Interview with Prof. Ruzha Smilova on Depoliticization, Populism, and Bulgaria

Ruzha Smilova: The rise and success of populism in CEE has preoccupied political analysts already at the time the countries in the region acceded to the EU and started backsliding on democratic norms and practices. A whole academic industry, which is studying populism both in the region and beyond, rapidly developed. Political theory is also contributing to the effort to understand populism by conceptualizing the diverse sources and manifestations of the populist phenomenon. As a researcher within the EU-funded project PaCE (Populism and Civic Engagement1), I have studied the causal mechanisms that explain the rise and success of populist parties and movements in Europe.2 Prominent among these is the reaction of voters to the shrinking policy space. This trend of turning liberal democracies into “democracy without choice” (Krastev 2002) has long been noted. In such a regime democratic say of the citizens becomes irrelevant: people may be able to change government but not its policies, as these have been outsourced to non-elected, democratically unaccountable bodies. It is this process of emptying democracy of its democratic content that is referred to as “depoliticization”. Some identify the cartelisation of party systems in developed democracies as the primary source of depoliticization (Katz, Mair 1995). As a result of growing cartelization (but also due to other forms of outsourcing democratic decision-making), the perceptions of political inefficacy – that one can change the government but not its policies – become widespread. This alienates voters from mainstream parties, who offer the same policy menu despite nominal ideological differences in their platforms. A further major source of voter alienation from mainstream parties is the growing perception that elected governments are not sufficiently responsive, as they often respond not to their electorates but to other (external or internal) constraints and pressures – be these from international markets or national businesses, or even from media empires acting as “PR divisions of business groups” (Smilova 2014). Parties in government often fail to ensure the desired balance between responsible (acting responsibly in performing its governmental functions vis-à-