Complex Futures : Problems and Performance of Populism

Book reviews. Reviewed works: Was ist Populismus? Ein Essay / Jan-Werner Müller. - Surhkamp, 2016. 160 pages. ISBN 9783518075227 & Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation / Benjamin Moffitt. - Stanford University Press, 2016. 224 pages. ISBN 9780804799331.Non peer reviewe

'Practicing “Europe” : Georg Lukács, Ágnes Heller, and the Budapest School' in Decentering European Intellectual Space

This chapter explores the cases of two generations of Budapest School through Georg Lukács and Ágnes Heller as transnational intellectuals, and by doing so, investigates from a post-foundational perspective the articulation of Europe through practices. What emerges isa Europe both imagined and physical, divided and asymmetrical. Crucially, it comesabout through its own limits.Taking issue with two left-wing theorists recently demonized in Hungary, thechapter also discusses how the national, the European,and the global are intertwined: the simple opposition of national and cosmopolitan sometimes assumeddoes not hold. The Budapest School, emigrating from Hungary in the 1970s, was established as a conscious effort globally. Here the roles of Ferenc Fehér and Ivan Szelényi were crucial for the emergence of the School as an international node for Western Marxist theory from the East, which challenged the division of East and West during the Cold War era.The chapter invites us to reflect upon the conscious strategies of academic branding, power structures, and personal experience of getting possibilities to cross frontiers, and ponder the asymmetries that continue to have positive and negative impacts on European and global academic life. They generate alternative centers of knowledge but also impede the free exploration of new worlds. Georg Lukács, Ágnes Heller, Ivan Szelényi, Budapest School, intellectuals, EuropePeer reviewe

Performing the nation : the Janus-faced populist foundations of illiberalism in Hungary

Hungary once represented a school-book case of transition to democracy. Now it offers insights into both contemporary Europe and theories of populism and nationalism. Resisting the traditional linear perspective to transition and a ‘demographic’ view of democracy, this article explores the relationships among democracy, populism and nationalism. This article operationalises performative and post-foundational theory of populism as a logic of articulation to explain Fidesz and the party leader Viktor Orbán’s illiberal measures, dichotomies between them and us, ultimately leading to nationalism and xenophobia. It shows how revolution, ‘illiberalism’ and migrants have served for populist meaning-making and are related to the political polarisation in Hungary. This article enhances the understanding of democracy by discussing the performative features of nation-building, populism and law-making in contemporary politics and finally the ‘Janus-face’ of populism. It sees 1989 as a populist moment of constitution of the foundations of a new era but also of the people central to democracy, and recognises attempts to generate similar moments in the 2010s.Peer reviewe

Building a New City through a New Discourse : Street Naming Revolutions in Budapest

Peer reviewe

Democracy vs. demography : Rethinking politics and the people as debate

Rise of populist politics in the 21s century calls scholars and politicians alike to reflect upon the question of how politics and democracy have been understood. Drawing on the theory of hegemony, this article establishes a distinction between democracy and 'demography' as a key line of conceptualization in politics. It highlights a central misunderstanding at the core of the demonization of populism: For radical democratic theory, 'the people' is not a demographic, socio-economic, or historically sedimented category tied to some characteristics, but a performative process of 'being' and 'becoming' 'the people' as a self-consciously enacted polity. This statement challenges the taken-for-granted status of subjectivities of political struggle and links this approach to other contemporary discussions of politics, democracy, and populism. After discussing how anti, neo and post-foundational theoretical accounts on populism reveal a dimension of politics and representation, this article emphasizes action and performativity over static categories and models characteristic of political realism and political system approaches.Peer reviewe

Nordic populists as hegemony challengers

Peer reviewe

Nordic Populist Parties as Hegemony Challengers

This chapter explores populism in Nordic countries where there is a long tradition of heterogeneous, populist parties with incompatible political ideologies transforming over decades. Populist parties have emerged as a reaction to dominant thinking in each of the political contexts. Theoretically, generating a typology between populist parties, people divide populist parties into mainstream and fringe populist parties. Mainstream populists seek to take over political space as a whole from a central position in the core of politics, as one of the larger and often traditional parties. Fringe populist parties and movements would challenge all the other parties from a supposed outside. Consensus culture in politics is present in all Nordic countries but political systems differ. Nordic populist parties have experienced waves of popularity related to different grievances and protests: from elitism in the 1960s to taxes in the 1970s–1980s and to immigration from the 1980s and onward.Peer reviewe

Post-Political Development and Emancipation : Urban Participatory Projects in Helsinki

Peer reviewe

Rupture and continuity

Le concept de révolution joue un rôle important dans la vie politique hongroise, qu’il traduise un sentiment de continuité ou de rupture. L’écriture de l’histoire de la Hongrie s’est opérée en mettant l’accent sur l’idée d’un continuum historique entrecoupé de révolutions. Ce sont ces dernières que les élites politiques parvenues au pouvoir ont interprété tour à tour à leur façon. Ainsi, la victoire électorale éclatante du parti Fidesz au printemps 2010 – qui lui a donné une majorité parlementaire historique lui offrant même la possibilité d’effectuer des révisions constitutionnelles – a été bâtie sur l’idée de « révolution » puis nommée rétrospectivement comme telle. En adoptant une approche théorique du discours inspirée par le travail d’Ernesto Laclau, cette communication entend montrer comment le concept de « révolution » a agi dans la vie politique hongroise à la fois comme un signifiant diffus (« a floating signifier » selon la terminologie de Laclau) et un mythe. La révolution se voit ainsi attribuer de nouveaux sens et est renvoyée à différents contextes afin de légitimer le changement tout en entretenant l’illusion de la continuité avec la tradition politique nationale – tandis qu’elle formule cette tradition elle-même. En définitive, il s’agit d’aborder le paradoxe selon lequel, dans ces circonstances, une révolution est considérée comme une rupture

Rupture and continuity

Le concept de révolution joue un rôle important dans la vie politique hongroise, qu’il traduise un sentiment de continuité ou de rupture. L’écriture de l’histoire de la Hongrie s’est opérée en mettant l’accent sur l’idée d’un continuum historique entrecoupé de révolutions. Ce sont ces dernières que les élites politiques parvenues au pouvoir ont interprété tour à tour à leur façon. Ainsi, la victoire électorale éclatante du parti Fidesz au printemps 2010 – qui lui a donné une majorité parlementaire historique lui offrant même la possibilité d’effectuer des révisions constitutionnelles – a été bâtie sur l’idée de « révolution » puis nommée rétrospectivement comme telle. En adoptant une approche théorique du discours inspirée par le travail d’Ernesto Laclau, cette communication entend montrer comment le concept de « révolution » a agi dans la vie politique hongroise à la fois comme un signifiant diffus (« a floating signifier » selon la terminologie de Laclau) et un mythe. La révolution se voit ainsi attribuer de nouveaux sens et est renvoyée à différents contextes afin de légitimer le changement tout en entretenant l’illusion de la continuité avec la tradition politique nationale – tandis qu’elle formule cette tradition elle-même. En définitive, il s’agit d’aborder le paradoxe selon lequel, dans ces circonstances, une révolution est considérée comme une rupture