Right-wing authoritarian innovations in Central and Eastern Europe

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Abstract (may include machine translation)

The decline of the quality of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe was facilitated by intellectual, ideological, and organizational innovations of a new authoritarian elite. I this article I discuss five such innovations: a particular combination of victim mentality, self-confidence and resentment against the West, the transformation of neighbor-hating nationalisms into a civilizationist anti-immigrant platform, the delegitimization of civil society and the return to the belief in a strong state, the resurrection of the Christian political identity, and the transformation of populist discourse into a language and organizational strategy that is compatible with governmental roles (“populist establishment”). These factors together point to an overarching ideological fame that I call paternalist populism.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)363-377
Number of pages15
JournalEast European Politics
Volume36
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2 Jul 2020

Keywords

  • East-Central Europe
  • Orban
  • Populism
  • ideology
  • nationalism
  • political Christianity

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