Sunnercrantz, Liv. (2023). “The impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on right-wing populism in Norway.” In: The Impacts of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Right-wing Populism in Europe. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). March 8, 2023. Brussels. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0025
The political right-wing populism topography in Norway has for decades been dominated by the Norwegian Progress Party, which is characterized by a combination of social-conservative values like nativism combined with market liberalism. However, following the invasion of Ukraine, it is not issues of security and sovereignty that take centre stage in the Progress Party’s discourse but high energy prices. As a fossil fuel producer, Norway profits from the ensuing energy crisis and Europe’s search for other energy providers than Russia. These profits, the Progress Party argues, are unduly awarded to the state treasury while “ordinary people” and entrepreneurs struggle. Populism thus appears in Norway as a way for a right-wing opposition party to challenge the centre-left government.
Keywords: Norwegian Progress Party; Russia–Ukraine war; energy prices; immigration; populism.
Populism appears in politics amongst parties of the Left, the Right and the political centre in Norway. This diversity is apparent in the diverging ideologies and strategies entangled with populist politics. On the Right, the Norwegian Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet, FrP) combines neoliberal and nativist ideologies and is most associated with populism in Norway. The traditionally agrarian Centre Party occupies the middle ground. The centre-left Labour Party advances a broad range of liberal, social democratic politics. Finally, on the Left, there are two smaller parties with populist tendencies, the Socialist Left Party (which campaigns on social justice and environmentalism) and the Far Left is the socialist Red Party, which engages in traditional class politics. In the most recent election in 2021, the Centre Party most successfully and thoroughly applied a populist agenda. It did so partly in cooperation with the Labour Party in forming a government but has since toned down its populist appeal.
The precursor to today’s Progress Party was Anders Lange’s eponymous party (Anders Lange’s Party, ALP), formed in 1973 and inspired by right-wing populist developments in neighbouring Denmark. Contemporaneously, a short-lived leftist populist movement attached to the Socialist Left Party demanded a reorientation of society and policy towards local communities and mobilized mostly peripheral coastal areas of Norway through a system critique and the threats associated with Norway’s European integration (Bjørklund, 2004). Like the FrP, this early wave of leftist populism mobilized actors dissatisfied with Labour Party governments and the politics of centralization, bureaucracy, and industrialization.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the ALP morphed into the FrP, redefined itself as a libertarian party, and applied more nativist rhetoric. The Muslim immigrant figure was singled out as a scapegoat in the FrP’s discourse. This is even though Muslims are not the majority of immigrants to Norway. In the 1980s, the FrP also started to shift to welfare chauvinism, arguing for the defence of the welfare state rather than its retrenchment. But it was not until the 1990s that the party discourse became rephrased around cultural differences and integration as its key concerns.
Although the FrP is relatively moderate by European Far Right standards— and internally divided between two factions (one libertarian, one more national conservative)—it is the strongest anti-immigration voice among parliamentary parties in Norway. Like its sibling Far Right parties across the Nordics today, the FrP maintains that it is not propagating hate messages against immigrants but instead is concerned with the national interest. The party instead positions itself against the policies of the Labour Party, which it blames for the social ills it claims have resulted from admitting (Muslim) immigrants to Norway (Palonen & Sunnercrantz, 2021). However, FrP has targeted a range of “elites” for criticism in its populist rhetoric over the last few decades, including the EU, the central state administration, liberal leftists, and, of course, the Labour Party. More recently, the party has foregrounded voices sceptical of human-induced climate change and mobilized around continued fossil extraction in Norway, thus targeting supporters of vigorous climate change mitigation and those opposed to fossil fuel use.
In the 2005 and 2009 elections, the FrP increased its voter support to become the second-largest party after the Labour Party. But Labour was able to cobble together a coalition government with the Socialist Left Party and the Centre Party in both cases. In 2013, the Conservative Party moved into second place ahead of the FrP but reached out to the party in coalition negotiations. The two agreed to form a governing coalition, allowing the FrP to enter government for the first time. The coalition was in office until 2017.
Populism in the 2021 elections: Now it is the turn of “ordinary people”
In January 2020, the FrP staged a dramatic exit from the governing right-wing coalition due to policy disagreements with its partners, the Liberal Party and the Christian Democrats. The FrP claimed that the government’s decision to bring a woman who had joined ISIS in Syria and her child back to Norway was the main reason for leaving the government. This left the party with a good margin to reposition itself as an oppositional challenger party in time for the national election in the autumn of 2021. But several internal ideological battles played out between the libertarian and national conservative factions in the autumn of 2020. The deputy leader Sylvi Listhaug took a prominent role alongside party chief Siv Jensen in rooting out radical nationalist elements from the party.
Like other right-wing populist parties in Europe, the FrP has been led by female party leaders since the mid-2000s. When Jensen stepped down as party leader in February 2021, she pointed to Listhaug as her preferred successor. Listhaug was unanimously elected party leader three months later during a party congress. Her victory speech was ladened with neoliberal populist rhetoric: “We shall still maintain the soul of the party, which is that we dare where others are silent. That we challenge the elite and the experts, and we stand up for individuals” (cited in Helljesen, 2021). Listhaug’s election was nevertheless tainted by a debate centred on the complete lack of female representatives among the remaining ten members of the party’s central board (Rognsvåg, 2021).
As a term, populism now carries negative connotations in Norwegian public political discourse. As a derogative, “populism” connotes opportunistic political practices, short-term solutions, and a lack of scruples and principles (Bjørklund, 2004). Populism was avidly used by politicians, journalists, and political commentators in the months leading up to the national elections in September 2021, as the slogan “now it is the turn of ordinary people” took centre stage in the election campaign of the Labour Party and the Centre Party. While this rhetoric was criticized and ridiculed, the two parties gained enough electoral support (26.3% and 13.5%, respectively) to form a coalition government and oust the incumbent right-wing coalition. This centre-left project thus utilizes populist rhetoric to challenge the liberal–conservative status quo coalitions governing since 2013. This follows a broader historical pattern of Nordic populism, which functions as a strategy for fringe parties to challenge an existing hegemony in attempts to gain mainstream positions (Palonen & Sunnercrantz, 2021). A type of “rural populism” fronted by the leader of the Centre Party contributed to their electoral success already in the local and regional elections of 2019.
The Centre Party is one of the few parties that increased its electoral support in the 2021 election, along with other fringe parties like the Socialist Left Party, the Red Party, and the Green Party. Simultaneously, the FrP’s vote share dropped from 15.2% in 2019 to 11.6 % in the 2021 election. This was their worst result since 1993. Aggregated polling results in the past year show a slight increase for the party in the summer of 2022 and a relatively stable downward trend back to 11.8% since then. The Labour Party has experienced a general fall in support since the election (to between 17.8 and 19.6% in the past six months) and the Centre Party (between 5.2 and 7.5 % in the past six months). All the while, the conservative Right party steadily increased from 20.4% in the election to tipping above 30% in support in late 2022 and early 2023 (Stortingsvalg: Hele Landet, n.d.). It is difficult to assess whether this relates to the war in Ukraine. While a direct causal relation seems unlikely, it seems more likely that these figures are indirectly related to the invasion of Ukraine and directly related to a crisis much closer to home, namely, increased energy prices coupled with the government’s inability to live up to its many promises from the election campaign.
The Progress Party strategy in the Ukraine war
The war in Ukraine and the government’s handling of the situation do not seem to cause a stir among voters or parties. Most parties are in general agreement on how to handle the situation. Both the Socialist Left and the Red party internally debate and disagree as to whether Norway should send weapons to Ukraine. The FrP also takes a critical stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and supports the government’s politics on the matter. While the FrP is largely silent in debates regarding the handling of the war in terms of international politics, they take the opportunity to exploit war-related issues such as energy prices, fossil fuel production and farming.
The Progress Party does not share the pure authoritarianism and illiberalism of Putin’s regime. The war has seemingly had both direct and indirect effects on the FrP’s discourse. First, in reassessing Norwegian defence policy, the party’s argumentation takes a more internationalist rather than nationalist turn. The FrP is a strong NATO advocate but is alone in seeing NATO as a genuinely collaborative organization. Since Norway will “play on the same team as the Finns” in case of an invasion from the east, the party argues that Norway should change its defence investment to complement the capabilities of its neighbouring newcomers to NATO (Sweden and Finland).
The fact that Russia shares a long border with Norway has complicated the political disproval of all things Russian. The border region in northeastern Norway is sparsely populated and potentially vulnerable because of its geographical remoteness from more densely populated and politically prioritized areas in the south. Therefore, Norway and its extended state apparatus maintained bilateral cooperation and relations with Russian counterparts well into 2021. Intriguingly, the FrP’s enmity with the Labour Party clashes with their NATO-friendly stance, as the NATO secretary-general is Jens Stoltenberg, a former Labour Party prime minister of Norway. Hence, while the FrP criticizes the Labour Party and Stoltenberg’s politics at home – they are not as critical of Stoltenberg’s politics as NATO secretary-general. Moreover, the FrP and Listhaug especially endorse good relations with the US. But individual spokespersons from the FrP are more understanding and even defensive of Russian actions, including former party leader Hagen and the spokesperson on foreign relations and defence (Myhre et al., 2022).
While in power, the FrP is quite happy to admit Christian immigrants from Poland and the Baltics – while less enthusiastic about immigrants from the Global South. This pattern is recognizable in the overall media discourse in Norway following the invasion of Ukraine. Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe faced a refugee crisis similar to that of 2015, when more than 800,000 refugees arrived in Europe by boat across the Mediterranean. European countries once again had to decide how to deal with hundreds of thousands and soon over a million displaced people. Norwegian media narratives of Ukrainian refugees are drastically different from the narratives of refugees from Syria, for example. Debates discuss whether the immense support for and engagement regarding Ukrainian refugees (compared to the more negative storylines of refugees from, say, Afghanistan or Syria) is a sign of sheer racism. Ukrainian refugees feature daily in media reports from the frontline, as well as border crossings, and the many various receptions and accommodations for refugees in Norway.
This differential treatment of refugees eventually gained attention in debate forums. Some argue that “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reveals systemic racism in European states’ refugee and asylum policies” (Kjellmo Larsen, 2022). The Progress Party—which has promoted very strict asylum and deportation policies for years (see, e.g., Progress Party, n.d.)—now suggests a so-called fast track for Ukrainians who come to Norway by, for example, granting work permits from day one (Progress Party, 2022b, 2022c). What is more, they wish to “immediately stop the retrieval of resettlement refugees from other areas of the world and give priority to helping European refugees from Ukraine” (Progress Party, 2022a).
The energy crisis resulting from the war has opened a window of opportunity for Finnish populist Far Right parties to reclaim their populist and rural roots in antagonizing energy policies and mobilizing the “regular people” through petro-friendly politics and campaigns against spiking prices and VAT on fossil fuels, electricity, and food. Hence, the internationalist free-market ideology is rearing its head again in Norwegian right-wing populism. That Norway profits from the war is no secret. In September 2022, The Economist reported that Norway would gain over US$200 billion in extra revenue a year from the sale of oil, gas, and electricity due to the Ukraine war (The Economist, 2022). The FrP takes this opportunity to argue for increased exploration activity on the Norwegian continental shelf. This argument is framed in terms of energy security and taking “responsibility for making Europe less dependent on Russia’s energy supply” (Progress Party, 2022a). Hence, an emphasized sense of a crisis serves as a useful building block in the Progress Party’s existing fossil fuel policies. Moreover, the party’s leader mobilizes against the fact that “the state becomes richer – people become poorer” (Politisk kvarter, 2022).
As a government party, the FrP contributed to tying Norway closer to the European power market through several power cables that connect the Norwegian national grid to those of adjacent countries. These have been the subject of dispute in the past few years. As recently as 2018, the former Progress Party Minister of Petroleum and Energy (2013–16) argued whole-heartedly in favour of the international market model (Hansen & Moe, 2022). The mainstream discourse thus far “represents a political counterweight to sovereignty claims and resource nationalism” (Hansen & Moe, 2022, p. 7), which we might associate with the populist Far Right. However, the FrP changed its rhetoric through 2021 and 2022 from market-friendly internationalism towards energy sovereignty. This is coupled with skyrocketing electricity prices relative to pre-pandemic times. In 2021 and 2022, the exploding electricity prices hit Norwegian citizens and businesses hard, given their propensity for high consumption. Prices were hotly debated, not least during the election campaigns in 2021, and the centre-left government that took office in the autumn of 2021 quickly rolled out a subsidy programme for households in time for the winter months of 2021–22.
The electricity prices increased in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine and are routinely blamed on the international market and cables. Nevertheless, the many co-dependent variables that affect electricity prices are so complex that neither politicians nor experts agree on how the prices are set or how much the two cables have affected prices. Nonetheless, the FrP leader Listhaug claimed in November 2022 that “there is no doubt that the high prices in Europe are largely due to the war” (Solvang, 2022) and that the two cables for increased export capacity are also to blame for higher prices. Moreover, the first significant price increase in the winter of 2020–21 followed a long period of low energy prices.
An argument concerning who and what is to blame for the high energy costs developed between the Labour Party and the FrP in the autumn of 2022. Listhaug accused the government of blaming too much on the war and not taking sufficient responsibility for increased prices in the summer of 2021. The Labour Party, on the other hand, accuses Listhaug of playing on polarization and hatred to recruit voters. Media recounts how the social democratic minister of climate and environment sees parallels between Listhaug and Putin:
“I wouldn’t say in any way that she’s doing it on Putin’s behalf because I don’t believe that for a moment, but that’s the kind of reaction he wants, namely, “us against them”, internally in the West, that we are divided.” (Karlsen, 2022)
Listhaug later condemned these accusations and managed to reassert a focus on the two cables and “naïve European politicians” (Heldahl & Karlsen, 2022). In the end, the complexity of the electricity market has been simplified in media narratives and has become one of the major concerns for Norwegian households. The governing parties’ inability to accommodate public grievances of the high prices is often named as one of the reasons why the Centre Party’s popular support has dropped from the election results of 13.5% to polling between 4.5–7.5 % through 2022-23.
In October 2022, the FrP suddenly demanded a maximum price for electricity. But this is not an anti-marketization argument since, as Listhaug emphasizes, ownership in the energy market is dominated by state actors (usually in the form of municipal and regional ownership of electricity companies) (Solvang, 2022). the FrP wishes to set a maximum price on electricity for “industry and business” and “common people” at 0.5 NOK per kWh (Progress Party, 2021; Solvang, 2022). True to form, the FrP does not wish to regulate the energy market as such but for the state to provide subsidies covering 100% of the electricity prices over 0.50 Norwegian krone (NOK) per kWh (about €0.05). Businesses and private customers may thus receive support for the difference between 0.50 NOK and up to their billed price (a slightly higher subsidy than the electricity support scheme in place since December 2021). While this proposal did not receive sufficient support in parliament, it shows that the FrP promotes a power policy relatively similar to that which populists on the Left—in the Socialist Left Party and the Red Party—have long since propagated.
Another issue debated since the invasion of Ukraine is that Norway has profited greatly from the ensuing increase in oil and gas prices. Intriguingly, the FrP uses this as a reason for increased subsidies in electricity prices:
The money flows into the treasury from the oil and gas sector. Never before have we made more money from this than now. Of course, we can afford to let some of this benefit ordinary people if there is political will. (Progress Party, 2021)
One could argue that this is related to the “demand side” of right-wing populism. Norwegian political parties seem almost to compete on the matter of who can lower the costs of electricity the most for households and businesses in times of skyrocketing prices in 2022–23. Hence, economic grievances amongst the electorate could be the reason behind the FrP’s U-turn from free-market liberalism to increased state inference. Moreover, the FrP takes on and propagates common-sense explanations that “everybody can see” (Solvang, 2022) when seeking to account for price rises.
Conclusion
The effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on right-wing populism in Norway are mostly indirect. The traditional populists in the Norwegian Progress Party mobilize less on the issue of military defence and international relations and more on high fuel prices, high electricity prices and tighter finances for both private households and the business sector. These domestic issues are framed partly as consequences of the war. It is widely recognized that as a producer of fossil fuels, Norway profits extensively from the war and Europe’s turn away from Russian oil and gas. The FrP equates the increased expenses for business and “common people” with the severity of the refugee crisis and the security threat that the war has triggered.
(*) Liv Sunnercrantz is associate professor at the Department of Media and Social Sciences in the University of Stavanger. Sunnercrantz’s work centres on post-foundational discourse theory and the sociology of intellectuals. Her current research is focused on populism and populist rhetoric, especially in the Scandinavian context.
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Palonen, E., & Sunnercrantz, L. (2021). Nordic populist parties as hegemony challengers. In A. Koivunen, J. Ojala, & J. Holmén (Eds.), The Nordic economic, social and political model: Challenges in the 21st Century. Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429026690-8
Afonso, Biscaia & Salgado, Susana. (2023). “The Ukraine-Russia war and the Far Right in Portugal: Minimal impacts on the rising populist Chega party.” In: The Impacts of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Right-wing Populism in Europe. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). March 8, 2023. Brussels. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0026
The effects of the Russia-Ukraine war on Portuguese politics have been negligible, leading to only minor changes in political positions or the relative popularity of the parties. Chega was the first right-wing populist political party to achieve a parliamentary breakthrough in Portugal, emerging as the third-largest political force after elections in January 2022. It shares rhetorical features and positions with European counterparts but distinguishes itself by its flexibility. Unencumbered by association with the Russian regime, Chega has been free to take the more popular position among voters, supporting Ukraine. Furthermore, one of its foremost adversaries, the Portuguese Communist Party, took an ambiguous position regarding the invasion of Ukraine, making Chega’s decision about positioning clearer. Nevertheless, Chega has used the war instrumentally in service of its established priorities—namely, nationalism, opposition to immigration, and militarism. Moreover, after temporarily setting aside welfare chauvinism, the party reverted to this staple as the war continued. We shed light on the rhetoric and positioning of Chega and its leader, André Ventura, by analysing 47 parliamentary commentaries by Chega MPs in 2021 and 2022 and 28 tweets mentioning Ukraine, Russia, nationals from both countries, or the war posted by Ventura during the same period.
Keywords: Portugal; right-wing populism; Chega; André Ventura; Twitter; legislative proceedings.
Chega is currently Portugal’s largest right-wing populist party and the third-largest political party overall. Established in 2019, Chega’s parliamentary breakthrough came the same year when founder and leader André Ventura was elected as the party’s lone MP. Then, in 2022, Ventura was joined by 11 new Chega MPs after the party took 7.18% of the vote in snap elections held in January. The Portuguese Far Right landscape includes two other noteworthy parties, Ergue-te! (Rise Up!) and ADN (Alternativa Democrática Nacional). However, they are electorally irrelevant (their combined vote share in the 2022 elections was 0.29%).
The rise of right-wing populism in Portugal came as something of a surprise. With the right-wing Estado Novo authoritarian regime still in living memory, the country had been considered resistant to Far Right mobilization, with news media coverage being consistently critical of populist or radical right-wing actors (Salgado & Zúquete, 2016; Salgado, 2019). Even though Ventura was the sole MP for Chega until 2022, the party began receiving disproportionate media coverage, as usually happens to smaller parties with seats in the national Parliament (Salgado, 2022). Nevertheless, despite the 11 new MPs who joined Ventura in 2022, Chega remains a “one-man show” (Halikiopoulou & Vlandas, 2022). Ventura is the uncontested leader and face of the party, with internal power so concentrated in his hands that Portugal’s Constitutional Court deemed the party charter unconstitutional in late 2022 (Pinto de Mesquita & Rodrigues, 2022).
Furthermore, media resistance to right-wing populism should not be equated with the absence of demand for it. For example, intolerant cultural attitudes led nearly 54% of Portuguese respondents to the 2014 European Social Survey to agree with the statement, “Some cultural groups are clearly superior to others” (European Social Survey, 2014). Moreover, “the size of the Roma minority [and] percentage of social assistance recipients” in a given locality are “associated with higher radical-right vote shares”, although, somewhat surprisingly, the “classic” factors seen as driving such voters (such as high unemployment and the presence of sizeable immigrant minority communities) do not (Afonso, 2021, p. 5).
Constants in Ventura’s rhetoric include references to a homogeneous community of “righteous Portuguese” people (Portugueses de bem) sharing certain norms and values and anti-system positioning by constructing an agonistic dichotomy between Chega (which means “enough!”) and the “establishment” parties and politicians, but also the regime itself (Biscaia & Salgado, 2022; Pimenta et al., 2022). Chega also evinces vocal support for the police and enthusiastically deploys penal populism (i.e., exploiting public anxiety about crime for political gain) (Bottoms, 1995).
Chega and André Ventura’s rhetoric and policy proposals bear similarities with other radical right-wing populist political actors across the European Conservatives and Reformists and Identity and Democracy groups in the European Parliament. Ideologically, Chega describes itself as “liberal-conservative” (Chega, 2021), and Ventura’s rhetoric shares features with European counterparts, such as nativism and authoritarianism. But the party’s primary feature is its pliability. Put differently, Chega and Ventura constantly seek to “read the room” (Albertazzi et al., 2022) to maximize visibility and media coverage. They are adept at adapting right-wing populist talking points to Portuguese political realities, adopting ambivalent rhetorical strategies, and frequently shifting positions. For instance, research has observed that European populist Radical Right movements do not usually prioritize economic issues (Morini, 2018). Chega follows this tendency, making exceptions for high-profile issues such as fiscal policy and tolls on roads serving economically deprived areas (Jornal de Notícias, 2022; Pires, 2022), but also by being quick to retract unpopular policy proposals, such as minimizing state intervention in the health and education sectors (Mendes, 2022).
Immigration stances encapsulate the party’s rhetorical pliability. For instance, despite its low salience among voters (Reis de Oliveira, 2022), Chega’s 2021 electoral programme contained several proposals aimed at reducing immigration flows, including rescinding the UN’s Global Compact for Migration and rejecting naturalization paths for asylum seekers, using conspiracist discourse (the “Great Replacement”) and describing immigrants as “a threat to the survival of the Portuguese as a people with its own identity” (Chega, 2021). At the same time, Ventura seldom mentions immigration in public, and when he has, it has usually been to defend Portugal’s border police, the Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF), from accusations of misconduct and brutality. In sum, Ventura uses migration instrumentally as a pretext to engage in welfare chauvinism and defend the state authorities.
In line with its European party family’s rejection of “any policy designed to create a supra-state or supra-national model” (Identity and Democracy Party, 2019), Chega claims to stand for a “Europe of nations”, working toward “integration, not dilution” (Chega, n.d. a). However, the EU and European integration are not prominent features of its rhetoric, nor does it advance hard Eurosceptic proposals such as reversing European integration or demanding Portugal’s exit from the Eurozone (much less the Union itself). In Chega’s 2021 manifesto, sovereigntist claims are used only in connection with immigration and administrative issues (Chega, n.d. b). In Portugal, it is parties of the Left, especially the PCP, that monopolize sovereigntist anti-EU, anti-Euro, and anti-NATO discourses. The PCP proposed to “staunchly stand up against submission to the Euro and the EU’s impositions and conditionalities, taking back the tools Portugal needs for its sovereign development” as part of its platform for the last European Parliament elections (Partido Comunista Português, 2019).
Taking the same position as the communists would be untenable for Chega since it claims to unreservedly oppose them. Thus, while Chega makes no explicit reference to NATO in its official campaign materials, it often voices its support for Portugal’s participation in the alliance, coherent with its general militarism (See, e.g., Assembleia da República, 2022p; Assembleia da República, 2022q). Furthermore, while the party is ideologically close to the Putin regime—for instance, in its opposition to the expansion of LGBTQ rights articulated through “opposition to gender ideology” and the politicization of religion—it does not have the same kind of ties to Moscow as other European right-wing populist parties (Weiss, 2020). For example, it stops short of expressing admiration for Vladimir Putin and has managed to avoid credible accusations of financial ties with the Kremlin.
Interpreting the Russia-Ukraine war
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Chega backed Kyiv. However, the decision was apparently more informed by political expediency than principle. Unlike many other Far Right parties in Europe, such as Matteo Salvini’s Lega or Marine Le Pen’s Front National, Chega had few established commitments or vulnerabilities vis-à-vis Russia, so it was free to take the more popular position of supporting Ukraine without concerns about being accused of “flip-flopping”. A 2022 survey found 78% of Portuguese respondents favour “EU-coordinated defence”, and 38% endorse direct NATO military intervention in the conflict (Public Opinion Monitoring Unit, 2022).
In fact, in early 2021, Ventura called for harsher sanctions on the Russian “enemy” in light of ongoing Russian provocation in the Donbas and the annexation of Crimea, demanding they be applied to the entire economy rather than individual Russians (Assembleia da República, 2021). On the day of the 2022 invasion, Ventura “unreservedly” denounced Putin’s aggression in Parliament, urging Portugal to do “everything in its power, militarily and sanctions-wise [against Russia]” (Assembleia da República, 2022a, p. 18), and used Twitter to warn followers of the “danger” posed by “Putin’s and China’s friends in the Portuguese Parliament” (Ventura, 2022a).
Nevertheless, the Chega leader’s position was not supported unanimously within his party (at least not initially). On February 24, António Tânger Corrêa, one of Chega’s vice presidents, posted on Facebook characterizing the invasion as a legitimate reaction to “NATO encirclement of Russia” and accusing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of “siding with avowed Nazis”, echoing official Russian justification of the invasion (Malhado, 2022). Tânger Corrêa was backed by high-profile party members, including the famous actress Maria Vieira, a municipal deputy in Cascais near Lisbon, who voted against a local resolution condemning him and used Facebook to deride President Zelenskyy as a “puppet” (Malhado, 2022). These internal tensions were quickly resolved due to Ventura’s centrality within the party structure and a strong exogenous incentive provided by parties on the Left, particularly the PCP.
The oldest active Portuguese political party, the PCP was founded in 1921 and was the pivotal player in the resistance against the Estado Novo regime. It developed in a close, clandestine relationship with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and Eastern Bloc states, which it perceived as natural allies (Cunhal, 1997). After democratization in 1974, the PCP resisted the trend toward autonomization from the CPSU and the adoption of “Eurocommunism” exemplified by its Italian, French and Spanish counterparts (Cunhal, 1977). The PCP continues to advocate “progressive patriotic Left policies,” which it believes will lead to a “sorely needed anti-monopolist, anti-imperialist rupture”, and argues for the dissolution of NATO as a “crucial objective towards national sovereignty and world peace” (Partido Comunista Português, 2010), although the party, like Chega, has rejected identification with the Putin regime (Partido Comunista Português, n.d.).
During the February 24 parliamentary debate following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, João Oliveira, a PCP MP, read the situation from this perspective and diagnosed the issue in Ukraine as part of
[T]he same problem we’ve seen in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. The problem is the use of siege tactics, confrontation, and war to impose economic relations that engender injustice, inequality, and appropriation [prescribing] an end to escalating political, economic, and military confrontation by NATO, the USA, and the EU towards Russia and relying on its contribution towards a negotiated political, peaceful, resolution”. (Assembleia da República, 2022a, p. 10)
Thus, Chega’s choice of Ventura’s pro-Ukrainian positioning was made easier by the PCP’s position. The party could observe how unpopular the communists’ ambivalent positioning was with voters and — since the PCP was the only party to consistently reject condemning the invasion — readily isolate the communists politically.
Exploiting the Russia-Ukraine war
In the weeks after the invasion, Chega’s efforts were directed at quelling doubts about its position, loudly proclaiming support for Ukraine. An early example concerned a protest scheduled for February 27 in front of the Russian embassy in Lisbon, organized by the youth wings of all the major political parties. Chega was the only party not invited to participate, part of an orchestrated strategy to establish a cordon sanitaire around it (Ribeiro, 2022). In response, Ventura tweeted his condemnation of other parties’ “low politics” (Ventura, 2022b). On the same day, Chega organized its own demonstration in front of the Ukrainian embassy, where Ventura was formally introduced to Ina Ohnivets, the Ukrainian ambassador to Portugal. Although Chega’s protest turned out to be smaller than the other parties’, it did allow Ventura to draw significant media coverage, be photographed standing side-by-side with the ambassador and play to the cameras in the role of party leader-cum-statesman (Rato, 2022). Ventura also suggested an ideological similitude between his party and Ukrainian resistance to invasion, equating its members’ “love for country” with “positive nationalism leading Ukrainians to defend themselves fearlessly from Russian aggression” (Assembleia da República, 2022b, p. 16).
The invasion was also used as ammunition against the Left. In a tweet soon after Russia’s invasion, Ventura prophesized that the war would be “lethal to Putin and Russian development, but also to the old Portuguese Communist Party, which is absolutely anachronistic in the 21st century. And one has to say ‘good riddance’!” (Ventura, 2022c). When PCP MPs were absent from President Zelensky’s address to the Portuguese Parliament (Lopes, 2022), Ventura accused the communists of having “[Ukrainian] women’s, children’s and senior citizens’ blood on [their] hands” (Assembleia da República, 2022e, p. 8). Simultaneously, when the Left attempted to highlight Chega’s ideological proximity with the Kremlin, such as when Pedro Filipe Soares of the Left Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda, BE) accused Ventura of “walking hand-in-hand with Marine Le Pen, who walks hand-in-hand with Putin” (Assembleia da República, 2022d, p. 59), Ventura reversed the accusations. Specifically, he pointed to the ambiguous positions of some members of The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL European party group, such as Spain’s Podemos, which, according to the Chega leader, “criticized sanctions on Russia and military support to Ukraine” (ibid., p. 60-61). Similarly, in September 2022, when Jerónimo de Sousa, the PCP leader at the time, tried to dispel the perception of proximity between his party and Russia by equating Putin’s authoritarianism with Chega’s, Ventura sneered in a tweet that “commies are funny: they’re incapable of condemning the war in Ukraine, blame the West for the inflation crisis, and reject sanctions on Russia, yet they say the President of Chega is like “Putin”” (Ventura, 2022f).
The ongoing war also presented an opportunity for Chega to display its militarism. The party repeatedly called for increased spending on armed forces with the aim, in MP Diogo Pacheco de Amorim’s words, of confronting the “unforeseen hazards of an extremely geostrategically volatile world” (Assembleia da República, 2022e, p. 9) and fulfilling Portugal’s obligations towards NATO, as MP Pedro Pessanha stressed more than once (Assembleia da República, 202l, p. 73 , 2022 p. 32 ).
Immigration was also brought to the fore in connection with the situation in Ukraine. Party whip Pedro Pinto condemned a proposed reorganization of the SEF, saying it would make it easier for “criminals to blend with people who are actually running from a war […] as is already happening, especially in the Algarve, with migrants coming from Morocco carrying iPhones” (Assembleia da República, 2022g, p. 59). Ventura employed xenophobic rhetoric in his parliamentary speeches outlining Chega’s concerns with non-Ukrainian migration to Europe. He asserted that it was “a disservice to Europe” to compare Ukrainians to other migrants coming to Europe, claiming that in the latter case was tantamount to “substitution of the European population by people from North Africa or the Middle East [… who] treat women as objects, think women should wear the burka to Parliament and believe our Western values should be discarded” (Assembleia da República, 2022k, p. 8).
As the war dragged on and attention moved back to domestic politics, Chega’s defence of Ukraine progressively became less solid as it reverted to welfare chauvinist discourse. For example, in early March, André Ventura tweeted about “doing everything we can to stand up for the Ukrainian people” (Ventura, 2022d), only to question Portuguese financial support for Ukraine two months later, tweeting that the money should be spent on pensioners (Ventura, 2022e) and assailing the government’s priorities in a parliamentary speech as “upside-down” (Assembleia da República, 2022j, p. 11).
The Russia-Ukraine war also provided avenues for Chega to pursue previous agenda priorities. For instance, Ventura had blasted the government on Twitter for rising gas and energy prices already in 2021 (e.g., Ventura, 2021a, Ventura, 2021b) and continued to do so in 2022, with Ventura demanding government intervention to control gas prices in his first parliamentary intervention after the invasion, and alleging voters prioritized gas prices over the war (Assembleia da República 2022a, p. 18, 2022g, p.18). Other Chega MPs mentioned energy prices in connection to the war in ten further separate parliamentary proceedings (Assembleia da República, 2022c, p. 36; 2022f, p. 13; 2022h, p. 37; 2022j, p. 27; 202l, p. 71; 2022m, p. 22; 2022n, p. 39; 2022o, p. 23-24; 2022q, p. 25; 2022r, p.16). Other issues touched upon by Chega MPs using war framing included a proposal to lower municipal real estate tax due to an alleged increase in demand due to the conflict (Assembleia da República 2022h, p. 37) and criticism of the National Health Service (SNS) for “killing more people than the war” (2022p, p. 51).
Discussion
Chega and André Ventura’s discourses on Ukraine were deployed instrumentally, allowing Chega to continue to trail a path toward normalization as a player in the political system. Initially, it allowed the party to side with the majority opinion, both in Parliament and among voters, and, conversely, take advantage of the fact that one of its main political adversaries did not, and could thus be isolated and portrayed as anachronistic, radical, and out-of-touch, in contrast with Chega’s sensible position. Then, when the weight of war waned in voters’ minds, Ventura and Chega MPs began to use it as a pretext to articulate pre-existing political priorities, such as militarism, opposition to immigration, and welfare chauvinism.
Chega’s strategy was moderately successful. Since the January 2022 election predates the invasion, there were no concrete, immediate electoral gains to be had, but the party hovered around the 9% mark in opinion polls taken in late 2022 and early 2023 (e.g., ICS–ISCTE Surveys, 2022; Rodrigues, 2023), meaning a slight upward trend. Other parties were hard-pressed to paint Chega’s position as unreasonable or out of bounds, and the attempt to isolate PCP was not carried out by Chega alone, as other parties also used PCP’s refusal to explicitly concede Russian blame for the war against it. The Communists were steadily losing electoral support. At the 2015 election, they obtained 8.25% of the vote (17 MPs), and by the 2022 election, this had fallen to 4.3% (6 MPs). Still, the PCP seems rather unaffected by developments, as neither the party’s overall unpopular positions on Ukraine nor the replacement of former leader Jerónimo de Sousa by the younger, largely unknown Paulo Raimundo has significantly altered its popularity in the polls (e.g., Rodrigues, 2023).
At the time of writing (February 2023), the war in Ukraine seems to have caused few changes to the Portuguese political landscape, even if inflation caused by the ongoing war is a factor in the slightly eroding popularity of the current Socialist Party (PS) government, in office since 2015. This is also the case when looking at Chega as the leading right-wing populist party in the country. The conflict is unlikely to cause deep rifts, as the relative success of Ventura’s strategy and his undisputed internal power ensure that doubts and disagreements about the matter will most likely not be voiced. Party positioning regarding key issues is also unchanged and has not impeded Chega’s transformation of the Portuguese political system by carving space for and normalizing right-wing populist actors.
(*) Afonso Biscaia is a PhD candidate in Comparative Politics at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais–Universidade de Lisboa. His main research interests include radical right-wing populism and digital political communication.
(**) Susana Salgado (PhD, 2007) is political communication scholar. She coordinates research projects, teaches, and publishes on democracy, populism, disinformation, hate and online extremism, and political polarisation. Salgado is currently Principal Research Fellow at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais–Universidade de Lisboa and the principal investigator of externally funded research projects, including “(The Matrix of) Populist and Denialist Attitudes towards Science” (PTDC/CPO-CPO/4361/2021) and “Depictions and Politicization of the Truth in Democratic Politics” (2020.04070.CEECIND/CP1615/CT0007).
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Once considered a partial exception to the recent diffusion of populism worldwide, Romania saw Radical Right populism return to Parliament in 2020. The Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) successfully campaigned on a platform of defending the Christian faith, freedom, the traditional family, and the nation. Although the party was initially considered the result of individual entrepreneurship linked to its founding leaders, it has successfully built on diffused networks of societal activism whose origins could be traced back to the early 2000s. However, the AUR’s track record of discourse aligned with Kremlin rhetoric calling for Western economic, political and cultural hegemony to be resisted and rolled back saw a temporary decline in voters’ support for the party. However, the party managed to rebuild consensus strategically by drawing on voters’ increased anxiety regarding the economic effects of the war. This report offers a cogent analysis of the political performance of the AUR, examining the party’s formative phase as well as its evolution since 2020, alongside a discussion of the impact of the war in Ukraine on Romanian party politics.
The literature dealing with the diffusion of populism across new and old democracies usually considers Romania a partial exception. While different variants of populism received electoral support and influenced the governmental agenda during the 1990s, in the 2010s, the supply of parliamentary populist parties dwindled if one only considers the most unambiguous cases. In 2012, amidst an economic crisis, widespread corruption, political instability and severe institutional clashes, the People’s Party–Dan Diaconescu (PPDD) gained some electoral support. The party was able to capitalize on being new in politics and standing for “the people” in opposition to “the elite”, but only for a short while. The PPDD platform combined populism with authoritarian discourses around “social order” and a peculiar form of nativism in which the defence of the Romanian community and the endorsement of the project of reunification with neighbouring Moldova coexisted with an odd ethnicization of merit in a slogan claiming targeted collaboration with foreigners (Gherghina & Soare, 2021). By 2014, several parliamentarians had defected from the PPDD, and in 2015, the party merged with the National Union for the Progress of Romania (UNPR). For the next half-decade, nativism, authoritarianism, and populism dwelt outside the parliamentary arena (Soare & Tufis, 2019). Only in the 2020 elections did Radical Right populism return to the Romanian Parliament with a strong showing from the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR).[2]
Yet public discourse and parliamentary debate point to populism’s polymorphism and resilience in Romania, with a reach far into the mainstream political forces that are central to defining governmental alternatives (Soare & Tufis, 2019). Dragoman (2021), for instance, finds populism even in the anti-corruption platform of the Save Romania Union (USR), a party that is probably most often associated with liberal oppositionto populism in Romania. Dragoman sees in the USR discourse “recombinant populism”, which is notable for connecting anti-communist stances with anti-corruption ones. Indeed, in Romanian politics, USR representatives have habitually accused traditional political actors — namely, the Social Democrats (PSD) and the Liberals (PNL) — of dishonesty and of serving their own interests. However, Engler (2020) has identified this kind of rhetoric as par for the course for centrist anti-establishment parties, which — apart from their anti-establishment and anti-corruption rhetoric — do not differ from the established parties they criticize. Similarly, the USR can be considered part of the group of anti-establishment reform parties identified by Hanley and Sikk (2016), committed to liberal democracy and the market economy.
A borderline populist position can also be traced in the Social Democratic Party (PSD), per forthcoming updated research on Romania from Populist (https://popu-list.org/). A successor of the communist-era governing party, the PSD (and its predecessors) has been in Parliament since the first post-communist elections, with regular participation in government. The formerly socialist party’s first ideological turn came at the end of the 1990s when the PSD endorsed market-liberal economics and cultural liberalism. Starting in 2012, though, the party increasingly came to champion left-wing populist economics and right-wing cultural traditionalism and adopted a Eurosceptic stance on issues from time to time. However, the PSD remained within the coordinates of mainstream party politics as an electorally dominant actor competing on the Left–Right political spectrum.
The AUR is undoubtedly the most noteworthy and universally recognized example of Radical Right populism in Romania today. This report focuses only on the AUR, given its peculiarities and significance today. As the war in Ukraine has unfolded, the AUR has aligned with the other parliamentary parties in condemning Russia’s invasion and voicing concerns for the security of the community of co-ethnic Romanians living in Ukraine. However, the party’s track record of discourse aligned with Kremlin rhetoric calling for Western economic, political and cultural hegemony to be resisted and rolled back saw the AUR initially penalized in terms of electoral support. Despite that, the party strategically invested in the heightened anxiety among voters regarding the economic effects of the war. It adapted its public stances to the need to defend the national interest by promoting forms of economic and energy protectionism, by promoting the idea that national resources (including energy) should be primarily directed towards Romanians and that foreign companies should receive limited access (if any) to these strategic resources. The latest opinion polling shows that the AUR has recovered from the decline in its electoral fortunes registered in the spring of 2022 and remains anchored as the third party in voters’ preferences.
The remainder of the report is structured as follows. The first section details the origins of the AUR and party development in its formative phases. The second section focuses on the evolution of the party since it returned to Parliament after the 2020 elections. The third section focuses on the impact of the war in Ukraine on Romanian party politics while also summarizing the main findings of the analysis.
Where did the Alliance for the Union of Romanians come from?
The AUR’s programme combines an ethnically defined emphasis on the “people’s will” with authoritarianism, understood as the belief in a strictly ordered community. This belief set encompasses traditional concerns about “law and order” but also culturally authoritarian positions like opposition to same-sex marriage, a hard line on LGBTIQ+ rights, and legislative proposals that claim to protect children from sexual propaganda in kindergartens, schools and the media. Due to the overlap between the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 electoral campaign, the AUR skilfully leveraged opposition to the government’s vaccination strategy and unpopular public safety measures, such as the obligatory use of masks, mandatory vaccination, and vaccine certificates. Although the party leadership did not openly oppose vaccination, AUR representatives regularly emphasized opposition to forcing citizens to get vaccinated. One of its leaders repeatedly endorsed the protests against the government strategy, reasoning that the AUR sides “with the people who are right-headed, who want justice” (Deutsche Welle, 2021).
The AUR’s rise was a great surprise in Romanian politics. The party garnered 9.1% of the overall vote in the 2020 legislative elections, including 541,938 votes for the Senate (9.17% of the total cast) and 535,831 votes for the House of Deputies (9.08%) (https://parlamentare2020.bec.ro/). As a result, the party saw four senators and thirty-three deputies elected. While the general turnout was the lowest since the end of communism, in the Romanian diaspora, turnout hit an all-time high. Previous studies have observed that Romanian non-resident voters have traditionally tended to vote disproportionately for centre-right candidates and parties over left-wing and populist parties (Vintilă & Soare, 2018). Still, in 2020 one in four Romanians abroad voted for the AUR; the party came first in the section polls organized in Cyprus and Italy and second in France, Germany and Spain (Ulceluse, 2020).
The available data allow us to clarify who voted for the AUR in Romania, but to the extent of my knowledge, no exit polls were conducted with Romanian voters living abroad. Exit polls conducted inside Romania show the typical AUR voter as a middle-aged male with a medium level of education. There was a strong correlation between conservative votes in a recent referendum related to the definition of the family in the Romanian Constitution and the vote share of the AUR in the 2020 legislative elections (Pora, 2020). Recent data (Soare & Tufis, 2023) also show that emigration from Romania mattered: the higher the emigration rate across different Romanian regions, the better the AUR scored in those areas. Moreover, other exit polls stressed that the AUR’s electoral success rested on voter disenchantment with traditional politics in the context of deteriorating socioeconomic conditions and rising economic inequality (Pora, 2020).
What looked like an unexpected electoral success resulted from a strategic investment in low-cost online campaigning with simple messages and Manichean stances claiming that all mainstream politicians were corrupt, the values of the Christian family were under threat, and the like (Doiciar & Creţan, 2021). The party was also very active in on-the-ground canvassing both in Romania and among non-resident voters in the West European diaspora (Andrei, 2020). Probably most importantly, the party benefitted from ties to political movements that pre-date its legal registration in 2019. In this early period, the AUR capitalized on the extensive societal activism of the party’s founding co-presidents, George Simion and Claudiu Târziu[3] (Soare & Tufis, 2023). Although the trajectories of these two men in terms of political activism do not fully overlap, their activities have converged on several key themes: the goal of unifying Romania and the Republic of Moldova, an emphasis on tradition (traditional family values), and the defence of the Christian faith.
The challenges of winning seats in the national Parliament
Like many other populist parties, when it arrived in Parliament, the AUR faced a deficit of credibility among the other parliamentary parties. This was coupled with a bad image in the mainstream media. As a result, in February 2021, 40 Romanian intellectuals and representatives of civil society organizations signed an open letter expressing strong concern about the AUR’s impact on Romanian democracy. They publicly called on the other parliamentary parties to establish a tight cordon sanitaire around the AUR by foreswearing any cooperation or coalition with it (Europa Liberă România, 2021). For a while, the traditional parties followed this strategy of political exclusion by regularly blocking or voting against the AUR’s legislative initiatives. It was, however, impossible to exclude the AUR completely. For example, Claudiu Târziu, former co-president of the AUR and a senator representing Bucharest since 2020, managed to get elected as president of the Senate’s Commission for Romanians Abroad.
Despite using folksy expressions and displaying raw and even violent behaviour (Deutsche Welle, 2022), the AUR was not hermetically isolated. In the middle of the 2021 governmental crisis, the AUR backed a motion of no confidence submitted by USR-PLUS, the junior partner in the governing coalition. At the beginning of 2022, different Romanian journalists wrote about a possible merger between AUR and the People’s Movement Party (PMP), founded by supporters of Traian Băsescu, then president of Romania, with other minor parties. The merger, which in the end fell through, was supposed to become a movement to circumvent the AUR’s international isolation and open direct access to the European People’s Party that the PMP was part of. This strategy was complemented by direct lobbying from the extraterritorial branches that AUR successfully created across the different communities of Romanian emigrants who built local connections with possible sister parties, such as the Vox party in Spain and the Fratelli d’Italia (Soare & Tufis, 2023).
In recent years, the AUR has worked on developing a broader political agenda and building transnational ties. In 2022, for instance, the AUR founded the Mihai Eminescu Conservative Political Studies Institute in Bucharest, aiming to support scholarship and research on conservative themes and to raise citizen awareness of conservative values and ideas. As the head of the newly created institute, Târziu gave the opening speech at the first International Conference organized in Bucharest under the title “The Europe we believe in”. The party invited representatives from the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS), and the Fratelli d’Italia to the conference together with representatives from Israel’s Likud, France’s Reconquête, and Portugal’s Chega! (Partidulaur.ro, 2022). As emphasized in Târziu’s speech, this event was seen as an occasion for intense networking with parties sharing conservative views.
Consequently, the AUR presented itself as a mainstream conservative party seeking to join a broader European and international campaign against the moral degradation purportedly produced by the spread of neo-Marxist ideology. Echoing one of the leading figures in the pantheon of European neo-conservatism, Ryszard Legutko and his The Demon in Democracy (Behr, 2021), Târziu and the other guests elaborated the thesis of the decadence of Western liberal democracy and the need to protect traditions following the model set by Poland and Hungary after 2010 (Aurnews.ro, 2022). It is yet too soon to evaluate the success of this networking. Still, the November 2022 event represented a radical change from Simion’s failed attempt to join a similar meeting organized by Vox in Madrid in February 2022 (Dutulescu, 2022).
Overall, in the first two years of parliamentarian representation, the AUR representatives remained vocal in accusing the government of damaging Romanians’ living standards and for its mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis. However, despite the continuity in discourses and behaviour, the first cracks in the party structure soon became visible. According to different media reports, the cracks were born out of two different visions of the party’s future. While Târziu aimed to bring the AUR into the European neo-conservatism mainstream (in the mould of Hungary’s Fidesz or Poland’s PiS), Simion was more interested in maintaining the emphasis on the radical grassroots. The tensions between the two orientations exploded in public when Simion endorsed Călin Georgescu as an honorary president of the party. Georgescu was a highly controversial choice given his lionization of historical Far Right figures in Romanian politics, including Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and Ion Antonescu, antisemites both (Pavel, 2022). In the face of intense criticism, Simion was forced to back down and renounce his support for Georgescu and a raft of other controversial figures in Romanian politics.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine further accelerated this process, as Călin Georgescu was among the leading figures taking a pro-Russian position and publicly backing Putin, telling a news reporter, “He [Putin] is a leader, one of the few” (În Linie Dreaptă, 2020) while also helping to organize a visit of Alexander Dugin, the Eurasianist ideologue with ties to the Kremlin, to Romania in 2014 (ziare.com, 2014). At the AUR National Congress in March 2022, the party’s dual leadership was abandoned, with Simion beating out Târziu to assume the sole presidency of the party. Simion continues to exhibit the kinds of public behaviours in Romania that characterized his pre-2019 societal activism and made him credible with the grassroots base of the party. He is uninhibited when it comes to standing up for “ordinary people”, uses everyday or even coarse language to attract attention and burnish his “every man” credentials, and will readily exploit private events—including his own wedding—to stay in the public eye and be seen mixing with ordinary people.
While continuing to reinforce its organization on the ground in Romania and abroad, the AUR remains very active online, with a heavy presence on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. According to Romanian experts, the party’s extensive online networks are rife with conspiracy theories, misinformation, and Russian propaganda (Despa & Albu, 2021). The popular perception of the AUR as being close to Russia and the anti-European Union (EU) and anti-NATO rhetoric led to an abrupt drop in the party’s popularity. Opinion surveys published just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine found 22% of respondents intended to vote for the AUR. By May 2022, this share had dropped to 16.3%. Yet, with increased warfatigue, rising energy costs, and high inflation, the party’s voter support had returned to 22% by September 2022 (Anghelus, 2022). Internal tensions in the AUR have also calmed down as the party organization has consolidated and its ideology refined.
The war in Ukraine and its influence on Romanian politics
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded, all Romanian parliamentary parties rapidly aligned towards vocal condemnation of the Kremlin, backing the pro-Ukrainian position adopted almost universally in the West and raising concerns for the community of Romanian co-ethnics in Ukraine. This endorsement echoed the diffused perception of trust in the Western partnerships among the Romanian electorate. A January 2022 poll showed that the prospect of Russian aggression against Ukraine had increased Romanian voters’ confidence in NATO and the EU. An overwhelming majority of voters (77%) believe Romania should intensify its political and military ties with the West; only 10.4% agreed that Romanian foreign policy should be oriented to the East and closer relations with Russia and China cultivated. However, compared to other international leaders, trust in Vladimir Putin remained high, in line with his image as a strong leader, with pronounced support among the young (Lupitu, 2022).
The pro-Ukrainian alignment came as a surprise, given the pro-Russian stances taken by prominent figures in the AUR in the past, their positive views of Putin’s strong leadership and, more generally, their vocal endorsement of the Kremlin’s fierce defence of national traditions and Orthodox Christianity. However, despite different media reports arguing a pro-Russian party might take up to 7% of the vote in Romania (Ancheteonline.ro, 2020), the AUR’s official message was nuanced. In the aftermath of the December 2020 elections, Simion argued that “Russia, throughout the ages, from the Tsarist Empire to the Soviet Union and Putin’s Russia today, has done a lot of harm to Romania” (Andrei, 2020). Moreover, he pointed to his dogged campaigning for the reunification of Romania with Bessarabia (most of which lies in today’s Moldova), which put him directly at odds with the Kremlin, which seeks to retain meddle in Moldovan affairs and has troops stationed in the breakaway region of Transnistria (Andrei, 2020). Consistent with these public statements against Russian imperialism, Simion had no hesitation in condemning Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022: “We are worried about the fate of the ethnic Romanians there [in Ukraine] and the repeated threats on the territory of Romania” (Mazilu, 2022).
At the same time, various AUR representatives have constantly expressed support and admiration for how traditions, values, and religion are defended in Russia. The Russian propaganda machine has picked up on this. At the end of 2021, the local outlet of the Kremlin-backed Sputnik media published a list of top personalities and political parties in Romania. At the top of their list was Diana Șoșoacă, a former AUR senator known for her anti-EU and anti-NATO stances. The Sputnik article also held the AUR out as “the absolute surprise of the Romanian political class” and praised its clear stance in defence of the national interest and domestic capital (Leonte, 2021). In parallel, the media chronicled a vast constellation of (former) AUR members with a record of avowedly pro-Russian positions in the public sphere. In addition, several newly registered parties rose to prominence in the public arena with pro-Russian messages grafted onto different conspiracy theories (Şuțu, 2022). A case in point is the Patriots of the Romanian People party founded by Mihai Lasca, a former AUR parliamentarian who vocally endorsed Putin’s hardline position on homosexuality and lambasted President Zelenskyy’s supposed “provocations” and “refusal to make peace” with Russia. Similarly, the new outfit SOS Romania welcomed Șoșoacă into the fold and aligned with her pro-Russian narrative of the war in Ukraine. Similar positions have been promoted by the so-called Roexit Party (a nod to Britain’s exit from the EU) and the Alliance for the Homeland, both founded by figures who once found a home in the AUR but who were eventually expelled from the party or decided to resign.
The diffusion of pro-Russian stances, however fringe, is far from a recent phenomenon and goes beyond the AUR constellation (hotnews.ro, 2015). Various experts and reports have chronicled diffuse networks of support in the media, among civil society organizations or in the political, economic, cultural, and religious arenas (Fati, 2022). Many politicians have lobbied on behalf of Russian economic interests (mainly in the field of energy) since the early 2000s. Since the beginning of the war, some — including former foreign affairs ministers Andrei Marga and Adrian Severin and Adrian Năstase, a former prime minister — have parroted Kremlin propaganda that Kyiv, more or less explicitly, provoked the conflict and drawn attention to reports of discrimination against Romanian co-ethics in Ukraine (Fati, 2022).
Overall, the consensus across the parliamentary parties in Romania has championed the government in its consistent backing for the Western coalition supporting the Ukrainian resistance since February 2022. The AUR has adapted to this consensus, although not without putting its own twist on the framing. For example, party president George Simion has leveraged increasing energy prices to attack both Western companies operating in the Romanian energy market and the Romanian government for exploiting the country’s natural resources without sharing the benefits with the Romanian people. The party’s position echoes the data on electoral support. A recent analysis published by the CPD SNSPA (2022) captures how confidence in the West (the EU, NATO, the United States) and the East (Russia) has evolved over time and how voters of the main parties position themselves on this topic. The analysis confirms that Romanian voters retain strong pro-Western attitudes. It also shows that very few express vocal support for or trust in Russia, with inactive young people (unemployed and with low levels of education) and people with populist attitudes being the most positive toward Moscow. Strikingly, this group of respondents reports getting most of its news and information online. While the analysis finds that the voting intention for the AUR is a predictor of trust in Russia, it also observes that support for Moscow has dropped significantly over the past year, with most mainstream party voters expressing a lack of confidence in Russia.
Conclusion
This report has shown that the AUR’s rise in the Romanian Parliament is partly due to disenchantment with traditional politics. The other part of the explanation is connected to pre-existing dense networks of social ties that have allowed the AUR to successfully present itself as a credible counterpoint to the established political consensus regarding liberal democratic values while simultaneously promoting a return to tradition as a safety net in turbulent times. Some party members’ customary obescience towards the Kremlin has been chronicled by a range of media reports, although the party has remained cautious in its official positions. Still, before February 2022, a number of party representatives were on the record praising the Putin regime and Russia generally as offering credible alternatives to the “decadent” liberal values of the West and as a hedge against economic exploitation from Western companies.
As the war in Ukraine has unfolded, some former AUR members have even parroted the Kremlin line, portrayed the aggression as justified and occasionally accused the government of failing to protect the Romanian minorities who call Ukraine home. Yet, the official message has focused more on the frame of economic protectionism, particularly regarding exploding energy prices. While carefully edited out of the AUR’s public statements, pro-Russian positions lie just below the surface in the minds of the AUR electorate and, most specifically, Romania’s inactive young voters.
Anghelus M. (2022, December 31). SONDAJ Tabloul momentului: ce partide pierd procente în ultima lună din an și la ce scor a ajuns AUR. Ștefureac: „Electoratul va taxa populismul/demagogia”. PSNEWS. https://psnews.ro/sondaj-tabloul-momentului-ce-partide-pierd-procente-in-ultima-luna-din-an-si-la-ce-scor-a-ajuns-aur-stefureac-electoratul-va-taxa-populismul-demagogia-729030/
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Spasojević, Dušan. (2023). “Balancing on a pin: Serbian populists, the European Union and Russia.” In: The Impacts of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Right-wing Populism in Europe. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). March 8, 2023. Brussels. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0028
This report investigates the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the Serbian party system. The Serbian case has two unique characteristics. The first is the final status of Kosovo, which Serbia has traditionally relied on Russian support over (as a member of the UN Security Council). However, Ukraine has also respected the territorial integrity of Serbia and did not recognize Kosovo. The second characteristic is Serbia’s ruling party, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). Unlike many other Eastern European populist parties, the SNS is formally pro-European Union. Since the beginning of the war, the ruling parties have been under international pressure to join sanctions against Russia; on the other side, the opposition splits between right-wing supporters of Russia and left-wing and liberal parties with weak support for international sanctions. This report aims to analyse the potential change in the ideological positions of Serbian parties — especially the populist ones — due to the significant changes in the international landscape occasioned by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Keywords: Serbia; populism; European Union; Russia; cleavages.
Serbian politics has revolved around identity issues since the beginning of party pluralism. Milošević’s authoritarian rule (1991–2000) was based on leveraging nationalism and conflicts during the break-up of Yugoslavia. After his defeat in 2000, the new ruling coalition of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia split between modernist and traditionalist forces based on similar identity-based issues: war crimes prosecutions, foreign relations — especially Serbia’s integration into the European Union (EU) — and finally, the status of Kosovo. Competition between these two sides was the critical process of Serbian politics during the first post-Milošević decade. In 2008, pro-EU forces led by the Democratic Party (DSS) made what seemed to be the decisive electoral victory that led to the establishment of a national consensus on European integration.
In this report, I will briefly describe the Serbian party system with particular emphasis on populist actors and populism-related issues. This part will be followed by a description of changes caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, focusing on the 2022 parliamentary elections in Serbia and a comparison with the period after the campaign. The final part will be dedicated to the “demand side” of politics – public opinion surveys and the electoral results of parties with specific positions on the war in Ukraine.
The Serbian party system – an overview
Since 2012, the Serbian party system has been dominated by the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska Narodna Stranka, SNS). The SNS was founded by the Far Right, nationalist, and populist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) after its electoral defeat in 2008. The new party declared itself a moderate centre-right and pro-European people’s party (Stojić, 2018), increasing its coalition potential and enabling electoral victory in presidential and parliamentary elections in 2012. Since 2014, the party has consistently won almost 50% of the vote and ruled under the very popular president, Aleksandar Vučić, as a predominant party with several coalition partners, including the Socialist Party of Serbia or SPS (Milošević’s former party) and minority Hungarian and Bosniak parties, among others.
Due to ideological baggage carried over from its radical period before 2008, the SNS initially moderated its political views to present itself as something completely new. The SNS tried to avoid most of the old identity issues and to promote issues such as economic growth and combating corruption. Corruption proved critical during the 2012 and 2014 electoral campaigns as the SNS accused previous governments of being “thieves and tycoons” and responsible for the corrupted transition from communism. In a classic populist manner, SNS leaders contrasted the corrupt ruling elites with the “ordinary” people. The SNS claimed to represent ordinary Serbs who had been left behind socioeconomically by the transition to democracy and a market economy (Spasojević, 2019).
In contrast to many Eastern European populist parties, the SNS had to formally maintain pro-EU positions as Serbia is a candidate country. This meant that criticism against the EU had to be expressed in vague and general terms; simultaneously, the SNS conveyed significant respect for individual European leaders. For example, Vučić spoke very highly of Merkel and had many meetings with the German chancellor, even as a part of electoral campaigns. The SNS developed an extensive catch-all ideological profile, including the balance between the East and the West. The previous DSS government already defined a similar foreign policy posture emphasizing “the four pillars” (the EU, the United States, Russia, and China), and it was primarily related to the question of the final status of Kosovo. In other words, as most EU countries recognized Kosovo’s independence, Serbia relied on Russia and China (as permanent members of the UN Security Council) as counterweights to the EU and the United States” support for Kosovo’s independence.
As time progressed, the SNS felt more confident in power and increasingly foregrounded non-European actors in Serbia’s political landscape. Simultaneously, the EU integration process stalled, both because of enlargement fatigue on the EU side and a dearth of reforms on the Serbian side. During Donald Trump’s presidency, relations with the United States intensified as there was more understanding of an “alternative” solution to the Kosovo issue, partition between Serbs and Albanians. This solution was perceived as practical but “against the European values” (an ethnic division of territory) and as a potential trigger for other similar cases in the region. Conversely, Russia and China have been praised as reliable partners that recognize Serbian interests and do not put pressure on Serbia like Europe. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Serbian government always emphasized medical support from China and Russia, in contrast, to aid from the EU.
However, this should not be understood as Serbia giving up on European integration – the process is still ongoing, and government officials often refer to EU values and cooperation with the EU institutions and EU representatives praising Serbian progress. Also, the SNS limits its right-wing populist policies primarily to regional issues and for a domestic audience while adhering to a pro-EU approach internationally. For example, the Serbian government took a very cooperative stance during the 2015 “refugee crisis”, the Serbian prime minister is openly lesbian, and Belgrade hosted the 2022 EuroPride (after initially cancelling the event, the Serbian government recanted, but the parade failed to attract the typical attendance). EU legitimacy enables the Serbian regime to undermine the opposition and relativizes criticism of autocratic rule (Spasojević, 2022). Support and legitimacy of this kind has been termed “stabilitocracy” (Bieber, 2018).
The SNS is not the only populist party in Serbia. Parties like Dveri, Zavetnici, Dosta je Bilo (Enough is Enough), which has run in past elections under the banner of the Sovereigntists, the SRS, and perhaps even the DSS are in many ways further to the right of the SNS. In total, these parties garner as much as 15% of the electorate, with each party winning 2–3% of votes. This group is heterogenous – the SRS and the DSS are the old parties from the 1990s, while the rest emerged during the last waves of populism. Most of these parties object to EU integration and demand strict anti-immigrant policies and the establishment of stronger ties with Russia. Some opposed COVID-19 measures and the government’s vaccination policies, and most accuse the current regime of being prepared to recognize Kosovo’s independence. At the same time, there are frequent accusations that they cooperate with the government and do not represent the “real” opposition. These claims are based on the fact that representatives of these parties have access to pro-government media, in contrast to the liberal and left-wing opposition parties.
Finally, since 2018 there have been examples of left-wing populism, such as the grassroots Ne davimo Beograd (“Do not let Belgrade d(r)own”) movement to participate in Belgrade elections. In 2022 they became a part of a parliamentary coalition with environmental groups and small regional parties, establishing a left-wing populist presence in the institutions.
The supply side of right-wing populism and their political environment
The Russian invasion began almost simultaneously with the kick-off of the electoral campaign in Serbia. The elections were scheduled for April 3, which gave parties an opportunity to react and adapt to new circumstances. Having the most resources, the ruling SNS immediately reacted and shifted the entire campaign from usual electoral promises of progress and rapid development toward stability – president Vučić argued that the world as we know it will collapse and that our goal should be to preserve ourselves. The main concerns the SNS and government officials raised were energy (as the Serbian energy sector is heavily dependent on Russian supplies) and food. As a result, the Serbian government was pressured to introduce sanctions on Russia. Still, it seems that they used the electoral campaign and technical mandate of the government as an excuse, at least initially. In later statements, the SNS representatives claimed that Serbia would not impose sanctions if it could resist pressure from the West. Finally, however, Serbia voted for the United Nations Assembly Resolution that demanded the end of the Russian offensive in Ukraine on 2 March.
Far Right populist parties saw the invasion as an opportunity and took a position that resonated with their constituency’s established anti-West (and pro-Russian) values. In this sense, the war gave new impetus to old arguments, with the war cast as a classic proxy war of the West against Russia, that Ukraine was under the sway of the Western powers, and Serbia should not take sides and impose sanctions on Russia. The arguments of these parties varied from the moderate position of the DSS (Serbia should not pick sides and should retain principled positions respecting the international law and territorial integrity of Ukraine and, therefore, should not recognize the separatist Donbas and Luhansk republics) and anti-EU positions of Dveri, Dosta je Bilo and Zavetnici (the EU integration process has stalled and thus there is no incentive to harmonize foreign politics with Brussels and to jeopardize relations with Russia and Belarus), toward the more critical SRS, which demanded strong support for Russia. The right-wing parties were already in a good position because of a recent campaign against the constitutional changes supported by the EU in January 2022.
The ruling SNS expressed positions close to Far Right populists. The SNS is often classified as pro-Russian. The Socialists rejected the idea of joining the sanctions regime against Russia as it would go against Serbian national interests. They referred to the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, asking why the international public was not interested in Serbian civilian victims. President of the Socialist Party, Ivica Dačić, argued that it would take another 25 years for Serbia to become an EU member and that Belgrade could thus happily shelve policy harmonization for the foreseeable future.
Other (non-populist) parties tried to avoid this issue during the campaign, hoping the war would end quickly. However, most non-populist parties believed the war would only provide incentives for nationalism and identity politics, traditionally perceived as a vital element of the regime and right-wing parties. Therefore, in the first several weeks of the campaign, the Party of Freedom and Justice (SPP), Serbia’s largest opposition party, argued against the sanctions on the ground they affect ordinary people and not the regime (often referring to the Serbian experience during the 1990s with claims that sanctions did not harm Milošević at all). Still, most non-populist parties demanded that Serbia condemn Russian aggression on Ukraine. However, as the war progressed toward the end of the campaign, several parties, including the DSS, the PSG (Movement of Free Citizens) and the left-wing party Moramo (We Must), spoke out strongly in favour of Ukraine and called for sanctions on Russia.
These voices were strengthened after the elections when the SSP supported the sanctions and even asked for a parliamentary session on this issue. It is unclear if these changes resulted from public opinion, war events (e.g., atrocities, destruction of civilian infrastructure), or international pressure on these parties. In the post-electoral period, pro-EU liberal and leftist parties started to demand sanctions against Russia daily and to warn that Serbia could be an isolated part of Europe once again if it did not change politics.
Radicalization after the elections also happened on the Right, where parties gathered in a coalition that aimed to prevent sanctions on Russia. These issues have been intertwined with developments in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro and presented as Western pressure on Serbian interests to disrupt relations between Serbia and Russia to facilitate Kosovo’s independence. In contrast to other European parties, being pro-Russian in Serbia is not an obstacle, so these parties could freely express their views.
Finally, the SNS position after the election remained similar for months – although there was a clear majority in the parliament, the government was formed just before the legal deadline – this deflected international pressure for a long time and enabled the SNS to escape from initial pressure. Party position remained neutral, and Vučić insisted on the complexity of the Serbian position and the necessity to put Serbian interest first; this led to a number of warning signs from both Russia and the West, but so far, it seems like there still is some manoeuvre space for him.
The demand side of right-wing populism
Since the beginning of the invasion, the war in Ukraine has become the most critical issue in Serbian media. Based on a recent report from the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA, 2022a), a Serbian human rights outfit, most of the media coverage is pro-Russian (although with some moderation compared to the initial phase of the war), with the most substantial imbalance observed in national TV stations (especially TV Pink and TV Happy) and tabloids (Informer and Večernje novosti). Biased reporting is moderate during the news sections and quite open during the morning talk shows (open pro-Russian propaganda by pro-government journalists and analysts). The CRTA report also shows that most fake news is pro-Russian and anti-NATO.
Considering this media landscape and established attitudes on foreign politics of the Serbian population, it is not surprising that a survey conducted in May 2022 (CRTA 2022b) showed that 66% of citizens claimed to be “closer to Russia” in the conflict, in contrast to only 12% who were pro-Ukraine; also, 72% agreed with the statement that Russia has been provoked by NATO expansion. These figures changed over time to some extent – a similar study conducted in September of 2022 showed a small decline in support for Russia and the number of citizens supporting the sanctions rising to 20% (Miletić, 2022). Other surveys show that Serbian citizens might change their position in the case of outside pressure, the threat of sanctions from the West or in the case of Russia recognizing Kosovo independence (on several occasions, Putin used the Kosovo argument to justify the independence of the Donbas and Luhansk republics) (Euronews Srbija, 2022).
Because the 2022 electoral campaign took place after the war started, many commentators argued that the invasion helped Far Right parties surpass the 3% threshold (in 2020, none of those parties had entered parliament). The same assessment was shared by President Vučić just after the elections when he accused the Far Right parties and the SPS of being opportunistic and irresponsible to Serbian interests because they allegedly used the pro-Russian sentiments of the voters to gain more support. However, if we observe mid-term trends (and compare results with the 2016 elections, as those were the last ones with the full participation of the opposition), it seems that there is a small growth of both the Far Right group and the SPS, probably on behalf of the SNS share. Although it could be argued that it is the consequence of the war, data already showed the gradual growth of the Far Right parties even before the war due to strong campaigns against COVID-19 measures and already mentioned constitutional changes in January 2022.
Table 1: Electoral results of populist and “pro-Russian” parties, 2016–2022
2016
2020
2022
Votes
%
Votes
%
Votes
%
SNS
1,823,147
48.0
1,953,998
60.0
1,635,101
44.0
DSS
190,530
5.0
72,085
2.2
204,444
5.5
Dveri
Boycott
144,762
3.9
Zavetnici
27,690
0.7
45,950
1.4
141,227
3.8
Sovereignists
—
—
73,953
2.3
86,362
2.3
SRS
306,052
8.0
65,954
2.0
82,066
2.2
Far Right populists (total)
524,272*
13.7
257,942**
5.7
658,861
8.3
SPS
413,770
11.0
334,333
10.0
435,274
11.7
Source: Republic Electoral Commission
* In 2016, the Sovereigntists could not be classified as Far Right. Dveri and DSS ran as a coalition that year.
** In the 2020 elections, some Far Right voters voted for the monarchist party POKS (85,888) and right-wing SPAS (123,374); in 2022, POKS split between DSS and Dveri, and SPAS joined the SNS.
Concluding remarks
The issue of Russian aggression merged with already existing political cleavages and reinforced some of them. None of the relevant parties dramatically changed their position due to war and the change in the international landscape; however, parties with strong ideological positions gained more strength and new topics that reinforced divisions between them. At the same time, catch-all parties found themselves in problems as balanced politics became much more complicated.
In terms of populist parties, Far Right populists gained additional issues and incentives to preserve strong anti-EU positions and to oppose the introduction of sanctions on Russia as it would weaken the Serbian position on Kosovo. At the same time, they gained the opportunity to reinforce narratives on the hypocrisy of the West and politics of power instead of politics of principles (e.g., territorial integrity). On the other side, the SNS, as a moderate right-wing and populist party that balances between East and West, found itself in a delicate situation. Although the SNS mastered balancing between powers in the last ten years, the space for manoeuvres is shrinking. So far, Serbia’s government did vote “against” Russia in the UN General Assembly twice, but it also rejected demands to impose sanctions. Moreover, the recent conflict in Kosovo regarding licence plates led to the withdrawal of Serbs from Kosovo institutions, which intensified the situation and raised concerns about the conflict to the highest levels since early 2000. On one side, this makes the situation for president Vučić and the SNS even more complicated, while on the other, it decreases the pressure regarding the sanctions.
In general terms, the war in Ukraine put the Serbian position in the spotlight and emphasized old divisions and issues. Most of them are identity-based and related to significant foreign policy issues, which remind us of previous periods of great divides – in the late 90-ties and before the decisive 2008 elections. However, the current party system does not reflect the divisions – the SNS has a stable government with coalition partners, and the bilateral opposition cannot agree on most of the issues. Also, there are many concerns about the quality of Serbian democracy and recent trends of autocratization. In other words, although there seems to be a challenge in foreign affairs for the Serbian government, there is significant stability in the internal political arena.
(*) Dušan Spasojević is an associate professor in the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade. His main fields of interest are political parties, populism, civil society and the post-communist democratization process. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Political Perspectives, published by FPS Belgrade and FPS Zagreb. Spasojević is a member of the steering board of the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA).
References
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Milojević, A., & Krstić, А. (2019). Dimensional approach to populism: Party communication during 2014 Elections in Serbia. In М. Dragićević Šešić & M. Nikolić (Eds.), Situating populist politics: Arts and media nexus (pp. 143–160). Institute for Theatre, Film, Radio and Television, Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Belgrade.
Spasojević, D. (2019). Transforming populism – From protest vote to ruling ideology: The case of Serbia. In V. Beširević (Ed.), The new politics of decisionism (pp., 125–140). Eleven Publishing.
Spasojević, D. (2021). Two and a half crises: Serbian institutional design as the cause of democratic declines. Political Studies Review, 20(4), 550–563. doi: 10.1177/14789299211056197.
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Učeň, Peter. (2023). “The Russia–Ukraine War and the Radicalization of Political Discourse in Slovakia.” In: The Impacts of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Right-wing Populism in Europe. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). March 8, 2023. Brussels. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0029
The report opens with a reflection on the political actors who have been labelled and analysed as populists in the modern history of Slovakia. Then, it assesses the impact of the Russian aggression in Ukraine by taking into account the broader group of radical challengers to the liberal-democratic notion of “politics as usual” in Slovakia who operate beyond the populist Radical Right. Overall, the report finds that while the Russia–Ukraine war has contributed to the radicalization of the public discourse in Slovakia, it has not engendered new populist or radical actors nor caused notable changes in the ideational profiles and political strategies of existing ones.
Keywords: Radicalization; Slovakia; Radical Right; Direction–Social Democracy (SMER); Russia–Ukraine war.
The argument presented in this report is that while Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has contributed to a radicalization of the political discourse in Slovakia, the main avenue of such radicalization was not the Radical Right or right-wing populism. The Radical Right parties were pro-Russian long before Putin’s war of aggression, have not changed their stance as a consequence of it, and have studiously avoided any suggestion of support for it, at least as far as the invasion itself is concerned. The issue did not cause significant realignment or institutional changes in the Radical Right scene. Nor are Radical Right parties the sole purveyors of an oblique pro-Russian stance. They may have been outperformed in this respect by a non-radical, centre-right party with motivations rooted in Slovakia’s domestic political conflict.
A brief historical outline of (suspected) populists in Slovakia
Accurate or otherwise, reflection on the populist phenomena in Slovak politics has often suffered from the same general problems afflicting populist studies and anti-populist activism and journalism elsewhere. In the case of academic treatments, we have witnessed conceptual stretching, confusing populism with its thicker ideational fellow-travellers (nativism, authoritarianism), and promoting populism to the status of the all-encompassing category subsuming other ideational constructs to which, in practice, populism often serves as a means to convey their messages more efficiently. Beyond the academy, anti-populist movements have also engaged in broad-brush engagement, with “populist” becoming an “officially sanctioned slur” for politics in general, which risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater and, in any event, constitutes a morally unacceptable way of marshalling popular support against bogus messages and dangerous ideas. With this caveat in mind, it is helpful to summarize the several ways of “doing politics” in Slovakia’s modern history that have been—accurately or otherwise—labelled as “populist”.
At first, the populist label was a part of various attempts at capturing and explaining the tribulations the young and underdeveloped Slovak liberal-democratic polity was experiencing in the 1990s. These included the post-1989 surge in Slovak ethnic nationalism demanding broad political autonomy or secession from the federal republic of Czechoslovakia, created in 1989–90 and dissolved in December 1992, when the Czechs and Slovaks went their separate ways.
Another powerful source of such reflection was a combination of effective nationalist and populist mobilization under the auspices of the shrewd populist politician Vladimír Mečiar. His political success and attempt to retain power led the Slovak polity to the verge of having its liberal content entirely hollowed out and continuing as an illiberal democratic facade. Later a series of articulate, yet varying, anti-establishment appeals by new political parties distancing themselves from mečiarist populism as well as the civic-democratic and largely liberal opposition that defeated it in the 1998 elections were analysed as forms of “populism”.[1]
Among the parties labelled populist from this first wave of anti-establishment challengers, Direction–Social Democracy (SMER) came to dominate and shape Slovak politics in the 2000s and continues to do so to the present day. In the past two decades, the party has undergone a series of ideological and strategic transformations, of which some can be clarified with the help of the notion of populism, while others should not be. The second decade of this century has witnessed the rise of a second generation of anti-establishment challengers, which includes the anti-corruption and market liberal Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party in 2010 as well as the anti-corruption movement Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO). While often called populist, these parties’ appeals—undeniably anti-establishment in their nature—have been primarily informed by anti-corruption and calls for integrity in politics.
A few years later, a genuinely Radical Right outfit, the People’s Party–Our Slovakia (ĽSNS), broke through on the regional level and entered the national parliament in 2016. Finally, in 2016 the Slovak polity witnessed the rise of the conservative We are Family party, which described itself explicitly as on a mission to “purify” Slovak politics and did not shy away from Radical Right tropes on occasion, particularly about immigration. As expected, both of these two new challengers have been analysed in terms of populism and extremism. All of these actors, at certain points in their political activity, presented—in varying degrees and forms—some kind of challenge to “politics as usual” in the Slovak polity. Populism—properly conceptualized—has been, and continues to be, a part of the appeal of some of them. Yet, in itself, populism hardly explains the nature of the challenges confronting Slovak politics.
Right-wing populism and other (radical) challengers since the 2020 elections
Not all challenger parties in the Slovak political system are right-wing populists. Some would qualify as mainstream right-wing parties that (on occasion) adopt a “populist style”, but a sustained combination of nativism and authoritarianism and populism is not the defining aspect of their appeals. Moreover, the right-wing populists do not present the single dominant threat to the quality of liberal democracy in Slovakia.
As for the political fate of the challengers listed above, SaS has never been Radical Right, and in the meantime, it has practically become the mainstream party. OĽaNO retained and repeatedly reinvented its anti-establishment appeal and the form of the anti-party, deliberately eschewing a meaningful organizational structure. The movement described itself as a platform for promoting independent (read: non-partisan) personalities to the parliament to address problems in the political process, hence the name.[2] Characteristically, the movement has undergone a series of reinvention cycles before each election since 2012, in terms of candidates but also electoral appeals. The typical OĽaNO candidate list has been a rather odd mix of anti-corruption activists and whistle-blowers (often with centrist or liberal inclinations) and conservative activists from the traditional Christian as well as newer charismatic (Pentecostal) milieus. The glue that has held this somewhat motley crew of candidates has been a staunch commitment to combat political corruption.
While OĽaNO satisfies both conditions—being right-wing and populist—it has never become a Radical Right party. Following a vote of no-confidence in the OĽaNO-led government in December 2022, an internal discussion started regarding the separation of the party’s “liberal” and “conservative” wings. The latter might take the movement in a more radical direction by engaging in culture wars and vigorous opposition to “gender ideology” and the rights of trans people.
The We are Family party broke out in 2016 as a socially conservative and paternalistic party for ordinary people. The party explicitly cast its approach in contrast to the elitist manner of previous conservative champions in Slovakia. The party appeal is primarily based on the curious charisma of the party leader Boris Kollár—a millionaire with an eccentric private life (normally incompatible with any version of conservatism). Kollár is known for occasional anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric outbursts. But more importantly, We are Family is a political project of predatory opportunists who try to marshal support from a paternalist but the largely non-Left and likely non-religious electorate. Being both right-wing and populist, We are Family is not a Radical Right party. Like in the case of OĽaNO, it lacks the combination of nativism and authoritarianism at the core of its ideology. While the party leader in the past expressed sympathies for Austria’s FPÖ, Italy’s Lega, and France’s FN, currently, such alliances do not bring any political profits to the party’s project.
The People’s Party–Our Slovakia (ĽSNS)—nowadays officially known by its prefix Kotlebistas—ĽSNS (K-ĽSNS)—broke out on the regional level in 2013 and made it into the parliament in 2016. The party has been analysed in terms of both the Radical Right and political extremism. In fact, it is part of the family of Central European Far Right parties—such as Hungary’s Jobbik—which, from the point of view of traditional comparativist schemes, could best be described as a hybrid of Radical Right and extremist political programmes. While ĽSNS was established by extremist cadres, for the sake of public consumption, it has developed a political programme that is radical and vaguely anti-systemic, albeit carefully avoiding refutation of democracy. However, while placing extremist ideas on the back burner for the sake of smoother participation in the game of democratic politics, the party has offered a series of dog-whistle gestures aimed at its extremist supporters (and mocking the establishment). One such gesture—handing out checks to needy families in the amount of €1,488[3]—saw party leader Marián Kotleba accused of propagating extremism and put on trial. The pending threat of four years in prison caused tension within the party. Kotleba started preparing for eventual prison time by packing the party leadership with loyalists. This alienated the group around Milan Uhrík, MEP, who led a splinter group which left the party to establish the Far Right Republika party in 2020. The split resulted from purely personal and organizational disagreements rather than programmatic and tactical clashes. The new Republika adopted slightly more consensual stances while the rump ĽSNS embarked upon further radicalization, including a return to anti-Roma marches. As a result, Republika took over most of the electoral support of the old ĽSNS, and the rump party has since languished with low-single-digit support in opinion polls.
Both ĽSNS and Republika are Radical Right and populist parties. They also stand out notably from the rest of the political spectrum in terms of their attitude to the Russia–Ukraine war. Paradoxically, their closest ally in both the fight against “the system” and the positions taken on the war is the left-wing populist SMER, which bills itself as a social democratic party.
The once anti-establishment party SMER has undergone a series of transformations over the two decades. While continuing to identify as a social democratic party, SMER has lately come to rely on appeals that are both socially paternalistic (in a generally leftist vein) as well as culturally conservative. The latest addition to its ideological tool belt has been authoritarianism. Thus, the party, which started life with a younger, urban and educated voter base, has ended up as a radical actor with messages appealing to a historically paternalistic left-wing electorate (pensioners), conspiracists, and those who question Slovakia’s geopolitical orientation. In fact, SMER has become the functional equivalent of the Radical Right for members of these constituencies that identify as left-wing.
Like Mečiar in the 1990s, SMER’s malleability has been conditioned by the need to shield party cadres and external allies from the consequences of losing power. Over decades, the party has come to be dominated by a “cabal” of senior party politicians and external actors exhibiting all the signs of state capture. Politicians have thus traded protection to external “fixers” and oligarchs for material benefits. The whole extent of the captors’ activities was revealed following an extensive report published on the murder of the investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová in February 2018. A substantial part of the public concluded that SMER party elites were morally responsible for the murder by instituting the system of “our people” (the nickname given to the cabal) with the pervasive feeling of impunity provided by such cover, which encouraged one of the fixers to mastermind the murder. The change of public mood cost party leader Robert Fico the prime ministership when the popular (and less tainted) Peter Pellegrini preemptively replaced him as party leader.
Fico, a former prime minister, launched a campaign to undermine the integrity of investigations of high-profile corruption cases that evolved around himself, his party peers and their allies in business and the state administration. Such campaigns were primarily based on challenging the investigations as biased, politically motivated and infringing on the rule of law. It also included accusations of foreign interference in Slovak politics and in the investigations themselves.
The radicalism of Fico’s campaign increased in the aftermath of the February 2020 elections when the opposition alliance came to power on the back of electoral appeals for de-oligarchization, and ending systemic corruption and state capture—as symbolized by Fico’s circle. This estranged the wing of the party around Peter Pellegrini, which split from SMER in 2020 to establish the party Voice–Social Democracy (HLAS). HLAS leaders could plausibly claim to have been outside the “our people” cabal and therefore felt less exposed to the consequences of the anti-corruption investigations. They objected to the anti-systemic shift in SMER’s appeals, preferring to position themselves in the political centre and burnish their prospective governing credentials. HLAS quickly bested SMER in popularity ratings, and the breakaway soon took over a substantial part of the original organization. This only caused Fico to further radicalize his appeals, which have increasingly come to rely on the mobilization of a part of the anti-systemic and “alternative geopolitics” electorates.
The role of the Russia–Ukraine war in the radicalization of Slovak politics
First, the actors primarily responsible for the overall radicalization of the political discourse and the ruling OĽaNO have been SMER, Republika and ĽSNS. As noted, ĽSNS and Republika are Radical Right outfits, and the reasons for their extreme conduct are both ideological and tactical. For the failing ĽSNS, radicalization is seen as a way to bring former voters who now prefer Republika back into the fold. This is effectively a fight over the ownership of the Radical Right issue space in Slovak politics. For Republika, a slight moderation might be an advisable strategy, but they still need to retain the anti-system but non-extremist voters inherited from ĽSNS. The two Radical Right parties’ relationship with SMER is logical and paradoxical. In many respects, currently, they are tactical allies—particularly SMER and Republika. However, radicalized SMER represents a clear and present danger of poaching anti-systemic voters of Republika.
In the case of SMER, the reasons for the radical conduct are mainly tactical. Like ĽSNS, the party found itself bested by its splinter, HLAS. The polls, however, show that a significant part of HLAS’s support still considers SMER as the alternative regarding their voting choice. While SMER fights for its former voters, the party also seeks to complement them with the radicalized anti-systemic voters from the two Radical Right parties. These efforts are incredibly intense as their motivation is the return to power and undoing any possible damages resulting from the high-profile corruption cases against SMER’s cadres and allies. The strategy—characterized by an utter absence of inhibition combined with Fico’s considerable political skills—has worked. SMER has become the second-most popular party in Slovakia, lagging behind HLAS by a margin of only 3–4 percentage points.
Secondly, the primary motivations of the radicalization efforts regard domestic politics. The issues of geopolitics, the relations with Russia and taking sides in the Russia–Ukraine war play an important but secondary role in attempts to mobilize anti-systemic voters to engineer a return to power and a purging of those who currently occupy the offices of state. In one way or another—and with varying degrees of intensity—all three parties claim that Slovakia’s support for Ukraine in the current effort to face Russia’s aggression is against the national interest and threaten the country’s welfare.
The outbreak of the war did not bring any substantial shifts in the popular support for political parties, including the Radical Right. The polls also confirmed that supporters of SMER and Republika were the most inclined to prefer Russia’s victory in the conflict. Public opinion data collected in September 2022 by the polling organization Globsec suggest that 47% of Slovaks would prefer a Ukrainian victory as opposed to 19% who support Russia. This compares with 55% of Republika supporters backing Russia and 36% of SMES sympathizers. Of SMER’s constituency, 34% responded that they did not care either way.
While all the parties surveyed here condemn Russia’s act of aggression, this should not be read as a condemnation of the ideas behind the Kremlin’s move. Open support of the Kremlin has certainly been rare and mainly limited to individuals on social media. Among the politicians, ĽSNS MP Slavěna Vorobelová, who replaced Marián Kotleba after he lost his parliamentary seat, said to the press that “she would not go and fight” if Russia invaded Slovakia because, among other things, the conflict was not between Russia and Slovakia but between the United States and Russia. Most of the time, political actors siding with Russia have opted for various indirect and proxy expressions of pro-Russian sentiment, such as the second part of Vorobelová’s statement.
From among these, the most frequent were:
Praise of geopolitical realism and arguments regarding the legitimate spheres of influence of players like Russia. This included references to various Western experts in the international relations field (such as John Mearsheimer) who advance this line of thinking in an attempt to look competent in foreign policy.
Narratives shifting the responsibility for the war from Russia to Ukraine, the West, NATO and the United States. These included claims that Russia had a legitimate case for aggression or that it was provoked and manipulated to invade Ukraine by the West. The “proxy war” argument has also been used to assert that the conflict was between the United States and Russia and that Slovakia ought thus to stay out of the fray. All three parties in question referred to geopolitical realism in such a manner. Also, in January 2023, both MEPs elected on the ĽSNS ticket—one of them becoming, in the meantime, the leader of Republika—voted against the resolution of the European Parliament calling for the establishment of the international tribunal dealing with Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine.
Calls for ending the war and “unnecessary suffering”. This narrative was a euphemism for stopping the military support to Ukraine—thus facilitating Ukraine’s surrender and Russia’s victory. For example, SMER’s chair of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee criticized the Slovak mainstream political discourse as “having resigned on the language of peace and diplomatic solutions” and becoming “limited to hardening of the sanctions and supply of weapons to Ukraine”. Similarly, SMER’s chairman Robert Fico asserted that should his party become a part of the new government, “it would preclude a supply of a single cartridge to Ukraine” because such a policy would “only prolong the problem”.
Related to this were arguments appealing to the economic interests of the country. These involved an open criticism of the Western sanctions targeting Russia. This was the official position of SMER and HLAS, who declared that the “solution of the impact of war required an active foreign policy emphasizing the enforcement of the national economic interests”. On other occasions, SMER and the Radical Right linked the sanctions to higher energy prices, as shown, for example, by Republika’s billboard campaign slogan, “We will rescind the sanctions and make energy cheaper”.
All the arguments contributed to the overall narrative of the betrayal of the national interest perpetrated by the ruling majority: According to ĽSNS and Republika, the “government did it all to prolong the war and involve Slovakia in it”, which was proof that the “government was serving foreign interests”. In contrast, ĽSNS praised the “neutral position of Hungary in the conflict” as an example to follow. In a similar vein, according to Republika, “the government involved Slovakia in global issues while it was better to take the neutral position”, described by the party as “a total failure to defend our sovereignty”.
Conclusion
In the last couple of years, the political discourse in Slovakia has notably radicalized. The topic of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, however, has not been the main reason for such radicalization in general or regarding the populist Radical Right parties in particular. Instead, the main reason was the conflict over the political and criminal consequences of investigating the high-profile corruption cases involving people linked to the previous government. However, the Russian aggression in Ukraine, to some degree, informed the radicalization process in the last year. Mostly, it has provided additional arguments for the “geopolitical” dimension of domestic political polarization. For SMER, ĽSNS and Republika, it has offered a means to distance themselves more convincingly from the post-2020 election majority. With the different motivations described above, SMER and the two Radical Right parties seek to enlarge and further encapsulate the estranged anti-systemic constituency and divide it among themselves. Their principal argument—taking the various forms described earlier—is that the current establishment’s geopolitical orientation, as best illustrated in supporting Ukraine in the current war, presents a grave danger to the national interest of Slovakia—a betrayal similar to the anti-national activities taking place in the domestic arena.
(*) Peter Učeň studied political science in Bratislava (Comenius University), Budapest (the CEU) and Florence (the EUI), focusing on party politics and populism. He spent most of his career as a practitioner in international democracy assistance and political party aid. Currently, he is a freelance consultant and evaluator in democracy, governance, civil society capacity-building, the rule of law and anti-corruption.
Footnotes
[1] The author has contributed to this state of affairs by popularizing the term “centrist populism” with reference to these parties, the politics of which—he now contends—could certainly better be explained by a conceptual elaboration on the term “anti-establishment politics” rather than populism proper.
[2] In Slovakia, independent candidates are barred from running in parliamentary elections.
[3] The number 1,488 is seen as referencing the neo-Nazi slogan “14 Words and 88 Precepts” often abbreviated as “14/88”, part of coded language that is propagated by the late white supremacist David Eden Lane and his followers.
Marcos-Marne, Hugo. (2023). “The Spanish Radical Right under the shadow of the invasion of Ukraine.” In: The Impacts of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Right-wing Populism in Europe. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). March 8, 2023. Brussels. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0030
Despite the geographical distance, the war in Ukraine has brought to the fore links between the Russian establishment and Radical Right forces in Spain. Both scholars and pundits have taken an interest in the question, which spread to party competition, quickly turning into a (discursive) race away from Putin as the consequences of war become more evident. Despite the war’s unquestioned relevance and previous links between Russia and the Radical Right in Spain (albeit less established than in other European countries), a systematic analysis of the effects of the invasion is missing. This report addresses this gap by focusing on the impact of the Ukraine invasion on party discourse and public opinion in Spain. It analyses records of proceedings from the Spanish Parliament, Twitter messages posted by the VOX party and its leader, and survey data gathered since February 2022 by the Spanish Center for Sociological Research (CIS). The main findings at the party level highlight the relatively weak associations between the Kremlin and The Radical Right in Spain (compared to other European countries), as well as efforts to separate from Putin after the invasion started. A more complex pattern of preferences is identified at the individual level.
Located on opposite sides of the European continent from Spain, Russia has seldom exerted much economic and political influence on the country. Whatever influence Moscow had has only declined since European Union (EU) sanctions were introduced in 2014, which adversely affected bilateral trade (Dunaev, 2018; Féas, 2022). These changes have shaped connections between Russian political and economic elites and the Spanish Radical Right.
This report focuses on Russia’s links to VOX, the most electorally successful but certainly not the only party with a radical right-wing orientation in Spain.[1] Other relevant parties in the Spanish party system mentioned in this report are the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), the Partido Popular (PP), and Unidas Podemos (UP). The PSOE—a centre-left party that belongs to the group of the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament (EP)—received the most votes in the most recent national elections. The PP, currently the main opposition party in Spain, lies on the centre-right and belongs to the European People’s Party group in the EP. For its part, UP is a Radical Left party that belongs to the European United Left (GUE/NGL) in the EP and is part of the coalition government led by Pedro Sánchez (Bakker et al., 2020). The UP is itself an electoral coalition dominated by the parties Podemos and Izquierda Unida (IU), which have often been characterized as populist outfits (Ramiro & Gomez, 2016; Marcos-Marne et al., 2020). VOX is universally classified as a Radical Right party because it adheres to authoritarian and nativist ideas (Ferreira, 2019; Mudde, 2004). Populist ideas also appear less consistently in the discourses of the party (Marcos-Marne et al., 2021; Rooduijn et al., 2019).
For a long time, Spain was a European outlier in lacking an electorally successful Radical Right party (Alonso & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2015), but this ended in 2019 when VOX broke through in national elections (Turnbull-Dugarte et al., 2020).[2] VOX’s emergence confirmed the disintegration of Spain’s established two-party system, and while the 2019 elections saw a left-wing national government elected, VOX’s success quickly had institutional consequences at the subnational level. For example, the PP was only able to form a coalition government in Madrid after VOX was persuaded to abstain and the party’s votes were necessary to ensure the PP’s regional government in Murcia. In Castilla y León, VOX entered coalition government alongside the PP.
Analysis of relations between VOX and Russia before the invasion of Ukraine falls into several distinct categories. First, in organizational and financial terms, VOX and Russia share several international allies on the Far Right (e.g., Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, and Matteo Salvini), and organizations associated with VOX (i.e., Hazte Oir-CitizenGO) have received funding from Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin (Datta, 2021). Second, in ideological terms, there is a strong complementarity between the Kremlin and VOX primarily based on nationalism (with a strong emphasis on opposing the EU as a supranational project) and authoritarianism (including resolute opposition to gender equality). There is thus a strong ideological affinity between VOX and the Kremlin, which is not necessarily reflected in deep financial ties (especially when compared to Russia’s support for other Radical Right forces in Europe).
To be clear, voices that speak in favour of Putin have continued among VOX politicians even after the invasion of Ukraine started (Testa, 2022). Even before the invasion (and since), party leader Santiago Abascal has pointedly refrained from criticizing Putin in public interviews due to ideological connections (González, 2019, 2022). However, ties have never been as blatant and significant as in other European countries. So then, how has the invasion of Ukraine affected these relations?
The Radical Right parties and Russia after the invasion
At the level of party discourse, the invasion of Ukraine forced VOX to take a comparatively less ambiguous position towards Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. In this vein, Abascal largely supported both the arrival of refugees[3]and sending war supplies to Ukraine, a position that he combined with strong criticism against the EU (both for being too weak and too expansionist) and the Spanish government (blaming UP for having relations with the Russian government). In March 2022, alongside all the parliamentary groups except the Grupo Mixto[4], VOX supported an official statement supporting Ukraine and against the invasion by Vladimir Putin. In the same debate, Abascal directed robust discourse against members of the government, accusing them of supporting the invasion of Ukraine indirectly due to government links with Russia via “El Grupo de Puebla”, their critical positions towards NATO, and previous criticisms directed against the Ukrainian government for (allegedly) giving support to Radical Right groups (Congreso de los Diputados, 2022a).
In Spain’s “state of the nation” debate held in the Spanish Parliament in July 2022, VOX’s MPs avoided any positive statements about Russia, the Kremlin, or Vladimir Putin, even if they did accuse Prime Minister Sánchez of using the war in Ukraine to deflect responsibility for the economic crunch (“It is not Putin, it is not Franco, it is not the virus. It is you, Pedro Sánchez, the government, and the erratic economic policy that explains to a great extent the economic collapse suffered…”( Congreso de los Diputados, 2022b, p. 27). Although a systematic analysis of VOX discourse on Twitter is beyond the scope of the current report, there are also enough examples to support the view that the party turned (more) critical toward Russia after February 2022:
Putin’s arrogance progresses due to the silence of many cowardly leaders and the support of tyrants from all around the world, like those from the Grupo de Puebla, formed by socialists and communists from the Spanish government. (Abascal, 2022a)
Putin’s allies are sitting in the government, and Pedro Sánchez should expel them immediately. Spain must support Ukraine unanimously, and there is no room for half-measures. (VOX, 2022)
I celebrate the Spanish Parliament’s support for the Ukrainian president. Zelenskyy has exhibited heroic behaviour in front of the criminal and deadly attack led by Putin, which would have made most Western politicians flee by helicopter. That deserves our recognition. (Abascal, 2022b)
Overall, the invasion of Ukraine has been politicized in the Spanish political landscape, and repertoires of competition have included accusing political opponents of being allies of Putin and his government.[5] VOX took part in this trend despite its previously ambiguous discourses towards Russia and the Kremlin, mostly focusing its discursive efforts on criticizing UP. However, consistent with the ambiguous relations highlighted above, VOX did not concentrate its communication strategy on the war. Indeed, at the time of writing, only 11 mentions of Putin, 20 of Ukraine, and 8 of Russia have been posted by VOX’s official Twitter account since February 2022. Abascal’s Twitter account had posted ten mentions of Putin, six of Ukraine, and two of Russia in the same period.
Voters of the Radical Right and Russia after the invasion
Data gathered by the Spanish Center for Sociological Research (CIS) allows for a public opinion perspective on the effects of the war in Ukraine among voters of the Radical Right, focusing on two main topics: the degree of concern about the war in Ukraine and support for different measures to help Ukraine (sending humanitarian help, hosting refugees, putting pressure on Putin to withdraw the army, and advocating for direct NATO intervention).[6] To allow for comparisons, we grouped respondents in each survey of the CIS by vote recall (which party the respondent voted for) in the last national elections (held in November 2019), considering the four parties that garnered the highest vote share: the PSOE, the PP, VOX and UP.
The lines in Figure 1 represent the share of voters for each of the four main parties declaring little or no concern at all about the war. These values evidence that most of the respondents were at least somehow concerned about the war, as the percentage plotted never reaches 30% or even 15% for the two main parties. They further suggest an overall growing lack of concern about the war among voters of all parties, with comparatively higher values displayed by voters of VOX and UP. Last, they indicate that voters of VOX were the least concerned about the war in eight out of nine surveys conducted by the CIS between March and December 2022 (in May, voters of VOX and UP reported almost the same level of concern with the selected indicator).
Source: Author’s elaboration based on data from the Center for Sociological Research (Study 3355, 3359, 3363, 3366, 3371, 3375, 3380, 3384, and 3388).
Beyond levels of concern, a battery of questions referring to specific measures regarding the invasion of Ukraine were asked in four different surveys between March and June. Four of them were selected for this report and refer to sending humanitarian help to Ukraine, hosting refugees from Ukraine, putting pressure on Putin to withdraw the army from Ukraine, and supporting a NATO direct intervention on Ukrainian territory.
Figures 2 to 5 show the percentage of voters for each party that disagree or disagree strongly with each of these measures. It can be seen in Figure 2 that respondents who declared to have voted for VOX were the least disposed to sending humanitarian help to Ukraine (a trend particularly visible in May and June). Voters of VOX also opposed more clearly the hosting of refugees from Ukraine (Figure 3), but the evolution of preferences in this group seems to diverge from the others. Voters of PSOE, PP, and UP start with very low levels of disagreement that grow only marginally with time. The trend for voters of VOX is more U-shaped as it starts with much higher levels of disagreement in March and April, almost joins the three other parties in May, and deviates again in June with higher levels of debate. I speculate this trend could be explained because discourses of VOX towards Ukrainian refugees, comparatively much more positive than previous refugee crises, had an effect among its voters that vanished with time as the invasion went on in time, and less public attention was devoted to it.
VOX’s voters also express reluctance towards the notion the government should pressure Putin to withdraw Russian forces from Ukrainian territory (as do UP voters, albeit less so, see Figure 4). Last, the distribution of preferences vis-à-vis direct NATO intervention in Ukraine shows that UP voters most strongly disagreed with this proposal (Figure 5). This might be explained by the traditional negative relationship between NATO and the (radical) Left in Spain (Viñas, 1988).[7] In this case, the position of VOX voters was indistinguishable from that of PSOE and PP voters.
Source: Author’s elaboration with data from the Center for Sociological Research (Study 3355, 3359, 3363, and 3366).Source: Author’s elaboration with data from the Center for Sociological Research (Study 3355, 3359, 3363, and 3366).Source: Author’s elaboration with data from the Center for Sociological Research (Study 3355, 3359, 3363, and 3366).Source: Author’s elaboration with data from the Center for Sociological Research (Study 3355, 3359, 3363, and 3366).
Final remarks
The weak and somewhat ambiguous links between VOX and the Kremlin transformed after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Although not very frequent, the main messages from VOX on the war have criticized Putin’s government, presented Ukraine in a positive light, and often accused members of the Spanish government of collaborating with Russia. Therefore, the invasion of Ukraine has been integrated into the discourse of VOX as a second-order element used to undermine the position of rival parties within a more integrated discourse, including nationalist and authoritarian elements. Although further analysis would be needed to test the proposition, we might speculate that the party’s limited public profile on the war reflects the fact that any pro-Ukraine message would not sit well with the party’s virulent anti-EU positioning, together with the ideological affinities between VOX and the Kremlin that persist despite the war.
At the individual level, VOX voters are comparatively less concerned about the war, which seems consistent with the low-profile strategy mentioned above. They are also comparatively more reluctant to help Ukraine by sending humanitarian help, hosting refugees, or calling on Putin to withdraw. Overall, the findings from this report suggest that the association between Russia and VOX can be better explained by focusing on the radical right-wing component of the party’s discourse (crucially, nationalism and authoritarianism) rather than the populist one.
(*) Hugo Marcos-Marne is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Salamanca. Previously, he has been a postdoctoral research fellow at SUPSI-Lugano, the University of St. Gallen, and the National University of Distance Education (UNED Madrid). His research sits at the intersection between public opinion and electoral behaviour, political parties, and populism. He has published on these topics in many top-ranked international journals, including Political Communication, Political Behavior, West European Politics, Political Studies, Politics, Electoral Studies, the International Political Science Review, and Politics and Governance, among others. He is currently a researcher in the project entitled “Youth Political Socialization, Journalism & Social Media: Understanding Democracy in Contentious Times” and a member of the Democracy Research Unit (DRU) and Team Populism.
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Datta, N. (2021). Tip of the iceberg: Religious extremist funders against human rights for sexuality and reproductive health in Europe 2009–2018. European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights.
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Footnotes
[1] For additional information on the complex relations between comparatively small groups of the Radical Right and Russia, see Albin (2022).
[2] To be clear, radical right-wing parties existed in Spain before VOX attained institutional representation following the regional elections in Andalucía in 2018. However, these were mainly marginal groups that never achieved the electoral success VOX attained nation-wide in April 2019.
[3] This measure was not supported by all members of VOX, as can be seen in statements issued by VOX Andalucía (Morillo, 2022).
[4] The Candidatura de Unidad Popular (CUP), which counts two MPs in Spain’s parliament, decided not to support the official statement as it failed to mention the role of NATO and the United States in the origins of the conflict.
[5] Criticisms directed towards Russia have traditionally had traction among the Radical Right in Spain, and VOX emphasized links between Russia, as the successor to the USSR, and current members of the government belonging to the Spanish Communist Party.
[6] The CIS surveys used in this section can be retrieved from the Center for Sociological Research (n.d.).
[7] This position has been mainly based on anti-imperialism, anti-militarism and non-alignment infused with a critical view of the foreign action of the United States. PSOE’s turn from criticizing to supporting Spain’s participation in the NATO in 1986 was a major political issue that put to an end the overall agreement of left-wing forces in this regard. The radical left-wing IU was born in 1986 at the height of mobilization against NATO and has remained opposed to NATO since then.
Bolin, Niklas. (2023). “The repercussions of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on the populist Radical Right in Sweden.” In: The Impacts of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Right-wing Populism in Europe. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). March 8, 2023. Brussels https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0031
The populist Radical Right Sweden Democrats (SD) have long been excluded from cooperation with other parties. As other parties have moved closer to the party’s more restrictive migration policy, and as older party leaders from the extreme Far Right have departed, some of the arguments in support of isolating the SD have waned. However, the party is still criticized for its ambiguous attitude towards Russia. But although individual politicians have openly expressed pro-Russian views, the current SD leadership has repeatedly rejected such accusations. The party’s position became increasingly relevant in 2022 when the Russian invasion of Ukraine coincided with the parliamentary elections. This article analyses the attitude of the SD towards the Putin regime and how this developed in response to the invasion of Ukraine. It also looks at how this has affected the public perception of the party and to what extent its position on Russia will continue to be important in the public debate.
Keywords: Radical Right; Sweden Democrats; Russia; Ukraine; elections.
There has long been a debate about the stance of European populist Radical Right parties towards the Putin regime. Traditionally, many of them are described as pro-Russian parties and are often criticized for their admiration of the Kremlin. In Sweden, the picture has been mixed. Their political opponents have repeatedly criticized the populist Radical Right Sweden Democrats (SD) for their ambiguous attitude towards Russia. However, although individual politicians have openly expressed pro-Russia views, the leadership of the SD has repeatedly rejected such accusations.
The party’s position became increasingly relevant in 2022 when the Russian invasion of Ukraine coincided with parliamentary elections. With mainstream parties on the Right having, in many ways, moved closer to the SD on immigration and law and order issues, the stance on Russia was potentially one of the key remaining obstacles to ending the party’s isolation. In this report, I analyse how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected the SD. More specifically, I describe the party’s stance towards the Kremlin and how this has developed in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Further, I discuss how the invasion has affected the public perception of the SD and how the party’s position on Russia will remain relevant in the public debate. The analysis is based on available research, media reports and official party documents.
The Radical Right scene in Sweden
With the partial exception of the short-lived populist New Democracy party in the early 1990s, Sweden, unlike many other European countries, had not experienced an electorally successful populist Radical Right party at the beginning of the twenty-first century (Rydgren, 2002). Since then, the story has changed drastically. The first SD members were elected to the national parliament in 2010, and their progress ever since has been remarkable, to say the least. In fact, the party has yet to experience an electoral loss and has increased its vote share at every election since it first ran in 1988. In terms of Radical Right electoral success, Sweden is no longer an exceptional case (Rydgren & van der Meiden, 2019).
Even though the SD have steadily increased their support in the electorate, the party has long been completely excluded from cooperation with other parties. An important reason for this cordon sanitaire can be found in the SD’s history. Unlike most other parties in the populist Radical Right family in Europe, the party was founded by outright racist groups with links to neo-Nazism (Larsson & Ekman, 2001). Although the party has worked hard to build a more respectable facade, the SD’s marginalization has remained. After the 2014 parliamentary elections, six parties concluded the so-called December Agreement to ensure that the SD would remain without influence while at the same time allowing a government to be formed without an explicit majority in the Riksdag (Aylott & Bolin, 2019; Bjereld et al., 2016).
Government formation was even more difficult after the 2018 election. The four parties of the centre-right Alliance could have formed a government if they had been willing to rely on the parliamentary support of the SD. However, two of them, the Centre Party and the Liberals, preferred the incumbent centre-left minority coalition to continue rather than make any kind of concession to the Radical Right (Teorell et al., 2020). The agreement between the Social Democrats and the two centrist liberal parties ended a decade of wide-ranging cooperation between the four parties of the Alliance. It also had implications of great importance because it was decisive in bringing the SD in from the cold. The Moderates and the Christian Democrats immediately began to initiate a policy of détente with SD. The cordon sanitaire that had prevailed until then was lifted. Later, the Liberals also decided to withdraw their support for the centre-left to reunite with their former Alliance partners.
Even though they all lost ground compared to the 2018 election, their joint election result in September 2022 with the SD was enough for a majority. Thus, they were able to form a government by the end of the year. Although the SD is not formally a member of the governing coalition, it has concluded a far-reaching agreement with the three centre-right parties, securing formal political influence for the first time (Aylott & Bolin, 2023).
The Sweden Democrats and Russia
As other parties have moved closer to the party’s more restrictive migration policy, and as older party leaders from the extreme Far Right have departed, some of the arguments in support of isolating the SD have waned somewhat. For example, in recent years, the SD’s stance on international cooperation and the European Union (EU) has come to the fore. Relatedly, there has been a recurring debate on the SD’s position towards the Kremlin. Critics argue that the party, or people associated with it, have shown sympathy for Putin’s government and have taken positions aligned with Russian interests. For example, a report on how the European Parliament voted on Russia-related matters in 2014 found that the SD were one of the most Russia-friendly parties (Bolin, 2015). Indeed, the two Sweden Democrats MEPs were the only Swedish representatives voting against ratification of an Association Agreement with Ukraine (Christodoulou, 2014).
Similarly, people closely associated with the SD, unlike politicians from other Swedish parties, have on several occasions participated in Russian state-supported media platforms such as Sputnik and Russia Today (RT). Researchers characterize the latter as “an opportunist channel that is used as an instrument of state defence policy to meddle in the politics of other states” (Elswah & Howard, 2020, p. 623). In addition, there are several examples of how leading SD politicians have expressed appreciation for Russia or participated in contexts that have been interpreted as indirect support of the Putin regime. On several occasions, both former and current MPs have expressed themselves in favourable terms about election processes in Russia after being invited by the regime to function as election observers or having participated in conferences arranged by the regime (Sundbom, 2018).
Those who harboured suspicions about the SD’s attitude towards the Russian regime were given further fuel when in an interview just a week before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the party’s leader, Jimmie Åkesson, refused to say whether he preferred Joe Biden or Vladimir Putin as a political leader (Odmalm, 2022). The leadership of the SD has, however, denied all accusations of being a pro-Russian party. It is also hard to find Russia-friendly statements in official party documents. Russia was not mentioned in the early party programmes and election manifestos. However, in recent years, especially since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the party has become increasingly critical of Russian developments (e.g., Shekhovtsov, 2018, p. 238). For example, the latest election manifesto for 2022 states that “Sweden should advocate clear sanctions against […] Russia and other countries with negative development” (Sweden Democrats, 2022, p. 57).
There are also signs that the SD have become more critical of Russia in practical politics. In stark contrast to the report mentioned above, a recent assessment of the degree of “assertiveness towards Russia”, SD comes out as the most critical of Russia among all Swedish parties represented in the European Parliament (VoteWatch, 2022). The appreciative attitude towards the Kremlin among some of the other Radical Right parties has also been presented as a reason the SD chose not to join the same party group in the European Parliament as, for example, France’s National Rally and Italy’s Lega (McDonnell & Werner, 2019).
The impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Swedish domestic politics
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 made it even more pressing to fend off any accusation of complicity towards Russia. Among other things, it significantly impacted the willingness to join NATO. Although Sweden became a member of the EU in 1995, it has maintained a policy of nonalignment and did not join NATO during the Cold War like neighbouring Nordic countries, Denmark and Norway. However, relations with NATO have developed considerably. In the 1990s, Sweden began cooperating more closely with NATO on peacekeeping missions and crisis management operations. Although Sweden is not a member of NATO, it has increasingly participated in the alliance’s activities and developed close relations with NATO countries (Wieslander, 2022).
Even though Sweden’s relations with NATO have become closer, there has always been a party-political divide, with centre-left parties opposing NATO membership and centre-right parties being more supportive of it. As late as November 2021, the Social Democratic defence minister assured its party congress that as long there was a Social Democratic government, an application for NATO membership was unthinkable. The SD have also been against NATO accession historically, and they have instead called for increased cooperation with other Nordic countries, including developing a joint Nordic defence force (Sweden Democrats, 2019). Despite the long-standing opposition to NATO, Åkesson declared in April 2022 that the party was ready to support a Swedish application for NATO membership if Finland applied simultaneously (Arenander & Nilsson, 2022). When the Social Democrats also made a ‘drastic U-turn’ (Hinnfors, 2022), the Swedish government took the same path as Finland and decided to apply for NATO membership (Aylott & Bolin, 2023).
Despite SD’s more openly critical stance towards the Russian regime and its new position on membership in NATO, political opponents still consider the party’s position untrustworthy. That this is still thought to have a deterrent effect on the electorate became apparent when the Social Democrats called a press conference just a week before the election to report on cases where the SD had acted in favour of Russian interests and thus posed a security risk. The Moderate prime ministerial candidate, Ulf Kristersson, was asked how he would prevent the SD’s links to Russia from affecting Swedish foreign and security policy if the election resulted in a parliamentary majority for the right-wing opposition. Åkesson unsurprisingly rejected this and tweeted that the statements were reminiscent of how the opposition would be dealt with in a dictatorship. More startling, however, was that Kristersson also came to the SD’s defence and argued that the Social Democratic stunt was unworthy, not least as it was the simultaneous positional changes in the Social Democrats and the SD that made a Swedish NATO application possible (Petersson, 2022). It was clear that alleged connections between SD and Russia were no longer seen as an obstacle to including the SD as part of a new political majority.
The demand for the Radical Right in the aftermath of the invasion
The last parliamentary term has been clearly marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This has meant that the main political issues of SD have been less salient in the public debate. These crises also seem to have affected support for political parties somewhat. A rally around the flag effect can be observed, where both the outbreak of the pandemic in the spring of 2020 and the Russian invasion in the spring of 2022 boosted the popularity of the governing Social Democrats (Esaiasson et al., 2021; Novus/SVT, 2022). Support for the SD also seemed to decrease somewhat in connection with the outbreak of the war, but the impact on the electoral outcome of 2022 was small. Some of the political issues that became important in the 2022 election campaign, partly because of the war, were favourable to the SD, and the party won 20.5% of the vote, becoming the second-largest party in parliament.
Despite the spectacular Swedish shift in attitude towards NATO membership and the fact that there were still parties that opposed this, the issue was absent from the election campaign. Other issues indirectly connected to the war, such as rising inflation and electricity prices, gained great importance (Aylott & Bolin, 2023). While the governing party blamed the war in Ukraine and chose to refer to it as “Putin’s price hikes”, the opposition argued that it was mainly about how the government had mismanaged Swedish fuel and energy policy for years. Judging by the exit polls, the opposition benefited the most from the salience of these issues in the campaign.
The Sweden Democrat’s traditional issue, immigration, came further down on the list of voters’ most important issues. A possible explanation is that several other parties have altered their policies in a more restrictive direction and, in this way, narrowed the distance of the mainstream to the SD’s position. In addition, it is noteworthy that the SD was positive about receiving Ukrainian refugees. According to the party, this was in line with its previous policy that Sweden should help countries in its nearby area. Åkesson (2022) also justified the position on both cultural and economic grounds as he argued that Ukraine is both religiously and culturally more similar to Sweden “compared to clan societies in the Horn of Africa” and that Ukrainian refugees differ from previous migration “of low-educated, or even completely uneducated, people”. As a result, Åkesson claimed, “the burden on society, economically, socially and culturally, will not be as devastating as with previous mass immigration from culturally distant countries” (ibid.).
Concluding remarks
Despite its continuous electoral progress, the Sweden Democrats have been in the political cold for a long time. Not until the two liberal centre parties chose to support a Social Democratic government in 2018 did the Moderates and the Christian Democrats approach the SD seeking to return to office. Previously, the SD’s history and attitude toward immigration had been the main reasons for excluding the party from cooperation. However, in the wake of the 2015 “refugee crisis” and the SD’s electoral progress, other parties have also moved towards a more restrictive immigration policy. The SD’s deviant approach to international cooperation and its ambivalent stance towards Russia have remained obstacles to it being fully accepted as a political cooperation partner.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine meant that the SD’s attitude towards the Kremlin was given further attention. Officially, the party has also taken a stand against Russia’s actions and for support and assistance to Ukraine. The party has even advocated a relatively generous reception of Ukrainian refugees. Given the party’s very restrictive immigration policy, this can be seen as a departure from its traditional line.
Despite the clear stance on Ukraine, the SD are not yet rid of their Russia-related problems. While the current parties in government no longer see the SD’s position towards Russia as problematic, both the opposition and political commentators continue to argue that the party’s murky connections to Russia are an acute security risk and that the leadership should more clearly uphold a red line against any actions that are in Russia’s interests (Johansson Heinö et al., 2023). The issue was given further attention again at the beginning of 2023 when a central figure in the alternative media environment around the SD, previously accused of Russian connections, helped the anti-Muslim activist Rasmus Paludan to get permission to burn a Qur’an near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. The incident worsened already strained relations between Turkey and Sweden, further frustrating Sweden’s NATO application (Rankin, 2023). In addition, political opponents criticized the SD for being “useful idiots” for the Kremlin (see, e.g., Lindberg, 2023) and not taking responsibility for people associated with the party, thus potentially serving the interests of Russia. However, the SD leadership rejected any responsibility for the incident and, more generally, any alternative media favouring Russian interests even though individuals associated with the party frequently appear in them.
Although there is much to suggest that the isolation of the SD is a thing of the past, it cannot be ruled out that the issue of NATO and, indirectly, the SD’s relationship with Russia will influence these relations. There is no evidence that the SD has direct links to Russia. Nevertheless, SD members and persons associated with the party appear from time to time in contexts that can be interpreted as pro-Russian. As a result, the SD leadership probably will be wary of any pro-Russian sentiments among its ranks and will continue to reject any accusation of acting in accordance with Russian interests. However, it is doubtful that this will prevent the opposition from criticizing the party’s connections to Russia.
(*) Niklas Bolin is Associate Professor of Political Science at Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden. His main research interests are parties and elections, particularly organisation, leadership, intra-party democracy, Radical Right parties and Green parties. He is co-editor (with Nicholas Aylott) of the edited volume Managing Leader Selections in European Political Parties (Palgrave, 2021) and has published in high-ranking international journals, including Party Politics, TheJournal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, Scandinavian Political Studies and West European Politic.
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Nijhuis, Chris; Verbeek, Bertjan & Zaslove, Andrej. (2023). “Disagreement among populists in the Netherlands: The diverging rhetorical and policy positions of Dutch populist Radical Right parties following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” In: The Impacts of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Right-wing Populism in Europe. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). March 8, 2023. Brussels https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0032
The Netherlands boasts a wide array of populist Radical Right parties, from the Freedom Party (PVV) and Forum for Democracy (FvD) to Correct Alternative 2021 (JA21). To complicate matters further, the left-wing Socialist Party (SP) is also considered a populist party. Mirroring the diversity of responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the rest of Europe, Dutch populist parties have reacted in myriad ways. Whereas the PVV condemned the Russian invasion, the FvD remained highly supportive of Putin. Interestingly, while many European populist Radical Right leaders, following public opinion, pivoted away from support for Russia, the FvD has maintained its support for Putin’s regime throughout 2022. JA21, on the other hand, has followed the non-populist parties, calling for tougher sanctions on Russia. This report maps the diverse positions of the three populist Radical Right parties regarding Russia. However, we also seek to explain why they have chosen such diverse paths. The report focuses on supply-side considerations, such as the impact of the parties’ relative degree of populism, their attaching ideology, and their position in the highly fragmented party system.
Keywords: Populism, Foreign policy, the Netherlands, Russia–Ukraine war, Party for Freedom (PVV), Forum for Democracy (FvD).
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has proven to be particularly problematic for the European populist Radical Right, challenging an alleged core feature of even the more moderate bedfellows: their desire to challenge the dominant liberal world order. This report focuses on the Dutch populist Radical Right’s response to the Russian-Ukrainian war. We map and account for the diverging responses of three parties: the Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom, PVV), Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy, FvD), and Correct Alternative 2021, widely known as JA21. The puzzle that drives our report is the remarkable divergence in reaction to the war among these parties.
Our contribution is structured as follows. After a short description of the rise and the growth of the Dutch populist Radical Right, we argue why the Netherlands is a relevant case for tracking populists’ reactions to the war. Next, we present how these parties’ narratives regarding Russia developed in the 2010s. Third, we offer three possible explanations for the differences between these narratives, focusing on their degree of populism, their attaching ideology, and their position in the party system. Finally, we will discuss what effect the narratives have had on the official Dutch position towards the war as well as on the position of the three parties in the Dutch political system.
This contribution is positioned at the interface of comparative politics and International Relations theory (IR). Congruent with the approach within comparative politics that sees populism as a “thin ideology” (Mudde, 2004), we expect a populist party’s foreign policy preference to be a mix of its idea of the divide between elites and the people and the broader ideology from which it borrows. Similarly, we expect that the closer the party is to the corridors of power, the more likely its foreign policy preferences will be reflected in governmental policies (Verbeek & Zaslove, 2017). Congruent with the “second image reversed” approach in IR scholarship, we assume that international crises pose a challenge to political parties domestically (Verbeek & Zaslove, forthcoming). Especially when such events are perceived as threatening national survival, they may upset the dominant security narrative underlying a country’s political discourse, thus affecting initial threat management but usually dissipating after some time. It may also provoke a rally around the flag effect for the incumbent government (Lee, 1977). Such upheavals may impact politicians’ domestic positions. The Russia–Ukraine war may thus prove an advantage or disadvantage to populist parties.
Why the Netherlands?
From the perspective of comparative politics, the Netherlands is intriguing. On the demand side, since the mid-2000s, 18–22% of the electorate has consistently voted for a populist party (of the Left or the Right). However, on the supply side, the (right-wing) populist landscape is highly volatile, with a plethora of populist parties that pop up and then (often) disappear. At the time of writing in early 2023, right-wing populist parties hold 29 of the 150 seats in the lower house of the Dutch parliament. The largest is Geert Wilders’s PVV, with 17 seats. Thierry Baudet’s FvD lost three of its eight lower house seats to the breakaway Groep Van Haga in May 2021. In the Dutch Senate, the FvD lost 11 of its 12 senators to three breakaway groups despite its tremendous success in the 2019 regional elections, which defines the election of senators. The 2021 parliamentary elections ushered in JA21 (three seats) — itself another breakaway from the FvD — as well as the BoerBurgerBeweging (Farmer Citizen Movement, BBB), which is less easy to classify as right-wing populist. Three months before the 2023 regional elections, scheduled for May 30, JA21 and the BBB were riding high in the polls, polling 7–9 and 11–13%, respectively (Louwerse, n.d.). The Netherlands is thus a political system where many right-wing populists compete for the same electorate (de Jonge, 2021). It also boasts a left-wing populist party, the Socialist Party (SP) (Meijers & Zaslove, 2021). However, since the report focuses on the populist Radical Right, we do not analyse the SP further.
The Netherlands is similarly intriguing from an IR perspective. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, as the United States sought to progressively limit its role in Europe, the country worked hard to improve its relationship with Russia, especially after the Obama Administration announced the “pivot to Asia”. The climax of these efforts should have been the celebration of 400 years of Dutch–Russian relations in 2013. However, 2013 ended awry due to unease over the Kremlin’s anti-LGBT+ policies, Russia’s jailing of Dutch environmentalists, and the Dutch arrest of a Russian diplomat over domestic violence (Walker, 2013). Nevertheless, the 2014 annexation of Crimea did not alter the broadly shared desire for better relations between Russia and the West.
This fundamentally changed with the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, almost certainly shot down by Russian-controlled forces in the area. More than 190 Dutch citizens were killed. The Dutch narrative of Russia quickly soured when Russia proved unwilling to cooperate with the official inquiry. The Dutch official reaction to the 2022 war was very outspoken, calling for tough sanctions against Russia. This call came despite the Dutch government’s decision to end gas production in the Groningen gas field in the country’s earthquake-prone north, making the Netherlands somewhat more dependent on gas imports from Russia (Sterling, 2022). However, Dutch dependence on Russian gas is low compared to other European countries. The new dominant narrative on Russia, which changed from (coveted) friend to (potential) enemy, was problematic to right-wing populists. The rally around the flag caused by the MH17 tragedy and, later, the war has made it more difficult for right-wing populists to claim that the elites were neglecting the people’s interests. Also, the reliance on international cooperation in NATO, the European Union (EU) and the International Energy Agency (IAE) made it more challenging to sustain the criticism of global liberal institutions as a “corrupt elite”.
Dutch right-wing populist narratives of Russia
The three major right-wing populist parties in the Dutch parliament (FvD, JA21, PVV) differ substantively in their narratives of engagement with Russia. Newcomer JA21 sticks closest to the Dutch government’s line. Wilders’s PVV explicitly condemns Russian aggression and accepts the temporary hosting of limited numbers of Ukrainian refugees. Overall, however, it remains more concerned with the consequences of Dutch foreign policy for the Dutch people rather than with direct involvement in the Ukrainian war effort. Baudet’s FvD, although never formally endorsing the Russian attack, has shied away from condemning Moscow. Instead, it seeks to paint a broader picture of geopolitical change (“the great reset”) in which the EU’s support for “colour revolutions” in the post-Soviet sphere has prepared the ground for this war. Before describing the narratives in more detail, we emphasize that for the FvD and the PVV, resistance against the EU–Ukrainian association treaty through a non-binding referendum in 2016 was important in mobilizing domestic electoral support. The 2022 war poses the populist Radical Right with a dilemma: either support a country they previously called corrupt and not worthy of European support or continue to be critical of Ukrainian at the risk of ending up in the pro-Russia camp (see Coticchia & Verbeek, in press).
The PVV, being the oldest of the three, had consistently criticized the EU’s opening to Ukraine in the 2010s. It did not condemn the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 (only a parliamentary minority of the CDA, D66, and the Greens supported a condemnation of Russia). The downing of MH17 made the PVV more critical of Russia, but the party argued that EU support for Ukraine had contributed to further escalation in the Donbas. In 2016, Wilders strongly opposed the association treaty with Ukraine and moved closer to Russia by describing Putin as a “true patriot” and depicting Russia as an ally in fighting terrorism and immigration (de Jong, 2018). Nevertheless, in its electoral manifesto, the PVV insisted that the perpetrators of the MH17 shooting be brought to justice (Partij voor de Vrijheid, 2020, p. 48). Wilders condemned Russian aggression in 2022 but considered the earlier prospect of Ukraine’s NATO membership an escalatory step.
In Wilders’s tweets and the PVV’s contributions to parliamentary debate, the war itself was seldom addressed but rather instrumentalized through the prism of the needs of the Dutch people. Wilders tweeted on March 18 2022: “I have sympathy for Ukrainians, but I represent the one million Dutch citizens who have elected me” (Wilders, 2022). During parliamentary debates, the PVV emphasizes the cost of the war for the Dutch people, linking high inflation and gas prices to sanctions on Russia. This is consistent with the PVV’s welfare chauvinist economic positions. Regarding parliamentary actions, the PVV and the FvD supported an unsuccessful motion to declare Dutch neutrality in the conflict in late February and an unsuccessful motion to stop sanctions against Russia in early June, while JA21 opposed both motions (Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, 2022a, 2022c). The PVV hinted at a willingness to house a limited number of Ukrainian refugees (preferably in the region or by expelling other refugees). Furthermore, the party leverages sympathy with Ukrainian refugees rhetorically (by labelling them “real refugees”) as a counterpoint to other refugees (which they label “the wrong kind of foreigners”) (Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, 2022b).
The FvD has never formally approved Russia’s actions but has consistently argued that prior EU and NATO offers of (eventual) membership to Ukraine, including the association treaty, were conducive to the war. Starting from the notion that morality in international relations is absent, Baudet invests considerably in communicating a perspective that, he claims, qualifies the dominant story on the war in the West. Through blogs, tweets, and the organization of a conference in Amsterdam to present an alternative perspective, he presents arguments that align with the Russian narrative, including the demand for the protection of the Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine. Positioning his view within a warning against the so-called “great reset”, Baudet presents NATO expansion, the colour revolutions, and the Arab Spring as part of an American ambition to achieve regime change across the globe (Baudet, 2022). Whereas Wilders thus downplays the war and focuses on the needs of the Dutch people, Baudet frequently engages with the events and interprets the war from the perspective of his view on world politics. Unlike many populist Radical Right parties, the Forum is not welfare chauvinist but rather market liberal. The cultural dimension and the larger global narrative are much more important for Forum’s justification of its support of Putin than is its market liberalism.
In its inaugural manifesto, JA21 did not address the Russian annexation of Crimea and Donbas or its involvement in the MH17 crash (JA21, 2021). In response to the 2022 invasion, the party called for tougher sanctions on Russia, increased defence spending, and using the funds appropriated from Russian oligarchs to rebuild Ukraine. Interestingly, since the start of the invasion, the party has adjusted some of its stances towards Ukraine. Early on, JA21 opposed the supply of weapons to Ukraine, a position they abandoned shortly after the start of the invasion. While the party opposed a parliamentary motion before February 2022 calling for unconditional support for Ukrainian sovereignty, it holds Russia (and Putin personally) solely responsible for the invasion (unlike the PVV and the FvD). However, JA21 remains opposed to Ukrainian membership of the EU, in line with their general opposition to EU enlargement. Like the PVV, JA21 rhetorically links the housing of Ukrainian refugees with other refugees (labelling the current situation as an asylum crisis). It further argues that Ukrainians should stay in neighbouring countries. The Dutch government should do more to support these countries and impose a cap on Ukrainian refugees in the Netherlands, thereby preventing Ukrainians from seeking help on Dutch soil (Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, 2022b).
Explaining position diversity on the Dutch populist Radical Right
Three factors help account for the diverse positions of the populist Radical Right vis-à-vis the Russian invasion of Ukraine: we focus on the combination of the party’s degree of populism and its attaching ideology and the nature of the party system.
Anti-elitism is an essential component of populism. A populist party’s anti-elitism emanates, in part, from its location within the party system. In other words, the more populist a party is, the more likely it will set itself against the established parties. The most reliable indicators of populism suggest that both the PVV and the FvD score high on the populist dimension (above 8 on a 0–10 point scale) (Meijers & Zaslove, 2021). At present, no existing measure of JA21’s populism exists. However, JA21’s actions within parliament, its conduct during the electoral campaign, and its party programme show that JA21 is less populist than its right-wing companions (references to the “pure people” and the “corrupt elite” are less prevalent).
The higher levels of populism displayed by the PVV and the FvD partly explain why these parties remain critical of the Dutch government’s handling of the situation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The fact that JA21 has not opposed the Dutch government’s policies is consistent with its lower level of populism. Nevertheless, it remains puzzling why the PVV mostly followed the government and condemned the Russian invasion, whereas FvD remained aloof and even came close to accepting Russia’s legitimization of the war. Understanding the difference requires insight into each party’s attaching ideology.
Regarding its attaching ideology, the PVV is a classical populist Radical Right party. It demonstrates a nativist nationalism, arguing that the Netherlands should prioritize native Dutch people over (especially non-Western) immigrants. This dovetails with its law and order orientation and welfare chauvinism. Foreign policy concerns, generally, are less important to the party’s identity. Its war narrative is congruent with this: in debates about the war, the PVV emphasizes the protection of the people’s material interests. It is neither essential for the PVV’s identity nor attractive to its voters to sit outside the mainstream by fully supporting the Russian invasion.
Similarly, the FvD is nativist and favours strict law and order policies. However, it voices a larger critique of the state of Western civilization, arguing that the West is decadent and in decline, endorsing Russia’s illiberal democracy as a viable alternative. The FvD’s positions regarding immigration and EU membership, for example, are couched in a broader story of the decline of the West, Europe, and the Netherlands. It pleads for a new global world order and sees Vladimir Putin as a pivotal player in this regard. The Forum’s steadfast defence of Russian foreign policy concerns is crucial for its identity. Forum, unlike the PVV, steers clear of economic arguments in its opposition to the Dutch government’s position regarding the war and Russia.
JA21’s more moderate position regarding the war emanates, in part, from its liberal-conservative ideology and the timing of its entry into the Dutch party system. JA21 was created by ex-FvD members who left the party, feeling that its leader Thierry Baudet had become too radical. Being a latecomer (the third populist Radical Right party on the block), JA21 had to find a space within an overcrowded system. As a result, JA21 chose a more moderate line than the PVV and the FvD, fitting its desire to present a more moderate identity and position itself as an eligible partner in a future centre-right governing coalition. JA21 is more moderate regarding its degree of populism, and its opposition to immigration, while its economic positions resemble more those of the governing VVD.
Public opinion research shows that the positions taken by the three parties largely reflect their respective voters’ positions. For example, fewer than 10% of the FvD supporters see Russia as a threat to Dutch national security, compared to roughly 50% of the PVV supporters and some 60% of JA21 voters. Similar trends hold regarding the support for Russian gas imports and sanctions on Russia (Houtkamp et al., 2022).
Lastly, the Dutch party system is open and fragmented. The system boasts a large number of relevant political parties producing a myriad of possible government coalitions, complicating government formation (Mair, 2008). Given the, albeit slight, possibility of the PVV joining a governing coalition, strategically, the PVV cannot situate itself too far from the mainstream. Consequently, the PVV places itself both inside and outside the party system. It threads the needle between being critical of the Dutch government’s policies following the Russian invasion without ostracizing itself from the positions of the mainstream parties. The FvD, on the other hand, has chosen to be an anti-system force. This is apparent in its parliamentary behaviour and its radical stances vis-à-vis, for example, COVID-19 and the war. Its recent efforts to create an alternative social space for its supporters is another expression of its anti-system approach. The FvD’s position directly contrasts with JA21, which presents itself as a comparatively moderate force within the party system, and as a potential coalition partner. Therefore, a radical stance regarding the war would harm JA21’s future ambitions, both in terms of its attempt to appeal to a broader electorate and its ambition to cooperate with mainstream parties.
Consequences
The Dutch government has been steadfast in its opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In this regard, the populist Radical Right has not affected the government’s position. Although public opinion research (I&O Research/NOS, 2022) demonstrates that there is a (sizeable) market for a more critical position regarding the Russian invasion, support for Ukraine remains high. We observe a rally around the flag effect regarding Ukraine, contributing to the Dutch government having the leeway to support Ukraine. Although this effect generally tends to be transient, support for Ukraine within the Netherlands has remained comparatively strong (Houtkamp et al., 2022).
If the conflict were to continue for a prolonged period of time, this might change. The Netherlands is somewhat insulated from higher gas prices (in comparison with other countries) due to its own supply of natural gas. However, if the war were to continue, high energy costs and inflation might create a situation in which the more critical position of the populist Radical Right could become more influential, especially during an electoral campaign. Nevertheless, we do not expect the influence of the populist parties to dramatically change the government’s position. This does not imply, however, that the more critical positions of the PVV and the FvD have not been important for party politics in the Netherlands. On the contrary, their critical positions have served to solidify their position as populist challengers, demonstrated by what appears to be continued support among their constituents (Houtkamp et al., 2022).
(*) Chris Nijhuis is a PhD candidate and instructor in the Department of Political Science at Radboud University, Nijmegen, in the Netherlands. His research concentrates on the impact of populist parties on the foreign policy of states, with a particular focus on the link between national identity and foreign policy.
(**) Bertjan Verbeek is Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at Radboud University, Nijmegen, in the Netherlands. He researches decision-making in foreign policy, including during crises, and the link between populism and foreign policy.
(***) Andrej Zaslove is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of Political Science at Radboud University, Nijmegen, in the Netherlands. He conducts research on populism and political parties. He measures populist attitudes among voters and within political parties and examines the links between populism and democracy, foreign policy and gender. His publications can be found in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, West European Politics, Political Studies and the European Political Science Review.
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The war in Ukraine is a defining historical moment that demonstrates the limitations of contemporary politics. Even the most pessimistic scholars did not conceive of a direct military conflict in the heart of the Eurasian landmass. Moreover, this conflict has exposed the limitations of populism in foreign policy. Despite rare instances of rhetorical cooperation with Russia, the populist politicians of Europe remained committed to Atlanticist foreign policies. Turkey, a textbook example of populist governance, offers a superb illustration of how the international zeitgeist constrains populist politicians’ goals. The “balanced” approach of Turkey’s foreign policy, which is dictated by its asymmetrical interdependence with Russia, aims to strengthen Turkey’s role as a regional force through mediation. In the meantime, the pressure of upcoming presidential elections and the country’s economic position are additional obstacles. An examination of Erdoğan’s speeches over the past year reveals that he has replicated this balanced approach in his discourse as the leader of Turkey.
The war in Ukraine has become a litmus test for European politicians. The unexpected conflict in Europe has prompted a revaluation of the capabilities of nation-states and international organizations. The same war has also served as a stage on which political leaders from several nations can perform for various audiences, domestic and international. Contrary to expectations, the Russians did not conquer Kyiv in a few days, and Ukraine’s resistance to unprovoked aggression has become a model for the world. The swift and decisive response of NATO and the European Union (EU) was equally unexpected, transforming the situation into a battle of attrition.
Among the numerous unanswered questions the war has brought to the fore, the responses of populist leaders’ have received significant attention. First, the working assumption has been that all populist leaders at least sympathized with Putin’s regime, if not directly under Russian influence. Second, the war has been framed and presented as a conflict between autocracy and democracy and between East and West, forcing us to consider which camp populists would favour. Third, the war generated an influx of refugees into parts of Europe that have exhibited fiercely anti-immigrant sentiments for some time. The question has thus been whether populist leaders would take advantage of this opportunity to garner support. Lastly, it is unknown whether the economic challenges caused by rising energy costs and the disruption to global trade will favour populist parties at the polls. A series of crucial elections in 2023 will shed light on these unanswered questions and the effects of the Ukraine conflict as it enters its second year.
Turkey, like Ukraine, a Black Sea country, now enters its second decade with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the helm. Erdoğan—a textbook example of a twenty-first-century populist politician—has been characterized as Russia’s “Trojan Horse” in NATO. Turkey’s leadership has strong authoritarian tendencies, and the country hosts more than 4 million refugees, contributing to social tension. In addition, the Ukraine conflict erupted as Turkey confronts two roiling crises — a war against militants along its long border with Syria and an ongoing economic crisis. As a NATO member, Turkey is central to the Western response to the war.
In this report, I will detail the reaction of Turkey’s populist leadership to the crisis, beginning with a brief review of populist foreign policy and concluding with a summary of Turkish foreign policy throughout the war. I will conclude by discussing Erdoğan’s speeches about the war and demonstrating how he has leveraged the conflict to reinforce his position as a strong leader.
Populist foreign policy
The global rise of populist leaders attracted the attention of experts to policy differences. Although there is no consensus on the definition of populism, Mudde’s minimalist definition is the most widely accepted. According to Mudde (2004), populism is
an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the “volonté Générale” (general will) of the people. (p. 543)
Another group of scholars define populism as a style that includes “an appeal to ‘the people’ as both the audience and the subject embodied; a resort to ‘bad manners’ and coarsened political rhetoric; and a representation and performance of crisis, breakdown, and threat” (Moffitt, 2016, p. 46). Populism has also been perceived as a strategy, a set of methods or instruments mobilized by politicians in political competition. Weyland defines this strategy as “direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of mostly unorganised followers” (Weyland, 2001, p. 14). A newly developed synthesis presents populism in an ideational form integrating ideological and discursive approaches and excluding strategy or tactics. This approach’s essential set of ideas or beliefs is defined as the belief in the sovereignty and the moral superiority of people, presented as a homogenous unit.
All of these definitions share similarities that provide hints about the foreign policy populists pursue when they attain power. Nonetheless, I must emphasize that the influence of populists on foreign policy may be limited. If a nation’s foreign policy is institutionalized and based on the consensus of several societal actors, the influence of politicians may be somewhat constrained. Foreign policy provides politicians with less space for flexibility than other policy sectors. Ideology is another aspect that influences the foreign policy practices of populist parties in government. Several studies demonstrated that the standing of populist political parties is determined by whether they are right- or left-wing (Verbeek & Zaslove, 2017). Finally, we must consider the structural aspects of a country that influence the foreign policy practices of populists, such as geography, economic development, and established commitments or alliances (Destradi et al., 2021).
Due to populists’ Manichean worldview, which sets the people and elite at opposite ends of the spectrum, their foreign policy preferences are expected, in the first instance, to reflect their anti-elite orientation. This elite may be identified at the national level as capitalists, bankers, and bureaucrats, while foreign elites, such as international organizations and bureaucrats, may serve as useful scapegoats. Consequently, we expect populist leaders to be opposed to international institutions and counter-majoritarian entities (such as courts) at home or abroad.
Second, the notion of the “pure people” may influence populist international policies. A homogenous “us” is always positioned against “them” in populist discourse. Consistent with the nationalist perspective, the nation is the primary component of “us”. In the context of foreign policy, however, “the people” may encompass or draw on transnational elements such as religion, race, ethnicity, and social class. Populists thus define “the Other” automatically in contradistinction to the “pure people”.
As populist leaders position themselves as the authentic representation of the will of the people, this strategy will contribute to the concentration of governance in the hands of the populist leader. In conjunction with an antipathy to national elites, populist politicians favour de-institutionalizing and politicizing foreign policy. The ontological grounds of populist policies are incompatible with the notion that foreign policy is a technocratic arena ideally administered by a rational bureaucracy. Thus, a desire to displace foreign policy bureaucracies and personalize foreign policy decisions under populist governance is foreseeable (Destradi et al., 2021).
Scholars have posited that the individual characteristics of populist leaders may influence their foreign policy orientations in office. For example, it is often pointed out that populist leaders exhibit a very direct style of communication, eagerly assuming the role of “drunken dinner guest” in global forums and “agent provocateur” when confronting the distant policy prescriptions of international bureaucrats. Certainly, quantitative and qualitative studies have demonstrated that populists have distinct personality traits. However, it remains difficult to connect these traits directly to the foreign policies of countries led by populists (Nai & Martnez i Coma, 2019; Özdamar & Ceydilek, 2020).
In sum, researchers have concluded that the foreign policies of populist leaders are characterized by anti-elitism, the supremacy of the “pure people”, and the de-institutionalization and personalization of foreign policy-making. In addition, the discourse of populist politicians tends to emphasize victimization and nostalgia for an imagined glorious national past (Elçi, 2022).
Turkish foreign policy during the Ukraine war
During the Ukraine–Russia war, Turkey has adopted a “balanced” foreign policy approach to the conflict. In a broader context, this can be interpreted as a turning point in Turkey’s shifting foreign policy priorities. Since the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) assumed office in 2002, Turkey has favoured a “transactional”, “active”, and “assertive” foreign policy, eschewing the more cautious approach of earlier eras (Mankoff, 2022). The country’s urgent need for export markets and energy dependence pushed the government to establish close ties with the Arab and Turkic worlds. Meanwhile, the ruling elite’s ideological orientation fostered a desire to take a leading role in the Muslim world and serve as a bridge between East and West. This “assertive” policy’s short-term success ended with the Arab Spring and the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
According to observers, 2016 marks a turning point in the Turkish government’s foreign policy. After the departure of Ahmet Davudoğlu, the architect of the new foreign policy, and the government’s growing security worries, the ruling class embraced more realistic foreign policy objectives. The soft power strategy that aimed to engage Arab societies in the region has been cancelled. Instead, the government envisioned an autonomous foreign policy based on the country’s military capabilities. Prior to the epidemic, Turkey supported the rebels in Syria’s civil war, while relations with Egypt and Israel were nearly frozen due to support for Hamas and the Muslim Brothers. Tensions remained with Greece over disputes in the Aegean Sea.
These shifts split the Arab world nearly in two. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were unequivocally opposed to Turkey’s aggressive participation in the domestic affairs of Arab countries and its aspirations for leadership. Turkey’s close relations with Qatar were insufficient to compensate for sour relations with the other Arab powers. In the meantime, Turkey and the United States were at odds due to Ankara’s conflict with the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG), the United States’ closest partner in the region (Keating, 2022; Pierini, 2022; Tapia, 2022).
However, after the epidemic, Turkey followed a more “realistic” approach due to the changing international situation. First, the Biden administration was less tolerant of Ankara’s foreign policy adventurism in the Middle East. Second, the economic and political challenges in Turkey compelled the government to seek international backing and increase financial inflows. Turkey reached out to mend fences with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, initiated discussions with Armenia and restored diplomatic relations with Israel. Third, Ankara’s preoccupation was keeping the Kurdish insurgent PKK and ISIS at bay and constructing a secure oil pipeline to offset rising energy expenses. Fourth, the approaching presidential elections have heightened economic and trade policy, not least the significance of Europe as Turkey’s principal export market (Tapia, 2022; Pierini, 2022).
The Ukraine–Russia war coincided with this “U-turn” in Turkey’s foreign policy, and Turkey sought to execute a “hedging” strategy navigating between Russia and the United States. Throughout history, Turkey’s ties with Russia have fluctuated between frigid antagonism (as in the Cold War), rivalry (mostly in Central Asia and the Caucasus), as well as indirect confrontation and forced cooperation (as in Syria since 2013). After 2016, Turkey was compelled to keep Moscow on side, as Ankara’s role in the conflict in Syria deepened and reliance on Russian energy (and tourism) grew. Despite being on the opposite side to Russia in crises in Libya, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh (not to mention being a NATO member for seven decades), the Turkish government has not hesitated in playing the role of back channel to Moscow (Lesage et al., 2022).
On the other hand, relations between Turkey and Ukraine have traditionally been very close. After Russia seized Crimea in 2014, Turkey supported Kyiv and called on Moscow to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Turkey and Ukraine inked a strategic partnership agreement in 2020 and established free trade arrangements in 2021. Turkey has also provided Bayraktar TB2 drones (used by Ukraine’s armed forces against several high-profile targets since the invasion) and established solid military ties with Ukraine while signalling its support for Ukraine’s eventual NATO membership. At the same time, Erdoğan has slow-walked approving the Finnish and Swedish applications to join the alliance in order to extract political concessions in the lead-up to elections in May. Despite Russia’s reservations, Turkey continues to send Ukraine military assistance, including the Bayraktar TB2 drones, which have become an emblem of resistance. As these drones are manufactured by the company owned by President Erdoğan’s son-in-law, this circumstance has caught the attention of experts and become a highly contentious subject in Turkey.
Ankara’s unique positioning “between” NATO and Russia and its middle power foreign policy aspirations have driven the Turkish government’s desire to act as a mediator (Üstün, 2022). At the beginning of the war, Turkey urged both sides to find a peaceful resolution and attempted to act as a regional peace broker by utilizing its links to both sides. Ankara initiated indirect communication between Ukraine and Russia and planned formal talks with relevant parties in Antalya and Istanbul in March 2022. President Erdoğan has also dispatched special envoys to facilitate a peaceful resolution. Notably, Turkey voted in favour of the UN Security Council condemning the invasion while choosing not to join sanctions against Russia, which caused some trepidation among Western allies.
Turkey has also provided humanitarian aid to Ukraine and accepted refugees while accepting thousands of Russian nationals fleeing to Turkey after the Kremlin cracked down on media and dissent after February 2022 and sought to call up reserves to fight in Ukraine. Erdoğan also brokered the deal permitting Ukraine to export grain via the Black Sea under the supervision of the United Nations in July 2020. Ankara pushed several times to prevent Russia from reneging on the agreement. Turkey is one of the arrangement’s most significant beneficiaries of the deal. The Montreux Convention of 1936 handed Turkey control of the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits, which connect the Mediterranean and Black Seas. This allows Turkey to limit the passage of naval warships and seal the straits to foreign warships during warfare or when threatened. Except for a few instances, Turkey has restricted the passage of all foreign warships since the war broke out.
Erdoğan’s rhetoric about the war
The aforementioned survey of Turkey’s recent foreign policy should not be read as a rationally planned sequence of actions aimed at leveraging the war’s gains and utilizing foreign policy to strengthen Erdoğan’s political fortunes. The most pressing challenge for Erdoğan is to win the upcoming elections, and his foreign policy of late reflects this imperative. He is an expert in winning tight elections against significant opposition, but his electoral “Midas touch” may no longer suffice against the backdrop of a deteriorating economy. The government has increasingly turned to populist boondoggles and “cash splashes” to stimulate economic growth, but it is unclear how these programmes will be supported. According to official estimates, inflation is running at 83% annually, and rising prices threaten Erdoğan’s chances of being elected because of the government’s unwillingness to hike interest rates. This is only exacerbated by rising energy costs during the war (Erlanger, 2022).
These concerns have a substantial international component, and it is impossible to distinguish clearly between domestic and international drivers when it comes to policy responses. Still, it is possible to analyse Erdoğan’s views regarding the war in Ukraine through the lens of his public pronouncements and discursive strategies. In order to do so, I have examined his speeches from January to December 2022, published on the Turkish presidency’s website and in various media reports across this period. I have calculated that in 123 of 224 public speeches during this period, Erdoğan discussed the war in Ukraine, although some references were brief and did not elaborate on the conflict in any great detail.
It is crucial to note that Erdoğan has a distinctive outlook on global politics and Turkey’s place in the world, which he sees as full of danger and knotty challenges. He has, paradoxically, long subscribed to the Turkish sense of “encirclement”, which sees Turkey as surrounded by hostile forces, whether it is Greece, Russia (and the Soviet Union before it), the United States, Kurdish separatists, or neighbouring states in the Middle East and North Africa. As a result, Erdoğan places stock in ensuring the Turkish government is sufficiently strong in military and economic terms to meet these threats (Euronews, 2022).
In Erdoğan’s discourse, clear divisions between “us” and “them” are manifest. This can be the “us” of Turkey set against corrupt “global elites” (he often criticizes the “Big Five” countries that control the United Nations and render it ineffectual; “the globe is more than five” is a frequent refrain). At other times, his discourse employs an “us versus them” dichotomy regarding the Muslim ummah versus the Islamophobic rest. And on occasion, Erdoğan foregrounds Turkey as a champion of the world’s “forgotten” peoples and the need for solidarity among the “silent majority” of poor and downtrodden nations (Batrawy, 2022).
President Erdoğan’s discourse vis-à-vis the war in Ukraine has typically reflected his general outlook. First, in the early days of the war, Erdoğan emphasized the legitimacy of Ukraine and reiterated Turkey’s support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. He framed the Ukrainian struggle as an issue of honour and independence. Over time, Erdoğan stopped repeating the same point in his presentations and adopted a more balanced stance.
Erdoğan has stated numerous times that peace is the final solution. However, the fighting parties were not to blame for the failure. The United Nations and the West hypocritically prevented the reestablishment of peace between the two countries, first due to their inability and secondly because there were actors who did not desire peace between them. In this speech, Erdoğan criticized the UN Security Council and repeated his slogan. Using this paradigm, Erdoğan pitted the West, the United Nations, and the permanent United Nations Security Council members against the world’s populace and legitimized his anti-establishment rhetoric (Batrawy, 2022).
As the West and big countries were hypocritical, Erdoğan argued that Turkey might be a facilitator (he emphasized that he did not prefer the term “mediator” for Turkey’s role). According to him, Turkey had deep historical ties with both nations, and his close relationships with their respective governments might help foster peace. He reiterated multiple times that he had direct conversations with President Zelenskyy or Vladimir Putin, as well as personal contacts. Using this story, Erdoğan portrayed himself as a world leader capable of resolving a significant catastrophe. In addition, he believed that the world’s leaders admired his efforts. Following the historical ties and his personal connections, Erdoğan emphasized Turkey’s diplomatic capacity and projected it as a regional force and the only nation capable of adopting a balanced approach (A-News, 2022).
Erdoğan emphasized his accomplishment in negotiating the grain deal. He argued that the balanced approach and friendly relations with Turkey made this agreement feasible, while Turkey’s presence fostered a climate of trust between the two parties. He represented the underprivileged by stating they had an immediate need for the food produced in Ukraine and Russia. He positioned himself as the ally of the impoverished Africans. Moreover, he emphasized that the General Secretary of the United Nations has praised this action (Batrawy, 2022).
Public opinion polls reflected Erdoğan’s balanced stance. In the early days of the conflict, surveys indicated that the Turkish public strongly supported Ukraine, with two-thirds of respondents deeming Russia’s action unjust and 78% favouring a neutral stance during the conflict. The majority of participants were concerned about the harmful effects of the war (Tahiroğlu, 2022). Some 44% of respondents supported Turkey’s role as a mediator in the war, while only 13% favoured an active engagement in the conflict. The remaining 40% of respondents favoured keeping neutral (Ünlühisarcıklı et al., 2022). Furthermore, 61% of Turkish residents were satisfied with the government’s response to the war in Ukraine, according to a study done in the summer of 2022; however, just 40% of respondents were satisfied with Brussels’ response, compared to the EU average of 57%. (European Commission, 2022). Transatlantic Trends of the German Marshall Fund revealed that just 43% of respondents supported sanctioning Russia, 30% advocated prohibiting gas and oil imports from Russia, and only 33% supported Ukraine’s NATO membership (Weber et al., 2022). In a study performed in the autumn of 2022, respondents expressed opposition to the sanctions against Russia (Henley, 2022).
Given the government’s low popularity, these numbers indicate that the Turkish public supported Erdoğan’s “balanced approach” to the Ukraine conflict. Of course, there may be cultural reasons for this favourable view of Russia, such as its historical legacy. Nonetheless, it appears that Turkish citizens are more pragmatic and that asymmetrical reliance benefits Russia. However, whether Erdoğan can convert this acceptance into electoral support is questionable, as economic hardships weigh more than foreign policy opinions.
Conclusion
The experience of Turkey during the war in Ukraine provides insight into populist politicians’ freedom for manoeuvre. The conflict has coincided with a U-turn after a period of “aggressive” foreign policy positioning and has given Erdoğan a chance to play the role of “bridge” and “mediator” once again. As a country with strong economic, political, and historical ties to both the West and Russia, Turkey nominated itself as a mediator in the conflict, aiming for a speedy restoration of peace in the region. To establish a back channel of communication between the warring parties and NATO, balanced activism of the Turkish government was needed. These efforts have been rewarded by praise from Western friends who have been increasingly dissatisfied with its democratic track record. Thus, Turkey strengthened its status as a bridge between East and West.
In the meantime, as presidential elections draw near, Erdoğan has not hesitated to utilize this changing role in the region. A seasoned politician, he has characterized the war as a result of the current global order. He has also preferred to place himself and Turkey in opposition to the West as the advocate and champion of impoverished non-Western countries. He has also used the opportunity to emphasize Turkey’s military, diplomatic, economic, and political strengths. For Erdoğan, Turkey’s success in maintaining a balance between the conflicting sides has been a distinguishing trait closely tied to his vision of the country’s role in the world.
Turkey’s experience demonstrated that populists in power have some leeway for flexibility in foreign policy but not enough to act as they like. However, these limits do not inhibit their determination to maximize the war’s opportunities.
(*) Emre Erdoğan is a member of the Department of International Relations at Istanbul Bilgi University. With a doctoral degree in Political Science from Boğaziçi University, he has served as a researcher and senior consultant in various projects in academia and civil society. His research focuses on political participation, foreign policy and public opinion, child and youth well-being, methodology and statistics. He extensively studies and publishes about youth in Turkey, integration of Syrian refugee youth in Turkey, othering, polarisation and populism.
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Abstract
After the Cold War, not only the economic discontent created by capitalism and globalization went to the extreme, leaving the environment at the mercy of multinational corporations, but also the perception that the sovereignty, autonomy and independence of nations, and with them, the right to self-determination was increased to a limited extent. In particular, as the global crises of 2008-2009 hit people’s lives hard, the sense of “being left behind” prepared the ground for the demand and supply of populist politics. However, populist governments not only failed to achieve any progress on the main problems complained about, rather the contrary, but primarily right-wing authoritarian-populist governments also worsened the situation by threatening multilateralism, democracy, human rights and the free market economy worldwide. Besides, the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020 posed quite mixed results for the future of populism. While the populists gained strength in the opposition, the right-wing populists in government began to lose power. Therefore, in such an environment, in Brazil, the rise of Lula’s left-wing (and to some extent populist) government to power after defeating a right-wing authoritarian government has potential implications for the future of democracy, human rights, the market economy, and multilateralism. If the Lula government takes a reformist, transformative, and progressive path, it can become a positive role model for other countries under populism threat. However, this article questions the possibility of that under local and global constraints.
After a fierce race against the right-wing authoritarian populist leader Jair Bolsonaro, the left-wing leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Lula (Lula, hereafter) took the lead on November 2, 2022, elections by a considerably narrow margin in Brazil. Given the fact that the local and global structural challenges are there, Bolsonaro’s loss of power does not indicate the final defeat of his right-wing populism. Latin America’s recent history shows that as long as the internal and external conditions that provide supply and demand conditions for populism remain in place, the ongoing vicious circle between the right and left populist pendulum will continue. For this reason, this result in Brazil can be seen as the beginning of a new showdown rather than a final victory against authoritarian tendencies in society that is highly characterized by authoritarian populist values.
On the other hand, while the right-wing populism (RWP) poses an obvious threat to the democracy and human rights, it would be too simplistic to present the left-wing populism (LWP) as progressive, democratic, and pro-human rights from the viewpoint of hardcore populist theory. The current question is whether Lula, one of the established actors of Brazilian politics, who previously ruled Brazil for two terms, can show a genuine leadership for change and reform, and trigger a conjuncture with an overarching impact that might extend beyond Brazil, and trigger an anti-populist wave. Despite Latin America’s political graveyard, which imposes a political culture of excessive short-termism, Lula can lead Brazil in that direction.
To discuss these arguments, after analyzing the nature of the currently shifting global landscape towards populism in the second part, the third part deals with the overall political climate between right- and left-wing populism in Brazil. This section will consider Lula’s legacy (2003-2010), Bolsonaro’s populism in power and the expectations from Lula, who has returned for the third time. Finally, the fifth section considers the new global conjuncture and its implications for a comprehensive economic transformation, the need for funding and source of finance, efficiency considerations on the use of public money as well as the need for comprehensive tax reform to create a new source of finance such as wealth tax. Article ends with final remarks and observations.
Shifting Global Landscape Towards Populism
Many prominent economists, such as Stiglitz (2003), Rodrik (2011), Acemoğlu & Yared (2010), and Greider (2003), argue that hyper globalized capitalism has exceeded its limits and produced unsustainable social, political, economic, and environmental repercussions. With those self-reinforcing inherent mechanism, they argued, “excessive globalization” threatens democracy, human right, and market economy.
Some alternative views, however, found that perspective overly pessimistic in an environment where socialist planning economies had collapsed in former Soviet Union in the early 1990s and nearly a decade after when China began transforming Mao’s regime to embrace and converge to the market economy led by Deng Xiaoping. After socialism collapsed and the possibility of communism as an alternative ideology lost its appeal worldwide, Fukuyama (1993) hastily published his “end of history” thesis, presenting capitalism as the most progressive and definitive form of an organization human beings can create.
Besides China and Russia, the number of countries transitioning to democracy and the market economy system suddenly increased and that created illusions about the final victory of capitalism over its alternatives. This process of globalization which was driven by technological breakthroughs, trade-openness, and financial liberalizations paved the way for multinational national enterprises (MNEs) to accumulate disproportionate concentration of wealth and a worsening of global income distribution at the national and global levels (IMF7WEO, 2007). Besides the great recession of 2008-2009 and the recent COVID-19 pandemic, a recent UN report also underlines the impact that climate change, urbanization and international migration has had on global income inequality (World Social Report, UN, 2020).
Global income disparities and a lack of opportunities are creating a vicious cycle of inequality, frustration, and discontent across generations and consequently have serious negative repercussions in the rise of authoritarian populism. Societies detach from the institutional structures to which they are accustomed to and eventually become more receptive to the recipes of the populist politics. Therefore, in a sharp contrast to the expected “third wave of democratization” in the post-Cold War period, the world has experienced “the third wave of autocratization,” an era that can be termed “the New Cold War.” For the first time in the post-Cold War world, authoritarian-oriented regimes outnumber democracies. This number does not include countries that have already surrendered to authoritarianism, like Russia and China (Lührmann & Lindberg, 2019). As of today, the global conditions for freedom and democracy are clearly trending downward. The growing signs of democratic recession, spreading to the core of the world’s liberal democracies, particularly Europe and the United States. While these are the first serious doubts about the future of democracy in the advanced liberal democracies since the beginning of the third wave of democracythe erosion of liberal democracies is part of a broader downward shift worldwide. Besides the former president Donald Trump in the US and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who lost the chair, recent autocrats include Hungary’s Viktor Orban, India’s Narendra Modi, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Nicholas Maduro formerly, Filipino Rodrigo Duterte, Austria’s Sebastian Kurz (Meyer, 2022).
The key observation to make here is that the rise of the new global wave of populism in the so-called New Cold War era has been driven by the current distorted globalization, large MNEs spiraling out of control, and the Western-biased multilateral governance order (MLO) losing its relevance. A rising multipolar world and new global powers such as Russia, India and China are the driving force of the populist tide, among others. As geopolitical competition between the West (especially the US) and these two geopolitical rivals intensifies, we are increasingly threatened with a regression to the Cold War days where alliances matter above democracy and human rights. The rulers who aspire to become autocrats, or to deepen their autocracy, perceive no serious consequences from “the international community.” Seeking a way to distance themselves from the West, many populist leaders are finding an opportunity to consolidate their power by exploiting the gaps in this emerging world (Aiginger, 2020).
A Quick Evaluation of the Populism in Opposition and in Power
Nested dolls depicting populist politicians Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the counter of souvenirs in Moscow.
Having lacked a coherent known ideology or a worldview, populism is better understood as a technique for striving for power. Populists increase their strength and adaptability through pragmatism and opportunism and, therefore, are compatible with an unlimited range of specific ideologies. It can be deployed anywhere through several rhetoric, such as anti-elite resentment, that can mobilize the masses, especially in countries where economic inequality and inequality in power sharing are widespread. The failure of the status quo to answer the ever-growing challenges such as economic woes, cultural fears, the speed of change brought about by globalization and digitization, and the failure of politics to manage the transition to higher levels of prosperity, provide the necessary supply and demand conditions for populist politicians to gain electoral support from the forgotten or socially neglected part of society. Under these challenging conditions people frequently turn to messianic solutions and demand extraordinary leaders with a cult of personality or metaphysical charisma who denies institutions and rules.
Left- and right-wing populists expose the following common characteristics: First, as Britannica emphasizes, a charismatic leader who appeals to and claims to embody the people’s will to consolidate his power also explains the inherent tendencies of populists towards authoritarianism. In this personalized form of politics, political parties lose their importance, and elections confirm the leader’s authority rather than reflect the people’s different allegiances. Believing themselves to be the “voice of the people and the right,” they keep themselves outside and above the norms of control and regulation, often acting dependent on the situation and the people, and even displaying purely arbitrary administration.
Second, with no initial chance of coming to power alone, the populist parties seek social and political legitimacy by creating coalitions with “mainstream” parties. In situations where political elections reveal no majority rule options, they also play a more active part in the party and make further inroads until they dominate (Hayward, 2003). Once they finally take the lead by promoting simplistic solutions to complex problems, extreme promises, and superficial rhetoric, they entrench themselves by changing the rules and dismantling the separation of power among government, parliament and the courts. Additionally, they restrict media freedom, grow closer to the military, and close foreign borders. By harming MLO, the rule of law, democratic control mechanisms, human rights, and the market economy, populists ultimately incline to authoritarianism. Rather than do away with elections altogether, they hold pseudo-elections to legitimize their anti-institutionalist, plebiscitary, and majoritarian attitudes (Naím, 2022).
A third related and common unifying feature of the RWP and LWP is their “divide and rule” strategy. They practice this by pushing intensely polarizing messages and dividing people binarily into the “us” and the “them.” The former is used to refer the ordinary people as virtuous citizens and the latter as a corrupt, self-serving elite. This divisive policy is shared among the populist, whether they are in opposition or in power. After the division of society into “the evil and happy minority” and “the good, unhappy and the silent majority,” the assertion that the great masses, i.e., the real people, also have an extremely homogeneous structure has significant consequences (Vidigal, 2022).
Relatedly, populist actors strive for “uniting the nation,” and perceive this as a permanent crisis. To that end, authoritarian populism tends towards extreme nationalism, racism, conspiracy-mongering, and scapegoating of marginalized groups. If there are sinister foreign forces and cultures that seek to intrude on the homogeneity of ‘our people’, country, nation, and religion, then the society needs protectors or guardians who can take care of society. All these factors help consolidate the leader’s power and distract public attention from the leader’s failures, the nature of the leader’s rule or the real causes of economic or social problems (Britannica, 2022).
Fourth, when they are in power, as Diamond (2017) summarizes, (i) populists demonize the opposition as illegitimate, (ii) undermine the independence of the courts, the independence of the media, gain control of public broadcasting, put stricter control on the internet, (iii) subdue (depoliticize) other elements of civil society and the business community into ceasing support for opposition parties, (iv) use state control over contracts, credit flows, and other resources to enrich a new class of political crony capitalists, (v) extend political control over the state bureaucracy and security apparatus to purge professional civil servants and create loyal servants to the political party. (vi) They also use the state intelligence apparatus as a weapon against the opposition, manipulate electoral rules and gain control over electoral administration to retain power in the elections.
Fifth, in economics, populism refers to a process that results in heroism when they are in opposition; while in power, they might foster pleasure in short-run unsustainable policies. With their oversimplified interpretation of a society’s problems, they talk about fair income distribution, national sovereignty and independence. What they do in reality is that by ignoring scientists, professional and economic constraints, and efficiency considerations, they rely upon policies, such as excessive monetary expansion, inflationary financing, and accumulation of debt and, thus, unsustainable growth (Aiginger, 2020). Populists characteristically favor strong but somewhat selective government intervention in the economy to counteract market forces, which ends with economic inefficiency and unsustainable growth.
Sixth, in terms of “good versus bad populism” (Larry, 2017), one must first consider populist leaders’ main ideologies, not their pragmatism, opportunism, tactics or maneuvers (Huber & Schimpf, 2017). Hardcore ideologies like communism, capitalism, or fascism target to redistribute political power, economic dominance, and cultural leadership away from what they declare as corrupt, greedy, over-centralized, urban-based oligarchies in favor of empowering “the common people.” In that context, three distinguishing characteristics of LWP than RWP can be mentioned: Because of their main leftist ideologies, LWP parties tend to define the people on a class basis, mainly referring to the poor. They, therefore, recognize class differences, consciousness, and conflicts of interest. In contrast, RWP parties define the people on a cultural and nativist base (Mudde, 2004). In other words, while LWP parties frame their criticisms economically and seek to protect the proletariat from exploitation by capitalists, RWP parties’ champion nativism (Mudde, 2007).
Seventh, RWP and LWP differ regarding political inclusion but share similarities in their ideas of political contestation and control of power. While LWP parties generally do not discredit minority groups nor object to granting these groups political rights, they do not accept political competition for that they, and only they, are the true representatives of the people. Consequently, they consider political control through effective opposition and institutional power check mechanisms as obstacles that prevent them from implementing the people’s will. In this sense, left-wing populists are inclusive on the societal level and the dimension of political participation. Thus, left-wing populist parties differ from right-wing populist parties in that they embrace an inclusive as opposed to an exclusive view of society (Katsambekis, 2017; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013).
Eighth, like RWP, LWP parties are also anti-elitist and anti-establishment, but LWPs are more international than RWPs. This attitude might help bring about necessary institutional reforms to mitigate injustices, break monopolies, redistribute power and income, and therefore play a progressive role in integrating forgotten or left-behind groups in the system. In this categorization, LWP represents progressive, good populism, whereas RWP represents the “bad.” However, the mentioned similarities should also not be overlooked. Populism, both right and left, is based on an individual’s personal preferences and their emergency management and arbitrary decision-making. They constantly try to increase power and adjust the system to their whims. RWP and LWP demand more power for the ruling executive to shift power away from parliaments and courts. They show no significant difference regarding their influence on mutual constraints.
Looking at the issue from this perspective, it is clear that the populist leaders from both sides should be under constant suspicion. Their act of undermining modern governance based on the separation of powers between the legislature, judiciary and executive, undermining media freedom and silencing civil society NGOs with various tactics should be resolutely opposed.
Populists often use a strong pragmatism full of empty promises (i.e., promising a return to non-existent past glory) that helps them defeat the status quo parties in the elections. Their underestimation or oversimplification of society’s problems cause them to severely underperform when in the power. However, that doesn’t mean they can be removed from power just for not fulfilling their promises. Removing the populists from the seat is likely to be much more complicated than ascending them. As Trump in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil and Orban in Hungary have shown, they do not go as easily as they come. That is because of the crimes and corrupt activities they commit while in power. After “crossing the Rubicon” in power, they pass a point of no return, and “unable to leave power.” They try to hold on to power by any means within their courage and strength by undermining the democratic order that enabled them to come to power. They even invent a foreign enemy or dangerous power or, like Erdogan in Turkey, artificially organize a fake coup to consolidate their power. As Naim (2022) puts it, both left- and right-wing populists can be more ideologically different but more similar in their strategies to seize and retain power.
In this respect, as Aiginger (2020) states, democracies are fragile in their efforts to protect themselves from destructive attacks by populists. Although the number of military dictatorships, which peaked in the 1980s, has sharply declined, they have been replaced by pseudo-democratic personal dictatorships (Lührmann & Lindberg, 2019). Given that an “authoritarian” regime refers to the absence of democracy, a system where free and fair elections determine who holds power, the most dangerous form of dictatorship in our time comes with the populist regimes. They are evolving under God-like charismatic leaders and seek legitimacy through a theater of rigged elections to govern their “pseudo-democracies” (Frantz, 2018).
In game-theory language, society may prefer “the least bad,” the so-called “second-best” where “the first best solution” is not possible in the given social pay-off matrix. However, when it comes to favoring populism over the established order, the situation expressed by the phrase “get caught by the hail while escaping the rain” can arise. As Martin Wolf puts it, “yes, indeed, the failings of the existing governmental and commercial elites – their indifference to the fate of large sections of the population, their greed and incompetence, which have been so clearly demonstrated – are hard to answer for; the solution does not lie with the populists.”
To conclude this section, populism does not allow a self-determined life to enrich human dignity and self-esteem. It does so by undermining life opportunities and lowering income. It also increases the probability of conflict with neighbors. Under populism, government expenditures for policy, border control, environmental degradation and health problems increase significantly, and this in turn leads to higher taxes and debt.
In terms of fighting with populism, it has multiple roots which must be addressed, but there exist numerous better solutions for these problems if they are discussed with citizens. However, given the new majority rules and suppression of the media, if there is no candidate presenting an alternative or opposition is divided, the return to liberal democracy is difficult. In order to combat and reverse populism, the disappointments of the “big silent majority” must be addressed and their hope for the future must be managed on a realistic basis.
In that regard, economic, cultural, and social expectations must be satisfied. The fears, anxiety, and concerns (i) like unemployment, income loss and inequalities, and rising cost of living in economics must be resolved. Also, negative repercussions of excessive globalization that comes with free trade and the unbounded activities of MNEs should be prevented from giving the impression of losing national autonomy, sovereignty, and independence. (ii) “Fear of foreigners,” that caused mainly by legal and illegal immigrants, are also perceived as a threat over the settled life patterns and civilizational values of native citizens. That should also be managed more accurately. Redrawing the picture without whitewashing must be the starting point of a new policy. It is necessary to explain the importance of a pluralistic society and its dynamism. Furthermore, it needs to be stressed that heterogeneity is not negative. The interaction of different cultures brings innovativeness, creativity and opens the door to further prosperity.
Moreover, each era has its own language, culture, and necessary organizations. Reactions should be appropriate. Instead of fleeing to the supposed “glorious centuries” of ancestors in different ages, it should be made clear that the necessary advances will never come through protectionism. Previous jobs and family structures will not be repeated either. As Rumi (1207-1273) once said: “My sweetheart faded away along with yesterday / No matter all the promises of yesterday / Now it’s time to say something new.”
In this respect, developing a vision outlining where the country or region wants to be in the medium term, for example by 2030, and defining the effective tools that can be used and partners found to achieve that vision are two Herculean tasks. In other words, it is important to structure the institutions, rules, instruments, actors, stakeholders, future industries, financial resources, and the place of the major national sectors in the global value chain and division of labor in a timely manner. All vision and measures should comply with good governance criteria, like transparency, accountability, and inclusion. The vision, which needs to be developed together with experts and policymakers, should be ambitious but achievable and shared by citizens, including the type of jobs to be created in a number of specific, future-oriented sectors. The skills and educational level of the youth as well as emigrants should also be aligned with this overall vision. The vision should specify which public services should be provided and how living conditions can be improved. Performance should be assessed against sustainable development goals. Actions needed include comprehensive tax reform, transforming the education system, supporting the hybrid work systems, and taking public action to support the process, investing in climate change and supporting green sectors such as better public transport, electric car incentives, car sharing and renting unused houses.
Brazil between RWP and LWP
Luís Inácio Lula da Silva and former President Bolsonaro participate in the debate over Brazil in Sao Paulo on October 16, 2022. Photo: Isaac Fontana.
To uncover the right-wing and left-wing populism of Bolsonaro and Lula, respectively, and to predict Brazil’s future in terms of democracy, human rights, and the market economy, it would be helpful to briefly examine the rhetoric of these two leaders on the one hand and their real policies and implementations in power on the other. Although they both refuse to be labeled as populist, both Lula and Bolsonaro cause political polarization, albeit in different tones, by adopting an exclusionary, discriminatory, marginalizing, and divisive language. This turns politics into a struggle between angels (the big silent majority) and demons (elites, professionals, bureaucrats).and reduces political competition to a dangerous struggle between “traitors” and “patriots.” According to a recent analysis by Käufer (2022), in the last election campaign, they both used terms like fascists, communists, devils, demons, thieves, agents of genocide, or Ku Klux Klan sympathizers to describe each other.
More specifically, Lula, who governed Brazil for two terms between 2003-2010, followed aggressive campaign rhetoric and insulted anyone who did not vote for him as “enemies.” Rather than pursuing a reconciliatory course to build bridges, repairing social fault lines, and uniting the nation, he used the environment Bolsonaro had divided to his advantage. It seems he found this to be a productive strategy in a socio-political culture where demand for strong political leadership, authoritarian and populist values is high. Lula was able to win the election with a majority, just 2 million votes more than his rival, and take charge of a deeply polarized country from January 1, 2023 by making different coalitions (León &Magni, 2022). Now, however, Lula has to mend this division he helped create and in such an environment he must propel Brazil into the future by giving the country a new vision.
Bolsonaro’s campaign was characterized by a fear of violence when he repeatedly cast doubt on the electoral system in October 2022. Bolsonaro announced that “only God can remove him from the presidency” and suggested that if he received less than 60 percent of the vote that would mean “something unusual (fraud) happened.” Like former US President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro refused to say whether he would leave office peacefully if he lost. He also scapegoated Lula by arguing that he is not only corrupt and a thief, but also will bring Communism to Brazil. The last, but not least, he blamed Lula for being pro-LGBTQ supporter, harming Brazilians morality. When he lost elections to Lula,Bolsonaro remained silent for hours after the result was announced and called on the military to oversee the vote count in October.
Both Bolsonaro and Lula have commonly attempted “scapegoating methods” to divert attention from their failures. Lula heavily relied on this strategy as he ruled the country for two terms (2003-2010). After the court rejected his candidacy, Lula ceded his post at the pinnacle of his popularity and social approval to another president (Dilma Rousseff – January 2011 – August 2016) from the same party, the Labor Party. Facing similar and serious controversial corruption-related lawsuits, Rousseff lost her post to Michel Temer (August 31, 2016, to December 31, 2018) as interim president, and then Bolsonaro rose to power from January 2019 to late 2022 (Käufer, 2022).
Looking at the language used by the two political leaders during Brazil’s last election campaign, one can say that both can be cited as “examples of subversive populism.” However, as the analysis presented in the first section concludes that LWP are expected to be more progressive than RWP because of the difference in their main ideology, we should focus on what they did in power in addition to their rhetoric. In this context, some selected practices of Lula and Bolsonaro (2018-2022) will be briefly discussed below.
Lula’s Legacy (2003-2010)
Lula, a politician who has made a name for himself as a unionist and struggling leader in Brazilian politics since the 1980s, gained experience on his way to the presidency. There were two main challenges for Lula to overcome: (1) Brazilians were overly politized and had a divided political culture and (2) Lula’s hardcore left ideology on economic management.
In terms of the first issue, the important chronic challenge was that all presidents of Brazil since re-democratization in the late 1980s have had to form coalitions among rival factions in the Brazilian Congress to govern (Käufer, 2022).Considering that fact and his previous attempts at the presidency, he toned down his rhetoric and succeeded in increasing his stakeholders and coalition partners. Lula was able to win the 2002 elections as a result.
Regarding the second issue, Lula was aware of the uncertainty that was held amongst the public on how a left-wing leader, who used very harsh ideological language during the election process and was a union leader in his past, would act as leader of the country. Lula kept a flexible and pragmatic approach; He emphasized the unity of the country and tried to calm fluctuating markets by publishing market-friendly statements. For instance, by publishing a “letter to the nation,” Lula tried to relieve “financial capital” by ensuring to follow an “evolutionist, pro-market, not revolutionary” reform and change path if the phrase is appropriate. The old saying that “the crowned head grows wiser” was vindicated in Lula’s case. As soon as he came to power, he began to adopt very pragmatic policies as if to say, “what is said on the campaign trail stays there.”
Lula was expected to take the necessary steps to resume economic growth during his first term in power, after almost 25 years of semi-stagnation, fight poverty, and improve historically deep income inequalities. Lula decided to continue the International Monetary Fund (IMF) program signed in 2002 by the former academic president Cardoso. Lula greatly benefited from the stability created by the Cardoso government, with the Plano Real taming inflation while avoiding recession and the privatization of monopolies increasing the inflow of foreign capital. To increase the credibility in his commitment to the market economy system, Lula also appointed Cardoso’s Minister of Finance Pedro Malan to the same position.
Thanks to these measures, compared to other left-of-center reform projects, Lula caused fewer confrontations with internal political adversaries and economic elites. He gained a reputation as a moderate and pragmatic leader (Hughes, 2012). However, that level of pragmatism even risked disappointing his ideological supporters’. In a way to balance that perspective, he also stressed that rather than following the so-called Darwinian philosophy, implying the survival of the fittest where the big fish eats the small, advocated by the right-wing politicians, he would pay attention to the social policies to improve income distribution and alleviate poverty. In other words, Lula protected the balance between the elites, that is to say, the finance capita and the “silent majority”. The combination of social sensibility and fiscalresponsibility promoted him as a “modern left” (de Carvalho, 2008).
In addition to his capacity to build and maintain coalitions and his ability to promote a pragmatic-flexible approach to the economic management Lula was also lucky, which allowed him to benefit a great deal from changes underway before his presidency. Geologists found a huge new oil field deep in the ocean off the Brazilian coast, and ethanol production expanded. The tens of billions of barrels of oil discovered in the fields of Rio de Janeiro in 2006 have been declared one of the most important discoveries of this century. Many hoped this would bring an abundance of education and health and make Brazil one of the largest economies in the world (The Guardian, 2015).
The most significant luck for Lula and Brazil was a new phase of globalization that encouraged an uninterrupted long growth cycle from 2002 till the burst of the global financial crisis in 2008. This new phase of globalization was driven by revolutionary developments in communication and transport technologies, the integration of China and then ex-Soviet markets into the world system via the WTO, and the breaking down of barriers to factor movements across the board. Globalization of production, trade, and financial flows, accompanied by great opportunities for energy and commodity-exporting countries like Brazil. As a result, unlike the period between 1990-2022, when, besides Argentina, Russia, and the South African Republic, Brazil recorded the lowest growth performance among developing countries (DCs) and, therefore, almost stagnated (Figure.1), during Lula’s two terms, a growth rate more than doubled in the 2000s and surpassed the OECD and world growth averages. Accordingly, nominal GDP increased fivefold from $500 billion in 2002 to over $2.5 trillion and per capita income from about $4,500 to $13,000 in 2010 (Figure.2). With that performance, Brazil came to the brick of successfully graduating from upper middle-income country status to becoıam a high-income country for the first time in its modern history.
Source: The World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator
The growth performance and the associated social policies have contributed significantly to Lula’s phenomenal success in the social sphere (Green & Skidmore, 2021). Growing export surplus and rising tax revenues allowed the Lula government to fight widespread poverty by investing in social programs, such as the Family Stipend (Bolsa Família), which started in 2003, to reduce poverty and increase human capital. Former president Cardoso’s School Stipend (Bolsa Escola) preceded that program, and Lula merged it with his Zero Hunger (Fome Zero) campaign (Hall, 2006). Bolsa Família supported families with children with a per capita income of fewer than 70 dollars a month, granted a small sum of money per child (up to three children) as long as they were vaccinated, stayed in school and did not engage in illegal child labor. As of 2010, 12.4 million households had enrolled in the program, and, in sum, 20 to 30 million Brazilian escaped from poverty.
According to Neri (2014: 25), one-sixth of Brazil’s strides in poverty reduction can be attributed to this program, which only costs 0.5 percent of the Brazilian GDP. Besides Bolsa Família, the creation of 13 million new jobs and the minimum wage surge from 100 to 205 dollars during his presidency helped him improve traditionally very skewed income distribution. According to the World Bank (2022) indicators, the Gini coefficient, an indicator of inequality, was above 0.60 in 1995s and 0.58 when he took office in 2003, declining to 0.53 at the end of his two terms in 2010, signifying a significant improvement. Rather strikingly, some experts like Hughes (2012) attribute Brazil’s success in securing the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, during his successor Dilma Rousseff, to Lula’s legacy. Among others, what is equally important to note is that the mentioned average rate of 4.5 percent annual growth during his two terms associated with a reduced public debt from roughly 60 percent to 40 percent of GDP, reduced inflation from more than 12 percent in 2002 to just under 6 percent in 2010, and increased trade surplus from $13.1 billion to $33.3 billion (The Economist, Sep.19, 2022).
To conclude, through pragmatism and a flexible attitude, Lula successfully balanced a market-friendly economic approach with his socially sensible programs. He aligned with the market expectations and did not give much space to the expected left-wing populism, which sacrifices fundamental macroeconomic balances at the expense of unsustainable high growth, income redistribution, and economic isolation policies. That is to say, he sacrificed neither social sensibility nor business responsibility and macroeconomic stability. After all, his ten years were a period of delivering high economic growth, macroeconomic stability, and social protection not only subsided reactions from international investors and national economic elites but also increased his approval rating among the citizens to an unprecedented rate of 87 percent.
The appropriate question is: Why did Brazil then surrender to right-wing populism in 2018? What lessons can we learn from the experiences of Lula and his Labor Party? Accordingly, what can be expected from Lula in his third term, which came at a drastically different local and global political and economic surrounding?Despite these positive aspects, Lula’s two terms in power were also subject to the following shortcomings.
Among others, the most disdainful criticism against Lula’s government concerns his inability to propose a strategic transformation vision for the country. Particularly during the first term, when capitalism was in a period of favorable expansion, the opportunity to transform the overall economy and diversify the existing industrial base through the use of a large volume of foreign capital inflows and the revenue generated from commodity exports was largely missed. Instead, the resources were directed to bigger transfer expenditures for single use at consumption (de Carvalho, 2008). So, the big vicious-cycle and therefore source of fragility for Brazil is that while the country remained dependent on unstable income via the exports of commodities and unstable capital inflows, the significantly big size of the population became dependent on transfer expenditures from the budget.
Moreover, being subject to a host of special interest groups at congress, despite levying taxes at levels close to the OECD average, much public spending is misdirected into feather-bedding bureaucrats or oiling political machines. In other words, interest-seeking coalitions lobbying power led the government to misdirect the resources to the investment in the sunset industries of the 20th century, with lower productivity and innovativeness.For instance,Brazil hosted the football world cup and Olympic games in 2014 and 2016, respectively, while the country’s hospitals and schools fell into disrepair, causing severe economic problems and social tensions. Much of the explanation related to these failures have to do with governance. Brazil remains a relatively closed economy and has failed to develop internationally competitive exports outside of agribusiness and mining (de Paula, 2016; Jenkins, 2014).
If there is a “missing vision and wrong investment” somewhere, it is inevitable that corruption will follow it, and it points to a reality that is looming over Brazil like a nightmare. Relatedly, a period of big disappointment began in 2005 when Lula did not take “corruption rumors” seriously while in office. His involvement in the vast Odebrecht, a giant construction company[1], and Petrobras, Brazil’s most prominent public institution corruption scandals have not been appropriately investigated (Sotero, 2022; DW, 2020). There was a constant effort to hide all these corruption scandals involving the name of Lula. However, Lula’s reputation came crashing down after leaving office when he was convicted in a wide-ranging corruption probe involving the state oil company Petrobras. Corruption rumors during the presidency of his close colleague Dilma Rousseff, whom he handed over in 2010, were reheated. While Rousseff’s defense of playing the “three monkeys” was roughly summed up as “I did not see it, I did not hear it; I did not do it,” she preferred to explain the incident as a political revenge plot on her political career by her opponents. However, none of these defenses saved her from impeachment in 2016 by the senate. That is because, for years, Ms. Rousseff had been placed on the board of directors of Petrobras.
Finally, she was replaced by the vice-President Michel Temer, who was also impeached and arrested during his tenure as acting president in 2016. Temer has been the subject of five court cases and one investigation, mostly related to passive corruption and money laundering. As part of the investigation, he was jailed in 2018 on bribery and money laundering charges and ultimately replaced by right-wing authoritarian leader Bolsonaro in the same year. After presidents Rousseff and Temer, this process eventually reached Lula, which led to his imprisonment for 580 days. However, the Supreme Court later ruled it as a mistrial, clearing his path to run for reelection. The inability of the judiciary to resolve these issues with the necessary transparency and impartiality in a country where all political leaders, including Lula, are prosecuted for corruption, impeached, or imprisoned has caused corruption to be legitimized, the public to lose its sensitivity to these scandals, thus, causing those involved to return to politics quickly. This social mediocrity points to a legacy that eclipses reformist and changer expectations for Lula.
Bolsonaro’s Populism in Power
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro during 74th Anniversary of Parachutist Infantry Battalion held at Military Village in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on November 23, 2019. Photo: Celso Pupo.
Bolsonaro came to power by successfully mobilizing anti-establishment anger towards the above-given political deadlock. He ran against the grain in a country roiled by scandalsand suffering from a stagnant economy (Phillips, 2022). Moreover, the negative repercussions of the global economic crisis in 2008-2009 continued to hurt society. As a result, in 2018, after two years of economic crisis and several public corruption scandals, Bolsonaro came to power in this environment with intense anti-establishment populism.
Bolsonaro began implementing policies that should be expected of a right-wing populist party. To mention just a few, he first worked to curb the judiciary’s power and attack electoral institutions. Second, with time, his aggressive and often profane manner and his attacks on women and journalists have left the population tired of him (Phillips, 2022). Third, the pandemic set an excellent example of how a populist denies science, scientists, expertise, division of labor, institutional capacity, and autonomy. Experts say the story of how Brazil’s leader went flaccid involves a litany of outrages, ineptitudes and errors committed during a chaotic four-year reign. At the height of the pandemic, like many other populists, Bolsonaro dismissed COVID-19 as a “little flu” and promoted the unproven and possibly harmful remedy hydroxychloroquine (Burni & Tamaki, 2021). He has expressed skepticism of vaccines — he suggested they could cause women to grow beards and turn people into crocodiles — in a country that has embraced them. Not surprisingly, Brazil has recorded one of the worst COVID-19 responses—nearly more than 34.5 million cases and 700,000 deaths since 2020. Both are presumed to be significantly undercounted (Béland et al., 2021).
Surveys show that more than 40 percent of Brazilians rate Bolsonaro’s administration as “bad” or “very bad.” Many experts also accuse him of having a role in hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths and his fake news-fueled attacks on Brazil’s young democracy (Boyle, 2022; Villega, 2022). Therefore, it is expected that after losing power and presidential immunity, he might be subject to sanctions. With that fear, just two days before the successors’ inauguration ceremony, Bolsonaro left Brazil for Florida and did not specify his return date. This action breaks with the Brazilian convention of outgoing leaders being present at the ceremony.
Fourth, besides pandemic challenges in the supply side of the economy, rising inflation stagnated national income and declining per capita GDP (Figure.2), and rising government debt that reached a record high of 90 percent of GDP (as of 2020), 30 percentage points higher than a decade ago. Because he underestimated hunger and malnutrition, tens of millions were plunged into poverty. Rather strikingly, after Lula’s globally renowned success story in fighting against poverty, Brazil reappeared on the World Food Program’s “Hunger Map” of the United Nations (UN) in 2021, with 28.9 percent of the population living in food insecurity. Thirty-three million Brazilians face acute hunger, and 100 million live in poverty, the highest number in years. It is a significant setback for a country that had been removed from the map in 2014, after an economic boom and landmark social programs helped lift 30 million people from poverty during Lula’s administration (France 24, 2022). As the 10th largest economy in the world, the largest one in Latin America, and one of the world’s largest food producers and exporters, Brazil’s return to the UN’s hunger map is not easier to bring any convincing explanation.
Lastly and most dramatically, South America’s largest economy become an international pariah notorious for Amazon annihilation. Deforestation in the Amazon region returned with a vengeance, turning Brazil into a pariah in the global fight against climate change. After almost a decade of steady decline in the deforestation process, mainly under Lula’s administration, the damaging process took off again under Bolsonaro’s administration beginning in January 2019 (Figure.3).
Bolsonaro’s actions up to this point typically describe a populist politician; to exploit the failures of the incumbent regime, making grand promises, and ascendance to power using the democratic mechanisms that the system still allows. When in power, however, populist politicians do the opposite of what they promised resorting to unsustainable policies and not leaving power by employing all the available means when unsuccessful. Bolsonaro paid too much effort to reverse the situation towards the campaign’s final stretch to keep his power. Flagging billions of dollars of welfare payments designed to seduce poor voters and a suspected attempt at voter suppression by federal highway police on election day. With Brazilians struggling with double-digit inflation and an election just weeks away, Bolsonaro has cut fuel taxes to reduce prices at the pump and sent monthly cash transfers to low-income families. He has created cash benefits for truck and taxi drivers and dispensed $20 to families needing gas cylinders for cooking. Although energy prices stabilized, inflation started to decline, and employment rose, Bolsonaro lost the seat.
The legacy of Bolsonaro is that Bolsonaro’s policies weakening institutions, loosing macroeconomic stability, dismantling environmental regulations and agencies, and disregarding social programs. Brazil’s fiscal situation is worse: public debt is 78 percent of GDP and 93 percent of the budget is consumed by mandatory spending on things such as salaries and pensions. The global outlook is fraught. Though high commodities prices have helped the economy, inflation is hurting the poor. Political conditions are tougher, too. Brazil’s Congress is more avaricious and less cooperative (The Economist, Sept.19, 2022). The highly fragmented political system in Brazil remains the biggest concern. In his inauguration ceremony on January 1, 2023 Lula described the diagnosis he received from the Bolsonaro government as follows: “emptied the resources for health, dismantled education, culture, science, they destroyed the environmental protections, haven’t left resources to school meals, vaccines, public security, forest protection and social assistance” (Watson & Davies, 2022).
Lula’s Third Return and Expectations
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva walks among supporters on Augusta Street at São Paulo on the eve of the brazillian election on October 1, 2022. Photo: Yuri Murakami.
After his third-round successful presidency in his sixth run, Lula has once again overtaken a politically divided and economically devastated country. Bolsonaro has gone, but “Bolsonarism” remains strong, making Congress hostile to the new government and society more fragmented (Sabatini, 2022). Keeping a possibly wider reform coalition in such a surrounding is troublesome. For instance, many prominent backbenchers (to be translated as “political parasites”) are funded by agribusiness. Therefore, they could be a significant obstacle in Lula’s highest priority areas of protection of the Amazon forests. That is why much of his speech to Congress at the inauguration ceremony was about “unity” and “reconstruction” of the nation through keeping and enlarging his existing stakeholders, which took him to the election victory.
Deep as they are, political divisions are not Brazil’s only problem. Economic problems are relatively high inflation, unemployment, high public debt, deep income inequality, massive poverty, and an almost stagnating economy (Ottis, 2022). Real growth in GDP per capita has averaged zero since 2011. The commodities boom that generously helped financing many of Lula’s social programs the first time around is over.
Very similar to what happened before he came to the power for the first time in 2003, during his third adventure to the power, Lula has once again tried to convince markets that he would not go on an uncontrolled spending spree. Similarly, he chose Geraldo Alckmin, a center-right and business-friendly former São Paulo Governor who was Lula’s rival in the 2006 election, as his Vice President. Going even beyond that, Lula has criticized a few of Rousseff’s policies, such as keeping fuel prices artificially low and offering tax breaks worth more than 450bn reais ($86bn) to businesses (which amounted to 7.5 percent of GDP).
On the other hand, today’s fraught geoeconomics climate offers Brazil some opportunities as well. The country is rich in food, fuel and metals and has a flourishing renewable energy sector. It is located far from global conflict spots and has traditionally sought good relations with the US, China, Europe, and Russia. However, economic transformation, industrial diversification, and generating funding resources in an unfavorable global and national environment are pretty uncertain. By lamenting the drop in car production and Brazil’s dependence on commodity sales to China, Lula has underlined the need for “re-industrialization,” proposed solutions such as investments in technology and the green-energy transition. However, Lula will continue balancing his “market-friendly” approach with “society-centric sensibilities.”
Lula’s quite ambiguous program involves the following topics:
In terms of fighting with poverty, through the Bolsa Familia poverty-relief program that includes transfers, expansion of social-housing scheme as well as debt-relief, Lula wants to “put the poor back in the budget.” He targets 33m Brazilians, who live on less than 289 reais ($55) per month, the highest number since 2012. Accordingly, the poorest families will get 600 reais ($110) a month and those with children under six years of age will get an additional 150 reais ($30). His second major measures to improve income distribution involves “updating” the existing labor reform, which he calls “slaveholder mentality.” Accordingly, he will increase the minimum wage, provide equal pay for men and women, aims adding protections for part-time workers.
Other challenges await Lula that are as important as overthrowing Bolsonaro through a legitimate and fair election. Lula must maintain the coalition he has formed, convince the highly politicized parliament to get support for the needed reforms, provide the necessary financial resources and restore the badly damaged financial balances. Implementation of a comprehensive tax reform, therefore, is one of his priority areas.
The New Global Conjuncture
Putin, Biden and Xi Jinping in the form of Russian nesting dolls in a gift shop in Moscow. Photo: Shutterstock.
It is a very positive development that Trump in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil were removed from their seats without being given a chance for a second term. However, after the right-wing authoritarian populist leaders lost elections in both countries, their supporters became even more divisive and did not accept the election results. Trump’s supporters in the US and Bolsonaro’s in Brazil have shown again that right-wing authoritarians come with free elections but try not to go by fair elections. At first, they wanted “military intervention” after the election results in October 2022. However, thanks to the army’s neutral position, it did not happen. After that, Bolsonaro fled the country to the US before Lula took office. Finally, with the encouragement and organization of the Bolsonaro team that occupied high-level security-oriented bureaucracy, his supporters attempted a coup d’état against the newly appointed government and stormed parliament. Thanks to his leadership and experience, Lula had no hesitation in declaring a state of emergency and dismissing many of the top security bureaucracies appointed by Bolsonaro. This evidence shows that Trump and Bolsonaro have gone, but Trumpism in the US and “Bolsonarismo” in Brazil have remained. This fact has deep-rooted implications that current global order and its structural characteristics feed populism at both the global and local levels remain.
Multiple adverse effects of excessive globalization manifest themselves in DCs through transmission mechanisms like the activities of the MNEs, mainly in labor markets and foreign trade sectors. Among others, the primary outcomes appear in the form of unemployment, downward pressure on wages in traditional import-competing industries, and difficulties in regulating tax evasion of MNEs, generating income inequalities and poverty. It also cultivates a perception of a loss of sovereignty and national independence. The wave of global immigration, triggered by the mentioned process, not only increases the fear of local people losing their jobs but also alienates native people and feeds the perception of losing their endogenous values. Furthermore, international capital movements not only have weakened national governments’ regulatory and taxation autonomy, but they have also shifted the balance of power within nations away from labor towards capital and allowed it to accrue further political power and wealth, opening yet more opportunities for the internationalization of capital.
According to a recent report by IPSOS Global Trends (2020), while six in ten (62 percent) globally agree with the meritocratic ideal (that if you work hard, you will get ahead), it is under threat in even in the most advanced and social welfare states in key European countries. For example, only half of those in Germany (53 percent) and Spain (50 percent) feel their economies produce rewards their efforts, as do just four in ten people in Italy (41 percent). One core response to this perceived inequality of outcome and opportunity is support for wealth redistribution – one of the top ten values of IPSOS in 2020. It encompasses the widely held view that national economies are rigged to advantage the rich and powerful (74 percent agree globally) and that large income differences are bad for society (76 percent). Finally, “the big silent majority,” who was entirely excluded from the decision-making processes but could not avoid its negative consequences, have come to rely more and more on populist rhetoric, which, given the excesses of hyper globalization, is obsessed with the idea that zero-sum situations invariably characterize market exchanges.
To reverse the mentioned process, DCs need to balance excessive globalization through localization, poverty prevention, tax reforms, and improved skills and abilities for a comprehensive future oriented sectoral transition. These tasks require four interlinked transitions comprised of mainly manufacturing, fiscal structure, education, and governance sectors. To address these tasks following tasks must be fulfilled.
i) Repositioning of the country in the global supply chains through re-scaling and re-shoring.
ii) Further localization of production and governance.
iii) Transition of energy systems towards renewables from fossil fuels, and
iv) Substitution of basic universal and targeted income through a comprehensive tax reform are the priorities.
Regarding the first three recommendations, the pandemic crisis has marked another turning point in the process already underway, which is leading many companies to transform their supply chains and invest in more resilient and often more localized production patterns (Zhan et al. 2020; Lawrence, 2020). Localization measures involve empowering community-based decision making, participatory budgeting, and local action on such issues as renewable energy, green infrastructure, public services, and food production. As thought from Brazil’s perspective, localization is especially beneficial for food production, as the pandemic has revealed the precariousness of global food supply chains. Yasmeen etal. (2020) adds that nearly one quarter of the world’s food crosses a border before consumption. Countries tend to specialize in a few products and import most others. Meanwhile, just a handful of mega-sized corporations dominate international food markets, and production often depends on the exploitation of vulnerable groups, such as migrant workers. As can be seen, one of the critical issues here is the balance between the quality of integration into the global order and localization.
Lula’s vision to give more weight to the public sector in transforming the industries where Brazil has competitive advantages, particularly in infrastructure investments, transition to a green economy with low-carbon target in the 2030s, agribusiness has been one of the hot topics of discussion in the country. However, the quality of public sector leadership in industrial transformation through selecting the national champions or the potential winners has been a highly problematic issue, as we know it from the failed industrialization models of import substitution in Latin American countries. It is a story of failed models, squandered resources, entrenched crony capitalism in corruption, and widespread authoritarian regimes.
Similar to his earlier experiences, Lula insists on big infrastructure projects, like public transportation, energy and water with investment from both the public and private sector. He also advocates a heavy dose of intervention, describing a national food reserves policy, the exchange rate as an instrument to reduce volatility, and the need to “Brazilianize” petrol prices. Meanwhile, Lula does not talk much about reducing trade barriers or making public spending more efficient.
Considering the nature of rising industries, in the age of fourth industrial revolution, Brazil should craft a model which carefully distinguishes between “crony-friendly,” “business-friendly,” and “market-friendly” approaches in search of attributing a new role to the public sector. In a crony-friendly policy regime, a few firms obtain many privileges from the government by leveraging their political connections. These include resources directly allocated by the state, such as public procurement contracts, public land, or subsidized credits. Politically connected businesses may influence the regulatory framework in a way that creates barriers to entry for potential competitors through several direct and direct lobbying. In a business-friendly approach, rather than bestowing favor on a few cronies, some businesses groups are supported in a transparent way to stimulate specific sectoral and regional development policies. Obviously, business-friendly policies are superior to crony-friendly policies. However, sometimes these policies may also disproportionately benefit a few. For example, suppose a tax benefit, cash subsidy, or import tariff protection are given in a sector or industry, where concentration ratio is high, dominated by a few big conglomerates. The “first best condition” is market-friendly policies as it fosters fair competition in the market after setting the rules and observing the proper implementation of the game’s rules.
In order for Brazil to grow faster, it needs reforms to improve the quality of spending and the business environment. Viewed in terms of the public sector effectiveness, when using public banks to finance large infrastructure projects, it must be ensured that this support remains at the level of providing a positive signal effect to the private players. The efficiency criteria are consistently met when the projects are carried out under more market-oriented conditions. Given the caveats above, a market-friendly public-private-partnership (PPP) (Matsumoto et al., 2021; Straub & Islam, 2022) model might trigger externalities in important sectors such as (renewable) energy, agroindustry, automotive, machinery, iron and steel, health, finance, and logistics, which, in turn, creates “crowd-in” effect for foreign as well as domestic investors. Foreign interest will emerge much stronger in the above sectors, especially as Brazil, with its 250 million population, raises its per capita income to the upper middle-income level and strengthens the middle class by improving the income distribution.
Finally, in repositioning the country in the global supply chains through re-scaling and re-shoring, localization, and transition of energy systems also require resources, to be briefly discussed below.
The Search for a Risky Flexible Budget
Photo: Shutterstock.
Since 2016 Brazil’s budget has been restricted by a Constitutional Spending Cap (CSC) that limits the growth of spending to the rate of inflation. However, such a restrictive anchor for Brazil, where crony business-friendly capitalism has been deeply rooted, is seen unacceptable (Limoeiro, 2020). First Bolsonaro announced that he plans to replace it with “more flexible” fiscal rules. However, the challenges with the COVID-19 crisis caused this constraint to be de facto out of action, as it did in other countries, without the need for a de jure amendment to fund COVID-19 spendings. However, these stimulus measures were also used to benefit former president Bolsonaro’s campaign and harmed the fiscal balances in the country. As a result, it has lost its power as a fiscal anchor.
Quite reasonably, Lula also wants a new fiscal framework that allows for more short-term borrowing while assuring markets that the debt-to-GDP ratio will come down in the medium term. Indeed, under Lula’s initiative, Brazil’s Congress has already suspended the government’s CSC to allow his government to raise expenditures on social welfare and public works, two urgent task and priority for his government. It corresponds to a spending of an extra $28 billion in 2023 outside of the CSC, sidestepping a fiscal anchor designed to keep free-spending governments in check (Pearson & Magalhaes, 2022).
However, several caveats should be noted also here. In Latin America in general, and Brazil in particular, the issue of fiscal flexibility points to a deep stalemate. On the one hand, the priority of Lula’s administration is to “put the poor back in the budget”, but, on the other hand, it is open to irresponsible populist abuses. As seen in the previous Bolsonaro era, the populist government ignored budgetary constraints, particularly the current anchor, leaving the Lula government financially vulnerable to extreme damage. This applies to both the national debt and budget deficits. The policy implication is that, in Latin America, where populism and short-termism dominate, lacking technical control over the use and draft of budget and borrowing can open the door to costly abuses. For that reason, that approval has prompted concerns in markets about the fiscal health and long-term growth of Brazil, Latin America’s biggest economy. So, we have come to two conclusions: First, for sustainable economic growth, transparency and efficiency in public spending, on the one hand, and second, a disciplinary, albeit flexible, limitation on budget expenditure in the medium term, if not now, on the other, should be sought. However, in addition to these measures at the spending side, the biggest challenge in providing the required funding for development projects as well as for improving income distribution, a truly tax reform is needed.
Wealth and Taxation
The tax reform could play a crucial role for Lula’s government to permanently reverse the waves of populism via improving the distribution of income. Since the lower social segments are dragged into deeper poverty due to job and income loss as well as rising cost of living recently, finding ways to support such vulnerable segments, for instance, through the provision of either a guaranteed/universal basic or targeted income, and the necessary financial resources for social expenditures have become one of the most urgent topics of discussion globally. The “guaranteed” basic income provides the same lump sum to all citizens regardless of circumstances, whereas a “targeted” basic income is available only to those who need it because their income falls below a minimum threshold. Their goal is to alleviate poverty and replace other need-based social programs that potentially require greater bureaucratic procedure.
It is evident that all these expenditures would increase the cost to government budgets, which are already being inflated by fiscal stimulus. Among others, one important source of income would come from levying a net wealth tax on the wealthiest without causing capital flight, tax base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). OECD defines BEPS as “the tax planning strategies used by multinational enterprises that exploit gaps and mismatches in tax rules to avoid paying tax. BEPS is quite crucial in DCs due to their higher reliance on corporate income tax, and they, therefore, suffer from it disproportionately. Among other harms it causes, this undermines the fairness and integrity of tax systems because businesses that operate across borders can use BEPS to gain a competitive advantage over enterprises that operate at a domestic level. Moreover, when taxpayers see MNCs legally avoiding income tax, it undermines voluntary compliance by all taxpayers. Thus, the task of financing growth and development in DCs becomes clear; By evaluating in terms of efficiency, equity and administrative arguments the imposition of a net wealth tax on the richest will not cause capital flight and levying a tax on the earnings of MNEs from the country they operate in a way to prevent BEPS are the two interrelated tasks (OECD, 2018)
However, the needed measures such as the implementation of a comprehensive tax reform are relatively easier to pronounce but hard to execute for numerous reasons. First, governments have long feared that higher taxes would produce capital flight and discourage investment. As a result, countries are engaged in a “race to the bottom” on corporate taxation, which ultimately, they lose. Second, in a world of large MNEs, mobile capital, and seamless digital transactions, it is hard to identify where modern businesses with significant intangible capital, especially digital businesses, locate their activities to be taxed away.
As a global public good, a tax reform requires international cooperation in renewing fiscal sovereignty through a new social contract. However, as Cobham (2021) notes, there are also potential arrears to be taxed away despite its complications along the way. As a matter of fact, according to the finalized landmark deal in October 2021, agreed by 136 countries and jurisdictions representing more than 90 percent of global GDP, MNEs will be subject to a minimum 15 percent tax rate from 2023, corresponding to more than $125 billions of profits from around 100 of the world’s largest and most profitable MNEs to be reallocated globally. Therefore, as the winners of globalization,paying a fair share of tax wherever they operate and generate profits will contribute to a more balanced globalization and multilateralism.
Returning to the taxation of richest companies, in principle, a fiscally neutral reform pair higher income taxes on high earners with lower payroll taxes for firms to incentivize formal employment seems reasonable in Brazil. Lula is quite eager to move quickly on a reform that would increase taxes on the richest while simplifying the labyrinth of levies on consumption, which are seen as a drag on growth. Income tax and VAT reform are priorities, particularly in the context of one of Lula’s main pledges, which is to address the crushing poverty situation in Brazil and ensure a progressive tax system where the wealthy pay more tax than the poor. However, given the fact that involves complex negotiations with states and interest groups, and the polarized political divisions in Brazil, these herculean changes, like a tax reform seem almost unlikely.
To conclude this section, it should be noted that when the agenda of industrialization and transformation in new sectors for Brazil is combined with the plan of taxing MNEs and levying a “welfare tax” on the richest in the country: In the efforts to delegate a more active role to the public sector, crony capitalism through rent-seeking of the privileged segments that distort competition, effectiveness, and innovations should be carefully avoided. Brazil’s attractive potential should be opened to the world, and the above taxes should be levied on high earnings.
Conclusion
Only at the end of the 1980s did Brazil transform into a democracy, which was also quite unstable. Brazil’s experience has also shown that even if the modern bureaucratic apparatus, autonomous and professional institutions, and principal institutions of the state— executive, legislative and judiciary—are supplied, if culturally and mentally supportive epistemology is not there, the system will not cultivate the expected outcomes.
In Brazil, the erosion of institutions in the last three decades have continued and they have become increasingly dysfunctional and politicized. In such an environment, corruption has become rampant, and the country’s presidents, including Lula, Rousseff and Temer, have been impeached or imprisoned on corruption charges. In the last case, Bolsonaro is trying to rid himself of the same fate by leaving the country. However, not only has the modern state apparatus failed to stop the rise of such a massive crony system and corruption, but also most of the impeached leaders were soon released from prison and compromised to return to politics, like Lula himself. These examples point to the poor quality of the judiciary and the institutionalization that is destroying public confidence in the system. That overall environment leaves voters open to losing their interest in the democratic system, adhering to short-term solutions and populist rhetoric. While the country’s authoritarian culture persists, populist discourse seems to dominate politics on both the right and left.
Externally, the imperfections created by the multilateral order in the post-WWII era and global capitalism, which both reflect Western values and dominance, have been subject to significant structural economic, political, social, and civilizational problems. The message is that, in the persistence of unresolved problems, the supply and demand conditions of populism at home and abroad also stay in place.
During Lula’s first two terms in power (2003-2010), the dimensions of left-wing populism were seen both in terms of progressive as well as regressive aspects. During his government, Lula followed a responsible, flexible, pragmatist path regarding the market and a socially sensible path adhering to societal expectations. Intending to improve income distribution, he focused on eliminating poverty. However, rather than driving the economy into a wide-range competitive transformation and boosting employment and income Lula addressed social vulnerabilities through regular social transfer expenditure aided by the fact that energy commodity prices gave Brazil relative fiscal flexibility in Lula’s first two terms. This shows that Lula’s vision was far from a fundamental transformation and relied heavily on the positive global conjuncture. Likewise, we can say that Lula supported the privileged classes and sectors with “business-friendly” approaches instead of being “market-friendly,” and therefore his government could not stay away from corruption rumors and gossip. He did not even take them seriously, until he left power in 2010, when all these allegations started to undermine the entire system in more than one decade.
As of today, with the world teetering on the brink of authoritarianism and Brazil itself oscillating on the verge of such authoritarianism, Lula who has been active with a left-progressive rhetoric in Brazilian politics since the 1970s, might lead a radical reform leadership the impact of which would extend beyond Brazil. With that in mind, we can assume he sees it as “the last exit before the bridge.” Despite the social fragmentation and the split in parliament making it challenging to reach a consensus, Lula will have to build efficiency in governance and the economy and create competitive advantages in the sectors of the future through fundamental reforms. Provided that Lula keeps the “social and political coalition,” which led him to the victory in the last election, he can succeed these tasks and also overcome populism.
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[1] The Brazilian construction giant, known for its role in the “Operation Car Wash” scandal. The company has changed its name to Novonor in 2020 to repair its image with a new name.
