Populism in Croatia: The Curious Case of The Bridge (Most)

Abstract

The main goal of the paper is to establish to which extent it is justified to label a newly established Croatian party The Bridge (Most) a populist party. in order to answer this question, the paper relies on theoretical, methodological and empirical insights from contemporary literature on populism. The study is based on inclusive approach to populism and accordingly developed categories for content analysis. The analysis only partially confirms the assumption that Most is a populist option. The authors suggest that Most is best described as a combination of centrist populism and an anti-establishment reform party. They suggest that populism research would benefit from distinguishing between anti-elitist and anti-establishment position of parties and politicians. finally, they argue that the 'curiosity' of Most stems primarily from their awkward and paradoxical relationship towards Croatian political elite: Most's politicians criticise political elite for being incompetent and corrupt, while at the same time advocating alliance with this same elite in order to implement reforms and bring prosperity to Croatian society.

Varieties of Populist Parties and Party Systems in Europe: From State-of-the-Art to the Application of a Novel Classification Scheme to 66 Parties in 33 Countries

“…Although any political actor may occasionally adopt populist rhetoric and messages, by adopting the ideational approach it is possible to identify the political parties for which populism represents a core ideological concept (Mudde 2004(Mudde , 2007 and, as such, constitutes a decisive feature of their belief system and identity. Following an 'inclusive' approach to ideology (Sainsbury 1980: 8), it thus becomes possible to identify the ideas that are central for the identity of a party, even those that claim a 'post-ideological' or 'non-ideological' character (which is, ironically, an ideological claim in itself), such as the M5S in Italy (Zulianello 2019a: 32), GERB in Bulgaria (Todorov 2018), MOST in Croatia (Grbeša and Šalaj 2017) and ANO 2011 in the Czech Republic (Siaroff 2019). 1 Given its nature as a thin-centred ideology, populism is commonly attached to other, additional, ideological elements (thick or thin) that are crucial for its capacity to convey political meaning to the voters (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013).…”

Ideology, Partisanship, and Change

“…This was also the year in which the parliamentary election ended in an even result between the HDZ-led center-right and the SDP center-left blocks, leaving the newcomer centrist populist and anti-establishment reform party Most, a heterogenous coalition of independent mayors and local lists, to play the kingmaker (cf. Grbeša and Šalaj, 2017).…”

European populism before the pandemic: ideology, Euroscepticism, electoral performance, and government participation of 63 parties in 30 countries

“…There are some cases where we do not classify a party as populist, which The PopuList does classify in this way and these are: Bridge of Independent Lists (Most) in Croatia, Sinn Féin in Ireland (which we feel should be classified the same way in the United Kingdom as it is the same party), and Italian Left (SI) in Italy. Most is essentially a centrist anti-establishment party (Grbeša and Šalaj, 2017). Sinn Féin presents itself as a republican left party and is best categorised as 'policy-seeking' (Mainwairing and McGraw, 2019).…”

“…The moderate right party, founded and led by Božo Petrov, was a kingmaker both in the 2015 general election and the snap election called in 2016. The party is concerned with good governance and liberal reforms, and while it bears an anti-establishment profile, it does not qualify as a fully fledged case of populism (Grbeša and Šalaj, 2017). 5 Croatia has two populist parties represented in parliament: the left-libertarian Human Shield (ZZ) and the right-wing Croatian Democratic Alliance of Slavonia and Baranja (HDSSB).…”