Сonservative populism in Italy and Estonia: playing the multicultural card and engaging “domestic others”

ABSTRACT

U-turns by populist parties are not a new phenomenon. The 2021 electoral campaign in Estonia was marked by episodes that combined cultural hybridity and political opportunism. The nationalist Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) was reprimanded by the Language Inspectorate for using Russian-language campaign posters with no Estonian translation. The same party was celebrating Estonian independence with a concert performing Soviet-time popular music. These episodes appeared quite surprising in the Estonian context, but not unique in a wider European perspective. We tackle the following question: why and how national conservative parties appeal to groups previously treated as domestic others.

KEYWORDS:

• Conservative populism
• domestic others
• Estonia
• Italy

Acknowledgement

The authors are extremely grateful to Ms Kristel Birgit Põtsepp for the invaluable help in the process of data collection and interpretation of the original sources.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 www.archive.org

2 EKRE's membership in the far-right European Alliance of Peoples and Nation – initiated by Matteo Salvini on the eve of the forthcoming European Parliament's elections – marks a clear discontinuity with other signatories of the Bauska Declaration, and, in general, with the Baltic and Eastern European far-right. The main reason behind the Polish and Baltic differences towards the alliance is exactly its member parties’ attitude towards Russia. Salvini's Lega, Alternative for Germany, and Marine Le Pen's French National Rally are considered to be among the Kremlin's closest allies in Europe. These parties have consistently advocated for a more Russia-friendly approach, including the removal of the sanctions against Moscow, and appeasement when it comes to Crimea both at home and at the EU level. The group is consistently the most Russia-friendly in Strasbourg.

3 In the programme for the European elections 2014, macro-regions are defined as “the ‘optimal areas’ and territories with a different extension from the nation states and characterized by cultural, social, and economic homogeneity.

4 The “Bauska declaration”, signed in August 2013 by Lithuania's Nationalist Union, Latvia's National Alliance, and Estonia's EKRE, defines a common ideological platform for the Baltic national conservative movements and a forum for their cooperation

5 Together with conservative Pro Patria and Jüri Ratas’ Centre Party.

6 The agreement, signed in 2004 and frozen in 2016, has been annulled in 2022.

7 Interview in Narva, August 18, 2021.

8 Interview in Narva, August 27, 2021.

9 A good example was Henn Põlluaas’ visit to Narva in July 2021 as part of his presidential campaign; his public appearance boiled down to the performative distribution of balloons with EKRE's logo. Another illustrative event was the celebration of the Estonian Independence Day in Narva in August 2021 marked by performative and largely symbolic projection of the Trumpist style (“Make Narva Great Again'') on the local soil.

10 Interview in Narva, August 20, 2021.

11 Interview in Narva, August 19, 2021.

12 Interview in Narva, August 20, 2021.

13 Interview in Narva, November 4, 2021.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Programme under grant agreement [No 822682] “Populist rebellion against modernity in twenty-first-century Eastern Europe: neo-traditionalism and neo-feudalism - POPREBEL”.

Notes on contributors

Stefano Braghiroli

Stefano Braghiroli is Associate Professor in European Studies at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies of the University of Tartu. He currently serves as director of the Master's programmes in “European Studies” and “European Union – Russia Studies” offered by the same institute. He received his PhD in Comparative and European Politics from the University of Siena (Italy) in 2010. His main research interests include party politics in the European Parliament, EU-Russia relations, regional integration, and party-based populism and euro-scepticism. His most recent publications include articles in the European Politics and Society, Contemporary Italian Politics, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Religion, State and Society, and Journal of Legislative Studies and various book chapters. He serves as academic coordinator of the Jean Monnet Module “Neighbourhood, Enlargement, and Regionalism in Europe” (NearEU).

Andrey Makarychev

Andrey Makarychev is Professor of Regional Political Studies at the University of Tartu Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies. He teaches courses on “Globalization”, “Political Systems in post-Soviet Space”, “EU-Russia Relations”, “Regional Integration in post-Soviet Space”, “Visual Politics”, and “The Essentials of Biopolitics”. He is the author of Popular Biopolitics and Populism at Europe's Eastern Margins (Brill, 2022), and co-authored three monographs: Celebrating Borderlands in a Wider Europe: Nations and Identities in Ukraine, Georgia and Estonia (Nomos, 2016), Lotman's Cultural Semiotics and the Political (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), and Critical Biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: from Populations to Nations (Lexington Books, 2020). He co-edited a number of academic volumes: Mega Events in post-Soviet Eurasia: Shifting Borderlines of Inclusion and Exclusion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Vocabularies of International Relations after the Crisis in Ukraine (Routledge, 2017); Borders in the Baltic Sea Region: Suturing the Ruptures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). His articles have been published in such academic journals as Geopolitics, Problems of Post-Communism, East European Politics and Societies, European Urban and Regional Studies, among others.