The thin ideology of populism

Journal of Political Ideologies

Volumn 13, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 95-110

  Stanley, Ben ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

LITERATURE REVIEW; POLITICAL IDEOLOGY; POLITICAL THEORY; POPULISM;

EID: 39049141041     PISSN: 13569317     EISSN: 14699613     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13569310701822289     Document Type: Article

References (74)

1. For more on populism as 'thin ideology' see C. Mudde, 'The Populist Zeitgeist', Government and Opposition, 39 (2004), pp. 542-563
2. and C. Fieschi, 'Introduction', Journal of Political Ideologies, 9 (2004), pp. 235-240.
3. E. Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso Books, 2005), p. 117.
4. Mudde, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 543.
5. See L. Goodwyn, The Populist Moment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. xvi
6. and F. Panizza, 'Introduction: Populism and the Mirror of Democracy', in F. Panizza (Ed.) Populism and the Mirror of Democracy (London and New York: Verso, 2005), p. 16.
7. E. Laclau, 'Populism: What's In a Name?', in F. Panizza (Ed.), Populism and the Mirror of Democracy (London and New York: Verso, 2005), p. 44.
8. D. Westlind, The Politics of Popular Identity: Understanding Recent Populist Movements in Sweden and the United States (Lund: Lund University Press, 1996), p. 54.
9. Laclau, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 120.
10. Laclau, op. cit., Ref. 5, pp. 36-37.
11. Laclau, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 116.
12. M. Canovan, '"People", Politicians and Populism', Government and Opposition, 19 (1984), pp. 312-327, p. 314.
13. Westlind, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 31-32.
14. Mudde, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 550, p. 563.
15. Laclau, op. cit., Ref. 5, p. 47.
16. B. Arditi, 'Populism as a Spectre of Democracy: A Response to Canovan', Political Studies, 52 (2004), pp. 135-143; pp. 139-40.
17. Y. Stavrakakis, 'Antinomies of Formalism: Laclau's Theory of Populism and the Lessons from Religious Populism in Greece', Journal of Political Ideologies, 9 (2004), pp. 253-268; p. 263.
18. Stavrakakis, Ibid., p. 263.
19. Arditi, op. cit., Ref. 14, p. 140.
20. Laclau, op. cit., Ref. 5, p. 39.
21. Laclau, Ibid., p. 37.
22. Laclau, Ibid., p. 39.
23. The curious metaphysical alchemy of these reifications is well illustrated in Laclau's own example of how material objects are transmuted into signifiers of something else: 'gold, without ceasing to be a particular commodity, transforms its own materiality into the universal representation of value'. Laclau, Ibid., p. 39. It is not entirely clear whether Laclau is speaking metaphorically; if so, it simply supports the point being made about the problems of a literal structuralism.
24. Laclau, Ibid., p. 37.
25. C. Hay, Political Analysis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 210. As Hay suggests, justifications for ontological commitments are always to some extent ineffable, influenced as they are by a variety of equally mercurial factors: Experience; normative judgements and intuitions. I would also stress the importance of the persuasiveness of others' accounts; certainly my interpretation of populism is testament to the persuasiveness of (what I perceive to be) a common thread uniting Hay's discussion of ideas and Freeden's of ideology. Indeed, the very fact that I speak of my 'interpretation' of populism (as my set of ideas about a set of ideas) is evidence of the extent to which their work has persuaded me.
26. Hay, Ibid., p. 209.
27. M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
28. M. Freeden, 'Ideology and Political Theory', Journal of Political Ideologies, 11 (2006), pp. 3-22, p. 19.
29. M. Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 62.
30. Freeden, Ibid., p. 61.
31. Freeden, Ibid., p. 65.
32. M. Freeden, 'Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?', Political Studies XLVI (1998), pp. 748-765, p. 750.
33. Freeden, Ibid., p. 750.
34. Freeden, Ibid., p. 751.
35. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 26, p. 62.
36. Frank comments on the 'remarkable inversion' of populist politics in America since the Populist movement of the late nineteenth century. Where populism in the 1890s connoted a Middle American socialist radicalism that pitted the interests of the people against elitist, metropolitan, Republican industrial capitalism, by the 1990s it had effected a volte-face, celebrating the virtues of the self-sufficient capitalism of the common man against a liberal, cosmopolitan Democratic elite. (T. Frank, What's the Matter With America?: The Resistible Rise of the American Right (London: Secker & Warburg, 2004), pp. 15-17).
37. Jean-Marie Le Pen, in N. Mayer, 'French Populism: The Aftermath of 21st April 2002', in B. Ociepka (Ed.), Populism and Media Democracy (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2005), p. 74.
38. M. Canovan, The People (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), p. 128.
39. M. Canovan, 'Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy', Political Studies, 47 (1999), pp. 2-16, p. 9.
40. Canovan, Ibid., p. 10.
41. Canovan, Ibid., p. 11.
42. Canovan, op. cit., Ref. 35, p. 108.
43. W. Riker, Liberalism against Populism: A Confrontation Between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice (San Francisco, CA: Freeman, 1982), p. 244.
44. Riker rejects the validity of the premise he regards as fundamental to populism: That the popular will can be 'computed' by consulting the people (Riker, Ibid., p. 11).
45. The rationality and coherence of voter preferences in the singular translate, when aggregated, into incoherent results that cannot reflect any coherent popular consensus). Thus, Riker concludes, falls the notion that popular sovereignty can be translated into policy: 'what the people want cannot be social policy simply because we do not and cannot know what the people want' (Riker, ibid., p. 238).
46. Indeed, this logic can be discerned in Riker's own argument in favour of the liberal interpretation of voting as 'the veto by which it is sometimes possible to restrain official tyranny' (Riker, Ibid., p. 244).
47. Riker suggests that this veto is the product of 'the concrete self-direction of individuals, who vote and organize voting to make the democratic veto work' (Riker, ibid., p. 245).
48. Whilst voting is indeed an individual act in a certain sense, the production of a 'democratic veto' requires, far from the accidental amalgamation of individual values through the voting process, a conscious process of mobilisation in the 'organisation' of voting. Populist politicians may aim at making a more telling impact than the 'curb on policy, a veto at the margins' that Riker (ibid. p. 245) views as the quintessence of liberal democratic participation, but whether the aim is to 'exercise a democratic veto' or to 'kick the bastards out', the notion of the articulation of a common popular voice is common to both cases; the difference is only of degree.
49. Canovan, op. cit., Ref. 35, p. 39.
50. C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (London and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 26.
51. A. Lepper, Lista Leppera (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo KAMEA, 2002), p. 8.
52. Lepper, Ibid., p. 9.
53. Jaroław Kaczyński, cited in M. Janicki and W. Władyka (Eds), Cień Wielkiego Brata: Ideologia i praktyka IV RP (Warszawa: POLITYKA Społdzielnia Pracy, 2007), p. 82.
54. Canovan, op. cit., Ref. 5, p. 5.
55. Schmitt, op. cit., Ref. 44, p. 26.
56. Schmitt, Ibid., p. 26.
57. Mudde, op. cit., Ref. 1, pp. 543-544.
58. Mudde, op. cit., Ref. 1, pp. 543-544.
59. Canovan, op. cit., Ref. 5, p. 93.
60. Thomas Gordon, in Canovan, Ibid., p. 69.
61. Lepper, op. cit., Ref. 45, p. 196.
62. Lepper, Ibid., p. 11.
63. A. Lepper, 'Tańczacy z wilkami - rozmowa z Andrzejem Lepperem', Elity, 11(12) (2002).
64. Lepper, op. cit., Ref. 45, p. 34.
65. Lepper, op. cit., Ref. 57.
66. Jarosław Kaczyński, in Janicki and Wladyka, op. cit., Ref. 47, p. 134.
67. Jarosław Kaczyński, cited in W. Załuska, 'Dlaczego Jarosław Kaczyński zaprzyjaźnił sie z ojcem Rydzykiem?' Gazeta Wyborcza, 12/12/2005.
68. Komitet Wyborczy Prawo i Sprawiedliwość [Electoral Committee of 'Law and Justice'], Polska katolicka w chrześciańskiej Europie (Warszawa, 2005), p. 7.
69. Komitet Wyborczy Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, Ibid., p. 9.
70. M. Mamoń, 'Tu jest Polska Kaczyńskiego', Gazeta Wyborcza, 09/07/2007.
71. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 26, p. 98.
72. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 26, p. 64.
73. D. Albertazzi, 'The Liga dei Ticinesi: The Embodiment of Populism', Politics, 26 (2006), pp. 133-139, p. 136.
74. Naturally, it is always possible for populists to side with the ideological options represented by the elite, but only at the expense of their credibility as populists.