My PhD research stems from the need to shift the conversation on populism. To grasp the identities behind identity politics, I propose an interpretive turn is necessary to shift the focus from populism to peoplehood, and from top-down survey research to bottom-up qualitative research. This has materialised as a comparative research project on Spain and Portugal, where I conducted fieldwork with discontent citizens (approximately 90 interviews). In this paper, I focus on understanding the nature of populism as a social reality: What are citizens discontent about? How does discontent develop into populism? What are the identities behind it? And what are the implications for potential political change? Building on my analysis, I propose a series of key findings that enrich and contest both the ideational and Essex theories in populism studies. First, I propose populism takes shape as a discourse aimed not so much at “corrupt” elites, but at structural factors that determine the process of representation. Chiefly, I show discontent citizens critically problematise parties as institutions of representation. Second, I argue populism expresses not a vertical vindication of the “pure” people against the elites, but a horizontal anxiety at the (im)possibility of constructing/experiencing a viable “We” among fellow citizens. Overall, I propose we make sense of populism not as a moral or agonistic discourse, but as an epistemic one that emerges from failures in communication and representation. Applying these insights to my comparative case study helps to understand why Spanish citizens are more prone to (populist) participation than Portuguese citizens.
My PhD research stems from the need to shift the conversation on populism. To grasp the identities behind identity politics, I propose an interpretive turn is necessary to shift the focus from populism to peoplehood, and from top-down survey research to bottom-up qualitative research. This has materialised as a comparative research project on Spain and Portugal, where I conducted fieldwork with discontent citizens (approximately 90 interviews). In this paper, I focus on understanding populism and political behaviour among supporters of the populist right (Vox in Spain, Chega in Portugal). What is it that drives their discontent? What constructions of peoplehood do they hold? And how are these relevant politically? Providing the first interpretive, comparative analysis of right populism, I argue that the more visible nationalist rhetoric of right populist actors belies the more central relevance of discourses of neoliberal producerism, meaning a morality of "makers" and "takers" that pits groups of citizens against each other according to neoliberal norms of self-reliance. I show neoliberal producerism is most critical to explain both the sense of self and the political participation of right populist supporters. Overall, I argue we can understand right populism as a reactionary force that paradoxically furthers the undoing of peoplehood characteristic of neoliberal politics. My findings counter common assumptions in ideational scholarship on populism, chiefly the idea that right populism channels a desire to revive traditional, national solidarity. On the contrary, they stand in line with perspectives that have conceptualised right populism as an extension of neoliberalism through new means, and more broadly with theories of social identity in post-industrial societies.
Despite increasing research on populist discourse, we know little about how populist discontent actually takes shape in the minds of ordinary citizens. Prior research has operated with a deductive framework, approaching populism as a set of psychological traits that assumes underlying values, their interrelations, and their relation to other discourses like pluralism. Bridging new theoretical perspectives on the multi-dimensionality of populism with methodological advances in multivariate statistics, in this paper we explore how populism can take shape as various types of discourses revolving around the issue of popular sovereignty. Using original data from two Spanish regions (Catalunya and Andalucía), we propose three key findings. First, populism can take shape combining various attitudinal dispositions, including pluralism, and a number of combinations emerge as meaningful discourses in both regions. Second, no "populist" voter exists, with populist parties drawing support from people holding different views on popular sovereignty. Third, a wedge nevertheless exists between the kinds of discourses most prevalent within the electorates of mainstream and populist parties, supporting the thesis that populism constitutes a new "cleavage."
Foucault and Butler's anti-essentialist theory has laid the grounds for an immensely generative academic and social agenda. Their influence is paramount in the development of feminist concepts and struggles. The concept of gender identity, central today to feminist and queer politics, is no exception. At once, the concept carries with it a certain essentialism, creating an ambivalence that is reflected in today's social and academic debates. In this paper I trace this essentialism in academic and media sources, and I argue it reflects contradictions internal to Foucault's theory and its derivations through Butler and other authors. Building on Baudrillard's theory of sign value, I argue that the concept of gender identity reproduces these internal contradictions, that unpacking them can help to understand contemporary tensions in the feminist movement as well as the success of the far right, and that working on these contradictions can be productive for meeting the original objectives of its proponents. In turn, the argument provides transferable knowledge for thinking more broadly about the construction of emancipatory subjects in late-modeern societies.
Current studies have made immense progress in the comparative study of populism, yet breadth has come at the expense of depth. Beyond the idea that democratic dissatisfaction is widespread, we know little about the way ordinary people engage with the idea of the people, and whether this is consequential to their attitudes and behaviours. Building on innovative methods and original data, I explore ways of applying multivariate statistics to address this question in a way that balances comparative generalisation with attention to meaning and heterogeneity.
The project that gave rise to these results received the support of a fellowship from ‘la Caixa’ Foundation [ID 100010434]. The fellowship code is LCF/BQ/EU21/ 11890039.
Academic discourse has historically fluctuated from celebrating to dismissing the transformative potential of contemporary political innovations (for instance, the alt-globalisation movement or populism). But often either position is driven by an excessive privileging of inductive perspectives or of deductive conceptual impositions, making it hard to feedback academic and social discourses productively. Specifically, I address this problem from two different angles:
· Studying the empirical prevalence of expectations and ideas of change, revolution, utopia, etc. among ordinary citizens, and the extent to which they might correspond to or contest theoretical understandings of the transformative potential of late-modern societies.
· Assessing the implications, potentials, and possible downsides of the correspondence between social and academic concepts/tools for emancipation (for instance, gender identity).