Working with data
The webpage focuses on political parties and their perception of nationalism and national identity. Firstly, the webpage contains a profile of each party in a national context based on basic facts, well known officials, and their electoral gains in national and European elections. Secondly, it gives an analytical insight into parties’ perceptions of national identity and nationalism. The parties are categorised according to mentions of related to national identity issues in election manifestos. These issues cover minorities, national myths, European integration, national sovereignty, integration of immigrants and related categories.
Selected case studies show parties’ "real politics" and strategies using national identity to politicise certain policies, such as using national mythologies in election campaigns. Case studies focus on up to three specific national identity issues for each country. They cover opposite positions of different parties to show different strategies and policies used to attract voters. For this purpose, visual (e.g. billboards) and text (e.g. given speeches) material was analyzed.
Acknowlegment
The Visegrad parties' profiles from 2006 - 2010 are based on a scholarly study published at Masaryk University: Černoch Filip, Husák Jan, Schütz Ondrej, Vít Michal (2011): Political parties and nationalism in Visegrad countries. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, Mezinárodní politologický ústav, Monography servies 46, 2011; and on the scholarly paper Husák Jan, Schütz Ondrej, Vít Michal (2012): National identity of the Political parties in Visegrad region and their European dimension, Journal on European Integration and Federalism, Science Po, Nice.
People's Party - Our Slovakia (Ľudová strana - Naše Slovensko)
The roots of the People’s Party – Our Slovakia are traceable into the nineties when organization Slovak Brotherhood was formed. As one of many extreme – right groups in Slovakia it was unnoticed by general public until first years of new millennia. Media started to pay attention to the Slovak Brotherhood after its members started to attend memorials of important events of the Slovak national history. Members of the Brotherhood wore distinctive uniforms which resembled uniforms of paramilitary fascist Hlinka’s Guards. Brotherhood and their uniforms became synonym and face of the extreme – right.