What's an Elite to Do? The Threat of Populism from Left,Right and Centre

Anthony Painter's report for Policy Network correctly describes populism as a ‘democratic argument’ which sets up a morally pure ‘people’ against vilified ‘elites’, in binary opposition. This is an argument which is increasingly prominent in political discourse, whether the elites in question are political, financial or technocratic. Painter focuses on the now‐familiar ‘radical right‐wing’ version of populism, as reflected across Europe in the rise of parties such as the UKIP. He omits discussion of other types of populism (of the left and centre), which perhaps represent the future for populist politics.     

Podemos: the ambiguous promises of left-wing populism in contemporary Spain

The paper inquires critically into Podemos as an instance of left-wing populism in contemporary European politics, putting forward four claims and a major thesis. First, Podemos was started as an original endeavour to ally in a hybrid mix two divergent approaches to democratic politics: the horizontal, open and networked mobilizations of the multitude, and the vertical, hierarchical, formal and representative structures of party formations, on the other. Such an amalgam might serve to combine the virtues of different models of democracy. Second, Podemos’ populism exemplifies a creative version of a ‘politics of the common’, but the terms of the ‘common sense’ are inflected in the direction of social rights, inclusion and egalitarian democracy. Third, Podemos illustrates a unique ‘reflexivity’ in the pursuit of populism. The party leadership has taken its cues from E. Laclau’s hegemonic theory of populism and implements it in its political strategy. Fourth, since the autumn of 2014, Podemos has arguably seen the gradual preponderance of a vertical, ‘hegemonic’ logic, reflecting a particular reading of populist theory which is prevalent among the party’s leadership. The broader thesis is that a dualist politics, which welds together horizontalism and verticalism in a conflictual bind, is a prima facie plausible strategy for renewing democracy in the present critical context. But a political organization like Podemos will be able to redeem its democratic promises as long as it maintains a constructive balance between these two political logics, avoiding the reassertion of centralized leadership and the suppression of pluralism which are typical of the populist tradition.     

‘I,the people’: a deflationary interpretation of populism,Trump and the United States constitution

This paper advances a deflationary interpretation of populism, Donald Trump and the United States Constitution. It accepts that Trump utilizes a populist pose but rejects populism as too reductive for understanding his ascension and constitutional challenge. First, it argues that, although he merits the designation, Trump reveals more about populism than populism does about him. Trump illustrates populism’s conceptual elasticity, but employing it as a frame to understand him imposes coherence upon a figure whose monetized politics are chaotic, shallow and unanchored by principle. Second, populism provides a necessary but insufficient condition for critically explaining Trump’s ascension, either in terms of electoral populism or populism in power. Third, while democratic deconsolidation under Trump’s presidency cannot be discounted, the Constitution remains resilient in most important respects. A dispassionate constitutional sociology counsels a deflationary understanding rather than an uncritical alarmism that too frequently reproduces and reinforces the darker aspects of Trump’s populist political logic.     

Back to the populist future?: understanding nostalgia in contemporary ideological discourse

Abstract

Nostalgia is regularly depicted as an indication of a flawed political argument or allegiance, and framed as a virus more likely to take hold in places that are ‘left behind’. Its prevalence has been linked to the rise of populism in Western politics, the vote for Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. This paper seeks to challenge the normative depiction of nostalgia as an alien presence within ‘normal’ political discourse, and critically evaluates theoretical attempts to distinguish between positive and negative forms of it. Instead, it sets out to explore some of the different affective, sentimental and ideational roles that various kinds of nostalgia practice perform, and highlights the particular importance of forms of political argument that accuse opponents of nostalgia while simultaneously employing some of its prevalent modalities and motifs. The paper finishes by exploring these themes in relation to the career and ideas of the iconoclastic and populist British politician, Enoch Powell.     

The Populist Surge in Post‐Democratic Times: Theoretical and Political Challenges

Populism has often been described as a great challenge and threat to Western democracies. Not surprisingly, at a time in which we are witnessing a significant rise in populist actors in Europe and the US, scientific analyses and commentary regarding populism have become particularly popular and, indeed, necessary. My aim in this article is to offer a brief yet comprehensive overview of the ongoing debates in a bid to problematise the supposed ‘imminent threat’ of populism in light of recent developments within the political systems and societies of established democracies, especially under conditions of crisis. I understand populism as a specific type of discourse, and thus as a way—among others—of doing politics and appealing to groups of people. Thus, I highlight the varying orientations that populist movements might take, depending on the ideological traditions with which they are closely articulated and the sociopolitical environment in which they manifest. Last, I relate the ‘populist surge’ to discussions regarding post‐democracy.     

The double-edged sword: the political appropriation of the concept of populism

ABSTRACT

The concept of populism has been in use in political debate for over a century. Because ‘populist’ is often used in a pejorative sense today, those to whom it is applied to tend to reject it. However, a closer look at the history of the concept reveals that while its meaning may fluctuate and even be dismissed as irrelevant, its use can become a political tool. This study of the use of ‘populism’ refrains from making value judgments on the actual populist nature of certain parties or political tendencies. Instead, it analyzes uses of the concept from a historical perspective. Special emphasis is placed on politicians who chose to define themselves as populist, or accept the label imposed by others, with particular focus on the Finns Party of Finland. Such self-identified populists draw their conceptions of populism from the ever-growing field of populism research, striving to appropriate and realize what scholars have only hypothetically described as a professed ideal. A closer look at the uses of populism as a political self-identity forces us to rethink its uses as a pejorative, or as an analytical, concept.     

Populists,Producers and the Politics of Rentiership

Populism studies finds itself in a crisis of originality. While some scholars have signalled over-usage, others have argued that by contextualising populism, we are able to specify our own ‘populist moment’ and remedy the term’s slipperiness. This article opts for the latter tactic through a comparison of two aspects of contemporary populism with late nineteenth century precedents. In the late nineteenth century, the American People’s Party pioneered a mode of mass politics anchored in agrarian and industrial labour which launched the term ‘populism’ in Western discourse. Contemporary populists show rhetorical and political overlap with this template, but also come up against two new constraints: (1) a stagnant capitalism increasingly centred on ‘rentiership’; and (2) a disorganised civil society. These factors render today’s populism resistant to analogy but also conceptually more specific, sharpening the contours of our populist moment.     

Empowered and enraged: Political efficacy,anger and support for populism in Europe

This article addresses the psychological dynamics between internal political efficacy, emotions and support for populism. Contrary to the extended idea that populism is associated with low levels of political competence, it is argued that individuals’ self-competence beliefs enhance populist attitudes. Individuals who conceive themselves as able to understand and participate effectively in politics are more critical towards politicians and more prone to consider that citizens could do a better job. The article also hypothesises that internal efficacy enhances the likelihood of experiencing anger, which in turn promotes populist attitudes. Experimental and comparative observational evidence shows robust direct effects of internal efficacy over populism, as well as a smaller indirect impact via feelings of anger. These findings raise important questions regarding the nature of populism and how to fight it in our emancipated and information-intensive democratic systems.     

Three decades of populist radical right parties in Western Europe: So what?

The populist radical right constitutes the most successful party family in postwar Western Europe. Many accounts in both academia and the media warn of the growing influence of populist radical right parties (PRRPs), the so‐called ‘verrechtsing’ (or right turn) of European politics, but few provide empirical evidence of it. This lecture provides a first comprehensive analysis of the alleged effects of the populist radical right on the people, parties, policies and polities of Western Europe. The conclusions are sobering. The effects are largely limited to the broader immigration issue, and even here PRRPs should be seen as catalysts rather than initiators, who are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the introduction of stricter immigration policies. The lecture ends by providing various explanations for the limited impact of PRRPs, but it is also argued that populist parties are not destined for success in opposition and failure in government. In fact, there are at least three reasons why PRRPs might increase their impact in the near future: the tabloidisation of political discourse; the aftermath of the economic crisis; and the learning curve of PRRPs. Even in the unlikely event that PRRPs will become major players in West European politics, it is unlikely that this will lead to a fundamental transformation of the political system. PRRPs are not a normal pathology of European democracy, unrelated to its basic values, but a pathological normalcy, which strives for the radicalisation of mainstream values.     

Economic crisis and the variety of populist response: evidence from Greece,Portugal and Spain

Abstract

Greece, Portugal and Spain are among the countries worst hit by the 2008 Great Recession, followed by significant electoral and political turmoil. However, one of the dimensions in which they differ is the presence and varieties of populism in parties’ political proposals. Drawing on holistic coding of party manifestos, we assess the varying presence of populist rhetoric in mainstream and challenger parties before and after the 2008 economic downturn. Our empirical findings show that populism is much higher in Greece compared to Spain and Portugal. We do not find a significant impact of the crisis as the degree of populism remains rather stable in Greece and Portugal, while it increases in Spain, mainly due to the rise of new populist forces. The study confirms that populist rhetoric is a strategy adopted mainly by challenger and ideologically radical parties. In addition, inclusionary populism is the predominant flavour of populist parties in new Southern Europe, although exclusionary populism is present to a lesser extent in the Greek case. We contend that the interaction between the national context – namely the ideological legacy of parties and the main dimensions of competition – and the strategic options of party leadership is crucial for explaining cross-country variation in the intensity of populism and the specific issues that characterise populist discourse.     

Progressive Responses to Populism: A Polanyian Critique of Liberal Discourse

This article explores the recent rise of populist politics from the perspective of Karl Polanyi's theory of the ‘double movement’. It firstly introduces Polanyi's understanding of interwar populism, and relates this to his broader critique of liberal economic thought. This framework is then used to analyse three prominent explanations for populism which emerged in the wake of the UK's 2016 EU referendum: globalisation; cultural reaction; and social media. I show how each of these explanations exogenises contemporary populist movements, narrating them as something external to the liberal economic restructuring pursued globally since the 1980s. Failing to diagnose adequately the causes of contemporary populist movements, which lie in this utopian attempt to treat labour as a commodity, they cannot support an intellectually coherent progressive response to Brexit. Finally, I outline a political agenda centred on labour de‐commodification, which could directly address populist grievances and reclaim the discourse of ‘taking back control’ for the left.     

Populism and the politics of the extraordinary in Latin America

Building on past and current experiences of populism in Latin America, this article makes four arguments. First, whereas populist movements seeking power promise to democratize society by challenging the legitimacy of exclusionary institutions, populist governments often include the excluded at the cost of disfiguring democracy. Second, during populist events the meanings of the ambiguous term ‘the people’ are disputed. When social movements are weak, and when the institutions of liberal democracy are discredited, a populist leader could attempt to become the embodiment of the will of the people. Third, even though the concept of the people is central to populism, it could be constructed differently. It could be imagined as heterogeneous and plural, or as the people-as-one, as an entity that shares one identity and interest that could be embodied in a leader. Fourth, populism shares with fascism an imaginary construction of the people-as-one. Yet differently from fascism, which staged extraordinary politics as war against internal and external enemies, populists staged their extraordinariness as winning popular elections and did not establish dictatorships.     

The rise of post-imperial populism: The case of right-wing Euroscepticism in Britain

Abstract.  Recent approaches to contemporary Euroscepticism have explained it in terms of the politics of opposition and peripherality characteristic of competitive party systems. Euroscepticism becomes a central strategy by which non-mainstream parties or factions within mainstream parties attempt to gain political advantage. In the British case, there has been a focus on the influence Eurosceptic factionalism can have within a first-past-the-post parliamentary system. This article challenges explanations of British Euroscepticism in terms of the politics of opposition and the workings of the party system. Instead, it is proposed that a structural crisis of British party politics has allowed Euroscepticism to enter the political mainstream. The author conceives of Euroscepticism as a distinct and powerful national movement asserting conceptions of Britain's exceptional national identity. This is viewed as part of a post-imperial crisis that shifts parties, and factions within parties, towards populist forms of legitimation that have weakened possibilities for stable and coherent political leadership over European integration. Consequently, mainstream parties have struggled to protect themselves against the ideological influence of this populist Euroscepticism. This is particularly evident during periods of Eurosceptic mobilization, and is demonstrated in this article through the examination of the extensive role played by right-wing Eurosceptic forces during the attempt by the Major Government to ratify the Maastricht Treaty.     

Housing and populism

Abstract

The recent success of populist candidates in the UK and Continental Europe has sparked a major debate between those who view populism as a reaction of the economically ‘left behind’ and those who view it as a cultural ‘backlash’ by groups with declining social status, pointing to stark divisions between urban and rural areas, core and periphery. This paper bridges the economic and values-based approaches to populism by arguing that the geography of wealth inequality offers a convincing explanation for the pattern of populist vote share. Drawing on fine-grained house price data in the UK and France, it is shown that the pattern of house prices ? even within small districts ? plays a major part in shaping support for Brexit and Marine Le Pen. The findings illustrate how longstanding variation in local wealth shapes the geography of discontent and drives populist appeal. Populism, the article concludes, is primarily a politics of place, and place is a product, in part, of the housing market.     

The role of memory in populist discourse: the case of the Italian Second Republic

Cento Bull's paper takes as its starting point Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's conceptualization of populism as counter-hegemonic, and argues, with reference to the Italian case, that populism not only takes the form of a rejection of the establishment and political elites, but also entails a construction of ‘the people’ that requires, as well as the development of empty signifiers as shown by Laclau, also the deployment of common myths based on a collective memory of an imagined past. Cento Bull therefore argues, in line with Ritchie Savage, that the role of memory in populist discourse has been underestimated. Specifically, many populist movements and leaders engage in a fundamental redefinition of who constitutes ‘the people’ accompanied by mistrust and demonization of the Other, which is predicated upon (and justified with recourse to) a reimagining of the nation's and/or democracy's ‘founding moment’. Furthermore, many populist movements make use of a political rhetoric revolving around the ‘anti-subversive impulse’ and aimed at instilling fear and a sense of being under threat.     

Assessing the diversity of anti-establishment and populist politics in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The more populism enters public debates, the more it needs close scrutiny. Central and Eastern Europe offers a useful context for exploring the diversity of parties identified as populist. Anti-establishment rhetoric provides a suitable conceptual starting point because of its pervasive role in the region’s political discourse. Using a new expert survey, this article details the relationship between anti-establishment salience and political positions, showing that anti-establishment parties occupy a full range across both economic and cultural dimensions and many occupy more centrist positions. Narrowing the focus to content analysis of anti-establishment parties’ thin ideology in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, it is concurrently found that for many actors (including those usually labelled as populist) anti-establishment rhetoric is indeed predominant, yet not always extensively combined with other elements of populism: people-centrism and invocation of general will. The findings are important for understanding multiple varieties of anti-establishment politics also beyond the region.     

Breaking Bad News: Penal Populism,Tabloid Adversarialism and Brexit

This article analyses the role that British conservative tabloid newspapers play in promoting penal populism and delegitimising liberal prison reform initiatives. Principally, we consider how different sections of the British press reacted to the then Prime Minister David Cameron's prison reform speech of 8 February 2016. The analysis illustrates how different newspapers cohered around two diametrically opposing interpretations of the scandalous state of the prison system, reflecting distinctive penal philosophies and moral positions. In the context of penal populism and the populist furies unleashed by the Brexit campaign, the central research finding is that the comparatively passive and equivocal support offered by the broadsheets was no match for the vitriolic attack mounted by the conservative tabloids on the ‘soft justice’ parts of Cameron's prison reform agenda. We conclude by arguing that the stark lesson to be learned is that the scandal‐ridden prison is a particularly toxic issue marked by serial policy failure. Consequently, in a febrile, intermediatised penal populist context, why would any political leader take on the manifest risks associated with embarking on liberal prison reform?     

In search of a leftist democratic imaginary: what can theories of populism tell us?

It might seem that Herbert Marcuse was right: leftist politics can no longer avoid the challenge of devising its own positive normative grounds. The neoliberal political rationality that is now hegemonic must be taken on by a new imaginary: radical, leftist and democratic. This article explores what major theories about new populism have to offer to a radical leftist attempt to reinvent itself. The regeneration of populist movements across the globe appears to offer signposts to guide a new radical politics. Yet I argue that populism is no ideologically empty mobilizing strategy able to be harnessed to all manner of political purposes. Embedded in its demagogic form are key presumptions about the character of democratic justification that collude with a neoliberal political project. Theories of new populism help us to shed light, instead, on the challenges that face the Left in its own self-reconstitution amidst liberal democratic crisis. Circumspection concerning the ideological load that is carried by a populist rendering of democratic politics needs to be united with an insight into how the rise of populism itself issues a warning about aspects of a social democratic past that cannot be reclaimed unchanged.     

The nation under threat: secularist,racial and populist nativism in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

Right-wing discourses and issues of belonging and collective identity in Europe’s political and public spheres are often analysed in terms of Islamophobia, racism and populism. While acknowledging the value of these concepts, Ke?i? and Duyvendak argue that these discourses can be better understood through the logic of nativism. Their article opens with a conceptual clarification of nativism, which they define as an intense opposition to an internal minority that is seen as a threat to the nation due to its ‘foreignness’. This is followed by the analysis of nativism’s three subtypes: secularist nativism, problematizing particularly Islam and Muslims; racial nativism, problematizing black minorities; and populist nativism, problematizing ‘native’ elites. The authors show that the logic of nativism offers the advantages of both analytical precision and scope. The article focuses on the Dutch case as a specific illustration of a broader European trend.