Populism beyond populism: Uncovering tribalism in Slovakia

Even in a region overrun with successful populist parties, Slovakia is an outlier. Between the national populist Vladimir Mečiar governments in the 1990s and left populist Robert Fico’s success with SMER from 2006 onwards, Slovakia’s political system never had a chance to crystalize into an establishment before there were successful anti-establishment parties. Currently, at least four of Slovakia’s parliamentary parties could be classified as populist, from the center-left SMER to the right-wing extremist People’s Party - Our Slovakia, and together these parties and their coalition partners hold 113 out of 150 seats in the Slovak parliament. Slovakia is also unique among its Visegrad 4 neighbors in that it is the only country with a significant, politically active ethnic minority group — the 8.3% of ethnically Hungarian Slovak citizens — living within its borders. Slovakia thus offers a unique opportunity to add nuance to our understanding of the phenomenon of populism. Even elsewhere in the Visegrad 4, studies regarding populist attitudes have found that “populist” support as such may not be as high as previously expected. One of the main features of populism is people-centrism, meaning the will of the people as the final source of legitimacy. Yet in the flagship populists countries of the region, Poland and Hungary, people-centrism was not higher among the supporters of populist parties than in the general population. Instead, what emerged was the need for a strong leader and black and white thinking (Krekó et al., 2018). This may suggest that people supporting populist parties don’t see politicians as the voice of “the people”, but a voice of their group, and their group only. While there are parties in the Slovak political arena that could be characterized as populist, we argue, that — partly because of the political fragmentation — they don’t aim to mobilize “the people'' against “the corrupt elite”. Instead, they aim to articulate and mobilize “their people” through certain identity-relevant issues, presenting themselves as the true representatives of certain groups only. Relying on a post-foundationalist approach, we suggest that instead of populism, this practice could be better understood through “tribalism”. While populism seeks to draw antagonistic frontiers between “the people” and “the other” in order to define and mobilize supporters, tribalism seeks to articulate, emphasise, and differentiate particular identities in order to create divides and mobilize supporters. This study will therefore seek to operationalize tribalism as a concept, relying on the methodological basis of post-foundational rhetoric performative analysis. Empirically, this study will collect Facebook data from the leaders of the four Slovak parties that we understand as populist (Ordinary People, We Are Family, Direction - Social Democracy, People’s Party - Our Slovakia) and the two major Hungarian Slovak political parties (MKP, Most-Híd) surrounding the 2020 parliamentary elections in Slovakia. Through this case, we can differentiate tribalism from the broader phenomenon of populism and explain the success of populist parties in Slovakia.