The Risk of the Growing Populism and the European

Transcript:The Risk of the Growing Populism and the European:
The Risk of the Growing Populism and the European Elections A brief overview of the Romanian case Mihai SEBE, P.h.D international relations coordinator, ADO Romania NGO expert, European Institute of Romania E-mail: mihai.sebe@yahoo.com; mihai.sebe@adoromania.ro *This publication received financial support from the European Parliament. Sole liability rests with the author and the European Parliament is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. * * The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization he is connected to. I. What is populism and why do we must take it seriously into consideration? A short review of the term and its meanings in the last decades Populism can be defined as an antagonistic political doctrine where we have two sides in an apparent irreconcilable conflict between the many, and yet weak, and the few but powerful – the mass versus the elite: “any of various, often anti-establishment or anti-intellectual political movements or philosophies that offer unorthodox solutions or policies and appeal to the common person rather than according with traditional party or partisan ideologies” . Today, populism appeals to people from all social classes, not just the poor and the uneducated that are discontent with politics and it often generates short-term bursts of political engagement, but often with no visible continuation other than the perturbation of the established order and the lack of viable, long-term solutions. It does not propose a viable and self-sustaining approach to day politics. Ghiță Ionescu and Ernest Gellner have provided us in their work POPULISM. Its Meaning and National Characteristics, published in 1969 with some of the first working definitions “There can, at present, be no doubt about the importance of populism. But no-one is quite clear just what it is. As a doctrine or as a movement, it is elusive and protean. It bobs up everywhere, but in many and contradictory shapes. Does it have any underlying unity? Or does one name cover a multitude of unconnected tendencies?” The difficulty to identify populism is increased by what Margaret Canovan notices in her 1999 article called Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy. She clearly states that populism is inextricably link to democracy, being perceived “as a shadow cast by democracy itself” as, in Canovan’s own words, the “democracy as we