NATIONALIST POPULISM AND POST-COMMUNISM

Party (Slovenská národná strana – SNS), Christian-Democratic Movement (Kresťansko-demokratické hnutie – KDH), Party of the Democratic Left (Strana demokratickej ľavice – SDĽ) and the minority-oriented Movement Coexistence (Spolužitie) and Hungarian Civic Party (Maďarská občianska strana – MOS). Although the last two are minority parties, representing the Hungarian minority in particular, their positions in the elections were different than in the case of the national minority parties in Poland. The election law gave both Spolužitie and MOS the same status as the “Slovak” parties, which meant that they had to compete with their Slovak counterparts for parliament seats. The categorisation of the political parties competing in the 1992 elections follows the same pattern as in the Polish case. Firstly, a general categorisation dividing the political parties according the presence or non-presence of nationalist populist slogans in their manifestos is made. Secondly, an analysis of the party programmes is conducted in order to identify the most “active” political parties, in terms of the usage of nationalist populist rhetoric. General categorisation – the presence of nationalist populist slogans in the programmes of political parties: I. Parties, whose political programmes do not contain any nationalist populist statements: --- II. Political parties, whose political programmes contain nationalist populist statements: Hnutie za demokratické Slovensko / Movement for Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) Kresťansko-demokratické hnutie / Christian-Democratic Movement (KDH) Strana demokratickej ľavice / Party of the Democratic Left ( SDĽ) Slovenská národná strana / Slovak National Party ( SNS) III. Parties of national minorities Maďarská občianska strana / Hungarian Civic Party (MOS) Spolužitie / Coexistence

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