Europe is Awakening: Diffusion of National-Populism in an Eastern Partnership Country - The Case of Georgian March in Georgia

Abstract

Deploying a transnational approach, the article follows the explanatory framework of diffusion theories in aiming to provide a new perspective on the rise of national-populist actors across different sociopolitical and national-historical settings, in the context of ever-increasing interdependence and transfers of ideas. Thus, it focuses on reconceiving national-populist units not as evolving detached from one another, but rather influencing and providing discursive frames for each other, even in the context of non-institutionalized, indirect connections. For demonstrating the theoretical claims about diffusing ideas and transnational modes of borrowing in the European context, the article discusses the evolution of national-populist discourses in post-communist Georgia through an example of the emergence and exclusionary agenda of a social movement, Georgian March. Locating the case within diffusion models, the analysis scrutinizes discursive strategies and incorporation of the West in the movement's discourse over the process of its collective identity construction. Thus, the article focuses on mediated experiences as providing models for certain behaviors; new roles and uses of social media as direct political platforms and channels for diffusions and borrowings; the factor of mutual references as tools for self-legitimization and mutual identification; and the relevance of borrowings and emulation among national-populist actors.