Few scholars have attempted a systematic comparison of populism in Western and post-communist Europe: studies of populism tend to be limited to one region or another, and when pan-European studies do occur, regional specificities disappear in an attempt not to essentialize “east” and “west”. The more theory-driven work on populism, however, offers useful tools to compare the nature and the causes of populist discourse at both ends of the European Union.
The challenge of a pan-European comparison of populism
Most of the literature on populism starts out with a careful note on the extreme difficulty in defining this phenomenon. Not only has the term has been used to describe very different situations, but the significant swell of scholarly attention to issue over the last 30 years has resulted in the adoption of multiple definitions and diverse interpretations. However, an increasing consensus has emerged on defining populism as a discourse, which has a defining core and a structure, but can have different contents. This allows one to take into account the multiple forms which populism can embody. Following Canovan (1999), I will define this common core as "an appeal to the people against both the established structures of power and the dominant ideas and values of society".
The increase in scholarly interest surrounding this topic reflects the empirical reality of an increasingly pervasive presence of populist discourse in the European political landscape. More specifically, it is the electoral success of populist radical right parties since the 1980's, currently stabilised in most European countries at around 10% of the electorate, which has spurred academic concern. Here, I will be looking on the one hand at the Central Eastern European (CEE) countries of the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargements, and on the other at the countries on the western side of this former communist bloc. With “East” and “West” so defined, populist radical right wing parties have had very comparable scores on both sides of the former iron curtain in Europe since the beginning of the 1990's. Despite this common trait, most authors tend to focus their analysis on Western European Populism, avoiding both the pan-European perspective and a thorough examination of populism in post-communist countries. The little literature which has attempted comparative studies of populism in this regard is fundamentally divided, as some authors focus on the intrinsic difference between populism in CEE and Western Europe, while others point to the risk of essentialising “East” and “West” in artificially created categories. This latter trend considers the growing success of the populist discourse at both ends of the European Union as essentially stemming from a common discontent with democracy.
If we focus on the definition of populism underlined earlier, however, these two approaches are not necessarily contradictory. In other terms, a "common analytical core" (Panizza, 2005) or structure can be found in both eastern and western populism. However, because populism emerges in two fundamentally different political environments, well-established democracies in the west and post-communist democracies in the east, it takes different forms on both sides of the former iron curtain.
Populism's "chameleonic quality" (Taggart, 2000)
Before analysing the different expressions of populism in Europe it is necessary to define more precisely the "common analytical core" which Francisco Panizza (2005) uses to bind different forms of populism together. According to this approach, populism is "an anti-status quo discourse that simplifies the political space by symbolically dividing society between 'the people' and its 'other'". The "people", here, is not the abstraction necessary in any democratic theory, but a unitary and homogeneous body defined through opposition to its enemies. The latter is constituted first of the elite, which usurps its political power, and second minorities, which threaten its homogeneity and identity.
Crucially, these features of the populist discourse have what Paul Taggart calls an "intrinsic chameleonic quality" (Taggart, 2000), in that they fundamentally vary according to the specific context in which the populist discourse emerges. In other words, they are "empty signifiers" that can take on many forms. According to Canovan (1999) the structure of power in place is essential in the formation of this specific populist discourse, as populism is above all a reaction to the elite in power and the dominant political discourse. From here, it is possible to identify the specific forms taken by populist discourse in CEE and Western Europe.
The “other” in post-communist and Western populist discourse
When the definition of the 'other' is considered, differences can be found between Eastern and Western populist discourses: while in Western populist rhetoric the 'other' is described as an invasive external threat to the people's homogeneity, a category into which immigrants and asylum seekers fall, the "other" in Eastern populist rhetoric is often a long-established insider who doesn't belong, such as the Roma population or the Jews. More generally, in Eastern Europe the populist discourse tends to be more openly exclusionary, that is more openly racist and xenophobic. As Mudde (2005) underlines, anti-Semitism and racism are fundamentally more widespread and accepted within Central European societies, and as a result, they are more overtly part of the radical political discourse while at the same time "mainstream political parties (...) are less willing to speak out against racist extremism than in the West". On the other hand, the exclusionary arguments of Western European radical right parties prefer to rely on an economic discourse ("they steal our jobs") or a sociological one ("they refuse to integrate") as a politically correct form of xenophobia.
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