Beyond populism studies
‘Populism’ has become ever more ubiquitous in political analysis, to the extent that ‘populism studies’ appears on course
to establishing itself as a field of research in its own right. This article warns about the dangers of such a development. Taking a
discourse theoretical approach as our starting point – but also critically engaging with this tradition’s contribution to the hype about
populism – we suggest that ‘populism studies’ (and the preoccupation with populism this field embodies) risks reifying populism by focusing
on populism as a phenomenon ‘as such’, and through an over-reliance on the concept of populism to approach
that phenomenon. This, we argue, hampers a nuanced and contextualized understanding of the exact role populism plays in different populist
politics. This is not a call for abandoning the concept of populism altogether, but a call for de-centring the concept and for moving beyond
academia’s ‘populist moment’.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The paradox of populism studies: The unfulfilled promise of minimal definitions
- 3.Against the reification of populism
- Countering reification 1: Against populism as analytical focus and explanatory nucleus
- Countering reification 2: Interrogating populism as signifier
- Conclusion: Beyond populism studies
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
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De Cleen, Benjamin, Jana Goyvaerts, Nico Carpentier, Jason Glynos & Yannis Stavrakakis
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