Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: Anti-Party As a Transient Aberration or a Trendsetter in Slovakia’s Party Politics?

While Slovakia’s party politics hosts a rich tradition of populism and anti-establishment mobilization, Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) movement is its first successful anti-party.  OĽaNO is an anti-party in that it refuses both “political party” as an organizational form of political activity and the role of parties in the political process and representation. Instead, the movement defines itself as a platform for independent candidates to run for parliament, thus, somewhat paradoxically, performing an electoral role of the party. While taking the role of the electoral party, in organizational terms it has been managing to evade party-like arrangement by avoiding internal party democracy, replacing it with the authority of a single leader and reducing the membership in the movement to its four members. Put differently, in terms of the three faces of party organization OĽaNO strictly refuses the party on the ground and, therefore, by extension also the party in the central office. It, however, considers party in public office as a useful – or, indeed, inevitable – means of exerting a leverage and checking on the dominant, greedily misbehaving political parties by the non-party.  Policy-wise, any issue or policy can easily become or cease to be relevant and central as soon as it pertains to and serves the purpose of the anti-party and anti-establishment drive. The goal of the case study is to inquiry into the determinants of success of such political appeal in Slovakia and the prospect for its duration in the country’s party system.