Stanisław Tymiński (Święte Psy, 1990)

Beginning in the late 1980s, Eastern Europe shifted from being a political backwater to a political bellwether. By shrugging off the Soviet yoke and exiting communism, the region pointed toward the future collapse of the Soviet Union and the cresting of a third wave of democratization. The fast-track liberalizations of Eastern Europe in the 1990s encouraged similar bouts of deregulation and marketization elsewhere in the world. The disintegration of Yugoslavia presaged centrifugal conflicts that would engulf Libya, Sudan, and Ukraine.

And if you want to understand the popularity of Donald Trump in the United States, Javier Milei in Argentina, and Giorgia Meloni in Italy, the global backlash against liberalism first acquired its distinctive right-wing populist flavor in Eastern Europe, beginning with hapless presidential hopeful Stanislaw Tyminski in 1990. The failure of liberal parties in the region to usher in broad prosperity—and the creation of distinct post-communist classes of haves and have-nots—led directly to the rise of right-wing populist parties and politicians. Even the egalitarian effect of European Union transfers was not enough to prevent the success of Viktor Orban in Hungary, Robert Fico in Slovakia, and the Law and Justice Party in Poland.

Today, the region is torn between broadly liberal, pro-EU politicians and their broadly illiberal, nationalist, and xenophobic rivals. What separates the two is often just a percentage or two at the polls. In Romania, a representative of that first group, pro-EU presidential candidate Nicusor Dan, won last week’s election but only after a pair of far-right opponents nearly pulled off an upset victory.

In Poland, meanwhile, the political winds blew in the other direction, as Karol Nawrocki nosed past the pro-EU candidate. It was a very close election, with Nawrocki garnering 50.89 percent of the vote and his opponent getting 49.11 percent. Nawrocki is linked to the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS), and he has now become a major obstacle in the path of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s plan to bring Poland back into the European mainstream.

Over the last decade, the world has suffered bouts of political whiplash as right-wing populists and their opponents have battled it out at the ballot box. In the United States, Trump has come back for a second term after besting liberal Kamala Harris while the progressive standard-bearer Lula has returned to office in Brazil after the defeat of “Trump of the Tropics” Jair Bolsonaro. Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, after leaving government in disgrace in 2019, won the general elections last year (only to be squeezed out of power by three other parties joining together to form a coalition government). After elections this week, South Korean progressives will return to government after losing by a tiny margin last time around.

To be sure, some autocrats— like Orban, Narendra Modi in India, and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador—have proven almost election-proof. And some progressive parties, like Morena in Mexico, have also remained in power across terms.

But the polarization of politics in Eastern Europe, which has already produced wild swings at the polls, points to a new era of instability when election results are hard to predict because the electorate is so evenly........

© CounterPunch