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New versus Old Politics in Podemos: Feminization and Masculinized Party Discourse

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Men and Masculinities 22(1):1097184X1876935

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Institute of Public Goods and Policies

Little research has explored the gender dimension of political actors who have emerged in response to the erosion of Western mainstream parties after the Great Recession. This article analyzes the case of Podemos, a party inspired by the protest movement Indignados, which has disrupted the Spanish two-party system in only two years. Through the analysis of its leadership’s discourse, I expose the constitutive friction between Podemos’ commitment to “new” alternative practices and the “feminization of politics,” and the reproduction of “old” and “masculinized” politics through a competitive rationale. I characterize this rationale with four features that underlie a dominant masculine party culture: (1) emphasis on winning and aggressive strategy, (2) adversarial style and internal confrontation, (3) hierarchy based on intellectual authority, and (4) charismatic masculine leadership. I suggest that this originates from a populist notion of empowerment and political power that relies on a patriarchal and dominant understanding of successful politics.

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Article

New versus Old Politics in

Podemos: Feminization

and Masculinized Party

Discourse

Paloma Caravantes

Abstract

Little research has explored the gender dimension of political actors who have

emerged in response to the erosion of Western mainstream parties after the Great

Recession. This article analyzes the case of Podemos, a party inspired by the protest

movement Indignados, which has disrupted the Spanish two-party system in only

two years. Through the analysis of its leadership’s discourse, I expose the con-

stitutive friction between Podemos’ commitment to “new” alternative practices and

the “feminization of politics,” and the reproduction of “old” and “masculinized”

politics through a competitive rationale. I characterize this rationale with four fea-

tures that underlie a dominant masculine party culture: (1) emphasis on winning and

aggressive strategy, (2) adversarial style and internal confrontation, (3) hierarchy

based on intellectual authority, and (4) charismatic masculine leadership. I suggest

that this originates from a populist notion of empowerment and political power that

relies on a patriarchal and dominant understanding of successful politics.

Keywords

feminism, populism, politics, feminization, Spain, masculinized party culture

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Paloma Caravantes, Rutgers University, Ruth Dill Johnson Crockett Building, 162 Ryders Lane, New

Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.

Email: paloma.caravantesgonzalez@rutgers.edu

Men and Masculinities

2019, Vol. 22(3) 465-490

ªThe Author(s) 2018

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1097184X18769350

journals.sagepub.com/home/jmm

When discussing the gender dimension of political parties, much of the literature

focuses on the formal and informal dynamics that shape the distribution of power

and the everyday functioning of established political organizations and institutions

including organization, participation, recruitment, or candidate selection (Bjarne-

gard 2013; Leach and Lowndes 2007; Lovenduski 2005; Verge and de la Fuente

2014). Not so much scholarship focuses on the gender dimension of new political

forces that emerged as a consequence of the erosion of mainstream parties in the

aftermaths of the Great Recession (Kriesi 2016). Podemos (“We can”) represents a

distinctive case in this context, as a leftist party inspired by anti-austerity social

movements, particularly the so-called Indignados (“Indignant”), within a Western

European scene dominated by the expansion of right-wing and neoliberal populist

actors. Unlike other challenges posed to Western liberal democracies, Podemos not

only offers a grassroots populist answer to the discredited political establishment

but, more interestingly, openly questions the gender order of political structures and

the exercise of power. At a discursive level, Podemos combines inclusionary com-

mitments, aiming to implement new, alternative, and “feminized” politics, with a

competitive rhetoric seeking to “win” the institutions for the people. I examine the

complex dialogue between these two discourses through the lens of gender perfor-

mance, exploring the friction between feminist and pluralist elements and the repro-

duction of a dominant masculine party culture.

I analyze Podemos leadership’s discourse and public performance—including

official party declarations, electoral material, personal statements, and interviews

that have been either covered by mainstream media or published by leaders through

social networks—between the foundation of the party in January 2014 and the first

semester of 2017. This material shows how Podemos leverages Western processes of

mediatization (Kriesi 2014) or tabloidization of politics (Mudde 2013), strategically

using social networks and mainstream media to build the image of the party and its

leaders’ personas (Rivero 2014). Online platforms have been equally central to the

party’s participation and organizational dynamics, offering an interface between the

leadership and the base.

Presented as a departure from the media strategy of mainstream parties,

Pode-

mos’ communication stands out for (1) the party’s advocacy for sharing its political

strategy and academic diagnosis of the sociopolitical and economic context and

(2) its transparency about internal and organizational dynamics. Thus, I explore

the party’s discursive production throughout its process of institutionalization,

during an exceptional moment in Spanish politics characterized by an intense

electoral cycle.

Podemos stormed onto the Spanish political scene in 2014, when the country was

still immersed in a climate of discontent and frustration over the corruption, mal-

practice, and self-indulgent dynamics of the political class. Since 2008, the country

has endured social, economic, and political crises that have severely affected the

well-being and living conditions of the population and have altered the stability of its

political system (Ioe´ 2013). The Great Recession deeply impacted the Spanish

466 Men and Masculinities 22(3)

economy, with a reduction of almost 15 percent in its gross domestic product

between 2008 and 2013 (Ramiro and Go´mez 2016). Austerity policies have accel-

erated unemployment, which reached 55.5 percent of youth and 26.2 percent of adult

workers in 2013 (Eurostat 2015), and the banking crisis has contributed to increasing

indebtedness among the middle class. Multiple corruption scandals have rocked

mainstream national parties as well as members of the royal family, and secessionist

movements have been revitalized, fueled by identity aspirations and perceptions of

economic discrimination.

In this politically volatile and economically precarious context, Podemos was estab-

lished to participate in the European elections of May 2014, unexpectedly winning 7.98

percent of the national vote (Ga´lvez and Kadner 2014). In only two years, the party has

disrupted the Spanish political landscape. Mainly due to Podemos’ success, the coun-

try’s two-party system has fragmented into a multiparty system leading to two rounds of

elections in December 2015 and June 2016. For the first time since the consolidation of

democracy in the early 1980s, neither of the two mainstream parties, the People’s Party

(PP) and the Socialist Party (PSOE), was able to form a government for almost a year.

Eventually, faction struggles within the PSOE led to the resignation of its leader, Pedro

Sa´nchez, and to the abstention of most Socialist Members of Parliament (MPs) to enable

the reelection of Mariano Rajoy, PP’s leader, as the country’s president in the name of

country’s stability (Burgen 2016).

The transformation and instability of the party system, along with the relative

collapse of the PSOE, reflect an extraordinary period in Spanish politics that resembles

similar processes in other Western countries after the Great Recession. The erosion of

mainstream parties’ representational role and the inability of political institutions to

promote policies that are well received have led to social unrest and to the emergence

of populist actors who seem to grasp structural conflicts better, claiming to defend the

self-perceived losers of globalization (Kriesi 2016). Recent literature identifies the

enforcement of austerity measures and mainstream parties’ political corruption and

unresponsiveness as major causes of the spread of popular protest and the transforma-

tion of Western party systems (Kriesi and Pappas 2015; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017).

The referendum held in the United Kingdom aboutwhether to remain in the European

Union, the 2016 US presidential election, and recent developments in French and

Dutch politics are good examples of these processes.

In the case of Spain, incipient studies question the hypothesis that Podemos

obtains its support from the self-perceived “losers of globalization,” rather, they

argue, the party relies on “anti-mainstream protest voting and highly educated

groups with unfulfilled expectations” (Ramiro and Go´mez 2016, 3). Framing the

political context as a “window of opportunity” (Errejo´n 2016) to foster a deep

transformation in Spanish society, Podemos leaders stress their commitment to do

things differently than the political class (“the caste”) does (Vallı´n 2017). Podemos

rhetoric relies on the dichotomy of new versus old politics, in which the party claims

to represent the common people in the face of a corrupt and self-serving elite of

professional politicians (Cruz 2016; Dı´az 2016).

Caravantes 467

This window of opportunity was allegedly opened by anti-austerity movements,

particularly the Indignados, also known as 15-M movement. The Indignados

emerged in the political scene with a mass demonstration in Madrid on May 15,

2011, seeking to hold political elites and financial institutions accountable for the

economic and political crises, while reversing the reigning apathy with a civic

exercise of political empowerment (Serrano et al. 2014). Following the lessons from

the Arab Spring and grassroots movements in Latin America and Greece, the Indig-

nados established protest camps in cities around the country as alternative models of

power and decentralized organization (Hughes 2011).

In 2014, Podemos capitalized on the momentum started by these mass mobiliza-

tions. The party continued the legacy of the Indignados by carrying forward some of

its key demands (e.g., empowering the population in front of the political class) and

by committing to practicing politics in ways similar to how the movement held its

protests—such as restricting leadership and promoting principles of collaboration

and horizontality (Hughes 2011). Unlike other grassroots protest movements such as

“Occupy,” the Indignados found a continuity in Podemos, which has not only

become the third national party in two years of existence—closely following the

PSOE—but even reached similar levels of vote intention to those of the main two

parties in 2015 (Ramiro and Go´mez 2016).

Interestingly, a key aspect of Podemos’ transformative discourse lies in decon-

structing dominant modes of gender performance within the political field, not only

as opposed to the stale practices of the “old caste” but also in the construction of the

party’s internal dynamics. Either through the so-called feminization of politics or

other feminist concepts, Podemos leaders stress the need to move away from a

dominant masculine party culture and the exercising of power that accentuates

hierarchy, confrontation, and imposition. Alternatively, Podemos advocates for lea-

derships based on dialogue, collaboration, and inclusiveness. By framing “new”

politics through the transformation of the gender order, Podemos provides a unique

example within the context of transformation of Western party systems.

In the remaining sections of this article, I use material from mainstream media

and social media to explore Podemos’ strategy, mechanisms of authority, internal

organization, and styles of leadership, assessing the gendered dynamics operating

through its leaders’ discourse and performance. First, I examine the party’s com-

mitment to new and alternative practices based on bringing plurality to the insti-

tutions and the “feminization of politics.” Then, I identify a competitive rationale,

characterized by an emphasis on winning, an adversarial style, a hierarchy based

on intellectual authority, and a charismatic leadership. Through this comprehen-

sive approach, I show how the competitive framework embraced by Podemos

recreates dynamics that are highly complicit to the “masculinized” ways the party

appears to be seeking to deconstruct. Finally, I discuss the assumptions underlying

this rationale suggesting its relation to a specific notion of empowerment and

political power.

468 Men and Masculinities 22(3)

“Masculine” and “Homosocial” Politics

Feminist scholars have devoted considerable attention to the analysis of gendered

styles of political leadership. Reingold (1996), for example, distinguished between

feminine or feminist political styles that value “compromise, consensus-building,

equality, and honesty,” as opposed to masculine leadership styles that frame politics

as a win–lose situation, in which a hierarchy is often enforced through manipulation

and coercion (pp. 464–65). Jones, Charles, and Davies (2009) differentiate between

“consensual politics”—less aggressive, cooperative, and associated with “feminine”

ways–and an “adversarial style”—oppositional, efficient, and associated with

“macho” forms of masculinity. Similarly, Lovenduski (2005) finds that British

politics favor “speechifying, posturing, and arcane practice” rather than

“cooperation, consensus-seeking, and real discussion of alternatives” (p. 54). Other

authors accentuate the relational aspect of collaborative leadership, characterized by

consensus building and shared authority rather than self-sufficiency and fragmenta-

tion (Palop 2016). This scholarship provides helpful guidelines for analyzing the

gender dimension of Podemos’ discourse, particularly to interpret the feminization

of politics, which Roth and Shae Baird (2017) define as follows:

First, gender equality in institutional representation and public participation. Second, a

commitment to public policies that challenge gender roles and seek to break down

patriarchy. Third, a different way of doing politics, based on value and practice that put

an emphasis on everyday life, relationship, the role of the community and the common

good.

In their definition, Roth and Shae Baird are particularly cautious to avoid a

reification of the feminine, a notion that has been extensively debated and contested

due to its complicity with binary and essentialist understandings of sex and gender

categories. Feminist literature has focused on destabilizing dominant readings of the

“femininity,” revealing their genealogy and sociocultural specificity, as well as their

configuration within a set of power relations that intersect with other systems of

discrimination (Butler 1990; Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall 2013). Despite the risks of

reification, the notions of “masculinity” and femininity have been used in studies on

gender and politics for their value as referential categories that define ideal forms of

gender configurations in Western cultures. In the case of Podemos, these termino-

logical complexities have triggered intraparty controversies around the use of

“feminization,” leading some party feminists to suggest the use of

“depatriarchalization” as a more appropriate way to convey the opposition between

egalitarian and patriarchal politics.

When exploring the ways in which institutions are gendered, the specialized

literature emphasizes the relevance of informal dynamics at the core of most polit-

ical organizations (Leach and Lowndes 2007). These dynamics are markedly homo-

social (Mackay, Kenny, and Chappell 2010), allowing political actors to mobilize a

Caravantes 469

type of capital granted for and to men based on interpersonal trust, familiarity, and

likeability within same-sex social relations (Bjarnegard 2013, 22). Homosocial

interactions work not only as relational mechanisms of validation, policing, or dis-

ciplining (Vasquez del Aguila 2014) but also as sources of trust among male poli-

ticians who ground their perception of interpersonal predictability, loyalty, and

complicity on gender identification (Bjarnegard and Kenny 2016, 385). This

in-group networking dictates internal dynamics within parties, such as decision-

making, recruitment processes, and recognition of leaders’ authority (Bennister,

Hart, and Worthy 2015); affecting negatively women who are excluded from acces-

sing the “homosocial capital” (Bjarnegard and Kenny 2016).

Homosocial dynamics construct the political sphere around an ideology of domi-

nant masculinity that pervades institutional structures, practices, and norms

(Mackay, Kenny, and Chappell 2010) and that is constantly reproduced and natur-

alized (Lovenduski 2005, 48). Within modern politics, the prevailing style of lead-

ership corresponds to the “male experience regarding authority, competitiveness,

ambition, and certain forms of rationality” (Verge and de la Fuente 2014, 71).

Associated with gendered practices that are attributed to masculine endeavors

(Jefferson 2002), political power features dominance, self-confidence, strength, and

efficiency (Romer 1990). Studies on the gender ideal ingrained in the US presiden-

tial campaigns, for example, suggest that candidates need to conform to ideals of

masculinity in order to succeed politically (Duerst-Lahti 2010), and this conformity

entails competing, attempting to dominate, and denigrating other masculinities

(Cooper 2009, 648). Similarly, Krohn-Hansen (1996) suggests that political legiti-

macy in the Dominican Republic is built upon daily-life notions of dominant mas-

culinity, including a language of power, rhetorical skills, or the exhibition of

courage, sincerity, or seriousness. Within this party culture, women are highly

scrutinized, considered less competent to pursue political careers, and affected by

horizontal and vertical segregation as well as by androcentric uses of time (Kenny

and Verge 2016; Verge 2015).

On account of its constitutive role in party politics,

Lovenduski (2005) concludes that political parties are “major distributors” of tradi-

tional masculinity (p. 56).

The case of Podemos enables the exploration of the contradictions, negotiations,

and complexities faced by a political party that explicitly questions the masculine

paradigm of power as described above and argues for alternative political practices,

facilitating the analysis of the hidden mechanisms of gender that shape institutional

and party politics.

Podemos’ Alternative Politics: Plurality in Spanish Congress

Podemos’ commitment to new and alternative politics has been channeled through

the presence and performance of its representatives in the Spanish Congress after the

elections of December 2015. Podemos participated in these elections with other

political forces from Catalonia, Galicia, and Comunidad Valenciana, integrating a

470 Men and Masculinities 22(3)

leftist coalition that gained 21 percent of the vote and brought sixty-nine newly

elected congressmen and congresswomen out of a total of 350. The formation of

a coalition with autonomous political organizations from different regions constitu-

tes itself an alternative political practice that differs from mainstream national

parties in the recognition and incorporation of the cultural diversity within the

Spanish state (Pou 2016).

Podemos and its allies contrast the usual profile of professional MPs with unpre-

cedented diversity, including social movement activists, the first black congress-

woman, or a labor unionist from the agricultural sector (Kassam 2015). The

representatives of Podemos’ coalition are the youngest in Congress, with an average

age of forty-one years, seven years below the overall average age. The coalition also

presents gender parity, following a system of zipper lists that requires a strict alter-

nation between female and male candidates, and incorporates the highest proportion

of representatives that access political institutions for the first time (Coller 2016).

Podemos’ plurality has been conveyed not only in terms of age, gender, race, class,

and background but also through personal aesthetics by adopting, for example,

informal clothing and nonnormative gender hairstyles, diverging from the standard

profile of a typical Spanish congressman—a forty-seven-year-old white male, grad-

uated in law, and wearing a suit and tie.

Within this context, two particular episodes generated profuse political reactions

and media attention. The first episode took place during the investiture debate of

March 2016, when the PSOE failed to form a government. Podemos secretary-

general, Pablo Iglesias, congratulated the male Catalan leader of the leftist coalition,

Xavier Dome`nech, hugging him and kissing him on the lips. That kiss generated a

significant reaction (Mackey 2016), and Iglesias was accused of attempting to take

media attention away from the PSOE. The next day, during his last intervention in

search of an agreement with the PSOE, Iglesias invited the socialist leader, Pedro

Sa´nchez, to sign the “agreement of the kiss,” by jokingly reminding him “Pedro, we

are the only ones left” (El Diario 2016b). When asked about the kiss in a mainstream

TV political show, Iglesias playfully declared:

I believe it to be a good thing that men kiss each other on the lips too. The politics of

machos and gentlemen that take offence in seeing two men kissing is over. Listening to

Xavi moved me and we kissed and I hope there would be less insults and more kisses in

this House [ ...] We [Podemos] are a factory of love. (Cuatro 2016)

The second episode involved one of Podemos’ most influential women MPs,

Carolina Bescansa, and her decision to bring her newborn to the chamber on the

constitutive session of the General Courts in January 2016. Bescansa publicly

explained her decision based on her right to and need for breastfeeding, as well as

her intention to politicize the issue of parenting using her visibility to open a con-

versation on the difficulties of balancing work and personal life (Manetto 2016).

Qualified as a “disgraceful” situation or as an unnecessary gesture by other parties’

Caravantes 471

members (El Diario 2016), Bescansa’s decision was equally debated in feminist

circles, bringing to the fore the ongoing discussion on the public–private dichotomy

and parenting as political issues.

The relevance of these two episodes lies not only in their novelty but also in the

impact on how the political scene is configured and symbolically represented in

Spain. For the first time, certain presences, messages, and gestures, as well as the

phenomena they invoke, are visible in the institutional sphere, which tends to

encompass a narrower, previously defined spectrum. The presence of Podemos in

the Spanish Congress questions the legitimacy of the gendered codes and perfor-

mances that grant access to spaces of political representation. At a discursive level,

Podemos leaders frame their performance and plurality as a way to hold to the

commitment of closing the gap between politicians and citizens by (in Bescansa

words) “making what happens in the street visible in the institutions” (Manetto

2016). This rhetoric informs a symbolic construction of the party’s identity by the

exclusion of other parties, reinforcing the dichotomy new versus old politics.

According to this discursive formation, old politics are represented as a corrupt,

homogenous elite of professional politicians that is isolated from ordinary people

and their preoccupations, who exercises power in masculinized, self-perpetuating,

hierarchical, and restricted ways (in Iglesias’s words “politics of machos and gen-

tlemen”). Meanwhile, Podemos leaders present themselves as the truthful represen-

tatives of the common people, working to solve everyday problems in alliance with

the civil society through open debate, while exercising power in collaborative and

deliberative ways.

Podemos’ Alternative Politics: Feminization of Politics

Apart from the emphasis on representing common people in the institutions, Podemos

articulates the commitment to new and alternative practices through a gender trans-

formation of politics. Some sectors of Podemos, led mostly by the party’s State Office

of Equality, Feminism, and Sexualities (SOEFS; A

´rea Estatal de Igualdad, Femin-

ismo, y Sexualidades),

concretize this commitment with the notion of the feminiza-

tion of politics. As examined below, this term has been internally and externally

disputed, as an arguably problematic notion that reinstates a binary approach to sex

and gender and reinforces the hierarchical understanding of the feminine as the other.

At the same time, the notion has been widely employed (mostly during Podemos’

electoral campaigns) and praised for being accessible and appealing, unlike more

obscure and exclusionary feminist and leftist terminology (Torresi 2017).

The feminization of politics is tentatively conceived as the implementation of

new ways of exercising power and occupying institutions. Ideally, these new ways

would involve delegating and sharing power through a collaborative and generous

leadership that accepts vulnerability, hesitation, and internal conflict while encoura-

ging dialogue with diverse political actors. This emphasis on the so-called relational

practices (Serra et al. 2016) seeks to replace dominant political practices, qualified

472 Men and Masculinities 22(3)

by SOEFS and more generally by Podemos’ members as masculinized (i.e., char-

acterized by hierarchical and competitive dynamics and a dogmatic and omnipotent

leadership that tends to enforce homogenization).

The phrase feminization of politics has been discordantly employed by Podemos

leaders and contested by feminist activists within the party. Whereas advocates of

the term avoid essentialist implications that ascribe particular features to women, the

party secretary-general defined feminization in terms of “woman’s style, tone, and

attitude” in December 2015 and, a year later, he correlated feminization to a dis-

tinctive capacity of motherly care (Carvajal 2015; La Ser 2016). Simultaneously,

feminist sectors other than SOEFS’s members question the notion of feminization

for its simplification and reification of essentialist and hegemonic ideas about

women’s inherent qualities, especially in their role as caregivers and mothers. They

argue that the features that are usually mentioned when defining feminization of

politics correspond to the characteristics of a culturally predefined type of woman

(viz, sensitive, caring, supportive, or emotional), thus reinforcing the dominant

gender paradigm (Delgado et al. 2016).

Ultimately, the disagreement around the notion of feminization of politics reflects

an unresolved friction among feminist perspectives, resonating with the equality

versus difference debate, over the signification and political implications of femi-

ninity. Whereas the promotion of feminization is understood as a synonym of Pode-

mos’ new politics, other feminists see feminization as a merely strategic discourse,

lacking deeper political implications, and actually reinforcing old meanings (Gal-

cera´n 2016; Arenillas and Garcı´a 2016). These feminists prefer the idea of depa-

triarchalization, associating the practices of collaboration, dialogue, or delegation of

power not to the notion of femininity but to a process of deconstruction of patriarchy

(Medina 2016). Regarding the use of depatriarchalization, SOEFS’s members argue

that this notion is complicated for everyday politics and stress the importance of

connecting with people through accessible language without taking for granted

knowledge on feminist terminology (Torresi 2017).

It is important to note that all Podemos feminists share the preoccupation about

the reproduction of normative gender dynamics within the party, despite its feminist-

inspired discourse. Whether framing it as feminization or depatriarchalization, both

sectors seek to dismantle certain dynamics that pervade the organization, including a

highly hierarchical structure and competitive strategy, the prominence of male lead-

ers, and different hardships experienced by women, such as exclusion from

decision-making processes, and horizontal and vertical segregation generated by the

reproduction of gender roles (Recupera la Ilusio´n 2017; Podemos en Movimiento

2017; Podemos para Todas 2017).

In their diagnosis of intraparty dynamics, feminists explain the exclusion of women

as a consequence of the reproduction of “old” political practices for the sake of

electoral and organizational efficiency, for which insufficient resources are destined

to promote gender equality within the organization. Whereas Podemos has implemen-

ted parity measures, like the previously mentioned zipper lists, party feminists find

Caravantes 473

them insufficient. Furthermore, they urge the formalization of other mechanisms to

reduce the negative impact of informality on women, and on the party in general, due

to the wasteful use of human capital (Telemadrid 2017). For instance, they denounce

the limiting effects of the homosocial dimension that characterize informal dynamics

(Leach and Lowndes 2007), by which important decisions are taken during men’s

spontaneous networking after formal meetings (Recupera la Ilusio´n 2017).

Podemos female leaders also blame media depiction of party women as mere

companions of male leaders (Cı´rculo Podemos Feminismos Estatal 2017) and advo-

cate for the end of “masculine monopoly” in politics (El Paı´s 2016). Likewise, they

warn of the differential evaluation of personal features when deployed by men or

women (e.g., being qualified as assertive vs. “bossy”), reflecting what the literature

defines as the “culture of masculinity” that pervades institutions and is propagated

by political parties (Lovenduski 2005). In this regard, SOEFS’s members identify

two mechanisms that distinguish Podemos’ party culture and contribute to exclude

women. First, the organizational dynamics hinder conciliation and assume an ideal

activist who is willing and capable to sacrifice everything for the party (assuming,

among other things, the absence of family obligations). Secondly, the party has

adopted a warlike culture that has normalized aggressiveness and competition,

expelling certain party members de facto (Recupera la Ilusio´n 2017).

Podemos’ Competitive Discourse

Alongside the commitment to implement new and alternative practices in the insti-

tutions and the feminization or depatriarchalization of politics, Podemos leadership

articulates a profoundly ambitious and competitive discourse because, in words of

Iglesias, “the duty of a revolutionary is to win” (Constante 2014). I analyze the

gender dimension of this discourse by echoing Hall’s model (1990) of the patriarchal

values that characterize Western competitive settings, like those of sports (p. 239).

Accordingly, four main features can be identified in Podemos’ discourse: (1) an

extraordinary emphasis on winning and an aggressive strategy, (2) an adversarial

style and internal confrontation, (3) a hierarchy based on intellectual authority and

on the dominance of experts, and (4) a charismatic masculine leadership.

Extraordinary Emphasis on Winning and Aggressive Strategy

After the successful—though still modest—result in the first elections in which the

party participated, Pablo Iglesias stated: “Do not congratulate us. We have come to

win” (Manuel 2015). From this point onward, Podemos has articulated an ambitious

and explicit strategy, reflecting a carefully designed incursion into politics inspired

by populist theories, the lessons learnt from Latin American experiences, and a post-

Marxist reading of Gramsci’s hegemony (Laclau 2007). Podemos leaders focus on

winning the discursive battle by establishing a political framework favorable to the

party’s role (Laclau and Mouffe 2014), such as promoting a perception of crisis or

474 Men and Masculinities 22(3)

appealing to the people by championing “common sense” (Mudde and Kaltwasser

2017). Podemos’ strategic discourse relies on an argumentative efficiency capable of

repoliticizing certain issues and recovering ideas traditionally monopolized by con-

servative and right-wing parties such as “nation,” “patriotism,” and “family values”

(Porta and Jime´nez 2016).

This and other strategies were originally connected to an explicit repeal of the

ideological dichotomy between left-wing and right-wing parties, privileging a top-

down antagonism that separates the elite (the caste) from the “common people” and

connects the party with the latter. Although Podemos eventually formed an electoral

coalition with Izquierda Unida (IU, “United Left”), its main spokespeople openly

antagonized the leftist party, accusing its leaders of accepting a marginal role in

Spanish politics (Hancox 2016). In Iglesias’s words: “let them keep their red flag and

leave us alone. I want to win” (Picazo and Dela`s 2015). Despite its recently political

renewal, IU appears as to belong to the same political establishment as the mainstream

parties (PP and PSOE) due to its traditional organization and leftist discourse (Ramiro

and Go´mez 2016), its established role in Spanish politics, and its recent involvement in

corruption cases (20 Minutos 2014). By originally distancing themselves from IU and

escaping the left–right divide, Podemos leaders reinforced their role as outsiders to the

discredited party system while seeking to occupy the political center and to enlarge

their spectrum of sympathizers (Domı´nguez 2015).

In addition to the initially tense relationship with IU, Podemos’ discourse con-

veys a degree of aggressiveness and pretension in the interpretation of its role within

the Spanish political scene. During his final intervention in the party’s founding

convention in October 2014, Pablo Iglesias proclaimed, “heaven is not taken by

consensus; it is taken by assault” (Hancox 2014). Two years later, after not having

obtained the predicted electoral results in June 2016, the party leadership insisted

that “political change is here to stay,” referring to the unavoidable transformation of

the two-party system and the regeneration of Spanish politics brought by Podemos’

incursion (Iglesias 2016b). During its institutionalizing phase and due to the intense

electoral activity, Podemos has read the political scene as a contest in which the

party should be an “electoral war machinery” (Rendueles and Sola 2015). The win–

lose framework, the aggressiveness, and explicit ambition match key characteristics

of the so-called masculine styles (Jones, Charles, and Davies 2009; Reingold 1996;

Verge and de la Fuente 2014), which are at odds with the party’s commitment to

new, collaborative and conciliatory politics.

In a recent reflection, Roth and Shae Baird (2017) suggest that left-wing populism

is incompatible with the feminization of politics. Podemos’ political performance

manifests that incompatibility by embracing a logic of confrontation between two

homogenous groups: “us”—the people, the new who advances—versus “them”—

the corrupt elite, the old who has to be overcome (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017).

While the construction of such antagonism obscures the plurality that characterizes

“the People,” a feminist approach would tend toward more inclusive discourses of

care that value the diversity as a source of community building (Roth and Shae Baird

Caravantes 475

2017). Similarly, the conception of popular sovereignty, its privileging of building a

sense of patriotism, and its focus on a short-term political agenda contradict feminist

investments in situated knowledges and horizontal and local mechanisms of delib-

eration as well as postcolonial critiques of the idea of a “homogeneous” nation.

Adversarial Style and Internal Confrontation

Podemos depicts its communication practice as innovative, not only because its

political goals and strategies are explicit and publicly discussed but also because

of the transparency regarding its internal discrepancies.

Social networks have been

the battleground for the intraparty disagreements in relation to organization and

ideological lines. During the months prior to the Second Citizen’s Assembly of the

party in February 2017,

these discrepancies translated into confrontational

dynamics between the secretary-general, Pablo Iglesias, and the secretary for Policy

and Strategy and Campaigning, In

˜igo Errejo´n, guiding two factions dubbed

Pablismo and Errejonismo. Allegedly, the differences between the two factions refer

to the relationship with the PSOE and the coalition with IU; the battles over regional

leaderships; the interpretation of electoral results and the party’s institutional role;

and Podemos’ ideological positioning within the right–left divide (Garcı´a 2016).

Initially, Podemos spokespeople framed this transparency as a distinctive feature of

new politics, unlike the opacity and technological apathy displayed by other parties,

and accused mainstream media of misrepresenting and exaggerating the confrontation

between the two factions in order to influence internal dynamics.

However, party

leaders, including Iglesias and Errejo´n, later expressed their concern about the poten-

tially dangerous public display of internal discrepancies that revealed the party’s

immaturity and reinforced a logic of “cockfight” and an “excess of testosterone”

(20 Minutos 2016; Gutie´rrez 2016). This adversarial climate detonated on December

24, 2016, when figures supporting Iglesias launched a Twitter hashtag (“Not like that,

´n

˜igo”) against Errejo´n, reproaching his way of expressing political differences; and

Errejo´n’s supporters answered on the same platform (El Diario 2016c).

The symbolic meaning of this date (Christmas Eve) in a culturally Catholic

country, along with the open hostility displayed by both factions in the online

skirmishes, made of this episode a turning point in the tension experienced at the

core of Podemos, forcing its leaders to publically acknowledge the situation and

apologize. Days later, embracing his role as secretary-general, Iglesias apologized

for having disappointed sympathizers and voters; and Errejo´n appealed to Podemos

leaders to rise to the occasion after the expectations generated by the party (Marull

2016). However, the tension continued growing in the days before the Second

Citizen’s Assembly, with public exchanges between different groups that substan-

tiated a public perception on the party’s internal fracture (Carvajal 2017).

These episodes of public confrontation call into question the party’s commitment to

consensual and cooperative politics, projecting an adversarial style (Jones, Charles,

and Davies 2009) in the Spanish political landscape, associated with dominant forms

476 Men and Masculinities 22(3)

of masculinity and military terminology (Lovenduski 2005). Feminists within Pode-

mos have reacted to this antagonistic dynamic, expressing concern about (1) the

reduction of the party diversity to the dispute between two male leaders that represent

only Madrid and (2) the depiction of party women only in relation to them (Europa

Press 2016). The self-referential focus on two male leaders negates the feminist (and

feminizing) agenda and upsets the inclusive framework that Podemos is promoting at

a regional level. The personalist reduction of the party diversity to Iglesias and Erre-

jo´n, even naming factions after them, also reflect devices of the homosocial mascu-

linity embedded in party dynamics. Some of these homosocial mechanisms include

men’s tendency to be conversationally dominant and to reference each other, which

not only makes women’s contributions invisible but also serves to legitimize and

perpetuate a male elite (Verge 2015; Verge and de la Fuente 2014). Whereas Iglesias

and Errejo´n depict themselves as friends who disagree politically but solve their issues

amicably,

the adversarial style is proving to be damaging for grassroots members

who regret the “all or nothing” logic and the political culture of antagonism and

suspicion transmitted to lower levels of the party (Alabao 2017).

Hierarchy Based on Intellectual Authority and the Dominance of Experts

The competitive style and the extraordinary emphasis on winning have translated into

a hierarchical, top-down structure of the party, based on a plebiscite logic by which

grassroots members periodically elect governing bodies among candidates nominated

by the party factions (Rodrı´guez 2016). Intellectual authority plays a crucial role in the

legitimization of party leaders, particularly their use of sophisticated language and

their public performance in mainstream media. This type of authority derives in part

from the intellectual tradition of previous social movements, but mostly from the

academic background that characterizes the leadership (Domı´nguez 2015). A consid-

erable majority of Podemos’ national leaders are former lecturers or doctors of polit-

ical science, philosophy, and sociology at Complutense University of Madrid

(Tremlett 2015). In addition, the party promotes spaces of reflection and discussion

via semiacademic publications and talks organized by its think tank, Instituto 25 M.

Podemos spokespeople establish their intellectual authority in public debates,

deploying dialectic skills and charismatic performances (Rodrı´guez 2016). The party

capitalizes on the mediatization of politics, characterized by the prioritization of

communication over content, an emphasis on provocative rhetoric and dramatization

of language, and the overexposition of politicians’ personas (Kriesi 2014). Benefiting

from, and arguably contributing to, the proliferation of political TV shows, Podemos

uses these spaces to foster its leaders’ personas, particularly that of Pablo Iglesias, who

has been referred to as “the leader who professionalized the political talk shows”

(Suanzes and Be´cares 2014). In these formats, the party spokespeople display a series

of rhetorical devices

that have become distinctive of the party in order to convey a

sense of greater seriousness and moral authority when compared to their interlocutors

and mainstream (old) parties’ representatives.

Caravantes 477

A distinguishing factor of the party lies in the combination of a populist discourse

with an academic rhetoric. The former attracts the general public while the latter

engages intellectual leftists (Domı´nguez 2015) and distance Podemos from the

characteristic anti-intellectualism of contemporary populist actors (Mudde and Kalt-

wasser 2017). Podemos offers a sophisticated diagnosis—one that has been praised

by media and even other parties (Papell 2014)—of the crises that have been affecting

Spain since 2008; introducing precise data and theoretical terminology that were

relatively unusual for Spanish political debates. The use of academic language plays

an ambiguous role in the party’s communication. While the technocratic vocabulary

detaches from the conveyance of common people’s concerns, it reinforces leaders’

role as experts and intellectual outsiders of the political class (Moffitt and Tormey

2014). Due to the frustration with mainstream parties, Podemos greatly benefits

from being considered an outsider and fosters this idea by defining itself as a

groundbreaking actor.

The intellectual dimension and the complexity of the academic language

employed by Podemos leaders have been the source of internal jokes and external

criticisms. For instance, the sophisticated language used by Errejo´ n in Twitter has

been qualified as pretentious and distant from the people who Podemos aspires to

represent. In response to a particular message,

Iglesias answered ironically: “being

an intellectual is an uphill battle”.

Through these exchanges, Podemos leaders

privilege certain intellectual and authorized expertise at the expense of alternative

experiences and knowledge, an exclusionary logic that is a common concern of

feminist theory (Alexander 2005). Ultimately, this logic consolidates a hierarchical

structure that elevates the leadership from the common people whom the party seeks

to represent politically, predicating a relationship of guidance and political

pedagogy.

Charismatic Masculine Leadership

Similar to the charismatic leadership that frequently appears in populist movements,

Podemos relies on a personalist rhetoric centered on Pablo Iglesias, portrayed as the

personification of the political change and, consequently, as a central figure for the

continuity of the party. This rhetoric defines not only the leadership’s discourse but

also key electoral strategies such as using Iglesias’s portrait on the ballot for the first

elections in which Podemos participated (A

´lvarez 2014). Echoing Laclau’s stress

(2007) on the importance of the populist leader, the party founders believe that a key

catalyst for Podemos’ success was building Iglesias’s persona as a TV political

commentator before the organization was founded (Iglesias 2016).

Charismatic leaders are defined as political figures with extraordinary qualities

who create a specific bond with their followers (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017,

66–67). When their leadership is interpreted via a populist rhetoric as a symbol of

the ideal of popular unity, the leader becomes the interpreter of the populations’ true

needs, personifying the people, mostly through his or her condition as outsider or

478 Men and Masculinities 22(3)

political novice (Kriesi 2014). Recurrently, Iglesias has grounded Podemos’ polit-

ical project on his own figure, appealing to the vote of the party base to justify his

legitimacy or posing the approval of his political line as the condition to remain the

party leader. For example, in January 2014, he personally requested 50,000 signa-

tures as a condition to advance the creation of Podemos as political party (Vargas

2014). Then, prior to the First and the Second Citizen’s Assemblies, he expressed his

determination to abandon the leadership if the organizational model suggested by his

team was not elected (Riveiro 2014; Iglesias 2017). This interpretation of leadership

not only reinforces the personalist logic in a party already dependent on media

figures but also creates a shielding effect. When the leader represents popular unity

symbolically, any attack against him or her is automatically translated into an attack

against the common people and, in the case of ruling leaders, against the country

(Llado´ 2014).

Because leadership is highly relational and reputational (Bennister, Hart, and

Worthy 2015), Iglesias’s leadership capital depends not exclusively on his perfor-

mance but rather on the external perceptions of his personal competences and the

recognition granted by other party members in the form of informal authority. The

centrality of Iglesias is so engrained in the Podemos symbolic imaginary that boost-

ing his leadership has become a recurrent practice after internal disputes. With

statements like “If Iglesias falls, the party falls,” (Monedero 2017) relevant party

figures express their allegiance to a leader depicted as indispensable for the proper

functioning of Podemos. This construction of Iglesias’s persona contradicts the

commitment to exercise power in collaborative ways, placing him at the top of a

pyramidal structure that promotes omnipotent leaderships, qualified as masculinized

practices by the party feminists.

Furthermore, Iglesias’s persona is deeply gendered. During the Citizen’s Assembly

of October 2014, Iglesias was accused of behaving like an “alpha male” due to his

rough style of leadership, to which he assertively answered: “I’m an activist, not an

alpha male” (Gil 2014). For some of the female participants in the assembly, inter-

viewed by El Diario, Iglesias does not represent the violent “Rambo type” but rather a

sophisticated and sweetened version of an alpha male: “thin, educated, and well

mannered, apparently willing to discuss, and patient” (Gil 2014). Thus, Iglesias differs

from the profile of “strongman” that the scholarship identifies in most charismatic

leaders, which includes elements of anti-intellectualism, vulgar language, and virility

(Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017, 64), for example, the Trump brand of masculinist

populism.

Similar to other leftist politicians in Western countries, such as Bernie Sanders,

Iglesias mobilizes a more technical and intellectual profile that diverges from the

paternalistic figures and dominantly masculine language observed in some Latin

American charismatic leaders (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2015). Saldan

˜a-Portillo

(2003) identifies practices similar to those performed by Iglesias as “revolutionary

subjectivities,” a type of masculinist construction that privileges “unitary, self-

determining consciousness, and agency” (265), whose sources of legitimation derive

Caravantes 479

from intellectual and dialectical proficiency. Likewise, Krohn-Hansen (1996) notes

features of masculinity that confer political legitimacy very similar to those of

Podemos, such as showing courage (by aiming at political goals nobody dared

before), displaying verbal and intellectual skills, or sincerity and seriousness—Pode-

mos’ promise to regenerate the corrupted and inefficient political system bringing

honesty to the institutions.

Discussion

According to its promise of representing common people in the institutions, Pode-

mos has led an unprecedented plurality into the Spanish Congress, symbolically

closing the gap between the political class and the population. By means of new

presences, new messages, or gestures, Podemos leaders have equally engaged with

the party’s promise to implement alternative political practices. Discursively, Pode-

mos’ commitment to challenge the dominant gender order has been conveyed

through Iglesias’s proclamation of the end of the “politics of machos.” The con-

versation among the party feminists on the need to dismantle the masculinized and

patriarchal practices that pervade Podemos is having a significant impact inside and

outside the organization, bringing traditionally feminist concerns to the fore. The

issues raised by Podemos’ feminists reflect most of the elements depicted by the

specialized literature (Bjarnegard 2013; Jones, Charles, and Davies 2009; Love-

nduski 2015; Verge and de la Fuente 2014), including the difference between adver-

sarial and collaborative styles, or how homosocial informal dynamics and a

dominant masculine culture shape political parties.

Iglesias’s depiction of Podemos as a “factory of love” seems, however, to conflict

with later developments in the party’s internal organization, strategy, and leadership

style. Despite the acknowledgmentof the excess oftestosterone and cockfight style that

were spreading throughout Podemos, its leaders have not been able or willing to restrain

those dynamics and the dominant masculine party culture characterizing them. Party

members arrived at the Second Citizen’s Assembly (February 2017) deeply divided,

after a couple of very tense months in which public confrontations betweentwo factions

had progressively intensified (Jones 2017). Paradoxically, one of the four main debates

in the Assembly focused ongender equality and feminism, situating the discussions on

feminization and depatriarchalization at the center of Podemos’ political agenda. This

discursive relevance, nonetheless, was at odds with the masculinized dynamics (in the

party feminists’ terms) that prevailed prior to the meeting (Hedgecoe 2017).

The commitment to more collaborative and relational practices is being overridden

by a competitive logic that adjusts to the pragmatism and efficacy proper of main-

stream parties. I suggest that the friction explored in this article, and the provisional

triumph of the competitive logic, responds to the progressive failure of Podemos

leadership to reconcile two promises: the transformation of political practices and the

political empowerment of common people. These promises have resulted in two

irreducible and mutually exclusive discourses: the emphasis on practicing new and

480 Men and Masculinities 22(3)

alternative politics and the access to institutions via traditional political means.

Whereas the former focuses on a long-term agenda that seeks to establish the condi-

tions for bottom-up processes, dialogue, and political consensus; the later focuses on

short-term goals—, for example, winning elections—and relies on institutional power

as the means to transform people’s living conditions. Through the prioritization of the

institutional power, Podemos detaches itself from the transformative potential of the

protest movements that inspired the party, which promoted decentralized and hori-

zontal models of power, while conflicting with the party feminists who denounce the

intrinsic patriarchal logic that pervades institutional spaces.

Podemos seems to interpret electoral success as an intrinsic transformational

event and as a form of direct empowerment. This interpretation prioritizes an idea-

lized perception of winning by committing to what is ultimately a populist belief that

Podemos is indeed the truthful representative of the People. Consistently, Podemos

leadership adopts a competitive framework as the supposedly best pragmatic chance

of electoral success, choosing a notion of empowerment that, ultimately, creates the

inconsistency at the core of the party.

Podemos’ populist narrative of empowerment appears to be deeply implicated in a

gender paradigm of power that reenacts certain patriarchal modes of political perfor-

mance. The transition from an old to new politics requires therefore to reconceptualize

power outside the competitive schemas of a dominant masculine party culture, defined

by personalist, hierarchical, aggressive, and adversarial dynamics (Bjarnegard 2013;

Lovenduski 2005; Reingold 1996; Verge 2015). This will provide foundation for a

new vision of empowerment and, ultimately, for truly alternative political practices.

One of the main challenges lies in reconciling an abstract understanding of

alternative practices to the actual process of institutionalization of political power.

In this context, the case study of Podemos offers unique opportunities for observa-

tion and interpretation. Despite the party’s complicity with a logic of electoral

competition, Podemos has articulated alternative models of political masculinities

in its short time within Spanish political institutions. The leaders’ performance and

presence in the Spanish Congress or the discursive commitments to dismantle the

politics of machos, to reduce “the excess of testosterone” in the party dynamics or to

feminize and depatriachalize the organization are good examples. By connecting the

transition from old to new politics to a transformation of the gender performance in

the political field, Podemos represents a rare case in a Western political scene

characterized by the revitalization of a dominant masculine culture.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,

authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or

publication of this article.

Caravantes 481

Notes

1. For more on the strategic use of social and mainstream media by the party founders, see

the interviews with Germa´n Cano—Podemos’ first Responsible for the Area of Culture—

and Eduardo Ferna´ndez Rubin

˜o—the party’s first Responsible for the Area of Social

Networks (Jerez and Maestu 2015).

2. An unusual electoral cycle started in May 2014 with the elections to the European Par-

liament, followed by the elections to the Andalusian Parliament in March 2015, the local

and regional elections in May 2015, the elections to the Catalan Parliament in September

2015, the first general elections in December 2015, the second general elections in June

2016, and the elections to the Basque and Galician Parliaments in September 2016.

3. Verge (2015) explains those types of segregation as the mechanisms by which the top

positions (vertical segregation) and the most valued areas (horizontal segregation) are

occupied by men, whereas androcentric uses of time refer to holding meetings in times of

the day that do not facilitate conciliation with family time (pp. 756–57).

4. The composition of the Spanish Congress after December 2015 is closer to the demo-

graphic reality of the country in terms of age, gender, background, or civil status. (Lo´pez

and Delgado 2016).

5. Diverse organizations criticized Bescansa’s attitude for misrepresenting the situation of

most women, who do not have access to her privileges as a congresswoman, for prior-

itizing women’s roles as mothers over their roles as workers, and for obscuring the

father’s shared responsibility in childrearing. Other feminist actors congratulated Bes-

cansa for politicizing an issue that is considered private and individual and for opening

the public debate on parenting showing the plurality of choices rather than precluding a

singular “appropriate” feminist answer (Flotats 2016).

6. I refer to the members of State Office of Equality, Feminism, and Sexualities that formed

the team until February 2017, which changed for the most part after the results of the

party elections in the Second Citizen’s Assembly.

7. See Polı

tica, manual de instrucciones (“Politics, instructions manual”), the documentary

that Podemos allowed to shoot reflecting the internal disputes during the party’s Citizen’s

Assembly of October 2014. http://politicamanualdeinstrucciones.mediaprocine.com.

8. A political convention in which the party’s governing bodies were elected. https://vista

legre2.podemos.info.

9. “The editorials do not lead our way, people do. We do not buy their labels, nor we fall in

their traps” (my translation of “Los editoriales no nos marcan el camino, lo marca la

gente. No compramos sus etiquetas ni caemos en sus trampas”). Errejo´n, In

˜igo. 2016.

Twitter post, December 12, 7:32 a.m., https://twitter.com/ierrejon.

10. After one of their online exchanges, Errejo´n joked with Iglesias, challenging him to fight

outside the Spanish Parliament building: “Let’s meet at the Lions Gate. No low blows

allowed” (my translation). Errejo´n, In

˜igo. 2016. Twitter post, November 30, 6:42 a.m.,

https://twitter.com/ierrejon. Iglesias answered ironically, “this is what Bergoglio told

Ratzinger. I don’t trust this” (my translation). Iglesias, Pablo. 2016. Twitter post, Novem-

ber 30, 7:04 a.m., https://twitter.com/Pablo_Iglesias_.

482 Men and Masculinities 22(3)

11. For instance, the tag line “do not interrupt me; I did not interrupt you,” which became

such a mannerism that a humoristic newspaper ironically published: “Pablo Iglesias

demands Spanish people not be interrupted” (Puig 2015).

12. “The hegemony moves in thetension between the radiating core and the seduction of side ally

sectors. Affirmation-opening.” My translation of “La hegemonı´a se mueve en la tensio´n

entre el nu

´cleo irradiador y la seduccio´n de los sectores aliados laterales. Afirmacio´n-aper-

tura.” Errejo´n, In

˜igo. 2015. Twitter post, June, 19, 1:26 p.m., https://twitter.com/ierrejon.

13. My translation of “ser intelectual es jodido” (Mengual, 2015). Note: Jodido is difficult to

translate; it is a curse word that implies difficulty but also the notion that you are special

among your fellows.

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Caravantes 489

Author Biography

Paloma Caravantes is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the Department of Women’s

and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, USA. Her research interests are related to the inter-

section of gender and politics, with specific emphasis on the performance of masculinities,

and the gender order of both political structures and the exercise of power. She focuses her

research on the ongoing transformations in Western political landscapes as a result of the

Great Recession. In this context, she studies and conducts fieldwork on the role of new

political parties, anti-austerity movements, and emerging populist actors.

490 Men and Masculinities 22(3)

Are sexist and populist attitudes connected? Positive evidence from the least-likely-case of Spain

Article

Nov 2024
S EUR SOC POLIT

Evidence suggests that populist parties, especially but not exclusively of the radical right, are more supported by men and can be a threat to gender equality. However, systematic analyses are missing regarding the connection between individuals’ attitudes towards gender equality and populism. We examine this link using original panel data gathered online in Spain in two waves, and find a general positive association between hostile sexism and populist attitudes. Our results contribute to unraveling one potential connection between the politicisation of gender equality and the spread of populism in Spain, a phenomenon that is also found in other countries of Southern Europe.

Evaluating the concept of political masculinity/ies: a simple idea or a case of too many ideas?

Article

Jan 2024

Jeff Hearn

This article critically interrogates and evaluates the concept of political masculinities as part of enhancing dialogue between political science and critical studies on men and masculinities. It discusses what counts as masculinity, what counts as political and how they connect. The connections are all too clear in mainstream politics, not only in populist, authoritarian, ethno-nationalist and militaristic politics but also in democratic, socialist and various activist politics. The evaluation of the concept of political masculinities is conducted by asking three main questions: how does the concept add to, complement or contradict existing and established external concepts and theories? How is the concept constructed internally, and with what structure, elements and interrelations? And how can the application of the concept be possibly extended into fields beyond those usually recognized and labelled explicitly as specifically political fields, including the politics of the everyday and the politics of multiple global crises?

Populism and Key Concepts in Social and Political Theory

Book

Jul 2023

The symbolic representation of the ‘People’ and the ‘Homeland’ in Spanish left populism: an opportunity for feminist politics?

Article

Aug 2023

This article analyses the symbolic construction of the ‘people’ and the ‘homeland’ in Spain’s left populist party Podemos by exploring the gender and class meanings that Podemos leaders evoke in their representation of these two key elements of populist rhetoric. Distinguishing between the official sym- 10 bolic presentation of the constituency, that purposely selects certain symbols to evoke particular meanings about the people and the homeland, and the subtext of gendered norms that symbols evoke, allows us understanding the possibilities of the Spanish left populist party to contribute to feminist politics. Podemos has a role in the process of meaning-making that envisions gender 15 and class-aware societal projects through the symbolic representation of ‘the people’ and ‘the homeland’. Yet, ambivalence in the egalitarian discourse and a symbolic subtext of unequal informal gendered norms in the party culture undermine the feminist commitments of the leadership adopted in the official presentation of the constituency. By capturing the gap between the 20 official purposeful symbolic representation, that conveys a message of inclusive and feminist people-homeland, and the symbolic subtext of the party’s discourse and performance, that reproduces exclusionary gendered norms, the article contributes to reflect on the inclusionary potential and contra- dictions of left populism.

Feminisation, governance and Roma on the urban margins

Article

May 2025
SOCIOL REV

The article delves into the governance of urban marginality, focusing on the interplay of the Wacquantian distinction between the left and right hands of the state in governing urban marginality and the gender dimension of this governance. Studies of state involvement in managing urban marginality have concentrated on the content of policies and services, neglecting their modes and forms. Our research sheds light on the concrete forms of implementing ‘left hand’ services and on the role of women involved in delivering them. We develop a case study linked to a sudden crisis in urban governance: a fire and the subsequent relocation of a Roma community in a Transylvanian city. Based on two rounds of interviews (2018/2019 and 2023), we reveal a distinctive albeit short-lived shift in approaching urban marginality in the aftermath of the crisis. We define this as the feminisation of governing ‘Gypsy Urban Areas’ (GUAs), which we contrast with previous masculine forms. While highlighting the increase in the responsiveness of women decision-makers to the challenges facing the Roma, we also draw attention to the limitations of this feminised governance. Our findings reveal that the feminised governance of GUAs has an emancipatory potential in challenging the right (punitive) hand of the state but, paradoxically, it also enfeebles its left (supportive) hand. Feminised governance is thus inherently ambiguous: it indicates an alternative space of governance that previously seemed unachievable but is still unable to effect structural changes and tends instead to reproduce neoliberal forms of urban discipline.

Beyond Angry White Men : a progressive sociological imagination as an alternative to aggrieved entitlement

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Jun 2024
J Youth Stud

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Article

Full-text available

Jul 2024

En las sociedades occidentales la división sexual del trabajo resultante del sistema patriarcal y capitalista dejó los cuidados a cargo de las mujeres. En las últimas décadas el movimiento feminista ha reivindicado el valor de los cuidados y ha denunciado su relegación al ámbito privado. Investigar cómo se posicionan las formaciones políticas respecto a los cuidados en el debate parlamentario español del primer semestre de la XIV legislatura (diciembre de 2019 a junio de 2020), que comprende la primera ola de la pandemia de la COVID-19, permite analizar cómo su discurso fomenta el reconocimiento del valor de los cuidados y el avance en políticas que permitan mejoras en este ámbito. Para el presente estudio se han seleccionado las formaciones de izquierdas de la cámara –que tradicionalmente se han alineado con los avances feministas– con el objetivo de analizar el uso del término cuidados que hacen en el debate parlamentario español. La metodología combina un análisis cuantitativo del conjunto de discursos de las sesiones plenarias del periodo estudiado, que ha permitido recoger una muestra de 114 intervenciones con 202 ocurrencias del término cuidados, con un análisis cualitativo basado en el análisis crítico del discurso. Los resultados permiten comprobar que el uso del término se concentra en los puntos del debate sobre COVID-19, economía, empleo, salarios y pensiones, y violencia de género y abuso sexual, y que se emplea, sobre todo, para reivindicar la importancia de los cuidados, agradecer a las personas cuidadoras y denunciar la feminización de los cuidados, lo que por el momento no activa la fuerza política del término ni conduce a una acción transformadora.

Conclusion

Chapter

Apr 2023

This chapter analyses the wealth of data presented in the Handbook to address questions concerning the conceptualisation and development of the radical left outlined in the Introduction. It classifies RLPs by party sub-type and presents comparable data on RLP electoral performance, organisations and their participation in power from 2000 to 2019. The chapter identifies significant diversity within the radical left and in particular the extent to which RLPs entered mainstream politics. The chapter views the radical left in comparative perspective to detail and explain its considerable variation. It questions the processes of convergence sometimes associated with the radical left as well as theories developed to understand it in the early 2000s. The conclusion discusses the challenges facing the contemporary radical left and highlights several obstacles to its electoral success and renewal. The chapter ends by outlining a comparative research agenda in these areas and the need for greater dialogue between research on RLPs and the wider discipline.

Austerity Policies and the Strategic Silencing of Their Gendered Effects: Evidence from Spain

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2022

My Rafstedt

Austerity measures are commonly adopted to address economic crises. Such measures have particularly adverse effects for women, but studies have found these consequences to be strategically silenced. I explore the conditions under which the gendered effects of austerity are silenced, and by whom. Drawing on an original dataset of 9,420 newspaper articles (2010–2020) addressing austerity measures introduced in Spain, I find that politicians from left parties critique the labor reforms for negatively affecting women’s working conditions, while conservative politicians rarely address the reforms from a gender perspective. The party political difference is conditioned by government–opposition dynamics, and the salience of gender perspectives varies with election cycles. These findings suggest that a gender lens is more likely to be present in the public debate on economic policy-making when it is strategically beneficial for garnering political support.

Introduction: Looking at the Relation Between Feminist Politics and Left-Wing Populism Through the Bolivian Case

Chapter

May 2022

Pablo Castaño

The author introduces the discussion on the relation between left-wing populism and feminist politics and its theoric and political relevance, and explains how it will be addressed through the case of Evo Morales’ Bolivia. First, I explain the key concepts of the book. Second, the theoric debate is explained. Third, I address the methods used to investigate de Bolivian case. Fourthly, I explain the theoric implications of the book, conceived as a socially and politically engaged work. Finally, the political and social context of Bolivia during the 2006–2018 period is explained, focussing on the main features of Morales’ and MAS government, women’s organisations, and gender equality policies.KeywordsFeminist politicsPopulismBoliviaGender equality policiesWomen’s movements

3. Mobilization of Protest in the Age of Austerity: From the Indignados to Occupy

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Dec 2016

Hanspeter Kriesi

Comparing Candidate Selection: A Feminist Institutionalist Approach

Article

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Jul 2016

This contribution evaluates the theoretical and methodological challenges of researching the gendered dynamics of candidate selection in comparative perspective. It argues that comparative studies should take into account not only the gendered nature of political parties and their wider institutional context, but must also investigate the informal aspects of the selection process and their gendered consequences. The article explores these dynamics by revisiting original in-depth research on the candidate selection process in two different settings – Thailand and Scotland. Using a common analytical framework, the article reflects on this work and points to two key aspects of the interaction between formal and informal rules – the gendered consequences of informal party recruitment and of local influence over candidate selection – which are critically important for understanding the continuity of male political dominance and female under-representation. The article concludes by outlining a research agenda for comparative work on gender, institutions and candidate selection and pointing to future directions for work in this area.

Radical-Left Populism during the Great Recession: Podemos and Its Competition with the Established Radical Left

Article

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Mar 2017

This article is now available free of charge: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0032321716647400 The 2008 Great Recession has had important political effects. In many countries the political consequences of the economic crisis have manifested by altering electoral behavior, party competition and party systems. These effects have been very visible in some of the countries hardest hit by the crisis, such as Spain. However, the Spanish case stands out as the only one in which a fully newly created radical left populist party, Podemos, has successfully attracted a sizeable support. Additionally, the success of this party is more intriguing given its capacity to overtake the established radical left, IU, and to attract many of their former supporters. This article analyzes what factors explain the support for the new radical left populist party Podemos, identifying the individual-level features that lead to support a new radical left populist party rather than a similar and already established anti-austerity radical left party. As the results show, Podemos supporters neither respond to the conventional description of populist voters, nor to a basic definition of the ‘globalization’ and 2008 Great Recession ‘losers’. A combination of protest, anti-mainstream and relative deprivation elements seem to distinguish them from the established radical left electorate instead.

Being a Man in Transnational World. The Masculinity and Sexuality of Migration

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Jan 2014

Ernesto Vasquez del Aguila

This book explores the masculinity and sexuality of migration, analyzing the complex processes of becoming a man and the strategies used by men to reconcile paradoxes and contradictions that co-exist between multiple masculinities and contradictory models of being a man. Vasquez del Aguila offers a number of conceptual contributions, including the notion of “masculine capital” that provides men with the necessary “masculine” skills and cultural competence to achieve legitimacy and social recognition as men; an analysis of male friendship where notions of solidarity and intimacy co-exist with those of distrust, competition, and power relations; and three social representations of being a man: the winner, the failed, and the good enough man. By analyzing heterosexual as well as gay masculinities, and incorporating race and class relations, this study shows the multiplicity and hierarchies of masculinities presented within a particular cultural context. Through ethnographic research undertaken over more than four years in New York and Lima, Peru, this book also examines the role of the Internet and transnational romances and the ways in which migration can create new opportunities for male sexual intimacy, while for others, it creates loneliness and isolation. More Info: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415703376/

Assessing the Authority of Political Office-Holders: The Leadership Capital Index

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Oct 2014

This article argues that the extent to which political office-holders can effectively attain and wield authority is a function of the stock of ‘leadership capital’. Drawing on the concept of political capital, the article defines leadership capital as aggregate authority composed of three dimensions: skills, relations and reputation of a leader. Leadership capital ebbs and flows over time within a trajectory of acquisition, expenditure and inevitable depreciation. The article presents a Leadership Capital Index (LCI) that systematically maps out the three broad areas combining concrete measures with interpretive aspects. This can be used as a tool for systematically tracking and comparing the political fortunes of leaders in a way that is both more nuanced and robust than exclusive reliance on the latest approval ratings. An illustrative case study of Tony Blair is used to demonstrate the LCI. The article concludes by discerning several promising paths for future development of the LCI.

Opening Up the Black Box: Gender and Candidate Selection in a New Era

Article

Jul 2016

Recent global developments, including the feminization of parliaments and the rise of gender quotas, have transformed the ways in which parties and legislatures operate. This introduction to the special issue ‘Candidate Selection: Parties and Legislatures in a New Era’ puts these recent developments in context, making the case for revisiting the ‘secret garden’ of candidate selection in light of this ‘new era’ in politics. It sets out a critical dialogue between party politics and gender politics scholarship and points to the need for more research on how political parties facilitate or block women’s access to political office. Building on the burgeoning research on gender and political recruitment, it outlines how a gendered and institutional approach allows us to retheorize candidate selection processes and opens up new avenues for empirically examining the pathways prior to election. The article then introduces the papers in this special issue and concludes by evaluating the main implications of gendering analyses of candidate selection and party politics more broadly.

Presidential Elections: Gendered Space and the Case of 2008

Chapter

Jan 2013

Georgia Duerst-Lahti

The presidential election of 2008 began November 3, 2004, the day after the 2004 election. Shortly thereafter, a tongue-in-cheek Associated Press (AP) article led with the following: “Wanted: a former altar boy from the Southwest who speaks Spanish, married into a rich Republican family from Ohio and revolutionized the Internet after working as a volunteer firefighter in Florida. Position: president of the United States.” Using findings from exit polls to construct the profile of the perfect presidential candidate for 2008, the article went on to propose that he • Be “a Medal of Honor winner” with combat experience who helped normalize relations with Vietnam, Love outdoor sports and drop his g’s “when talkin’ about huntin’ and fishin’ and car racin’” • Be a former quarterback for the University of Michigan Rose Bowl team • Be a “trained economist who taught in Minnesota, where he met his wife, a nurse,” whose father is a former governor • Be “a volunteer fireman” who “drove his pickup truck to help out the World Trade Center site” • Be “a billionaire in his own right who developed software” Although not fitting this profile, five prominent men and Hillary Rodham Clinton were mentioned in this article as potential candidates. It closed with, “Mr. Perfect might be a Mrs. – the first woman to head a majority party ticket. But it would be a lonely job, what with her husband fighting in Iraq.” For presidential candidacies, the press serves as the great mentioner, without whose attention no candidate can be seen as viable.

Our first unisex president?: Black masculinity and obama's feminine side

Article

Jan 2009

Frank Rudy Cooper

People often talk about the significance of Barack Obama's status as our first black President. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, however, a newspaper columnist declared, "If Bill Clinton was once considered America's first black president, Obama may one day be viewed as our first woman president." That statement epitomized a large media discourse on Obama's femininity. In this essay, I thus ask how Obama will influence people's understandings of the implications of both race and gender. To do so, I explicate and apply insights from the fields of identity performance theory, critical race theory, and masculinities studies. With respect to race, the essay confirms my prior theory of "bipolar black masculinity." That is, the media tends to represent black men as either the completely threatening and race-affirming Bad Black Man or the completely comforting and assimilationist Good Black Man. For Obama, this meant he had to avoid the stereotype of the angry black man. Meanwhile, though, the association of the Presidency with the hegemonic form of masculinity presented difficulties for Obama. He was regularly called upon to be more aggressive in responding to attacks and more masculine in general. As a result, Obama could not be too masculine because that would have triggered the Bad Black Man stereotype but he could not be too feminine because that would have looked unpresiden-tial. Obama solved that dilemma by adopting a "unisex" style. He was a candidate who was designed to be suitable to either gender. I believe Obama's unisex performance on the world's biggest stage suggests that we are all more free to perform our race and our gender as we see fit than we had previously believed.

Playing with different cards: Party politics, gender quotas and women's empowerment

Article

Jan 2014
INT POLIT SCI REV

Although statutory quotas have considerably expanded worldwide, the bulk of gender quotas in place are party quotas used in the selection of candidates and composition of party bodies. This article aims to examine whether reforms addressing women's representation translate into greater power for women within political parties, thus providing new insights into how transformative gender quotas may (or may not) be in promoting gender equality in politics more generally. Specifically, we look beyond the distributive logic of gender quotas and examine instead the party institutional configuration in which patterns of distribution are realised, through the daily enactment of informal institutions. Our findings suggest that while unequal patterns of office distribution can be effectively fixed through gender quotas, this 'simple' solution cannot automatically subvert the main informal sources of male power in the party organisation. As change and continuity coexist, gender quota reforms are layering processes in which some elements are renegotiated while others persist.

The Gender Regime of Political Parties: Feedback Effects between “Supply” and “Demand”

Article

Dec 2015

Tania Verge

Is women's chronic minority status worldwide explained by a lack of women wishing to stand for political office or by party selectors’ disinterest in selecting women candidates? This debate continues among gender politics scholars; however, an increasing number of studies highlight the need to further investigate how the demands of party selectors might shape the supply of women candidates, especially in strong parliamentary democracies where political parties are the key gatekeepers (Kenny 2013; Murray 2010). This concern was already present in Norris and Lovenduski's (1995) original model, which called for a deeper examination of the “interaction effects” between “supply” and “demand.” In engaging with this call, I argue that the constraining effects of supply are reinforced not only by the demands of party selectors, but also by the everyday (gendered) functioning of political parties, which helps us understand the differential chances of women and men eventually becoming candidates.

New versus Old Politics in Podemos: Feminization and Masculinized Party Discourse

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