The De- and Re-Democratization (DRD) Workgroup of the CEU Democracy Institute cordially invites you to its third presentation of Illuminating Books on Democracy and Authoritarianism.
If you would like to attend, please register here.
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Book:
Maria Snegovaya: When Left Moves Right: The Decline of the Left and the Rise of the Populist Right in Postcommunist Europe (Oxford University Press, 2024)
Over the past two decades, postcommunist countries have witnessed a sudden shift in the electoral fortunes of their political parties: previously successful center-left parties suffered dramatic electoral defeats, while right-wing populist parties soared in popularity. This dynamic echoed similar processes in Western Europe and raises a question: Were these dynamics in any way connected? This book argues that they were. And that the root of the connection between them lies in the pro-market rebranding of the ex-communist left. This book demonstrates that, though the left’s pro-market shift initially led to electoral rewards, it had a less straightforward impact on left-wing parties’ electoral fortunes in the long run. Traditional supporters of the left (working-class and economically vulnerable groups) were alienated by the new economic policies, and the middle-class voters newly drawn to these parties did not compensate for those losses. As a result, several electoral rounds following the rebranding, reformist parties on the left suffered electoral defeats. In response, right-wing parties in their respective countries adopted more redistributive economic platforms consistent with preferences of former supporters of the left and incorporated sizable shares of these electorates. The book traces this process in postcommunist Europe. It argues that scholars should incorporate the economic policy dimension when explaining the demise of the left and the rise of the populist right in the region. It also examines important parallels between the dynamics of Western and postcommunist countries by arguing that the idiosyncrasy of Eastern European politics has been overstated in the scholarly literature.
Author:
Maria Snegovaya is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, Senior Fellow with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a Fellow at the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.
Discussants:
Vassilis Petsinis is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Corvinus University (Institute of Global Studies) in Budapest, Hungary. His research expertise lies in European Politics and Ethnopolitics. He was formerly Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Tartu (2017–19). He authored the monographs National Identity in Serbia: The Vojvodina and a Multiethnic Community in the Balkans (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Cross-regional Ethnopolitics in Central and Eastern Europe: Lessons from the Western Balkans and the Baltic States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), as well as other academic publications that cover a range of countries as diverse as Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Greece.
Zsolt Boda is a research professor and director general of the HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences – Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence as well as part-time professor of political science at the ELTE University of Budapest. He holds an MA in economics, a PhD as well as a DSc in political science. He did research at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the University of Versailles as well as the Centre des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris and was teaching at Paris 6, the University of Nordland, and the European University Viadrina. His academic work focuses on the problems of governance, public policy, as well as institutional trust, its social roots and its consequences for policy effectiveness. From 2019 to 2022 he was the principal investigator of DEMOS – Democratic efficacy and the varieties of populism in Europe, a consortial H2020 project. He is now leading a research project on the challenges of greening state governance.
Moderator:
Karolina Zbytniewska is a Junior Research Affiliate at the Democracy Institute, Chief Editor at EURACTIV Poland and a major Polish expert media focusing on European affairs. She is board Member at Europe's MediaLab. Karolina is a political scientist specialized in democracy and populism and a lecturer at Warsaw University. Alumna of Fulbright, Marie Curie Research Fellowship, and Bertelsmann Leaders for Europe program. Currently she is a Re:constitution fellow.