of Nationalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997. MEYER, Thomas, Media Democracy: How the Media Colonize Politics, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2002. MOORE, Margaret, The Ethics of Nationalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001. PANIZZA, Francisco (ed.), Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, Verso, London, 2005. POSTEL, Charles, The Populist Vision, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009. RICOEUR, Paul, Memory History, Forgetting, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2004. RORTY, Richard, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007. ROSZAK, Theodore, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition, Anchor Books, New York, 1969. SARAT, Austin, Thomas R. KEARNS (eds.), Cultural Pluralism, Identity Politics and the Law, University of Michigan Press, USA, 1999.

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TAGGART, A. Paul, Populism: Concepts in the Social Sciences, Open University Press, Buckingham, 2000. VOSLOO Robert, “Archiving Otherwise: Some Remarks on Memory and Historical Responsibility”, Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2005, pp. 379-399. ZIZEK, Slavoj, Living in the End Times, Verso, London, 2010. ZIZEK, Slavoj, O Nasilju , Ljevak, Zagreb, 2008. ZIZEK, Slavoj, O Verovanju, Algoritam, Zagreb, 2005. ZIZEK, Slavoj, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology, Verso, London & New York, 1999.

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BOOK REVIEWS Daniele ALBERTAZZI, Duncan MCDONNELL (eds.),

Twenty-First Century Populism. The Spectre of Western European Democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2008, 264 pp.

Twenty-First Century Populism. The Spectre of Western European Democracy looks at The

volume

the familiar sight of democratic exposure to populism with an intricate, non-selective, visionary guise. The claims of influence that populism undertakes upon the democratic experiment in Western Europe are not becoming softer during the current unveilings. Moreover, they are becoming ill-perceived. For the democratic experiment, populism has also become an innovative voice. The democratic patchwork in Western Europe has usually been left aside in populist comparative studies, as the chapters of this volume indicate. Could this be a new cultural engagement that the democratic road is taking or is it, moreover, a pathology that has not been treated adequately, more like reexamined, but this time it is evaluated for the causes, and not for the effects?

The authors are carefully examining in this book the role and the contributions of the manifold factors that have been in the background of the emerging loot that populism has been taking in current domestic politics all over Western Europe1. The situation that triggered the rise of populism in Western Europe, as the authors of this volume admit, was like a barely-controlled chaos as far as the inherent legitimacy of the political class was concerned: “The rise of populism in Western Europe is, in large part, a reaction to the failure of traditional parties to respond adequately in the eyes of the electorate to a series of phenomena such as economic and cultural globalization, the speed and Western Europe has not been approached in an interchangeable relation with the rise of populism in other comparative populist studies, as the mainstream perspectives for such a turnout seemed rather nul. For this reason (but not exclusively!), this book is entitled to a more enhanced scientific repository effect. 1

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direction of European integration, immigration, the decline of ideologies and class politics, exposure of elite corruption, etc. It is also the product of a much-cited, but rarely defined, „political malaise‟, manifested in steadily falling turnouts across Western Europe, declining party memberships, and ever-greater numbers of citizens in surveys citing a lack of interest and distrust in politics and politicians” (p. 1). The systemic barriers that have been impeding the proliferation of populism are now being under a process of consistent dissolution. Within this perception, the media has sent off an enormous part. Populism has an antisystem message: anti-political parties, anti- political representatives1, antisource of political participation. The practice and ideas, that have been accompanying the populist motility,

An insidious understanding of the people's right and unaltered desirability to be represented by their own agency, which has become more dependable than the representation through others. In this line of reasoning, the supporting utility of politicians is considered contraproductive. Politicians tend to follow their own narrowminded interests and coalesce them into antisocial, immoral actions. This is why the people have to repossess the ability to represent its interests. 1

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have been finding a strong connection with a large basin of disappointed voters. Currently, the process of such a strong causal relationship has found a unique, unprecedented encounter. The electoral behavior is denoting an upsurge of populist orientation. The chiefly increasing number of partisans is an open invitation to re-assess democracy as an effectual ideology, that has found a stimulating capacity to prove its functionality. Capitalizing from the issue of combined national and extra-national fears regarding the processes of trans-border citizenship, from the prevalent effects of migrations and other conducive mechanisms of globalization, but also from the failure encountered by the political elites to deliver the expected results to the electorate, populism is lacerating in a place where old wounds still prevail. Divided in fourteen chapters, the volume, to a vital degree, brings forward the idea of populism as a mission of redemption of the democratic experiment, that bushels the innermost attribute of choice back to the people2. The sense of soverignty lost is a permanent reminder of the fixing implications that populism can have upon democracy and its real-time kernel: people's degree of choice – which is supposed to be unaltering by other social 2


In the first chapter, which stands as the opening section of the volume, Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell underline the virtual peculiarities of the populist ideology: the people are an indivisible entity and the people‟s choice is not a subject to a morality scan (this choice is simply considered the right one), the people aim to exert an absolute sovereignty, other specific conditions, like: people‟s way of life, and people`s culture are of paramount importance, the leader of the party or the populist political movement strikes a sense of total identification with the people (being one and the same with the people, sovereignty can at last be restored)1. The second chapter is preoccupied with a conceptual pinpointing of the terminology – the people. In this regard, Gianfranco Pasquino uses the Gettysburg address and the certifications of the US constitution in order to better grasp the

structures involved in the purposeful manifestations of the act of choice, expressed as such by the people. 1 A status of interposition between the grave and deepening edeges of discontent with the governmental outcomes, as derived from the electoral processes, and of the disbelief that any other remedy would actually work.

term2. Paquino remonstrates the elusive character of democracy. In one way or another, this elusiveness has been translated in the field of the terminology: the people. Pasquino‟s study is quite important for the objective of blocking the resurgence of over-idealization of the term – the people –something which, in fact, is exactly what populism does: “Successful contemporary democracies combine a precise definition of the rights of citizens, including the right of association, which is usually translated into the formation of political parties able and willing to compete according to precise political and electoral rules, alongside representative and governmental institutions. It is important to underline that, Populism and Democracy in liberal democracies, even the will of the people is subject to constitutional limitations” (pp. 18-19). Alfio Mastropaolo deals in chapter 3 with the synthesis between the populist withdrawal and the populist breakthrough. Mastropaolo introduces 2A

problem –or better still a confusion –would issue if the terminology would continue acting in a self-serving manner. The people is one conceptual underpinning of democracy. Pasquino downgrades it to signify the citizens of a state, that exercise both a juridical and forms of nonjuridical connection with the state in question.

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an analysis of the manner in which populist parties have beginning to penetrate the political discourse and why the extreme-right labelling (with the hierarchical subordination of collective groups to the state) is sheltering an inbuilding typology of populist 1 propaganda . Mastropaolo confers the acclaim that populism is not all antisystem2. Instead, populism is revolutionary, by trying to bring democracy to its organic efficiency and mainstay. Another very important implication is that populist parties are often anti-intellectual3. This trait is semi-pervasive, but this is a matter of factuality when analyzing populist parties and the populist political discourse. Gianpetro Mazzoleni dissects the relation of congruity between the media and populism in chapter 4. The author delineates how the media makes use of its power and purpose of critique in order to enhance its public role. Some media suffers a metamorphosis into an

Mastropaolo does not make a critique of the populist parties. Hsi argument is quite balanced in extracting the main distinctive features of populism. 2 As rendered by Giovani Sartori. 3 With reference to the democratic experiment in Germany during the Weimar era. 1

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entity with populist features. Other media does not suffer such a transformation. In addition to this, there is a type of media that integrates the populist agenda not in order to gain audience, but rather in order to produce an immoral alliance within a structure of media partisanship with the political parties, or within a framework of media sponsorship by the political parties. In chapter 5, Reinhard Heinisch induces a screening of the structure and agency of the Austrian populism. He contends that populism can be understood as mass mobilization, on the one hand, and as opportunism and political expediency, on the other hand (p. 67). Heinisch describes the Austrian model of populism as having been initially centered on de-germanization, and then, further on, on the collective feeling of vulnerability that the Austrian nation has managed to procure during the post-war years (p. 72). Marco Tarchi canvases in chapter 6 populism and its self-fulfilling mission Italy. He entails that in order: ”to understand the underlying causes of the populist wave that inundated Italian politics in the 1990s, we need to take a long-term perspective in order to identify the contribution of (a) the particular structural factors facilitating


this sudden growth, such as the widespread and deep distrust of the political class and (b) the actions of individuals who have deployed populist arguments and stereotypes, with the aim of building a new electoral space or extending an already-existing one” (p. 86). The same rejection of establishment practices and the marketing of a new type of politics – untainted by traditional politics – has produced heterogeneous types of populism which have furnished plenty of terrain to flourish. In chapter 7, the Swiss model of populism is kept into description, despite the fact that this model strives in non-violence and scalar affability within society. As remarked by Daniele Albertazzi, despite of the different tools utilized for the purpose of consolidating direct democracy1, the Swiss model has also been characterized by the deficiency of the government to compromise the highly-mustered electoral expectations. The German model – exposed in chapter 8 by Frank Decker – is focalized around the obtrusive fact that there is not a powerful, moderate rightwing political force (p. 120). As observed, populist parties emerge when The compulsory referendum, the optional referendum and the initiative. 1

modernity is in crisis. In Germany, the political arena is characterized by an openness of the structure of political competition that has still nurtured an important degree of legitimacy of partyocracy. Chapter 9 elaborates, through the work of Jens Rydgren, an explanatory discussion of the manner in which populism has found avenues of prevailing in Sweden: “The main reasons behind the sudden emergence of New Democracy lie in the fact that a new area of opportunity for populists had opened up among the Swedish electorate: the anti-immigration niche within a developing socio-cultural dimension. The party was lso helped by a general shift to the right in the socio-economic sphere and by the emergence of a pure protest dimension” (p. 137). The antiimmigration influence upon the cohesiveness of cultural identity is one of the most important pillars developed by the populist propaganda, as in other parts of Europe. De-alignment and realignment, as well as the dynamism of the identity-interests matrix of the social groups identified in Sweden, are undisputed forces in the emerging populist propaganda. Paul Lucardie signals in chapter 10 the fragmented

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political and administrative system of Netherlands and the accompanying effect of pillarization upon populism gushing. In chapter 11, Jens Rydgren summarizes the veritable, on-going, reappearance of ethno-nationalism in France, as an affliction, that cannot disappear completely and one of the activating mechanisms of populism. Stefano Fella circumscribes in chapter 12 the British model as encompassing dormant elements of the imperial legacy, but who found means of eloquent reflection in the thatcherite and postthatcherite scintilla. The check and balances mechanism does not arise from a written constitution. However, surprisingly, the British populism is not entirely anti-establishment as, especially during the Thatcherite period, economic elites were held in a centripetal relation with the populist approach. In chapter 13, Duncan McDonnell identifies the modest badge of successes that

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populism had in Ireland. De-alignment, in fact, is beginning to strike back in Ireland forcefully, although not in the same degree as in the rest of Europe, and in potential, unrecognizable manifestations. Chapter 14 is a final account of the editors of this book, where the fact that democracy has not been able to appease as much partisanship as in the past, is duly noted as an inciting actuation of the prolonging upshots of populism in Western European democracies. All things fee-tailed, populism is not a factor of limited inheritance in the democracies of Europe, as one may superfluously engage in admitting. It has found a worrying center line of engendering and is up-staging thoroughly the competing buttonholes. Ioana-Bianca BERNA LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe


Jean-Michel DE WAELE (ed.),

Partis politiques et démocratie en Europe centrale et orientale [Political Parties and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe], Éditions de l‟Université de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, 2002, 288 pp.

Edited by Jean-Michel De Waele, as the result of an international symposium organized by the Group of Socio-Political Analysis of Countries from the Central and Eastern Europe (GASPPECO) and by the Centre for the Study of Political Life (CEVIPOL) – both belonging to the Free University of Brussels –, this volume, Partis politiques

et démocratie en Europe centrale et orientale, stands for a comparative analysis of European new democracies, for a large study of parties seen as vehicles of democracy. It could be considered a study of the strengths and, particularly, of the weaknesses of the new political environments established after ‟89-‟91 (the weak territorial organization, the political and ideological incoherence, the lack of sustainable programs, the extreme electoral volatility, the modest social base of parties, the corruption, the clientelism, the exaggerated demagoguery, etc.). Although it is not recent, we consider that, given its subject and the geographical area it

handles, the book could offer an interesting overview on the contexts of populism emergence and its diverse metamorphoses, contexts amply discussed by the contributors to the current Journal issue. In the first chapter of the volume, “The study of political parties in Central Europe” (« L‟étude des partis politiques en Europe centrale », pp. 917), Jean-Michel De Waele, Petia Gueorguieva and Sorina Soare explain this scientific demarche and, without adopting a holistic vision, succeed to avoid the two important dangers that, according to De Waele, comparative studies entail, i.e. the particularism (focusing on the specificities of the former communist countries) and the Occidental centrism (based on a permanent comparison to the Western model)1. Being a good connoisseur of Jean-Michel De Waele discussed this thesis at several conferences held at the Institute of Polical Research of the University of Bucharest in the 2000s. 1

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the historical regional differences between East and West, De Waele identifies important points of convergence between the political parties in CEE and those of Western countries. According to him, both categories of parties and the scenes on which they compete are not so different as we might think and, in order to sustain this assumption, he gives two simple examples – the Romanian elections of 2000 and those held in France two years later, when the leaders of the extreme right (Corneliu Vadim Tudor, from PRM, and Jean-Marie Le Pen, from FN) were able to get a great success. But De Waele, as well as other authors in the volume, seems to become very precautious when he arrives to the interpretation of these mirroring situations. In his chapter, Daniel-Louis Seiler also notes the need for extreme caution with regard to the reasoning by analogy in the matter we call “EastWest”. In the chapter entitled “The Electoral Geography of East Central Europe” (« La géographie électorale de l‟Europe centre-orientale », pp. 17-35), Christian Vandermotten and Pablo Medina Lockhart differentiate between the major political families in the region, propose a typology of national party 348

systems and identify the sets of electoral preferences at the national level. Observing, inter alia, that “the Romanian social-democratic voting [...] strongly opposes the old Romania, Moldova and Wallachia [...], to Transylvania, Banat and Dobruja”, the authors conclude: “the social democratic vote for Iliescu appears [...] more typical for a neo-communist geography than for a social democratic geography” (p. 30). The authors limit their research to the differentiation of the major tendencies, they do not explain neither the (in)stability of voting behaviours, nor the observed differences (mainly between Transylvania and the other Romanian regions). For better understanding the continuities between the inter-wars years and the period after „89, Petia Gueorguieva invites us to analyse “The role of political parties in Central and Eastern Europe in the inter-wars period” (« Le rôle des partis politiques en Europe centrale et orientale dans l‟entre-deux-guerres », pp. 35-55). This chapter is part of a larger series of studies trying to establish links between the two periods that were brutally separated by le mal du siècle, the communism, and to repair – somehow – the history of Central and Eastern


Europe and its memory. After the Second World War, the political distance between the two major regions of Europe has inevitably deepened and that because of a new East-West differentiation factor: the “real socialism”. Among other factors, Gueorguieva adds: the long period of foreign domination, the economic backwardness, the electoral fraud and manipulation of the vote. According to the author, the short periods of parliamentary democracy that Central and Eastern Europe has known during the inter-wars years were not sufficient for the formation of stable political parties. Sorina Soare‟s chapter, “About the anti-communists (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania)” (« Des anticommunistes (Tchéquie, Pologne, Hongrie, Roumanie) », pp. 55-71), starts from an analysis of the use of the word “anti-communist” (a word which, without doubts, has made a beautiful career immediately after the fall of the communist regimes) and of the “anticommunist” discourse in the four countries mentioned above. A certain number of those calling themselves “anti-communists”, as the author shows, have a definite goal to win the electoral support and to become popular on the

political scene. Some of them are true dissidents, others – reconverted communists. The case of the Bulgarian Communist Party, BKP, transformed into a Socialist Party, BSP, is illustrative in this regard. Dobrin Kanev wrote an entire chapter about this interesting case, “The transformation of the Bulgarian Communist Party” (« La transformation du parti communiste bulgare », pp. 83-101). Another similar case is presented by Bruno Drweski: “From the „labour‟ party to the „democratic left‟. The metamorphoses of a Polish ruling party (1989-2001)” («Du parti „ouvrier‟ à la „gauche démocratique‟. Les métamorphoses d‟un parti de pouvoir polonais (1989-2001)» (pp. 71-83). Analysing “The party systems in Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary” (« Les systèmes de partis en République tchèque, en Pologne et en Hongrie », pp. 101-115), Miroslav Novák finds out that these states have reached an important stage of development, especially after the experience accumulated during the first three free elections, and that they finally succeeded to cross the long way from “parliamentarisation” to a relative stabilisation. One could consider this evolution as one of the factors

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increasing the comparability with the Western European parties. As Daniel-Louis Seiler demonstrated in his study, “Can we apply Rokkan‟s cleavages to the Central Europe?” (« Peut-on appliquer les clivages de Rokkan à l‟Europe Centrale? », pp. 115-145), the influence of the past on the systems of political competition continues to be decisive and, implicitly, the Rokkan‟s paradigm cannot be applied to the former communist countries without major adjustments. Studying these countries, the author observes that, except the four fundamental cleavages (centre vs. periphery, urban vs. rural, Church vs. State primary sector vs. secondary sector), two new divisions are emerging in CEECs. They are the result of a dual process of transition, opposing, on the territorial axis, the post-communist to democrats and, on the functional axis, the maximalists to minimalists. The discussion about cleavages is reopened by Jean-Michel De Waele, in his chapter “Democratic consolidation, parties and cleavages in the Central Europe” (« Consolidation démocratique, partis et clivages en Europe centrale », pp. 145-161). The author considers that a major Revolution that has not occurred in the Western region (namely 350

the real socialism), therefore specific to CEECs, compels us to rethink Rokkan‟s conceptual map. In a subsequent research performed together with Roger Antoine on the same subject, JeanMichel De Waele will propose a new differentiation between directional, categorial and referential cleavages. While the categorial cleavage becomes observable when “the gap between several categories of population widens”, the directional and referential cleavages form on the field on which the directions/decisions are taken by the political parties and on which the symbols related to identity are used for “motivating or denouncing the status of collectivities in relation with the dominant power”1. These are important nuances that, according to the author, are to be taken into account in the analysis of post-communist political systems. György G. Márkus, in the chapter “The typology of political

Jean-Michel DE WAELE, Antoine ROGER, « La formation des clivages partisans en Europe centrale et orientale », in Jean-Michel DE WAELE (éd.), Les clivages politiques en Europe centrale et orientale, Éditions de l‟Université de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, 2004, pp. 11-30. 1


cleavages in Central and Eastern Europe, an example for the West? The Hungarian case” (« La typologie des clivages politiques en Europe centrale et orientale, un exemple pour l‟Occident? Le cas hongrois », pp. 161-173) examines three broad categories of cleavages (cultural, structural and socioeconomic). This is a non-rokkanian typology. In the academic literature dedicated to structural cleavages, there are several classifications. Thus, Douglas Rae and Michael Taylor first differentiate between basic (or sociodemographic), attitudinal and behavioural cleavages. Scott Flanagan writes about the segmental, cultural and economic-functional cleavages. Mattei Dogan presents two other categories of cleavages, different by nature and by the intensity of their effects: vertical vs. horizontal cleavages. In the chapter “Enlargement and democratic consolidation” (« Élargissement et consolidation démocratique », pp. 187-205), Nicolas Levrat tries to determine the effects of the enlargement on the democratic consolidation in CEECs. It handles, among other issues, the delay in the process of consolidation of democratic practices, the external conditionality, the acquis communautaire, etc. The author

comes to the conclusion that the enlargement and the related factors are not sufficient for the consolidation of democratic institutions; the national management also plays a very important role. These issues are also discussed by Antoine Roger, the author of the chapter “The impact of external constraint on the positioning of political parties in Central and Eastern Europe” (« L‟incidence de la contrainte externe sur le positionnement des partis politiques en Europe centrale et orientale », 173-187). Antoine Roger highlights and explains three core functions that the parties perform in relation with the “international creditors and the European Union”: “the function of demonstration”, “the function of rupture” and the “planning function”. Signed by Daniel Barbu, the last chapter included in this volume proposes a return to the moment when the single party lost its power. The author notes that the transition was not accompanied, as it would have been necessary, by the dismantling of the old political and legal order. Moreover, the parties took over supra legem the power to implement the law. The new politicallegal construction of the people (the

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people whose vote is nothing else than a symbolic gesture) is also, implicitly, put into question by the author. Daniel Barbu criticizes the Romanian case where ministerial responsibility is absent, where most legislative acts are urgency ordinances issued by the government, and where the Constitutional Court ignores this shameful practice. This “dejuridicisation of the State” (or confiscation of the State by the partitocracy) is also considered as part of the totalitarian legacy. This collective volume is part of a major series of publications that the researchers affiliated to the former GASPPECO or the current CEVIPOL have devoted to social and political realities of CEECs. Each of these studies contributes to a better understanding of post-communist political space and, perhaps, to a better learning of the democracy. “Learning democracy, going from dirigism to the market economy, avoiding the nationalist temptation and, above all, integrating into Europe: these are almost superhuman tasks for the bloodless, demoralized, impoverished

populations” – François Fejtö and Ewa Kulesza-Mietkowski (p. 115)1.

Andreea ZAMFIRA LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe

Quotation in Daniel-Louis SEILER, « Peut-on appliquer les clivages de Rokkan à l‟Europe Centrale ? », in Jean-Michel DE WAELE (éd.), 1

Partis politiques et démocratie en Europe centrale et orientale, Éditions de l‟Université de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, 2002, pp. 115-145.

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Pierre MANENT,

Rațiunea națiunilor: Reflecții asupra democrației în Europa [Democracy Without Nations:The Fate of Self-Government in Europe], trans. Cristian Preda, Nemira, București, 2007, 115 pp.

Pierre Manent (born 1949) teaches political philosophy at École des

hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Assistant to Raymond Aron, Pierre Manent has made a valuable contribution to the redescovery of the works of important french liberal thinkers (Benjamin Constant, François Guizot and particularly Alexis de Tocqueville) at the

Centre de recherche politiques Raymond Aron. He is also the author of many works on history and the theory of liberalism and democracy. Were translated into Romanian the following books: An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Humanitas, 1991), The City of Man (Babel, 1998), Modern Liberty and its Discontents (Nemira, 2000), A

World beyond Politics?: A Defense of the Nation-State (Humanitas, 2003) and Democracy Without Nations: The Fate of Self-Government in Europe (Nemira, 2007). In Democracy

Without Nations: The Fate of Self-Government in Europe, Pierre Manent addresses

themes such as democracy, nation and religion from a political and philosophical point of view, by studying various phenomena which had a significant political impact over time and by debating theories of great political philosophers, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Leo Strauss and Raymond Aron. In the first part of the book, the author develops the idea that citizens of occidental democracies are driven by a strong sentiment of “human likeness”. He considers that this order, in which we are required to “see the other as the same as ourselves” (p. 12) has different forms depending on the two versions of the “democratic empire”: the American and the European. The American vision is characterized by the preservation of nations and the predisposition towards using force in order to impose the democratic values. On the contrary, the European democracy is based on a “central human agency” (p. 14), which has gradually detached from a certain

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territory and a certain people, leading to the creation of a kratos without demos. The both versions have in common the vision of a world in which no collective difference is significant. This perception, considers Manent, has lead, along with some other factors, to the weakening of the European nations. In the chapter entitled Democracy, the author starts from the definition given by Tocqueville (democracy as the “equality of conditions”) and presents the successive versions of democracy until its actual form. Manent imagines a series of concentric circles within circles arranged on a temporal axis. The first circle, considered to be representative for the social question, stretches from 1848 – the year of the Manifesto of the Communist Party – until 1968, when the class struggle ceased and democracy was established. The second circle is represented by the tocquevillian period, beginning in 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and ending on 11th of September 2001 and is marked by the sovereignty of the people. The third stage, of the sovereign nation-state, is opened by the publication of the Hobbes’s Leviathan in 1651.

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Another concept examined in this chapter is that of the sovereign state, which represents the “necessary political condition of the equality of conditions” (p. 29). If the modern state was founded on the alliance between individual rights and public authority, we witness nowadays the “empowerment of rights”, which eventually leads to the collapse of the sovereign state. Pierre Manent considers that this process is best illustrated by the abolition of the death penalty in European states. He returns to the theories of the state of nature as conceived by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and, using political and moral arguments, concludes that the United States is still a sovereign state, while the European countries have lost this attribute once they agreed with the abolition of the death penalty. In the second part of the book, The Nation, the author examines the events of September 11, which changed the perspective on what was thought to be a worldwide tendency towards unification. The attacks revealed that the differences between us are more significant than we thought and that neither the instruments of commerce, nor a common language


could establish effective communication between people. As for the longevity of the nation-state, Pierre Manent notices that the European nations were able to “reinvent” themselves with the help of two political artifices: the sovereign state and the representative government, “which have allowed the accommodation of huge masses within an order of civilization and liberty”. Nowadays, we witness the replacement of these political forms with two postWorld War II artifices: the European Union and the welfare state. The author considers that the European Union has changed its meaning, from a common project of the European nations to something that has detached from the national political bodies and without a concrete purpose. Regarding the welfare state, a distinction is made between the concepts of “government” and “governance”, the latter tending to replace the representative government in a state whose mission is to guarantee both the liberal rights (private property and freedom of action) and the social rights: “Embracing democratic “values,” we have forgotten the meaning of democracy, its political meaning, which is

self-government. The time of enlightened despotism has returned – a sum of agencies, administrations, courts of justice, and commissions that lay down the law – or, better, rules – for us more and more meticulously.” (p. 66)

The rest of the chapter brings into question the admission of Turkey to the European Union. This situation has been made possible by the way in which the European Union has expanded. With the admission of the Great Britain in 1973, the question of the candidates changed from “Why?” to “Why not? By what right do you leave us waiting at the door?” (p. 69). But the candidates proved to have different intentions and sometimes lacked sincerity, which led to general dissatisfaction among the member states. Pierre Manent believes that the European nations’ decision is highly influenced by the fact that Turkey is a Muslim country. In this case, we must relearn how to approach religion from a political point of view. Pierre Manent’s ideas regarding religion from a political perspective can be found in the third chapter of the book. A subjective approach to religion leads to the debate between those who foresee a “renaissance” of religion and those who 355


announce its decline. An objective analysis of this phenomenon is only possible insofar as we perceive it as a political fact. The author believes that the present world is organized according to political polarities which extend over religious divisions and the best example in this case is the conflict between the Christian West and Islam. This has been partially amplified by the Islam’s inability to find a suitable political structure. Although the Empire was the political form specific to Islam – materialized in the Ottoman Empire – the abolition of the caliphate by Mustafa Kemal gave birth to an empire without an emperor. The next pages of the book are dedicated to the discussion of the Jewish question and the impact that Zionism has had on the European identity. Manent claims that the Jewish state forces Europeans to see how “empty, hollow and vain is any humanism that claims to detach itself wholly from all responsibility toward or for a particular people, or from any distinctive view of the human good” (p.

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105). Thus, he urges the European nations to reveal their Christian character, while preserving the secular state. Pierre Manent’s incisive reflections on democracy and the European construction represent a firm recommendation to reconsider the principles of the European Union so as to preserve the traditional political form of the nation state.

Flavia CIONTU LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe


Jean GRUGEL, Democratizarea: O introducere critică [Democratization: A Critical Introduction], trans. Ramona-Elena Lupu, Polirom, Iași, 2008, 272 pp.

At the end of the 9th decade of the past century the way of the world changed visibly along with the fall of the communist alliance. After the fall of the Berlin Wall people were remarkably considering the victory of capitalism and oriented the mass towards a western model of democracy as the west was already a symbol of ”People’s absolute power”. The return to such values was thought as a very important step to evolution and would be spoken of in many pieces of written work throughout history. Thus, most states under strict policies initiated a vast case study of what democracy truly signified and found that their own ruling system to be under complex issues. It is essential to point out that Jean Grugel is a Sheffield University professor. She teaches International development in the Geography study section. She graduated from the University of Liverpool where she studied History and English Language. Also to be mentioned that her Ph. D. consists in a work of research about

Latino-American nations and culture. She is currently a member of the Royal Art and Social Science Academy also involving her study research in Political Science. As academic staff her work projects are various and she mostly shows her interest in topics such as: ascending democracy, children’s rights, global ruling policy between vulnerability and development as well as the constant economic evolution. One of her former titles was a councilor status for in concern of children’s rights both in the European Commission and the UNICEF. Further to be mentioned some of her most important published articles: “Global governance, economic migration and the difficulties of social activism”1, “The Domestic Politics of International Human Rights Law: Implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Ecuador, Chile

J. GRUGEL, N. PIPER, “Global governance, economic migration and the difficulties of social activism”, International Sociology, Vol. 26, No. 4, 2011, pp. 433-454. 1

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and Argentina”1, “Post-neoliberalism in Latin America: Rebuilding and 2 Reclaiming the State after Crisis” . Her books may also be mentioned such as: The politics of poverty reduction3,

Democratization: A critical 4 introduction or the Democratization5 set of four volumes collection. The “Democratization, A critical Introduction” book, translated into Romanian at the Polirom editing department is no more than the title itself expresses, a critical view upon democracy. It is structured in ten chapters with a special introductive and conclusive section at the beginning and J. GRUGEL, E. PERUZZOTTI, “The Domestic Politics of International Human Rights Law: Implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Ecuador, Chile and Argentina”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2012, pp. 178-198. 2 J. GRUGEL, P. RIGGIROZZI, “Postneoliberalism in Latin America: Rebuilding and Reclaiming the State after Crisis”, Development and Change, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2012, pp. 1-21. 3 P. MOSLEY, B. CHIRIPANHURA, J. GRUGEL, B. THIRKELL-WHITE, The Politics of Poverty Reduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012. 4 J. GRUGEL, Democratization: A Critical Introduction, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2001 (Democratizarea. O introducere critică, trans. Ramona Elena Lupu, Polirom, Iași, 2008). 5 Grugel, J. (2013) Democratization (Four Volumes) Sage, London. 1

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the end of the book. It could in theory be split into two parts: while the first is a detailed theory based explanation the second section is more practical showing true cases of countries that evolved due to the democratization process. It is understood that the two important so called halves can themselves be split and structured according to their own particular topic. There is a true bond between the chapters which links the information together and makes the reading task quite easy to coup with, however this could stand as a disadvantage if the reader chooses a rather sequential approach. The theoretical aspects are objectively exposed with reference to other authors and for each practical analysis there is always experimental evidence to stand as proof. “The book is an attentive conceptual study on democratization very closely linked to a normative understanding of democracy”6 In the first chapter concepts and theoretical aspects on democracy are defined scientifically. The author uses the main questions of the democratic theory as starting support then goes deep into detail with each GRUGEL, introducere...cit., p. 22. 6

J.

Democratizarea.

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theory. The first one is the “direct democracy” aspect based on the Athenian legacy of full involvement of community in everything that is to be settled. The liberal aspect of democracy is a result of population growth and the initial appearing of liberal theories. It expresses that for humans it is a right and not a responsibility to be part of political structures in society. During the Cold War there was installed an opposition between western democracy and communism which left it to the people to decide for themselves ideologically. As humanity reached contemporary times and post-modern ways of thinking there was a new wave of theory sets to be exposed like participative democracy-invented just for criticizing the whole system, feminism - which had the mission of pointing out social disorders and association building views – stating that most state issues could be successfully controlled by associations. There are also citizenship statements with main attention on the civil society actions and the cosmopolitan thinking mentions that globalization and a mix of nationalities in politics are a key to development as what mostly matters are

those building civil society for future issues.1 In the second and third chapters the author historically reveals the evolution of the democratization term and its ethical representation. She uses Huntington’s wave theory as reference promoting the argument of a transition group that would fully change political structures in a constant rhythm proportionally harmonious with the current conditions.2 It is said that till the day there had been three such kind of waves as nowadays we as a civilization live the times of the third one. The writer also brings critical arguments as she considers that not all states can be involved in the third wave structural evolution. She also claims that Huntington has no such thing as a broad understanding for he mentioned that globalization is always an element of benefit for the widening democracy. After illustrating the democratization dynamics through history in the third chapter there is a wide claim about the way in which

Ibidem, p. 40. S.P. HUNTINGTON, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentienth Century, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1991, pp. 15-16, apud. J. GRUGEL, Democratizarea...cit., p. 44. 1 2

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democracy was chosen as a state ideology and the manners of involvement once again theoretically exposed. The statement of modernization fights for the idea that this governmental structure was created in the modern era after capitalism which made it subliminally thought of as irrelevant in terms of a historical research ethnocentric and excessively structural. History’s Social Science also known as structuralism has as a study objective the way in which the changing flux between social classes and the state may stimulate changes in the political domain. Those with structural mind capacities carefully observe the constant evolution and are always skeptical in terms of a fast democratization. On the other hand the theory of transitional studies is based on the building-up in ideological terms by assured and planned agents of establishment. Highly suggested is the keen analysis of evolution in a clear way through three key points of attention as showing attention to progress: the state, society and global order as they are presented in the following three chapters where what mostly matters is the importance of the central dimension of change and progress for in concern

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of this ideology change brings total reorganizing of the whole system. The institutional changes and resettlements in economy all are in favor of the democratic rule within a state. Another important aspect that is pointed out is the fact that various states find it harder to evolve because of the previous authority in ideology. It apparently declines to the past and is in need of time to adapt to actual conditions. The importance of civil society is revealed through the experimental examples of reforming a new social order in Latin American, Southern and Eastern European states where during the past century there have been numerous revolutions and social movements according to the constant change. In the last part of her book Jean Grugel exposes the geographical areas in which democracy is entering quarters. There still is to be worked on in countries such as the Eastern or Southern European ones as well as some Asian areas. In such situations there is a conceptual appearance of problematic democracy. While European countries find it easier to in store democracy due to their high cultural level it is more


difficult in other areas and thus the author concludes her study in a rather statistical way. The democratization process requires patience and continuous changes. For a state to be thus it has not only to be in harmony with all theories but also to have a well-built tradition and respect its structural way. It takes years and it is quite hard for a state to find it a customizable new kind of order. In conclusion, Jean Grugel offers a scientifically based explanation which is to be highly considered as reference. Information is well structured and presented making the book accessible to all interested readers. The writer sees democracy as the future ideal of society however she pictures it in her work in an objective perspective without avoiding to point out the mistakes or errors that occurred in theory and history also noting that ideologies of authority have no chance of further evolving in the nearby future. Emanuel Mihai DEACONU LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe

(Translated to English by Petra-Iuliana PINTELEI LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe)

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Ionel BOAMFĂ, Geografie electorală [Electoral Geography], Editura Universităţii “Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, Iaşi, 2013, 462 pp.

The electoral geography, as a complementary field of electoral researches and a subdiscipline of political geography is no very well extended in Romanian are. There were some attempts at the beginning of the ’90 (Ioan Ianoş şi Cristian Tălângă -

Analiza comparativă a opţiunilor electoratului român la alegerile legislative din perioada post-comunistă [Post-Communist Romanian Electoral Behaviour at the General Elections. An Comparative Analyses]), and some doctoral theses Voicu Bodocan, Remus Creţan, Alexandru Ilieş, Aurelian Giugăl) and few enthusiastic researchers at the Faculty of Geography in Iaşi (Corneliu Iaţu şi Ionel Boamfă) could not change the general image of electoral geography in Romania. Important subfields of this subdiscipline (manipulation of electoral district boundaries to create partisan advantaged districts - gerrymandering, neighbourhood effect) are missing form the area of the electoral researches. In this context, the emergence of an

electoral geography paper is quite welcomed. Ionel Boamfă is one of the most known and passionate electoral researchers in our country. His last book, Geografie electoral [Electoral Geography], represents a meticulous and hardy paper with a generous and, in the same time, eclectic table of contents. We consider it eclectic as the author does not limit to Romanian electoral geography (by the by, the spatiality of vote in Romania is analysed since 1832 – a huge effort for such a long historical period of time, a singular synthesis of the kind in our area), but to themes as democracy, types of states after their level of democracy, states after their form of governing etc. Excepting the introduction and the conclusions, the paper of the professor in University of Iaşi is structured in three chapters. In the introducing part the author is making a short presentation of electoral studies. Considering the fact that initially the electoral researches were tributary to political sciences, Ionel Boamfă is 363


referring in the same time to geographers (starting with André Siegfried) and electoral researchers form various academic disciplines (Paul Lazarsfeld and the electoral sociology from Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research). The researching methodology is also presented in the introducing part. Chapter I, “Global Electoral Geography” despite its title is not an analytical part. It is rather a presentation of the evolution of democracy in the world, of voting systems, of electoral process, of forms of governing and of types of presidential elections. At same point the author is referring at the chrono-spatial distribution of mandates since 1790. We consider that such a approach is not a suitable one, not because of the lack of electoral data for different periods – as the author is claiming, but rather for the conceptual grill used for a extremely long period of time (1790-2010) and for a enormous spatial area (all the democracies in the world). The political parties are not isochronous from temporal and spatial points of view. Even Lipset and Rokkan recommended being prudent when it comes to extending the theory of cleavages in cultural areas, others than those in Western Europe. If the 364

cleavages system developed in Western Europe at the end of the ’60 remained the same as the system stabilised as a consequence of universalizing the right of vote, after the Firt World War (M. Lipset and S. Rokkan), how can we use the same partisan differences extended to such a large periods and spatial areas? Chapter II, “European Electoral Geography” contains an analysis of the elections in European Union (the political options of the voters at the European Parliament elections, the evolution of turnout etc.), a study of case (Germany and Romania) concerning the parliamentary elections and electoral geography’s particularities at the national parliamentary suffrages during 1991-2010. The electoral comparison Germany – Romania (1866 - 2010) is facing the same limitations above mentioned: the political and economic differences between these two states implies important differences concerning the evolution of electoral parties – which determines us to state that this electoral comparison is inadequate. Chapter III, “Romanian Electoral Geography” is the most valuable in the whole study concerning the variety of themes (local, parliamentary and presidential elections,


political families in Romanian space), the large number of used statistical data, concepts, electoral maps which were realised and the bibliographic bookishness. It consists itself into an enormous laboratory electoral geography, an extremely useful instrument for those analyzing the electoral behavior in Romania. Two of the most original themes in this chapter are referring to the plebiscites and referenda, respectively the geographic origin of the ministers in Romanian Governments. In modern Romania, popular plebiscites and referenda were few: two before the First World War, other three in the interwar period and one in the communist period and five in the postcommunist (the author ends his chronology in 2009). All these ante and post-war electoral confrontations, received the favourable vote of the electorate, excepting the Presidential impeachment referendum of 2007. Therefore, only the president in force of the republic succeeded in persuading the electorate to vote against a governmental and parliamentary initiative. The subchapter where I. Boamfă is analyzing the geographic origin of the ministers in post-1864

Romania is a unique inquiry in the field of the researches in Romania1. The data attesting the fact that Bucharest is on the first place at the section referring to the prime-ministers: 20 out of 76, as well as at the number of ministers: 313 out of 980 give Ionel Boamfă the possibility to state that this empirical aspect “shows the force of politics to centralize at the level of state the Romanian authority and appliance, without any exception, of the policy concerning «the national unitary state»” (p. 337). If we follow the distribution of the ministers and prime-ministers on counties, we shall remark that more rural and less economical developed counties are less represented and the counties that contain some of the most important cities in Walachia and Moldova, and then in Romania (such as Iaşi, Dolj – Craiova, Prahova – Ploieşti) are situated immediately after the capital Bucharest, which it rather indicates the idea that Romanian ruling class respects the social structure of the society. The most compact group of ministers and prime-ministers came from the old traditional centres (Iaşi as the former

1Similar

analyses were realised, for example, in

Belgium.

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capital of Moldova, Craiova as the residence of the Small Walachia). In this way, maybe it should be interesting to follow which is the value of the urban/rural report showing the origin places of the Romanian political elites in modern period. I shall make one last remark that, after an effort that lasted some years, Ionel Boamfă succeeded in offering the Romanian academic area the first handbook of electoral geography in Romania. Conjugating the enormous effort to research and to collect the data and the lack of some papers in the field of electoral geography in Romania, the disunities

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which are inherent in such a large research become inessential. It is certainly remarkable the generous effort transposed in milestone for the nest studies. The study is useful both to students, professors, and researchers in the field of social sciences in general, electoral researches in particular.

Aurelian GIUGĂL LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe


INTERVIEW-EVENT Drifts and Metamorphosis. On the New Paths of Populist Movements. (an interview with Sergiu MIȘCOIU, conducted by Codrin TĂUT)

In your recent books and articles you use the concept of neo-populism1. This may sound like an unnecessary complication of a notion which is already is assaulted by polysemy. Please tell us which analytical virtues of this new term are? Let me address frontally this matter of “unnecessary complication”. Of course, the academic ritual regarding populism is to begin with some complaints about the contradictory complexity of this notion. So, the strategy of many researches was to build up a list of features and to generate criteria of definition and classification. You can find this line of thought in the classical approach, from Peter Worseley2 to Margaret Canovan3 or Paul Taggart4. I believe that at this moment we have to make a step further and ask: are those features perennial? Can we think them as Platonic essences? In my recent publications the answer is definitely no. An example will illustrate this. We know already that the way popular identity is constructed is one of the central features of populism. Classical populism tends to be “constitutivist” in the sense that most of the times there is a concurrent appearance of the people as a political subject and of populism as a political trend. This was the case of Bonapartism, which manifested starting from the first Sergiu MIȘCOIU, Au pouvoir par le « Peuple » ! Le populisme saisi par la théorie du discours , L’Harmattan, Paris, 2012, pp. 71-90; “From Populism to Neo-Populism? Empirical Guidelines for a Conceptual Delineation”, in Sergiu GHERGHINA, Sergiu MIŞCOIU, Sorina SOARE (eds.), Conteporary Populism. A Controversial Concept and Its Diverse Forms, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013. 2 Peter WORSLEY, “Concept of Populism”, in Ghiță IONESCU and Ernest GELLNER (eds.), Populism: Its Meanings and National Characteristics, Wiedenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1969, pp. 212-250. 3 Margaret CANOVAN, Populism, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1981. 4 Paul Taggart, “Populism and representative politics in contemporary Europe”, Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2004, pp. 269-288. 1

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presidential elections by universal suffrage; of Peronism, which emerged with the emancipation of the workers and the peasant masses; of Nasserism, which inaugurated popular participation in political decision-making in Egypt; or, more recently, of the populisms of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, the latter priding himself on having “re-founded the People”, particularly through his constitutional reform of 2008. Now, the “new populism” or neo-populism relies not so much on a foundational act, on an initial and consistent identification of the people, as on an ad-hoc identitarian reunion of individuals, groups and social classes, of ideas and political trends, of ethnic minorities or caste interests, of individual passions, tastes and dispositions. The idea is not to grant an identity to the people, but to construct their identity in a credible manner, taking into account their past or present identifications. This is the case of the new populisms from Western Europe, where the democratic political tradition leaves very little room for any foundational or re-foundational ambitions and compels the populists to synthesise the manifold identitarian references of the masses. Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is a relevant example here, in the sense that his effort of reuniting the middle classes and the popular classes, instilling them with the illusion of pragmatism, modernism and progressivism, as well as with respect for the national values of the “real people”, allowed the majority of the Italians to repeatedly identify themselves with Il Cavaliere’s political promises. To conclude my answer, I will say that the concept of neo-populism is not an “unnecessary complication”, but a useful notion to describe the transformations of this political phenomenon.

The “glorious past” or the “popular heroes” constituted for a long time the foundational elements of the populist rhetoric. How are they transformed by this practice of identitarian collage? You are right! “Passéism” is an important ingredient of all classical populisms; it is also a way for the populist movements or leaders to identify themselves with the “historical battles” of the people. It often takes the form of an open front against the enemies of the present, who are “not up to the high moral standards imposed by our ancestors”. The glorification of the national past and the popular contribution to the creation, unification and independence of the country constantly fuelled Reactionary Populism in the United States, Bonapartism in France or Marshal Pilsudski’s National368


Populism in Poland. In the 1920s, Pilsudski added his anti-Bolshevik victories to the collection of heroic wars waged by the Poles and fomented the immediate danger of conspiracies and insurrections in order to secure the popular support for his 1926 coup d’état. Of course, in the case of neo-populism, although references to the past are not absent, but the dominant trend promotes a prospective orientation toward change, reforms and the removal of the elitist establishment. The latter is branded as the defender of its historical privileges, “obtained through the people’s sweat and toil”. The more disgruntled the masses envisaged by the populist discourse are with the government officials, who claim to rely on tradition, the more momentum the future-oriented discourse will gain over the past-oriented discourse. At the beginning of the 2000s in the Netherlands, Pim Fortuyn and, more recently, Geert Wilders registered a galloping electoral advancement, based on “progressive, but popular” discourses. Pragmatically resuming the prevalent themes of insecurity, immigration and the defence of democratic values, the Dutch populists turned against “multi-cultural deviations”, Islamisation, the “Eurocrats’ soft dictatorship”, and “high taxes”. Even though the theme of the return to the “Judeo-Christian values” was not absent, especially in Wilders’ case, the prospective dimension prevailed over exalting the past, which was considered to be much too marked by “compromises and defeats”.

So, you think that the neo-populist movements are facing a value crisis. These movements are not consisting anymore in exposing popular identities, they are rather pragmatic oriented political devices that use or recycle certain items depending on the local context and temporal configuration. However, we must not forget that for a long period of time the notion of populism has been linked to the “revolt of the masses”. Populism used to anticipate the coming of a future kingdom in which exploitation and social hierarchies were to disappear. What about this redemptive message? Classical populism entailed a “civil religiosity” that includes the more or less explicit promise of overcoming the ephemeral condition of human life by partaking of a well-articulated political and moral body - the People. These features are not, however, characteristics of neo-populism. More anchored in everyday reality, the new populists limit themselves to criticising the absence or the excess of reforms and to exploiting

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popular discontent against political opponents without promising the purification or salvation of the people. I think that this attitude corresponds to what Michel Maffesoli calls the postmodern condition, characterised by gregariousness and the relinquishment of rational ideals, being destined to constantly accommodate the realities of the present. Far from envisaging the emancipation of the narod (“people”) and undertaking any rescue mission, neo-populism makes somewhat more “mundane” promises: the cleansing of the political world, the reduction of fees and taxes, strengthening the citizens’ referendum powers, helping the poor regions, restoring dignity to the elderly, supporting the integration of the youth, taking the corrupt to the people’s courts, limiting the immigration waves, etc. This is the case of the highly publicised Democratic Union of the Centre (UDC) in Switzerland, which has expanded the traditional electoral base of conservatism by radicalising and vulgarising its political message. Apart from being quite “uptight” about Islam, the UDC defends the right to an almost unlimited use of referenda for consulting the citizens on naturalisation time frames, reinforcing police rights, maintaining the country’s sovereignty and neutrality, rejecting unions of the PACS type, etc. In a country where the confederate-level institutions have less power than the cantons, the UDC’s populism also promotes a “Rousseauian” defence of the small communities and of their right to self-management. There is nothing eschatological about the discourse of the UDC, even though the strategies used by this political formation and its means of expression are typically populist.

Assuming this picture, one can still talk about a populist political agenda? How the themes and the topics are set up? While classical populism had a tendency towards essentialism and dogmatism with respect to its coherence, neo-populism is characterised by the extreme heterogeneity of its themes. Despite the diversity of their historical and contextual trends, classical populisms were entrenched in the tradition of the political right and this granted them a certain degree of stability, built around traditional and religious values such as the family, the church, work, the nation etc. These themes were perceived by their promoters not only as temporary political demarcations, but as the very substance of their political action, without which their presence in politics would have been devoid of any purpose. The neo-populists populists conceive and present their political ideas in accordance with 370


the particular demands at a given time. With few unshakable reference frames, they adapt themselves to the themes imposed by the public opinion and change direction with it. Ségolène Royal, the 2007 candidate of the Socialist Party for the Presidency of the French Republic is a telling example. Trying to get as many votes as possible from the left-ofcentre voters, Royal added several right-wing issues - such as national identity and security - to the traditional topics of her party and willingly adopted a strategy based on pursuing and resuming those areas that were of utmost concern to the public opinion. The corollary of this strategy was the adoption of trenchant viewpoints and attitudes on issues that were likely either to divide the audience into two relatively equal groups or to unexpectedly make the public opinion swerve during electoral campaigns. Neo-populism does entail a “suiviste” dimension (in the sense that it blindly follows or adopts the attitudes of the majority public opinion). As seen in the case of Ségolène Royal, this is not always a guarantee for electoral success.

Do you suggest that we are facing the exhaustion of charismatic personality? Traditional populism imposes “natural” limits between the two parties: the leader necessarily comes from a higher class, is educated, rich, and evinces a certain naturalness in the relationships with the “world above”. Being emancipated, he will also emancipate the masses; still, there will always be a distance between them. Because he is so different not only from the other politicians (who look down on the people), but also from the people (whom he loves and wants to subdue, educate, and civilise), he has the right and the duty to carry their banner. This attitude could be identified, for example, in the 1930s, in the case of Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, who was proud that he had enlightened the people, thus building the New State. The neophyte populists are usually “common people” (or, at least, they try to leave this impression); they are close to the ordinary people, having similar tastes and preferences with those of their voters. Being companions or even friends, the new populists and their voters know and recognise each other through certain verbal and behavioural features. The latter may be open, affectionate, familial, or, if necessary, vulgar, as signs of their common values and attitudes. However, like in any fragile relationship, populists may easily fall out with their voters. The voters’ loyalty is conditional upon results or it may be the effect of media over-exposure or the absence of a better alternative. Along these lines, Nicolas Sarkozy’s

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“interference with” Jean-Marie le Pen’s votes in the 2007 presidential elections and the voters’ return “from the copy to the original” in the 2010 regional elections are relevant examples. Convinced that he had got rid of the far right by taking away all its votes, thanks to his exaggerated recourse to hot topics such as immigration, insecurity and unemployment, Sarkozy over-estimated his popular support and misunderstood the conditional nature of the trust that the French had vested in him. In the case of populism, we may speak of a permanent necessity to constantly win the allegiance of the groups deemed to form the people rather than of a consistent political rootedness.

It is well-known that classical populism implied strong rhetorical devices. Is there any discursive change in the new populist field? As great orators, the classical populists mobilised the masses through their eloquence and dominant position. By comparison with their opponents, populists are not averse to mingling with the crowds and addressing them directly, the moments of their speeches being, most of the times, solemn. The audience’s manifestations include primarily ovations, applause and, less frequently, interventions and comments. From the Gracchi brothers in Ancient Rome to the Peruvian Raul Victor Raya de la Torre during the inter-war period, populists can be regarded as tribunes who held the power (sometimes considered to be magical) of catalysing the will and actions of the masses through words. In the age of mass communication, populism actually amounts to “relationism” rather than “tribunism”. Although the practice of mingling with the crowds or the so-called “crowd baths” has maintained its symbolic importance, populists today have a higher necessity to make themselves known and visible on television and via the internet rather than by travelling from one end of the country to another. This has also diminished the importance of the political leaders’ rhetorical qualities because if the differences between them and the crowds stood in stark relief, this might alienate them from the masses. Traian Băsescu and Boyko Borisov, the former mayors of Bucharest and Sofia, are hardly “elite” orators and prefer “speaking in a simple and popular manner”. The number of words they use is limited and, as shown by some analysts, they make frequent speech errors. A striking feature of populism is the politicians’ apparent readiness to listen to and follow the “People”. The latter are no longer satisfied to express themselves only through elections or associative movements, demanding instead 372


to engage in a dialogue with the politicians. This is why candidates must ensure that “participatory debates” are organised (e.g. Ségolène Royal). The political and electoral legitimation of modern populist leaders takes place through these very permanent exchanges with the people.

The discussion so far leads us to hypothesize that in spite of its prevalence, today's populism is rather precarious, lacking institutional stability. Yes, I agree. Neo-populism is much more ephemeral than the classical. But here we must make some important distinctions. In the case of extremist populists, this precariousness is due to the massive rejection of the other parties, the international community, or the civil society, which may be augmented by the sometimes spectacular results obtained by such leaders or formations. In the case of systemic and moderate populism, the ephemerality is due to this accelerated pace of contemporary political life, which entails a rapid succession of changes, unsettling medium- and long-term strategies. In addition, at stake there is also the failure of other contemporary parties to provide the citizens with the necessary landmarks for identification with a stable political project. The appearance of the Tea Party in the United States is undoubtedly a proof of this temporal precariousness of populism. This “popular-conservative” orientation, which emerged mainly (although not exclusively) within the Republican Party in 2009, symbolically took on the name of the American colonists’ revolt against the taxation levels imposed by the British metropolis (the Boston Tea Party, 1773). Resorting to a tradition that makes direct reference to the Founding Fathers, the Tea Party advocates de-taxation, the freedom of local collectivities, and the reduction of fiscal costs. However, in comparison with classical populist movements, the Tea Party is actually a rather heterogeneous political association. Being, in fact, a commingling of local platforms, this movement has no hierarchical leadership system and prefers to endorse “opinion leaders” and notables or local celebrities whose ideas have more or less conservative overtones. This movement rallies together, at its bosom, WASP, which flirts with racism and, in particular, with Islamophobia, and African American tribunes, such as Herman Cain, the Georgian commentator and businessman, an official candidate for the Republican primary presidential elections in 2012. From an electoral point of view, the Tea Party served as a scarecrow for the half-term elections of November 2010. Having been victorious in a

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series of primary Republican elections, where they had run against the incumbent “people of the system”, the candidates supported by the Tea Party obtained, with a few exceptions, modest results and only managed to mobilise the Democrats and the moderate Republicans against them. Being divided between the usual rhetoric of the local notables, who sometimes harshened their discourse in order to obtain the support of this movement, and the rising stars, who did not hesitate to present their ultra-radical stances, the Tea Party had an unquestionable impact on the public debates. Notwithstanding all this, the rather limited number of candidates elected in 2010 and, above all, the absence of ideological and organisational agreement indicate that this party has a minor presence on the American political scene.

For the concluding remarks of this interview, I would like to know your opinion about the future of the European populist movements. Generally, it is admitted that the 2014 European Parliament elections will see populist parties make some important gains. Do you agree with this political diagnosis? As the 2014 European elections are concerned, there are two major trends. On one hand, we could anticipate an almost inevitable progress of the populist far-right parties, as is the case withe the Front National in France. This is mainly due to the fact that the crisis is still there and there was no aggregated European response to the crisis' causes in a cohesive way. Topics such as youth unemployment or mass immigration are nowadays central to most European public agenda and the populist far-right could easily profit of this situation. On the other hand, there is spreading of the neo-populist strategies among the wider mainstream parties, especially among the neo-conservative ones. Governing parties such as the Christian Social Union based in Bavaria or the NVA based in Flanders surf on the public dislike of foreign workers and strongly attack the 'Eurocratic' elites denounced as being too cosmopolitan and anti-national. Such messages have in some particular areas a wider public echo and, as the voting system for the European Parliament is proportional, we could expect some breakthroughs of Euro-MPs who make quasi-populist campaigns in order to be elected.

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SIGNALS RECENTLY PUBLISHED Yuval LEVIN,

The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, Basic Books, 2013. Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791) are the intellectual well-springs of what we call the republican ―Right‖ and the ―Left.‖ Much of what American Republicans think can be traced to Burke; much of what American Democrats think can be traced to Paine. For this reason, Burke and Paine are– with the possible exception of J.S. Mill– the most important political thinkers in the modern Western republican tradition. For these reasons, Yuval Levin’s The

Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine and the Birth of Right and Left is very relevant today. Levin masterfully explains not only why Burke and Paine thought what they thought (that is, he provides the historical context for their ideas), but he also makes clear how their ideas matter today.

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Jesse NORMAN,

Edmund Burke: The First Conservative, Basic Books, 2013. Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political thinker of the past three hundred years. A brilliant 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman, Burke was a fierce champion of human rights and the Anglo-American constitutional tradition, and a lifelong campaigner against arbitrary power. Revered by great Americans including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Burke has been almost forgotten in recent years. But as politician and political philosopher Jesse Norman argues in this penetrating biography, we cannot understand modern politics without him. As Norman reveals, Burke was often ahead of his time, anticipating the abolition of slavery and arguing for free markets, equality for Catholics in Ireland, and responsible government in India, among many other things. He was not always popular in his own lifetime, but his ideas about power, community, and civic virtue have endured long past his death. Indeed, Burke engaged with many of the same issues politicians face today, including the rise of ideological extremism, the loss of social cohesion, the dangers of the corporate state, and the effects of revolution on societies. He offers us now a compelling critique of liberal individualism, and a vision of society based not on a self-interested agreement among individuals, but rather on an enduring covenant between generations. Burke won admirers in the American colonies for recognizing their fierce spirit of liberty and for speaking out against British oppression, but his greatest triumph was seeing through the utopian aura of the French Revolution. In repudiating that revolution, Burke laid the basis for much of the robust conservative ideology that remains with us to this day: one that is adaptable and forward-thinking, but also mindful of the debt we owe to past generations and our duty to preserve and uphold the institutions we have inherited. He is the first conservative. A rich, accessible, and provocative biography, Edmund Burke describes Burke’s life and achievements alongside his momentous legacy, showing how Burke’s analytical mind and deep capacity for empathy made him such a vital thinker—both for his own age, and for ours. 376


Arthur HERMAN,

The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization, Random House, 2013.

The Cave and the Light is a magisterial account of how the two greatest thinkers of the ancient world, Plato and Aristotle, laid the foundations of Western culture—and how their rivalry shaped the essential features of our culture down to the present day. Plato came from a wealthy, connected Athenian family and lived a comfortable upperclass lifestyle until he met an odd little man named Socrates, who showed him a new world of ideas and ideals. Socrates taught Plato that a man must use reason to attain wisdom, and that the life of a lover of wisdom, a philosopher, was the pinnacle of achievement. Plato dedicated himself to living that ideal and went on to create a school, his famed Academy, to teach others the path to enlightenment through contemplation. However, the same Academy that spread Plato’s teachings also fostered his greatest rival. Born to a family of Greek physicians, Aristotle had learned early on the value of observation and hands-on experience. Rather than rely on pure contemplation, he insisted that the truest path to knowledge is through empirical discovery and exploration of the world around us. Aristotle, Plato’s most brilliant pupil, thus settled on a philosophy very different from his instructor’s and launched a rivalry with profound effects on Western culture. The two men disagreed on the fundamental purpose of the philosophy. For Plato, the image of the cave summed up man’s destined path, emerging from the darkness of material existence to the light of a higher and more spiritual truth. Aristotle thought otherwise. Instead of rising above mundane reality, he insisted, the philosopher’s job is to explain how the real world works, and how we can find our place in it. Aristotle set up a school in Athens to rival Plato’s Academy: the Lyceum. The competition that ensued between the two schools, and between Plato and Aristotle, set the world on an intellectual adventure that lasted through the Middle Ages and Renaissance and that still continues today. Accessible and eloquently

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written, The Cave and the Light provides a stunning new perspective on the Western world, certain to open eyes and stir debate. Paul HAZARD,

The Crisis of the European Mind : 1680 – 1715, NYRB Classics, 2013. Paul Hazard’s magisterial, widely influential, and beloved intellectual history offers an unforgettable account of the birth of the modern European mind in all its dynamic, inquiring, and uncertain glory. Beginning his story in the latter half of the seventeenth century, while also looking back to the Renaissance and forward to the future, Hazard traces the process by which new developments in the sciences, arts, philosophy, and philology came to undermine the stable foundations of the classical world, with its commitment to tradition, stability, proportion, and settled usage. Hazard shows how travelers’ tales and archaeological investigation widened European awareness and acceptance of cultural difference; how the radical rationalism of Spinoza and Richard Simon’s new historical exegesis of the Bible called into question the revealed truths of religion; how the Huguenot Pierre Bayle’s critical dictionary of ideas paved the way for Voltaire and the Enlightenment, even as the empiricism of Locke encouraged a new attention to sensory experience that led to Rousseau and romanticism. Hazard’s range of knowledge is vast, and whether the subject is operas, excavations, or scientific experiments his brilliant style and powers of description bring to life the thinkers who thought up the modern world.

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Joshua MITCHELL,

Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in a Democratic Age, University of Chicago Press, 2013. The Arab Spring, with its calls for sweeping political change, marked the most profound popular uprising in the Middle East for generations. But if the nascent democracies born of these protests are to succeed in the absence of a strong democratic tradition, their success will depend in part on an understanding of how Middle Easterners view themselves, their allegiances to family and religion, and their relationship with the wider world in which they are increasingly integrated. Many of these same questions were raised by Alexis de Tocqueville during his 1831 tour of America, itself then a rising democracy. Joshua Mitchell spent years teaching Tocqueville’s classic account, Democracy in America, in America and the Arab Gulf and, with Tocqueville in Arabia, he offers a profound personal take. One of the reasons for the book’s widespread popularity in the region is that its commentary on the challenges of democracy and the seemingly contradictory concepts of equality and individuality continue to speak to current debates. While Mitchell’s American students tended to value the individualism of commercial selfinterest, his Middle Eastern students had grave doubts about individualism and a deep suspicion for capitalism, which they saw as risking the destruction of long-held loyalties and obligations. When asked about suffering, American students answered in psychological or sociological terms, while Middle Eastern students understood it in terms of religion. Mitchell describes modern democratic man as becoming what Tocqueville predicted: a ―distinct kind of humanity‖ that would be increasingly isolated and alone. Whatever their differences, students in both worlds were grappling with a sense of disconnectedness that social media does little to remedy. We live in a time rife with mutual misunderstandings between America and the Middle East, and Tocqueville in Arabia offers a guide to the present, troubled times, leavened by the author’s hopes about the future.

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Sara MCLAUGHLIN MITCHELL, Emilia Justyna POWELL,

Domestic Law Goes Global. Legal Traditions and International Courts, Cambridge University Press, 2013. International courts have proliferated in the international system, with over one hundred judicial or quasi-judicial bodies in existence today. This book develops a rational legal design theory of international adjudication in order to explain the variation in state support for international courts. Initial negotiators of new courts, 'originators', design international courts in ways that are politically and legally optimal. States joining existing international courts, 'joiners', look to the legal rules and procedures to assess the courts' ability to be capable, fair and unbiased. The authors demonstrate that the characteristics of civil law, common law and Islamic law influence states' acceptance of the jurisdiction of international courts, the durability of states' commitments to international courts, and the design of states' commitments to the courts. Furthermore, states strike cooperative agreements most effectively in the shadow of an international court that operates according to familiar legal principles and rules.

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John SIDES, Lynn VAVRECK,

The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election, Princeton University Press, 2013. In this groundbreaking book, John Sides and Lynn Vavreck tell the dramatic story of the 2012 U.S. presidential election. Using an unusual "moneyball" approach, they look beyond the anecdote, folklore, and conventional wisdom that often pass for election analysis. Instead, they draw on extensive quantitative data about the economy, public opinion, news coverage, and political advertising to separate what was truly important from what was irrelevant. Combining this data with the best social science research and colorful on-the-ground reporting, they provide the most accurate and precise account of the election yet written-and the only book of its kind.Which mattered more--Barack Obama's midsummer ad blitz or the election year's economic growth? How many voters actually changed their minds-and was it ever enough to sway the outcome? The Gamble answers important questions like these by looking at the interplay between the candidates' strategic choices--the ads, speeches, rallies, and debates--and the chance circumstances of the election, especially the economy. In the Republican primary, the book shows, the electioneering and the media's restless attention did matter, producing a string of frontrunners. But when Obama and Mitt Romney finally squared off in the general election, there were few real gamechangers. The candidates' billion-dollar campaigns were important but largely cancelled each other out, opening the way for Obama to do what incumbents usually do when running amid even modest economic growth: win. An election book unlike any other, The Gamble is a must-read for political analysts, journalists, consultants, and academics.

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EST EUROPA. Revue d’Études Politiques et Constitutionnelles, ed. by L’Institut Universitaire Varenne, Bayonne, Numéro 2013. [http://www.est-europa.univ-pau.fr/images/archives/2013/2013.pdf]

EST EUROPA is a new journal, which, as part of the intellectual extension of Revue de justice constitutionnelle Est-européenne and Revue d’études politiques et constitutionnelles Esteuropéennes, contributes to the dissemination of scholarly works on the political and juridical evolution of Central and Eastern European States and their inclusion in the scope of European institutions. As a multidisciplinary journal, it thus intends to constitute an instrument of exchanges and reflection, starting from specific geographical areas, it will tackle and deepen all reflections on the concepts of democratic transition and democratic consolidation, of transnational integration, cultural and linguistic minorities and – more generally – of ―democratic model‖.

Selected1 by Florin-Ciprian MITREA

LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe

1

Sources: [www.amazon.com]; [http://www.est-europa.univ-pau.fr/images/archives/2013/2013.pdf].

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Ionuţ APAHIDEANU Ph.D. student in Political Science at the University of Bucharest and research assistant at the Centre for Political Analysis within the “Babeş-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca; B.A. (Babeş-Bolyai University, 2004) and M.A. (National School of Political Science and Public Administration, Bucharest, 2006) in International Relations; former researcher at the Romanian Institute of International Studies “Nicolae Titulescu” in Bucharest, director of the Center for Prospective Studies “Strategikon”, managing editor of the Romanian Journal of Society and Politics, International Relations, Constitutional Law tutor, political consultant; author of volume chapters in Manual de Relaţii Internaţionale (Polirom, 2006), CrisisManagement in Romania (Swedish National Defence College, Crismart, 2007), journal articles in Monitor Strategic, Strategic Impact, Lumea, Studia Politica, Sfera Politicii and various mass media articles.

Ioana-Bianca BERNA She is a lecturer at LUMINA – The University of Southeast Europe. She has a Ph.D. in Political Science, International Relations Specialization, with the thesis “Southeast Asian Security Dynamics. The Role of Extra-Regional Actors”. She has published studies in national and international journals, encompassing a wide range of publications, such as: Hiperboreea, Monitorul Strategic, Universul Strategic,

Moldavian Review of International Law and International Relations, Economie şi Administraţie Locală, Tribuna Economică, International Journal for Public Management and Political Development, Sfera Politicii, Revista de Comerţ, Analysis and Metaphysics – An International Journal, Journal of East European and Asian Studies, Romanian Military Thinking, Gândirea Militară Românească, Annals of University Ştefan Cel Mare of Suceava, Philosoply, Social and Human Disciplines Series, Studia Securitatis – Security Studies Magazine, Geopolitics, 383


History and International Relations Review, Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice Review, Journal of Research in Gender Studies, International Journal for Human Capital Development, Southeast European Journal of Political Science. Her research interests include: East Asian and Pacific Studies, Fractality in International Relations Theory, Identity Theory in International Relations. Her first book, entitled Incrementalism and Identity-Building in Southeast Asian Security Dynamics is under current publishing under the aegis of the Military Publishing House.

Ion BOBOC Ph.D. in Sociology (2000), B.A. in Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy (1975). Publications (selection): Partide şi familii politice din Europa de Sud-Est: 19452010, Editura Pro Universitaria, Bucureşti, 2010; Partide şi familii politice europene: cercetări, date statistice, analize politice, Editura Universitară, București, 2008; Managementul strategic al reţelelor de politici publice, Editura Universitară, București, 2010; Marketing politic şi consultanţă guvernamentală, Editura Universitară, București, 2006; Management politic. Ştiinţa şi arta conducerii în politică, Sylvi, București, 2005; Managementul organizaţiilor non-guvernamentale, Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică, București, 2004. Research interests: political parties, organizational and managerial psycho-sociology; political management; political marketing and governmental consultancy.

Flavia CIONTU Undergraduate student at LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe from Bucharest (Department of International Relations and European Studies) and at the University of Bucharest (Faculty of Foreign Languages). She is an intern at the European Institute of Romania and author of “Humanitarian Intervention. Case study: Lybia”, a paper which ranked first at the Student Scientific Conference held at Lumina – The University of South-East Europe in May 2013. Research 384


interests: human rights, gender studies, European institutions, democracy and conflict prevention.

Dragoș COSMESCU He holds a Ph.D. in Political Sciences, from the University of Bucharest, after a Master in Political Sciences at the Faculty of Political Sciences, following majors in political sciences, as well as International Economic Relations (at the Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest). The Ph.D. thesis, coordinated by Professor Teodor Meleșcanu, is entitled “Endogenous and exogenous factors in the political transition. Towards a new theory of regime change”. Previously, he has taught classes on comparative politics, at the Faculty of Political Sciences, namely “Comparative Democratization” and “Typology of non-democratic regimes”. Recent publications: Regim politic ș i tranziț ie politică, Institutul European, Iași, 2014; “The Institutional Design of Democracy”, South-East European Journal of Political Science, Vol. I, No. 2, 2013, pp. 40-58; “Democracy and the Authoritarian Tendencies: the influence of the political regime on the societies in transition”, ISPAIM – Monitor Strategic, No. 1-2, 2012, pp. 91-101.

Emanuel Mihai DEACONU He is undergraduate student at LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe from Bucharest (Department of International Relations and European Studies) and also an undergraduate student at the University “Babeș-Bolyai” of ClujNapoca (Faculty of Letters, Korean Language and Literature Department). He participated as an exchange student in CEEPUS Program studying Korean Language and Culture at St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria. He also won a grant for the 20th Summer Program for International Students at The Academy of Korean Studies, South Korea. Major fields of interest: diplomacy and negotiations, Korean Studies, inter-Korean political relations.

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Taras DOBROVOLSKYY Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest; M.A. in International Relations, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest (master course graduation paper on the “Orange Governance in Ukraine between 2005 and 2010”); B.A. at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest (graduation paper on “The Orange Revolution in Ukraine 2004”. Published articles: “Part one. The impact of National and Regional Issues in the Rapprochement between Ukraine and Romania (Romanian Minority in Ukraine)” Ed. Ukrainian World Coordinating Council, August 2013; “Part two. The Impact of National and Regional Issues in the Rapprochement between Ukraine and Romania (Ukrainian Minority in Romania)” Ed. Ukrainian World Coordinating Council, September 2013.

Dragoş DRAGOMAN Ph.D. in Sociology, lecturer with the Department of Political Science, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu. His research interests include social capital and political participation, ethnicity and nationalism, democracy and democratization. Recent publications: Capital social şi valori democratice în România, Editura Institutul European, Iaşi, 2010; Gestiunea politicilor publice teritoriale şi integrare europeană. Politici culturale, sociale şi de sănătate în Franţa şi în România (coord., with Dan-Alexandru Popescu), Editura Universităţii ”Lucian Blaga”, Sibiu, 2010; “Populism, autoritarism şi valori democratice în opinia publică din România”, in Sergiu Gherghina, Sergiu Mişcoiu (eds.), Partide şi personalităţi populiste în România postcomunistă, Editura Institutul European, Iaşi, 2010, pp. 267-207; “Partide regionale şi democraţie locală în România”, in Sergiu Gherghina (ed.), Voturi şi politici. Dinamica partidelor româneşti în ultimele două decenii, Editura Institutul European, Iaşi, 2011, pp. 319-345.

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Marin DRĂMNESCU Ph.D. in Educational Science at “Ion Creangă” University, Chişinău; Ph.D. Candidate in Political Sciences at the University of Bucharest. He is Lecturer at Lumina – The University of South-East Europe; Head of Educational Sciences Department. Recent publications: “Postmodern Society and Individual Alienation”, Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy, 2013; “Educational Psychology. Trends and Developments”, Globalization and Security in Black and Caspian Seas Region, Tbilisi, 2011; “Pedagogical models based on social learning theory of Albert Bandura”, Scientific Bulletin-Education Sciences Series, Piteşti, 2011. He is co-author at: Fundamentele educaţiei (coord. S. Cristea, F. Stanciu), Pro Universitaria, Bucureşti, 2011; Reforma învăţământului între proiectare şi realizare, Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică R.A. (coord S. Cristea), 2012; Educational Reform in the 21st Century in Balkan Countries (eds. V. Nicolescu, F. Stanciu, M. Drămnescu).

Ljubomir D. FRCKOSKI He is Permanent Professor of International law, Theory of International Relations and International Human Rights law at the Faculty of Law “Iustinianus Primus”, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. He took part in the entire process that led to Macedonian independence, by being prominent expert in the preparing of the new Constitution of Republic of Macedonia, and in the same position in drafting of the Constitutional Amendments in 2001. He was one of the experts who drafted the Ohrid Framework Agreement in 2001. Frckoski has served as Macedonia‟s Minister of Internal and Minister of Foreign Affairs, in the Government of Republic of Macedonia from 1990 until 1997. In 2002, he was elected as member of European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) of the Council of Europe. In the field of his academic work, he is also a visiting professor on post-graduate studies at University of Trieste ISIG, Institute of International Sociology, Gorizia, Italy. Professor Frckoski has published, among others, the following books:

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Contemporary Political Theories (textbook), Forum, Skopje, 2003; International Public Law (textbook), Magor, Skopje, 2012; Negotiation in Identity Conflicts, 3rd ed., Magor, Skopje, 2012; International human rights law, 3rd ed., Magor, Skopje, 2012. He is also the author of many academic articles.

Aurelian GIUGĂL B.A. in Geography (1998), M.A. (2008) and Ph.D. (2011) in Political Science at the University of Bucharest; Associate Researcher at the School of Geographical Sciences – University of Bristol (2010), associated lecturer at “Ovidius” University of Constanţa, Faculty of History and Political Sciences (2012-2013). Recent publications: Geografia electorală a Dobrogei postcomuniste: 1992-2012, Editura Fundaţiei pentru Studii Europene, Cluj-Napoca, 2013; “Alegeri generale în România sau confirmarea teoriei periferiei politice”, Sfera Politicii, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 51-65, 2013 (with Ionuț Ciobanu); “Democratic musical chairs? Romania‟s Post-1989 Electoral Geography”, Space and Polity, Vol. 15, pp. 43-61, 2011 (with Ron Johnston & Ștefan Constantinescu). He is also the author of several articles in Cultura (since 2009).

Florin GRECU Ph.D., M.A. and B.A. in Political Sciences at the University of Bucharest. He is Lecturer at “Hyperion” University, Bucharest. Recent publications: Construcţia unui partid unic. Frontul Renaşterii Naţionale, Editura Enciclopedică, Bucureşti, 2012; “Campania electorală din mai 1939: mecanisme, proceduri și comportament electoral”, Sfera Politicii, No. 169, 2012, pp. 134-144; “Regimul și principiile Constituției de la 1938”, Sfera Politicii, No. 172, 2012, pp. 70-82; “The Authoritarian Constitution versus the National Renaissance Front”, South-East European Journal of Political Science, Vol. I, No. 2, 2013, pp. 13-30.

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Veton LATIFI Professor of political sciences and international relations at the South-East European University (SEEU) in Macedonia. He is the author of several books in the field of the political sciences and international relations: NATO and the EU: New Relations in Crisis Management (2012), Concepts of Democracy (2009); Political Leadership (2009); Politicology (2008); The negotiations for signing the Ohrid Framework Agreement (2008); Negotiation as a primary technique for conflict resolution (2007), Theories of Political Sciences (2007); Political Institutions (2007), etc. He is also the author of several chapters for international book series. He holds a PhD degree in Political Sciences. He is teaching at the South East European University since 2003. Since December 2013 Prof. Latifi is a director of the SEE University‟s Scientific Research Institute “Max van der Stoel”.

Sergiu MIŞCOIU He is Ph.D. Habilitated Associate Professor at the Faculty of European Studies, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. He holds a Ph.D. and a Habilitation in Political Science from the University Paris-East Marne-la-Vallée and a Ph.D. in History from Babeș-Bolyai University. He is the author and co-editor of several national and international volumes and of more than 40 articles published in Belgium, Italy, France, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, and the UK; ExecutiveEditor-in-Chief of the Academic Journal Studia UBB Europaea, Head of the Department of International Relations and American Studies at the Faculty of European Studies, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. His interests lie in constructivist theories applied to political communities and the emergence of radical and populist groups.

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Florin-Ciprian MITREA Ph.D. in Political Sciences at the University of Bucharest, with the doctoral thesis entitled “Intellectuals in totalitarianism. Cultural Foundations of the Polish Critique of Communism (1945 – 1989)”; B.A. (2000) and M.A. (2002) at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Bucharest; Studies of academic research at the Jagiellonian University of Cracow and at the University “La Sapienza” of Rome. Presently, he is lecturer at LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe (Department of International Relations and European Studies), Bucharest. He published several scientific articles in journals such as: Sfera Politicii, Revista de Ştiinţe Politice şi Relaţii Internaţionale a Academiei Române, Romanoslavica, South-East European Journal of Political Science.

Cristina NEDELCU Ph.D. (Thesis: “Romanian Policy towards the Palestinian Question”) – 2012, Associate Lecturer (since 2012) at the University of Bucharest (Faculty of History, International Relations Department); Graduate of Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures (Arabic-Russian) – 2008; Graduate of Master Program in International Relations, at the University of Bucharest and RWTH Aachen Germany – 2004; Graduate of Faculty of History, the University of Bucharest – 2002. Publications: Politica României faț ă de Problema palestiniană, 1948-1979, Editura Cetatea de Scaun, Târgoviște, 2013; “Identity Features In The Shadow Of Sectarianism: Lebanon”, Annals of “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Linguistics, Literature And Methodology of Teaching, Vol. XII, No. 2, 2013, pp. 33-46; “Conflictul din iunie 1967 şi reacţii diplomatice faţă de modificările teritoriale”, in Nicolae Ecobescu (coord.), România. Supravieț uire ș i afirmare prin diplomaț ie în anii Războiului Rece, Editura Fundația Europeană Titulescu, Vol. 2, 2013, pp. 347-364; “Implicarea României în Problema palestiniană în anii ‟70”, in Nicolae Ecobescu (coord.), România. Supravieț uire ș i afirmare prin diplomaț ie în anii Războiului Rece, Editura Fundația Europeană Titulescu, Vol. 2, 2013, pp. 429452; “Conflictul din Iunie 1967 și reacţii diplomatice faţă de modificările 390


teritoriale”, in Studii şi materiale de istorie contemporană, Serie Nouă, Vol. V, Academia Română, Institutul de Istorie „Nicolae Iorga”, 2006.

Lee Rahel NIREL M.A. degree in Government, specializing in public policy and administration. She graduated with honors at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya (2012). B.A. undergraduate studies in Government, Diplomacy and Strategy with specialization in leadership and communication at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya (2011). Presently, she is third year law student at Shaarei Mishpat College. She served as parliamentary assistant to cabinet Minister Michael Eitan. She is research and teaching assistant to Professor David Nachmias, Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. Recently, she was elected Member of Council in Karnei Shomron. Main research topics: public education reforms, the relationship between public trust and political participation, governance crisis, democracy index.

Răzvan Victor PANTELIMON Associate Professor at Instituto de Historia, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. He holds a Ph.D. (thesis: “Europe and the Americas: constitutions, doctrines and political institutions”) at the Department of Politics, Institutions and History, University of Bologna, and a Ph.D. in Political Science at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest; post-doctoral studies on RomaTre University in the framework of the “Europaeus” International Project; Associate Professor at the University of Bucharest; Lecturer at “Ovidius” University of Constanța; visiting teacher/ researcher in Italy, Spain and Portugal. He is Member of the Latin-American Association for Political Science and of the European Network of Information and Documentation on Latin-America. Presently, he is director of a research project on comparative study of populism in Europe and Latin America. His main research interests include: political parties, socialist and

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leftist ideologies and parties in Latin America and Latin America‟s political systems evolutions. As of lately, he has published various articles and book chapters on: Latin-American socialism, Latin-American political theories and thinkers, populism and neo-populism, transition and democratic consolidation and new types of political parties.

Alexandru RACU Ph.D. in Political Studies (June 2013), University of Ottawa (thesis title: “Modernity and the Theologico Political Problem in the Thought of Joseph de Maistre and Fyodor Dostoyevsky”); Part time professor at the University of Ottawa – Course taught: “Conservatism and Neoconservatism” (January-April 2013); M.A. in South-East European Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (October 2006); B.A. in Political Science, University of Bucharest (July 2004). Recent publication: “The Friend/Enemy Distinction and its Ethical Implications: A Critical Analysis of Carl Schmitt‟s Political Thought”, Gnosis, Vol. X, No. 3, 2009. Research interests: political theology, political philosophy, political ideologies, conservatism, Russian thought, theories of modernity.

Cătălin SECĂREANU Ph.D. Student at the Faculty of Political Sciences (University of Bucharest) and L‟Ecole Doctorale de Droit (Université “Montesquieu” Bordeaux 4/ École Doctorale Francophone en Sciences Sociales de Bucharest); Master Degree in Comparative Politics at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Bucharest; B.A. in Political Sciences, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Bucharest. Domains of interest: Romanian Foreign Policy after 1989, geopolitics of the extended Black Sea region, UE-US relations, political elites in Central and Eastern Europe.

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Anca SIMITOPOL Ph.D. in Political Science (August 2012), University of Ottawa (thesis title: “Ideas of Community in the Thought of Pierre Leroux and of Feodor Dostoevsky: Agape, Philia, and Eros”. Publications: “Dostoevsky, Critic of „Possessive Individualism‟”, in Ryan McILHANNY (ed.), Render Unto God. Christianity and Capitalism Reconsidered, University Press of America, forthcoming (2014); “Mémoire et histoire chez Pierre Leroux”, Le Déliberant, forthcoming (2014); “Proiectul de Uniune Europeană al lui Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon”, Convorbiri literare, December 2011, pp. 128-130. Research interests: nineteenth-century, as well as contemporary, French and Russian political thought, history of political ideas, ethics and compassion in politics, and the relation between politics, philosophy and religion.

Marcela Monica STOICA She holds a Ph.D. in Political Sciences at the University of Bucharest. She is lecturer at the Christian University “Dimitrie Cantemir”, Bucharest. She was parliamentary counsellor at the Department of Press, Communications and Public Relations at the Chamber of Deputies and from 2006 works at the Legislative Department, at the Committee for Human Rights (the Chamber of Deputies). She is interested in the field of international organizations and institutions and is the author of some studies and researches focused on the relationship between the political parties, political elites and the electoral systems. Recent publications: European Union – an institutional approach, Ed. Pro-Universitaria, Bucureşti, 2010; “Le élite politiche, i partiti politici e il processo di democratizzazione in Romania”, in Mediterranean Pattern and the Extended Region of the Black Sea. Political, Economical and Cultural Confluences, Editura Ars Docendi, Bucureşti, 2013; “The Cultural Romanian Identity in the South-Eastern Space”, Proceedings of the First International Conference on EU and Black Sea Region, Vol. II:

Challenges from EU in the Black Sea Region: Facing New Geopolitics Realities 393


(edited by Mihai Şerban and Gabriel Leahu), Mineo Giovanni Editore, Bagheria (PA), 2012.

Codrin TĂUT Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Bucharest. Recent publications: “De la gramatică la politică”, introducere la Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser, Despre redistribuire şi recunoaştere, Editura Tact, 2012, pp. 5-17; “Demitizarea sau mitologizarea postcomunismului?”, in Sergiu Gherghina, Sergiu Mișcoiu (coord.), Miturile politice in Romania contemporana, Institutul European, Iași, 2012, pp. 41-62. Fields of interest: Contemporary political philosophy, Critical theory, Poststructuralist politics, Post-communism, Populism.

Andreea ZAMFIRA Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bucharest and L‟Université Libre de Bruxelles. She is lecturer at LUMINA – The University of South-East Europe, Bucharest (Department of International Relations and European Studies), associated researcher at CEVIPOL (Center for the Study of Political Life) from Brussels and associated teacher at the University of Bucharest (Faculty of Political Sciences). She is the author of the book Une sociologie électorale des communautés pluriethniques, L‟Harmattan, Paris, 2012 and of several articles and book chapters on interethnicity, political parties and voting behaviour: “Le rôle de la solidarité ethnique aux élections locales de Sibiu”, Transitions, Vol. 53, No. 1&2 – Sibiu: Les mutations d‟une région d‟Europe centrale), 2013, pp. 121-141; “Europa etnică. O analiză a analogiilor şi contrastelor între Orient şi Occident”, Polis, No. 2, 2013, pp. 52-74; “Participarea partidelor etnice la alegerile locale”, in Sergiu Gherghina (ed.), Voturi şi politici. Dinamica partidelor româneşti în ultimele două decenii, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2011, pp. 295-325.

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Mandatory Submission Guidelines

I. ARTICLES Each article will be accompanied by:

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Last name and forename (Institutional affiliation) E-mail address Abstract (no more than 15 lines, in English – including the title); Mini-CV (in English, of no more than 10 lines, specifying the contributor’s scientific titles, his/her institutional affiliation, the titles of his/her most important publications); Keywords (in English, no more than 5).

Important: Each article should contain an Introduction and Conclusions. General recommandations: -

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The desirable dimension of an article is of 15-20 pages (about 40.000-50.000 characters, spaces included, without footnotes). The texts shall be written in Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf), in 12-point Garamond font, using 1.0 line-spacing. The footnotes shall be written in font 10, using 1.0 line-spacing. Margins: 2.54 cm. (bottom, top, left, right). Paragraph indent shall be of 1 cm. All quotations in the text that exceed 3 lines shall be written in font 10 and shall constitute distinct paragraphs (in italics, with quotation marks). In this case the indent shall be 1 cm (left/ right). The quotations should not exceed 7 lines. A maximum of 3 headings are accepted in structuring the paper. Example: 1. CHAPTER; 1.1. Subchapter; 1.1.1. Sub-Subchapter. English quotation marks shall be used in the text: “the meaning of ’Nationbuilding’ in Anderson’s book”. Use the specific regime of capital letters in the titles (Ethnicity and Electoral Politics). The punctuation marks that shall be followed by a blank space are , . ? ! : ; The one preceded and followed by a blank space is – The footnotes shall be numbered from 1 to n.

Quotation system (Footnotes):  The order of the elements of a cited paper is the following: 395


- Volumes: author (Arend LIJPHART), title (in italics), publishing house, town, year, page/ pages (p./ pp.) - Articles: author, title of the article (with quotation marks), title of the journal (in italics), Vol., No, Year, pp. - Chapters in collective volumes: author, title of the chapter (with quotation marks), in, the coordinator’s/ publisher’s name, (ed.)/ (eds.), title of the volume (with quotation marks), publishing house, town, year, pp. - For on-line sources, the afore-mentioned order shall be used: Author, Title..., Publishing house, place of publication, Year... . At the end the link shall be placed in square brackets [ ]. Note: In case the publishing house or the publication place is not specified, write n.p. (i.e. “no publisher”/ “no place”). In case the year when the work was published is not specified write n.d. (“no date”).  Example: Arend LIJPHART, Electoral Systems and Party Systems. A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994, pp. 80-90. Iain McLEAN, Arnold B. URKEN (eds.), Classics of Social Choice, The University of Michigan Press, Michigan, 1995, p. 70. Giulia SANDRI, Carlo PALA, “L’impact du processus de régionalisation sur le système politique et de partis italien”, in Jean-Benoit PILET, Jean-Michel DE WAELE, Serge JAUMAIN (eds.), L’absence des partis nationaux: menace ou opportunité, Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, Bruxelles 2009, pp. 97-125. Antoine ROGER, “Economic Development and Positioning of Ethnic Political Parties: Comparing Post-Communist Bulgaria and Romania”, Southeast European Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2002, pp. 20-42. Repetition of bibliographic references: - If one and the same author appears in successive notes and is quoted with a different paper, starting with the second note use Idem. - If the same paper is cited in successive notes, starting with the second note, the reference shall be Ibidem. - Starting with the second bibliographical reference to one and the same paper, but in non-consecutive notes, ...cit./…cit. (lat., citato) is recommended to be used.  Examples: Benedict ANDERSON, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, New York & London, 1983. 2 Ibidem, pp. 9-24. 3 Pierre BOURDIEU, The Field of Cultural Production, Polity, Cambridge, 1993. 1

396


Idem, Ce que parler veut dire. L’Économie des échanges linguistiques, Fayard, Paris, 1982. ROGER, “Economic Development and Positioning of Ethnic Political Parties: Comparing Post-Communist Bulgaria and Romania”, Southeast European Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2002, pp. 20-42. 6 Benedict ANDERSON, Imagined Communities…cit., p. 145. 7 Antoine ROGER, “Economic Development and Positioning...cit.”. 4

5 Antoine

Structure of bibliography: - The works shall be enumerated in alphabetical order. - The last name of the author (in capitals) shall precede his forename (in lower-case letters). - On-line sources that cannot be ordered alphabetically (the name of the author is missing), shall be mentioned at the end of the bibliography. - The names of the publication places of the cited works, others than cities belonging to English speaking countries, shall not be translated into English (Write for instance București, Wien,... ).  Example: LIJPHART, Arend, Thinking about Democracy. Power Sharing and Majority Rule in Theory and Practice, Routledge, London & New York, 2008. MAYER, Nonna, PERRINEAU, Pascal, Les comportements politiques, Armand Colin, Paris, 1992. II. BOOK REVIEWS -

-

The reviewed works should be recent (published no more than 4 years ago). The recommended dimension of a review is of 3-4 pages (between 8.000-11.000 characters, spaces included). The reviews shall be written in Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf), in 12-point Garamond font, using 1.0 line-spacing. The footnotes shall be written in font 10, using 1.0 line-spacing. The quotations in the reviewed paper shall be followed by the reference to the page/Example: (pp. 17-21). The book reviews shall be accompanied by the bibliographic description of the reviewed paper (author/ authors, title, publishing house, town, year, number of pages). Example: Tom GALLAGHER Romania and the European Union: How the Weak Vanquished the Strong, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2009, 304 pp. 397


III. ESSAYS, INTERVIEWS, ARCHIVES, CHRONOLOGIES, EVENT RUBRIC -

The recommended dimension is between 10-20 pages (approximately 30.00055.000 characters, spaces included). They shall be written Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf), in 12point Garamond font, using 1.0 line-spacing. The footnotes shall be written in font 10, using 1.0 line-spacing.

Authors are fully responsible for the accuracy of all data in their contributions to this journal (articles, book reviews, etc.). The Journal is exonerated from juridical responsibility.

398

South-East European Journal of Political Science (SEEJPS)

South-East European Journal of Political Science (SEEJPS) is a peer-reviewed journal, with four thematic issues per year, dedicated to South-East Europe – to the socio-historical and political peculiarities and commonalities this area has in relation to the West and in relation to other surrounding cultural and political spaces, as well. First, by extending classical theoretical frameworks, the journal aims to create solid bridges between the research devoted to South -Eastern European political phenomena and processes before 1945, on the one hand, and research on communist regimes, post-communism and transition, on the other hand. Second, by probing various perspectives offered by political science (philosophy and political theory, sociology and political history, anthropology and political psychology, political analysis and public policies, international relations and European studies, etc.), the journal aims to contribute to the creation of an international forum for interdisciplinary debates on the latest concepts, issues and methodologies in the field.

Issues of the Numbers 1-4 (2014) Vol. II • No. 1 & 2 Populism and Its Metamorphoses Vol. II • No. 3 Population Policies and Demographic Dynamics in the Mediterranean Area Vol. II • No. 4 State and Citizenship: New Perspectives on Old Issues

10-11 APRIL 2014 BUCHAREST-SINAIA, ROMANIA

"The Exercise of Power 500 Years After The Prince Was Written"

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