NATIONALIST POPULISM AND POST-COMMUNISM

interests of the society, but rather the homogenisation of the electorate. Since ethnic nationalism can easily be used in the processes of political mobilisation, ethnic prejudice and animosity toward “others” was widely exploited in the political statements and appeals of the political elite. 6.3 Cross-time comparison – beginning of the 1990s and ten years later It can be argued that media statements and party slogans reflected the main issues connected with the political, economic and social development of the examined countries. Therefore, there was a need to monitor the party slogans and media statements for certain period of time, in order to analyse changes in their thematic orientation. Due to limited time and resources, the monitoring periods were reduced to important election years in two different phases of the transformation: the initial phase (beginning of the 1990s) and the pre-EU accession phase (ten years later). The analysis revealed three important findings. First of all, the number of nationalist populist statements in the party programmes and media discourse was significantly lower in 2001 when compared to the situation ten years prior. This conclusion applies to both countries, and might be partly interpreted by a decreasing number of political parties competing in the elections. Secondly, even though several new issues were introduced into both the Polish and Slovak political discourses in the course of ten years, a number of other issues – especially those related to the ethnic “others” – survived over time. Finally, another common feature was the apparent personal continuity of the political elite. Most of the political actors known in the beginning of the 1990s remained active in political life a decade later, even though the majority of them occupied different positions. The dynamics of the changes in the political discourses was examined according to the same categories as in the case of the cross-country comparison. Positive national self-presentation A positive perception of their respective nations was common for both the Slovak and Polish political elite. In both cases, the political parties and their leaders continuously claimed that their nation was exceptional due to various reasons, and deserved special attention and exceptional treatment. They tended to present themselves as custodians of the national memory and guarantors of the future development of the nation. Obviously, they also distinguished themselves from the other parties or “internal others”, who were accused of not serving the interests of their nation and state.

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