Dr. Maria Snegovaya discusses how the evolution of the post-communist party systems facilitated the rise of nationalist populism. She argues that the centrist shift of the ex-Communist left parties along the economic policy dimension (and their implementation of austerity reforms, which led to growing disenchantment with neoliberalism) made the left’s traditional blue-collar constituencies receptive to the redistributive appeals of populist right parties.

Speaker: Dr. ​​Maria Snegovaya (PhD, Columbia University), Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Virginia Tech; Visiting Scholar at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University; Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council.