Books by Eirikur Bergmann
Palgrave Macmillan, 2020
This book maps three waves of nativist populism in the post-war era, emerging into contemporary N... more This book maps three waves of nativist populism in the post-war era, emerging into contemporary Neo-Nationalism. The first wave rose in the wake of the Oil Crisis in 1972. The second was ignited by the Collapse of Communism in 1989, spiking with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The third began to emerge after the Financial Crisis of 2008, soaring with the Refugee Crisis of 2015. Whether the Coronavirus Crisis of 2020 will lead to the rise of a fourth wave remains to be seen. The book traces a move away from liberal democracy and towards renewed authoritative tendencies on both sides of the Atlantic. It follows the mainstreaming of formerly discredited and marginalized politics, gradually becoming a new normal. By identifying common qualities of Neo-Nationalism, the book frames a threefold claim of nativist populists in protecting the people: discursively creating an external threat, pointing to domestic traitors, and positioning themselves as the true defenders of the nation.
Palgrave Macmillan, 2018
Here are prelims and the introduction chapter to the book Conspiracy & Populism: The Politics of ... more Here are prelims and the introduction chapter to the book Conspiracy & Populism: The Politics of Misinformation
This book brings together six countries where arguments about democracy have been central in the ... more This book brings together six countries where arguments about democracy have been central in the processes that have brought them into or kept them on the outside of the European Union (EU). Its purpose is to examine whether, in a context of Europeanization and at the juncture of crisis, shifts in ideas about national democracy and democracy in the EU have taken place. Turning the focus from the EU centre toward its periphery, the book makes an original contribution to the intertwined debates on the Eurozone crisis and democracy in the European Union. Informed by a constructivist perspective, the book presents in-depth analyses of political party and civil society discourse in Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Turkey, Iceland and Norway.
Based on a constructivist approach, this book offers a comparative analysis into the causes of na... more Based on a constructivist approach, this book offers a comparative analysis into the causes of nationalist populist politics in each of the five Nordic independent nation states. Behind the social liberal façade of the economically successful, welfare-orientated Nordic states, right-wing populism has found support in the region. Such parties emerged first in Denmark and Norway in the 1970s, before becoming prominent in Sweden and Finland after the turn of the millennium and in Iceland in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, when populist parties surged throughout the Nordics. The author traces these Nationalist trails of thoughts back to the National Socialistic movements of the 1920s and 1930s (the respective Nordic version Nazi parties) and before, to the birth of the Nordic nation states in the nineteenth century following the failure of integration. Since then, as the book argues, separate nationalisms have grown strong in each of the countries. This study will appeal to students and scholars as well as wider audiences interested in European Politics, Nordic Politics, Nationalism, and Populism.
In the years leading up to the Crash of 2008, Iceland had been triumphed in world business media ... more In the years leading up to the Crash of 2008, Iceland had been triumphed in world business media as an economic miracle. Its new breed of Viking Capitalism had become rock stars of the global finance driven economy, even while it was testing the foundations of Europe's financial system. Eirikur Bergmann applies Postcolonial analysis to explain the paradigmatic case of Iceland's fantastical boom, bust and rapid recovery after the Crash. His critical approach to the claims of the financialization advocates relates the questions of the national economy and globalisation to current trends in Europe and the World.
The research asks why Iceland has – until May 2009 - chosen to participate in the European projec... more The research asks why Iceland has – until May 2009 - chosen to participate in the European project through the EEA and Schengen agreements but not with full membership in the EU. It analyses whether ideas on Iceland’s sovereignty or economic interests can better explain the approach Icelandic politicians have taken towards European integration. The book is divided in three parts. Part I analyses theoretical discussions on states’ relations with the European integration process. Part II deals with Iceland’s current participation in the European project. Part III analyses the discourse Icelandic parliamentarians have used in three rounds of discussions on Europe, first in the EFTA-debate (1970), then leading up to the establishment of the EEA (1994) and finally, an debate in the parliament on possible EU-membership (2000-2003).
Within liberal intergovernmentalist theories it is claimed that the interests of the leading sector in each nation’s economy can best explain the different approaches the Nordic states have chosen in the European integration process. According to these theories, economic interests of the fisheries sector dictate Iceland’s relationship with the EU. However, the fact that the fisheries issue has not been put to the test in accession negotiations indicates that other factors might also be of importance.
Based on a post-structural and constructivist approach, this research therefore analyses if and how ideas on the Icelandic nation and its sovereignty affects the stance Icelandic politicians have taken towards the European project. Icelanders’ struggle for independence in the 19th century created a special kind of nationalism which gives prominence to the sovereignty of the nation as a whole, rather than individual freedom which was one of the main trends of the Enlightenment.
Economically, however, Iceland feels the same need as other European states to participate in European co-operation, which can explain its membership in the EEA. The agreement brings Iceland into the European single market, but at a cost: Iceland has agreed to adopt the EU’s regulations within the boundaries of the agreement, and thus a transfer of decision making and domestic governmental power to the EU. This dilemma, between economic interests on the one hand and ideas on the sovereignty of the Icelandic nation on the other, has created a kind of a rift between the emphasis on the free and sovereign nation and the reality Iceland is faced with in the co-operation.
The main finding of the research is that the inheritance of the independent struggle still directs the discourse Icelandic politicians’ use in the debate on Europe. A strong emphasis on sovereignty has become the foundation on which Icelandic politics rests. Participation in EU’s supra-national institutions falls, in a way, outside the framework of Icelandic political discourse, which highlights Iceland’s sovereignty and stresses an everlasting independent struggle. (English summary follows by the end of the book)
Árið 2002 lögðu tólf Evrópuríki endanlega niður eigin gjaldmiðil og tóku upp sameiginlega mynt,... more Árið 2002 lögðu tólf Evrópuríki endanlega niður eigin gjaldmiðil og tóku upp sameiginlega mynt, evruna. Allar götur síðan hefur hugsanleg innleiðing evru á Íslandi verið til umræðu á einn eða annan hátt. Meðal hagfræðinga og forystumanna í atvinnulífi og stjórnmálum eru enn mjög skiptar skoðanir um stöðu krónunnar og hugsanlegan ávinning af upptöku evru. Undanfarið hefur umræðan um evruna og stöðu krónunnar stöðugt orðið háværari og ákafari á vettvangi atvinnulífs og í almennri þjóðmálaumræðu. Er nú svo komið að spurningin um krónu eða evru er orðin ein sú áleitnasta í efnahagsumræðu í landinu. Þótt ýmislegt hafi verið ritað og rætt um kosti þess og galla fyrir Ísland að taka upp evru er eigi að síður óhætt að fullyrða að í hugum flestra er enn nokkuð óljóst hvaða afleiðingar evruvæðing hefði í för með sér fyrir íslenskan efnahag og stjórnmálalíf. Þessari bók er ætlað að meta hvaða áhrif það hefði á Íslandi ef evra yrði tekin upp í stað krónu og hvernig íslensku efnahagslífi myndi reiða af innan evrusvæðisins.
Hvar á Ísland heima? Hver er staða landsins í samfélagi þjóðanna? Hvers vegna hafa Íslendingar ve... more Hvar á Ísland heima? Hver er staða landsins í samfélagi þjóðanna? Hvers vegna hafa Íslendingar verið tregir í taumi í evrópskri samvinnu? Hafa tengslin við Bandaríkin rofnað eftir að herinn fór? Af hverju óttumst við hnattvæðingu, innflytjendur, erlendar tungur og innflutt matvæli?
Papers by Eirikur Bergmann
Central European University Press, 2023
Populist parties in the Nordic countries part to a significant degree from most nativist populist... more Populist parties in the Nordic countries part to a significant degree from most nativist populists in Western Europe by not being clearly positioned on the right-wing of the socioeconomic spectrum. Rather than being
established around traditional right-wing neoliberal rhetoric, they rose on a new sociocultural master frame of combining ethno-nationalism and anti-elite populism with welfare chauvinism.
The Nordic populists skillfully played on a nostalgic wish of going back to a simpler and happier time. The Sweden Democrats, for example, reached a real tactical breakthrough by shrewdly adopting the traditional social democratic notion of the People’s Home (Folkehemmed). This was a classical dis- cursive creation of a Golden Age when the close connection between the ethnic people, democracy, and welfare are emphasized in an exclusionary understanding of the nation abandoning their long-asserted promise of the People’s Home, the all-embracing welfare society.
In this chapter, I will explore how the Nordic populist parties presented immigration as a threat to the promise of universal welfare for the native population. Rather than primarily referring to the social-economic situation of the ordinary people they, instead, adopted a new populist winning for- mula of combining socioeconomic left-wing views with hard-core right-wing conservative sociocultural ideas.
Before delving into Nordic nativist populism more closely, it is first necessary to briefly frame how I understand the phenomena here under examination. In previous research, I have detected three distinctive waves of Neo- Nationalism in the postwar era, each rising in the wake of crisis (Bergmann 2020). On the canopy of these waves, nativist populists have since moved from the fringes and to the mainstream. All these waves were ignited by crises. The first wave rose in Western Europe in the wake of the oil crisis in the early 1970s. The second began after the fall of the Berlin Wall, first mainly in opposition to migrants from Eastern Europe from seeking work in the West. The third wave was triggered by the financial crisis of 2008 and heightened by the refugee crisis of 2015 in the wake of the Syrian War. By the time the COVID-19 Crisis hit in 2020, this prolonged neo-nationalist surge had, for example, brought populists to power in all the four largest democracies in the world, namely, the United States, Brazil, India, and Indonesia.
In my previous research, I have also identified a threefold claim that nativist populists put forth in their support of the people: First, they tend to discursively create an external threat to the nation. Second, they accuse the domestic elite of betraying the people, often even of siding with the external aggressors. Third, they position themselves as the true defenders of the “pure people” they vow to protect, against both the elite and these malignant out- siders, that is, against those that they themselves have discursively created. Now I turn to analyzing the evolution of Nordic Populism on these scales.
CONSTDELIB Cost Acation , 2021
Nomas: Aufstand der Außenseiter, 2022
English Studies in Africa, 2021
In this paper, I analyze whether the COVID-19 crisis might lead to a new wave of neo-nationalism.... more In this paper, I analyze whether the COVID-19 crisis might lead to a new wave of neo-nationalism. History teaches that socioeconomic crises tend to pave the way for populist nationalists to seize the moment and place themselves as saviours of the people/nation against both an external threat and the domestic elite. In previous research, I detected three waves of nativist populism, emerging into what I call neo-nationalism in the postwar era, each rising in the wake of crisis. The characteristics of the current crisis are in many ways reminiscent of those that have previously led to the rise of nativist populism, which defines much of contemporary politics in the West, and indeed around the world. It is therefore timely to contemplate whether the crisis resulting from governmental responses to COVID-19 might ignite the fourth wave of neo-nationalism.
Routledge, 2021
One of the most widespread conspiracy theories in contemporary time in Europe is that of Eurabia,... more One of the most widespread conspiracy theories in contemporary time in Europe is that of Eurabia, the fear of Muslims replacing the Christian population with Islam. The theory is also often named after Renaud Camus’s book from 2011 titled the Le Grand Remplacement (‘The Great Replacement’). Camus argued that European civilisation and identity was at risk of being subsumed by mass migration. This notion of replacement, or white genocide, has echoed throughout the rhetoric of many anti-migrant far-right movements in the West.
Chris Allen (2010) defines Islamophobia as the negative positioning of Islam and Muslims as the ‘other’, posing a threat to ‘us’. The archetypical Muslim in a Western depiction is, indeed, not only portrayed as inferior, but also as being alien. Inhered in the theory is an apocalyptic view of Muslims dominating and destroying the liberal and democratic Europe.
This fear of subversion is, though, only the first part of the full theory. Its completion usually also takes the form of accusing a domestic elite of betraying the good ordinary people into the hands of the external evil. This chapter analyzes the Eurabia theory and maps how mainly populist leaders in Europe have promoted this theory.
Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, 2020
The proliferation of fake news and of conspiracy theories has coincided with the emergence of the... more The proliferation of fake news and of conspiracy theories has coincided with the emergence of the digital media. Although the extensive distribution of misinformation is nothing new, the emergence of online media proved to be especially fertile for conspiratorial popu-10 lists in transmitting distorted information. Since 2016, conspiracy theories, disguised as news, have spread like a snowstorm across the political scene on both sides of the Atlantic. As I discuss in this paper, this climate has enabled conspiratorial populists to be especially successful in spreading suspicion of established knowledge, 15 which they claim to have been produced by the elite and which is eschewed for its association with the powerful. Alongside the diminished gatekeeping capabilities of the mainstream media, it thus becomes ever more difficult for people to distinguish between factual stories and fictitious news often spread via unscrupulous web-20 sites, as both can be presented in the same guise.
Routledge, 2020
This is an co-authored book chapter by Eirikur Bergmann and Michael Butter. Published in the Rout... more This is an co-authored book chapter by Eirikur Bergmann and Michael Butter. Published in the Routledge Handbook on Conspiracy Theories in 2020.
Routledge, 2020
This is the introduction to the section of the Routledge Handbook on Conspiracy Theories which de... more This is the introduction to the section of the Routledge Handbook on Conspiracy Theories which deals with Society and Politics. Citation: Bergmann, E., Dyrendal, A., Harambam, J., and Thórisdóttir, H. (2020). ‘Society and politics: Introduction’. In: Butter, M. and Knight, P. (Eds). Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories. London: Routledge.
In autumn 2008, Iceland suddenly took centre stage as a symbol of the international financial cri... more In autumn 2008, Iceland suddenly took centre stage as a symbol of the international financial crisis when its three international banks, representing 85 % of the country's financial system, collapsed within a single week. Similarly to what happened in other countries, this episode has become known as " the crash " since then. International media extensively covered the financial collapse of this tiny island state, which was unable to meet its obligations and has come to rank third in the history of the world's greatest bankruptcies. Financial crisis and democratic crisis: the impact of the crash The stock exchange and the entire equity market were virtually wiped out almost immediately and the Icelandic króna (ISK) tanked, spurring rampant inflation which, in the following weeks and months, ate up most people's savings. Property values dropped by more than a third and unemployment
Vor 2017
Líkt og víðar á Vesturlöndum hafa þjóðernispopúlískir stjórnmálaflokkar á Norðurlöndum náð verule... more Líkt og víðar á Vesturlöndum hafa þjóðernispopúlískir stjórnmálaflokkar á Norðurlöndum náð verulegu flugi og notið síaukinnar lýðhylli; einkum Danski þjóðarflokkurinn (Dansk Folkeparti), Framfaraflokkurinn í Noregi (Fremskrittspartiet), Finnaflokkurinn (Perussuomalaiset) og Svíþjóðardemókratarnir (Sverigedemokraterna). Á Íslandi hefur álíka flokkur sem skorar flokkakerfið á hólm utanfrá á þjóðernispopúlískum forsendum ekki náð álíka árangri – þótt greina megi viðlíka áherslur og einkenna slíka flokka í Frjálslynda flokknum árið 2006 og í Framsóknarflokknum á árunum 2009 til 2016, en báðir voru þessir flokkar vitaskuld að stofni til annars eðlis.
Þótt þjóðernispopúlískir stjórnmálaflokkar geti raunar verið æði ólíkir þá eiga þeir samt nokkra skýra þætti sameiginlega, sem hér verða raktir. Hér verður rakin þróun þjóðernispopúlískra flokka í þremur bylgjum frá seinna stríði og tilraun gerð til þess að greina fyrirbærið með tíu sameiginlegum einkennum. Í einfaldaðri mynd má segja að þjóðernispopúlisti sé sá sem elur á ótta gagnvart utanaðkomandi ógn sem hann hefur framkallað í hugum fólks og stillir sjálfum sér upp sem brjóstvörn fyrir þann hóp sem ber að gæta og gegn ógninni sem ber að verjast. Meginskilaboðin eru þá þessi: Treystið mér, ég mun vernda ykkur. Til skýringarauka verður hér líka farið í saumana á þróuninni í Danmörku en þar í landi hafa þjóðernispopúlistar náð mestum árangri á Norðurlöndum. Loks er stuttlega drepið á stöðu mála á Íslandi.
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Books by Eirikur Bergmann
Within liberal intergovernmentalist theories it is claimed that the interests of the leading sector in each nation’s economy can best explain the different approaches the Nordic states have chosen in the European integration process. According to these theories, economic interests of the fisheries sector dictate Iceland’s relationship with the EU. However, the fact that the fisheries issue has not been put to the test in accession negotiations indicates that other factors might also be of importance.
Based on a post-structural and constructivist approach, this research therefore analyses if and how ideas on the Icelandic nation and its sovereignty affects the stance Icelandic politicians have taken towards the European project. Icelanders’ struggle for independence in the 19th century created a special kind of nationalism which gives prominence to the sovereignty of the nation as a whole, rather than individual freedom which was one of the main trends of the Enlightenment.
Economically, however, Iceland feels the same need as other European states to participate in European co-operation, which can explain its membership in the EEA. The agreement brings Iceland into the European single market, but at a cost: Iceland has agreed to adopt the EU’s regulations within the boundaries of the agreement, and thus a transfer of decision making and domestic governmental power to the EU. This dilemma, between economic interests on the one hand and ideas on the sovereignty of the Icelandic nation on the other, has created a kind of a rift between the emphasis on the free and sovereign nation and the reality Iceland is faced with in the co-operation.
The main finding of the research is that the inheritance of the independent struggle still directs the discourse Icelandic politicians’ use in the debate on Europe. A strong emphasis on sovereignty has become the foundation on which Icelandic politics rests. Participation in EU’s supra-national institutions falls, in a way, outside the framework of Icelandic political discourse, which highlights Iceland’s sovereignty and stresses an everlasting independent struggle. (English summary follows by the end of the book)
Papers by Eirikur Bergmann
established around traditional right-wing neoliberal rhetoric, they rose on a new sociocultural master frame of combining ethno-nationalism and anti-elite populism with welfare chauvinism.
The Nordic populists skillfully played on a nostalgic wish of going back to a simpler and happier time. The Sweden Democrats, for example, reached a real tactical breakthrough by shrewdly adopting the traditional social democratic notion of the People’s Home (Folkehemmed). This was a classical dis- cursive creation of a Golden Age when the close connection between the ethnic people, democracy, and welfare are emphasized in an exclusionary understanding of the nation abandoning their long-asserted promise of the People’s Home, the all-embracing welfare society.
In this chapter, I will explore how the Nordic populist parties presented immigration as a threat to the promise of universal welfare for the native population. Rather than primarily referring to the social-economic situation of the ordinary people they, instead, adopted a new populist winning for- mula of combining socioeconomic left-wing views with hard-core right-wing conservative sociocultural ideas.
Before delving into Nordic nativist populism more closely, it is first necessary to briefly frame how I understand the phenomena here under examination. In previous research, I have detected three distinctive waves of Neo- Nationalism in the postwar era, each rising in the wake of crisis (Bergmann 2020). On the canopy of these waves, nativist populists have since moved from the fringes and to the mainstream. All these waves were ignited by crises. The first wave rose in Western Europe in the wake of the oil crisis in the early 1970s. The second began after the fall of the Berlin Wall, first mainly in opposition to migrants from Eastern Europe from seeking work in the West. The third wave was triggered by the financial crisis of 2008 and heightened by the refugee crisis of 2015 in the wake of the Syrian War. By the time the COVID-19 Crisis hit in 2020, this prolonged neo-nationalist surge had, for example, brought populists to power in all the four largest democracies in the world, namely, the United States, Brazil, India, and Indonesia.
In my previous research, I have also identified a threefold claim that nativist populists put forth in their support of the people: First, they tend to discursively create an external threat to the nation. Second, they accuse the domestic elite of betraying the people, often even of siding with the external aggressors. Third, they position themselves as the true defenders of the “pure people” they vow to protect, against both the elite and these malignant out- siders, that is, against those that they themselves have discursively created. Now I turn to analyzing the evolution of Nordic Populism on these scales.
Chris Allen (2010) defines Islamophobia as the negative positioning of Islam and Muslims as the ‘other’, posing a threat to ‘us’. The archetypical Muslim in a Western depiction is, indeed, not only portrayed as inferior, but also as being alien. Inhered in the theory is an apocalyptic view of Muslims dominating and destroying the liberal and democratic Europe.
This fear of subversion is, though, only the first part of the full theory. Its completion usually also takes the form of accusing a domestic elite of betraying the good ordinary people into the hands of the external evil. This chapter analyzes the Eurabia theory and maps how mainly populist leaders in Europe have promoted this theory.
Þótt þjóðernispopúlískir stjórnmálaflokkar geti raunar verið æði ólíkir þá eiga þeir samt nokkra skýra þætti sameiginlega, sem hér verða raktir. Hér verður rakin þróun þjóðernispopúlískra flokka í þremur bylgjum frá seinna stríði og tilraun gerð til þess að greina fyrirbærið með tíu sameiginlegum einkennum. Í einfaldaðri mynd má segja að þjóðernispopúlisti sé sá sem elur á ótta gagnvart utanaðkomandi ógn sem hann hefur framkallað í hugum fólks og stillir sjálfum sér upp sem brjóstvörn fyrir þann hóp sem ber að gæta og gegn ógninni sem ber að verjast. Meginskilaboðin eru þá þessi: Treystið mér, ég mun vernda ykkur. Til skýringarauka verður hér líka farið í saumana á þróuninni í Danmörku en þar í landi hafa þjóðernispopúlistar náð mestum árangri á Norðurlöndum. Loks er stuttlega drepið á stöðu mála á Íslandi.
Within liberal intergovernmentalist theories it is claimed that the interests of the leading sector in each nation’s economy can best explain the different approaches the Nordic states have chosen in the European integration process. According to these theories, economic interests of the fisheries sector dictate Iceland’s relationship with the EU. However, the fact that the fisheries issue has not been put to the test in accession negotiations indicates that other factors might also be of importance.
Based on a post-structural and constructivist approach, this research therefore analyses if and how ideas on the Icelandic nation and its sovereignty affects the stance Icelandic politicians have taken towards the European project. Icelanders’ struggle for independence in the 19th century created a special kind of nationalism which gives prominence to the sovereignty of the nation as a whole, rather than individual freedom which was one of the main trends of the Enlightenment.
Economically, however, Iceland feels the same need as other European states to participate in European co-operation, which can explain its membership in the EEA. The agreement brings Iceland into the European single market, but at a cost: Iceland has agreed to adopt the EU’s regulations within the boundaries of the agreement, and thus a transfer of decision making and domestic governmental power to the EU. This dilemma, between economic interests on the one hand and ideas on the sovereignty of the Icelandic nation on the other, has created a kind of a rift between the emphasis on the free and sovereign nation and the reality Iceland is faced with in the co-operation.
The main finding of the research is that the inheritance of the independent struggle still directs the discourse Icelandic politicians’ use in the debate on Europe. A strong emphasis on sovereignty has become the foundation on which Icelandic politics rests. Participation in EU’s supra-national institutions falls, in a way, outside the framework of Icelandic political discourse, which highlights Iceland’s sovereignty and stresses an everlasting independent struggle. (English summary follows by the end of the book)
established around traditional right-wing neoliberal rhetoric, they rose on a new sociocultural master frame of combining ethno-nationalism and anti-elite populism with welfare chauvinism.
The Nordic populists skillfully played on a nostalgic wish of going back to a simpler and happier time. The Sweden Democrats, for example, reached a real tactical breakthrough by shrewdly adopting the traditional social democratic notion of the People’s Home (Folkehemmed). This was a classical dis- cursive creation of a Golden Age when the close connection between the ethnic people, democracy, and welfare are emphasized in an exclusionary understanding of the nation abandoning their long-asserted promise of the People’s Home, the all-embracing welfare society.
In this chapter, I will explore how the Nordic populist parties presented immigration as a threat to the promise of universal welfare for the native population. Rather than primarily referring to the social-economic situation of the ordinary people they, instead, adopted a new populist winning for- mula of combining socioeconomic left-wing views with hard-core right-wing conservative sociocultural ideas.
Before delving into Nordic nativist populism more closely, it is first necessary to briefly frame how I understand the phenomena here under examination. In previous research, I have detected three distinctive waves of Neo- Nationalism in the postwar era, each rising in the wake of crisis (Bergmann 2020). On the canopy of these waves, nativist populists have since moved from the fringes and to the mainstream. All these waves were ignited by crises. The first wave rose in Western Europe in the wake of the oil crisis in the early 1970s. The second began after the fall of the Berlin Wall, first mainly in opposition to migrants from Eastern Europe from seeking work in the West. The third wave was triggered by the financial crisis of 2008 and heightened by the refugee crisis of 2015 in the wake of the Syrian War. By the time the COVID-19 Crisis hit in 2020, this prolonged neo-nationalist surge had, for example, brought populists to power in all the four largest democracies in the world, namely, the United States, Brazil, India, and Indonesia.
In my previous research, I have also identified a threefold claim that nativist populists put forth in their support of the people: First, they tend to discursively create an external threat to the nation. Second, they accuse the domestic elite of betraying the people, often even of siding with the external aggressors. Third, they position themselves as the true defenders of the “pure people” they vow to protect, against both the elite and these malignant out- siders, that is, against those that they themselves have discursively created. Now I turn to analyzing the evolution of Nordic Populism on these scales.
Chris Allen (2010) defines Islamophobia as the negative positioning of Islam and Muslims as the ‘other’, posing a threat to ‘us’. The archetypical Muslim in a Western depiction is, indeed, not only portrayed as inferior, but also as being alien. Inhered in the theory is an apocalyptic view of Muslims dominating and destroying the liberal and democratic Europe.
This fear of subversion is, though, only the first part of the full theory. Its completion usually also takes the form of accusing a domestic elite of betraying the good ordinary people into the hands of the external evil. This chapter analyzes the Eurabia theory and maps how mainly populist leaders in Europe have promoted this theory.
Þótt þjóðernispopúlískir stjórnmálaflokkar geti raunar verið æði ólíkir þá eiga þeir samt nokkra skýra þætti sameiginlega, sem hér verða raktir. Hér verður rakin þróun þjóðernispopúlískra flokka í þremur bylgjum frá seinna stríði og tilraun gerð til þess að greina fyrirbærið með tíu sameiginlegum einkennum. Í einfaldaðri mynd má segja að þjóðernispopúlisti sé sá sem elur á ótta gagnvart utanaðkomandi ógn sem hann hefur framkallað í hugum fólks og stillir sjálfum sér upp sem brjóstvörn fyrir þann hóp sem ber að gæta og gegn ógninni sem ber að verjast. Meginskilaboðin eru þá þessi: Treystið mér, ég mun vernda ykkur. Til skýringarauka verður hér líka farið í saumana á þróuninni í Danmörku en þar í landi hafa þjóðernispopúlistar náð mestum árangri á Norðurlöndum. Loks er stuttlega drepið á stöðu mála á Íslandi.
The Icesave dispute was thus not only a matter of international law, but rather also a case of contestation between cross border actors over determination of authority during the crisis. By empirically studying the Icesave dispute this paper discusses a profound crisis of diplomacy and the political processes of international legality of the financial sector during the Credit Crunch. This can be coined as case of perfect legal storm in international relations; a crisis of public international law, diplomatic law, EU law and finance law. This case study traces the dynamics of how international legality is produced and remade during the course of this particular inter-state crisis and in doing so thus contributes to analysis of political construction of international legality.
The study deals with interpretive contest in international relations on what is considered legal, in this particular instance dispute of responsibility over guarantying deposits of a fallen cross border bank. In this case intersecting practices and expertise were to revolve in a struggle over cross border insolvency law. By pressuring the Icelandic government into accepting responsibility of the fallen bank in UK and the Netherlands this was an international push towards sovereign socialization of private debt through twists of circumstances and practise.
At its core, perhaps, this is a study of struggle over who decides authoritative interpretations, of what in this particular instance is understood as international legality, which is constructed, construed and contested through multi-actor and multi-level interaction of multi-national relations.
Indeed, initiatives for political reform are often instigated in wake of crisis (Elster 1995). Just as a crisis in capitalism can open up our imagination to alternative ‘economic imaginaries’ (Jessop 2004), constitutional revisions are usually only embarked upon in the aftermath of severe political or economic crisis (Elster 1995). This is what Ackerman (1998) refers to as a ‘constitutional moment’, when a catastrophe mobilises societal forces for fundamental change Teubner . This chapter will rst brie y set out the context for this celandic constitutional moment in 2009 and then examine the reform process from the perspective of input, throughout and output legitimacy.
Initiatives for political reform are often instigated in wake of crisis. Similarly Iceland’s constitutional revision was one of many projects initiated after the financial crisis had hit Iceland severely hard in autumn 2008. Its three international banks amounting to 85% of the country’s financial system – which had grown ten times the GDP in less than a decade – came tumbling down within a single week in early October 2008. The Stock exchange and the equity market was virtually wiped out and the tiny currency, the ISK, tanked, spurring rampant inflation which in the following weeks and months was eating up most people's savings, property values dropped by more than a third and unemployment was reaching levels never seen before in the life of the young republic. The ruined currency finally stabilized below half its pre-crisis value after introduction of currency controls.
Crisis in capitalism can open up our imagination to alternative „economic imaginaries”. (Jessop, 2004). Similarly constitutional revisions are usually only embarked upon in the aftermath of severe political or economic crisis (Elster, 1995). This is what Ackerman (1998) refers to as a constitutional moment. In the wake of the crisis Iceland came closer than most countries ever get to a clean slate situation. As demonstrated in this paper the constitutional revision process was meant to be an integral part of Iceland’s recovery out of this most profound crisis hitting the republic since its creation in 1944. As a result the process was subsequently highly politicised within a „new critical order“ which emerged through the crisis, contesting most initiatives for what constitutes „recovery“.
This paper offers an empirical study on Iceland’s participatory constitutional process and analyses how it relates to other such initiatives in Europe, Canada and South America. By studying the process of constitutional revision I furthermore analyse this critical order, which lodged deeply on the micro level of Icelandic everyday life.
Áfallið á Íslandi haustið 2008 er talið einstaklega áhugavert á heimsvísu því það var viðameira og skyndilegra en víðast annars staðar. Þekking á atburðunum hér er hins vegar af skornum skammti, eins og sést í nokkrum lífseigum en efnislega röngum goðsögnum sem hafa lifað um Íslandshrunið í alþjóðapressunni. Eitt það áhugaverðasta við Íslandshrunið er að hér urðu viðbrögðin við krísunni öndverð við viðleitni alþjóðasamfélagsins þar sem áhersla var víðast hvar lögð á að bjarga bankakerfinu. Bankahrunið á Íslandi og viðbrögð íslenskra stjórnvalda ógnaði þeirri viðleitni sem skýrir að hluta óhemju harkaleg viðbrögð erlendra ríkja í okkar garð, til að mynda beitingu hryðjuverkalaganna í Bretlandi. Í seinni tíð hafa fleiri ríki hins vegar kosið að fara ‘íslensku leiðina’ eins og að hluta til var gert á Kýpur. Íslandskrísan opinberaði einnig alvarlegan kerfisgalla í fjármálakerfi Evrópu sem hér mun tekinn til skoðunar.
Djúpstæðar efnahagskreppur vekja gjarnan upp tækifæri og rými til að endurskoða hagkerfið og þjóðskipulagið í heild. Þá takast iðulega á öfl sem krefjast breytinga og þau sem vilja viðhalda ríkjandi ástandi. Á Íslandi urðu þessir þræðir einstaklega skýrir. Hér greip enn fremur um sig það sem kalla má „ný gagnrýnin skipan“ (e. New critical order) þar sem flestöll tilboð um pólitíska endurskipulagningu lentu í hakkavél innanlandsátaka. Efnahagsleg endurreisn hefur hins vegar náð að skjóta rótum, þótt viðkvæm sé. Enn er þó óleystur alvarlegur kerfisbundinn galli í uppbyggingu íslensks efnahagslífs.
Til þess að ná utan um þessa magnþrungnu atburði þarf að beita samfléttaðri efnahagslegri, sagnfræðilegri og stjórnmálafræðilegri nálgun. Út frá slíku margvíðu sjónarhorni er í þessari grein rakið hvernig Ísland birtist í alþjóðlegum viðskiptaheimi og hvernig hrunið hafði áhrif langt út fyrir landsteinana. Kafað er ofan í grundvöll íslenskra stjórnmála og efnahagslífs og gerð tilraun til þess að greina djúpstæð lögmál þeirra en í bakgrunni eru þó mun stærri spurningar um hagkerfi þjóðríkja í alþjóðavæddum heimi.
Hér er sett fram sú kenning að íslensk stjórnmál grundvallist enn á pólitískri sjálfsmynd þjóðarinnar sem mótaðist í sjálfstæðisbaráttunni og felur í sér tvíþætta áherslu; annars vegar á formlegt fullveldi landsins en einnig þá ósk að Ísland verði nútímavætt ríki á pari við önnur vestræn lýðræðisríki (sjá nánar í Eiríkur Bergmann, 2014a). Þessi pólitíska sjálfsmynd þjóðarinnar hefur verið ráðandi í bæði utanríkis- og efnahagsstefnu landsins og skipt sköpum fyrir efnahagslega þróun í landinu (Eirikur Bergmann, 2011).
Hér verður farið ofan í áhrif þessarar pólitísku sjálfsmyndar í aðdraganda Hrunsins, viðbrögðum við því og eftirmála. Á þessum grunni er farið yfir hagsögu Íslands og greint hvað veldur meiri hagsveiflum á Íslandi en í öðrum vestrænum ríkjum. auk þess sem dreginn er lærdómur fyrir önnur ríki og almennt fyrir efnahagskerfi heimsins (ítarlegri útlistun í Eirikur Bergmann, 2014b).
• University Institute of Lisbon
• 1. July 2022
• Prof. Eirikur Bergmann