It is widely known that the configuration of political competition has differed in the Slovak and the Czech Republics, which used to be one state until January 1, 1993. As K. Deegan-Krause observes: “A national issue divide shaped much of Slovakia’s politics, during 1990s, whereas an economic issue divide dominated competition in the Czech Republic“(Deegan-Krause 2006: 207). These different key patterns of political competition had consequences – whereas the Czech political system had been visibly organized according to left-right economic alignment (marked by two major parties – the center-right ODS and center left ČSSD), in Slovakia nationalist populism played a major role and the key cleavage formed along an authoritarianism vs. liberal democracy axis. Despite the changing role of populism in Slovakia’s politics it has maintained its constitutive characteristics during three decades of post-communist democratic consolidation. Meanwhile, the trajectory of the Czech political development has been anything but straight. Since the 2010 general election the relatively stabile political system has been challenged by the rise of party populism (Havlík 2016, Heinisch and Saxonberg 2017). Above all, the party ANO as a representative of “entrepreneurial populism” and radical right movements as well as Dawn of Direct Democracy (later SPD), have emerged as successful electoral actors. In Slovakia an extreme right, and openly anti-minorities and anti-EU party, People’s Party–Our Slovakia (ĽSNS), entered the national parliament in 2016, in addition populist and nativist appeals were present in mainstream parties as well. Furthermore, the migration crises accelerated the saliency of such appeals and spread them almost across the entire political spectrum.
The literature on populism/s and nativism usually focuses on the discursive opportunity, forms, appeals, narratives, as well as issues of populism, nationalism and extremism. My proposed paper would shed more light on the counter-narratives– that is, the responses to particular appeals. Applying critical discursive analysis of statements, manifesto, speeches and other materials, the article will explore the discursive counteraction strategies of the political actors, which try to build the wall against populist rhetoric. The analysis will be conducted by comparing two countries: Slovakia and Czechia. It will focus on the year 2017, because of the general election in the Czech Republic and the regional election in Slovakia. For the Czech actors it will explore parties ODS and ČSSD which used to be the key mainstream parties, but are now becoming increasingly marginalized, yet still relevant for the public discourse. In Slovakia the situation is much more complicated because the line between populists and non-populists is more blurry and instead of political parties we will concentrate more on concrete issues (EU integration, migration, foreign labor force) and reveal the counter narratives. In summary, the paper aims to explore following questions: what are the differences in frames of populism and nativism counter-narratives between these two countries that have different “records” of populist politics? What can explain the success or failure of counteraction strategies? How do populist and anti-populist narratives interact in the political discourse?
