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Book Review: "Populism" (2020), written by Benjamin Moffitt
Abstract
Book review for "Populism", written by Benjamin Moffitt (2020)
"Newsletter of the Populism Specialist Group Political Studies", Issue 3 – February 2021
https://psapopulism.org/2021/02/02/our-third-newsletter-is-out/
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This paper critically explores the notions of populism and hegemony in Ernesto Laclau. Following the publication of On Populist Reason, the conceptual proximity between populism and hegemony hampers their respective explanatory and political purchase. I offer a fresh interpretation that clearly distinguishes them by reformulating the conceptions of time and space in Laclau. He problematically conceives time and space in the singular and anti-nomically. I propose to go back to Gramsci to pluralize the way in which they are conceptualized. The analytical and strategic upshot is that populism does not necessarily imply hegemony, and vice versa. Laclau, the Populist The work of Ernesto Laclau enjoys good health. It could not be otherwise at a time when the category of populism is all the rage in both academic and non-academic debates thanks to the diffusion on a global scale of projects that make political polarization their hallmark. The fame of Laclau, especially that achieved in the last few years, is indeed related to the rescuing of a notion that is often railed against in political science and employed as a sort of derogatory term in political practice. It is no wonder that Laclau's theory of populism, both in its analytical import and its prescriptive character for the Left, has received particular attention. Regardless of its increasingly abstract language, Laclau's work always maintained a foothold in concrete historical conditions. But how cogent are the analytical and strategic implications of his theoretical formulations? My contention is that while much is to be learned from the insights on populism divulged from On Populist Reason (2005) onwards, 1 some tensions exist in relation to another category on which his theory has rested: hegemony. These tensions can be alleviated by questioning and reformulating the way Laclau conceptualizes the notions of time and space. In turn, this presupposes a return to the ure of ntonio ramsci who was hi hly influential on Laclau's early thought. Finally, this theoretical operation leads to
Rise of populist politics in the 21s century calls scholars and politicians alike to reflect upon the question of how politics and democracy have been understood. Drawing on the theory of hegemony, this article establishes a distinction between democracy and ‘demography’ as a key line of conceptualization in politics. It highlights a central misunderstanding at the core of the demonization of populism: For radical democratic theory, ‘the people’ is not a demographic, socio-economic, or historically sedimented category tied to some characteristics, but a performative process of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ ‘the people’ as a self-consciously enacted polity. This statement challenges the taken-for-granted status of subjectivities of political struggle and links this approach to other contemporary discussions of politics, democracy, and populism. After discussing how anti, neo and post-foundational theoretical accounts on populism reveal a dimension of politics and representation, this article emphasizes action and performativity over static categories and models characteristic of political realism and political system approaches.
Does the populist radical right benefit from increased electoral mobilization? Integrating theories of political grievances with accounts of party competition in Western Europe, we contend that the populist right gains advantage from increased electoral mobilization, but that this effect is conditional on political disaffection. We draw on a novel panel dataset (2009–2019) of more than 10,000 German municipalities and city districts to study the implications of turnout surges as a function of pre-existing levels of political disaffection in a difference-in-differences design. The results demonstrate that turnout surges benefit the populist right “Alternative für Deutschland” (AfD) in contexts of widespread political distrust. In contrast, increased mobilization acts to depress its electoral fortunes in communities marked by low baseline levels of political disaffection. In shedding light on the interplay between political disaffection and electoral mobilization, this study has important implications for understanding the surge of the populist right in established democracies.
After a hopeful electoral debut, left populism in Europe has undergone relative normalization. While the literature on new parties might regard the persistence of left populist forces as a success, we deem instead that such an outcome should be considered against the backdrop of the initial left populist hypothesis. Based on a discussion of the existing literature and ten semi-structured interviews with party members, this paper analyses the case of Podemos in Spain as a proxy to assess the fortunes of left populism in Europe at large. We describe its political trajectory and explain its failure to go mainstream by reference to the interplay between, at a macro level, the structure of political opportunities and, at a meso level, its interpretation of the populist strategy. In particular, we focus on the paradoxical effects of the representative void, on the specific and unfavorable mutations of the populist moment in Spain for Podemos, and its own organizational and strategic shortcomings.
‘Populism’ has become ever more ubiquitous in political analysis, to the extent that ‘populism studies’ appears on course to establishing itself as a field of research in its own right. This article warns about the dangers of such a development. Taking a discourse theoretical approach as our starting point – but also critically engaging with this tradition’s contribution to the hype about populism – we suggest that ‘populism studies’ (and the preoccupation with populism this field embodies) risks reifying populism by focusing on populism as a phenomenon ‘as such’, and through an over-reliance on the concept of populism to approach that phenomenon. This, we argue, hampers a nuanced and contextualized understanding of the exact role populism plays in different populist politics. This is not a call for abandoning the concept of populism altogether, but a call for de-centring the concept and for moving beyond academia’s ‘populist moment’.
The article argues that the eruption of 'indignation' protests after 2011 produced new discourses questioning political representation that challenge one of the most important frameworks of the constructivist turn in democratic theory: Michael Saward's representative claim. This article analyses these post-representative claims through Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's distinction between Vertretung (or representation as 'acting for') and Darstellung (aesthetic and performative representation), and concludes that it is possible to discursively construct 'the people' without implying representation as 'stepping in someone's place'.
In recent years, especially after the outbreak of the economic crisis, the phenomenon of populism has returned to the forefront. Populism is all around us, on the front pages of the newspapers, in the political repertoire, in academic papers. Politicians, journalists and researchers discuss this phenomenon, try to define it, examine its principal features and analyse its relationship with democracy. A large part of the mainstream parties and politicians have succeeded, through a strong anti-populist rhetoric, in consolidating the idea that populism is a dangerous ideology. Technocrats, mainstream media and many researchers blame the anti-establishment parties and argue that populism is an ‘irrational’ phenomenon that threatens politics and society. But is that really the case? In this article, we examine anti-populism after the economic collapse in Greece (2008/09) and Argentina (2001) to highlight the danger that derives from this kind of discourse. Our main goal is to find the chief characteristics of anti-populist discourse in both countries in order to emphasize its problematic and controversial perspective.
This article provides an internal assessment of Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism. While critiques of Laclau have been made from a variety of traditions, few scholars have sought to work through the contradictions of his thought on internal terms. This article identifies some key antinomies in Laclau’s oeuvre and hints at some redemptive strategies. It starts with a short summary of Laclau’s conception of populism in contextual and conceptual fashion. Subsequently, four possible deficits of Laclau’s theory are examined, ranging from a tension between verticality and horizontality, an ahistorical dimension, a descriptive and normative hyperformalism, and the lack of a reflexive approach to the term ‘populism’ itself. The article finishes with a fresh research agenda for ‘post-Laclauian’ theories of populism.
The political-strategic approach is one of the most employed frameworks within the methodologically heterogeneous subfield of populism studies. In the last two decades, it has contributed to the analysis of populism both in Latin America and the United States and, more recently, in Western and Eastern Europe. That being said, a close inspection of its axioms and its conceptualization of the phenomenon shows that it is built on ill-conceived premises. This article intends to be a comprehensive critique of the approach that can contribute to the methodological progress of the field. It criticizes the three main dysfunctions of the approach: selective rationalism, leader-centrism, and normative bias.