Tuesday, June 25, 2013
C0.23 (Oudemanhuispoort)
Following the coming of financial and economic crisis in 2008, many observers expected the rise of Left political mobilizations as the answer to dissatisfaction with worsening socioeconomic conditions. While this was basically confirmed in West European countries (Occupy or Indignados movement, student protests or mass labour strikes), the Left has generally not been that successful to mobilize on economic issues in CEE countries. On the contrary, it seems that the far-right actors were more successful to respond to the changed political landscape. What are the reasons? Our paper aims at systematic empirical exploration of this phenomenon. First, it compares radical Left and radical Right protests in the Visegrad countries before and after the coming of the economic crisis in 2008. Second, it asks, what are the reasons for far-right mobilizations in the CEE countries. We explore the hypothesis that the worsened ideological climate for the Left after 1989 has prevented it from mass mobilizations. More specifically, we ask whether and how the protest activities framed as anti-communist correlate with the frequency of far-right protests in the CEE countries. We expect that the stronger the anti-communist campaigns in respective CEE countries, the more active radical Right mobilizations.
