Populist rhetoric in the parliamentary election campaign in the Czech Republic from 2017

The paper presents the history of the populist dimension. Populism is depicted in this article as a phenomenon with many planes of conceptualization. In order to combine the considerations of populism and the party system, Czech groups have been investigated, which can be included in the current commonly called modern populism in modern politics. The subject of the study was not marginal groups, including detached parties, and those which have been present on the Czech political scene since 1993: ČSSD, ODS, TOP09, KDU-ČSL, ANO 2011, KSČM.

The objective of this paper is to analyze two research tools applied in the social sciences for quantitative and qualitative studies respectively, namely codebook, or coding scheme, and individual in-depth interview – in terms of their applicability for studies of populist political communication. To this end, three codebooks serving as the tools of media content analysis in the above-mentioned international studies conducted in Europe in 2012 – 2017 are critically reviewed, and the structure of a questionnaire for in-depth interviews planned within the COST Action IS1308 Populist Political Communication in Europe: Comprehending the Challenge of Mediated Political Populism for Democratic Politics is analyzed.

In recent years, the amount of empirical research on populism has increased dramatically. The purpose of this text is to analyze these strands of existing research on populism which employ qualitative methods. Additionally, the paper discusses their basic categories and research design, and highlights the advantages and drawbacks of each of these approaches. The paper presents the three most influential trends in qualitative research on populism: ideology analysismorphological approach, discourse theory, and historical-discursive analysis.

Populism is a multi-disciplinary research issue, especially as politics is concerned, present both in the social sciences and linguistics. Examined from different angles, it exhibits its semantic ambiguity and lack of a single definition. It is essential for cross-disciplinary studies to determine the definition of populism, which will also make it possible to determine the scope of the phenomenon under research. Such a possibility is ensured by the syndromized understanding of populism and by taking into account its manifestations on different levels of political discourse, including linguistic exponents, sender-recipient relations and a specific image of the world created within the framework of this discourse. The application of cognitive methodology in studies offers one of many research perspectives allowing populist discourse to be characterized from an interdisciplinary perspective, including a political-linguistic approach.

In 2015, so-called double (i.e., presidential and parliamentary) elections were held in Poland. The unquestionable winner of these elections was Law and Justice [Prawo i Sprawiedliwość], using slogans such as “good change” or “we’ll make it” in the campaign. The leitmotif of this campaign was discrediting any activities, including achievements, of the Civic Platform [Platforma Obywatelska] / Polish Peasant Party [Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe] coalition, addressing a “simple man” or the nation, and pointing out the need to involve the state institutions to implement the “good change” in favor of the “simple man”. Thus, Law and Justice adopted the anti-elitist position, pointing to the “pathologies of democracy in Poland”, mainly caused by the rule of the Liberals. Initiating the populist style of thinking was one of the reasons for the party’s success. This was an interesting research problem for us, especially that Law and Justice gained the trust of many young voters, aged 18–24.
The success of Kukiz’15 Election Committee, based on the third place achieved by musician Paweł Kukiz in the presidential election, was also very significant for our research questions. It was fascinating because Kukiz’15 Electoral Committee, apart from the popular slogan about the need to establish single-member electoral districts (JOW) and anti-elitist approach, did not offer the voters any vision of socio-political order in terms of ideology or programme. Still, it managed to persuade citizens to vote for Kukiz’15 in the parliamentary election.
These premises led to a research problem concerning the analysis of anxiety determinants that contributed to the positive reaction of voters, especially young ones, to the populist elements of the electoral campaign. Obviously, the fact that so-called soft populism is an inherent characteristic of all electoral campaigns was taken into account. Furthermore, we took into consideration the widespread occurrence of populist slogans in virtually all political programmes. Still, some questions remained unanswered, and the aim of the present study was to answer them. The primary question to answer is about the degree to which individual anxiety dispositions influence the development of populist attitudes among young people. Another important question is whether these are strong populist attitudes or just populist tendencies. The research results presented below are exploratory in character: this is only an introduction to further search for the answers to the above-mentioned questions.

The vast majority of the papers on populism describe this political phenomenon as one which is very difficult to explain and to analyze due to its discursive versatility and behavioural chameleonism. Furthermore, I would argue that the term populism covers more political and social realities than one single term would normally concentrate from a semantic point of view. I focus more over the psychological roots of populism which can be observed in the political symbolic field. In that manner, I consider that political symbolic, as part of the behavioural theory, can be a better tool for unveiling the populist discourse than the usual techniques of political analysis.

Is a Referendum a Threat to the Democratic Order? Reflections on Polish Legal Regulation and Referendum Practice Against the Background of the Latest Opinions of Foreign Doctrine of Constitutional Law and Political Sciences

In the latest literature on the subject, one can notice an increase in interest in direct democracy on the one hand, and on the other – a clear increase in the skepticism of researchers towards the idea of making binding and important decisions for the state by popular vote. The purpose of this article is to present and analyze the latest views of foreign doctrine of constitutional law (and, in addition: political science) about the institution of the referendum and to compare them with the (general) analysis of the legal regulation of this institution in Poland, as well as to present the real impact of referendums on the decision-making process and public policies in Poland. As a result, an attempt will be made to assess the Polish legal regulation of referendum institutions in terms of their effectiveness on the one hand, and potential threats (or resistance to threats) to the democratic order on the other. Although direct democracy, and especially a referendum, have a wide range of critics in the scientific community accusing it of even being anti-democratic, radical proposals calling for the complete abolition of referendums are rare. The postulates of appropriate changes in the legal regulation concerning the referendum prevail in order to make it resistant to dangerous modern phenomena: populism, political cynicism, manipulation and propaganda. The implementation of all postulates for changes reported by representatives of science will be very difficult. Noticing this fact may cause that the referendum will become a decision-making procedure very rarely launched. This seems to be the intention of researchers who submit their proposals and reservations – that direct democracy should be only an exception to representative democracy and that the former should not be used against the latter.

Artykuł poświęcony jest problematyce przemian zachodzących w ramach europejskich systemów partyjnych. Autor zwraca uwagę, że możemy obecnie obserwować proces rozpadu dotychczasowych podziałów socjopolitycznych i kształtowania się nowych podziałów. Proces ten jest efektem makropoziomowych procesów, które można określić jako rewolucja postindustrialna i rewolucja postnarodowa. Głównym celem artykułu jest próba weryfikacji hipotezy zakładającej, że efektem kształtowania się tzw. społeczeństwa informacyjnego będzie pojawienie się nowych podziałów społecznych politycznie doniosłych. Ponad pięćdziesiąt lat temu dwaj autorzy: Seymour Lipset i Staein Rokkan opublikowali książkę Party systems and voter alignments: cross-national perspectives. W pracy tej autorzy skojarzyli podziały społeczne z liniami podziałów politycznych kształtujących się w ramach europejskich systemów partyjnych. Lipset i Rokka dowodzili także, że istniejące podziały partyjne są efektem dwóch makropoziomowych procesów: rewolucji przemysłowej i rewolucji narodowej. Jednakże obecnie europejskie systemy partyjne przechodzą daleko idące przemiany. Można zaobserwować spadek poparcia dla „tradycyjnych” partii politycznych, a także rosnące poparcie dla tzw. ruchów antyestablishmentowych. Autor przyjął, że jest to efekt kształtowania się nowych podziałów socjopolitycznych będących efektem daleko idącej transformacji społecznej związanej z kształtowaniem się społeczeństwa informacyjnego. Dla potwierdzenia swojej hipotezy autor analizuje przemiany, które zaszły we francuskim systemie partyjnym. Według autora zmiany, które zaszły na francuskiej scenie politycznej, są dobrym stadium przypadku, które pozwala zrozumieć współczesne procesy społeczno- -polityczne.

Populizm jest zjawiskiem skomplikowanym, ponieważ koncepcja ta nie tylko różni się zarówno w podejściu, jak i przejawach, ale także ukształtowała się w krajach i regionach poza Europą. Podczas gdy intelektualiści nieustannie krytykują i postrzegają to zjawisko jako zagrożenie, któremu należy zapobiegać, miliony ludzi w całej Europie jednocześnie okazują poparcie dla ruchów, partii i osób o ideologii populistycznej. Ten sprzeczny obraz pokazuje, że pojawienie się populizmu jest w istocie odzwierciedleniem szeregu niestabilnych i niepokojących problemów społeczno-politycznych, a także skrajnych emocji i bezsilności ludzi w takich sytuacjach. Celem artykułu jest zatem przyjrzenie się czynnikom napędzającym Brexit, a tym samym zbadanie populizmu na poziomie analizy na poziomie indywidualnym, grupowym, państwowym i systemowym. Wyjaśniając poglądy wietnamskich intelektualistów na temat populizmu, artykuł następnie omawia możliwość wzrostu populizmu w obecnej sytuacji społeczno-politycznej w Wietnamie.

About the need for increased intercultural education in the face of the right-wing populism in Poland

The phenomenon of right-wing populism, which has been spreading in Poland for several years, is deeply permeated with exclusive and anti-pluralist demagogy, which has consequences for public education in our country. In this context, an urgent socio-educational challenge is to counteract students’ fear of what is different and unknown, as well as to develop respect and empathy towards other people, i.e. their different worldview, culture and religion. The aim of this article is not to construct some ad hoc and one-off school and pedagogical initiatives in the face of populist lies and manipulation, but to create the conceptual foundations of an educational, interdisciplinary and, above all, anti-populist preventive system that would be thoroughly filled with the premises of intercultural education and educate young citizens who perceive pluralism as cultural and social value.

Megalothymic subjectivity as a result of populist narrative strategies

The article addresses the phenomenon of megalothymic subjectivity as an indirect effect of the systemic weakness of modern liberal democracy. By using Donald Trump’s narrative strategies as an example, the author shows how populism creates in voters’ minds an imagined reality of conspiracy, danger, and loss of human decency. The process of populist communication takes the form of a story with an upcoming decisive moment, the victory of good or evil. A voter being shaped in such manner sees himself both as a part of a significant and strong community and as a victim of hostile actions of politicians on the national and international scene. The voter in such a position begins to manifest attitudes indicating a desire to regain his supposedly lost subjectivity, the extreme manifestation of which was the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.