Abstract
This article argues that while nationalist discourses construct “the people” through positive identity practices, populist discourses articulate it through negative identity practices. Nationalism emphasizes who “the people” are, by identifying a number of core positive characteristics that they share, such as ethnicity, language, culture, history, religion, or political rights and civic traditions. Populism, on the other hand, defines “the people” primarily in a negative fashion in opposition to the elites. Here, “the people” do not share any positive characteristics beyond their oppression, exclusion, and marginalization by the elites. In order to empirically demonstrate the above distinction, I compare the political discourse of Rafael Correa in Ecuador during his first term in office (2007–2012) with that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, primarily during his second term in office (2010–2014). The comparison between these two political projects not only spells out important differences between populist and nationalist articulations of “the people” but also highlights different types of anti-system politics that have emerged in Latin America and eastern Europe.
Introduction
The aim of this article is twofold. First, it purports to clarify the distinction between populist and nationalist politics by showing how they differ in the construction of “the people” as a political subject. The main argument of the article is that nationalist discourses construct “the people” through positive identification practices that identify a number of positive core characteristics that they share. Populist discourses, on the other hand, articulate “the people” through negative identification practices in opposition to the elites. While “the people” of nationalism are defined positively through their shared characteristics, from ethnicity, language, and religion to civic and political rights, “the people” of populism are defined negatively as “not the elite.” Hence, they do not share any specific positive characteristics beyond their oppression and marginalization. In other words, nationalism in its different forms defines who the people are, whereas populism focuses primarily on who the people are not.
The second aim of the article is to utilize the above theoretical distinction in order to show that while anti-system politics in Latin America defines “the people” primarily in populist terms, anti-system actors in eastern Europe define “the people” primarily (although not exclusively) in nationalist terms. To this end, I compare the construction of “the people” by Rafael Correa and his movement Citizen Revolution (Revolución Ciudadana), in his first term in office in Ecuador (2007–2012), with the construction of “the people” in the speeches of Viktor Orbán, during his second term in office as leader of Fidesz in Hungary (2010–2014). While “the people” of Correa were defined primarily by their opposition to, and oppression by, the elites, “the people” of Viktor Orbán were defined primarily by their Hungarian identity, which consisted of a shared ethnicity, (conservative) culture, language, religion, history, and territory.
Such differences reflect, in part, the different socio-economic contexts of Latin America and central Europe. The majority of states in the latter consist of societies that are quite homogeneous racially and ethnically, especially compared with Latin America. Hence, articulating “the people” as an ethnically homogeneous entity is politically convenient in these societies. Most of the states in Latin America, on the other hand, consist of multi-racial and multi-ethnic societies. Such heterogeneous social composition combined with very high levels of inequality (much higher than in central Europe) means that in Latin America a populist articulation that defines the poor and marginalized masses against a small and very wealthy elite is far more feasible than a nationalist articulation that identifies some core characteristics of “the people.”
In order to show the difference between populist and nationalist articulations of “the people,” the article is organized in four major sections. In the first part, I present the major theoretical distinctions between nationalism and populism that have been developed so far, arguing that they are all useful but insufficient. In the second part, I offer a new theoretical framework that complements existing ones, arguing that while nationalists emphasize what “the people” are, populists highlight what “the people” are not. In order to demonstrate empirically such different articulatory practices, in the third part of the paper, I compare the articulation of “the people” in Viktor Orbán’s speeches (2010–2014) in Hungary with the construction of “the people” by Rafael Correa (2007–2012) in Ecuador. Finally, in the conclusion, I spell out some of the implications of my argument.
Populist versus Nationalist Constructions of “the People”: Existing Theoretical Frameworks
Authors such as Michael Freeden have implicitly distinguished between nationalism and populism in relation to their ideological status, by classifying the former as a thin ideology 1 and by denying the latter the same status. 2 Freeden’s observation is important insofar as it shows that nationalism is conceptually “thicker” than populism. The nationalist ideology, according to Anthony Smith’s widely accepted definition, argues that the nation “is the source of all political and social power, and loyalty to the nation overrides all other allegiances.” 3 Thus, nationalism articulates a larger number of core concepts than populism, such as nationhood, national sovereignty, positive evaluation of the nation, politics as an expression of national identity/interest, and a strong sense of national belonging. 4 Populism, on the other hand, even when defined as a thin ideology, articulates a far more limited number of core concepts, such as the antagonism between the honest people and the corrupt elite and the popular will as the only source of political legitimacy. 5 Yet, while useful, Freeden’s distinction is not sufficient insofar as “the people” and “the nation” can be synonymous and are very often used interchangeably in many languages. 6 Das Volk in German, el pueblo in Spanish, or nép in Hungarian mean both “the people” and “the nation.” Hence, it becomes difficult to distinguish conceptually between popular and national sovereignty, popular and national political will, or popular and national political legitimation, as long as one cannot distinguish conceptually between “the nation” and “the people.”
Attempts to conceptually differentiate between “the nation” and “the people” have been useful but still insufficient. Brubaker’s claim that the concept of the nation refers to the whole community, whereas “the people” in populism refers only to one part of the community, which are “the plebs,” captured an important aspect of the distinction between the two. 7 Yet as Brubaker himself recognized, the concept of the people in populism has a double meaning, it simultaneously refers to the part (the plebs) as well as to the whole, which in turn blurs the distinction with the concept of nation. 8
In a similar fashion, Singh identified an important distinction between the populist and the nationalist concept of community by arguing that the former was moral while the latter imagined. 9 This is often the case. The problem is that morality is not a monopoly of populism. As Katsambekis has rightly argued, moral framings are a constant of political life. 10 The nation is also often constructed as a moral community superior to other communities or groups. Not to mention that “the people” in populism is also an imagined community insofar as it is constantly construed against the evil elite. Hence, the distinction between the moral and the imagined communities is of limited use in order to distinguish “the people” of populism from that of nationalism.
The difficulty to differentiate between nationalism and populism has led some researchers to distinguish their effects rather than contents. From this perspective, populism is inclusionary while nativism is exclusionary because it “holds that states should be inhabited exclusively by the members of the native group.” 11 This distinction is useful insofar as it helps us understand that nativism, not populism, is the source of exclusionary politics in many radical right parties in Europe. It is insufficient, however, because nativism is a special type of nationalism. Hence, before distinguishing between populism and nativism, we should distinguish between populism and nationalism. Reducing the difference between populism and nativism to xenophobia, racism or exclusionary rhetoric means that if these phenomena were not present, as in a non-nativist nationalism, then there would be no difference between nationalism and populism. In other words, the distinction between populism and nativism does not account for the different ways in which “the people” is articulated in nationalist and populist discourses.
The most successful attempt to differentiate between nationalist and populist articulations of “the people” has taken place in discourse analysis. From this perspective, there are two key discursive differences between populism and nationalism. First, while the nodal point in a nationalist discourse is “the nation,” the nodal point in a populist discourse is “the people.” 12 Second, while “the people” of populism is the underdog, construed vertically against the elite, “the people” of nationalism is construed horizontally against other nations. 13 In other words, “the distinction between ‘the people’ and foreigners is a nationalist in/out distinction, not a populist down/up distinction.” 14 Being an underdog is sufficient to be part of “the people” but not of “the nation.”
While very useful, the above distinctions remain insufficient. Given that “the nation” and “the people” are articulated interchangeably, it is not always possible to determine whether the nodal point of a given discourse is “the nation” or “the people.” In order to do so, one would have to first distinguish between “the nation” and “the people” at the conceptual or discursive level. To this end, the discursive distinction between the vertical articulation of the people in populism and the horizontal one in nationalism is not always helpful. On one hand, the nation is often articulated vertically as an underdog against local and international cosmopolitan elites. On the other hand, “the people” of nationalism often are not articulated simply, or even primarily, in a horizontal fashion against other peoples or nations. That is to say, the opposition to other nations, cultures, or groups is only one aspect, and not necessarily the most fundamental, of the discursive construction of “the people” in nationalism. “The people as a nation” are primarily articulated as a community that shares a set of positive characteristics, whether in terms of ethnicity, language, history, culture, religion, territory, or political rights and obligations.
As we can see from the above summary, we lack a theoretical framework that distinguishes clearly between populist and nationalist articulations of “the people.” This is part of the reason why some authors have tended to produce concepts such as ethno-populism that reduce nationalism to populism. 15 Some have gone in the opposite direction by reducing populism to nationalism, treating “most types of populisms as cases of nationalism.” 16 Others have argued that “populism and nationalism are two strands of the same logic of identity. This logic of identity [. . .] entails the construction of the identity of the ‘self’ in contradistinction to an excluded ‘other.’” 17 In all these cases, “the people” of populism becomes indistinguishable from “the people” of nationalism. This is why we need a better theoretical framework that allows us to distinguish “the people” of nationalism from that of populism.
Populism versus Nationalism: Negative versus Positive Identity Practices
The key difference between nationalist and populist articulations of “the people” is that the former articulates “the people” primarily through positive identity practices in relation to a positive set of characteristics, while the latter (populism) articulates “the people” primarily through negative identity practices in opposition to the elite. As developments in socio-linguistics have shown, identities can be created through positive and negative identity practices:
NEGATIVE IDENTITY PRACTICES are those that individuals employ to distance themselves from a rejected identity, while POSITIVE IDENTITY PRACTICES are those in which individuals engage in order to actively construct a chosen identity. In other words, negative identity practices define what their users are NOT, and hence emphasize identity as an intergroup phenomenon; positive identity practices define what their users ARE, and thus emphasize the intragroup aspects of social identity.
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Another way to spell out the distinction between positive and negative identity practices is to follow the distinction developed in identity studies between Me and the Not-Me, where Me would be the positive identity and Not-Me the negative identity. The Not-Me is not necessarily a “set of negative identities [in the normative sense]; rather, it is a set of various self-disidentifications.” 19
Here, three clarifications are in order. First, the distinction between positive and negative identities operates at the ontic rather than the ontological level. The ontological level refers to the basic conditions that “delimit the possible ways for an entity of a certain kind to be,” while the ontic refers to the “concrete condition and properties” of an entity. 20 At the ontological level, identity formation might always imply negative identity practices insofar as the subject is constituted at the unconscious level by resisting or responding to the demands of the Other, as psychoanalysis tells us. 21 At the ontic level, however, which refers to the specific constitution of a given identity through conscious linguistic and other practices, a given identity can be constructed through positive identity practices that emphasize what an identity is, through negative identity practices that highlight what an identity is not, or through a combination of the two.
Naturally, positive and negative identity practices are intricately interwoven in practice. Hence any political discourse engages in both. However, while most discourses utilize both practices, they are not equally important and/or necessary to all of them, which brings us to our second point. The distinction between positive and negative identity practices is both theoretical and empirical. At the empirical level, one has to simply evaluate whether a given identity is most frequently constructed through positive identity practices that emphasize its positive characteristics or through negative identity practices that articulate it in opposition to other identities. At the theoretical level, on the other hand, one has to determine whether an identity practice is necessary or contingent. Necessary identity practices are those without which a given identity cannot exist. Contingent identity practices are those which might be important in highlighting a given identity while not being indispensable to its existence.
Nativism could be a useful example here, insofar as it relies on both positive and negative identity practices. It is a form of nationalism which “holds that states should be inhabited exclusively by the members of the native group [. . .] and that non-native people and ideas are fundamentally threatening to the homogeneous nation-state.” 22 This is the nationalism of Trump and of the so-called populist radical parties in Europe, which combine nationalism with racism, xenophobia, and islamophobia. As such it relies heavily on negative identity practices insofar as it often defines national identity in opposition to other identities that threaten it, such as immigrants, Islam, or cosmopolitanism. Nevertheless, while important, these negative identity practices are contingent, not necessary, to the articulation of “the people” in the nativist discourse, given that the identity of “the people” is highlighted but not determined by the external threats. Such identity is determined through positive identity practices that define who “the people” are.
In the case of Trump, for example, Christianity and whiteness were two key positive characteristics that defined his “American People” and attracted his voters. 23 They were necessary, not contingent, in two aspects. First, without them (Christianity and whiteness), the “American People” of Trump would disappear. Second, they were positive identity practices that did not only define who the “American People” were but also, and as a consequence, the external threats to American identity, such as Muslim or Latino emigrants, who were not Christian, or white, or both. Indeed, Trump had no problem with immigrants as such, as long as they were white, European, and Christian, which is why he called for emigration from Norway instead of Africa. 24 In other words, it was the positive identity practices that determined the negative ones, not vice versa. The American people of Trump were not Christian because they were threatened by Islam; they were threatened by Islam because they were Christian. Their Christian identity was highlighted by the Islamic threat, but it was not determined by it.
This brings us to our third point. As the example of nativism above shows, the levels of political polarization and antagonism are not directly determined by the type of identity practices political actors embark upon. That is to say, both positive and negative identity practices can produce highly antagonistic and conflictual politics. Negative identity practices can produce conflictual politics by defining the political community purely in opposition to an external threat. Positive identity practices can be quite antagonistic as well, insofar as they tend to exclude those that do not share certain positive characteristics that define a given community, as the example of Trump above attests. Another good example of how positive identity practices fuel antagonistic politics would be the construction of Turkish national identity in Erdoğan’s discourse, placing at its center two positive characteristics: Islam and the Ottoman identity/nostalgia. 25 Such positive identity practices enabled Erdogan to articulate a deep antagonism between the real “Turkish people” who were proud of their Islamic and Ottoman identity “and the secular-republican elites who [were] disconnected from the values of the people.” 26
Now that I have clarified the distinction between positive and negative identity practices, it is possible to show that nationalism defines “the people” through positive identity practices, by emphasizing primarily who they are. Populism, on the other hand, defines the people primarily, if not exclusively, through negative identity practices against the elites. In this respect, my argument resembles that of Heiskanen, who argued that “populism is about ‘vertically’ re-presenting the will of the sovereign people in the place of power, while nationalism is about ‘horizontally’ identifying who the sovereign people are in the first place.” 27
“The people” of populism is primarily, if not exclusively, defined against the corrupt elites. It is defined principally as “not the elite” because it lacks a positive characterization outside of its opposition to the elites. Even the positive characteristics of “the people” are determined through its opposition to the elite. “The people” are the underdog because the elite is the over-dog, “the people” are honest because the elites are corrupt, “the people” are hardworking because the elites are lazy, the people are exploited because the elites are exploiters, “the people” are “authentic” because the elites are “fake,” “the people” are patriots because the elites are traitors, and “the people” are excluded or marginalized because the elites are privileged. In the classical case of Peronism in Argentina, in the late 1940s, even the “positive” characterizations of the people as descamisados (shirtless) by Peron served to differentiate them from the elites and the “established society” of Buenos Aires, who were well dressed. 28
This is why in populism the antagonistic political frontier between “the people” and the corrupt elite is necessary, not contingent. As Laclau has argued, “if this frontier collapses, ‘the people’ as a historical actor disintegrates.” 29 This is why “the people” of populism functions as an empty signifier, without a positive content, both at the ontic and the ontological levels. It serves to articulate the demands of various groups that have been oppressed and marginalized by the elite. “The people” of populism “has to dispossess itself of particularistic contents in order to embrace social demands which are quite heterogeneous. That is, a popular identity functions as a tendentially [sic] empty signifier.” 30 In short, “the people” of populism has no positive identity beyond its opposition to the elite.
The opposite is true in the case of nationalism, which operates primarily through positive identity practices. It emphasizes “the intragroup aspects of social identity.” 31 Nationalism produces political subjects through positive identity practices that define who “the people” are. Membership in a nation is not defined simply in opposition to the elites or other nations, but rather through a number of positive criteria, or a combination thereof, such as religion, territory, history, culture, blood, race, ethnicity, language, birth, political values, and obligations and rights. If the common denominator of the people in populism is negative (their opposition to the elite), the common denominator of the people in nationalism is positive (a specific set of characteristics). This is why “populism is always ‘hot’—it operates purely in a mobilizational register, and its boundary is by definition, an antagonistic frontier. Nationalism, on the other hand, can also exist ‘cold.’” 32
Obviously, this is not to say that nationalism cannot resort, or has not resorted, to negative identity practices by emphasizing what one is not, especially in order to highlight or mobilize national identities. There are different types of nationalism, which rely on negative identity practices to different extents. As seen earlier, there is an “ugly” nationalism called nativism, which relies quite heavily on negative identity practices insofar as it sustains the idea that “non-native people and ideas are fundamentally threatening to the homogeneous nation-state.” 33 Even in the case of nativism, however, negative identity practices are complementary to, and dependent on, positive identity practices that define who “the people” are.
Populist versus Nationalist Constructions of the People: Rafael Correa in Ecuador versus Viktor Orbán in Hungary
In order to explore and contrast populist and nationalist constructions of “the people,” I will compare the political speeches of President Rafael Correa (2007–2012) in Ecuador and of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (2010–2014) in Hungary. I analyzed twenty speeches by Orbán, including his famous speech of 2014 in Băile Tuşnad, where he introduced and defended the concept of illiberal democracy. In the case of Rafael Correa, I analyzed some fifteen of his key speeches. 34 I also compared the new constitutions produced by the government of Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2008) and the government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary (2011). These were very important documents for my empirical analysis, because in their respective preambles they defined quite clearly who “the people” were.
There are three reasons why the comparison between Correa and Orbán is useful in order to elucidate the differences between populist and nationalist constructions of “the people.” First, the political projects of Correa and Orbán relied heavily on populist and nationalist discourses, respectively. Correa’s political project Citizen’s Revolution has been widely identified as populist, at least in its early stages. 35 Orbán’s Hungarian Civic Alliance (Fidesz), on the other hand, has been identified as a political project centered on nationalism. 36 Although populism has often been identified as one of its central features, the Orbán government has legitimized itself primarily as the protector of the Hungarian nation. 37 Second, both politicians and their political projects were quite representative of their respective regions. Correa’s political discourse was typical of other left-wing populist projects in Latin America. 38 Orbánism, on the other hand, has inspired other major political parties in central and eastern Europe, such as Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość), led by Jarosław Kaczyński, in Poland (2015–present) and Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (Akce nespokojených občanů), led by Andrej Babiš, in the Czech Republic (2017–2021). Finally, both political projects can be easily classified as anti-systemic in their rejection of the dominant liberal political and economic consensus. 39 Correa and Orbán both criticized neoliberalism, the traditional political class, international financial institutions such as the IMF or the World Bank, and free trade, and they called for more national sovereignty.
Beneath these apparent semblances, however, lie profound differences not only in the different ideological perspectives of Correa (social-democracy) and Orbán (conservative nationalism) but especially in the way they articulated “the people.” As I will try to show below, Orbán articulated the “Hungarian people” primarily through positive identity practices, by emphasizing those characteristics that, according to him, the Hungarian people shared. Rafael Correa, on the other hand, articulated “the people” primarily through negative identity practices, which defined them—in opposition to political and economic elites—as the marginalized and the oppressed.
“The People” of Viktor Orbán: We Are Hungarians!
The aim of this section is not to classify the Orbán regime as such, a task various Hungarian scholars have completed skillfully. Some have characterized it as a plebiscitary leader democracy, 40 some have shown that the Orbán regime is a typical illiberal democracy, 41 while others have argued that Orbán has constructed a mafia state in Hungary. 42 Despite their differences, most authors agree that nationalism is one of the key features of the Orbán regime, insofar as the nation, the national interest, national sovereignty, and national unification are core concepts in his discourse. 43 Hence, my aim here is to show how Orbán has articulated “the people” from a nationalist perspective utilizing primarily positive identity practices.
I am not arguing that Orbán relied only on positive identity practices. He did utilize important negative identity practices in order to highlight the identity of the “Hungarian people,” such as the threat from international cosmopolitan elites (Soros, the EU, and “Brussels”) or from Asian, non-white, and Muslim immigrants. Such negative identity practices, however, were important but not necessary to the construction of the identity of the “Hungarian people.” My argument here applies only to the construction of “the people” within the Orbán discourse, not to the political identity of the Orbán regime in general. One could argue that Orbánism as a political project could not be understood without its denunciation of Soros, of the EU, and of liberal cosmopolitan elites in general. In this respect, negative identity practices might be necessary to its political identity, an important point that lies beyond the scope of this article. What I argue is simply that Orbán construed the identity of the “Hungarian people” primarily through positive rather than negative identity practices.
At the theoretical level, my argument implies that, in Orbán’s discourse, negative identity practices, such as the immigration threat, were important but not necessary to the construction of the “Hungarian people.” While they did serve to highlight Hungarian identity, the latter could still exist in their absence. Positive identity practices, on the other hand, which identified the core characteristics of the Hungarian nation/people, such as Christianity, whiteness, Hungarian language, culture, and ethnicity, were necessary to the construction of the “Hungarian people.” There could be no “Hungarian people” in their absence. It was this positive identity that defined the external threats to it, not vice versa. In Orbán’s discourse, the non-white, non-European, Muslim immigrants coming from Syria were a threat to the Hungarian people because the latter were Christian, white, and European, not the other way around. It was for this reason that while the Orbán regime rejected Syrian war refugees, it welcomed Ukrainian ones, because they did not “threaten” the positive (European, Christian, and white) identity of the Hungarian people. 44 This positive identity of the “Hungarian people” did not depend on, although it was highlighted by, the immigration “threat.” This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the threat of immigration appeared in Orbán’s discourse only in 2015, long after he had articulated a clear positive Hungarian identity. 45
At the empirical level, my argument means that in Orbán’s speeches the negative articulation of the nation against external threats, whether non-European immigration or liberal cosmopolitan elites, was more limited compared with his positive articulation of the Hungarian people as a community that shared certain fundamental characteristics, such as language, history, territory, religion, and ethnicity. This is best reflected in the Fundamental Law that Fidesz approved with its two-thirds parliamentary majority on 18 April 2011, only one year after it came to power. In its preamble, called “The National Avowal of Faith,” the new Hungarian Constitution stated:
At the dawn of a new millennium, we MEMBERS OF THE HUNGARIAN NATION declare the following, with a bond of duty to all Hungarians: We are proud that one thousand years ago our king, Saint Stephen, based the Hungarian State on solid foundations, and made our country a part of Christian Europe. We are proud of our ancestors, who fought for the survival, freedom and independence of our country. We are proud of the outstanding intellectual achievements of the Hungarian people. . . . We acknowledge the role Christianity has played in preserving our nation. We respect all our country’s religious traditions. [. . .] We pledge to cherish and preserve our heritage: the Hungarian culture, our unique language, and the man-made and natural riches of the Carpathian Basin.
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The first thing to notice in the above preamble is how the Hungarian nation is clearly delimited and articulated in a positive fashion. The Hungarian nation/people had a one-thousand-year-old history (one thousand one hundred to be more exact) since the kingdom of Saint Stephen, it was located in the Carpathian Basin of central Europe, it was European (and implicitly white), it was Christian, and it had a specific culture, specific traditions, and, more importantly, a unique language.
The Fundamental Law defined the Hungarian nation in ethnic rather than civic terms. Such an understanding of the nation was made quite explicit by Orbán himself, who contrasted his illiberal (ethnic) understanding of the nation with the liberal one:
the illiberal or national viewpoint states that the nation is a historically and culturally determined community. [. . .] According to the liberal notion of freedom, you can only be free if you discard everything that involves you in belonging somewhere: borders, the past, language, religion, culture and tradition.
47
History, ethnicity, tradition, culture, territory, religion, and language were key characteristics that combined to define a nation in Orbán’s perspective. They were the positive characteristics that defined the Hungarian people as a community that shared a common history, territory, religion, culture, ethnicity, and language.
Of the above characteristics, language was of special importance in defining the Hungarian nation and who belonged to it.
48
It was, indeed, more important than territory, given that many Hungarians lived outside the borders of present-day Hungary. In many of his speeches, Orbán emphasized that Hungarian was a unique language that produced a unique mindset and culture:
All peoples are generally unusual, every nation is unique, but the Hungarians are somehow especially unusual and even more unique. Which obviously stems from the fact that we speak a unique language [. . .] then if our language is unique, our mind-set is undoubtedly also unique.
49
The importance of the mother tongue was reflected in the fact that it was one of the criteria that justified extending Hungarian citizenship to Hungarians living outside the borders of Hungary, in countries such as Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, and Ukraine. Thus, in a ceremony of citizenship granting, Orbán would declare that “Hungarians live almost everywhere in the world. We professed that, irrespective of their place of residence, they too are members of our nation. Because, just as we do, they too speak Hungarian, pray in Hungarian.” 50
One need not only speak but also pray in Hungarian in order to be part of the Hungarian nation. Christianity was another core feature of Hungarian identity that Orbán emphasized constantly, because it defined the European identity of Hungarians: “In our view, Christian culture is the guiding force of Hungarian history. We aren’t European on account of geographical reasons; we are European because we are Christians.” 51 Here, the Christian and European identity of the Hungarians were intimately related, given that Christianity was the fundamental and defining feature of European identity, according to Orbán.
This point is important because Orbán identified myriads of other positive characteristics of the Hungarian people, which were not as fundamental as ethnicity, language, history, culture, or religion. He constantly repeated in his speeches that Hungarians were very creative because “they invented the computer, the ballpoint pen, and the espresso coffee machine.” 52 He would declare that Hungarians were “a freedom-loving, proud, hard-headed and passionate but friendly people.” 53 He also argued that Hungarians were “Free and dutiful. Brave and sober. Humane and patriotic.” 54 Being Hungarian meant “being both a rebel freedom fighter and the devoted guardian of observed order. [And] that you are never satisfied with your government.” 55
Nevertheless, unlike language, ethnicity, or religion, such features were presented more as a matter of opinion. When it came to core characteristics of the nation, such as religion or language, Orbán made it clear that he was espousing facts, not opinions. Christianity, in his opinion, was “not only a religion, but also a culture on which we have built a whole civilisation. This is not a choice, but a fact.” 56
In other words, the identity of the Hungarian people/nation had at least two layers: a fundamental core that consisted of language, religion, ethnicity, culture, history, and religion and another layer that contained the general virtues of the Hungarian people, their creativity, pride, love of freedom, friendliness, passion, stubbornness, and even pessimism. The main aim of Orbánism as a political project was to conserve and strengthen the inner core of the Hungarian nation. It was here where nationalism met with conservative ideology.
Indeed, it is impossible to understand Orbán’s nationalism apart from his conservative ideology, given that preserving the nation intact, in its traditions, ethnic composition, religion, culture, and traditional family values were key objectives of Orbánism. He clearly stated that “Hungary [. . .] must protect its ethnic and cultural composition [. . .]. So the borders must be protected, ethnic and cultural composition must also be protected, and enforced change must not be accepted.”
57
He went as far as to argue that
We [Hungarians] are an endangered species; we are becoming fewer and fewer every day; there are more funerals than christenings and consequently, until we reverse this tendency [. . .] the Hungarian nation [. . .] is not safe, and we are in fact in serious danger.
58
To protect its ethnic and cultural composition, Hungary had to resist and reject the changes that came from globalization and undermined national sovereignty, such as a cosmopolitanism that erased national and Christian identity through immigration and a liberalism that undermined traditional family structure and values. This was why the enemies of Fidesz were often defined “as people without national identity—as European cosmopolitans.” 59
It would be erroneous, however, to conclude that Orbán articulated the “Hungarian people” primarily in opposition to internal and external threats. As I tried to argue above, such threats were important in highlighting the identity of the Hungarian people, but they did not necessarily define it. Orbán himself recognized this when arguing that “The threat of migration and the appearance of masses of people from cultures which are foreign to us has also increased awareness of the Christian foundations of our culture—even among those who have distanced themselves from religion.” 60 Nevertheless, he did also admit that the “good soldier does not fight because he hates that which is facing him, but because he loves that which is behind him. He loves Hungary and Hungarians.” 61 This is why Orbán constantly called on the Hungarians to love their country, their culture, and their language and be proud of it, because “the greatest thing in our lives is that we were born Hungarian.” 62 Being born Hungarian meant having a specific language, ethnicity, religion, race, and history. Here, “the people-as-a-nation” far from being an empty signifier, as in the case of populism, was a concept filled with a specific content that quite clearly delimited its meaning.
“The People” of Rafael Correa: We Are the Oppressed!
If Orbán articulated the Hungarian people primarily through positive identity practices, by emphasizing their positive characteristics, such as ethnicity, culture, history, religion, and language, Rafael Correa and his Citizen Revolution (Revolución Ciudadana) movement articulated the people primarily through negative identity practices, by emphasizing what they were not. The people were defined in opposition to the elite, which meant that generally speaking they were those who did not belong to the economic, social, media, and political elites. As a consequence, the oppression by the elite was the defining feature of “the people” in Correa’s speeches, much more than any positive characteristics that they shared.
This was reflected in the Preamble of the New Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008, initiated by Correa’s government, which articulated “the people” in populist rather than nationalist terms:
WE [nosotras y nosotros], the sovereign people of Ecuador, RECOGNIZING our ancient roots, forged by women and men of different peoples CELEBRATING nature, the Pacha Mama [Mother Earth], to whom we belong and which is vital for our existence INVOKING the name of God and recognizing our diverse forms of faith and spirituality, APPEALING to the wisdom of all the cultures that enrich us as society, AS HEIRS to the social struggles of liberation from all forms of domination and colonialism, [. . .] Decided to build A new form of citizen coexistence.
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“The people” of Ecuador were defined primarily by their struggles of liberation from all forms of dominations and colonialism (against elites) rather than by any positive characteristics that they shared. As the Preamble made clear, their ancient roots were not common, as they were forged “by men and women of different peoples.” They did invoke God but recognized their “diverse forms of faith and spirituality.” Finally, there was not a common culture that “the people” shared, as they appealed to “the wisdom of all cultures that enrich our society.” The one thing that the people did seem to share, besides their celebration of nature, was that they were heirs to the social struggles of liberation froms all forms of domination. That is to say, although the people of Ecuador did not have common roots, ethnicity, culture, religion, or ethnic composition, they all struggled against domination. This was what defined “the people.” They were those who fought against domination. Domination by whom? By the elites, local and international, as Correa’s speeches made quite clear.
If Orbán’s Fundamental Law of Hungary (Constitution) invoked the Hungarian Nation as its basis of legitimacy, the New Constitution of Ecuador had at its foundation the sovereign people of Ecuador, rather than the Ecuadorian Nation. In the Hungarian constitution, “nation” and “people” were two identical concepts. In the Ecuadorian constitution, on the other hand, the concept “nation” described the different indigenous groups that constituted the Ecuadorian people. The first article of the Ecuadorian constitution defined Ecuador as a “plurinational constitutional State.” 64 A plurinational state, unlike a multicultural one, did not simply recognize cultural and political rights for minorities, instead it was a state “in which indigenous peoples [were] conceived as nations.” 65 This is why Correa’s populism had a plurinational dimension to it, insofar as it recognized that the Ecuadorian people consisted of various different indigenous nations, as well as of different social, racial, and ethnic groups.
Although Correa often mentioned the fatherland (la patria in Spanish) in his speeches, just like Orbán mentioned constantly the homeland (haza in Hungarian), his main point of reference was “the Ecuadorian people” rather than “the Ecuadorian nation.” The people of Ecuador in Correa’s speeches were not defined by their particular legal or political relation to the State, and even less by their shared positive ethnic or cultural characteristics, as much as by their oppression by the elites. Correa would argue that the Citizen Revolution that he led resulted from the revolt of the people against abusive political, economic, and media elites; “the people fed up with abuses and arbitrariness said: Enough! Echoing in this way the other fervent cry: Let them all go [the whole political class]!” 66 Correa’s “people” were a “spontaneous movement of the outraged (los indignados) of this country [Ecuador] that anticipated the outraged of the first world [in Spain] and said ‘enough’ and ‘here we are.’” 67
The central feature of the people here was their condition of being marginalized, oppressed, offended, excluded, and exploited by the elites. Hence, Correa (2007) would declare that “the immense majority of our people, always offended and marginalized, supports our sovereign decisions.” In order to put an end to the exploitation, exclusion, and inequality that the people had suffered, Correa called for the construction of “popular power”:
We have to engage thoroughly in the construction of popular power [. . .] which is the only way to put an end to the centuries of injustice, to corruption, to racism, to neoliberalism, to exploitation, we have to break once and for all the structures of oppression, exclusion, which have led us to the worst distribution of wealth, the highest indicator of the concentration of wealth, of corruption, of chronic malnutrition, of social exclusion.
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As the above citation shows, popular power was identified as the means through which the exploitation and marginalization of the people could be arrested and overcome. This meant that the people were those exploited, marginalized, suffering from discrimination, racism, and malnutrition.
In the speeches of Rafael Correa, the chain of equivalence that brought together different nationalities and social groups was constructed in opposition to the elites, rather than in relation to any positive characteristics that they shared. In this case, Laclau’s (2005) theoretical framework explains quite well the construction of “the people” in Correa’s discourse. What “the people” shared was oppression, exclusion, and marginalization by the local and international elites. According to Correa, the different social groups in Ecuador were oppressed not only by the local elites but also by policies of international institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, which produced “a daily humiliation to the dignity of the peoples and indigenous nationalities of the indigenous, afro-Ecuadorians and montubios [coastal peasants].” 69
Different populations, such as the indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorians, and montubios, came together against the humiliation they suffered by international institutions. In a similar fashion, diverse social demands and social groups, such as the indigenous, women, students, workers, fishermen, and small merchants, were articulated together by Correa through their oppression and exclusion by the local elites:
our compromise is unwavering with the indigenous sector, with our labourer sisters and brothers, with the students, with the women, with the peasants, fisherman, small merchants. We are mobilized by the themes, necessities, dreams of our peoples delayed, excluded, oppressed for centuries.
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Here, it is important to emphasize that at times Correa did articulate the people in a positive fashion by identifying some positive characteristics that they shared, such as their “clean hands, lucid minds and burning hearts for the fatherland.” 71 Such positive characteristics, however, served primarily to distance the people from the elites, who were corrupt and unpatriotic, rather than as a common denominator in relation to which the different social groups were articulated. As Mazzolini has argued, while Correa defined the people as those with lucid minds, clean hands, and passionate hearts, “[i]n contrast, he used pejorative expressions such as ‘partycracy’, ‘pelucones’ (bigwhigs), and ‘momias cocteleras’ (cocktail-drinking zombies) to refer to the adversaries of the people, such as the old party system, the upper classes and the country diplomats, respectively.” 72 The people were those that were not the elite, those that the elite and its partidocracia (rule through political parties) oppressed, disrespected, and marginalized. It was these negative identity practices that defined the people in Correa’s speeches, far more than any positive social, cultural, political, or religious features that they shared.
Conclusion: Populist versus Nationalist Anti-System Politics
The main objective of this article was to show that a key difference between nationalist and populist discourses lies in their construction of “the people.” Nationalist discourse articulates “the people” by utilizing positive identity practices, which specify a set of common features that the members of the nation share. In populist discourses, on the other hand, “the people” are articulated primarily in opposition to the elite rather than in relation to some positive features they share. Obviously, most political projects combine populist and nationalist articulations of “the people,” which is why it is important to distinguish between the two.
In order to make such distinction, I compared the populist discourse of Rafael Correa in Ecuador during his first term in office (2007–2012) with the nationalist discourse of Viktor Orbán in Hungary primarily during his second term in office (2010–2014). I showed that Viktor Orbán articulated the “Hungarian people” primarily through positive identity practices by identifying a core set of characteristics, such as ethnicity, history, culture, religion, and territory, which they shared. This was not true in the case of the discursive constitution of “the people” by Rafael Correa in Ecuador. In Correa’s speeches, there were no positive features of “the people” that existed independently or outside of their opposition to the elites. Here, the opposition to elites was a necessary condition for the construction of “the people.”
This distinction between populist and nationalist constructions of “the people” could be useful to explain the inclusionary nature of Latin American populism and the exclusionary dimension of eastern European ethno-populism. The positive construction of “the people-as-a-nation” in nationalism fomented exclusion insofar as it left out of the national community those groups or individuals that did not share those core ethnic, religious, or cultural traits that defined it. The construction of “the people-as-underdog” in populism through negative identity practices, on the other hand, meant that any individuals or groups that were oppressed by the elites could be part of “the people.” Thus, populism constructs “the people” in a more inclusionary and open fashion, since the only criteria for belonging to “the people” is being oppressed by the elite. To borrow a concept from Freeden’s theoretical arsenal, the articulation of “the people” in nationalism is rather “thick,” whereas in populism it is quite “thin.” 73
At this point, it is important to emphasize that the different ways in which “the people” are articulated in Latin America and eastern Europe reflect different historical, political, and social contexts. It is easier to articulate “the people” as a community that shares a core set of characteristics in countries with highly homogeneous populations, in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, and religion, such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, or Poland. In Latin America, on the other hand, most societies are quite heterogeneous, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, and multi-racial, where often the dominant ethnicity or race (normally white) is a minority. Here, nationalist ideologies, which rely on the concept of mestizaje (mixture), “contain and encompass dynamics not only of homogenisation but also of differentiation [. . .] creating a mosaic image of national identity.” 74 Hence, a construction of “the people” in terms of ethnic nationalism is quite difficult in most Latin American countries, while a populist articulation that pits the poor and oppressed masses against the rich and oppressive elites is easier—especially if we take into account the fact that Latin American societies sustain levels of inequality that are much higher than those of central and eastern Europe. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that anti-system politics, understood as a rejection of the dominant liberal consensus, takes very different forms in Latin America and eastern Europe. Further research is needed in order to highlight and understand such important differences, instead of burying them under the general category of populist politics.
