Slovak populists explore neglected social issues to strive, says study
When the environmental lawyer and social liberal Zuzana Čaputová was elected as President of Slovakia last year, the media called her achievement a setback for populism. Populist political forces had grown larger and become successful in the country. The populist political movement Sme Rodina (We Are a Family—Boris Kollár, WAF) won 11 parliamentary seats in Slovakia's elections in 2016 partly because of a justified protest against traditional political parties. That included focusing on key policy issues ignored by local governments. That conclusion, which offers insights into the success of populist agendas in electoral campaigns, came out in a DEMOS peer-reviewed study by Andrej Školkay and Viera Žúborová, from the School of Communication and Media in Bratislava (SKAMBA), a DEMOS partner.