The Discursive Construction of Crisis
Hungary’s Spiral to Populism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12918210 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Zsófia Nagy (0000-0003-1212-7351, Eötvös Loránd University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 130-133 |
| Publication date | 2020-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Communication Culture and Critique (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1753-9137 • E-ISSN: 1753-9129 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ccc/tcz053 |
| OpenAlex | W3011494664 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 2 |
At the time of writing this piece, 51% of the Hungarian population believes that George Soros, Hungarian-born philanthropist and billionaire, is organizing migration across Hungary in order to replace Europeans with migrants (Political Capital, 2018). The toolbox utilized by the Hungarian populist government works effectively—what is needed is insight into how exactly it operates. We know what populists do, but we are at a loss for words when trying to explain what makes them successful. In the blossoming literature on populism, it is often argued that crisis—as an exogenous factor—would explain populism’s rise. Brubaker talks of a “perfect storm” of crises (the economic crisis of 2008–9, the refugee and security crisis of 2015, the crisis of European institutions, and a crisis of “public knowledge”) that come together to create an opportunity for populists (Brubaker, 2018). The problem with such explanations is that they fail to problematize the notion of crisis and that the populism-crisis nexus remains under-theorized (Moffitt, 2015). Regarding the former: I approach populism here as a discursive strategy and will point to three key features that most definitions share: (a) the positive imagination of the “people” (Rucht, 2018: 68), (b) an antagonism between the in-group and the outgroup, and (c) a reference to the volonté general. Regarding the latter, agreeing with Moffitt I think that rather than seeing crisis as an external variable, “performance of crisis should be seen as internal to populism.” Moffitt identifies six steps in this performance. In what follows I narrate how these play out in the Hungarian case
Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Populism · Sociology · Central European and Russian historical studies · German legal, social, and political studies · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Law
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2024 (5) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |