Breaking EU’s Eastern Democracies – Populism in Romania and Hungary

Populist parties across Europe have gathered momentum and transformed the public sphere – and while some have argued that we have reached the ‘peak of populism’ with the result of the French and Dutch elections, this prediction seems premature as some suggest following the recent Austrian parliamentary elections. Populism is striving and this is especially important for EU’s Eastern democracies, where political institutions are ‘younger’, much less embedded in protective pro-democratic political culture. This paper examines how populist mobilization undermines traditional perceptions of cultural, as well as political otherness while at the same time challenges the core EU values of the rule of law, human rights and democratic freedoms. Populist pressures manifest themselves in various forms; the local institutional set-up is paramount to understanding their effects. This paper adopts a comparative case-study approach to examine Hungary and Romania – on the face of it, two very different cases. While Hungary’s PM was among the first to adopt a nationalist populist approach (‘Orbanization’), aimed at Hungary’s infamous ‘illiberal democracy’, many see Romania as an outlier in the regional trends favouring populist political style. Yet, a closer examination of public discourses and practices of political elites showcase Romania as bucking the trend: a mix of xenophobia and agitation against resident national minorities is endemic not only to electoral campaigns but mainstream political talk. Discrediting of opponents, as well as abundance of conspiracy theories compound discussions of economic downturn and angst over arrival of refugees. These live off and foster a self-centred apprehension of ill-defined ‘others’, where any deviation from the majority group is considered a threat to the nation that results in the manipulation of constitutional provisions, and balance of political power at the expense of several groups: national and gender minorities, as well as the refugees/migrants. The paper shows comparatively how the principles of equality, non-discrimination, and the rule of law have been eroding in relation to these three groups.