A theoretical approach of “populism”

 Populismul este un concept controversat, întrucât nu există o definiție omogenă a acestuia, fiind
considerat de diferiți teoreticieni fie tactică politică, fie stil de comunicare politică, fie practică
discursivă, fie ideologie politică
 Cea mai frecventă confuzie este aceea că stilul populist este apreciat ca fiind un stil de
comunicare care încearcă pur și simplu să fie popular pentru a atrage un număr cât mai mare de
voturi de la categorii cât mai diverse de alegători, printr-o simplificare și generalizare a
discursului politic (Bonikowski, Gidron et ali., 2016)
 The concept of populism has become so widely used—and usually in a derogatory manner to
denigrate any political personality we do not like—that it has lost its analytical value and has
become meaningless.
 We can view the continuing debate over populism as an indication that there is something
important, promising and resonant about the concept.
 In trying to understand populism, political thinkers have long been split about the nature of the
phenomenon and how to approach it—is it a type of social movement, ideology or something
else?
 Conceptualisation of populism as an ideology has become the dominant position in the
literature over the past decade.
 politica este o luptă pentru putere cu scopul de a pune în practică anumite idei
politice, economice și sociale
 discursul politic este eminamente ideologic (Van Djick, 2014), fiind un instrument
prin intermediul căruia ideologiile devin observabile
 Ideologia politica: “un set de idei mai mult sau mai puțin coerent, care oferă baza
acțiunii politice organizate, fie că intenționează să mențină, să modifice sau să
răstoarne sistemul de putere existent > toate ideologiile (a) oferă o descriere a
ordinii existente, de obicei sub forma unei "viziuni mondiale", (b) avansează un
model al unui viitor dorit, o viziune a "societății bune" și (c) explică modul în care
poate și ar trebui să se producă schimbarea politică” (Heywood, 2002, p.43)
 Vehiculându-se ca "regim al adevărului", ideologia este întotdeauna legată de
noțiunea de “putere
 împarte societatea în două tabere antagoniste, poporul “virtuos” și sistemul corupt,
viciat și care susține că politica trebuie să fie o expresie a voinței generale a
poporului.
 principalul element al ideologiei populiste se găsește în respingerea de către
populiști a Sistemului
 partidele populiste dezvoltă un set unic de argumente privind funcționarea
defectuoasă a democrației reprezentative, contestând nu ideea de democrație, ci
forma organizațională a acesteia.
 Dezaprobarea democrației reprezentative = dezaprobare a democrației elitiste și a
cadrului său instituțional, populismul devenind o “expresie a nemulțumirii față de
modurile existente de organizare a intermedierii politice dintre mase și elite” (de
Raadt, Hollanders et ali., 2004, p.6)
 Când subiecții care vorbesc sunt actori politici, observăm că termenul de populism
este sunt folosi atât de către dreapta cât și de stânga pentru a stigmatiza partea adversă
sau pentru a se apăra împotriva stigmatizării.
 Caracteristici ale discursului populist: este întotdeauna născut într-o situație de criză
socială, se observă prezența unui lider carismatic, care promite să se despartă de
practicile din trecut, să pună capă, existnta t corupției și să redea puterea poporului,
existenta EXCESULUI (mizează pe emoție în detrimentul rațiunii politice și aduce
dramatizarea scenariului la extrem: exacerbarea crizei, denunțarea vinovaților,
exaltarea valorilor și apariția un Mântuitor), culpabilizarea inamicilor (externi/interni -
sistemul, "clasa politică", "elitele reci și calculatoare, instituțiile politice, birocrația,
tehnocrații care confiscă puterea prin acțiunea lor administrativă)
 El solicită, prin urmare, restaurarea suveranității populare prin acțiuni directe, imediate,
ocolind instituțiile. Respingerea dimensiunii temporale este o caracteristică a
discursului revoluționar, dar și a discursului populist: este de a crede că "totul este
posibil imediat", că miracolul schimbării este realizabil, fiind o modalitate de a mobiliza
speranța .
 Populismul a fost conceptualizat ca un stil de comunicare, ca o practică de discurs, ca o ideologie
subțire sau ca o mapă mentală prin intermediul căreia indivizii analizează și înțeleg realitatea
politica
 Construcția comunicativă a “poporului” – apeluri către popor, discursuri despre popor, plasarea
opiniei publice pe primul loc în deciziile politice, uniunea simbolică și retorică cu poporul prinn
folosirea pronumelui “noi” – reprezintă elemente fundamentale care se plasează în centrul
comunicării populiste.
 Alte caracteristici ale acesteia sunt: antielitismul (vizibil în atacurile sau atitudinea cinică în raport
cu anumite elite, instituții, sistem – și excluderea grupurilor outsidere, care pot fi atacate verbal
de către populiști și considerate “părți ilegitime” în raport cu poporul, existența unui lider
carismatic, narativul crizei și al pericolului ca punct de plecare al revendicărilor populiste, un stil
tabloidizat construit pe baza unor procedee retorice, cum ar fi limbajul colocvial și emoțional,
duritate în atacurile la adresa oponenților, simplicitate si atitudine directă.
 Aceste elemente dau naștere la patru tipuri diferite de populism “discursiv”: populismul gol, în
cadrul căruia referințele la popor sunt singurele elemente la care politicienii fac apel pentru a
atrage și mobiliza electoratul; populismul excluziționist, în cadrul căruia referințele la popor se
cumulează cu excluziunea grupurilor catalogate drept “outsideri”; populismul anti-elitist, care
mixează referințele la popor cu atacurile la adresa elitelor și, în cele din urmă, populismul
complet, care reunește toate elementele menționate mai sus (Ibidem, p.15).
 Mai mult decât orice altă ideologie, populismul îndeplinește nevoile de integrare
socială și construcție a comunitătii pe care le au cei care aderă la această ideologie.
In acest sens, populismul este îndeaproape relaționat cu nevoile umane primare de
apartenență și acceptare.
 Corelațiile disputate între populism și democrație au dat naștere la două tendințe
în cercetare: una care separă cele două concepte, considerând populismul
antidemocratic și fiind de părere că acesta pune în pericol instituțiile democratice,
alta care asociază populismul și democrația, catalogând populismul drept o
tensiune esențială în cadrul democrației.
 In Franța, populismul are o conotație negativă puternică, folosesc în schimb
termeni precum național-populism, populism liberal, socio-populism, neo-
populism
 We are seemingly living in populist times. The effects of the Global Financial Crisis
drag on, the Eurozone sovereign-debt crisis continues to threaten the very existence of
the European Union, and more broadly, it is alleged that we are suffering from a crisis of
faith in democracy, with political party membership falling dramatically and citizens
finding themselves more and more disillusioned with mainstream politics
 The time is ripe for canny political actors who can speak effectively in the name of ‘the
people’ to make great political gains.
 Over the past two decades—but particularly in the last decade or so—populists across
the world have made headlines by setting ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’ in the name of
popular sovereignty and ‘defending democracy’. Europe has experienced a
groundswell of populism in the form of leaders like Silvio Berlusconi, Geert Wilders,
Jörg Haider and Marine Le Pen, and populist parties throughout the Continent have
enjoyed significant and prolonged political success.
 What was once seen as a fringe phenomenon relegated to another era or only certain
parts of the world is now a mainstay of contemporary politics across the globe
 we need to rethink contemporary populism
 While still based around the classic divide between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, populism’s
reliance on new media technologies, its relationship to shifting modes of political representation
and identification, and its increasing ubiquity have seen the phenomenon transform in nuanced
ways that need explaining.
 This is an era in which ‘communicative abundance’ reigns supreme, and where the increasing
ubiquity and affordability of communication technologies, together with the exponential increase
in the speed and scope of communication and information networks, have led to a situation in
which “all spheres of life, from the most intimate everyday milieux through to large-scale global
organisations, operate within heavily mediated settings in which the meaning of messages is
constantly changing and often at odds with the intentions of their creators” (Keane 2013) >We are
no longer dealing with the romantic notion of the populist speaking directly to ‘the people’ from
the soapbox, but witness a new breed of savvy populist leaders who know how to utilise new
media technologies to their advantage. H
 How has the increased mediatisation of the political helpe populism? How do populist actors
relate to, or use, different aspects of the media to reach ‘the people’? And how has the rise of the
Internet and social networking changed contemporary populism?
 Populism as a political style
 theoretical framework where the leader is seen as the performer, ‘the people’ as the audience,
and crisis and media as the stage on which populism plays out upon. This new vocabulary speaks
to the inherent theatricality of modern populism, as well as helping us focus on the mechanisms of
representation and performance that underlie its central appeal to ‘the people’.
 Populism as ideology
 by conceptualising it as a ‘thincentred’ ideology, we can understand that populism does not exist
in any ‘pure’ form, but rather that it is always present in mixed forms with other ideologies.
 As opposed to a ‘full’ or ‘thick’ ideology (such as liberalism or socialism), which is understood as a
“wide-ranging structural arrangement that attributes decontested meanings to a range of
mutually defining political concepts” (Freeden 2003, 54, emphasis in original), thin ideologies
have a much more restricted core, and focus on only a limited number of key concepts. As such,
they do not attempt to provide the ideational roadmap for the wide range of questions that a full
ideology would. So while populism as a thin ideology may be able to provide the resources to
argue forcefully for the sovereignty of ‘the people’, as Freeden (2003, 98) puts it: “The point is that
it does little else> populism is not a fully formed Weltanschauung but rather a limited set of
concepts that is always combined with other thick ideologies.
 Populism as political strategy

 Weyland (2001, 14): “a political strategy through which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government power
based on direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of mostly unorganized followers”
 populism is thus not defined by the political values of the political actor, nor by the way that they communicate, but by
their relationship (which is supposedly ‘direct’) with their followers.
 Populism as type of discourse

 a discourse that pits ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’ or ‘the oligarchy’ rather than being a feature of a set of political
beliefs, populism is seen as a particular mode of political expression, usually evident in speech or text.
 According to the discursive view, a political actor can be ‘more or less’ populist at different times depending on how
and when they use populist discourse, whereas for the ideological or strategic views, one ‘is’ or ‘is not’ populist. In his
work on populism as a discourse, Hawkins (2010, 30–31) further explains the difference between these approaches by
arguing that a discourse “lacks the official texts and vocabulary that accompany an ideology, and must be discerned
through more diffuse linguistic elements such as tone and metaphor and by a search for broad themes”.
 While an ideology has a normative programme for political action, a discourse does not. (ex. A figure like Chávez may
have a populist discourse, but his ideology is not populism, it is socialism).
 Populism as political logic
 political logic that has had the biggest impact in the area of political and social theory (Laclau)

 Laclau argued that it is the logic of the political > any political project is premised on the division between two
competing antagonistic groups (us/them, underdog/system, ‘the people’/‘the elite’ and so forth
 For Moffitt, populism is a political style
 In the European literature, two key authors stand out for their early work using the concept: Taguieff and
Canovan
 Taguieff:
 populism “does not embody a particular type of political regime, nor does it define a particular
ideological content. It is a political style applicable to various ideological frameworks”
 “populism can only be conceptualized as a type of social and political mobilization, which means that
the term can only designate a dimension of political action or discourse”
 Canovan:
 the only feature that links populist actors is their “rhetorical style which relies heavily upon appeals to
the people” > populism is “a matter of style rather than substance”
 focusing on populism’s political style means moving beyond the simple framing of ‘the people’ against
those in power, and additionally taking into consideration the way that this appeal is shaped and
delivered
 “Populism appeals to the people are characteristically couched in a style that is ‘democratic’ in the
sense of being aimed at ordinary people”. This style relies on directness and simplicity, in terms of not
only the language it is delivered in but also the kind of analyses and solutions it offers
 political style can be understood as the repertoires of embodied, symbolically mediated performance
made to audiences that are used to create and navigate the fields of power that comprise the political,
stretching from the domain of government through to everyday life
 Features of the populist style
 1.Appeal to ‘the People’ versus ‘the Elite’
 2. Bad Manners’ (the tabloid style - use of slang, swearing, political incorrectness,
and being overly demonstrative and ‘colourful’, as opposed to the ‘high’
behaviours of rigidness, rationality, composure and use of technocratic language)
 3. Crisis, Breakdown, Threat (Populism gets its impetus from the perception of crisis,
breakdown or threat and aims to induce crisis through dramatization and
performance > radically simplify the terms and terrain of political debate)
 By conceptualising populism as a political style, the question is not only who ‘the
people’ are, but also how the activity of interpellating or ‘rendering-present’ (Arditi
2007a) ‘the people’ actually occurs.
 Populism and the media
 The survival of populism as a ‘political style’ cannot be understood without an examination of
contemporary media politics
 media - one of the central ‘stages’ on which contemporary populism plays out upon, and as such, argues
that media processes need to put at the centre of our thinking about contemporary populism
 media - both a ‘friend’ and ‘foe’ of populists. It can be a ‘friend’, in that it can set out a sympathetic public
agenda for populists and ‘prime’ the public with issues on which populists can capitalise (such as
immigration or law and order); and ‘foe’, as the media can also often be openly hostile to populists.
 While all forms of politics are mediatised in one form or another, it is populism that most effectively
marries the tendencies of media logic with the central processes of political representation and
decision-making at present. Its appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’ and associated Others plays into
media logic’s dramatisation, polarisation and prioritisation of conflict; its ‘bad manners’ line up with
media logic’s personalisation, stereotypisation and emotionalisation; while its focus on crisis plays into
media logic’s tendency towards intensification and simplification.
 New media has opened up many performative opportunities for populist actors > speak ‘directly’ to
and for ‘the people’, harnessing new media’s reach, connectivity, user-interactivity and relative
affordability
 Populist actors have benefited from the ability to reach ‘the people’ in a low-cost and efficient manner
that sidesteps traditional media channels, while at the same time appearing as more ‘direct’, ‘immediate’
and accountable to their ‘people’. Populism is also suited to the contours of the digital media landscape,
whereby ideological division, virality and immediacy are favoured over the qualities of ‘slow politics’
(Saward 2011)—listening, understanding, modesty and discussion.
 Populism and crisis
 rather than just thinking about crisis as a trigger of populism> populism attempts to act
as a trigger for crisis
 move from a conception of crisis as something that is purely external to populism, to
one that acknowledges the performance of crisis as an internal feature of populism as
conceptualised as a political style > no performance of crisis, no populism.
 1 approach: crisis as a necessary precondition for populism, which cannot emerge
without crisis (we see crisis as offering a ‘break’ in hegemonic discourses, thus opening
a space for counterdiscourses (like populism) to emerge); it surges most strongly in
contexts of crisis or profound social transformation, when pre-existing patterns of
authority or institutional referents lose their capacity to structure the political behaviour
and identities of popular sectors
 2 approach:there may be a link between populism and crisis but remain sceptical
about it (ex. emphasis on the vital role of ‘crisis’ is a constant in studies of both historical
and contemporary nativism and populism & the concept of “crisis” is vague and
imprecise, of limited analytic value
 3 approach: perceive crisis as external to populism > crisis is considered a
phenomenon that does (or does not) cause, spur on, pave the way for or affect the
development of populism
 the performance of crisis should be seen as internal to populism—not just as an
external cause or catalyst for populism, but also as a central feature of the phenomenon
itself >npopulist actors actively ‘perform’ and perpetuate a sense of crisis, rather than
simply reacting to external crisis.
 The question of whether there ‘really is’ a crisis is not important—rather, the key focus
should be on populist actors’ ability to create a sense of crisis and how they use that
sense to inject an urgency and an importance to their message
 The model of populists’ ‘performance’ of crisis:
1. Identify failure
2. Elevate the failure to the level of crisis by linking it into a wider framework and adding a
temporal
dimension
3. Frame ‘the people’ versus those responsible for the crisis
4. Use media to propagate performance
5. Present simple solutions and strong leadership
6. Continue to propagate crisis
 populism = “an appeal to ‘the people’ against both the established structure of power and dominant
ideas and values of the society” (p. 3).
 Populism is easily combined with other ideologies > different types of populist political parties such
populist radical right, social populist, ethnoregionalist populist or liberal populist parties.
 In relation to the two styles of modern politics defined by Oakeshott – the politics of faith and the politics
of skepticism – Margaret Canovan (1999) talks about the two faces of democracy: pragmatic and
redemptive.
 The redemptive face refers to a vision that promises “salvation through politics“, and the return to
popular power with the people as the only legitimate authority and to the direct exercise of power
without institutional constraints.
 The pragmatic face refers to a peaceful resolution of conflicts in society (as an alternative to violence or
even civil war), to preserving the government, institutions and rules (Canovan, 1999). There is essentially
a constant tension between the redemptive and pragmatic faces of democracy which helps to mobilise
populism. On the other hand, populism may threaten the real functioning of democratic regimes
 The key to understanding this face of populism is in its contrast to the principles of liberal democracy,
such as the rule of law, fair and free elections, popular sovereignty, political equality with majority rule,
but also the constitutional protection of minority rights. In the eyes of populists, democracy is a one-
sided phenomenon - it only represents the power of the people
 two dominant interpretations of the term populism, both are highly charged and
negative.
 1. populism refers to the politics of the Stammtisch (the pub), i.e. a highly emotional
and simplistic discourse that is directed at the ‘gut feelings’ of the people
 2. populism is used to describe opportunistic policies with the aim of (quickly)
pleasing the people/voters and so ‘buying’ their support – rather than looking
(rationally)for the ‘best option’
 DEFINITION: populism is an ideology that considers society to be ultimately
separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus
‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the
volonté générale (general will) of the people.
 Populism, so defined, has two opposites: elitism and pluralism
 populism is a distinct ideology, it does not possess ‘the same level of intellectual
refinement and consistency’ as, for example, socialism or liberalism. Populism is only a
‘thin-centred ideology’, exhibiting ‘a restricted core attached to a narrower range of
political concepts’
 Populism is moralistic rather than programmatic. Essential to the discourse of the
populist is the normative distinction between ‘the elite’ and ‘the people’, not the
empirical difference in behaviour or attitudes. Populism presents a Manichean outlook,
in which there are only friends and foes. Opponents are not just people with different
priorities and values, they are evil! Consequently, compromise is impossible, as it
‘corrupts’ the purity.
 In an often implicitly Rousseauian fashion, populists argue that political parties corrupt
the link between leaders and supporters, create artificial divisions within the
homogeneous people, and put their own interests above those of the people
 While populism has been less prominent in mainstream politics in Western Europe, the
last decade or so has seen a significant change in this. Various mainstream opposition
parties have challenged the government using familiar populist arguments.
 the current ‘plebiscitary transformation of democracy’ does not only fail to solve
the perceived crisis of democracy, i.e. the populist challenge, it can actually
strengthen it. By using a similar, popular democratic discourse to justify the
changes, the critique of the populist actors is legitimized.72 More importantly,
these actions raise the expectations of the populist heartland. And when these
expectations are not met, which has been the case in most instances, the populist
protest will be even stronger. Consequently, dissatisfied voters will prefer the
original over the copy, as Le Pen has famously remarked, given that the copy has
already proved to be untrustworthy
 populism draws its strength from the confused and often opportunistic democratic
promises of the political elites.
 The term is regularly used as a synonym for “antiestablishment,” irrespective, it seems, of any
particular political ideas; content, as opposed to attitude, simply doesn’t seem to matter. The term
is thus also primarily associated with particular moods and emotions: populists are “angry”; their
voters are “frustrated” or suffer from “resentment.”
 Today, especially in Europe, all kinds of anxieties—and, much less often, hopes—also crystallize
around the word populism
 Populism is seen as a threat but also as a potential corrective for a politics that has somehow
become too distant from “the people.”
 Populism is a particular moralistic imagination of politics, a way of perceiving the political world
that sets a morally pure and fully unified—but ultimately fictional—people against elites who are
deemed corrupt or in some other way morally inferior. It is a necessary but not a sufficient
condition to be critical of elites in order to qualify as a populist
 In addition to being antielitist, populists are always antipluralist: populists claim that they, and only
they, represent the people. Other political competitors are just part of the immoral, corrupt elite,
or so populists say, while not having power themselves; when in government, they will not
recognize anything like a legitimate opposition
 Populism arises with the introduction of representative democracy; it is its shadow.
Populists hanker after what the political theorist Nancy Rosenblum has called “holism”:
the notion that the polity should no longer be split and the idea that it’s possible for the
people to be one and—all of them—to have one true representative.
 This is the core claim of populism: only some of the people are really the people. Think
of Nigel Farage celebrating the Brexit vote by claiming that it had been a “victory for
real people” (thus making the 48 percent of the British electorate who had opposed
taking the UK out of the European Union somehow less than real—or, put more directly,
questioning their status as proper members of the political community)
 For a political actor or movement to be populist, it must claim that a part of the people
is the people—and that only the populist authentically identifies and represents this
real or true people.
 Populists themselves often conceive of political morality in terms of work and
corruption. This has led some observers to associate populism with a distinct ideology
of “producerism.” Populists pit the pure, innocent, always hardworking people against a
corrupt elite who do not really work (other than to further their self-interest)
 Conventional wisdom has it that populist parties are primarily protest parties and that
protest cannot govern, since one cannot protest against oneself (and, once political
actors have become an elite in power, it will simply prove impossible for them to
perpetuate an antielitist stance).1 Finally, there’s the notion that populists, when they
reach office, will somehow lose their nimbus; charisma will be used up and
“disenchanted” in everyday parliamentary routines
 While populist parties do indeed protest against elites, this does not mean that
populism in government will become contradictory>failures of populists in government
can still be blamed on elites acting behind the scenes, whether at home or abroad
 Populists in office continue to polarize and prepare the people for nothing less than
what is conjured up as a kind of apocalyptic confrontation > they seek to moralize
political conflict as much as possible
 Populist will often eagerly frame a situation as a crisis, calling it an existential threat,
because such a crisis then serves to legitimate populist governance
 Why would anyone ever support populists if the latter are so obviously always
protoauthoritarians likely to do serious damage to democratic systems?
 the success of populism can be connected to what one might call promises of
democracy that have not been fulfilled and that in a certain sense simply can’t be
fulfilled in our societies
 The crucial promise, simply put, is that the people can rule. At least in theory,
populists claim that the people as a whole not only have a common and coherent
will but also can rule in the sense that the right representatives can implement what
the people have demanded in the form of an imperative mandate
 The major differences between democracy and populism should have become
clear by now: one enables majorities to authorize representatives whose actions
may or may not turn out to conform to what a majority of citizens expected or
would have wished for; the other pretends that no action of a populist government
can be questioned, because “the people” have willed it so
 Theses on Populism
 1. Populism is neither the authentic part of modern democratic politics nor a kind of pathology caused
by irrational citizens. It is the permanent shadow of representative politics. There is always the
possibility for an actor to speak in the name of the “real people” as a way of contesting currently
powerful elites.
 2.Not everyone who criticizes elites is a populist. In addition to being antielitist, populists are
antipluralist. They claim that they and they alone represent the people.
 3. populists claim to represent the common good as willed by the people
 4. While populists often call for referenda, such exercises are not about initiating open-ended processes
of democratic will-formation among citizens. Populists simply wish to be confirmed in what they have
already determined the will of the real people to be.
 5.Populists can govern, and they are likely to do so in line with their basic commitment to the idea that
only they represent the people. Concretely, they will engage in occupying the state, mass clientelism
and corruption, and the suppression of anything like a critical civil society.
 6. Populism is not a corrective to liberal democracy in the sense of bringing politics “closer to the
people” or even reasserting popular sovereignty, as is sometimes claimed. But it can be useful in making
it clear that parts of the population really are unrepresented
 POPULISM is one of the most contested concepts in the social sciences > the
discussion about populism concerns not just exactly what it is, but even whether it
exists at all.
 different authors define populism, among others, as an ideology, a movement, and
a syndrome.
 In the European context populism is often used to refer to anti-immigration and
xenophobia, whereas in the Latin American debate populism is frequently
employed to allude to clientelism and economic mismanagement.
 The literature tends to distinguish at least three ideal-types, which loosely relate to
specific geographical areas and time periods: agrarian populism in Russia and the
USA at the turn of the nineteenth century; socio-economic populism in Latin
America in the mid-twentieth century; and xenophobic populism in Europe in the
late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries
 conventional wisdom places the origins of populism at the end of the nineteenth
century, with the almost simultaneous occurrence of the so-called Narodniki in
Russia and the People’s Party in the United States
 In the first wave populism was combined with agrarianism, in the second with a
specific socioeconomic project, and in the third with a xenophobic type of
nationalism.
 In the past decade a growing group of social scientists has defined populism
predominantly by making use of an ‘ideational approach’, conceiving it as
discourse, ideology, or world-view
 populism must be understood as a kind of mental map through which individuals
analyse and comprehend political reality >populism should not be conceived of as
a coherent ideological tradition, but rather as a set of ideas that in the real world
appears in combination with quite different, and sometimes contradictory,
concepts
 Core Concepts
 The People - as sovereign, the common people, and peoples as nations.
 The notion of the people as sovereign is based on the modern democratic idea that defines ‘the people’
not only as the ultimate source of political power, but also as ‘the rulers’.
 In contrast to this elitist view, the notion of ‘the common people’ vindicates the dignity and knowledge of
groups who objectively or subjectively are being excluded from power due to their socioeconomic
status.
 The Elite -the economic elite, the cultural elite, and the media elite.
 All of these are portrayed as being one homogeneous corrupt group that works against the ‘general will’
of the people.
 Because of the essentialist anti-establishment position of populism, many scholars have argued that
populists cannot, by definition, sustain in power. After all, this would make them (part of) ‘the elite’.
 While populists defend a post-class world, often arguing that class divisions are artificially created to
undermine ‘the people’ and keep ‘the elite’ in power, they do at times define the elite in economic terms.
This is mostly the case with left-wing populists, who try to merge some vague form of socialism and
populism.
 General Will
 The third and last core concept of the populist ideology is the notion of the general will
 In addition, by employing the notion of the general will, the populist ideology shares
the Rousseauian critique of representative government. The latter is seen as an
aristocratic form of power, in which citizens are treated as passive entities, mobilized
periodically by elections, in which they do no more than select their representatives
 Populist actors usually support the implementation of direct democratic mechanisms,
such as referenda and plebiscites > one of the practical consequences of the populist
ideology is the promotion of strategies that are useful for enabling the putative will of
the people.
 Because the populist ideology implies that the general will is not only transparent but
also absolute, it can morph easily into authoritarianism by legitimizing attacks on
anyone who doubts the homogeneity of the people
 by conceiving of populism as a thin-centred ideology, it is possible to understand why
populism is so malleable in the real world
 charismatic leadership should not be seen as a defining attribute of populism, but
rather as a facilitator of the latter. Similarly, the alleged absence of intermediation
between the populist leader and the masses is not inherent to populism, but rather a
practical consequence of it.
 populism should be considered less as a political strategy that is implemented by
‘malicious’ actors, and more as a Manichean world-view that could be raised by
different political leaders and is shared by diverse constituencies. This means that it is
flawed to assume that the people support populism because they are ‘foolish’ or
‘seduced’ by charismatic leaders.
 In conclusion, although there is little doubt that populism is a contemporary
phenomenon that affects the day-to-day functioning of democracy worldwide, there is
no scholarly agreement on how to conceptualize it.
 the global rise of populism – based on "the failure of the neoliberal system“ &ba destabilised
cultural identity.
 voting for a populist party is a retro reaction by once-predominant sectors of the population to
progressive value change
 the roots of neo-populism are likely to be thick tangles of economic, cultural, existential
 leftist and rightist variants of populism share an anti-establishment stance, a claim to defend
ordinary people and an opposition to some of the maxims of neoliberalism
 centrist populism (Macron) > "anti-populist populism“ or "soft populism"
 social media outlets have provided a platform against the (neo)liberal elites, but social media is
not solely a populist tool
 social and mass media feed off one another in recursive loops of what I call ‘viral reality’ whereby
populist leaders and their followers co-create content, often through hashtags that straddle the
social versus mass media divide and blur the lines between news and opinion.
 Just because a populist – or indeed a non-populist – social media campaign preceded an electoral
victory, we cannot assume that this triumph was a result of that campaign
 to understand the link between social media and the recent rise of populism we need a global,
comparative approach that carefully scrutinises claims about the effects of new media
technologies on political change
 In the aftermath of the Great Recession that began in 2008, populism has returned
to political life in a spectacular fashion and, as befits our information age, its has
also become a trending topic in the global conversation
 the populist strategy has served well a number of political leaders that have defied
the establishment within their parties (Pedro Sánchez, Matteo Renzi) or even their
national party system (Emmanuel Macron)
 populism has become an affective performance -without ceasing to be an ideology
or a discourse or a political movement
 liberal democracies themselves are more populist, it is because those emerging
features extend their influence beyond the explicit action of populist parties and
movements > intersection of populism with the digital and the affective is not only
interesting for understanding the former, but also for reflecting upon liberal
democracy and its future
 Whereas the digital turn refers to the impact of new information technologies in social and
personal lives, including politics and democracy, the affective turn underlines the underestimated
influence of emotions in individual and even collective perceptions, reactions and decisions -
encompassing, again, political perceptions, reactions and decisions. These two phenomena
reinforce each other -and both reinforce populism or at least populist tendencies.
 Some claim that populism as such does not exist, but rather its heterogeneous manifestations >
contested concept -so contested that many doubt that it exists or is something else than a
Kampfwort to demonize political enemies.
 a distinction between substantive and adjective elements: the former amount to the basic core
of populism, whereas the latter are often present but are not enough to define it, since they can
also be at play in other political phenomena
 Populism is an intensely affective phenomenon - "Populism is a matter of the heart rather than the
head“
 The affective core of populism reveals itself in the display of an emotional language that is both
verbal and non-verbal, in the relationship between the leader and the followers, as well as in the
make-up of a collective subject (the people) that stands against its enemies (the elite, or the
establishment).
 The digiticization of the public sphere: post-truth, affective publics, and
populism
 Following the conceptualization of populism as a political style, it has been
emphasized that it is the populist performance what most counts in the search for
public support. Again, this performance does not only include verbal
communication and the usage of words that possess a strong symbolic and
affective power -such as "people" and "democracy"- but also non-verbal aspects of
communication. They all contribute to the construction of a public image of the
populist leader, which in turn is a magnet for the eyes of the people in a democratic
society where such gaze is becoming much more relevant that people's voice
 governments must be persuasive in order to govern, but consent is harder to
obtain than ever > the talk of a "permanent electoral campaign" in which both
governments and opposition find themselves to be
 Do social networks, through which most the digital public conversation takes place, makes
political communication more emotional? Or does it rather reinforce its rational components and
hence foster its deliberative functions? And how does it contribute to the workings of populism?
 Now citizens are co-protagonists in the creation of opinion: vertical mass communication has
given way to mass self-communication, where citizens create and distribute content that can be
instantaneously discussed in both directions
 instruments -from blogs to social networks and comment sections in webpages- are used to
debate political topics, it can be argued that "rhetorical rationalism" has been weakened while a
more "authentic" language that privileges an emotional register, personal experience, and a
suspicious attitude towards elites is becoming prevalent: a narrative rather than an argument
 Social networks and even blogs become "echo chambers" where we interact in isolation with
those who already think what we think
 Digital technologies, in sum, reinforce the trend through which democracy becomes a battlefield
for influence, i.e. influence on the way in which citizens perceive or frame issues, as a condition
for political change.
 digital technologies and social networks make it possible to create in voters the feeling that they
are themselves directly addressed -an unmediated communication that, as Donald Trump's clever
use of Twitter amply demonstrates, create a bond between followers and leaders that befits
populist strategies
 while the anti-establishment discourse of populism entails a distrust of mainstream media and
conventional politicians, social networks make it easier for populist movements to feed their
followers with their own news
 technology has made possible a mediated communication that however feels unmediated, thus
tapping into the belief that we are empowered as citizens. Populism profits from this as well, since
this political style relies not only upon the opposition between people and elite, but also upon
democracy's ideology as the rule of the people by the people for the people.
 Audiences are not only pushed (by traditional media or the populist leader) because they also
pull(by engaging actively in digital media or keeping up the digital bonding that expresses
support for the populist movement)
 Populism is strenghtened by digiticization and affectively charged; sentimentalization is
facilitated by digiticization and expresses itself in populism; digiticization shows an important
expressive-cum-performative dimension and paves the way for a populist way of communication
 Concluzionând, putem identifica un pattern de comunicare populist care reunește
valențele ideologice specifice populismului (Lilleker, 2006, pp.160-161):
 • Intervențiile discursive se vor concentra pe concepte precum naționalitate și
identitate națională, în cadrul cărora amenințările pentru națiune vor fi folosite ca
un accent pentru apelul la unitate;
 • Soluțiile propuse la problemele de pe agenda politică vor fi extreme, radicale
(expulzări, eliminări masive);
 • Populismul va atrage în mare măsură simbolismul, imaginile unui trecut mitic și
figurile și imaginile care unifică, folosindu-se de strategii discursive care mizează
pe emoție și dramatizare în detrimentul rațiunii politice: exacerbarea crizei,
denunțarea vinovaților, exaltarea valorilor și reîntoarcerea la o stare primară,
fondatoare a unui destin național glorios