Is There Such a Thing as Populism? 3 Provocations and 5 1/2 Proposals (2025) (2024)

How to Study Populism Chapter from Populism. An Introduction. Routledge

Populism. An Introduction, 2017

Some Theses on "Populism", e-flux journal #76, October 2016

Populism, or, politics at the edges of democracy (Contemporary Politics, 2003)

Contemporary Politics, 2003

Traditional approaches to the study of populism highlight the connection with modernization, the enfranchisement of the underdogs, and the role played by charismatic leaders. More recently, the literature has begun to discuss the connection between populism and democracy. This article takes on this relation by thinking populism as an internal periphery of democratic politics. It proceeds to develop this intuition by identifying three possible iterations of the populist phenomenon. The first one looks at populism as a mode of representation. The second possibility, populism as a symptom of democratic politics, ups the ante by looking at the tensions that push populism to the edges of democracy without necessarily stepping out. The third line of inquiry looks at the populist mobilization as a possible underside or nemesis of democracy.

Discoursing Populism: Types, Typologies and Contexts

Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium, 2020

Re-conceptualizing populism: Bringing a multifaceted concept within stricter borders

2017

The word populism has been associated to (very) different meanings in the last years. The " populist " label is still used to describe parties, leaders, movements, attitudes and political regimes, too. Moreover, the adjective " populist " is used in a normative fashion in the public debate to denigrate those movements or parties which contrast the mainstream views. The aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, I conduct a non-normative analysis to avoid a biased vision of the concept. On the other hand, I advocate the understanding of populism as a thin-centered ideology, according to which it is based on two necessary features, namely, (a) an anti-elite(s) mindset and (b) the criticism of representative politics. Resumen El término populismo ha sido asociado a significados muy diferentes en los últimos años. La eti-queta de populista se sigue utilizando para describir partidos, líderes, movimientos, actitudes y regímenes políticos. Además, el adjetivo populista se utiliza también con una inclinación norma-tiva en el debate público para denigrar a esos movimientos o partidos que contrastan con las ideo-logías dominantes. Este artículo tienes dos objetivos principales: por un lado, desarrollo un análisis conceptual no normativo para evitar una visión sesgada del concepto. Por otra parte, abogo por una consideración del populismo como una ideología débil, según la cual se basa en dos caracte-rísticas necesarias, a saber, (a) el anti-elitismo y (b) la crítica de la política representativa. Palabras clave: populismo, política comparada, análisis conceptual, ideología débil.

Democracy Revisited: Politics, Populism, and the Political (FS 2018)

The last presidential election in the United States of America as well as the rise of populist movements over the last couple of years across Western European countries brought forth in the most volatile way one fundamental question: What constitutes political life? It is this very question that the course seeks to address. Instead of lamenting over the loss, decline or drawback of politics as we supposedly knew them till now, the course strives – by scrutinizing the elements that constitute political life – to provide explanations for the increase and deployment of such phenomena and trace them back to their generative grounds in order to stipulate the necessary alternatives. The concept of the Political, drawn by primarily French post‑war philosophers, seems to be a highly effective medium for such a purpose. Unlike the political sciences or even the (normative) political theory that attempt to address these questions on a rather institutional level, the philosophical concept of the Political raises macroscopic questions concerning not only democratic political conduct or institutional legality, legitimization and/or correctness, but it takes up fundamental question in order to delineate the grounding notions that construct political life per se. Seen this way the course will address ground notions like those of politics as vocation (Max Weber), of politics as part of the public sphere (Jürgen Habermas) and of politics as an autonomous (autopoietic) societal subsystem

CONTEMPORARY POPULISM: A Controversial Concept and Its Diverse Forms

If the Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti or the President of the European Council Herman van Rompuy are not regarded as populist figures in the public imagination or in the scientific community, then it should be quite easy to identify their opposite. Cases like those of Juan Perón, Hugo Chávez, Pym Fortuyn, Geert Wilders, Martine and Jean-Marie Le Pen, or Corneliu Vadim Tudor are well-known examples of populist leaders. The problem is that these manifestations cannot all be treated as a unitary phenomenon, with a similar programmatic discourse, a common Weltanschauung, or an organisational structure that consistently reproduces the pre-eminence of a charismatic leader. Moreover, the situation gets complicated when we consider the variable of the past and, in particular, the genealogy of these leaders. Often referred to as a phenomenon that is viscerally related to the extremisms of the 20th century, populism is arguably coterminous with right-wing radicalism, in more or less direct connection with interwar extremism, and, in some cases, with left-wing radicalism, such as espoused by Fidel Castro or other Latin American leaders. And yet, an in-depth analysis may reveal that the genealogical approach has a limited heuristic capacity. The situation becomes truly difficult when the label “populist” is used for some of the political leaders of the institutionalised parties. A relevant example in this sense is that of Ségolène Royal and the Socialist Party in France or of Traian Băsescu and the Democratic Liberal Party in Romania.

Book Review: Pierre Ostiguy, Francisco Panizza, and Benjamin Moffitt (eds), Populism in Global Perspective: A Performative and Discursive Approach

Populism, 2023

The great merit of Populism in Global Perspective, edited by Pierre Ostiguy, Francisco Panizza and Benjamin Moffitt, is the quest to reconcile two critical approaches in populism studies. For over a decade, the discursive strand – drawing on Ernesto Laclau and the so-called Essex School – and the sociocultural or performative strand of populism studies have been fellow travellers. Both oppose the mainstream approaches, which demonise populism as an undemocratic phenomenon. The two critical perspectives understand that populism is much more complex and that in several cases the appeal to “the people” against the “elites” can be democratising, denaturalising hierarchies and giving voice to the voiceless. Despite their proximity, however, these two currents have never unified. In this volume, which integrates theoretical reflections and case studies, one finds a first and important step in the creation of an articulated “discursive-performative” paradigm.

Why Populism? Why Now? An Introduction

Populism, 2018

Populism, a Thread and a Chance. Between Demagogy and Participation

This paper inquiries into the concept of populism from a sociological perspective. This is done by highlighting the unstable co-presence of demagog y and participation through an intercultural analysis of the European and the Indian discursive approach and its construction of popular politics. The underlying understanding is that the concept is misrepresented by the equation of populisms with demagog y. The paper therefore builds on " participatory populism " to promote the expansion, rather than contraction, of the term's ambiguity. The analysis accounts for the emergence of populisms as subaltern politics that are unable to subvert the political status quo but are able to enhance it morally. The study starts by problematizing the concept's historical double movement that is at the basis of its demagogic and participatory features, then it focuses on populism as a signifier reinforced by the impasse between the two pillars of liberal democracy. Furthermore, by critically building on Laclau's position, its social discursive formation is investigated. Chatterjee's " political society " and the party-movements (the Aam Aadmi Party and the Movimento 5 Stelle) are two contradictory cases that are proposed to exercise an expansion of the concept.