A Cultural Approach to Populism

Juha Herkman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000580471
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book is a critical introduction of theorisations and research on contemporary political populism emphasising the cultural perspective. It introduces the basic theories and analyses the cultural construction of populism regarding radical democratic theory and empirical studies.

Applying Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's theories, the author builds a bridge between radical democratic and ideational approaches on populism with examples and studies that emphasise European radical right populism, alongside the United States, Latin American and Asian cases. Special attention is paid to relationships between populism and democracy and between populism and media. The contemporary appeal of populism is linked to current developments in welfare states and in global economic and cultural trends. The future of populism is discussed in regard to COVID-19 pandemic and Donald Trump's fall in the US presidential elections in 2020 that together with abovementioned global megatrends and with the development of media and communication environment set conditions for the 2020s populism.

Scholars and students of political science, media and communication studies, cultural studies and social sciences will find this a unique and novel approach.

1What is populism?

DOI: 10.4324/​9781003267539-2

A number of academic scholars met in the mid-1960s at the London School of Economics to discuss the problem of populism (see Ionescu & Gellner 1969). Their aim was to define populism as a phenomenon, but the result was somewhat confusing due to translation problems and a collection of fragmented perspectives on populism as an ideology and movement. The same confusion has continued to exist amongst researchers in the 21st century due to the fact that populism is associated with so many diverse types of political phenomena and movements; thus, an unambiguous definition is difficult to make. Hence, populism theorists have repeatedly complained about the difficulty of defining populism, leading to it being called chameleon-like (Taggart 2000). It has also been considered a vague or obscure concept and consequently many political researchers have not wanted to use the term (see Canovan 1999). Some have even come to believe that populism is an unanalytical concept that it is not useful for research, and justifiable warnings about using the term vaguely have arisen (Dean & Maiguashca 2020; Goyvaerts & De Cleen 2020).

Nevertheless, the study of populism continues to expand. The strengthening of nationalist and anti-immigration movements in the 21st century led to the avalanche of right-wing populism, while Brexit and the election of Trump as the President of the United States in 2016 placed populism as a subject squarely in the Anglo-American research community. Research methods and subjects respond to changes in society – and currently there is a growth in and a qualified need for research into populism. Alongside this rise in research, there has been an increase in the academic understanding of populism and a burgeoning of data. Furthermore, the need to define populism seems more pressing today than it was at the end of the 1960s, when the modern base for the academic study of political populism was established. The 1960s were still experiencing the intense industrialisation and urbanisation that were established after the Second World War, leading to structural changes that revolutionised political life and created the opportunity for the welfare state and so-called agrarian populism. Consequently, populism was defined and approached as a political phenomenon that resulted from the reaction to the disintegration of rural communities and the increased fragmentation of life in urban environments.

Perhaps the most widely used definition of political populism in research today is based on Cas Mudde’s work. According to Mudde (2004, 543), “Populism is an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups: ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’, and argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people”. Mudde has since slightly modified the definition by complementing the ideological description and now speaks of a “thin-centred ideology”, a phrase inspired by Michael Freeden (1996), but otherwise the definition has remained almost the same (Mudde 2007, 23; Mudde & Kaltwasser 2012a, 8). The thin-centred ideology modification was derived from a lively debate in which the defining of populism as a clear ideology has been criticised. However, this definition and “ideational approach” on populism have been perhaps the most popular orientations in contemporary populism studies.

Mudde’s formulation is seen as a “minimal definition of populism”, and it therefore raises most of the recurring themes of populism and highlights them: the concept of the people, the forming of a group, the confrontation and antagonism between different groups, the ideology behind those confrontations and the perspective of the role of populism in politics. I will next examine in more detail those definitions of populism that have emphasised certain aspects of the above-mentioned individual themes as the main denominators of populism. The aim is to open the background to the theoretical debate of populism. At the end of the chapter, I present a slightly modified version of a definition of populism, which, in particular, echoes Ernesto Laclau’s cultural understanding of populism in addition to the Muddean approach.

Appealing to the people

In everyday language, populism often means the wooing or the agitating (demagogy) of the people, often by methods that are termed cheap talk or opportunistic (see Taguieff 2002). The concept of the people is at the heart of the definition of populism, stemming from the fact that the word populism comes from the Latin word “populus” that means the people. How the notion of the people is understood varies from one person to another. This is because “the people” is itself about as vague a concept as populism (Canovan 2005, 2). Acting in the name of the people has occurred since time began – and depending on the era and context – completely different policies have been enacted. Consequently, “the people” have been harnessed as a tool for a huge variety of diverse political aims (Koselleck 1989).

It can be categorically stated that an unambiguous group that can be called “the people” does not actually exist anywhere. The people always consist of individuals, some of whom, according to different definitions, are “more people” than others. For example, in the city of Athens, half a century before the Common Era, fully fledged citizens could only be free men. Women, children, slaves and metics did not belong to the people; they were not citizens. Benedict Anderson (1983), a scholar of historical nationalism, presented the idea that nations are imaginary communities. When small communities were transferred into nation states, the nations had to be consciously built. That construction of nation required language, stories, communication of information, literature, culture and common symbols (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983). Thus, the people can be considered a fiction that must be specifically invented (Morgan 1988).

Nonetheless, the belief in a united people as a nation and a pillar of democracy is strong. Without such faith, nations would not exist; thus, the imagined community is not merely fiction or myth; it has concrete consequences. In the name of shared communality, nations organise themselves into societies; they organise the interaction and human life. Without the imagined communality, there would be no countries cooperating in the international community with other states. Imagined and created communities also compete against each other on the sports fields and economically, even at times going to war. The people may have been imagined but the concept also becomes an actor – in the people’s name and working against it (Canovan 2005).

The concept of the people has been used in many struggles during political history. The people were certainly an important concept when the idea of a unified nation state was introduced at the beginning of the 19th century. The people were also a key term when civil society and its internal national divisions were structured later in European and American contexts. The concept of the people plays a central role in the definition of a unified nation and in the struggles concerning its internal structures (Koselleck 1989). The use of the term “the people” based on an ethnic, linguistic and cultural distinctiveness is therefore only one form of nationalism; thus, returning “the people” to this sort of exclusionary nationalism does not necessarily do justice to the concept.

Thus, nationalism or patriotism can be seen as a positive phenomenon because their lack would mean it is not possible to build the nation states that have proved to be historically well-functioning units of social organisation. At its best, nationalism acts specifically as an idea that unites different groups of people, creating opportunities for organising co-existence despite differences. However, the reverse side of nationalism is the exclusionary nationalism that only accepts certain groups of people as “the people” and treats others as enemies. This becomes nativism and is precisely the ideology in which “the native citizens” of a country are considered the source of the nation, while people representing languages and cultures from elsewhere are seen as a threat (Mudde 2007, 19). That form of extremist nationalism can also be associated with populist movements; hence, in this book I usually refer to exclusionary nationalism when I use the term nationalism in the context of right-wing populist political parties.

In democracies, the idea of the sovereignty of the people has been central. It is this that distinguishes democracy from other more central forms of government where people are not citizens but subjects. The word “democracy” (demos-kratos) ultimately means the people decide. In reality, of course, this is not true. There are so many different types of people living in nation states that the issues facing a nation can never be decided on unanimously. In representative democracies, this issue has been resolved by the people periodically casting votes in elections to elect decision makers who represent the interests of the people.

“The people” has had a special meaning in populism because the idea of common people and the expression of their will is the starting point of populism, consequently citing the term “the people” is used as an ultimate justification (Canovan 2005, 80). In fact, populism generally comes from disappointment with representative democracy or the functioning of democracy. When populism rises, it is commonly believed that the rank and file of the people have been forgotten by politicians, that so-called ordinary people no longer have a voice in politics. Peter Wiles (1969, 166) summarised this concept in his early contribution within populism by stating that “virtue resides in the simple people, who are the overwhelming majority, and in their collective traditions”.

Hence, populism is often justified by the fact that it concerns a part of the nation that has been forgotten and which, it is claimed, represents the majority. In other words, according to populists, representative democracy does not work because a minority makes decisions without listening to the majority. This claim contains seeds of truth as, in many representative democracies, voting power has fallen at the same time as participation in party politics interests fewer people (Manin 1997). Outside of those citizens who are politically active, there are people for whom politics holds no interest because they feel that they cannot influence it or are excluded from political life. Some of this group eagerly grasp the populist promise that democracy will be restored to their hands.

Nevertheless, an essential part of populism is that not all the citizens of a nation represent the people. It may also be that what populists call “the people” is a very small part of the nation, even a minority. For example, in Western multi-party democracies, populist parties have, at best, received roughly 20 per cent of the votes cast in parliamentary elections while support for their movements is no higher than opinion polls show. It is true that on some individual issues, populist movements may even represent the opinion of the majority of the people, but in most cases this is not the case, and quite often the majority of citizens do not want to give populists a mandate to promote issues by using the power of the majority. During this millennium in Europe, Hungary is the closest to an exception in this respect, resulting in a shift to an authoritarian use of power. In Turkey and Russia, presidential powers have also reached a position in the 2010s where they can rely on a simple majority without referring to the consent of the minority, but to what extent this is actually populism is another question.

In addition, it is possible to ask whether the will of the people can be trusted or measured in any sensible way. Even if majority vote is an essential measure in representative democracies, all voting methods are problematic regarding the expression of the will of a majority: the voting method produces an election result but does not provide any guarantee of the functionality of decisions made for the majority (Gaertner 2006; Hindmoor 2006). For this reason, opinion polls and referendums do not, therefore, act as the will of the people. These are necessary reminders of the limitations of the concept of “the people” and the will of the majority as a justification for policy.

Appealing to the people is an understandable starting point for populists because the concept of the people is so central to populism – they seek power from the “people”, and a group will call for the right to define the people from its own essence. It may, however, be argued that politics is, in general, a public provocation and that all politicians appeal to the people – at least during election campaigns when trying to attract as many voters as possible. There is no policy without an appeal to the people and for that reason, a more specific approach to the problem of populism has been sought, for example, through the concept of ideology.

Ideology

The concept of ideology is not much more unambiguous than populism or the people. In a broad sense, ideology is the system of ideas and beliefs that govern human behaviour. For example, in Marxist theory, ideology means the ability of the capitalist system to produce social structures, institutions and practices that enable capitalism to reproduce and justify itself from one decade to the next. In the field of cultural studies, however, ideology is often identified with common beliefs, the so-called common sense, by which people structure the world in well-trodden and reproducible ways (e.g. Hall 1988). This also sits well with the populist worldview, which is believed to be the people’s intuitive and experiential view of the world of expenditure. According to the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (1918–1990), ideology calls us as subjects; in other words, capitalist culture is interpellated with our identities through ideology (Althusser 1971). In a broader sense, the idea also explains why everyday reason or common sense feels like a natural way to understand the world: it has permeated us to become part of our identities. The grip of ideology is based on the fact that it makes itself become such a natural and invisible part of the self (Glynos & Howarth 2007, 117).

However, in political sciences, ideology is generally regarded as a more restrictive system, which guides the action of people (e.g. Freeden 1996; Moffitt 2020). In politics, dominant ideologies have been separated, such as Marxist-based socialism, individual and economic freedom emphasising liberalism, as well as conservatism that accentuates traditional values.

Conservatism emerged at the end of the 18th century as a counter-reaction to the spread of enlightenment ideals and revolutionary activity in order to defend continuity and older systems of power; thus, it can be considered a reactionary ideology. Liberalism and socialism are, in turn, reformist or radical ideologies that represent the power of change. Today, conservatism is also often associated with nationalism, which can also be considered an ideology. At the time of the construction of national states, nationalism was clearly a radical ideology challenging the order of previous eras (Anderson 1983). Traditionally, in modern politics, conservatism and nationalism are linked to the right and liberalism and socialism to the left. Thus, economic and value-liberalism do not necessarily go hand in hand, especially in today’s world, where these divisions are often confused: the economic right may represent liberal values, for example, with regard to sexual minorities and immigrants, while on the left, the national economic interest can be emphasised in the name of the majority and at the expense of minorities.

Donald MacRae (1969, 154) was of the opinion in the late 1960s that populism should be treated as an ideology, even though the concept of ideology in sociological and political analysis was quite controversial at that time. Of the known ideologies, populism is particularly associated with conservatism and nationalism. Above all, this is true for right-wing populism, where nationalism and the defence of traditional values – home, religion, patriotism – have played a key role. On the other hand, the political movements listed as populist and identified at the beginning of this book show that populism has been associated with so many different ideologies that it is very difficult to find any solid ideological background into which all the world’s populists could be placed. Unlike, for example, the political left or right around the world, populism does not have a common system of doctrine, catechism or reference on which political action can be built. Additionally, significant populist characters are also usually national rather than international (Stanley 2008; Aslanidis 2016).

It is clear that populism is not ideology in the same sense as capitalism, socialism, liberalism, conservatism or nationalism, but that does not mean that populism does not have anything to do with ideology. For example, MacRae (1969) saw populism as a central ideology of primitivism, in which a non-intellectualism in the form of the pursuit of some sort of naturalism as well as romantic and conservative utopianism was pr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Endorsements Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 What is populism?
• 2 A short history of different populisms
• 3 Populism and democracy
• 4 Populism and the media
• 5 Three perspectives on populism
• Conclusion: Populism after the pandemic and Trump?
• References
• Index