The Rise of Populism during the Pandemic: The Case of AUR in Romania

Burean Toma () and Pálfy Zoltán
Additional contact information
Burean Toma: Babeș-Bolyai University, FSPAC, Political Science Department, 71 Traian Moşoiu, 400132 Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Pálfy Zoltán: Babeș-Bolyai University, FSPAC, Political Science Department, 71 Traian Moşoiu, 400132 Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Social Change Review, 2024, vol. 22, issue 1, 82-123

Abstract: The article examines the case of AUR a populist political party, that entered the political electoral arena during the COVID pandemic. The party’s populist messages on social media activated an electorate that is receptive to the appeal of a nationalist anti-establishment party. Combining a description of the discourse, strategies, leadership and context coupled with an investigation of a nationally representative survey, the paper argues that AUR has succeeded to become an established party by mobilization of the national and transnational electorate through social media. We further show that AUR appeals to a predominantely male, young and anti vaccination electorate in a similar fashion to other voters of populist parties in Europe indicating that the Romanian political system witnesses the emergence of a new left-right gendered political cleavage.

Keywords: Political parties; Vote; Crisis; Romanian political; system; AUR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/scr-2024-0004 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:socchr:v:22:y:2024:i:1:p:82-123:n:1004

DOI: 10.2478/scr-2024-0004

Access Statistics for this article

Social Change Review is currently edited by Anca Bejenaru and Dave Trotman

More articles in Social Change Review from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().