Credit: Stanford CDDRL
As we head into election season in Europe, the question that dominated the past spring’s elections remains on everyone’s mind: What will be the fate of populist movements, parties and candidates? says Joshua Tucker, a Professor of Politics at New York University. I reached out to Stanford University political scientist Anna Grzymała-Busse, who just guest-edited a special issue of Slavic Review on “Global Populisms,” he writes for The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog:
AGB: The weakness of mainstream parties allows populists to take power. Centrist parties that respond to electoral concerns and offer distinct policy alternatives are on the wane. Populists can then not only claim the mantle of representing popular interests in the face of mainstream party indifference, but they also can gain the votes and seats to govern with supermajorities. These enormous majorities then allow them to govern without coalition partners and preclude effective parliamentary checks. In both Poland and in Hungary, these parties have more freedom than ever to erode the formal institutions of liberal democracy and the informal norms that underpin them…..
