The upcoming Czech parliamentary elections have seen a discursive shift from a left/right toward a populism/anti-populism conflict and a government without a populist party is unlikely, argues Seongcheol Kim in his latest Blogpost for the WZB Democracy Blog.
Today and tomorrow, Czechs will go to the polls in an election whose outcome, according to opinion polls, has been a foregone conclusion for almost the entire legislative term: Andrej BabiĹĄâs ANO is projected to finish well ahead of its senior coalition partner, the Social Democrats (ÄSSD), with the last pre-election polls even suggesting a widening gap with a wide-open race for second place between the ÄSSD, the Communists (KSÄM), and even the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD). In stark contrast to this bit of apparent clarity is the sheer uncertainty in the composition of the next government: while the incumbent government of ANO, Social Democrats, and Christian Democrats (KDU-ÄSL) is widely expected to retain its majority, almost all parties with a shot at entering parliament â including ÄSSD and KDU-ÄSL â have ruled out a coalition in which BabiĹĄ is prime minister.
All this against a background in which relations between the ruling parties have worsened dramatically over the past half-year: Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (ÄSSD) dismissed BabiĹĄ from his post as Minister of Finance in May (following question marks over ill-gotten gains from bonds issued by his company Agrofert) after an attempt to tender the entire cabinetâs resignation (in order to not let BabiĹĄ take up the role of victim) was rejected by President MiloĹĄ Zeman. The immediate run-up to the election has seen a breathtaking flood of scandals and mutual incriminations: BabiĹĄ is under a police investigation into fraudulent obtainment of subsidies in the ÄapĂ hnizdo case (prompting the leaders of numerous parties to rule out a coalition with âa criminally charged prime ministerâ); the ÄSSD Minister of Industry and Trade took the controversial step of unilaterally signing a memorandum on lithium extraction with an Australian company (with ANO accusing the ÄSSD of conspiring to âsteal lithiumâ and parliament convening for an extraordinary session just four days before the election); the Slovak Constitutional Court has reversed a previous court ruling absolving BabiĹĄ of collaboration with the Czechoslovak secret police (leading the ÄSSD candidate for prime minister, LubomĂr ZaorĂĄlek, to comment that âBabiĹĄâs past has caught up to himâ).
How, in the midst of all this, does BabiĹĄ manage to maintain a highly successful populist discourse â and what have the other parties been doing about it?
Understanding BabiĹĄâs Populism
Populism, based on the work of Ernesto Laclau, can be understood as a discursive logic of articulating an antagonistic frontier between a power block and a popular subject; âthe peopleâ is a contingent articulation of demands united in their negative dimension of non-fulfillment by a locus of power. Populism as a hegemony project, then, is always a balancing act between extending the equivalential chain onto the largest number of demands and giving them a sense of positive coherence through privileged points of signification or nodal points (e.g. in the form of shared values such as âsocial justiceâ). In all this (as Laclau himself noted), populism very much resembles the logic of the political as such, with the difference that the subject being represented is claimed to be no less than âthe peopleâ â a constitutively impossible construction that no discourse can maintain indefinitely, meaning that politics as a struggle for hegemony never ends â with its opposite, or constitutive outside, being âthe powerâ that rightfully belongs to it in a democracy and yet with which it can never be one (with the implication that populism, as noted by Canovan, is a âperennial possibilityâ built into any democracy).
BabiĹĄâs ANO, in its electoral debut in 2013 (in which it won a stunning 18.7% of the vote), pitted in its discourse a hard-working people against corrupt, incompetent âpoliticiansâ; perhaps its most famous billboard featured the slogan: âWe are not like politicians. We work.â After entering into government, however, ANOâs discourse has shifted away from a sweeping denunciation of âpoliticiansâ onto showcasing its record of competent (âhard-workingâ) management in government in demarcation from âthe traditional parties.â In the current electoral campaign, BabiĹĄ has defended his record as Finance Minister â especially in reducing public debt by 70 million KÄ â while promising large-scale public investments and wage and pension rises in the next government to the benefit of all (from doctors and teachers to those in the cultural sector). âWork,â in other words, functions as a nodal point with enough emptiness to accommodate a wide range of subject positions while bridging the partyâs record in the previous government with its promises for the next: âto fight for what is capable and hard-workingâ â in contrast to the âblabberâ of the other parties (as featured in the title photo of this article).
Contrary to crudely simplified accounts, BabiĹĄ is neither a Trump nor a Berlusconi nor an OrbĂĄn; his program does not call for an institutional (counter-)revolution or mass privatization of the state, nor is his construction of âthe peopleâ ethnically reductionist. His stance on immigration and asylum has been opportunistic: having welcomed refugees as an opportunity for the Czech labor market in September 2015, he has pursued a strategy of equivalential incorporation of anti-immigration demands (articulated above all by the protest mobilizations of the Block Against Islam and the electoral rise of Tomio Okamuraâs SPD) since then, going so far as to claim earlier this year that âthe ANO movement has been the leader of the anti-immigration agenda since the beginning.â Tellingly, BabiĹĄ has maintained a conspicuously two-faced line in relation to the SPD: while consistently ruling out a coalition with the SPD and denouncing its âunreal program,â he has affirmed that the two parties share the goal of âstopping immigration, the accountability of politicians, and direct democracy.â
Indeed, what is deeply problematic for Czech democracy consists in the openings that the ANO discourse has created for the SPDâs virulently anti-pluralist agenda, which has shadowed ANO like an evil twin in this election campaign: not content to merely sing the virtues of âwork,â Okamura openly demonizes âparasitesâ who âare capable of work but do not work long-termâ (and many of whose children, incidentally, âdonât know how to speak Czechâ); beyond just âstopping immigration,â the SPD calls for an outright ban on Islam as a âtotalitarian ideologyâ (and not a religion) and denounces the EU for opening the door to a âtotal Islamic invasionâ; openly expressing support for the likes of Trump, Le Pen, Wilders, and OrbĂĄn, Okamura also propagates the right-wing ârevolutionâ that BabiĹĄ has stopped short of calling.
Here, the pitfalls of a dominant populist discourse that seeks to maintain its populism from within government become evident. On the one hand, BabiĹĄ has predictably dismissed the criminal allegations in âthe psuedo-case of ÄapĂ hnizdoâ and even alleged following the Slovak court decision that âthe fingers of the mafia state are longâ â an attempt to maintain an antagonistic frontier between âpeopleâ and (a hidden locus of) âpowerâ even from a position of formal power. Yet while the ÄSSD and other âtraditional partiesâ have struggled to capitalize on BabiĹĄâs alleged corruption â with ANO hitting right back on the lithium memorandum (âWe wonât let the ÄSSD steal lithium just like OKD,â referring to yet another scandal involving the ÄSSDâs outgoing PM Sobotka) â the SPD has managed to present a radicalized discourse in which ANO is just another part of a corrupt, kleptocratic power block. Dubbing the lithium memorandum âthe theft of the century,â SPD campaign materials have depicted BabiĹĄ and Sobotka as robbers of the nationâs mineral resources. It is perhaps no coincidence that it is, in particular, the SPD that has gained in opinion polls in the final weeks of the electoral campaign that have coincided with BabiĹĄâs travails.
Countering BabiĹĄ: Between Anti-Populism and Counter-Populism
While the ÄSSD has attempted to call BabiĹĄ out on his own alleged corruption while outdoing ANOâs spending promises, the parties of the right have largely pursued an anti-populist discourse that articulates the main line of conflict as one between âdemocratsâ and âpopulists.â This is particularly pronounced in the case of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), which has painted the specter of an ANO-KSÄM-SPD alliance after the election: âSo that populists with communists wonât subjugate us â therefore Iâm voting ODSâ â thus replacing the familiar menace of a ÄSSD-KSÄM coalition as the go-to bogeyman of the right. In both cases, the logic has been one of alleging an unholy alliance that is nonetheless formally ruled out by the main competitor: just as the ÄSSD has ruled out a coalition with the KSÄM and âother extremist partiesâ since the BohumĂn resolution of 1995, BabiĹĄ has repeatedly ruled out both the KSÄM and the SPD as coalition partners.
Indeed, the shift from a left/right toward a populism/anti-populism conflict as articulated in the discourses of political parties can be seen in TOP 09 chairman Miroslav Kalousekâs resolute opposition to ANO-KSÄM-SPD coupled with a willingness to form a coalition âwith all other democratic partiesâ after the election, explicitly including the ÄSSD â a previously unthinkable proposition. In particular, the animosity between BabiĹĄ and Kalousek, BabiĹĄâs predecessor as Finance Minister (2010-13) whom the ANO chairman has singled out as a âsymbol of corruption,â can be seen as a symbol of the new conflict in Czech politics.
The Czech Pirate Party, which is expected to finish above the 5% threshold for entering parliament, represents an interesting case featuring elements of a counter-populism opposed to both ANO and the targets of ANOâs populism. In a sense, the party â being the latest extra-parliamentary newcomer â has taken up ANOâs original mantle of opposition to all the âpoliticiansâ that have come before them, with chairman Ivan BartoĹĄ attributing widespread mistrust in politics to the fact that âthese politicians [such as Miroslav Kalousek and outgoing Minister of the Interior Milan Chovanec] havenât even stepped down for twenty years.â Accordingly, the party has ruled out coalitions not only with âundemocratic parties, which are for us KSÄM and SPD,â but also with âpeople who have a corrupt pastâ including BabiĹĄ â with discussions being a possibility only with an âANO that BabiĹĄ, Jaroslav FaltĂ˝nek and all employees of Agrofert will leave.â
Whatever the exact outcome of the election, it is looking very much likely that something will have to give: a mathematical majority of ANO, KSÄM, and SPD will mean that not even the widest possible anti-populist coalition would be able to govern, while BabiĹĄ may well have to either renounce his claim on the premiership or retract his pledge to not work with the KSÄM and the SPD. In other words: in a discursive field that remains as fluid as ever, one can expect further displacements in the antagonistic frontiers in the coming weeks.
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