scholarly journals Success of the Far Right in the 2020 Slovak Parliamentary Election within the European Context

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-197
Author(s):  
Marián Bušša

Subject Financial market volatility. Significance A more dovish outlook for US monetary policy and the weaker performance of the far right in the Dutch parliamentary election have contributed to subdued volatility and risk aversion in financial markets. The Euro Stoxx 50 Volatility Index, Europe’s so-called ‘fear gauge’, measuring anticipated price swings in European equities, is close to a historic low. However, other gauges of sentiment, such as outflows from ‘junk-bond’ funds, suggest investors are increasingly concerned that markets are too frothy. Impacts Oil prices fell by 10% in March amid oversupply concerns, and further slippage would complicate OPEC talks on extending the output curbs. Emerging market equities have risen by 11.1% this year as dollar weakness and improving growth prospects lure investors seeking returns. The spread between France's ten-year government bond yield and Germany's remains close to a four-year high, highlighting Europe’s variation.


2002 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Cole

The 2002 Elections In France Were A Gripping Drama Unfolding in four acts. Each act has to be understood as part of a whole, as each election was ultimately dependent upon the results of the first round of the presidential election on 21 April. However untypical in the context of Fifth Republican history, the first round of the presidential election strongly inf luenced the peculiar course of the subsequent contests. The outcome of the first election on the 21 April – at which the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen won through to the second ballot against Jacques Chirac, narrowly distancing the outgoing premier Lionel Jospin – created an electric shock which reverberated around the streets of Paris and other French cities and sparked a civic mobilization without parallel since May '68. The end-result of this exceptional republican mobilization was to secure the easy (initially rather unexpected) re-election of Chirac as president at the second round two weeks later. The election of 5 May was unlike a typical second-round election. Rather than a bipolar contest pitting left and right over a choice of future governmental orientations, it was a plebiscite in favour of democracy (hence Chirac) against the far-right (Le Pen). Chirac was re-elected overwhelmingly as president, supported by at least as many leftwing as right-wing voters. This enforced plebiscite against the extreme right allowed a resurgent Jacques Chirac to claim a renewed presidential authority. At the parliamentary election of 9 and 16 June, the Fifth Republic reverted to a more traditional mode of operation, as a new ‘presidential party’, informally launched just weeks before the elections, obtained a large overall majority of seats to ‘support the President’ in time-honoured Fifth Republican tradition.


Author(s):  
Dawid Aristotelis Fusiek ◽  
Cecilia Marconi

The paper aims at investigating the relationship between Trumpism and the European far-right parties. The combination of shared ideological cores with the confrontation of similar “enemies” has resulted in the creation of an unprecedented relationship, wherein Trump takes the role of “international godfather” and inspiration for the European far right. To examine this relation, the paper focuses on references to Donald Trump and his policies and statements from 2016 to 2020 in the discourse of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Hungarian Civilian Alliance (Fidesz), and Lega Nord (Lega). The examination of the discourse of the three parties about security, immigration, foreign policy, and corruption shows that these parties have utilised Trumpism in three manners. Firstly, they have employed Trumpism to normalise certain pre-existing far-right ideologies and practices within their national and European context. Secondly, they have emulated Trump’s discourse and policies to capitalise on his popularity and support their national endeavours. Thirdly, they have used Trump’s fight and ideas to justify national measures, beliefs, criticism, or political goals. This paper thus aims to establish the leitmotifs governing the use of Trumpism by European far right to set the framework for future more critical analyses and a better understanding of this unprecedented relationship.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-48
Author(s):  
Viera Žúborová ◽  
Ingrid Borarosová

Abstract The recent parliamentary elections which took place in The Slovak Republic in March 2016 opened for many national and international commentators the bottled of demons from the past history of Slovakia. For the first time a Far right extremist political party entered into parliament and held seats there. They gained more than some standard political parties and also were not dubbed as the “black” horse of this election. As they were not measured by public opinion. The main purpose of this article is to analyze the fundamental purpose of voters that had elected this political party and on the other hand the main reason that has opened the parliamentary door to such a political entity that was not visible in the previous electoral periods or played any important role in the independence of Slovak republic. Our main assumption will be that which is taken from the media analysis before the parliamentary election and public opinion research. Our main variable from the external environment will be the migration refugee crisis and the rhetoric of political parties acting at national level. We can assume that this was one of the main reason for the entry of this political party within others which were “hidden” or covered by this crisis and were not mediatized in the media.


2020 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 316-334
Author(s):  
Tony Rocchi

The history of the prerevolutionary Russian Black Hundreds movement is an integral part of the general European history of populist parties and movements, especially of the far-right type. However, the European context of the Black Hundreds is not reflected in Russian and foreign historiography. This absence of a broader context for the study of the Black Hundreds constitutes a huge blank spot in our understanding of this complex and often contradictory political phenomenon. This article examines the groundbreaking possibilities of studying the Black Hundreds phenomenon in a European context of the history of populist parties and movements. A comparative approach to the study of the Black Hundreds movement would help us to understand many complexities of its history. By doing a comparative analysis of the Black Hundreds with other European far-right populist movements, we can trace elements of similarities and differences and determine elements of Russian uniqueness. The comparative approach helps us to avoid incorrect conclusions about the essence of the Black Hundreds movements. Incorrect conclusions include identifying the Black Hundreds with traditionalist counter-revolutionary movements from the time of the French and other democratic revolutions between 1770 and 1850 or with fascism, National Socialism and related ideologies in the 20th century. Instead, in many ways, the Black Hundreds movements were the forerunners of today’s mass European far-right populist parties and movements and even centrist and leftist populist parties. Populist parties are protest movements against traditional parties across the political spectrum. It is time to explore the Black Hundreds movement as part of the history of populism. Also through the comparative approach, one can determine the place of the Black Hundreds in the European-wide context of the history of European revolutionary, antirevolutionary, and counterrevolutionary movements, nationalism, the consolidation of ethnic and political nations, questions about the identity of individuals, strata, and societies, and the development of nationalist, separatist, autonomist, and regionalist parties and movements. Studying the Black Hundreds in a broad context has a huge current relevance and helps us to sort through the elements of mythmaking in the history of the Black Hundred phenomenon from its origins to the present day.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-99
Author(s):  
Pascal Siemsen

AbstractPopulist, especially far-right populist, parties have gained votes in recent elections across Europe recently. This observation is true for Poland as well. The far-right populist party Law and Justice (PiS, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) won the parliamentary election in 2015. Next to the well-known nativist and populist messages, PiS promoted a social policy: the Family 500+ programme. Did this programme attract voters? The findings of this study lend reason to answer the question in the affirmative. The inclusion of social policies usually associated with left-wing parties might hence be a path to be explored by other far-right populist parties as well.


Res Publica ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-438
Author(s):  
Istvan Hajnal ◽  
Bart Maddens

Rankings of politicalparties are often used to map the multiple party preference of the electorate. This article shows how the obtained rankings may be analysed by means of the exploded logit-technique, which allows for testing both the difference between the rankings and the effect of either categorical or quantitative independent variables on the rankings. An analysis of the effect of age on the party preference rankings of the christian democratie (CVP) electorate in the 1991 Belgian parliamentary election shows that the older CVP-voters tend to rank the liberal and the socialist party equally, white the younger voters hesitate between the liberal and the green party. The younger CVP-voters are also significantly less averse of the far-right Vlaams Blok.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-258
Author(s):  
Michael Rossi

The February 2020 parliamentary election marked a significant moment for Slovakia after years of public dissatisfaction with endemic corruption, political mismanagement, and unaccountable leadership associated with the political hegemony of Smer-SD and its leader Robert Fico. The resounding victory of the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities Party offers the country an opportunity to not only address the problems with Slovakia’s political culture of corruption and oligarchism, but also to strengthen democracy, the rule of law, and good governance. However, contrary to international expectations, the electoral demographic that chose Zuzana Čaputová as Slovakia’s new president in 2019 failed to secure enough votes to place any liberal democratic party in parliament, leaving the current legislature dominated by a collection of conservative, populist, and Eurosceptic parties. While seen by some analysts as a setback, the prognosis for Slovakian politics appears rather optimistic. This article assesses the outcomes of the February election and notes a continued pattern of political entrepreneurialism where the most successful parties tend to be those that promote broad-based issues of policy instead of any particular ideology, conservative or liberal. Slovakian politics might have been significantly influenced by a number of nationalist and conservative parties over the past three decades, but actual policy has been directed by opportunists instead of ideologues. This has enabled these larger entrepreneurial parties to adopt conservative elements into their programmes for electoral advantage instead of from actual conviction. This leaves open the possibility that entrepreneurial parties might gravitate towards more liberal democratic and even progressive policies should advantageous opportunities arise in the future. Given the current efforts by Slovakian political actors to break with past patterns of oligarchism, coupled with the discrediting of entrenched political elitism and the visible-yet-manageable threats from Slovakia’s far right, such outcomes are increasingly likely.


Politics ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Duncan Morrow

The unexpectedly early Austrian elections of 1995 resulted in the first setback for Jor Haider's dynamic far-right ‘Freieitlichen’ movement since he became party leader in 1986. The Austrian Social Democrats managed to overcome early inertia and mobilise the collective fear of many Austrians about the political and economic future and increase their parliamentary strength. Nevertheless, after the elections they used their strengthened position to introduce a programme of sharp cuts in the traditionally generous welfare budget which had been previously demanded by their opponents


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