Populism, legal studies, and CEE : some meta-reflections

The 'really existing populism' in CEE / SEE arises from the juxtaposition of universal afflictions of contemporary democracy with the local, semi-peripheral and post-socialisation states. The specificity of their regimes cannot be grasped without this interposition of contexts; otherwise it is all-too-easy to fall into the trap of the 'Eastern backwardness story'. The concept of the European legal war allows of inscribing the current transformations into the long chain of fights for (de/re)politicisation that cut across the entire Europe, but for historical and geopolitical reasons are most eminent in its Eastern part. Populism, therefore, is not a phenomenon anyhow inherent in 'the new Europe': on the contrary, its elements are to be found in the West as well. In its development, it is dependent on the crumbling liberal hegemony that itself slides into sovereigntism. What seems a raw irruption of the political appears as such only against the background of the liberal vision of curbing the political by the law. This situation poses a crucial challenge to legal scholarship. Contemporary populism in CEE / SEE should be analysed as a floating signifier which is deeply mired in ideological struggles from which the academia cannot be free. Instead, however, of active participation in the struggle between imaginary 'liberal' and 'illiberal' camps, legal studies may and should engage in revealing the multidimensionality of the conflicts that cut through the EU, its member states and their societies. These conflicts tend to oscillate around the question of the rule of law not because it is inherently central to them, but because it is the scene where the struggle for redefinition of boundaries of politicisation is fought. For this reason legal scholarship should reconsider its own position and foundations. Instead of declaring contemporary populism a particular state of exception, it should rather see it as the current chapter in the history of a long war.