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Resisting the ‘populist hype’: a feminist critique of a globalising concept

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2019

Bice Maiguashca Open the ORCID record for Bice Maiguashca [Opens in a new window]
Bice Maiguashca*
Affiliation:
Politics Department, Exeter University
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*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The purpose of this article is to offer a feminist critique of populism, not as a distinct mode of politics, but as an analytical and political concept. As such, it seeks to redirect our attention away from populism, understood as a politics ‘out there’, towards the academic theoretical debates that have given this analytical term a new lease of life and propelled it beyond academic circles into the wider public discourse. In this context, the article develops two broad arguments. The first is that the two prevailing conceptions of populism are marred by anaemic conceptions of power, collective agency and subjectivity and, as such, are unable to present us with a convincing account of why this form of radical politics emerges in the first place, who its protagonists are, and how they come together in collective struggle. The second is that our current frenetic deployment of the term as a blanket descriptor for radical politics of all persuasions does not bode well for feminism politically. For both reasons, I conclude that feminists need to resist the current ‘populist hype’.

Keywords

PopulismAnti-PopulismCas MuddeErnesto LaclauFeminist TheoryFeminismLeft PoliticsLeft–Right Distinction
Type
Review Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 45 , Special Issue 5: Special Issue on Populism , December 2019 , pp. 768 - 785
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2019 

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References

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17 See Jones, Paul K., ‘Insights from the infamous: Recovering the social-theoretical first phase of populism studies’, European Journal of Social Theory (2018)Google Scholar, available at: {https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1368431018772507}. Most of the Special Issues on populism, thus far, have been in the field of Political Science (for example, International Political Science Review, 38:4 (2017) or Comparative Political Studies, 51:13 (2018)) or in Political Theory (for example, Constellations, 21:4 (2014)).

18 See, for example, Shabnam Holliday, ‘Populism, the international and methodological nationalism: Global order and the Iran-Israel nexus’, Political Studies, available at: {https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0032321718817476} and Hadiz, Vedi and Chryssogelos, Angelos, ‘Populism in world politics: a comparative cross regional perspective’, International Political Science Review, 38:4 (2017), pp. 399–411CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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23 Cas Mudde, ‘How populism became the concept that defines our age’, The Guardian (22 November 2018), available at: {https://wrdtp.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Mudde-How-populism-became-the-concept-that-defines-our-age-_-Cas-Mudde-_-World-news-_-The-Guardian.pdf} accessed 11 July 2019.

24 For a critical discussion of the way that ‘populism’ is now being adopted ‘willy-nilly’, as Frank puts it, in academic analyses to explain all contemporary challenges to liberal democracy, see Frank, Jason, ‘Populism is not the problem’, Boston Review: A Political and Literary Forum (15 August 2018)Google Scholar, available at: {https://bostonreview.net/politics/jason-frank-populism-not-the-problem} accessed 7 July 2019 and Philippe Marlière, ‘The demophobes and the great fear of populism’, Open Democracy (4 June 2013), available at: {https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/demophobes-and-great-fear-of-populism/} accessed 7 July 2019.

25 The Guardian newspaper, for instance, has given the concept unprecedented attention initiating ‘The New Populism’ series in 2018, which combines academic articles by key thinkers on the subject (Cas Mudde is now a regular contributor to the paper) with simple quizzes that readers can take to find out if they too are populists! See, for instance, Peter Baker, ‘We the people: the battle to define populism’, The Guardian (10 January 2019), available at: {https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/10/we-the-people-the-battle-to-define-populism?CMP=share_btn_link} accessed 11 July 2019 and Matthijs Rooduijn, ‘Why is populism suddenly all the rage?’, The Guardian (20 November 2018), available at: {https://www.theguardian.com/world/political-science/2018/nov/20/why-is-populism-suddenly-so-sexy-the-reasons-are-many}.

26 https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/populism-revealed-as-2017-word-of-the-year-by-cambridge-university-press}.

27 See, for example, Pappas, Takis and Kriesi, Hans, ‘Populism in Europe during crisis: an introduction’, in Pappas, Takis and Kriesi, Hans (eds), European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession (Colchester: European Consortium for Political Research Press, 2015)Google Scholar; March, Luke, ‘From vanguard of the proletariat to vox populi: Left-wing populism as a “shadow” of contemporary socialism’, SAIS Review, 27:1 (2007), pp. 63–7Google Scholar; van Kessel, Stijn, Populist Parties in Europe: Agents of Discontent? (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Moffitt, Benjamin, The Global Rise of Populism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016)Google Scholar. In the case of the latter, Mudde's definition is expanded to include ‘political style’. Notwithstanding this interesting effort to finesse the notion of populism, Moffitt's account assumes that populism functions as an ideology in the first instance and then subsequently, as a performance.

28 Mudde, Cas, ‘The populist zeitgeist’, Government and Opposition, 39:4 (2005), pp. 541–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 543).

29 Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal R., ‘Populism’, in Freeden, Michael, Sargent, Lyman Tower, and Stears, Marc (eds), Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 7Google Scholar.

30 Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal R., ‘Studying populism in comparative perspective: Reflections on the contemporary and future research agenda’, Comparative Political Studies, 51:13 (2018), pp. 1667–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Interview with Cas Mudde on the root causes of populism available at: {http://dialogue-on-europe.eu/interview-cas-mudde-causes-populism-european-union/}.

32 Cas Mudde, ‘The Problem with Populism’, available at: {https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/17/problem-populism-syriza-podemos-dark-side-europe}.

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34 In other words, for Laclau treating populism as a sui generis form of radical politics ‘out there’ is to misconstrue its fundamental nature because all politics is marked by this binary discursive logic. It is the essential feature of the political. By contrast, for Mudde, and those who follow him, populism is a distinct type of radical politics that can be characterised in terms of specific, fixed features and that can be compared to other forms that are not populist.

35 Ernesto Laclau, ‘Populism: What's in a name?’, in Panizza (ed.), Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, pp. 32–49 (p. 44).

36 Laclau, ‘Populism’, p. 37.

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40 For examples of the former trend, see Akkerman, Agnes, Mudde, Cas, and Zaslove, Andrej, ‘How populist are the people? Measuring populist attitudes in voters’, Comparative Political Studies, 47:9 (2013), pp. 1324–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rooduijn, Matthijs and Pauwels, Teun, ‘Measuring populism: Comparing two methods of content analysis’, West European Politics, 34:6 (2011), pp. 1272–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hawkins, Kirk, Carlin, Ryan E., Littvay, Levente, and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal R. (eds), The Ideational Approach to Populism: Concept, Theory, and Analysis (Oxon: Routledge, 2019), chs 1, 4, 5, 7Google Scholar. For examples of the latter, see Mouffe, Chantal, For a Left Populism (London: Verso, 2018)Google Scholar; Errejón, Íñigo and Mouffe, Chantal, Podemos: In the Name of the People (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2016), chs 10, 11, 12, 13Google Scholar; Kioupkiolis, Alexandros, ‘Podemos: the ambiguous promises of left-wing populism in contemporary Spain’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 21:2 (2016), pp. 99–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stavrakakis and Katsambekis, ‘Left-wing populism in the European periphery’, pp. 119–42.

41 One of Cas Mudde's early works on populism was his book Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). He continues to research radical right-wing politics with his latest book The Far Right in America (London: Routledge, 2017).

42 Members of this camp have explicitly argued that populism, understood in Laclauian terms, can only meaningfully refer to left-wing movements, given that right-wing movements mobilise ‘the nation’, rather than ‘the people’, as its central empty signifier. For a defence of this position, see Stavrakakis, Yannis, Katsambekis, Giorgos, Nikisianos, Nikos, Kioupkiolis, Alexandros, and Siomos, Thomas, ‘Extreme right-wing populism in Europe: Revisiting a reified association’, Critical Discourse Studies, 14:4 (2017), pp. 420–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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45 See Mudde and Kaltwasser, ‘Studying populism in comparative perspective’, pp. 1667–93.

46 Michael Cox, ‘Understanding the Global Rise of Populism’, LSE!deas blog (2018), available at: {http://www.lse.ac.uk/ideas/research/updates/populismhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/ideas/research/updates/populism}; Fareed Zakaria, ‘Populism on the march: Why the West is in trouble’, Foreign Affairs (2016), available at: {https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-10-17/populism-march}.

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52 See Mudde and Kaltwasser, ‘Exclusionary vs. inclusionary populism’, p. 154.

53 For a discussion of leadership in the context of the theory and practice of populism, see Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal R., ‘Populism and political leadership’, in Rhodes, R. A. W. and Hart, Paul ‘t (eds), Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; see also Eatwell, Roger, ‘Charisma and the radical right’, in Rydgren, Jens (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)Google Scholar or Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism, who argues that the leader should be the focus of any study of populism because it is the leader who ultimately ‘does’ or ‘performs’ populism (p. 52).

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56 It is important to remember that this gendered description of leadership does not constitute an empirical finding, that is, it is not the result of inductive, comparative sociological-ethnographic research, but is rather built into the framing of what constitutes charismatic leadership in the context of populism.

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61 For an excellent, comprehensive overview of this effort, see Laura Sjoberg, ‘Feminism’, in Rhodes and Hart (eds), Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership, available at: {https://0-www-oxfordhandbooks-com.lib.exeter.ac.uk/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199653881.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199653881-e-004}.

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68 See, for example, Zakaria, ‘Populism on the march’, pp. 13–15, or for a variation of this view, see Parker, Christopher, Mayer, Sebastian, and Buckley, Nicole, ‘Left, right, but no in-between: Explaining American polarisation and post-factualism under President Trump’, in Herman, Lise and Muldoon, James (eds), Trumping the Mainstream (New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 112–30Google Scholar.

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70 For an interesting discussion of the construction of the ‘white working class’, primarily in the US context, see ‘Whitewashing the Working Class’ [six essays], American Sociological Review, available at: {https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1536504217714256}.

71 For a critical deconstruction of the implicit racist implications of this narrative, see Bhambra, Gurminder K., ‘Brexit, Trump and “methodological whiteness”: On the misrecognition of race and class’, British Journal of Sociology, 68:1 (2017), pp. 214–32CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

72 It is important to remember, as pointed out in fn. 41, that for these authors only left politics can be construed as really populist since right-wing movements construct themselves in the name of the ‘nation’ and not ‘the people’. Stavrakakis and Katsambekis, ‘Left-wing populism in the European periphery’, emphasis added.

73 McKean, Benjamin, ‘Towards an inclusive populism? On the role of race and difference in Laclau's politics’, Political Theory, 44:6 (2016), pp. 797–820CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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76 Alcoff, Linda, Visible Identities; Race, Gender and the Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Kingsbury, Donald, ‘Populism as post-politics: Ernesto Laclau, hegemony and the limits of democracy’, Radical Philosophy Review (2019)Google Scholar, available at: {https://www.academia.edu/12176446/Populism_as_Post-Politics_Ernesto_Laclau_Hegemony_and_the_Limits_of_Democracy}.

78 See Roseneil, Sasha, Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham Common (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995)Google Scholar and Eschle, Catherine and Maiguashca, Bice, Making Feminist Sense of the Global Justice Movement (Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010)Google Scholar.

79 McKenna, The Task of Utopia.

80 Robinson, Fiona, ‘Globalizing care: Ethics, feminist theory and IR’, Alternatives, 22 (1997), pp. 113–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hutchings, ‘Towards a feminist international ethics’, pp. 111–30.

81 Breines, Wini, Community and Organisation in the New Left 1962–68: The Great Refusal (New York: Rutgers Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Cockburn, Cynthia, From Where We Stand: War, Women's Activism and Feminist Analysis (London: Zed Books, 2007)Google Scholar.

82 Eschle and Maiguashca, Making Feminist Sense of the Global Justice Movement, ch. 5.

83 Kingsbury, ‘Populism as post-politics’, pp. 5–6.

84 McKean, ‘Towards an inclusive populism?’, p. 816.

85 See Beckwith, Karen, Banaszak, Lee Ann, and Rucht, Dieter (eds), Women's Movements Facing the Reconfigured State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

86 Frank, ‘Populism is not the problem’.

87 Glynos and Mondon, ‘The Political Logic of the Populist Hype’. See also De Cleen, Benjamin, Glynos, Jason, and Mondon, Aurélien, ‘Critical research on populism: Nine rules of engagement’, Organization (2018), p. 3Google Scholar, available at: {https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1350508418768053.

88 For a substantive critique of conceptual over-reach, see March, Luke, ‘Left and right populism compared: the British case’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19:2 (2017), pp. 292–303 (p. 283)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a methodological critique, see Silva, Bruno Castanho, Jungkunz, Sebastian, Helbling, Marc, and Littvay, Levente, ‘An empirical comparison of seven populist attitudes scales’, Political Research Quarterly (2019)Google Scholar, available at: {https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912919833176}; for a critique of the applicability of populism to Corbyn's politics, see Maiguashca, Bice and Dean, Jonathan, ‘“Lovely people, but utterly deluded”? British political science's trouble with Corbynism’, British Politics (2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, available at: {http://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41293-019-00124-5}.

89 This literature focuses on the incredible influence that Laclau's theory of populism has had on certain streams of left-wing politics in Spain (Podemos) and Greece (Syriza). See Stavrakakis and Katsambekis, ‘Left-wing populism in the European periphery’ and Kioupkiolis, Alexandros, ‘Late modern adventures of leftist populism in Spain’, in Katsambekis, Giorgos and Kioupkiolis, Alexandros (eds), The Populist Radical Left in Europe (New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 47–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 While both definitions explored here have gained media coverage, it is Mudde's conception of populism that has gained the most prominence in media and political discourses.

91 Frank, ‘Populism is not the problem’.

92 Bice Maiguashca and Jonathan Dean, ‘Corbynism, populism and the re-shaping of left politics in contemporary Britain’, in Katsambekis and Kioupkiolis (eds), The Populist Radical Left in Crisis-Hit Europe.

93 Dean, Jonathan and Maiguashca, Bice, ‘Gender, power and left politics: From feminisation to feministisation’, Politics and Gender, 13:3 (2018) pp. 376–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 I recognise that Podemos does self-identify with the label populism, which adds another layer of complexity to this story.

95 Lukes, ‘Epilogue: the grand dichotomy of the 20th century’.

96 Goodhart, David, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics (London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers Ltd, 2017)Google Scholar.

97 Barker, ‘We the people’.

98 See Marta Lorimer, ‘Ni droite, ni gauche, Français! Far right populism and the future of left/right politics’, in Herman and Muldoon (eds), Trumping the Mainstream, pp. 145–63 and Rory Mulholland, ‘Marie Le Pen promises revolution for France’, Telegraph (5 February 2017), available at: {https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/05/marine-le-pen-promises-revolution-france-tells-rally-lyon-wind/}.

99 John Judis, ‘Us vs. them: the birth of populism’, The Guardian, available at: {https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/13/birth-of-populism-donald-trump}.

100 Rooduijn, Matthijs and Akkerman, Tjitske, ‘Flank attacks: Populism and left–right radicalism in western Europe’, Party Politics, 23:3 (2017), pp. 193–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 See Mudde and Kaltwasser, ‘Exclusionary vs. inclusionary populism’ and Santiago Zabala on ‘The difference between left and right wing populism’, Al-Jazeera (17 January 2017), available at: {https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/01/difference-left-wing-populism-170112162814894.html}.

102 This reaction is somewhat puzzling given that Mudde, the authoritative voice on populism, lists the tyranny of ‘centrism’ as one of the main causes of the populist upsurge.

103 Fraser, ‘Progressive neoliberalism versus reactionary populism’, pp. 281–4. For an excellent analysis of the emergence and politics of the populist/anti-populist divide, see Stavrakakis, Yannis, ‘“The return of the people”: Populism and anti-populism in the shadow of the European crisis’, Constellations, 21:4 (2014), pp. 505–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 Remember that those working within the Muddean frame have paid far more attention to the right-wing populism than to its left counterpart.

105 Jonathan Dean, ‘Who's Afraid of Identity Politics?’, LSE blog, available at: {http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/whos-afraid-of-identity-politics/}.

106 See, for example, Mudde and Kaltwasser, ‘Populism’.

107 Stavrakakis, Yannis and Jäger, Anton, ‘Accomplishments and limitations of the “new” mainstream in contemporary populism studies’, European Journal of Social Theory, 21:4 (2018), pp. 547–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

108 See Mudde and Kaltwasser, ‘Studying populism in comparative perspective’. As an example of this general lack of care and engagement, they point out that neither Brexit nor Trump's victory in the US elections can meaningfully be conceptualised as a form of populism, at least not in their definitional terms. This has not prevented both events being framed as such by most academic, media, and political commentators.

109 While those in the Laclau camp cannot be described as empiricists/positivists in any fashion, they have tended to cede ground to their political science colleagues and have joined the search for minimal definitions that lend themselves to empirical analysis. In other words, in an effort to engage with their Muddean counterparts, many now implicitly treat populism as an ontic force, rather than a discursive logic. See Stavrakakis et al., ‘Extreme right-wing populism in Europe’ for an explicit effort in this direction.

110 Evidence of the gendered nature of populism studies can be found in the table of contents of the recently published Online Oxford Handbook of Populism in which only six female contributors (one writing on the role of gender in populism) are featured out of a total of 38. Recognising and seeking to rectify the lack of visibility of women in the field, the ‘Women+ on Populism Research’ Facebook group was set up in October 2018 as was an LSE blog advertising the work of female scholars on populism (equated on this site with far-right politics). See {https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2019/03/05/reading-list-10-recommended-reads-on-the-far-right-and-populism/}. More anecdotally, my own experiences at numerous workshops and conferences on populism also suggest that female scholars, let alone feminist ones, are few and far between in this burgeoning field. For example, the ECPR Joint Sessions in Pisa in 2016 on the ‘Causes of Populism’, to which I was kindly invited, boasted 28 participants of which only four were women, with one being my co-author. Of course Margaret Canovan, Chantal Mouffe, and Nadia Urbinati, all political theorists, are three notable exceptions to this trend.

111 Katsambekis, Giorgos and Stavrakakis, Yannis, ‘Populism, anti-populism and European democracy: a view from the South’, Open Democracy (2013)Google Scholar, available at: {https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/populism-anti-populism-and-european-democr/} accessed 14 June 2019.