Search

Search Results

• About the ideological dimensions of fear

  74-111

  Beáta Kovács

  Views:

  6

  The main goal of of my research is to explore the right and left dimensions of the phenomenon of fear. I would like to argue that the categories of left and right continue to be defining aspects of political identities, and by mapping their emotional structure we can better understand the current relevance of these ideologies. The studies that have examined political fears have mostly linked fear to conservativism and right wing-populism, while the fears of the left have generated far less scientific interest. A study also wants to respond to this research gap. In this paper, I would like to present the potential connection points between fear and ideological identity. The structure of the study is as follows: first, I outline the relationship between ideology and moral emotions, and then I analyze fear as a moral emotion. After that I present how fear is connected to conservatism and right-wing populism, and then I try to illustrate the ideological differences with two types of politically relevant fear, i.e. climate anxiety and migration-related fear. Finally, I add context to these specific political fears that is I also interpret them in the Hungarian political system. The study ends with drawing conclusions and outlining future research directions.

• Trojan horse and fig leaf: the role of populism in the global crisis of democracy and the postmodern autocracies

  30-61

  István Benedek

  Views:

  20

  It is my contention that populism could be an appropriate framework to understand and link the phenomena of global crisis of democracy and spread of postmodern autocracies. In order to substantiate this claim with the method of literature review, I have examined first the characteristics of these phenomena and then I have focused the nature of relationship between them, in particular with regard to the complex system of stability of new types of autocracies, in which, I think, populism playing a key role. Populism, understood it as an autocratic interpretation of democracy and representation, could be a particularly dangerous Trojan horse for democracy. Above all, because of its idea of a single, homogeneous and authentic people that can be genuinely represented only by populists, and because of this representative claim is a moralized form of antipluralism. In addition, populism is also an important feature of postmodern autocracies, especially of electoral autocracy. By means of populism, it is possible for these regimes to camouflage and even legitimise the autocratic trends and exercise of power, as well as the creation an uneven playing field for political contestation behind their formally multi-party elections and democratic façade. As a radical turn towards traditional forms of autocracies would be too expensive, postmodern autocrats need manipulated multi-party elections and other plebiscite techniques that could serve as quasi-democratic legitimation, as well as populism that could transform political contestation to a life-and-death struggle and, provides other important cognitive functions. Therefore, populist autocracy, as a paradigmatic type of postmodern autocracies, will remain with us for a long time, giving more and more tasks to researchers involved in them.