The Faces of Contemporary Populism in Western Europe and the US

280 Pages·2021·2.299 MB·English

by  Karine Tournier-Sol (editor), Marie Gayte (editor)

The Faces of
Contemporary
Populism in Western
Europe and the US
Edited by
Karine Tournier-Sol
Marie Gayte
The Faces of Contemporary Populism in Western
Europe and the US
·
Karine Tournier-Sol Marie Gayte
Editors
The Faces
of Contemporary
Populism in Western
Europe and the US
Editors
Karine Tournier-Sol Marie Gayte
University of Toulon University of Toulon
La Garde, France La Garde, France
ISBN 978-3-030-53888-0 ISBN 978-3-030-53889-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7
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Introduction
Populism has gone global. The last decade has proven particularly fertile
inthisrespect,withtheyear2016standingasacriticaljuncture:theunex-
pected victory of the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016 was seen as a strong
signal epitomizing a new populist breakthrough, which appeared to find
an echo a few months later in the equally surprising victory of Donald
Trump in the US presidential election. From an international perspec-
tive, the Brexit vote was interpreted as a “populist moment,”1 in a larger
sequence of events going beyond the UK’s own case and borders, which
startedawholeconversationontheresurgenceofpopulism:asarguedby
Rooduijn in The Guardian “Some of the most significant recent polit-
ical developments like the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald
Trump cannot be understood without taking into account the rise of
populism.”2
In the following months, other countries followed suit (Germany,
Austria, later Italy, Brazil), providing further evidence of the interna-
tional dimension of the phenomenon, which seemed to have spread to
1C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017; M. Rooduijn, “State of the
Field: How to Study Populism and Adjacent Topics? A Plea for Both More and Less
Focus”, European Journal of Political Research, 58:1, 2019, pp. 362–372.
2M. Rooduijn, “Revealed: One in Four Europeans Vote Populist”, The Guardian, 20
November 2018.
v
vi INTRODUCTION
every continent.3 Populist parties have gained considerable ground: in
Europe, they have tripled their vote in the past 20 years.4 But this goes
well beyond Europe, with populists now in government in almost every
partoftheglobe.Theyhavesuccessfullymoved“fromthemarginstothe
mainstream,”5 thereby redrawing the political landscape.
This apparent new wave triggered an exponential growth of the use
oftheterm“populism”inpublicdebate,whichwentviral,notablyinthe
media6 whereitbecamethe“newbuzzword7”—theobviousrisksofsuch
an escalation being confusion and conflation, therefore calling for closer
scrutiny, relying on a precise definition of the concept of populism.
However, this unprecedented upsurge of interest in populism is not
only the preserve of the media and public debate, as it is also reflected
in the academic literature,8 further testifying to the reality of the
phenomenonatwork.Theincreaseofscholarlyproductiononthesubject
canbeseenasamirroredimageoftheextentanddiversityofthemanifes-
tations of contemporary populism. Academic interest is not new though,
far from it, and has gone through successive phases, mostly reflecting the
successive waves of the manifestations of populism itself.9
3C.Mudde,C.RoviraKaltwasser,Populism:AVeryShortIntroduction,OxfordUniver-
sity Press, 2017, p. 40; B. Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political
Style, and Representation, Stanford University Press, 2016, pp. 1–2.
4M.Rooduijn,“WhyIsPopulismSuddenlyAlltheRage?”TheGuardian,20November
2018.
5P. Hainsworth (ed.), The Politics of the Extreme Right: From the Margins to the
Mainstream, Pinter, 2000.
6M. Rooduijn, “State of the Field: How to Study Populism and Adjacent Topics? A
PleaforBothMoreandLessFocus”,EuropeanJournalofPoliticalResearch,58:1,2019,
p. 362.
7C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017, pp. 73–74.
8C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, P. Ostiguy, (eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Populism, Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 9–11.
9B. Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representa-
tion, Stanford University Press, 2016, pp. 34–35.
INTRODUCTION vii
Successive Waves and Major Landmarks
in the Research on Populism
The point here is not to enter into an exhaustive review of the literature
onpopulism,10 buttoidentifyseverallandmarksinthefield.Takingstock
ofthesuccessiveattemptsatconceptualizingpopulismandofthedifferent
existing visions of the notion will then allow us to explicitly state the
conceptualframeworkadoptedforthiseditedbook,atleastasacommon
starting point for all the contributions—to say, in fact, where we speak
from and what we mean when we engage in this work on populism.
The first attempt at comparison and conceptualization dates back
to the 1967 conference at the London School of Economics orga-
nized by Ionescu and Gellner, and which resulted in an edited book
publishedin1969.11 Althoughthedifferentcontributionsfailedtoreach
a common theoretical framework for populism, this cutting-edge work
proved very instructive, opening up new avenues for academic explo-
ration.Inparallel,othersignificantstudiesemergedonthesubject,mostly
on Latin America,12 as well as Laclau’s first book identifying populism as
a discourse.13
ThesecondlandmarkworkisthatofMargaretCanovan,withher1981
seminalbookPopulism.IncontrastwithIonescuandGellner,heravowed
aim was not to come out with “a single essentialist definition,”14 but to
provide a typology, which eventually broke down into seven categories,
with three types of agrarian populism and four of political populism.
Although this classification proved rather limited in terms of systematic
10See for instance B. Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style,
and Representation, Stanford University Press, 2016, pp. 30–43; M. Rooduijn, “State of
the Field: How to Study Populism and Adjacent Topics? A Plea for both More and Less
Focus”, European Journal of Political Research, 58:1, 2019, pp. 363–365.
11G. Ionescu, E. Gellner (eds.), Populism: Its Meanings and National Characteristics,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969.
12T. Di Tella, “Populism and Reform in Latin American”, in C. Véliz (ed.), Obstacles
to Change in Latin America, Oxford University Press, 1965, pp. 47–73 ; P. H. Smith,
“SocialMobilization,PoliticalParticipation,andtheRiseofJuanPerón”,PoliticalScience
Quarterly, 84:1, 1969, pp. 30–49.
13E.Laclau,PoliticsandIdeologyinMarxistTheory:Capitalism,Fascism,Populism,New
Left Books, 1977.
14M. Canovan, Populism, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.
viii INTRODUCTION
applicability, as she herself later acknowledged,15 she already identified
two universal characteristics of populism: “the exaltation of and appeal
to ‘the people’” (on which she would later focus her work), and the
anti-elitist dimension.16
The 1990s opened up a new phase, marked by a significant growth in
scholarly work on populism, focusing mostly on radical right populism in
WesternEurope,17 reflectingthemanifestationsofpopulismatthattime,
but also already raising the question of the risk of conflation between
what could be identified as features of the radical right, and features of
populism. In 2000, Taggart’s book, Populism, marked another landmark,
aiming at a “universal understanding of populism” and proposing “an
ideal type”18 with common features. It provided comparative researchers
with very useful analytical tools, among which the concept of the people
as a homogenous “heartland,” as well as the “chameleonic nature” of
populism. Across the Atlantic, Kazin’s book on American populism also
represented a substantial contribution on a country which was already
vastly understudied.19
There was a significant increase in comparative studies from the
2000s.20 A major landmark in this respect came with Mudde’s defini-
tion of populism as “a thin-centered 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 poli-
tics should be an expression of the ‘volonté générale’ (general will) of
the people.”21 As a thin ideology, populism can therefore be attached
15M. Canovan, “Two Strategies for the Study of Populism”, Political Studies, 30:4,
1982, p. 552.
16M. Canovan, Populism, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981, p. 294.
17H. G. Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe, Palgrave Macmillan,
1994 ; P. Taggart, “New Populist Parties in Western Europe”, West European Politics ,
18:1, 1995, pp. 34–51 ; P. Taggart, The New Populism and the New Politics: New Protest
Parties in Sweden in a Comparative Perspective, Macmillan, 1996.
18P. Taggart, Populism, Open University Press, 2000, p. 7.
19M. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History, Basic Books, 1995.
20Y.Mény,Y.Surel(eds.),DemocraciesandthePopulistChallenge,PalgraveMacmillan,
2002; D. Albertazzi, D. McDonnell (eds.), Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of
Western European Democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
21C.Mudde,“ThePopulistZeitgeist”,GovernmentandOpposition,39:4,2004,p.543
; C. Mudde, “Populism: An Ideational Approach”, C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P.
INTRODUCTION ix
to various thick or hostideologies,left and right.This minimaldefinition
marked a decisive step in comparative research on populism, “a fruitful
move22” providing academics with an operational tool to work with, and
moving beyond the constant controversy which had always characterized
this field of study.
The debate still rages on, however, but there is a growing consensus
among scholars on what is called “the ideational approach,” which
considers populism as a set of ideas and encompasses Mudde’s defini-
tion. Alternative visions within this ideational approach define populism
not as an ideology, but as a style,23 a rhetoric,24 a political logic25 or a
discourse.26 Most experts also agree on its core features, namely people-
centrism and anti-elitism. The essence of the still ongoing dispute about
populism today is normative rather than conceptual,27 and is linked to
its perceived negative connotation in public debate which raises the very
question of its scientific relevance as a tool of analysis.
Finally, in terms of the volume of scholarly work, as already under-
lined, the last decade has proven particularly fertile, with what Rooduijn
calls an “explosion of populism studies.”28 This new wave of scientific
research constitutes a fourth wave, merely reflecting the expansion of
populism itself around the globe, with considerable electoral gains for
populist parties. The result should not be dismissed as merely cumula-
tive though: the scientific literature on populism is becoming richer as it
Ochoa Espejo, P. Ostiguy, (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Populism, Oxford University
Press, 2017, pp. 27–47.
22B. Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representa-
tion, Stanford University Press, 2016, p. 36.
23Ibid.
24P. Norris, R. Inglehart, Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian
Populism, Cambridge University Press, 2019.
25E. Laclau, On Populist Reason, Verso, 2005.
26K. A. Hawkins, Venezuela’s Chavismo and Populism in Comparative Perspective,
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
27C.RoviraKaltwasser,“HowtoDefinePopulism”,inG.Fitzi,J.Mackert,B.S.Turner
(eds), Populism and the Crisis of Democracy Volume 1: Concepts and Theory, Routledge,
2019, pp. 62–63.
28M. Rooduijn, “State of the Field: How to Study Populism and Adjacent Topics? A
PleaforBothMoreandLessFocus”,EuropeanJournalofPoliticalResearch,58:1,2019,
p. 363.
x INTRODUCTION
draws from an increasingly wide range of manifestations and case studies
in real life to analyze and learn from. Hence this mirrored image effect,
which is quite logical, as social scientists reflect on and study the world
they live in.
Aim(s) of the Book and Theoretical Framework
This edited collection aims to contribute to the political science schol-
arship on populism by focusing on the contemporary manifestations of
populism in light of the current context. In so doing, this book not only
takes stock of the previous work on populism, but also builds upon it to
further deepen our understanding of the phenomenon and take research
forward. We explore different facets of the most recent manifestations of
populism, trying to engage in new avenues as suggested by recent and
authoritative academic work. In this respect, all advice point in the same
direction: first, the necessity to explore “blind spots29”; second, avoid
conflation yet encourage fertilization,30 to see how populism is associ-
ated with other concepts, and how they possibly reinforce each other:
“Populism rarely travels alone. It is necessary to identify what it travels
with.”31
The approach is comparative, with a cross-regional focus on Western
Europe and the US. This is because we feel that these countries share a
comparablesystemofrepresentativedemocracyresultingfromacommon
history. We put a particular emphasis on the US, with four chapters,
becausewhileitiswherethetermpopulismwasborn,32 thephenomenon
in its contemporary form is largely understudied. We also devote specific
attention to the UK, with three chapters, due to the Brexit earthquake
anditscommoninterpretationas“apopulistmoment,”inacountrylong
regardedasimmunetopopulism,withtheviewtodisentanglingpopulism
fromotherassociatedfactors(nativismandEuroscepticism),asadvisedby
29C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, P. Ostiguy, (eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Populism, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 16.
30M. Rooduijn, “State of the Field: How to Study Populism and Adjacent Topics? A
PleaforBothMoreandLessFocus”,EuropeanJournalofPoliticalResearch,58:1,2019,
pp. 367–368.
31C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, P. Ostiguy, (eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Populism, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 17.
32Ibid., p. 9.