Abstract
This article sets out to examine two claims that have increasingly come to define the dividing lines between the ideational and the post-foundational discursive approaches to populism: namely, that the former is moralistic and the latter is normative in orientation. The article considers the conceptual merits of both critiques while using them to further examine some of the implicit assumptions and pitfalls within Cas Mudde’s and Ernesto Laclau’s paradigmatic conceptualizations of populism. It is argued that ideational scholars’ attribution of a moralistic particularity to populism runs the risk of pathologizing the latter for characteristics that are arguably constitutive of all politics, while the danger of a certain crypto-normativity can be seen in Laclau’s tendency to equate populism with the political and simultaneously emphasize its emancipatory effects. The key difference between the two approaches ultimately consists in the location that they assign to populism within the wider topography of politics itself.
Highlights
Recent years have seen a veritable boom in the study of populism and an increasing crystallization of different ‘schools’ of populism research, as evidenced by the publication of volumes such as The Ideational Approach to Populism (Hawkins et al, 2019) or articles that have contributed to formalizing ‘discourse theory in populism research’ (Stavrakakis, 2017a) or ‘a discourse theoretical framework for the study of Politics 00(0)populism’ (De Cleen and Stavrakakis, 2017)
Approaches following the ideational turn in this broad sense have produced significant advances in the study of populism vis-à-vis earlier objectivist ones that ascribed to populist phenomena a determinate socio-structural character
Where the ideational and post-foundational approaches crucially diverge, is in the location that they assign to populism within the wider topography of politics: as a less-than-fully-fledged (‘thin-centered’) yet moralistic form of politics or, on the contrary, as the quintessential political logic (‘the royal road’) that points to a dimension inherent to all politics
Summary
Populism’ (De Cleen and Stavrakakis, 2017) In this context of growing differentiation, numerous lines of demarcation have emerged between the various research perspectives: on the most basic level, in terms of the conceptual status ascribed to populism as a discourse, frame, ideology, strategy, or style; in addition, and more subtly, in terms of the conceptual and normative presuppositions underlying the different definitional approaches to populism. This has especially been the case when it comes to staking out the dividing lines between two of the most influential approaches in the literature: ideational approaches, based on Mudde’s (2004) ‘thin-centred ideology’ conception of populism, on the one hand and post-foundational discursive approaches, based on Laclau’s (2005a) conceptualization of populism as a ‘political logic’, on the other. The article closes with a concluding section that discusses both the challenges and opportunities that the preceding discussion points to for the ideational and post-foundational approaches alike
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
