Populism in Power: Discourse and Performativity in SYRIZA and Donald Trump

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“It was once assumed that populists could not survive once in power, but recent
history has shown us how very wrong this assumption was. Comparing two
of the most important cases of populism in power on the left and the right in
recent years – the cases of SYRIZA in Greece and Donald Trump in the US
respectively – Giorgos Venizelos’ masterful book pushes our understanding
of the phenomenon of populism forward in several ways. It works across
regional and ideological lines, interrogates the relationship between populism
and anti-populism, and creatively analyses populist discourse, visuals and
performances to make sense of how and why populism operates and sometimes
changes when in power. Theoretically sophisticated yet empirically grounded,
cleverly argued and methodologically innovative, it is required reading not
only for those interested in populism, but in the rapidly changing landscape of
contemporary politics more generally”.
Benjamin Mott, Associate Professor Australian Catholic University
“This book recasts the debate over populism in power by examining its varied
eects on democracy and its performative mode of governance. As Giorgos
Venizelos explains, populist discourse, performativity and identication may
be forged in opposition, but they hardly disappear once populists take power.
Through a comparative analysis of left-wing populism in Greece and right-wing
populism in the U.S., Venizelos breaks new ground in showing how populism
adapts to governing responsibilities and transforms ‘the people’ in dierent
institutional contexts. This book is a major contribution to the study of populism’s
dynamic properties and the socio-cultural bases of its appeal”.
Kenneth M. Roberts, Professor of Government, Cornell University
“In the crowded eld of populism studies, GiorgosVenizelos persuades with
his illuminating comparison of diametrically opposed types of populists in
government. His meticulous in-depth studies of Syriza and Trump show that
populists succeed in reinventing and recalibrating their populist discourse once
in oce but do so in dierent ways given their ideological roots. His book is
a must read for any scholar wanting to understand the impact populists might
have on liberal democracy”.
Sarah De Lange, Professor of Political Pluralism,
University of Amsterdam

Populism in Power
Shifting attention away from policy achievements and eects on democracy,
this book focuses on the charismatic function of populist discourse – comprising
antagonistic narratives, transgressive style and appeals to the common people.
The book puts forward an integrative approach that brings together discourse
analysis, analysis of digital media, in-depth interviews and ethnographic
methods, and places into comparative perspective the cases of SYRIZA in
Greece and Donald Trump in the United States. Theorising populism through
the lens of collective identication, Venizelos places the rhetorical and
emotional dynamics of populist performativity at the core of the analysis,
oering a rigorous yet exible conceptulisation of populism in power. Against
theoretical expectations, ndings suggest that both SYRIZA and Trump
retained, to dierent degrees, their populist character in power, although their
style and vision diered vastly.
This book urges researchers, journalists and politicians to adopt a reexive
approach to analysing the political implications of populism for politics, polity
and society, and to challenge the normatively charged denitions that are
uncritically reproduced in the public sphere. It will appeal to researchers of
political theory, populism, comparative politics, sociologists and ethnographers.
Giorgos Venizelos is Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Cyprus. His research
is situated at the intersections of contemporary political theory and comparative
politics with a special focus on populism, anti-populism and discourse theory.
He has published in journals including Political Studies, Constellations, Critical
Sociology and Representation. He co-convenes the Populism Specialist Group
of the Political Studies Association (www.giorgosvenizelos.com).

Conceptualising Comparative Politics seeks to bring a distinctive approach to
comparative politics by rediscovering the discipline’s rich conceptual tradition
and inter-disciplinary foundations. It aims to ll out the conceptual framework
on which the rest of the subeld draws but to which books only sporadically
contribute, and to complement theoretical and conceptual analysis by applying
it to deeply explored case studies. The series publishes books that make serious
inquiry into fundamental concepts in comparative politics (crisis, legitimacy,
credibility, representation, institutions, civil society, reconciliation) through
theoretically engaging and empirically deep analysis.
10. The End of Communist Rule in Albania
Political Change and The Role of The Student Movement
Shinasi A. Rama
11. Authoritarian Gravity Centers
A Cross-Regional Study of Authoritarian Promotion and Diusion
Thomas Demmelhuber and Marianne Kneuer
12. Politics as a Science
A Prolegomenon
Philippe C. Schmitter and Marc Blecher
13. Populism in Global Perspective
A Performative and Discursive Approach
Edited by Pierre Ostiguy, Francisco Panizza, Benjamin Mott
14. Populism in Power
Discourse and Performativity in SYRIZA and Donald Trump
Giorgos Venizelos
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Conceptualising Comparative Politics: Polities, Peoples,
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Populism in Power
Discourse and Performativity
in SYRIZA and Donald Trump
Giorgos Venizelos

First published 2023
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DOI: 10.4324/9781003351634
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List of gures viii
List of tables x
Acknowledgements xi
Series preface xiii
Introduction 1
1 Populism(s) in power 17
2 Populism in Greece and the United States: politics,
history, culture 47
3 SYRIZA in opposition (2012–2015) 80
4 SYRIZA in government (2015–2019) 103
5 The rise of Donald Trump: ‘Make America Great Again!’ 132
6 Donald Trump in power: ‘Keep America Great!’ 157
7 Left- and right-wing populists in government:
a comparative analysis 189
Conclusion 220
Research Methods Appendices 232
Index 247
Contents

3.1 SYRIZA’s 2012 election campaign posters 81
3.2 Poster from SYRIZA’s rst congress in 2013 82
3.3 SYRIZA’s posters for Angela Merkel’s visit to Athens in 2014 84
3.4 SYRIZA’s posters from the 2014 European election campaign 88
3.5 2014 European election campaign posters expressing
SYRIZA’s core demands 91
3.6 Stills from SYRIZA’s election campaign broadcasts in
January 2015 93
4.1 Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras performing on the
socio-cultural low 107
4.2 Transgressing the socio-political high 1 108
4.3 Transgressing the socio-political high 2 108
4.4 Transgressing the socio-political high 3 109
4.5 SYRIZA’s poster for the 2019 European elections 113
4.6 Pamphlets included in the SYRIZA-leaning Emerida
ton Syntakton 115
4.7 Alexis Tsipras announces Greece’s exit from the memoranda 116
4.8 Alexis Tsipras appears wearing a tie for the rst time 116
4.9 Alexis Tsipras on the ‘high’ of the populism/elitism spectrum 119
5.1 An abandoned warehouse next to a newly constructed
mosque aords a snapshot of contemporary suburban
Pennsylvania. Wilkes-Barre, PA 140
5.2 Billboards outside Scranton, PA advertise the US Marine
Corps. In the same districts, sepia images of veterans
captioned with patriotic messages were hung from lamp
posts, and homes proudly ew the American ag 141
5.3 Stills capturing the range of Trump’s hand gestures within a
1-minute time frame, during a rally at Wilkes-Barre, PA on
25 April 2016 (VM.41) 147
5.4 Donald Trump with an ‘authentic’ background, Golden, CO,
October 2016 (VM.42) 148
Figures

Figures ix
5.5 Trump’s tweets during his 2016 campaign demonstrate a
working literacy, albeit cruelly deployed, with prevailing
Internet culture 149
5.6 Trump publicises his ‘passion’ for fast food on social media 149
6.1 Donald Trump tweets a meme about his rst impeachment
process 159
6.2 An email sent by the 2020 Donald Trump campaign (VM.61) 161
6.3 Trump’s Instagram story following his 2020 State of the
Union address 161
6.4 Trump’s tweeted memes: surveilled by Obama, and
reimagined as Rocky Balboa 162
6.5 ‘Law & Order!’. Trump posts a favourite catchword on
Instagram in response to the Black Lives Matter
protests (VM.62) 167
6.6 2020 Campaign yers and stickers collected from a petition
rally in Scranton, PA (F.US.5) 171
7.1 SYRIZA and Trump’s frames in opposition and government.
The dominant frame is outermost 198
7.2 Collective identity among SYRIZA supporters, showing
relations of horizontal solidarity between articulated
identities, and a shared self-understanding of these identities
as constituent parts of ‘the people’ 201
7.3 Collective identity of ‘the people’ in the Trump campaign,
vertically mediated by the relationship between leader and
base, but not necessarily in horizontal solidarity 201

1.1 Sublimation and idealisation 35
1.2 Democratic and anti-democratic aects 35
2.1 Similarities between SYRIZA and Donald Trump 53
2.2 Dierences between SYRIZA and Donald Trump 56
7.1 Characteristics of ‘the low’ 191
7.2 Ideologically conditioned dierences in populist discourse 194
7.3 Typology of emotions 202
7.4 Trajectories of identication 205
Tables

The core idea behind this book has its roots in the period 2012–2015 while
I was nishing my undergraduate degree at the University of Essex and start-
ing my postgraduate studies at Goldsmiths College. The rise and fall of radical
left parties such as SYRIZA and Podemos sparked intense discussions about
the potential and limits of populism as a strategy for the left – to seize power
and produce progressive social change. It was in this context that, in the early
stages of my PhD in Florence, the right had its own seemingly sudden populist
moment with the BREXIT referendum and the election of Donald Trump. The
changing political landscape urged me to transform a number of political ques-
tions into research inquiries: are all populists the same? Do they necessarily
fail in government? And if so, by what standards? How can we conceptualise
failure?
To shape and structure these questions, I drew inspiration from many peo-
ple whom I met through various research trips and conferences, especially in
Europe but also in Brazil and the United States. It is obviously impossible to
name everyone, but a number of people deserve special acknowledgments.
I wish to thank Manuela Caiani for supervising this project for more than four
years. I am also indebted to my second supervisor and mentor Yannis Stavraka-
kis for his constant intellectual and moral support, and the numerous theo-
retical and political discussions that have inuenced my thought and research
since 2014 when we rst met in London.
I beneted greatly from the stimulating exchanges that took place in the
various colloquia, seminars and workshops organised at the Centre on Social
Movements Studies in Florence, led by Donatella Della Porta and populated
by many excellent scholars and friends whom I want to thank for their direct
or indirect inuence. Special thanks go to Linus Westheuser, Francesca Feo,
Andrea Terlizzi, Stella Christou, Jacopo Custodi, Beatrice Carella, Enrico
Padoan, Lorenzo Zamponi, Jannis Grimm and Andrea Pirro – not only for their
academic feedback, but above all for the moral support they provided me in
dicult times. I similarly thank Matteo Paba for our many years of supportive
and engaging friendship.
I would also like to extend my gratitude to Ken Roberts, who hosted me at
Cornell University as part of this research and generously provided me with
Acknowledgements

xii Acknowledgements
important insights about the political and cultural terrain in the US. Likewise,
I wish to thank my dear friend and collaborator Antonis Galanopoulos who
was a great companion during my research visit at Aristotle University in
Thessaloniki. Our discussions of parts of this text provided me with valuable
insights into various aspects of Greek politics and culture. I’d also like to thank
Benjamin De Cleen, whose empathic approach kept me going when morale
was pretty low; Thomás Zicman de Barros, with whom I discussed the inter-
section between psychoanalysis and populism; Seongcheol Kim for his rigor-
ous feedback; and Hara Kouki, Haris Malamides, Kostis Roussos, Christos
Avramidis and Giorgos Papaioannou, who shared their rst-hand experience
and knowledge of crisis politics in Greece.
It is not an overstatement to say that this research would not have been pos-
sible without Alexandra Elbakyan, an overlooked hero whose commitment to
open access education is invaluable to many scholars. This project was also
made possible by the administrative sta at the Department of Political and
Social Sciences of the Scuola Normale Superiore, especially Serenella Ber-
tocci, Michela Cappellini. Thanks must also go to those who agreed to be inter-
viewed for the purposes of this research, opening up and sharing their thoughts
and emotions with me, without being concerned about our potential ideological
dierences. I would also like to thank photographer Panayotis Tzamaros for
permitting me to use the photos that appear in Figure 4.4 and Ilias Louloudis
for permitting me to reproduce the photo that appears in Figure 4.2.
Last but not least, I want to thank Sophie for showing me another mode of
relating with my work and with others; as well as my parents who supported
me for 30 years by all means possible.

The series Conceptualizing Comparative Politics aims at publishing books
that make a serious inquiry into fundamental concepts in comparative poli-
tics through theoretically engaging and empirically deep comparative analysis.
Few concepts have the recurring and contemporary import of populism, and
this book fulls the remit of the series in regard to that concept. Through the
comparative study of populism in power in Greece (SYRIZA) and the United
States (Donald Trump), the book engages some fundamental theoretical issues
in the study of populism while oering new light on how populists deploy and
sustain (or not) populist politics in the oce.
Venizelos understands populism as a particular political logic that constructs
collective identities in the name of ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’, empty of
any essential content and susceptible to variable socio-cultural characteris-
tics and manifestations. Ostensibly aligned with the mainstream minimalist
conceptualisation of the term (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017), Venizelos
makes three key dierences. First, populism is not an ideology, not even a thin
one (Freeden, 1998), nor is it a political strategy (Weyland, 2017). Instead, in
line with Laclau (2005a), he advances a purely formal denition of populism
as a political logic. Second, he argues that the idea of a single, homogenous,
authentic people is a fantasy and it is precisely because the subject-as-a-whole
is a fantasy that multiple discrete identications can emerge to ll it. Third, he
challenges whether the ‘purity’ (of the people) and the ‘corruption’ (of the elite)
are dening characteristics of populism. Drawing on the appeals of SYRIZA’s
leader, Alexis Tsipras, he shows that the people were not framed by Tsipras as
‘pure’ but rather as ‘excluded’, ‘marginalised’ and ‘exhausted’ (though at the
same time, ‘resisting’). ‘The people’ in this appeal therefore took the status of
a politically rather than normatively constituted actor.
By bracketing attributes of ideology, homogeneity and purity, we are left
with a minimalist denition of populism that pares down the concept to two
core features: (1) the centrality attributed by populists to ‘the people’ (as the
plebs or the excluded) as the holders of sovereignty and (2) the constitutive
role that the antagonism between the people and its ‘other’ (the elite, the estab-
lishment, the political class, etc.) plays in the constitution of popular identi-
ties. It is this characterisation that frames Venizelos’ analysis of populism in
Series preface

xiv Series preface
government and helps to understand the similarities and dierences between
SYRIZA and Trump.
The study of populism in oce raises some important questions that are
addressed in the book. Perhaps the theoretically most important one concerns
the anti-establishment, anti-institutional, nature of populism. Arguably, a polit-
ical appeal that shares these attributes cannot remain populist in oce: it either
follows the rules of the ‘establishment’ and ceases to be populist or it proves
unable to govern because the ‘establishment’ undermines it. Such an assump-
tion rests in conceptiualisations of populism as a force of the opposition; or as a
force that is not as capable as ‘normal’ non populist politicians. Redirecting the
discussion back to populism core denition, Venizelos argues that the analysis
of populism in power must concentrate on the very analytical locus which clas-
sies a phenomenon as such. In examining whether populists remain populists
in power, the book thus focuses on if and how populist governments continue
to present antagonistically ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’.
Based on extensive empirical research, Venizelos argues that having
risen to power through a populist aective performativity, both Trump and
Tsipras maintained, renewed and expanded their populist repertories in oce.
Both actors presented high degrees of people-centrism and anti-elitism, and
polarisation remained the discursive norm rather than the exception in their
political appeals. Yet, he notes that although both Tsipras and Trump contin-
ued to perform as populists in government, their appeal did not go entirely
unchanged and was subject to uctuations depending on when and where it
was performed.
This qualication brings into consideration two closely related theoretical
questions in the study of populism. The rst one is that populism is an ordinal
rather than categorical attribute. As Laclau (2005b:45) noted, ‘[to] ask oneself
if a movement is or is not populist is, actually, to start with the wrong ques-
tion. The question that we should instead, ask ourselves, is . . . to what extent
is a movement populist?’ A second related question is that populist leaders are
never wholly dened by their ‘populism’, as their appeals always articulate
populist and non-populist discursive frames, such as liberal democracy. As
Venizelos notes, this highlights that a populist actor is never merely populist.
But perhaps the main question to be addressed regarding Trump and Tsipras’
degree of populism is how successful they were in their appeal. Here the con-
trast is telling. Both SYRIZA and Trump ended up losing elections, but this
is not necessarily the best form of measuring the success of their respective
versions of populism. After all, as Venizelos notes, Trump gathered more votes
in 2020 than in 2016, while SYRIZA registered only a moderate fall in the
popular vote when they lost power. There are many reasons for this, but one
critical one is the presence of a host ideology that impacts the discourse of the
populist.
The explanatory primacy of the host ideology over that of the populist
logic runs extensively throughout the book. Venizelos claims that Tsipras and
Trump’s populist discourses, their denitions of ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’,
their diagnosis of the social, political and economic issues at stake, and the

Series preface xv
solutions they propose were profoundly inuenced by their adjunct ideology.
In other words, the policies, articulated visions and mobilised aective identi-
cations of these populists were not determined by populism itself. This raises
the question of why studying populism at all if it does not account for some of
the most fundamental features of the two governments.
Perhaps the answer can be found in Venizelos’ conclusion that understand-
ing populism through a discursive-performative lens makes it possible to
transcend the restrictive frameworks that understand populism’s fate in gov-
ernment as a question of ‘success’ or ‘failure’ in policy delivery, or of taking
a ‘mainstream’ or an ‘authoritarian’ turn. He notes that accessing state power
is not the teleological end point of a populist strategy but the starting point for
new salient identications between ‘the people’ and the (populist) government
that requires the constant reactivation of political passions and antagonism
over time. He further notes that political mobilisation and the energising of
aect are indispensable for the maintenance or, in extremis, reinvention of a
collective ‘we’ in antagonistic juxtaposition to an oppressive or exploitative
‘other’. This is perhaps the main lesson to be drawn from the contrasting cases
of SYRIZA and Trump and this is also why the study of populism is still rele-
vant. Populism is not the only road to political change and may not even be the
most eective one, but an energised and mobilised populous is important for
change. This book goes a considerable way in explaining why this is the case.
Francisco Panizza and Anthony Petros Spanakos
References
Freeden, M. (2017). After the Brexit referendum: Revisiting populism as an ideology.
Journal of Political Ideologies, 22(1), 1–11.
Laclau, E. (2005a). On Populist Reason. London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2005b). Populism: What’s in a name? In F. Panizza (Ed.), Populism and the
Mirror of Democracy (pp. 32–49). London: Verso.
Weyland, K. (2017). Populism: A political – strategic approach. In C. Rovira Kaltwas-
ser, P. Taggart, P. O. Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Populism
(pp. 48–72). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003351634-1
Introduction
I. Populism: from the streets to the halls of power
The proliferation of populist movements, leaderships and parties, together with
their transition from the margins to the mainstream of party systems, signalled
a dramatic change in the global political landscape. The (re-)emergence of left
and right populists in the aftermath of the deep 2008 economic crisis com-
bined with a profound public distrust of political and business elites to disrupt
‘long-established patterns of party competition in many contemporary West-
ern societies’ (Norris & Inglehart, 2019:3). Traditional political parties, which
had governed interchangeably over the preceding 30 years, were perceived
as incapable of responding to mounting socio-economic demands, leaving a
political space open for populist parties and movements. The emergence of the
so-called ‘square’ and ‘occupy’ movements in 2011 and the rise of movement
parties in the following years brought formerly neglected demands to the cen-
tre of the political mainstream (Prentoulis & Thomassen, 2013; Kioupkiolis &
Katsambekis, 2016; Gerbaudo, 2017; Della Porta et al., 2017).
Populists sought to harness indignation as a force for change by channel-
ling popular frustration and electorally uncommitted protest grievance against
what they characterised as ‘the political establishment’. Populism’s distinct
antagonism, which undermines conventional political formations of left and
right by conceptually pitting ‘the people’ at the bottom against ‘the elite’ at
the top, points to a provisional denition of the resurgent populist politics.
Yet, against the temptation to clump all sorts of varied phenomena under a
homogenous ‘populist’ label, fundamental dierences between populisms can
in fact be drawn. Left-wing populists champion ‘the people’ against an elite
and establishment dened by its economic supremacy (Venizelos & Stavraka-
kis, 2022). This antagonism is vertical and punches upwards: the many at ‘the
bottom’ rally against the few at ‘the top’ (Casullo, 2020a). The collective sub-
ject adopts the subaltern status in the sense that it is excluded from society
(Ostiguy, 2017). Thus left populism is ‘dyadic’ (Judis, 2016:15). By contrast,
right-wing populists champion ‘the people’ against an elite whom ‘they accuse
of coddling a third group, which can consist, for instance, of immigrants. . . .
[Thus] Right-wing populism is triadic. It looks upward, but also down upon an
out group’ (Judis, 2016:15).

2 Introduction
Populists are no longer conned to sporadic appearances in opposition. They
have increasingly taken opportunities to become relevant forces within their
respective party systems by achieving incremental power at the sub-national
level and winning seats in national legislatures.1 Gradually, the most successful
populists moved from opposition to government. Parties such as PiS (Prawo i
Sprawiedliwość [Law and Justice]) in Poland and Fidesz (Fiatal Demokraták
Szövetsége [Alliance of Young Democrats]) in Hungary are often regarded
as paradigms of populism in government, exhibiting authoritarian, undemo-
cratic and illiberal characteristics (Kim, 2020, 2022).2 Moreover, the Philip-
pines’ PDP–Laban (Partido Demokratiko Pilipino–Lakas ng Bayan [Filipino
Democratic Party–People’s Power]) under Rodrigo Duterte (Curato, 2021) and
Turkey’s AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi [Justice and Development Party])
under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have received substantial attention in a similar
vein over the last few years (Özdemir, 2015; Gurhanli, 2018; Baykan, 2021).
Much ink has been spilled on Latin America, arguably a ‘natural habitat’ for
populist politics. The cases of Juan Perón in Argentina, Getúlio Vargas in Bra-
zil and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela demonstrate that in contrast to contempo-
rary Europe, populism in government has not historically been an exceptional
mode of Latin American politics (McGuire, 1997; Hawkins, 2010; Groppo,
2010). Recent regional developments are suggestive of a return to form. On
the left, the Ecuadorian ‘Citizens’ Revolution’ (2007–2017) led by the progres-
sive populist Rafael Correa was an exemplary case (Mazzolini, 2021), as was
Bolivia’s plurinational and indigenous populism under Evo Morales from 2016
until its violent interruption in 2019 (see de la Torre, 2010; Brienen, 2016). The
right-wing populism of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018 interrupted the conti-
nuity of Lula da Silva’s progressive populism (Zicman de Barros, 2018; Men-
donça & Caetano, 2021), while Andrés Manuel López Obrador, alias ‘AMLO’,
captured the presidency of Mexico in 2018 (Macip, 2018). In 2019, resurgent
Kirchnerist Peronism supplanted four years of neoliberalism in Argentina (Do
Rosario & Gillespie, 2019). In the face of such evidence, it is dicult to deny
that a new wave of Latin American populism is well under way.
The Italian and Greek governments formed in 2018 and 2015, respectively,
present two paradigmatic cases of the populist coalition government in the
European liberal party systems. The hitherto marginal experience of European
populist parties in government, usually as minor coalition partners at best, is no
longer the norm. In Italy, the idiosyncratic populist Movimento Cinque Stelle
and the nativist right Lega briey coalesced into an ideologically contradictory
alliance putatively based on anti-establishment populism (Caiani & Padoan,
2021; Giannetti et al., 2021). In Greece, the contemporary populist experi-
ence managed to exhaust its term in oce. In 2015, SYRIZA (Συνασπισμός
Ριζοσπαστικής Αριστεράς [Coalition of the Radical Left]) led a coalition
government alongside the nativist populist right party ANEL (Ανεξάρτητοι
Έλληνες [Independent Greeks]), the latter serving as a minor partner (Asla-
nidis & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2016; Hawkins et al., 2018; Pappas & Aslanidis,
2015; Stavrakakis et al., 2017).

Introduction 3
The other side of the Atlantic presents a very similar picture. The victory of
Donald Trump in 2016 was by itself construed as a political scandal. His tri-
umph against the expectations of pollsters and analysts took the American pub-
lic by surprise. It especially shocked cosmopolitan urban classes and educated
elites whose values were threatened by Trump’s success. As Paul Krugman
(2016) put it,
[w]hat we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers
of The New York Times, truly didn’t understand the country we live in. We
thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate
so manifestly unqualied for high oce, so temperamentally unsound, so
scary yet ludicrous.
Trump rejected progressive neoliberalism:
an alliance of mainstream currents of new social movements (feminism,
anti-racism, multiculturalism and LGBTQ rights) on the one side, and
high-end ‘symbolic’ and service-based sectors of business (Wall Street,
Silicon Valley and Hollywood) on the other, ideals such as empowerment,
multiculturalism and diversity.
(Fraser, 2017)
These developments challenged conventional wisdom, which regarded the
juxtaposition of populism with established institutions as odd or contradictory.
The fact that populists over the world no longer come as minor partners in
coalitions but now in fact lead national governments raises a critical question:
what happens when populists achieve power?
II. Conceptual challenges
Populism in government is often thought of as an epitome of contradiction. Its
relationship with institutions can be uneasy. Does populism last once in power?
Does it maintain its anti-establishment outlook? Existing literature has pro-
duced several hypotheses on populism’s trajectory once in power which have
guided prior empirical research. Commonly analysed as an ‘outsider force’, a
feature of the opposition (see Kitschelt, 2006; Akkerman & de Lange, 2012),
populism is rarely understood as a durable force of government (see Mény &
Surel, 2002). Populism in power can therefore seem an impossibility: it either
fails to deliver its promises or it falls into alignment with the mainstream (see
Canovan, 1999; Mudde, 2017). Nonetheless, the multitude of Latin American
populists in power surveyed earlier coupled with the growing electoral success
of contemporary populists in western liberal democratic contexts undermines
this received wisdom.
Unsurprisingly then, this standard view has its dissenters. Focusing on the
capability of populists to implement policies close to their core ideological

4 Introduction
positions, Albertazzi and McDonnell (2015) argue that populists can survive
the experience of power.3 Populists may indeed succeed in implementing
policy in government. However, aspects of such policy, some literature has
argued, are not denitive of populism, but rather of whichever supplemen-
tary ideology accompanies it. Besides, we may well interrogate whether a
populist actor in government successfully implements policy, but by itself,
this does not necessarily speak to the question of whether they have remained
populist. If analysis of populists in government is principally concerned with
their ability to pass and implement policy, then dichotomies of ‘responsible’
and ‘irresponsible’, ‘capable’ and ‘incapable’ and ‘normal’ and ‘exceptional’
can be uncritically reproduced, together with an inclination to place populist
actors on the latter side in each case. Nevertheless, just as with populists, non-
populists and establishment politicians can equally fail or succeed to imple-
ment policy.
Focusing on populism’s ‘outcomes’ – the impact it may have on the insti-
tutions of representation – Müller (2016) and Pappas (2019) assert that the
destiny of populism in government is to descend into illiberal and authoritarian
forms. Some populists in government may well indulge in corruption, intimi-
date political adversaries and the media and inict other authoritarian repres-
sions, but does this hold true for all populists; for the phenomenon of populism
in government per se? Certainly not, since even a supercial comparative sur-
vey immediately discloses the existence of democratic, egalitarian and liber-
ally oriented populisms (Katsambekis, 2020). In short, attempts to understand
populism in government through attributes that are neither exclusive to nor
constitutive of populism distract us from the core of the populist phenomenon,
and impede its rigorous assessment.
This book takes the view that if there is a denitive populist style of gov-
ernance, it is likely dissimilar to what has been conceived earlier. In order to
properly explore the metamorphosis from populism in opposition to populism
in power, the very notion of populism itself may require re-evaluation (cf. Mof-
tt, 2016). Populism’s inherent ambiguity and complexity render the concept
normatively charged. Widespread and uncritical use of the term in public life
has exacerbated its a priori association with irresponsibility, ignorance, back-
wardness, demagogic agitation of the masses, reactionary backlash and its
conation with concepts like nationalism and fascism (Stavrakakis & Jäger,
2018; De Cleen et al., 2018; Galanopoulos & Venizelos, 2022). This construal
of ‘populist’ as an axiomatic pejorative is bound to predispose us to negative
expectations about its ascent from opposition to power.
As Conni (2012) has argued, populism in power is a question of who gains
public oce and how they govern. In order to assist in the clarication of
populism’s operational denition, this book argues that adequate analysis of
populism in power can only emanate from the very analytical locus which
classies a phenomenon as populist in the rst place (cf. Laclau, 1977; Cano-
van, 2005; Stavrakakis, 2004; Mudde, 2004; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser,
2012; Panizza, 2005; Hawkins, 2009). In examining whether populists remain

Introduction 5
populists in power, this book examines how and if populists in power persist in
their antagonistic presentation of ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’.
This study builds upon the theoretical tradition of the Essex school of dis-
course analysis (Laclau & Moue, 2014 [1985]; Torng, 1999; Howarth et al.,
2000; Glynos & Howarth, 2007; Stavrakakis, 2007) as well as on the socio-cul-
tural/performative perspective (Casullo, 2020a; Mott, 2016; Ostiguy, 2009),
whose innovative contributions helped divorce populism from the essentialist
connotations ascribed to it by Eurocentric punditry. In accordance with Mott
(2016), this project moves beyond eorts to dene populism ‘as a particular
thing’, a type of policy or a regime intrinsic to any particular ideology and
reorients towards populism’s own function (Laclau, 2005b).
The book conceives of populism as a performative mode of political identi-
cation which, through aective investment, constructs the collective identity
of a politically subaltern social majority that operates against a political class
which is framed as illegitimate (Laclau, 2005; Stavrakakis & Katsambekis,
2014; Panizza, 2017; Venizelos, 2022). Continuing a tradition established by
other studies, this one focuses on the primacy of people-centrism and anti-
elitism within populist discourse (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012). In dis-
cursive and performative approaches, however, ‘the people’ do not pre-exist
but are rather articulated as a popular political identity, understood as a series
of discursive linkages. Importantly, articulation is not just a particular type
of rhetoric but also a performative praxis manifested by a transgressive and
disruptive dynamism. The populist style comprises a wide range of practices
and operations: political speech, bodily choreographies and gestures, social
markers such as accent as well as symbols, music and slogans (Laclau, 2005a;
Casullo, 2020b; Ostiguy et al., 2021a). The populist actor’s function of inter-
pellation is fundamental to constituting what it purports to represent: ‘the peo-
ple’ (Thomassen, 2019).
The aforementioned considerations in no way insinuate that populism is a
top-down phenomenon. To view populism as a dynamically relational category
presupposes that ‘the people’ – and the collectivities from which it emerges –
themselves play an active role in constructing and conditioning an aective
community through the interplay of their demands, visions and desires. Rela-
tionships between populist leaders4 and the people are thus ‘co-constitutive’
(Ostiguy et al., 2021a:2), and for this reason, Dean and Maiguashca (2020:21)
refer to them as collective enactments which are ‘not seen as ephemeral perfor-
mances by leaders, but rather as embedded, relatively durable and purposeful
“repertoires of action” that reect a substantive view of the world and a desire
to transform it’. Collective identities are sustained by shared experiences and
bonds, emotions and other corporeal energies, often referred to as aects, and
these lie at the core of this analysis.
Taking this anti-essentialist perspective, the research presented in this book
invites examination of populism’s transformation on entering government in
terms of its own discursive and performative dynamics by which it articu-
lates the antagonism between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, while at the same

6 Introduction
time sustaining an aectively-invested collective identity revealed by the bond
maintained between ‘the people and ‘the populist’.
III. Research methods and contributions
This book focuses on the cases of SYRIZA in Greece and Donald Trump in
the United States which can be considered as paradigmatic instances of pop-
ulism in power: not only have both attained power against expert expectations
and erce anti-populist reactions, but both also successfully maintained power
for a full term in oce putting into challenge the norm that populism is not a
durable force in government. Indeed, the two cases are characterised by stark
distinctions. SYRIZA was a cohesive party while Trump was an individual
leader who was widely perceived as an outsider even within his own party.
SYRIZA emerged under strict political monitoring in a small semi-peripheral
EU member-state while Trump emerged in a seemingly economically and
politically robust United States. Greece has a parliamentary system and the
United States a presidential one (Stavrakakis & Katsambekis, 2014; Aslan-
idis & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2016; Katsambekis, 2016, 2019; Venizelos, 2020;
Bitecofer, 2018; Alexander & Mast, 2019; Ott & Dickinson, 2019; Oliva &
Shanahan, 2019). The weight of dierence between SYRIZA and Donald
Trump could supercially seem prohibitive to comparative analysis. However,
a core aim of this book is to move beyond inexible social-scientic paradigms
of geographically conned research. The intensity of populist mobilisations
that spark, often simultaneously, in an ever-globalising world allows one to
observe patterns of similarity and dierences. One must not forget that neither
SYRIZA nor Donald Trump constitutes an exceptional moment in the political
history of their countries as they are part of rich and reactivating traditions of
populist mobilisation. Furthermore, they both emerged in the aftermath of the
Great Recession, as a response to the popular discontent against unresponsive
political and economic elites and accumulated grievances. If the two actors are
as dierent as expected, will the process of comparison disclose whatever core
remainder justies their co-categorisation as ‘populist’ or reveal that this com-
mon classication exists purely in the eye of the beholder? Research of this
nature can arguably provide answers to pressing questions about the character
of distinct populist typologies regarding their nature as well as relationship
with democracy and its institutions.
To conduct empirical research, this book puts forward an integrative
approach that brings together discourse analysis (see Appendix A), analysis
of digital media, posters and campaign spots (see Appendix B), in-depth inter-
views (see Appendix C) and ethnographic research (see Appendix D). Spe-
cically, this book studies speeches of the political actors involved, the type
of language they employ, the qualities of their bodily movements and over-
all social habitus, symbolic resources and aesthetics found in posters, cam-
paigning material and social media. Furthermore, to grasp the aective grip
of collective identication – arguably a core aspect of populism – the book

Introduction 7
interviews ‘the people’ in order to gain insight as to the ways they identify or
stop identifying with their leaders, parties and ideas. Through ethnographic
research conducted during eldwork in Greece (2018–2019) and the Unites
States (2020), this book delves into the various community practices and ritu-
als, rallies and protests that generate aective bonds which are understood as a
vital drive of politics. The aim is to elaborate one’s understanding with respect
to how groups, networks, organisations and movements become ‘the people’.
The rst service this research performs to its eld is to redress the research
gap in the prevailing literature of populism in power. A remarkably rich and
ongoing literature has approached populism from several directions, but since
the ascendance of contemporary populism to government – especially in the
so-called ‘consolidated’ democracies of the West – remains a relatively new
phenomenon, thorough treatments remain scant. Most research has treated the
term ‘in power’ liberally, focusing on populists at the regional level, in parlia-
mentary opposition, and as minor partners in coalitions. This research focuses
on durable national governments and actors who rule independently (or at least
as major partners in a coalition). The strength and autonomy aorded to popu-
list governments allow the phenomenon to be studied in the proper sense of the
term ‘in power’ – operating with fewer institutional restrictions and obstacles
than they would otherwise – thereby testing populist articulation and interpel-
lation in power to its maximum capacity.
Its second advantage is to pursue a cross-regional perspective. With some
notable exceptions (see Mouzelis, 1986; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012;
de la Torre, 2015; Savage, 2018; Ostiguy et al., 2021; Padoan, 2021), the state
of the eld is predominantly conned to narrow geographic boundaries and
isolated case studies (Self & Hicken, 2016). This ultimately poses barriers to
enhancing understanding of a global and multifaceted phenomenon – especially
in times marked by intensely proliferating populist governments.
Third, this book performs a cross-ideological comparison, treating left and
right phenomena in parallel within the same study. Until recently, literature has
predominantly focused on nativist right-populist phenomena (see Akkerman
et al., 2016; Betz, 1994; McDonnell & Werner, 2019; Mudde, 2004, 2007;
Pirro, 2015), recently, though left populists also received attention (see Kat-
sambekis & Kioupkiolis, 2019; Stavrakakis & Katsambekis, 2014; Agustín,
2020; Venizelos & Stavrakakis, 2022). It is only rarely, however, that left-
and right-wing populists are incorporated in the same in-depth study (see also
March, 2017; Ivaldi et al., 2017; Rooduijn & Akkerman, 2017; Roberts, 2019;
Caiani & Graziano, 2019).
Many contemporary phenomena are treated under the rubric of ‘populism’,
and due to the negative valence of the term in public discussion, egalitarian and
pluralistic manifestations are sometimes collapsed into xenophobic and regres-
sive typologies (Stavrakakis, 2017). Recognition that populisms of dierent
ideological orientations pursue dierentiable political agendas and have a dis-
similar overall impacts on democracy has only appeared relatively recently
(Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012; Ivaldi et al., 2017; Huber & Schimpf,

8 Introduction
2017; Font et al., 2019; Norris, 2019). In this vein, a central task of this book
is to illustrate that not all populisms in power have the same implications
for democratic institutions and society. Analysis of their discursive practices
shows that left- and right-wing populisms in power reproduce contrasting
socio-political imaginaries. They pursue, respectively, contrasting political
discourses, which in turn generate distinct emotions and construct varied forms
of collective identity.
It is hoped that the application of the discursive and performative lenses
to the populist cases treated in this book may provide the reader with a ‘ex-
ible yet rigorous’ method to study the phenomenon (Stavrakakis, 2013:28).
Transcending restrictive frameworks that render populism’s transformation in
government as ‘mainstreaming’, ‘authoritarianism’, ‘success’ or ‘failure’, this
research aims to facilitate the study of the uctuations of populist performativ-
ity by degree (Aslanidis, 2015; Caiani & Graziano, 2019).
Lastly, by evaluating populism as an emotionally-invested collective iden-
tity, this book introduces an oft-neglected factor – aect – and thereby sheds
new light on the psycho-social dynamics behind the construction of populist
political identities (Lacan, 1961; Moue, 2002; Laclau, 2005a; Stavrakakis,
2007; Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2008; Cossarini & Vallespín, 2019; Eklundh,
2019; Demertzis, 2020; Venizelos, 2022). Despite the general depreciation and
all-too-often exclusion of emotions from socio-political analysis, the work pre-
sented in this volume shows how dierent variants of populism, e.g. left/right,
progressive/regressive, and so on, can be associated with a range of emotions,
from hate to love, and from nostalgia to hope (see Salmela & von Scheve,
2018).
VI. Structure of the book
Chapter 1, Populism(s) in power, oers a critical review of contemporary lit-
erature on populism in power and traces its roots to the pre-emptively nega-
tive inection of ‘populism’ as a point of departure in public discourse. By
interpreting populism as an aectively-invested collective identity constructed
in the name of ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’, this chapter puts the case that
governing populists’ own discursive performances, together with the manner
of emotional identication they sustain with ‘the people’ after assuming power,
are the best object of examination for properly understanding the metamorpho-
ses populism undergoes during its ascent from opposition to power.
Chapter 2, Populism in Greece and the United States, develops proles for
the cases of SYRIZA and Donald Trump and familiarises the reader with the
political, historical and cultural context within which they emerge. It traces
their roots in populist mobilisations of the past and highlights populism’s reac-
tivating nature.
Chapter 3, SYRIZA in opposition, delves into SYRIZA’s discourse in the
period 2012–2015 and highlights its progressive and democratic character. It
also looks at the aective question of how the collective identity of ‘the people’

Introduction 9
was constructed through relations of equivalence established between social
movements, party militants, radicalised citizens and voters in general against
a common ‘enemy’.
Chapter 4, SYRIZA in power, focuses on the discourse of the SYRIZA in
government in the period 2015–2019. It argues that the leftist government
retained its populist style to a great extent; it also renovated and performed it
together with new populist and non-populist repertoires. However, SYRIZA’s
retreat from its key economic promises critically damaged the aective bond it
had previously maintained with ‘the people’.
Chapter 5, The rise of Donald Trump: ‘Make America Great Again!’,
focuses on the emergence of Donald Trump as a political outsider contesting
the Republican Party’s nomination and his role as a key political antagonist in
US politics in the period 2015–2016. This chapter evaluates the importance of
Trump’s transgressive style in mobilising grassroots aects and constructing
an anti-establishment identity capable of courting supporters’ sentiments of
long-standing neglect by political elites.
Chapter 6, Donald Trump in power: ‘Keep America Great!’, focuses on
Trump’s populist discourse, style and performativity in the White House. Don-
ald Trump’s populism not only persisted in power but also multiply reinvented
itself by incorporating new elements and themes. Despite Trump’s rhetorical
inconsistency and poor record in government, his style continued to resonate
with his audience to a great degree.
Chapter 7, Left- and right-wing populists in government, oers a compara-
tive analysis of the two cases. Its empirical ndings seem to challenge norma-
tive conceptions about populism in power on several fronts. First, not only
was populist style persistent in power, but it also constantly reinvented itself
depending on time and space. Second, the cases’ dissimilar discourses evi-
dently drew on their respective left and right ideologies, articulated distinct
socio-political visions, energised dierent types of emotions and related with
political institutions in fundamentally opposing ways. Regardless of institu-
tional performance, the aective element of collective identity followed diver-
gent trajectories; SYRIZA’s supporters felt disillusioned with its reality in
government, while Trump’s supporters showed increasingly euphoric levels of
aective identication, culminating even in the infamous Capitol insurrection
of January 2021.
In light of the theoretical considerations and empirical ndings delivered
by this research, the conclusion arms that the study of populism’s transition
from antagonistic to protagonistic postures should divorce itself from Euro-
centric and intrinsically anti-populist paradigms. While some populists may
take an authoritarian turn while in government, turn into mainstream parties or
even prove incapable of implementing their policies as conventional wisdom
suggests, they can equally adopt an opposite presentation: exemplify demo-
cratic characteristics, sustaining their populist performativity and even passing
legislation and implementing policy. This ‘paradox’ is only normative in its
nature. Neither populism nor its ‘erosion’ in government can be solely assessed

10 Introduction
through the policies it pursues, nor from the outcomes it renders visible. If it is,
then the eld distracts itself from the denition of populism and risks conat-
ing the phenomenon with other notions supercially resembling it but which
are by no means identical, i.e. authoritarianism and demagogy. As this book
demonstrates, such characteristics are not exclusive to populism and cannot
therefore be fundamentally constitutive of populism.
Redirecting the discussion back to the operational criteria of people-centrism
and anti-elitism, and building on the discursive and stylistic approaches, this
study approaches populism by focusing on its very (dening) function to con-
struct what it purports to represent – namely a collective identity in the name of
‘the people’. Such a take detaches analysis from essentialist prejudices against
the notion of populism in general. It highlights that right-wing reactionary
populist forces may pose a real threat to democracy, while left-wing egalitar-
ian ones may earnestly seek to promote progressive social change. Put simply,
ideology plays a pivotal role in populism’s impact. The category of populism
should no longer serve as a general explanatory category that seeks to explain
political discontinuities and setbacks.
Notes
1. Precise enumeration of ‘populist parties’ is inevitably contingent on one’s denition
of populism. The Cypriot Symmachia Politon, Greek Golden Dawn and Greek Solu-
tion and German Pegida all appear in certain lists (see Zulianello, 2019, the Popu-
List, 2019). Beyond the mere question of whether these entities are in fact populist
or not, additional conceptual and political hazards associated with this label deserve
careful attention. We are ill-advised to use ‘populism’ as a euphemistic byword of
convenience for especially objectionable political forms or a bridge to concepts such
as xenophobic nationalism (Stavrakakis, 2013). For instance, Symmachia Politon
was recently amalgamated into Kinima Sosialdimokraton, a technocratic post-ideo-
logical party of the centre (Venizelos, 2022). Despite recent vogue for the notion of
‘technocratic populism’ (see Buštíková & Guasti, 2019), more often than not, tech-
nocratic politics is postulated as the opposite of populism (see Ostiguy, 2017). As
for the others, Greek Solution is a nationalist party with a penchant for conspiratorial
rhetoric, Pegida’s populist characteristics are often weaker than their radical right
tendencies and Golden Dawn were prosecuted and found guilty of criminal activi-
ties including launching pogroms and murdering migrants; the rubric ‘neo-Nazi’ is
more apposite than ‘populist’ in such cases. The author chooses to exercise stricter
restraint on the term ‘populist’ in this work.
2. Per van Kessel (2015:121), PiS’ ‘populism seemingly remain(s) a relatively loose
supplement to its national-conservative core ideology’. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has
likewise arguably passed from a populist to an authoritarian period, in which demo-
cratic rights have been restricted to such a degree that ‘his populist politics transform
the state into an admittedly “illiberal” regime’ (Salzborn, 2018). Orbán’s ‘collective
community’ is strictly dened by ethnicity, while the collective subject has shifted
from ‘We the People to We the Nation’ (Toth, 2012).
3. Populists of the left or the right may implement scally, socially and politically
liberal or conservative policy, respectively. Focusing on the ideological valence
of policies implemented by populists in power can thus tell us whether they have
remained left or right, but not whether they have remained populist.

Introduction 11
4. ‘The leader’ typically attracts central attention in populism research. His or her func-
tion is considered pivotal in articulating, interpellating, constructing and mobilising
‘the people’. Potential overemphasis on a leader has been subject to serious criticism
(Weyland, 1996; Laclau, 2005a). On the academic-comparative level, many have
underscored that not all populist projects rely on strict hierarchical relationships
between leader and masses (Aslanidis, 2016; Gerbaudo, 2017; Kioupkiolis & Kat-
sambekis, 2016; Stavrakakis et al., 2016). On the political level, left-wing think-
ers especially have further problematised excessive leader-oriented analysis as an
impediment to visions of a truly horizontal and democratic (and populist) left (Maz-
zolini & Borriello, 2021). One may critically argue that in Lacanian terms, the object
of desire with which ‘masses’ identify and are infatuated with in the process of
forming a community need not amount to ‘the gure of the leader’. A commodity, an
idea, an ideology or a symbol can readily substitute ‘the leader’ (Zicman de Barros,
2021:516).
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