Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines the actions and discourses of the main peasant parties and movements in Romania, Poland and Bulgaria during the inter-war period. Ideologically and discursively, peasant parties were a heterogeneous amalgamate of anarchist, Marxist, socialist and liberal (and sometimes even conservative or nationalist) ideas. In defining the populism as a repertoire of actions and/or discourses, rather than the unchanging essence of a party, it shows that the three agrarian parties have known a “populist moment”, i.e. temporarily taking recourse to claims of representing “the people” and extra-parliamentary action. While the Bulgarian peasant party never resorted to populist actions, the Romanian agrarian party had its moment of populism without a significant shift in rhetoric and the Polish peasant party never resorted to populism neither in either rhetoric or actions.
Author: Wim van Meurs
Institution: Radboud University Nijmegen
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2997274103