Left Populism Research Articles

Left Populism and the Education of Desire

AbstractThis paper mobilises the psychoanalytic concepts of desire and enjoyment to better understand how processes of education aimed at extending and defending democratic life might respond to and engage with populist politics. I approach this task by engaging with a particular vector of Mouffe and Laclau’s political philosophy, moving from a critique of liberal democracy’s rationalist pretensions to their insistence that left populism and its passionate construction of a ‘people’ is the central task facing radical politics. This attention to the libidinal basis of political identification locates them in a community of Left Lacanian thinkers who reframe the problems of democratic politics in terms of desire and enjoyment rather than miseducation or its lack. Whilst this position might suggest a binary choice between different analytical frames, I inquire into what insights are generated by theorising left populism as an ‘education of desire’. The paper is organised into four main parts: the opening discussion clarifies my understanding of education by engaging with the literature on educational agonism. The second section lays the groundwork for a critique of the way in which education is fetishized, in different ways, by liberals and radicals as a panacea for populist politics. The third section reframes democratic crisis as an enjoyment problem in order to better grasp the relationship between the liberal democratic disavowal of its own irrationality and the structure of right-wing populist enjoyment. The fourth section applies these insights to develop a critical analysis of what is at stake when we explicitly consider the left populist construction of a ‘people’ as an educational task. I conclude by drawing together and summarising the main features and considerations of left populism understood as an education of desire.

Democracy as Ambitendent Phenomenon: Problems of National and Social Solidarity

The article’s intellectual core resides in the examination of social phenomena through the lenses of ambivalence and ambitemptiness. Democracy is conceived through the cultivation of the ideal of national solidarity within the framework of the “indivisible and unified nation” and revolution — values which, according to B. Anderson, individuals do not choose of their own volition. Nevertheless, it functions by virtue of structures that are freely chosen by individuals, specifically political parties and civil society organisations, among which trade unions assume a paramount role in ensuring social solidarity. The author posits that a functioning political democracy, viewed as a historically ambi temptuous phenomenon, necessitates the reanimation of sustained equilibrium between the for ces of social hegemony and counter-hegemony. This revival hinges on transformative shifts in the structure of civil society, particularly reinstatement of pivotal social functions to trade unions. The article underscores the phenomenon of unprecedented demonstrative solidarity exhibited by the Democratic Party of the USA towards the strike movement. The author emphasises that a fully-fledged European liberal democracy was established during its golden age, preceding financial globalisation, as a social democracy. Within its framework, competitive and pluralist elections were complemented by the possibility of nationwide strikes facilitated by trade unions capable of social mobilisation. Proposing the term “political society” to denote the phenomenon encompassing political parties and movements, the article argues that their viability depends on their connection with civil society structures. It is asserted that neither right-wing nor left-wing populism possesses the capacity to fully neutralise “democratic fatigue”.

SAĞ POPÜLİZM VE SOL POPÜLİZM: TÜRK SİYASAL SİSTEMİNDE İTTİFAKLARIN ÇATIŞMASI

This study aims to investigate the effects of right and left-wing populism before the 2023 elections on the Turkish Political System. In this direction, the study argues that the People's Alliance, formed with the AKP-MHP alliance, has adopted right-wing populism and the Nation Alliance, which was established in partnership with four opposition parties (CHP-İYİP-SP-DP) and currently expanding to six opposition parties (CHP-İYİP-SP-DP-DEVA-GP), adopted left-wing populism. In line with the findings obtained in the study, it is argued that the 2019 elections are actually a “clash of alliances” and thus right-left populism. Accordingly, the study describes the 2019 elections as a "limited" success for left-wing populism. Considering that the alliances have increased their discourse and strategies in the last period, the article describes the 2023 elections as the “real clash of alliances”, and argues that the election result revealed that although a significant rise in left populism is observed, right-wing populism is dominant in Turkish politics. For now, right axis of populism is the winner in Turkish Political System.

Bringing gender and religion in: Right-wing networks and “Populism and Civil Society”

In this contribution, Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen’s Populism and Civil Society is confronted with current gender studies research on populism. This research mainly focuses on right-wing populism and highlights strong links between right-wing populists and the religious right, which are to a large degree organized by “anti-gender,” a stance both against social constructivist notions of gender and against basic gender rights, especially in the fields of reproduction and of LGBTIQ concerns. Against the backdrop of this literature, I argue that in Populism and Civil Society, right-wing populist anti-gender politics are not addressed in a way that takes account of their full complexity; and that these politics furthermore suggest to treat right-wing populism and left-wing populism as phenomena that do not only differ in content, but also in form.

“Kukiz’15” And “Korwin”: The Essence Of The Polish Populist Rise And Its Possible Causes

The article analyzes the configuration, ideology, program and electorate of two national-populist parties in Poland — “Kukiz’15” and “KORWiN”, which showed significant results in the 2015 and 2019 elections and thereby demonstrated society has a demand for change. Further, the possible reasons for the populist success are considered in terms of the increase in the amount of demand because of the socioeconomic situation, the problem of migration and the high volatility of the party system. And from the point of view of increasing the quality of the proposal the article deals with the development of communication channels “party — voter”, the use of the Internet in electoral campaigns and adaptation to the policies pursued by the ruling party “Law and Justice” (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc). The 2015 Polish parliamentary elections were characterized by the successful debut of the right-wing populist and anarchist “Kukiz’15”. Nearly a quarter of her voters in 2015 voted for the left-wing populist “Palikot Movement” in 2011, when it debuted in elections and entered parliament. However, ideologically these are diametrically opposite forces. They are related only by aggressive and irreconcilable discourse and, of course, populism. Thus, the success of these parties did not come so much from the ideologies and programs they proposed, but from the fact that in recent years the Polish voter is consciously ready to choose any non-systemic radical alternative protest force, which is expected to be populists, as opposed to the established party establishment.

Does left populism short-circuit itself? Podemos in the labyrinths of cultural elitism and radical leftism

ABSTRACT Podemos’ initial left populist strategy and electoral success have been the subject of much academic debate. However, amid the party’s rapidly declining numbers at the polls, scholarly attention towards the Spanish party has been on the wane. Based on a discussion of the existing literature and a mixture of qualitative methods, this paper attempts to capture the distinctive features of the early populist gamble and two internal elements that progressively short-circuited it. The first is related to the cultural elitism of Podemos’ leadership, a phenomenon observed especially within the faction of Íñigo Errejón, former number 2 of the party. The intellectualist distinction of many of its members proved to be a repressive instance that jeopardised the populist practice. The second is instead the return to a radical left fold, which is instead to be attributed to Podemos’ former leader Pablo Iglesias and his successor Ione Belarra. Party factionalism, strong leftist symbolism and the promotion of identity politics stand here among the most visible factors that negated the initial transversal approach. In different ways, those elements re-established the previous symbolic space that Podemos’ populism had been trying to supersede and sabotage the possibility of securing a broad and durable popular identity.

A populist turn in the European left. What is new, and what is not?

ABSTRACT What is left-wing populism? Is it just populist rhetoric grafted onto a left-wing ideology? How can we distinguish the populist left from the socialist left, the communist left and the radical left? Is the difference between the populist left and the non-populist left one of degree or of nature? How can we explain the populist turn taken by part of the European left in the mid-2010s? What was the breeding ground for these new political forces? And what links do these European left-wing populist movements have with the similar forces that emerged ten years earlier in Latin America? In order to answer these questions, this article draws on a broad review of left-wing populism studies literature and on five years of fieldwork within two prototypical contemporary left-wing populist forces (Podemos and La France Insoumise). The result is a thick conception of the phenomenon and a set of six differences between populist and non-populist lefts.

“Everything is Biased”: Populist Supporters’ Folk Theories of Journalism

Populist supporters have a complex relationship with journalism (e.g., embracing elites’ negative rhetoric, yet consuming news profusely). This study explores this relationship. The notion of folk theories informs an inductive analysis of thirty-three in-depth interviews conducted in 2021 with right-wing and left-wing populist supporters in the United States and Spain to understand how they (RQ1) make sense of their news consumption habits and (RQ2) navigate the current high-choice media environment to stay informed. Findings reveal three interconnected folk theories that populist supporters drew from in explaining their news consumption: (1) “everything is biased,” (2) “it’s a way of seeing what other people think,” and (3) “it’s a pleasurable source of information.” Findings additionally support an important role of emotion underlying these folk theories, which helped participants reconcile their negative views of journalism with the pleasure they derived from meeting ingrained normative democratic ideals.

The effect of populism on high-skilled migration: Evidence from inventors

This study investigates the nexus between populism and inventor migration across 36 economies during the period of 1978–2012. The primary focus of our analysis lies in the examination of inventor migration due to its potential impact on innovation within an economy. By employing a gravity model, we analyse the relationship between populists gaining power in the destination economy and the influx of inventors. The findings of our study reveal that the ascension of populists in the destination economy leads to a decrease in the number of inventors immigrating. This suggests that the presence of populism in the destination economy poses challenges in attracting inventors. Moreover, we undertake a comparative analysis of right-wing and left-wing populism, uncovering notable effects linked to each ideological orientation. Right-wing populism has the potential to discourage inventor immigration in destination economies. However, the impact of left-wing populism on inventor migration is contingent upon whether the populist leaders govern in the origin or destination economy. Specifically, when a left-wing populist assumes power in the origin economy, inventors display a diminished inclination to emigrate to alternative destinations. Additionally, destinations governed by left-wing populists experience a reduced influx of immigrant inventors.

From opposition to government: how populist parties change their political communication in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT Political communication is central to the electoral ascension of populist parties across the world. Several studies investigate how communication is used by populists to gain power, but we know very little about how the communication varies when moving between opposition and government office. The few studies on the topic focus exclusively on right-wing populist parties and neglect left-wing populism. This article addresses this gap in the literature and analyses the political communication of left- and right-wing populist parties by comparing their periods in opposition and in government. It focuses on the Northern Ireland case and compares Sinn Féin and the DUP and uses deductive thematic analysis for each election manifesto for the Northern Ireland Assembly between 1998 and 2022. The analysis includes four themes: people-centrism, anti-elite bad manners, crisis talk and volonté générale solutions. Contrary to theoretical expectations, we find that the right-wing populist DUP has changed more substantively its political communication than the left-wing Sinn Féin when moving from opposition to government.

Ideological drivers of participatory democracy in Europe: disentangling the different approaches of populism and post-materialist politics

Empirical literature regarding which actors support the most participatory democracy is surprisingly scarce. Discussing the core ideological features of populist and post-materialist-centred parties, we expect that these parties emphasise participatory democracy more than their competitors. Additionally, populist parties should embody a monist demand for greater participatory democracy, while post-materialist-centred (PMC) parties should advocate a pluralist understanding of it. Drawing on party electoral manifestos, we verify these assumptions in several national elections across Europe. Our findings show mixed support for the theoretical expectations. Both post-materialist and populist parties support participatory democracy more than other parties, and their principles diverge. More precisely, our data confirm that PMC parties advocate a pluralist understanding of participatory democracy. Yet populist parties show a fuzzier picture. While populist radical right parties exhibit a monist profile, radical left populist parties are much more in line with post-materialist arguments.

Left-Wing Populism and Environmental Issues: An Analysis of La France Insoumise’s ‘Popular Environmentalism’

This article proposes to explore the interaction between populism and environmentalism in the discourse of populist radical left parties, through a case study of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s parties, Parti de gauche (2008–2016) and La France insoumise (from 2016). While an emerging literature primarily investigated the populist framing of populist radical right parties’ climate (sceptic) discourse, the article analyses how a populist radical left party incorporates environmental issues into its agenda and the extent to which environmentalism and populism concretely interweave. Using mixed-methods, we first show that the logics of party competition and the growing salience of environmental issues led La France insoumise to gradually develop an ambitious green agenda. We then show that there is evidence for a populism/environmentalism nexus that could be defined as ‘green populism’. La France insoumise’s ecosocialist ideology combines to anti-elitism and people-centrism to blame the environmental crisis on the ‘oligarchy’ and to promote a green transition that would protect the people.

Government participation and populist discourse transformation of radical left Syriza and radical right Anel

This study examines how the government participation within an EU country can affect the discourse of the left-wing and right-wing populist parties. We analyzed this question by tracing two Greek populist parties' discourse, the left-wing Syriza and the right-wing Independent Greeks (Anel), during the 2012-2019 period. We have split the examined period into two subperiods (2012 to July 2015, and August 2015 to 2019). The turning point was the Syriza-Anel government’s signature of the third EU bailout program in August 2015. The first hypothesis was that the government accession within the EU context would slightly decrease the populist logic of the two parties. The next two hypotheses referred that the EU leverage emerged by the signing of the bailout agreement will decrease the populist rhetoric of the two parties towards the external elites (mainly the EU). However, the right-wing populists (Anel)- even after this decrease- will target the external elites to a larger extent than the left-wing populists. To examine the hypotheses in-depth, we applied a combination of quantitative content analysis with qualitative discourse analysis. The findings have corroborated our three initial hypotheses. Simultaneously, the qualitative discourse analysis offered us some additional findings concerning the two parties' use of topos of “History” to increase their populist appeal within the electorate.

Mutations of Barcelona’s cultural policy model: Political change, local planning and political instrumentalization of culture in Barcelona

ABSTRACT Barcelona has been a poster child for the entrepreneurial turn in cultural policy, with an approach based on seizing opportunities for promoting the city in the global arena. This model has been successful in terms of urban branding but has driven growing urban inequalities that have drawn criticism from social and academic spheres. Hence, after the 2008 crisis and the ensuing public budget cuts, growing opposition to the model emerged. Criticism of the city’s cultural model crystallized in the leftist, activist candidacy of Barcelona en Comú, a new party that took power in 2015. Since then, pro-commons discourses on cultural policy have emerged that criticize the past model. The new pro-commons approach proposes a radical turn advocating policy as a tool for cultural democratization. Yet this left-wing populist orientation has encountered great hurdles to changing the Barcelona Cultural Policy model (which is based on artistic institutions, creative factories and the instrumentalization of culture for urban branding). Indeed, analysis of the structural cultural expenses of the city council and the innovative local Cultural Rights Plan paradoxically reveals a continuation of the idea of the creative, entrepreneurial city, focusing once again on developing cultural facilities and fostering new urban and cultural clustering. Thus, rather than a radical change in cultural policy, we see great continuities with the previous Creative City model.

Right-wing populism and urban planning

ABSTRACT This article examines the effects of right-wing populism (RWP) on urban planning from the perspective of the concept of the “just city” with its three attendant criteria—democracy, diversity and equity—along with a commitment to combating climate change. First, we discuss the significance and impact of RWP for planning at the level of metro areas, its difference from left-wing populism, and its implications for democratic theory. Next, we provide some brief illustrative examples from the U.S. and Germany of how the rise of RWP affects the attainment of values of equity, democracy and diversity, and examine who is involved. We then consider some explanations put forward for the current upsurge in RWP and examine the extent to which they help to make sense of developments affecting planning at the local level. Finally, we examine the possibilities—and limitations—of engaging with the right-wing populist movement within different paradigms of planning theory.

On Populism and Class Politics: The Polish Union of Labour and the Workers’ Party of Belgium

ABSTRACT This research note combines conceptual considerations on the relationship between populist and class-political discourse with an analysis of two parties that, in light of their origins, suggest affinities to both populism and class politics: the Union of Labour (UP) in Poland and the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PVDA/PTB). Taking up a discursive approach to populism with an established tradition of theoretical reflection on class politics, the analysis keys in on the interplay of populist and class-political elements in how these parties construct collective identities in their programmatic statements and related organisational practices such as links to trade unions. It finds that the UP largely abandoned its founding references to ‘working milieus’ in favour of a left-wing populism of ‘ordinary people’ vs. ‘elites’, whereas the PVDA/PTB has maintained a primarily class-political discourse centred on ‘working people’ with elements of populism, performatively embellished by its practices of workplace-level organising and trade union entryism.

Meritocracy, unfairness, and the directions of anger

Although researchers have focused on different aspects to explain the success of populist movements, perceptions of unfairness continue highly overlooked. Despite the difficulty in finding evidence, I intend to elucidate the growing perceptions of unfairness, the anger it causes, and its impact on the electoral success of radical left and right movements by investigating the spread of the meritocracy discourse and the ideological repositioning of political parties. I argue that the collectivization of economic grievances directs the anger caused by perceptions of unfairness exclusively to the economic elite, allowing for bottom-up mobilization and greater support for left-wing populism. However, since the meritocratic mentality encourages the individualization of grievances and social competition, the anger that the perception of unfairness creates is directed towards those seen as unfairly rewarded regardless of their income group, which increases support for right-wing populism. As populists achieve electoral success, the consolidation of the discourse and its popular support depends on the ability to reaffirm the identities of the “pure people” and the “corrupt elite”. The analyses of case studies in the Americas and Europe support the arguments.

The Monetary Policy Preferences of Left- and Right-Wing Populism

The paper uses a Taylor-rule model for central banks to examine the economic outcome of modern populism. Annual data of major OECD countries from 2001 to 2019 is applied to examine the overall level of populism in the regime, the left/right divide of the regime and the populist political force, the independence of the central bank from the political regime to model the target interest rate. The results verify the impact of populism on monetary policy and the invalidity of the traditional partisan approach, and distinguish the different effect of left- and right-wing populism. A populist regime favors low interest rate than a non-populist regime, and a leftist populist regime prefers expansionary monetary policies than rightist populist regime. Such a divide in monetary policy preference can be used as a classification criterion for classification of populist political forces, with The Five Star Movement in Italy as an example.

The Image of the Urban People: Visual Analysis of the Spatialised Demos of Left-Wing Populism in Madrid

This paper focuses on the visual representation of “the urban people” by the Spanish left-wing populist party Unidas Podemos (UP) during the campaign for regional elections in Madrid in 2021. The political environment was characterised by increasing polarisation and the hyper-leadership of two candidates, right-wing Isabel Díaz Ayuso and UP’s national leader Pablo Iglesias. In this context, UP employed a diverse range of images and audio-visual material with a specific focus on the urban dimension. This paper explores how the populist logic and societal split—the people vs. the elite—deployed by UP are visually represented and connected with the urban space. Drawing on the central role of images in politics, this paper contributes to the emerging scholarship on the visual and spatial dimensions of populism by (a) exploring the connections between populist imaginary, space, and the visual; (b) advancing an empirical analysis of the image of “the people” in a left-wing political party; and (c) connecting the imaginary of populism to its geo-graphical dimension, stressing both the urban and class divide.

Left-wing Economic Populism and Savings: How Do Attitudes Influence Forward-Looking Financial Behavior?

ABSTRACT This paper uses the case of Ukraine to explore the association between attitudes and saving behavior. We hypothesize that individuals’ preferences and beliefs, which we proxy with support for left-wing populist economic policies, have an adverse effect on strategic, forward-looking behavior. Using the data from a nationally representative survey conducted in 2019, we find that support for populist economic policies has a negative association with a likelihood to have bank savings. The results hold in the presence of socio-economic and behavioral factors and when we remove the variation attributed to the cultural and socio-economic factors from our measure of economic populism.