Cultural policies of populist governments in central and Eastern Europe: a comparative review

The recent rise of populist and illiberal actors in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the concomitant democratic backsliding has generated notable scholarly interest; however, the implications of populism for cultural policy remain understudied. Since culture defines popular tastes and shapes interpretations of national identity and history, we adopt a comparative perspective to evaluate what impact these actors had on cultural policies between 2010 and 2023, using a combination of qualitative analysis of discursive and legislative changes, and quantitative text analysis. The findings indicate that the instrumentalization of cultural policies has been a function of ideology: while the ‘thick ideological’, radical right populist governing parties of Hungary and Poland abused culture as a vehicle for transmitting their nationalist narratives, their ‘thin populist’, technocratic Czech and Slovak counterparts took a more pragmatic approach to cultural policy. These findings highlight the impact of populist ideology with thick, cultural features on cultural policy.