Suchergebnisse

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.

"Last year Anatolij Morozov and Lilija Siricenko published a study on the Common Agricultural Policy of the countries of the European Union at the University of Cerkasi (Ukraine). This study served as the starting point for the author's reflections, as it offers a much-needed sounding board helpful for both insiders and outsiders of the EU, for it echoes the tensions between high European hopes and increasing counterclaims in the wider Southeast European region originating from a Russian or Turkish sphere of political and economic influence. The study, and the author of this commentary, invite Europeans to count their blessings and, at the same time, warn those striving for admittance to the EU to perform a 'reality check' on their readiness for European integration." (author's abstract)