Populist Politics in Eastern Europe: Between the Legacies of Autocracy and the Rules of Democracy

Why has the politics of personalist leadership experienced a resurrection in Central and Eastern Europe, a region that used to be ruled by autocratic Communist dictators? Operating in a democratic context, the region's new populists are anti-establishment outsiders and thus different from former Communist strongmen. Yet, their personalism, which defies institutionalized democratic politics, is perhaps more than reminiscent of old times. For example, Bulgaria's populist ex-prime minister, Boiko Borisov, has claimed that he has learned most about politics from the former dictator whose personal bodyguard Borisov was.

This paper uses a mixed-method approach - large-N studies and paired comparisons - to propose an explanation of the causal factors and mechanisms behind the electoral rise of non-xehophobic populists in the region. It utilizes a precise political definition of populism and proposes an empirical basis of a dataset of cases to develop a Populism Index, the dependent variable based on which post-communist democracies are systematically compared for the 1990-2010 period. The project argues that dissatisfaction with the economic transition is a trigger for populist voting in the region for two reasons. The first is a sense of relative deprivation related to the former communist culture of (nominal) equality as well as to popular aspirations to catch up with the EU’s more developed Western parts. The second reason is that publics blame their economic woes on the political institutions, a level of distrust especially salient in this region due to the historically high levels of distrust during Communism.