What role does the memory of the post-communist transition process play in driving the success of populists in getting into power? We focus on two major populist parties in Europe - Fidesz in Hungary and Law and Justice in Poland and use data from the European Social Survey from 2004 to 2018. We test three explanations – based on three perceptions of insecurity related to the post-communist transitions in the region – 1) ontological, 2) economic, and 3) cultural insecurity. We find that voters who support populists primarily reject the post-communist transition process to market democracy and European integration because of both the economic performance of the former and the normative coerciveness of the latter. The paper contributes to the literature on memory studies by bridging it with the literature on global populism and does so with quantitative analysis of the prominence of memory discourses in the post-communist region.
