Populist Strategies Research Articles

POPULIST POLITICS IN PAKISTAN: A CASE STUDY OF PAKISTAN THREEK -E- INSAF (PTI) FROM 2018-2023

Populism, although not a new political ideology, has witnessed a significant resurgence since the late 20th century. Emerging initially among Southern sharecroppers and tenant farmers in the United States during the 1880s, populism has since manifested globally, characterized by its opposition to elites and its appeal to the "common people." This thesis explores the nature of populism, its ideological foundations, and its impact on contemporary politics, with a particular focus on Pakistan's political landscape. The study critically examines the populist strategies of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and its leader Imran Khan, assessing their socio-political and economic consequences from 2018 to 2023. By distinguishing between populist and non-populist politics in Pakistan, this research provides a comprehensive analysis of PTI's rise and its implications for democracy and governance in the region. The analysis reveals the intricate dynamics between populist rhetoric and policy, and their effects on the economic and sociopolitical fabric of Pakistan. Key findings indicate that PTI's populist approach has significantly reshaped political discourse and governance structures, promoting a narrative that pits the "pure people" against the "corrupt elite." The thesis also highlights the broader implications of populism for democratic practices, suggesting that while populism can invigorate political engagement and address genuine grievances, it also poses challenges to pluralism and institutional stability. Ultimately, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of populism in the Pakistani context, offering valuable insights into its potential trajectories and the critical balance required to sustain democratic values amidst rising populist sentiments.

Introduction “street‐level bureaucracy, populism, and democratic backsliding”

AbstractThis special issue investigates the impact of populism and democratic backsliding on street‐level bureaucracy (SLB) across various countries and contexts. The cooccurrence of populism and democratic erosion significantly alters public administration, particularly affecting public sector employees responsible for policy implementation. This issue explores how populist strategies differ in their application to SLBs as compared to the Civil Service, the distinctive challenges SLBs encounter due to populism and democratic backsliding, and the pressures exacerbated during crises. By examining studies from Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Switzerland, and the United States, the papers highlight the interplay between political pressures and frontline service delivery. The findings underscore the necessity of understanding the relationship between democratic backsliding, populism, and SLBs, proposing a research agenda to further explore these dynamics and their implications for public administration and policy implementation.

How #Trad Catholics Challenge Current Constructions of Christian Nationalism: Counterknowledge, Masculinity, and Elite Aesthetics on Instagram

ABSTRACT I analyze traditionalist Catholic (or Trad) content on Instagram to add digital hyperconnectivity to current conversations about Christian nationalism in the United States. Building on studies of both epistemological and affective shifts in the age of digital hyperconnectivity, I argue that some pockets of right-wing Christian content are not anti-intellectual, but rather construct alternative knowledge bases to challenge mainstream authorities. This populist strategy of counterknowledge is mediatized in Trad Instagram, creating an epistemic community to counter those of the mainstream. The affordances of Instagram as a platform, characterized by its emphasis on visual content, brevity, and rapid consumption, have resulted in the decontextualized presentation of fragmented elements of Catholic philosophy and social teaching. This reconfiguration not only reshapes the public perception of Catholic thought but also fundamentally alters the grammar of public discourse. I draw on studies of affective polarization to argue that counterknowledge is not primarily about building a substantive alternative knowledge base, but rather about constructing an identity around the media image of an epistemic community under threat. The Trad aesthetic representation of intellectualism is distinctly gendered, presenting intellectual pursuit and reason as masculine virtues. I conclude by explaining how Trad Instagram contributes to and challenges current discourses on Christian nationalism by centering digital hyperconnectivity instead of a rationalist analysis of motivating beliefs, providing insights not only about shifts in authority and populism, but also moving beyond ideology to highlight aesthetic, affect, and the algorithmic curation of knowledge.

Corrigendum: Beyond negativity? A laboratory study on emotional responses to populist strategies on social media

Corrigendum: Beyond negativity? A laboratory study on emotional responses to populist strategies on social media

Populists in the Shadow of Unanimity: Contestation of EU Foreign and Security Policy

The arrival of populist political parties to power in several member states and the increasing politicisation of EU foreign policy has made intra-European consensus more difficult to reach in the past decade. This article examines the impact of populist contestation on EU foreign policy negotiations in the Council, a policy area governed by unanimity. This decision-making mode makes the policy especially vulnerable to the impact of contestation and, at the same time, gives power to those willing to use their veto. Drawing on the idea of unpopulist politics, this study shows how Hungary and, to a lesser degree, Poland have contested the established formal and informal norms (such as consensus-building or reflex coordination) through discursive and behavioural non-compliance. The “domestication” of EU foreign policy has meant that, in general, populists show less willingness to compromise and resort to non-decisions to demonstrate the EU’s weakness. However, there are exceptions, and it is possible to see variations in populist strategies when faced with similar challenges, as exemplified by the EU’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine. By testing the scope conditions under which unpolitics might be activated, we show that the same crisis situation did not lead to a uniform response amongst populist governments. This is because both the nature of the crisis and perceptions of risk/gain were understood differently (and actively constructed as such) by populists in power. This finding emphasises the social, relational, and multi-level nature of unpolitics as a phenomenon.

Beyond negativity? A laboratory study on emotional responses to populist strategies on social media

This exploratory laboratory study analyzes emotional responses to two types of populist strategies on social media platforms. We focus on emotional responses to content expressing ordinariness (on Instagram) and victimhood (on TikTok), where the content creator is a right-wing populist leader who is unfavorably perceived by the respondents in the study. Thus, the study critically tests the effectiveness of de-demonization strategies used by populist leaders to diversify the electorate. The research employs a combination of facial expressions analysis and two self-report measures of emotions to investigate the emotional responses elicited by populist strategies in individuals belonging to an out-group. Additionally, we examine the interrelation between psychophysiological measures and self-reported emotions. In doing so, the study makes a methodological contribution by advancing our understanding of emotional response processes and the methodologies employed to measure emotional responses. The results reveal positive and negative emotional responses, challenging the prevailing emphasis on negative emotions in response to out-group communication. However, the facial expressions and the self-reported emotions do not correlate. Our interpretation underscores the role of cognitive reasoning processes in differentiating emotional responses to political out-group social media content.

Megaprojects in austerity times: Populism, politicisation, and the breaking of the neoliberal consensus

Drawing on the literature on neoliberalism and populism this paper examines the potential of contentious politics that target iconic megaprojects for promoting societal politicisation and effectively challenge the neoliberal consensus over the necessity of sustained growth and competitiveness, in a context of enduring austerity. Using the case of Valencia as an entry point, it looks at how, just as decision makers and global architects alike had mobilised iconic megaprojects and events to generate consent for the city’s neoliberal urban policy, opposition movements, with less economic resources but in innovative ways, provided an alternative narrative to interpret the urban policy and its social consequences. Empirically, this paper draws upon 35 semi-structured research interviews and a press coverage analysis of national and regional newspapers. Interviews were conducted with urban environment professionals, members of business associations, members of political parties, elected politicians, journalists, community representatives and members of the social movements involved. From both theoretical and empirical perspectives, the case of Valencia raises important questions regarding the potential of populist strategies to foster politicisation and challenge the neoliberal post-political consensus.

“Long Live Freedom!”: Digital Communication of Argentina’s Emerging Libertarian Populism

Social networks have become the ideal platform for populist leaders to directly engage with their followers, facilitating the dissemination of polarizing narratives. Populist actors have gained electoral momentum in different parts of the world by importing populist content from diverse national contexts. Argentina’s legislative elections in 2021 are a case in point. The main objective of this study is to examine the communication strategy employed by Javier Milei, an anarcho-capitalist politician, on Instagram during this electoral campaign. Through a quantitative content analysis, we identify the thematic and populist elements present in Milei’s Instagram posts. Our findings reveal a new style of ‘libertarian’ populism, which employs discursive components previously used by populist parties from various ideologies and the strategic alignment of political communication with opportunistic themes and contextual dynamics. Milei focuses on positioning himself as the leader of the electoral campaign, with minimal emphasis on concrete policy proposals. His populist strategy revolves around attacking ideological adversaries (such as communism and feminism) and denouncing the corrupt political ‘caste’. Unlike other rightwing populist politicians, Milei’s discourse does not particularly focus on the issue of immigration.

Staging the New City: Urban spectacles and the ecological origins of Nayib Bukele's authoritarian populism

AbstractThis paper analyzes the connections between real estate speculation and authoritarian populism in El Salvador. Focusing on president Nayib Bukele's term as mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán (2012–2015), I examine the role speculative urbanism played in the crafting of his profile as a promising politician in the early years of his career. I trace how Bukele instrumentalized the ecosystem of Nuevo Cuscatlán's coffee forest as a means to fund a personalistic populist strategy whose main project called for the construction of a “New City.” This project involved the lifting of barriers to real estate investment to raise funds for social programs and municipal infrastructure. Its flipside was an aggressive process of deforestation and displacement of rural populations. Drawing on urban political ecology and critical agrarian studies, I argue that Bukele's New City project constituted a type of urban spectacle. This urban spectacle was rooted in two socio‐ecological dynamics: (1) The use of land as a revenue‐raising token of exchange; and (2) The fetishization of urban water infrastructure in the context of water scarcity. The paper concludes with various considerations about the destructive force of the link between authoritarian populism and urban extractivism in rural environments.

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.

How a populist remains in politics: an Indian Muslim politician’s winning style

ABSTRACT In a competitive political system where getting renominated is challenging and incumbency disadvantage is a reality, what factors compel an electorate to keep a certain leader in power for over four decades? This article examines the qualitative characteristics of Azam Khan’s politics in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, and their interlinkages with his sustained electoral success. Through ethnographic methods, I uncover the various populist strategies he deploys in his connection with his electorate and investigate local responses to this politics. The strategies involve an anti-elite rhetoric, constant identification with the people, self-victimization, the projection of a strongman image, his use of transgressive language, the importance in the party, and the voters’ perception of lack of alternatives. A comparison is also undertaken with non-populist opposition politicians to understand the significance of these strategies. In times of majoritarianism when Muslim candidates are marginalized by mainstream political parties and struggle to win elections, understanding why people accept a Muslim leader as their symbol also has wider implications for the study of representation in which considering both the leader’s claim of being voters’ voice as well as voters’ acceptance of that claim is contextually important.

Populist strategies on Twitter: analysis of the political discourse during the campaign for the general elections in Spain on November 10th, 2019

In recent years we have witnessed a resurgence of populism, which has relied on the virality of social networks to deepen its roots in society and spread its ideas. This paper analyses the populist strategies used by all parties to viralise their messages in the online environment, regardless of ideology. The present research has also examined the possible existence of complementary strategies used by the parties’ organisational profiles and those of their leaders. To this end, a content analysis has been carried out regarding the publications made on Twitter during the 2019 election campaign. The posts have been delimited to those made by the parties and candidates that attained the highest percentage of representation in the Congress of Deputies, which include the PSOE, PP, Vox, and Unidas Podemos. The findings show that all the parties under study resorted to this type of strategy. The parties closest to centre of the political spectrum, both right and left, used mostly a populist strategy aimed predominantly at attacking their adversaries, while Vox and Unidas Podemos articulated their discourse beyond this argument, with Vox appealing to the emotions of the nation and Podemos positioning itself as the peoples’ advocate. Furthermore, a complementary strategy used by both the parties and their leaders has been identified, which fosters the expansion of these kinds of populist ideas.

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s Literary Resistance to Right-Wing Populist Discourse in Grand Hotel Europa (2018)

ABSTRACT Right-wing populism has been on the rise in Europe for the past two decades. The success of populist strategies has generated a broader discursive shift in news coverage about immigration as simplifying and polarizing strategies have been incorporated into mainstream media. This paper discusses how Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer offers resistance to the discursive structures of right-wing populist discourse in his 2018 novel Grand Hotel Europa. More specifically, it analyses the novel’s late postmodernist politics of literature, which emerges from its reflection on the future of Europe. This reflection, which revolves around two forms of hospitality dominating Europe’s border politics, i.e., immigration and tourism, addresses and subverts the main topoi and tenets of right-wing discourses. In doing so, the novel spurs its readers to engage in critical thinking, reject simplistic solutions to layered problems and foster debates on Europe’s identity and future in the 21st century.

Anti-COVID = Anti-science? How protesters against COVID-19 measures appropriate science to navigate the information environment

Opponents of COVID-19 measures invoke science in curious ways: they collect data, cite scientific studies, and even conduct their own research projects. Previous research has explained these scientific appropriations as the product of motivated reasoning, the result of widespread disinformation, or a populist strategy. This study provides a further explanation by focusing on these scientific projects. Drawing from repeated interviews with a select group of 36 anti-lockdown protesters in Germany, I find that my interviewees draw on scientific repertoires in order to overcome information insecurities triggered by their discovery of online countermedia. Although the results of their scientific efforts often remain inconclusive, through the process of doing research, protesters achieve a reorientation in the information environment and begin to rely on countermedia as a source of information and political opinion. Based on these findings, I argue that protesters refer to the sciences as a conversion technique.

Populist Discourses in Taiwan and the Case of Han Kuo-yu

Abstract The article analyses the rise and fall of the Kuomintang candidate in the 2020 Taiwanese presidential election, Han Kuo-yu. It examines how three leading Taiwanese newspapers, the China Times, the Liberty Times, and the United Daily News, have reported about him and his populist strategy and style. Han Kuo-yu is almost uniformly viewed as a populist due to his anti-elite discourse, self-styling as a common man, and use of simple and direct language. The analysis of Han Kuo-yu and the media coverage about him is based on three leading approaches to defining and understanding populism—the ‘ideational’, ‘political-strategic’, and ‘socio-cultural’ approaches—and academic definitions of populism that have been used and invented by scholars in Taiwan since the island’s democratisation in the 1990s.

Populism of Religious Conservative Parties in Turkey: A Psychoanalytical Approach

Despite the growing number of works attempting to understand and explain the Justice and Development Party’s (JDP) populism, we possess limited insight into the longue durée of Islamic populism in Turkey and its pyscho-political origins. Therefore, this article highlights the lines of continuity and change in the populist strategy of Islamist parties with reference to the discourse of their leaders who managed to present their changing, growing, but partial support base as the totality of the people. Since social, economic, and political crises played a significant role in the rise of these Islamist parties in Turkey, this study relies on Laclau’s logic of populism blended with a Lacanian psychoanalysis, underlining the significance of crises in the formulation and articulation of populist demands. This study will thereby offer a new understanding of the rise of Islamist parties that successfully defined, redefined, and then redefined “the people” they claim to represent through a populist discourse and strategy in Turkey.

Populism as a challenge for Albania’s fragile democracy

Abstract This paper explores the phenomenon of populism and its impact on the democratic processes in Albania. The spread of populism represents one of the most acute challenges to Albanian democracy. To understand the dynamics of populist strategies and behavior, it is crucial to analyze the relationship between populism and the media, and to discuss the phenomenon of “media populism”. More than two decades after the transition from communism, democracy in Albania remains fragile. Freedom House labels Albania ‘transitional or hybrid regime’ and international organizations have expressed concern about the progress of Albania. Populism, characterized by its appeal to the emotions and grievances of the people, has gained prominence in recent years, posing significant challenges to the stability and development of democratic institutions in Albania. Through an examination of the historical and socio-political context of Albania, this paper analyzes the rise of populism, its consequences for democracy, and proposes potential strategies to mitigate its negative effects. Drawing upon scholarly research and case studies, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of populism’s influence on Albania’s democracy and suggest actionable recommendations for safeguarding democratic values and institutions.

Humorous parodies of popular culture as strategy in Boris Johnson’s populist communication

This article examines the role of parodic humour in Boris Johnson’s populist communication. Populist parties and conservative politicians have increasingly drawn humorous connections to films and entertainment in their political communication. But, despite the increasing research on populism, the role of humour in political communication is not yet at the centre of populism research. The article shows how professionally designed humour can dominate discourses and bring immense amounts of media attention to specific details while distracting attention from other political issues. The argument of the article is illustrated by analysing humorous communication of the former British PM Boris Johnson in 2019 and 2020. Among others, Johnson compared himself to Marvel’s Hulk, a parody that echoed through the news media. The article provides a very specific and new insight into the means by which populist strategies make use of parodic humorous elements in their communication.

Understanding and evaluating populist strategy

Populism describes those strategies which actors endorsing populist ideas must use in order to be considered populist. Typical populist strategies include the hijacking of state institutions; the development of clientelistic relationships with constituencies labelled the people, or employing certain rhetorical moves in which enmity between the people and a corrupt elite looms large. In this paper, I argue against tendencies to define populism according to a specific set of tactics that are supposed to flow directly from populist ideas. Instead, populism should be understood in terms of a particular orientation, which grounds and justifies a range of strategies, all of which – nefarious or otherwise – should be considered populist. This orientation posits that enmity between ‘the people’ and an elite is a defining feature of political life, in part because it is responsible for serious failures in a country’s ostensibly democratic institutions. These failures create a degree of ambivalence with respect to these institutions’ claims to authority and obedience, and generate the perception that political actors thereby enjoy an expanded set of moral permissions. Finally, populists argue that elites prosecute revanchist projects aimed at resisting populist pathways to power and undermining them once in office. Populist strategies then are simply whatever range of tactics political actors use who accept the validity of that above orientation.

PHILOSOPHY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

This article discusses philosophy of public administration. It must be recognized that the goals of the development strategy of New Uzbekistan serve the development of all spheres of state and community life. But what is the reason why the construction of a society and a people-friendly state with priority of human value is defined as the first priority of the development strategy? Because the effectiveness of our activities in the remaining six directions will directly depend on pro-people policy and pro-people management. In other words, the populist Strategy cannot be implemented without populist leaders. This requires raising the public service to a new level.