A Popular Political Leadership: Social Movements and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The phenomenon of social movements and their actors entering formal politics to contest elections and challenge extant elites has, over the past decade, become widespread across Europe. These movements propose both a new type of discourse and political leadership. Where and when this has happened in Eastern Europe, with social movements gaining terrain and registering important electoral performance in local and national politics, there is immediate historical resonance with the collapse of communism and the transition to liberal democracy. Nearly three decades later, the unconventional formation of these new political actors and their electoral performances begs a number of questions: How close are they to populists, both ‘good’ and ‘bad’? What does their emergence suggest about the conventional way of doing politics? Does expertise matter? What does the leadership of these movements looks like? We seek to attract papers that directly answer these questions, particularly from a comparative perspective drawing on cases from across the region broadly defined (including the Balkans, the Baltic region and the Caucasus).