Beyond populism studies

Abstract

‘Populism’ has become ever more ubiquitous in political analysis, to the extent that ‘populism studies’ appears on course to establishing itself as a field of research in its own right. This article warns about the dangers of such a development. Taking a discourse theoretical approach as our starting point – but also critically engaging with this tradition’s contribution to the hype about populism – we suggest that ‘populism studies’ (and the preoccupation with populism this field embodies) risks reifying populism by focusing on populism as a phenomenon ‘as such’, and through an over-reliance on the concept of populism to approach that phenomenon. This, we argue, hampers a nuanced and contextualized understanding of the exact role populism plays in different populist politics. This is not a call for abandoning the concept of populism altogether, but a call for de-centring the concept and for moving beyond academia’s ‘populist moment’.

Junctures in the time of COVID-19: Topic search and government's framing of COVID-19 response in the Philippines

“…Existing works on the politics of the COVID-19 response in the Philippines have ubiquitously highlighted policy failure in the backdrop of a populist regime (Aguilar, 2020; Hapal, 2021; Teehankee, 2021). However, such preoccupation with populism as a one-size-fits-all account not only hampers a more nuanced examination of policy discourse (De Cleen and Glynos, 2021) but ignores the relevance of citizens as stakeholders and policy participants (Kweit and Kweit, 2004). This article digresses from the conventional populist formula and contributes through an empirical inquiry of the relationship between citizen demand and policy response.…”

What “Real” Women Want: Alt-Right Femininity Vlogs as an Anti-Feminist Populist Aesthetic

“…Yet, in context, many authors link populist style with conservative politics, particularly as it manifests in nationalism (Anastasiou, 2019;De Cleen & Glynos, 2021). Such populism today often takes the appearance of consensus-building, even when it operates as a resentful "form of wedge politics" (Cover, 2020).…”

Populist performance(s) in contemporary Greek rap music

“…Whether they are themselves populist or not, the fact that such (political or cultural) projects – from particular political forces to rap music – are demonised as such brings them within the scope of the research field of populism studies, which must encompass discourses about populism in addition to populist discourses themselves. Indeed ‘[n]ot much attention has been paid to such dynamics underlying and perpetuating debates about populism’ (De Cleen and Glynos 2021, p. 188, emphasis in the original); yet such ‘meta-reflections on discourses about populism’ (De Cleen and Glynos 2021, p. 190) are crucial in illuminating the field in all its complexity and paradoxical dynamics.…”