What the (Ideational) Study of Populism Can Teach Us, and What It Can't

Abstract

In their hasty response to the recent wave of populist victories, many analysts have ignored previous scholarship on populism. In contrast, contributors to this special issue draw from well-tested approaches to populism that allow them to build on previous work, especially work based on an ideational approach. In doing so, they highlight at least three things that a more scientific approach to populism can teach us. First, populism is not a new phenomenon, nor is the current wave necessarily stronger than previous ones; second, populist ideas exist at the level of individual voters and matter for political behavior; and third, populism has both positive and negative consequences for democracy. At the same time, contributions to this special issue allow us to highlight at least three limitations of the current ideational approach: it fails to comprehend other political ideas clearly and how they interact with populism; it lacks a theory about different modes of political organization pursued by populist forces; and it inadequately theorizes about the impact of populist forces on party systems.The year 2016 will go down in history as the year when populist forces changed the political scene in the Western world. At least, this is the narrative that many academics and pundits have constructed after the Brexit referendum in the UK and the electoral victory of Donald Trump in the US. Hundreds of newspaper articles and op-eds developed similar versions of this type of argument, each one bringing the issue of populism to center stage. Nevertheless, it is wrong to assume that populism is a new phenomenon that has just come to the surface in the year 2016. In addition, the results of the 2017 national elections in countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands have shown that populist forces are not necessarily the main winners. What is more worrying is that in reaching these conclusions, many journalists and scholars overlook the existence of a coherent wealth of research on populism that should be used and built upon (c.f. Rovira ). This is a major strength of this special issue of the Swiss Political Science Review. All of the contributors are well aware of the academic debate on populism, and in consequence, they not only build upon an existing body of literature but address blind spots and propose new avenues of research. The articles that we discuss here show that the way ahead consists not only in studying populism per se, but in linking the analysis of populism with other academic literatures and traditions (e.g. media studies, nativism, partisanship, political representation, and political psychology).

The Activation of Populist Attitudes

“…This is not the place to delve into this topic, but suffice it to say that the differences between these conceptualizations are minor and all of them consider elitism and pluralism as the opposites of populism. For a more detailed discussion of the ideational approach, see Hawkins and Rovira Kaltwasser (2017) and Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2017). 2 The 2016 election of Donald Trump as US president seems to challenge this argument, but Trump's populist discourse was moderate in comparative perspective, and much of his electoral support was related to his capacity to secure the nomination of the GOP despite his outsider character.…”

Populist Mobilization Across Time and Space: An Introduction

“…Populism comes in waves, and waves also recede, thus there is no secular trend towards populism. In their reflections on this special issue, Hawkins and Rovira Kaltwasser (, this issue) maintain that this is one of the productive conclusions that grow out of the ideational approach to populism.…”

“…Thus, we have yet to understand how the individual‐level underpinnings of populism interact with thick ideologies to make some voters support left‐wing populism and others right‐wing populism. In fact, in their concluding reflections on this special issue, Hawkins and Rovira Kaltwasser (, this issue) identify the relationship and interaction between populism and the other ideologies as one of the lacunae in current research in the field.…”

“…Because of the existence of contrasting conceptions of democracy and the potentially uneasy relationship between the sub‐components of liberal democracy, the relationship between populism and democracy is also ambivalent (Hawkins and Rovira Kaltwasser , this issue). One factor that matters in determining whether populism is “a threat or a corrective to democracy” (Rovira Kaltwasser ) is whether populists actually govern.…”

¿Condiciona la ideología de acogida las actitudes de los partidos populistas hacia la UE? Los vínculos entre populismo y euroescepticismo en el sur de Europa

“…ISSN-L: 0034-9712 https://doi.org/10.3989/ris.2018.76.4.18.003 challenger parties (Mudde 2004;Hobolt and Tilley 2016), and people-centrism. Populism, although far from being a new phenomenon (Hawkins and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017), has proved adept in shaping contemporary European politics, particularly in the postcrisis period, when issues related to European integration became more relevant than ever (Kriesi 2014;Kriesi andGrande 2015, 2016). Poor economic performance and particularly high levels of unemployment are considered a (mildly) favourable opportunity for populist parties in Europe (Kriesi and Pappas 2015), and can also explain the rise of hard Eurosceptic parties (Nicoli 2017;Schraff 2017).…”