Populism and Passions: Democratic Legitimacy after Austerity 9780815383789, 9780815383796, 9781351205474

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POPULISM AND PASSIONS

There is a consensus that right and left-wing populism is on the rise on both sides of the Atlantic, from Donald Trump in the United States, to Spain’s leftist Podemos. These may utilize different kinds of populist mobilizations but the fact remains that elite and mass opinion is fuelling a populist backlash. In Populism and Passions, twelve scholars engage with discourse analysis, democratic theory, and post structural political thought to study the political logic of passion for contemporary populism. Together these interdisciplinary essays demonstrate what emotional engagement implies for the spheres of politics and the social, and how it governs and mobilizes individuals. The volume presents:

  

Theoretical and empirical implications for political analysis chapters on the current rise of populism, both right and left-wing trends, their different ideological features, and their relationship with the logic of passion theoretical implications for the future study of populism and democratic legitimacy.

A timely analysis of this political phenomena in contemporary Western democracies, Populism and Passions is ideal for students and scholars in political theory, comparative politics, social theory, critical theory, cultural studies, and global studies. Paolo Cossarini is Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of International Studies at the University of Trento, Italy. He previously taught Politics and International Relations at Loughborough University, UK. He has held visiting positions at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, Queen Mary University of London, and has been a member of the research project ‘The political consequences of the economic crisis’ funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education. His research focuses on democratic theory and populism, Spanish politics and nationalism, and the role of emotions in protest movements and political communication, as well as border and migration studies. He has published in Global Discourse, European Political Science, and Revista de Estudios Políticos, among other journals. Fernando Vallespín is Professor of Political Science at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. He has directed the Department of Political Science and International Relations and the Centro de Teoría Política at the same University. He has also been a postdoctoral Fulbright researcher at Harvard University, and has been visiting professor at the universities of Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Veracruz and Malaysia. He has published several books and over one hundred academic papers and chapters. Additionally, he was President of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) between May 2004 and May 2008, Academic Director of the Fundación Ortega-Marañón (2012–2015), President of the Spanish Association of Political Studies (2013– 2015) and member of IPSA’s Executive Council (2014–2016).

ROUTLEDGE ADVANCES IN DEMOCRATIC THEORY Edited by Paulina Tambakaki (University of Westminster), Lasse Thomassen (Queen Mary, University of London) and David Chandler (University of Westminster)

Advisory Board: Amy Allen (Penn State University), Benjamin Barber (City University of New York), Rajeev Bhargava (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies), Fred Dallmayr (University of Notre Dame), John Keane (University of Sydney), James R. Martel (San Francisco State University), Chantal Mouffe (University of Westminster), Davide Panagia (UCLA), Bhikhu Parekh (House of Lords), and Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University) Democracy is being re-thought almost everywhere today: with the widespread questioning of the rationalist assumptions of classical liberalism, and the implications this has for representational competition; with the Arab Spring, destabilizing many assumptions about the geographic spread of democracy; with the deficits of democracy apparent in the Euro-zone crisis, especially as it affects Greece and Italy; with democracy increasingly understand as a process of social empowerment and equalization, blurring the lines of division between formal and informal spheres; and with growing demands for democracy to be reformulated to include the needs of those currently marginalized or even to include the representation of non-human forms of life with whom we share our planet. Routledge Advances in Democratic Theory publishes state of the art theoretical reflection on the problems and prospects of democratic theory when many of the traditional categories and concepts are being reworked and rethought in our globalized and complex times. The series is published in cooperation with the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, London, UK.

8. Council Democracy Towards a Democratic Socialist Politics Edited by James Muldoon 9. Emotions, Protest, Democracy Collective Identities in Contemporary Spain Emmy Eklundh 10. Populism and Passions Democratic Legitimacy after Austerity Edited by Paolo Cossarini and Fernando Vallespín

POPULISM AND PASSIONS Democratic Legitimacy after Austerity

Edited by Paolo Cossarini and Fernando Vallespín

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Paolo Cossarini & Fernando Vallespín to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-8153-8378-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-8153-8379-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-20547-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

CONTENTS

List of figures List of Contributors Introduction: Populism, Democracy, and the Logic of Passion Paolo Cossarini and Fernando Vallespín

vii viii 1

PART I

Ordering the Political Realm

13

1 Political Affects in the Neuroscientific Age Manuel Arias Maldonado

15

2 Populisms and Emotions Nicolas Demertzis

31

3 Populism versus Technocracy: Performance, Passions, and Aesthetics Benjamin Moffitt

49

PART II

Passionate Logic and Discourse in Times of Austerity

65

4 Our Damned Weakness: Tensions between Reason and Emotion in Podemos Emmy Eklundh

67

vi

Contents

5 The Political Logic of Populist Hype: The Case of RightWing Populism’s ‘Meteoric Rise’ and Its Relation to the Status Quo Jason Glynos and Aurelien Mondon 6 Populism and the Use of Tropes Paulina Tambakaki 7 Emotions and the Left in Denmark. Towards Left-Wing and Mainstream Populism Óscar García Agustín

82 102

115

PART III

Passions and Democratic Legitimacy 8 Filling the Vacuum? Passion, ‘the People’, and Affective Communities Paolo Cossarini 9 Passion, Excess, and Fear of the Mob: Populism as Ideology Simon Tormey

133 135 148

10 Populism and the Restructuring of the Public Sphere Fernando Vallespín and Máriam M. Bascuñán

162

Index

184

FIGURES

3.1 Technocratic-Populist political style spectrum 5.1 Right-wing populist party results in the European elections (as a percentage of the total votes cast) 5.2 Right-wing populist party results in the European elections (as a percentage of registered voters) 7.1 Voter development (number of seats), 1990–2015 7.2 Historical construction of community in the RGA campaign ‘Community works’, 2013 7.3 The Alternative, Campaign ‘Tour de Hope’, 2017

56 87 88 120 122 128

CONTRIBUTORS

Óscar García Agustín is Associate Professor at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University. With Christian Ydesen he has co-edited the book Post-crisis Perspectives: The Common and its Powers (2013), and with Martin Bak Jørgensen he has co-edited Politics of Dissent (2015) and Solidarity Without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society (2016). He is also coeditor, with Marco Briziarelli, of Podemos and the New Political Cycle (2018). He is author of Discurso y autonomía Zapatista (2013) and Sociology of Discourse: From Institutions to Social Change (2015). Paolo Cossarini Paolo Cossarini is Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of International Studies at the University of Trento, Italy. His research focuses on democratic theory and populism, Spanish politics and nationalism, and the role of emotions in protest movements and political communication. He has published in Global Discourse, European Political Science, and Revista de Estudios Políticos, among other journals. Nicolas Demertzis is a Professor at the Department of Communication and Media Studies, at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and a founding member of the Research Network of the Sociology of Emotions at the ESA. He has published, co-authored, edited and co-edited 27 books, and 94 articles and papers in Greek and international journals and collective volumes. His current research interests focus on political sociology, cultural sociology, political communication, and the sociology of emotions. His previous publications include Emotions in Politics. The Affect Dimension in Political Tension (2013); Envy and Ressentiment. The Passions of the Soul and the Closed Society (with Thanos Lipowatz, 2006); and The Nationalist Discourse. Ambivalent Semantic Field and Contemporary

List of contributors ix

Tendencies (1996). Currently, he is the Director of the National Centre for Social Research (EKKE). Emmy Eklundh is a Lecturer in Spanish and International Politics at the Department of European and International Studies, King’s College London. Emmy’s research is mainly centered on the post-crisis eruptions of protest in Southern Europe and in particular the Indignados Movement in Spain. She is especially interested in how this ties in with questions of democratic theory as well as social theory in general. Current research projects include the rise (or return) of left- and right-wing populist movements and parties in Europe. Her work includes (with Nick Turnbull) the chapter ‘Political Sociology’ in Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science (2015), a co-edited volume Politics of Anxiety (2017), and her monograph Emotions, Protest, Democracy. Collective Identities in Contemporary Spain (2019). Jason Glynos teaches political theory at the Department of Government, University of Essex. He has published in the areas of poststructuralist political theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, focusing on theories of ideology, democracy, and freedom, and the philosophy and methodology of social science. He is co-author with David Howarth of Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory (Routledge, 2007), and co-editor with Yannis Stavrakakis of Politics and the Unconscious (Special Issue of Subjectivity, 2010). His current research explores the contributions of discourse analysis and psychoanalysis to the development of a critical political economy. Manuel Arias Maldonado is Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Malaga, Spain. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Berkeley, California, as well as a visiting fellow at the Rachel Carson Center, in Munich. He has worked extensively on environmental issues, from a sociopolitical as well as from a philosophical standpoint. Other research topics include political liberalism, deliberative democracy, new information technologies, populism and political affects. His most recent books are Environment and Society. Socionatural Relations in the Anthropocene (2015) and La democracia sentimental. Política y emociones en el siglo XXI& (2016). Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Autónoma University of Madrid. Her research focuses specifically on contemporary feminist political theory, and has published articles on a monograph on Iris Marion Young, Género, emancipación y diferencia(s) (2012), co-author with Fernando Vallespín of Populismos (2017), and co-edited Las consecuencias políticas de la Crisis Económica (2017). Benjamin Moffitt is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne. He is the author of The Global Rise of Populism: Performance,

x List of contributors

Political Style, and Representation (2016) and Populism: Key Concepts in Political Theory (2019). Aurelien Mondon is a Senior Lecturer in comparative politics at the University of Bath. His research focuses predominantly on the impact of racism and populism on liberal democracies and the mainstreaming of far right politics through elite discourse. His first monograph, A Populist Hegemony?: The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia, was published in 2013. He recently coedited After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, Racism and Free Speech (2017). Paulina Tambakaki is a Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster. She is co-editor of the Routledge book series Advances in Democratic Theory and she works in the areas of agonism, radical democracy, representation and citizenship. Her publications include a monograph entitled Human Rights, Or Citizenship? published in 2011 and articles in various academic journals. Paulina is currently working on her second monograph on processes of political change, with a particular focus on the relation between democracy, idealization, and memory. Simon Tormey is a professor of politics at the University of Sydney. He is the author of numerous books and articles including Agnes Heller: Socialism, Autonomy and the Postmodern (2001), Anti-Capitalism (2004 and 2013), Key Thinkers from Critical Theory to Post-Marxism (2006), and The End of Representative Politics (2015). His most recent book, co-authored, is Refiguring Democracy: The Spanish Laboratory (2017). Fernando Vallespín is Professor of Political Science at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He has held the position of Vice-Rector of Culture, has directed the Department of Political Science and International Relations and the ‘Centro de Teoría Política’ at the same University. He was postdoctoral Fulbright researcher at Harvard University, and has been visiting professor at the universities of Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Veracruz, and Malaysia. He has published several books and more than 100 academic papers and chapters on renowned political science publications. His latest publications include Populismos (2017), co-edited with Máriam Martínez-Bascuñan, and with the same author Las consecuencias políticas de la Crisis Económica (2017). Additionally, he has been President of the ‘Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas’ (CIS) between May 2004 and May 2008, Academic Director of the ‘Fundación Ortega-Marañón’ (2012–2015), President of the AECPA (2013–2015), and member of IPSA’s Executive Council (2014–2016). He regularly collaborates with various media, and periodically writes a column in El País.

INTRODUCTION: POPULISM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE LOGIC OF PASSION Paolo Cossarini and Fernando Vallespín

Populism seems to be ubiquitous. In 2016, Trump’s victory and Brexit have exacerbated a phenomenon that, although itself not a new one, has entered into a new phase and has reached global dimensions. From Europe to North and South America, from Asia to Africa, there seem to be no country immune to some form of populist politics. In the European context, different types of populist parties have grown in times of austerity. To name just a few, from right-wing parties such as France’s Front National, Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party in Hungary, the Freedom Party of Austria, The Swedish Democrats, and the extreme right-wing Alternative for Germany, to the left-wing parties such as Spain’s Podemos, and Greek left-wing Syriza, and the heterogeneous example of The Five Star Movement in Italy. Undoubtedly, there are many diverse phenomena in different geographical contexts that are labeled as populism, and scholarship has echoed this by producing an enormous quantity of literature. Despite this, the success of the term goes hand in hand with its constitutive ambiguity, and all scholars point out that populism has become a passe-partout label. Admittedly, this success is due in large part to the habit of describing those political forces that may represent a threat to the constituted order. Especially in the European and North American press, but also in the academic debate, populism is often employed to designate the danger that these actors would represent to democracy, liberalism, pluralism, and also to human rights. While populism is very frequently deployed as a negative epithet with the purpose of discrediting political opponents, populism’s meaning and political value vary depending on the geographical and ideological context. Typically, critics of populism highlight its intrinsically demagogic practices, which involve fuelling an atmosphere of enmity and distrust towards political representatives, making popular and unrealistic promises to the citizenry, and so forth. On the contrary,

2 Paolo Cossarini and Fernando Vallespín

positive assessments are often supported from a theoretical standpoint which firstly maintains that populism is an essential aspect of any political articulation, and secondly that it also has an inclusionary potential. Either way, populism has entered the everyday vocabulary, and there are numerous examples of press headlines and politicians’ statements that nourish an indiscriminate use of the concept (Katsambekis 2016). Despite the amount of the literature, populism’s vagueness seems to be efficiently resilient. Being one of the most commented upon concept in recent political studies, in media and in public life, the growing literature on populism has primarily stressed the ideological and discursive traits of populist movements and political parties, their inner organization, their transnational connections, the relevance and style of their leaders, and the consequences they trigger for democratic politics. As such, populism has been conceptualized as a particular form of political organization (e.g. Germani 1978; Taggart 1995), as a thin-centred ideology (e.g. Albertazzi & McDonnell 2008; Mudde 2004 and 2007; Stanley 2008), as a political style (e.g. Mazzoleni et al. 2003; Moffitt 2016), and as discourse (e.g. Laclau 2005). All these approaches have focused on seeking a minimal definition of this ambiguous phenomenon and mapping a common core of features, which would be applicable to all of its different manifestations. While within the dominant liberal perspective populism is generally regarded as something to be feared and discredited, one may argue that the stigma attached to populism is in and of itself evidence that populist politics actually exist having a set of distinct features and patterns which are directly related to its twin concept: democracy. The relationship between these two concepts is indeed far from being axiomatic, and their usage in the public sphere has exacerbated both their vagueness – populism and democracy are notoriously elusive and slippery concepts – as well as their conceptual and empirical connection. This book finds its starting point with these reflections and, in consonance with much scholarship that has focused on these questions, stresses the importance of inquiring about the nature of populism and its political consequences for our liberal democratic systems. To that end, this volume is committed to enhancing the analytical and methodological instruments we have at our disposal to address this multifaceted phenomenon. As the contributions in this volume aim to show, new insights on populist and democratic politics are brought in by recent developments in the study of emotions in social realm. One of the hypotheses of this book is that, regardless of the analytical approach one adopts to define populism, the emotional dimension that characterizes the political sphere is to be taken into account if we want to shed light on this phenomenon and the current dynamics in democratic legitimacy. Indeed, over the past few decades, emotions – and similar concepts such as passions, affect, sentiments, feelings, etc. – seem to have become central for the understanding of socio-political phenomena and community life. Studies of emotion have challenged the standard accounts of politics,

Introduction 3

shedding light on different forms of political action, dynamics of identity formation, and multi-dimensional aspects of civil engagement and political legitimacy. Since populism is something intrinsically related to democratic politics – as has been rightly pointed out, it follows democracy as a shadow –, it becomes clear that current accounts of emotions also have important theoretical and practical repercussions for the study of democratic politics.

The logic of passion and populist politics Over the last decades, we have witnessed an ‘affective turn’ within social and political sciences (e.g. Stets & Turner 2006; Clough & Halley 2007; Hoggett 2009) that, denouncing the limits of the positivist paradigm, not only opened up new interpretive horizons for the understanding of individual and collective emotional dynamics, but also enhanced our view of broader political behaviour and social life. Within the scientific literature, terms like ‘passion’, ‘emotion’ and ‘affect’ are quite commonly used in a broad sense, and not rarely they conflate into each other. While the ‘affective turn’ started off focusing more on affect as a bodily sensation, theories of emotions have been flourishing in numerous scientific fields, and authors from various perspectives argue slightly different things, thus prefer the use of one or another term. Affect, passion, emotion, feeling, and so forth, each of them has its own set of literature, and different theories and (more or less comprehensive) classifications have been articulated in order to discern between all these concepts. Depending on the epistemological perspective, these terms have been differentiated according to central elements and axis, such as the conscious/unconscious dimension and the personal/impersonal facet of human feeling, and also taking into account their different duration, and their connection to individual/collective norms (Frijda 2008; Thompson and Hogget 2012). Undeniably, the scholarship has developed an important corpus of analysis, and theories converging around the affective dimension of political life are not always compatible. This diverse terminology – political scientists and theorists most commonly choose the use of emotion and passion over affect and feeling – is indeed proof of this controversial side of the literature. However, for the purpose of this volume, we are not interested in finding the ultimate definition of human inner experience; rather we prefer to focus on the relationship between this dimension (regardless of the term we use to define it) with democratic politics and populism. Having been long disregarded by the dominant paradigm in political studies during the second half of the twentieth century, emotions have been recently brought back into scientific discussion and have found a place in political science. In fact, in recent years, advances in a wide range of disciplines such as neurology (e.g. Damasio 1994), cognitive psychology (e.g. Forgas 2000), philosophy (e.g. Elster 1999; de Sousa 1987), anthropology (e.g. Lutz & Abu-Lughod 1990) and sociology (e.g. Steats & Turner 2006) have given new prominence to the role of

4 Paolo Cossarini and Fernando Vallespín

emotions in social and political sciences (e.g. Barbalet 2001; Kemper 1990; Clarke, Hoggett & Thompson 2006; Kingston 2008, 2011; Bleiker & Hutchinson 2008). This heterogeneous literature and fields of research have been undermining the traditional dichotomies of reason and passion, contributing to place the affective dimension in political research. Furthermore, there have been great developments in the study of emotions related to protest movements (e.g. Goodwin et al. 2001; Goodwin and Jasper 2003). Emotions, it is argued, motivate individuals and groups to engage in protests and political actions. They can be means and ends of movements and they shape, often rhetorically, their goals and strategies. Similarly, there are many sociologists and anthropologists who have argued that emotions should be regarded not only as psychological states, but as social and cultural practices too (e.g. Lutz and Abu-Lughod 1990; Hochschild 1983; Katz 1999). In addition, the feminist tradition has brought emotions back to political theory and moral philosophy, underlying, in the wake of Aristotle, the fundamental role played by emotions in political judgment and action, and in democratic education for virtuous citizens (e.g. Koziak 2000; Nussbaum 1994). While the philosophical assumption of the predominant approaches to politics has for long been the alleged rationality of the political world and its study, the recent interdisciplinary wave in the study of emotions unlocked the theoretical frameworks for the understanding of the social realm. Emotions contribute to identity formation, along with other factors such as shared values, worldviews, attitudes, rituals, and performances, and they clearly take part in the creation of social bonds and the promotion of social cohesion (Markell 2000). Emotions are also an essential component of any form of collective action: building or reproducing identities is one of the processes by which individuals and groups give meaning to their experiences and contribute to collective action and political participation (Hall 2002, 739–741; Stets & Turner 2006, 290). This onto-epistemological turn has triggered a variety of normative consequences, one of which is the questioning of beliefs around democratic politics as essentially – when not exclusively – based on human rationality. The common association of populism with a form of doing politics based on emotions patently is proof of that. Undeniably, in contemporary democratic theory numerous approaches have focused on the new appraisal of the emotional dimension in politics (e.g. Hall 2005; Krause 2008). The same dismantling of the reason/emotion divide implies a series of normative questions political theorists have been faced with. On a general note, questions have converged around the kind of emotional engagement liberal and democratic regimes need, and what affective dispositions (if any) liberal democracy requires from its citizenry. Most contemporary political theorists agree indeed that emotions have a central role in citizens’ support of liberal values (e.g. Morrell 2010; Nussbaum 2013). Although liberal democratic theory has focused on the repercussion of these ways of conceptualizing the interplay of emotions and reason for the understanding of democratic engagement, current forms of populist politics expose the

Introduction 5

limits of our democratic systems and open up new theoretical and practical ways to reflect upon the labour of emotions in politics. Needless to say, it is not a matter of giving primacy to emotions over reason in political affairs, but rather of revealing their relationship, as well as their place in political studies, especially in the analysis of populism. It is important to note that different interpretations of populism have already pointed out some aspects of the affective dimension of this phenomenon. By highlighting simplistic discourse and charismatic leadership, for instance, the various definitions of populism have also traced a line of connection with the emotional dimension of political life and, in so doing, have attributed a primacy to populism in the emotional appeal that would not characterize the supposed rational deliberation of democratic politics. However, with the exception of specific lines of research – such as those scholars who work following the lead of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Jacques Lacan – little attention has been paid to the specific connection between theories of populism, the political role of passion, and democratic legitimacy. What can current accounts of emotion and passion offer to theories of populism? How is this related to and how does this impact political legitimacy? In order to broach these questions, the study of populism has to be connected to this broader scientific field that has brought emotions back into the study of politics. Evidently, emotions are not exclusive of populism. Politics, in all its forms, is about emotions, and various political parties, ideologies, and movements mobilize a variety of emotions, while impregnating their discourse with given affective signifiers. Still, inquiring about the connection between populism and the affective dimension is particularly interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, it is worth mentioning a seemingly paradoxical situation for which both public discourse and advanced research on populism connect this form of politics to emotions. Certainly, there is a need to go beyond the common simplification in which populism is exclusively seen as an emotional way of doing politics, where emotions are linked to a non-reflective way of thinking and acting. Paradoxically enough, this parallels some of the most advanced research on populism and emotions coming from scholars who defend a specific idea of radical democracy in which passion play a central role in political struggle. Partly to overcome everyday simplifications, partly in order to disagree with the (more or less deliberate) marginalization of emotions in political studies, radical and agonistic democratic theory challenges the idea of liberal (more or less technocratic and dis-passionate) consensus in politics. Second, social media has represented an important change in contemporary forms of communications bringing significant consequences for the current political conjuncture. Quite intuitively, this is often linked to the role of affect in the social realm and the rise of populist politics, as new technologies directly alter the relationship between politics and citizens in numerous ways. Examples of this are the connection between political parties and leaders with common people, as well

6 Paolo Cossarini and Fernando Vallespín

as the substantial change in political communication – which has admittedly moved towards simplification in order to meet the standards of online discussions. While populism has often been associated with a ‘tabloid-style’ form of politics (Canovan 1999, 5), and more recently to ‘bad manners’ (Moffitt 2016), it is clear that social media plays an important role in the performative dimension of such a type of politics, and that it has a direct link with the realm of affects. Therefore, all of these reasons aside, normative questions regarding the role of passion in democratic regimes and populist politics need to be addressed, and these go beyond the attention paid to states of feeling that mobilize or demobilize citizenries.

Passions and the boundaries of democratic legitimacy The link between populist politics and the logic of passion does not only open up interesting horizons to understand the former, it also triggers consequences for current dynamics of legitimacy in liberal democratic contexts. Interestingly enough, despite the difference between right- and left-wing manifestations of populism, there is no political party nor leader that explicitly present themselves as anti-democratic – quite the contrary, they all claim to be the true representatives of the people, the true democrats. Likewise, behind them all there resides a perception of current liberal institutions and procedural mechanisms as useless and no longer respondent to citizens’ demands. Liberalism has indeed been criticized for having allowed some of its democratic principles to be abducted, often in the name of stability, by financial powers and international organizations. If we accept that legitimacy involves the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate or proper ones for the society (Lipset 1959), then current forms of populist politics expose the limits of our liberal democratic systems. All manifestations of populism indeed unveil that contemporary democracies are witnessing a flagrant paradox: at a time when the discursive pull of democracy has never been stronger, its current mechanisms and functioning are under criticism. In fact, both left- and right-wing populism are representative of the increasing breach between the practiced form of liberal representative democracy and the ideal of democracy. In order to understand this gap, it is important to take into account the vast field of scholarship that critically explores the role of affect in social and political realm. Admittedly, regardless of the analytical perspective one adopts, two elements are recurrent in all definitions of populism: the idea of ‘the people’, and the antagonistic division of society into two opposing blocs. In this context, populism is essentially associated to a discourse centred on the idea of ‘the people’ as the exclusive source of political decisions and repository of social virtues and morality. Hence, the ‘redemptive’ form of politics put forward by populism is also characterized by the labour of passion and, as this volume shows, emotions contribute to shape the subjects of populist politics. Therefore, if passion is crucial in the

Introduction 7

formation of collective political identities – ‘the people’, ‘the elite’, ‘the establishment’ – and, if Laclau is right in his affirmation that “the construction of a ‘people’ is the sine qua non of democratic functioning” (2005, 169), then it becomes clear how important it is to inquire about the role of the affective core of populist politics and its consequences for the legitimacy of our democratic systems. This book locates itself within this framework and comprises of theoretically informed contributions that paint a picture as to what emotional engagement is implied in contemporary populist politics, and how this is related to democratic legitimacy. The key strength of this book is thus its ability to mobilize different approaches in the study of current forms of populism and the role of passion in numerous geographical contexts. Avoiding a narrow rationalist view of politics, the contributions in this volume stress the function of passion in populism and in current democratic dynamics. Whether or not the affective dimension of populist politics brings any specificity and novelty into ways of doing politics, the nexus passion-populism must indeed be analysed, and the nature of this link sheds new light on the debate about the positive or negative character of populism for democracy. Quite intuitively, the emotional horizon plays an important role in the substance of this relationship. Arguably, depending on the type of the emotional dynamics, this nexus may tend towards a positive equilibrium, where populist discourse and practice can strengthen democracy or, on the contrary, towards a negative relationship, in which populism can represent a threat to the liberal-democratic equilibrium and, ultimately, also lead to authoritarian forms of politics (Finchelstein 2017).

Structure of the Book As explained earlier, in recent years a wide range of disciplines have given new prominence to the role of emotions in social and political fields. Drawing on different critical approaches and traditions of thought, the relatively new ‘affective turn’ has developed a vast cross-disciplinary literature on emotions that opens up thought-provoking interrogatives about the relationship between affective and political dimensions. This heterogeneous literature has been undermining the traditional dichotomies between reason and passion, trying to find a location for emotions and affective dimensions in social and political investigation. As this volume shows, the significance of passion stems from its ordering and legitimatory logics. Bridging the theoretical-empirical divide, the contributions in this volume critically analyse the facets of the link between populism and passion, pointing to its effects for democratic legitimacy. Combining different methodologies such as discourse analysis, studies on populist politics, democratic theory, and sociology of emotions, this volume offers a critical understanding of the relationship between diverse populist phenomena and the passionate investment in politics.

8 Paolo Cossarini and Fernando Vallespín

In order to address these political and affective logics and engage with their dynamics, the book is organized in three parts. Part I, Ordering the Political Realm, delves into the relationship between passion and politics, highlights both theoretical and methodological implications for political analysis, and critically points to current ‘styles’ of doing politics. Manuel Arias Maldonado opens this first section with his chapter ‘Political Affects in the Neuroscientific Age’. Focusing on the effect that neuroscience has on the study of politics and human behaviour, his chapter offers some answers to essential questions: How do emotions emerge? Is the way we perceive political phenomena affectively biased and, if so, where do these biases come from? And how is this related to the way we make moral and political decisions? In putting forward some essential ideas on the relationship between emotion and reason, Arias Maldonado also clarifies the conceptual complexity about the affective dimension. This first theoretical and epistemological analysis is followed by Nicolas Demertzis’ contribution. In his chapter ‘Populisms and Emotions’ Demertzis explores the specific relationship between populism and the role of emotions, giving specific examples of concrete manifestations of human affect and its influence on the political sphere. Drawing on a political sociology of emotions, this chapter focuses on some specific affective dimensions, such as ressentiment and anger, as master emotions that nurture populist politics. For his part, Benjamin Moffitt, in his chapter ‘Populism versus Technocracy: Performance, Passions, and Aesthetics’, establishes a comparison between the different performative, stylistic and aesthetic features of populism and technocracy, and the role these divides play in the mobilization of passions. While technocracy is based on appeal to expertise, ‘good manners’, and the performance of stability and progress, populism is based on an appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’, ‘bad manners’, and the performance of crisis. According to Moffitt, this has deep consequences for the legitimacy of political regimes across the globe. Par II of this volume, Passionate Logic and Discourse in Times of Austerity, includes chapters on the current rise of both right- and left-wing populism in Europe, their different ideological and discursive features, and their relationship with the logic of passion. The first chapter in this part, ‘Our Damned Weakness: Tensions between Reason and Emotion in Podemos’ by Emmy Eklundh, focuses on the case of Podemos in Spain by drawing on both Laclau’s and Lacan’s theories of populism and identity formation. In so doing, Eklundh illustrates the tension between emotion and reason in our comprehension of politics and our own political behaviour, as well as the difficulty to overcome it. This chapter is followed by Jason Glynos and Aurelien Mondon analysis of 2014 European elections and the case of French Front National and UKIP. In their ‘The Political Logic of Populist Hype: The Case of Right-wing Populism’s “Meteoric Rise” and its Relation to the Status Quo’, Glynos and Mondon argue that the media coverage and the excessive attention paid to their rise – the hype around rightwing populism – contributed to the legitimization and normalization of their discourse. This, according to the authors, also disallowed to put back on the table

Introduction 9

of the democratic discussion burning questions about the status of representative democracy and its relationship with the economic world. In a similar vein, Paulina Tambakaki also deals with the crisis of representation that contemporary democracies are facing. In her chapter ‘Populism and the Use of Tropes’ Tambakaki focuses on the example of Syriza and its egalitarian agenda in crisis-driven Greece, arguing that left-wing populism opens up the possibility of strengthening democratic participation along with egalitarian politics. The specific use of metonymic language in Syriza’s political discourse, Tambakaki argues, is a central part of the re-signification of the political and economic crisis. The last chapter in Part II focuses on two left-wing parties in the Danish context and their relationship with a renewed emotional dimension of politics. In ‘Emotions and the Left in Denmark’. Towards Left-Wing and Mainstream Populism’ Óscar García Agustín introduces two case studies on the left spectrum of Danish politics that represent an interesting example on how there can be an alternative to the exclusionary and nativist – mainly anti-migration – identity politics that is fostered by right-wing political parties. In fact, as García Agustín argues, both the Red-Green Alliance and the Alternative offer affective bonds that enhance a different form of identity formation which is open to cultural diversity, and as such, diametrically opposed to the nationalistic perspective of right-wing populism. These left-wing parties attempt to recover social bonds that emphasize the pride of the welfare state and, through that, empathy among citizens and groups. As shown by the mounting literature on populism and democracy, the nature and judgment of their relationship may differ depending on the political perspective one adopts and the geographical context one reflects from. The final part of this volume – Part III, Passions and Democratic Legitimacy – highlights the theoretical and political implications of the relationship between these fellow travellers. Paolo Cossarini’s contribution opens Part III. His chapter, ‘Filling the Vacuum? Passion, “the People”, and Affective Communities’, focuses on the increasing breach between the current forms of representative politics and the democratic ideal, as shown by the indetermination of ‘the people’, the nodal point of all definitions of populism. Cossarini stresses that representation creates a sort of vacuum that populist politics – in its different forms – makes visible and, at the same time, attempts to fill. By providing a theoretical account of the significance of ‘the people’ within different democratic perspectives, Cossarini argues that the affective dimension is how the current emptiness of ‘the people’ has been filled, and populist politics cannot be understood unless political science and democratic theory take emotions into serious consideration. For his part, Simon Tormey moves from the global rise of populism and develops a theoretical analysis on the relationship between populism and democracy. While all manifestations of populism are a clear sign of this current type of politics, which is based on a dichotomy between insiders and outsiders, ‘the people’ versus the elites, Tormey delves into the intrinsic relationship

10 Paolo Cossarini and Fernando Vallespín

between democracy and populism, seeing the latter as a contemporary form of the Pharmakon – the ‘medicine’ that kills. Pointing to a nuanced differentiation between left- and right-wing forms of ‘outsider politics’, in his chapter ‘Passion, Excess, and Fear of the Mob – Populism as Ideology’ Tormey builds his argument on the use of the term ‘populism’, on how it has gone mainstream, and the values accredited to it according to the different perspectives one adopts. The final chapter of Part III is ‘Populism and the Restructuring of the Public Sphere’ by Fernando Vallespín and Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán. Drawing on a crossdisciplinary perspective and focusing on the spread of social media and their discursive frames, the authors link the global rise of populism to the changes in the configuration of the public sphere. Vallespín and Martínez-Bascuñán argue that social media’s dynamics are re-shaping public opinion, thus creating the conditions for new forms of democratic legitimacy, where the emotional reigns over the reflective, and passionate engagement reigns over expertise and deliberative thinking. Moreover, social media’s logics, and the new era of ‘digital democracy’ we have entered, hinder a nuanced understanding of political reality – hence the division between reason and emotion – promoting instead a conflation of virtual discourse and perceived facts. Social media’s logics and the struggles over ascertaining the truth are essential features of our current times. Populism and democracy are converging and mutually re-shaping themselves within these dynamics. All in all, asking about the affective logic of populist politics turns out to be particularly relevant for democratic theory, which would benefit greatly from this interdisciplinary approach to emotions and populism.

References Albertazzi, D. and McDonnell, D. (eds.) (2008). Twenty-first Century Populism. The Spectre of Western European Democracy. Houndmills: Palgrave. Barbalet, J. M. (2001). Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bleiker, R. and Hutchison, E. (2008). Fear no more: Emotions and world politics. Review of International Studies, 34: 115–135. Canovan, M. (1999). Trust the people! Populism and the two faces of democracy. Political Studies, 47: 2–16. Clarke, S., Hoggett, P., and Thompson, S. (2006). Emotion, Politics and Society. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Clough, P. T. and O’Malley Halley, J. (eds.) (2007). The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social. Durham: Duke University Press. Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam. de Sousa, R. (1987). The Rationality of Emotion, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Elster, J. (1999). Strong Feelings. Emotion, Addiction, and Human Behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Finchelstein, F. (2017). From Fascism to Populism in History. Oakland, CA:University of California Press.

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Forgas, J. P. (2000). Feeling and Thinking: The Role of Affect in Social Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frijda, N. (2008). The psychologists’ point of view. In Lewis et al. (eds.) Handbook of Emotions, New York: Guilford Press, 68–87. Germani, G. (1978). Authoritarianism, Fascism, and National Populism. New Brunswick: Transaction. Goodwin, J., Jasper, J. M., and Polletta, F. (2001). Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Goodwin, J. and Jasper, J. M. (2003). The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. Hall, Ch. (2002). Passions and constraint: The marginalization of passion in liberal political theory. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 28(6): 727–748. Hall, Ch. (2005). The Trouble with Passion: Political Theory beyond the Reign of Reason. London: Routledge. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hoggett, P. (2009). Politics, Identity, and Emotion. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Katsambekis, G. (2016). Radical left populism in contemporary Greece: Syriza’s trajectory from minoritarian opposition to power. Constellations, 23(3), 391–403. Katz, J. (1999). How Emotions Work. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press Koziak, B. (2000). Retrieving Political Emotion. Pennsylvania, PA: Penn State U. Press. Krause, S. R. (2008). Civil Passions: Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. London: Verso. Lipset, S. M. (1959). Some social requisites of democracy: Economic development and political legitimacy. American Political Science Review 53: 69–105. Lutz, C. A. and Abu-Lughod, L. (1990). Language and the Politics of Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kemper, T. (ed.) (1990). Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Kingston, R. (2011). Public Passion: Rethinking the Grounds for Political Justice. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Kingston, R. and Ferry, L. (eds.) (2008). Bringing the Passions Back In: The Emotions in Political Philosophy. Vancouver: UBC Press. Markell, P. (2000). Making affect safe for democracy? On ‘constitutional patriotism’. Political Theory, 28(1): 38–63. Mazzoleni, G., Stewart, J., and Horsfield, B. (2003). The Media and Neopopulism. Westport, CT: Praeger. Moffitt, B. (2016). The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Morrell, E. M. (2010). Empathy and Democracy: Feeling, Thinking and Deliberation. Philadelphia, PA: Penn State University Press. Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(3), 541–563. Mudde, C. (2007). Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. (1994). The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2013). Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Stanley, B. (2008). The thin ideology of populism. Journal of Political Ideologies, 13(1): 95–110. Stets, J. E. and Turner, J. (eds.) (2006). The Handbook of Sociology of Emotions. New York: Springer. Taggart, P. (1995). New populist parties in Western Europe. West European Politics, 18(1): 34–51. Thompson, S. and Hoggett, P. (eds.) (2012). Politics and the Emotions. The Affective Turn in Contemporary Political Studies, London: Continuum.

PART I

Ordering the Political Realm

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1 POLITICAL AFFECTS IN THE NEUROSCIENTIFIC AGE Manuel Arias Maldonado

Introduction It is now commonplace to observe that the last decade, marked as it has been by the unrest triggered by the Great Recession, cannot be understood without taking into account the bursting of political emotions throughout Western democracies. ‘Indignez-vous!’ – such is the unofficial slogan of the collective mobilizations that erupted in the aftermath of the financial meltdown, taken from the pamphlet written by the nonagenarian Stephanie Hessel (2010). Hessel, an ex-member of the French Resistance against the Nazis, encouraged young people to rebel against an unfair social order and sold millions of copies all over the world. Yet outrage itself can be directed towards very different targets: it has led to protests against economic inequality or the lack of participatory channels within representative democracies, but it also underpins the hatred of immigrants and the growing support for so-called illiberal regimes. Political emotions, in short, are more ambiguous than it seems. And that is why they should be carefully approached. Therefore, it is not enough to claim that such mobilizations – as well as related political phenomena such as populism or nationalism – make use of an emotional language in order to stir political passions that are conducive to their goals. Political theorists should go beyond that truism, shedding light on the particular way in which this happens and the reasons why this strategy seems to work. Drawing on the abundant literature on affects which has been produced in the last two decades by different fields of expertise, allows for a more rigorous understanding of the way in which emotions, in all their variety, operate. How are they elicited? What role do they play in individual decision-making? How manageable are them? Are they pre-conscious impulses or a mixture of instinct and language? Are

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they beneficial or harmful to democratic politics? How can they be mobilized? If we are to talk about populism and passions, or about the role that specific passions play in the populist strategy, these questions must be answered. Political reality cannot be explained without human affects, but affects do not explain themselves. As a matter of fact, the need to deal with them after years of theoretical neglect has ended up producing an ‘affective turn’ in the social sciences and the humanities, which can be succinctly described as the recognition that emotions are an important driver of human behavior (see Clough and Halley 2007; Greco and Stenner 2008; Thompson and Hoggett 2012). A certain model of human subjectivity, that of the autonomous and reasonable individual, is thus questioned. Far from being rational beings that make informed calculations while trying to maximize our preferences, we seem to be something else, i.e. psychobiological creatures whose decisions are predated by all kinds of cognitive biases and emotional influences. We are, in short, less rational than expected. And this realization, which owes a great deal to research conducted outside the social sciences – mostly in the fields of psychology and neurobiology – contributes to a new understanding of political phenomena. This needs to be emphasized: neither populism nor political emotions constitute a novelty. New is, properly speaking, the body of knowledge provided by the affective turn. The latter makes it possible to speak of political emotions in a novel way, using new concepts, opening up unprecedented theoretical possibilities. Much is yet to be understood and many of the recent findings must be deemed provisional, as methodological difficulties abound in a field where it remains arduous to tell causation from correlation, the material from the ideational, and the description from the prescription. However, despite the shortcomings that may still afflict the study of a subject as complex as human emotion, it is not possible to talk about it – or discuss its role in populism and other political phenomena – without taking the affective turn into account. This chapter is organized as follows. First, an overview of the affective turn in the social sciences will be provided. Second, a description of the postsovereign subject that constitutes its main corollary is offered – by way of elucidating the main reasons why it can be said that we are not purely rational beings. Third, the normative relevance of neurosciences will be discussed, with the aim of providing a balance between two opposing claims – one saying that neuroscience provides meaningful criteria to discern what is good or desirable, the other denying that they have a say on these matters. A brief recapitulation of the chapter serves as a conclusion.

Turning to the Affective: A New Direction for Political Thought Since the beginning of the new century, an affective turn can be discerned in the social sciences and the humanities – one that runs parallel to the rapid development of neurobiology and has ended up leaving its trace in popular culture,

Political Affects: The Neuroscientific Age 17

where new representations of the intricate relations between affect and behavior, as well as body and mind, have emerged. This shift entails a rebuke to rationalist accounts of human behavior and decision-making, which have dominated the Western epistemological tradition, thus subjugating passions to reason. Unsurprisingly, one of the most common metaphors employed for describing the relations between reason and emotions is that of master and slave, i.e. reason as charged with the task of repressing and controlling the dangerous impulses of emotion. We think, therefore we are – free of sensations and feelings. For Elizabeth Grosz, a recurrent ‘somatophobia’ can thus be discerned in Western thought, at least as far as back as Plato (Grosz 1999). Such hierarchical dualism, not only separating but also placing reason above emotions, helps to explain why political philosophy is linked still today to the superiority of reason over affect. Passions are taken not just as a hindrance to reason, but also as the basis of intellectually inferior and socially irresponsible attitudes (Freeden 2013, 85). The affective turn can then be seen as a belated reaction against an aggressive hyper-rationalism that has downplayed the emotional dimension of human existence in the past. How to make sense of this? There is, to begin with, the preponderance of a reductionist epistemology in the social sciences, namely that of rational choice – whose foundations can be found in the neoclassical economic theories before Anthony Downs systematized it back in 1957 (Downs 1997). To a great extent, the success of such paradigm owes much to the methodological ease it offers, as opposed to the epistemological complications that accompany emotions: they are elusive, hard to observe, and harder to measure. Furthermore, as the new interest in affects is also a return to the material and the corporeal, it can be seen as a reaction against the long reign of poststructuralism and its idea that human subjectivity is almost exclusively made up of language or discourse (Terada 2001). Pinker’s The Blank Slate symbolizes the moment in which anti-constructivism gained public ground, defending the idea that there is a universal human nature with innate features that interacts with the environment and culture – instead of us being infinitely plastic creatures shaped by culture alone (see Pinker 2003). And finally, there is the perverse influence of the Enlightenment project, as it was somehow assumed that modernization and public education would diminish the impact of affects in the political process, thus allowing reason to take the lead in democratic decision-making. A hurried conclusion, to be sure. Finally, as Demertzis (2013, 1) has pointed out, passions are hard to integrate in the neutralprocedural conception of politics, Habermas-wise, that has been calling the shots in normative theory in the last decades. It goes without saying that this affective turn does have precedents in the Western tradition (see Solomon 2008). David Hume proclaimed reason to be a slave to passions, Adam Smith emphasized the role of ‘moral sentiments’ in human behavior, and Spinoza rebelled against Cartesian dualism. Later on, thinkers such as Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger or Sartre understood the centrality of

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affects – in the form of passions, moods or sensations – for human experience, not to mention the influence of psychoanalysis and its complex view of the human psyche. All of which was, somehow, already present in Greek theatre: human affects have always been a persistent shadow of reason. That said, the current rise of emotions as a scientific object exhibits a new intensity and shows a number of distinctive features. It is markedly multidisciplinary: apart from the social sciences and the humanities, valuable contributions are made by neurology, psychology, and economics (see Damasio 1994; Elster 1999; Forgas 2000; Stets & Turner 2006; Lewis et al. 2008; Kingston and Ferry 2008; Nussbaum 2001; Barbalet 2002). Actually, this revival owes much to the impact of neurosciences, which have provided new evidence of those brain processes linked to the production of emotions and, more generally, stressed the preconscious activity that underpins our affective life. Selim Berker has written that the first decade of this century will come to be known as “the age of the magnetic resonance” (Berker 2009, 293), whereas Cass Sunstein points to its practical consequences when he anticipates that it will be that of “behavioral economics and psychology” (Sunstein 2016, 1). As we shall see later, this does not mean that the news provided by neurologists must be accepted as such on the other side of the ‘two cultures’ divide. Yet it would be equally absurd to deny that psychology and the neurosciences have put emotions back on the table and their contributions cannot be ignored. Rather, they must be weighed and discussed. Mostly, the spectacular rise of neurosciences suggest that intellectual pioneers such as Nietzsche or Hume got it mostly right when they cast doubts on human rationality. It looks like humans are more dependent than expected on passions, feelings, the unconscious or whichever term we employ to describe that aspect of human subjectivity that cannot be consciously controlled – at least, not without some effort. Therefore, it looks like an epistemological transition is taking place from the ideal self of the Enlightenment, conceived as a rational being, to the actual self described by the affective turn: an entity conditioned by a number of affective influences of different kind, whose rational method for processing information is also distorted by a number of biases and cognitive shortcomings. In short, we would have ceased to be sovereign agents, as the self cannot exert full control of its own agency (see Krause 2011; 2015). Properly speaking, this is not a novelty – just a new way of formulating an old suspicion about human limitations. As it happens, the political implications of psychology’s findings, which are in fact breathing new life into the subfield of political psychology, run in two directions – because it is not only the epistemological foundations of liberalism that are threatened, but also those of Critical Theory (see Rosenberg 2014). On the one hand, it is becoming clear that most citizens lack an integrated or consistent view of politics and do not have the ability to understand and appraise political events, so that the latter are mostly approached through an emotional

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engagement and cognitive shortcuts. Yet, on the other hand, it cannot be simply assumed either that human beings are a tabula rasa on which any kind of content can be inscribed, since there actually exists an inner organization of subjectivity that conditions the way in which exogenous inputs are received. Moreover, social meanings are reconstructed by each individual according to their own experience. In sum, the affective turn in the social sciences entails an expansion of the latter’s scope, as their attention is now turned to feelings, memories, and materiality (Whetherell 2012, 2). And, despite the occasional protest on the part of old-school humanists, this turn should be welcomed – lest the anthropological foundations of social theories diverge too much from the descriptions provided by the experimental sciences. Between the hyper-rational individual described by the Cartesian-cum-Kantian dualism and the death of the subject announced by poststructuralism, a postsovereign subject in which reason and affect interact in intricate and subtle ways does look like a reasonable proposal. All the more since, according to an emerging consensus, emotions are not exactly antithetical to reason but a product of natural evolution that is to play a constructive role in human behavior and decisionmaking (see Evans and Cruse 2005).

Affected Selves: Understanding the Postsovereign Subject In what sense can we say that human beings are postsovereign subjects? For this claim to be sustained, affects must operate in a way that involves a limit to, or an influence on, cognitive processes. Needless to say, such constraint would in itself possess political implications, since the claim that citizens are rational should have to be qualified. This is not to say that such citizen would always behave irrationally – the relation between cognition and affect is a complex one. In fact, emotions cannot be removed from human subjectivity without turning the individual into some kind of zombie that lacks any motivation to pursue ends or express preferences. To speak of affected selves is to describe an intricate psychobiological complex that cannot be so easily reduced in neither direction: a matter of degrees rather than absolute categories. In any event, the “sovereign liberalism” that Judith Butler (2015) finds in the liberal tradition – making something of a strawman out of a current of thinking that includes David Hume – seems now untenable. To Butler, this sovereign liberalism inoculates the fiction that we can live and act as if we were not influenced by outer forces. On the contrary, we are, and affects are among those forces. “I am affected before I can say ‘I’”, she writes (Butler 2015, 2). Communitarian thinkers had said that much earlier, focusing on the cultural space that shapes us as we grow (see McIntyre 1981, Sandel 1982). This problem – that of the relation between the subject and her environment – has always been present in Western thought: “give shape” as opposed to “be given shape” (see Corlett 2014, 3391). A number of questions emerge in relation to this opposition: about

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individual autonomy, preconscious influences, somatic impulses, and the role of language. Robert Solomon summarizes them: How should we think about emotion – as intrusive, as essential to our rationality, as constitutive of meaning, as dangerous, as dispensable, as an excuse for irresponsibility, or as a mode of responsibility? Which of the evident aspects of emotion – that is, the various sensory, physiological, behavioural, cognitive, and social phenomena that typically correspond with an emotion – should we take to be essential? (Solomon 2008, 10) To be sure, emotions can be defined in different ways – mostly depending on the role cognition is assigned to. Yet its main feature cannot be excluded, namely, that they take place without the participation of our will, in a spontaneous or automatic fashion and as a response to an outer event, be it real or imagined. Thus, Klaus Scherer (2005) defines affect as an episode of recruitment of mental and somatic resources to cope with a stimulus event subjectively appraised as being relevant to the individual, whereas Antonio Damasio (1994) emphasizes how an evaluative mental process combines with dispositional answers to the latter which result in a corporeal emotional state. But not all affects are the same – it is useful to make some distinctions among them. Above all, a distinction should be made between that dimension of our affective life that is more impulsive and indeterminate, and that which interacts with language and the production of meaning. Thompson and Hogget (2012, 2–3) do just that, differentiating between affect (as the most unconscious and material dimension of human feeling, e.g. anxiety) and emotion (a more conscious feeling that relates to mental states which can be expressed through language, e.g. jealousy). Within the broad category of emotions there also exist feelings (like love or hate), which have a longer duration – a difference that can also be formulated as that between a state and a disposition (Frijda 2008, 73). Whereas emotions are more impersonal and instinctive, feelings are more complex and personalized, as they are more directly connected to personal memories and social norms. On their part, passions are non-controllable emotions, or emotions that are less elaborate than feelings or at least more prone to be expressed through unexpected outbursts. Two supplementary categories are those of moods (passing or durable, belonging to our affective life but hardly covered by the terms above) and sensations (corporeal or sensorial stimulus coming from the outside that can elicit affective responses). This conceptual exuberance notwithstanding, words like ‘affect’ or ‘emotion’ are commonly used in a broad sense. Often, too, passions are conflated with emotions. And it should be not overlooked the fact that below these typologies lies a complex reality that often do not produce single emotions, but rather set of emotions: guilt can be related to fear, pain with shame or rage, hate with envy or

Political Affects: The Neuroscientific Age 21

disgust (Ben-Ze’ev 2001, 5). As psychoanalysis reminds us, emotions are ambivalent and sometimes a given object can elicit apparently antithetical feelings: hate can hide love or desire, love can contain rancour. The same applies, of course, to political emotions. Let us take class relations, wherein feelings of resentment can be related to envy but also to emulation impulses, which in turn can encompass a certain degree of admiration hidden under the appearance of rage or hatred. In sum, words and typologies can take us here only so far, as affective experiences do not always translate into neatly separate categories. On the other hand, emotions have a material basis insofar as their origin lies in brain activity. Thus, it makes sense to speak of an emotional brain, but not of a disembodied reason that operates independently of affects – reason being, after all, a conscious physiological process. How does emotion relate to cognition? To which extent are they biologically determined? The danger, at this point, lies in a reductionist view that sees neuronal processes as corresponding to mental states. Although emotions are linked to patterns of brain and visceral activity, it has not yet been demonstrated that specific emotional states match particular brain signals (Larsen et al. 2008). Likewise, there is still no methodological path that allows us to establish the relation between affect, cognition, and our subjective experience of them (Brader and Marcus 2013, 166). However, it makes no sense to go from one monism (reason without affects) to another (affects without reason). Likewise, a rigid dualism that places reason above affect or vice versa should also be discouraged. Their relation is complex and dynamic and not easily put in hierarchical terms. The key notion in this respect is that of appraisal, which describes the operation by which a stimulus is invested with affected value and personal meaning (Lazarus 1991). Such processes are not uniform: some will be automatic, while others involve a greater evaluative (and conscious) activity (see Frijda 2008). Martha Nussbaum (2001) has even defined emotions as a particular type of judgment, thus claiming that emotions possess a strong cognitive dimension. In other words, we know through emotions. To some thinkers, therefore, emotions are rational – as they provide a functionally adequate answer to outside events or stimuli (see De Sousa 1987; Solomon 2004). Certainly, it would make no evolutionary sense for emotions not to be adaptive. However, this approach risks overlooking how emotions, and passions among them, can also lead us astray – pushing us towards self-harming decisions and behaviours. Politically, this applies whenever the best choice is left aside for affective reasons, i.e. when a passion blinds our judgment or hinders a careful consideration of the arguments at play in a given situation. In fact, the rational qualities of emotions should not be considered in isolation, but as compared to the cognitive appraisal that results from more self-aware and deliberative processes (Fisch 2008). Most likely, reason and emotion are complementary systems that operate alternatively in our brain insofar as decisionmaking is concerned: one is slow and accurate, the other fast but imprecise. As Kahneman has suggested, emotion is now granted a greater role in our view of

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decision making – although it should also be recognized that emotions can have prolonged effects as the individual reflect afterwards upon its own emotional states (Kahneman 2003; Just, Crigler, and Buhr 1999). Yet a different way of seeing this dialectic entails a rejection of any opposition between reason and the lack thereof, claiming instead that the symbolic logic of passions and the analytic logic of reasons do different things (Bodei 2013, 18). Another way of explaining how emotions influence behavior is Jon Elster’s, for whom the latter create ‘action tendencies’, i.e. they impel us to behave in some way. Irrespective of whether this tendency is resisted or accepted, they are more than simple dispositions, namely, “forms of incipient behavior rather than mere potential for behavior” (Elster 1999, 147). As they generate an urgency, they influence the production of beliefs: rather than incurring on the cost of compiling information, we might prefer to surrender to this tendency, thus creating a low quality belief. If the decision happens to be relevant, such emotional influence can prevent us from acquiring the information that we need for making the right decision. Along these lines, Lodge and Taber (2000) speak of a “hot cognition” process according to which new information is automatically evaluated by the individual in an affective way – insofar as implicit attitudes cannot be deactivated, a “cold” deliberation would never take place. Unsurprisingly, as the information that fits our beliefs makes us feel better, the one that contradicts them is processed more slowly. For proponents of the theory of affective intelligence, such new information will only be welcomed whenever circumstances – from a terrorist attack to an economic recession – disorganize our previous view of reality (see Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen 2000). Under ordinary circumstances, though, our ‘motivated reasoning’ unavoidably distorts the processing of information. As Kahneman (2003)puts it, our perception is already “saturated” by emotions – the latter tend to guide our cognitive evaluation. To put it bluntly, affected selves see the world through an affected perception. Believing is seeing. Two more facets of the postsovereign subject should be mentioned, as they are politically relevant. On the one hand, human beings are sensitive to the way in which political issues are presented to them: issue framing and storytelling facilitate an affective engagement with reality as presented by particular actors or media (see Westen 2007; Hammack and Pilecki 2012). On the other, there is moral tribalism as explained by modern theories of moral sentiments, which see the human tendency to enjoy intra-group cohesion and engage in inter-group enmity as a result of natural evolution. Morality would then be a psychological adaptation that facilitates cooperation among members of a group, the same mechanism hindering cooperation with members of other groups: morality binds and blinds (see Haidt 2001; 2012; Tangney et al. 2007; Greene 2013). This tribal dimension has yet another expression in the hypothesis that peer-pressure and the willingness to conform to our social environment exerts a considerable influence on political behavior – thus the idea of ‘social citizens’ that receives information from their group and base their political decision on the decision of others (see

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Sinclair 2012). So much for personal autonomy! Yet, as has been recently argued, this very ‘hyper-sociality’ may be the key to understanding the apparent flaws of reason from an interactionist perspective, as the most important thing is not to be ‘right’ but to cooperate efficiently with others (see Mercier and Sperber 2017). Despite the uncertainties that still surround the relation between cognition and affect, then, there is no doubt that human beings should not be seen just as rational beings that make deliberate decisions according to the available information after a careful consideration of their own interests. The picture that emerges from the affective turn is at the same time more nuanced and interesting. It is the picture of an affected self that, not lacking in cognitive resources, does not enjoy a full sovereignty due to a number of emotional influences from which it may not even be aware. This condition can be summarized by saying that our perception of reality (including political reality), as well as our thinking itself, are ‘motivated’ by our feelings, which in turn correlates with an emotional attachment to a social group or a set of beliefs.

From Neuroscience to Passions: The Paradox of the Postsovereign Subject Whereas the conception of the self that emerges from contemporary neurosciences and psychology can be summarized in the idea that we are actually postsovereign subjects, its very formulation entails a paradox – one that can be fruitfully explored to protect personal autonomy from the consequences of the affective turn. It is a simple one, namely, that a subject who is able to find out – or to acknowledge – that the self does not enjoy the full sovereignty that she thought it had might actually not be losing but rather acquiring sovereignty. While her relative impotence was wrongly experienced as a full potency, it is now possible to refine that agency by acknowledging its limitations. In a self-reflective individual, this should lead to more autonomy. A precondition for this qualified personal autonomy is the belief that individuals can behave as moral agents, i.e. that they do not just bear the effects of neuronal activity. In this regard, neuroscientific findings must be carefully weighed, lest we conflate neuronal flashes with subjective appraisals. Too many questions remain unanswered: about consciousness, about the relation between mental states and subjective experiences, about the causal trajectory that goes from stimuli to brain processes to individual actions, about the role of language and culture in modelling or shaping affective responses. A fundamental objection can thus be formulated against the neuroscientific view of human behavior: an emphasis in the tomographic observation of the brain can easily lead to a ‘connectionism’ that deprives social phenomena of their autonomy and produces a new dualism wherein the brain takes the place of the mind (Gunnell 2007, 717 and 724). Let us remember the methodological issues at play: mental states are not directly accessible and it remains unfeasible to establish a direct correlation

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between neuronal activity and the phenomenological experiences of thinking, feeling, desiring, appraising (Connolly 2002, 6). So far, there remains an insurmountable gap between outer observations and individual experiences. This is a clear expression of the so-called ‘mind–body problem’ that deals with the physicality of the brain vis-à-vis the seeming non-physicality of mental representations (see Westphal 2016). Furthermore, affects themselves do not get affected. As Sartre cautioned, it would be a mistake to make a purely materialistic interpretation of emotions, since the emotion does not exist just as a corporeal phenomenon: a body cannot confer meaning to its own manifestations (Sartre 2001). To make sense of this we need to take language and its representations into account, i.e. the complex array of meanings and symbols that contemporary affect theory tends to leave aside. Margaret Whetherell is right: “Human affect is inextricably linked with meaningmaking and with the semiotic (broadly defined) and the discursive. It is futile to try to pull them apart” (Whetherell 2012, 20). Both, language and physiology, must thus be considered if individual behavior is to be explained. A good example of their complex interaction is that of Holocaust survivors, who, upon hearing the word itself, experience a multilayered reaction: on the one hand, it calls on memories in the higher register, that of language; on the other, it activated the visceral dimension of the trauma, an intense set of feelings with physical manifestations in the muscles, the guts, the skin (Connolly 2002, 35). Admittedly, the rise of neurosciences and the exhaustion of the poststructuralist paradigm have led to an emphasis in the cerebral aspect of affect. However, as Whetherell (2012, 62) has warned, a more careful attention to the literature shows how affect possesses conscious and unconscious, as well as corporeal and cognitive, elements – all of which are intertwined in complex ways. At the same time, much as there exist preconscious responses to external stimuli that are activated before any subjective appraisal can be made, this does not preclude a conscious evaluation following such automatic response. Moreover, a number of affective answers are activated by conscious perceptions, sensations and memories. In fact, the relevance of meaning for emotional reactions is expressed in their relative historical variability: the feeling of shame, for instance, is not activated by the same events in every society. Affect is thus an intricate and interactive assemblage of automatic, conscious and semi-conscious corporeal responses, subjective feelings, cognitive processes, the activation of neuronal circuits, verbal formulations and communicative signals. In other words, meaning and language count. And to isolate one of those factors as the key factor for affective production is, at least for the moment, unwarranted. A fine balance can be found in the work of Daniel Dennett (1995; 1996), who defends a non-reductionist materialism that is compatible with an evolutionary explanation of brain activity. For him, physical events may explain consciousness, but not the contents of consciousness. In other words, the latter constitute an ontologically separate dominion that cannot be reduced to physiological

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processes. Language is an emergent property of the species and it creates an autonomous sphere that in turn influences the human genotype, as the rising field of epigenetics comes to demonstrate (see Moore 2015). As psychobiological beings, humans are simultaneously anchored to their primary physiological reality and to the virtual reality of language. So that: It would be equally absurd to claim that there are human experiences foreign to the collective and individual imaginary (for instance, having experiences purely psychobiological or non-interpreted emotions), and to suggest, as deep psychology does, that every human experience answers to a logic of unconscious ghosts (or ghostly signifiers) […] that by themselves determine and articulate behavior inexorably. (Castro Nogueira et al. 2008, 535). That is partly why Selim Berker, in his work on the ethical implications of neurosciences, claims that the latter are ‘normatively insignificant’ (Berker 2009). In other words, their insights about how the brain seems to work when processing moral dilemmas – or, for that matter, making political decisions – do not contribute anything meaningful to the task of deciding how we should behave or decide. Berker criticizes the conclusions drawn by Joshua Greene and his colleagues, who, after examining the tomographical reading of brains confronted with distinct type of moral dilemmas, seem to react differently to them: whereas personal dilemmas activate emotional evaluative processes, impersonal dilemmas lead to cognitive appraisals (see Greene et al. 2001; 2004; 2008). This can be translated into the political: the more personal a topic feels, the more emotional our response to it will be. In any event, Greene suggests that a dual processing hypothesis can be deduced from such experimental evidence: deontological judgments would be grounded on emotional processes, whereas utilitarian judgments seem to be weighed in a more cognitive fashion. Utilitarianism beats deontology, the conclusion goes: ought is derived from is. Therefore, neuronal observation might indeed entail normative consequences. But why should it? Leaving methodological queries aside, a description of how the physiology that underlies the processing of moral dilemmas works cannot replace the search for rules able to ground our response to them. Or perhaps there is a moral truth that is independent from, and prior to, intersubjective moral assessments? For Berker, neurosciences may give us clues about where to look at when trying to clarify the features of social life to which each of our moral faculties are trying to respond – but neuroscientific insights do not play any role after this has been cleared up (Berker 2009, 328). In sum: neurosciences should not be granted any normative role, because describing actual mental processes has nothing to do with prescribing moral rules or reflecting upon the good life. And the same goes for politics: emotions cannot decide what is to be made.

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Still, neuroscience can be helpful when elucidating the relation between outer stimuli, brain reactions and moral behavior. Physiological processes do have a somatic impact and cannot be so happily discarded as irrelevant to moral life. Mostly, brain processes can set limits to how far or how fast can morality advance in preventing or weakening undesirable behavior. Such limits can be temporary or final, depending on how plastic the species turns out to be. Yet neurosciences can help us to understand a number of moral and political phenomena. It is hard to underestimate the relevance of moral tribalism in explaining ethnic nationalism or the appeal of the people-versus-elite narrative in populism, for instance. Given that group identification plays such a commanding role in organizing human perceptions, including individual responses to the messages conveyed by news outlets (see Taber 2013), an understanding of the psychological-cum-affective basis of such propensity may help to shed new light on populist strategies. It would also be unwise to ignore the importance of peer pressure, the way in which prejudices or deeply seated social norms colour our perception of events, or the fact that we confirm our beliefs more easily than we correct them. In sum, Theories such as affective intelligence, motivated reasoning or dual processing should thus belong to the toolbox of the social scientist devoted to the study of populism (see Neuman et al. 2007). However, none of this forces us to suppress the normative dimension of moral and political reasoning. Rather, these limitations entail that some normative strategies may be less effective than others due to the strength of affective factors and/or rational shortcomings. Some normative projects, therefore, might be more difficult to implement than others. At the same time, this knowledge may help to devise effective strategies to foster them. Short of possessing normative value, then, neuroscientific descriptions are relevant for any theoretical attempt to reformulate individual autonomy after the affective turn. How so? Let us go back to the paradox of the postsovereign subject: those who become aware of their affective biases and rational flaws can be said to be more autonomous than those who continue to ignore them. Albeit limited, this capacity for self-reflection is the most promising ground for defending personal autonomy – and, for that matter, the autonomy of politics – in the neuroscientific age. There is no better standpoint for the reconstruction of individual autonomy: as the latter cannot be taken as a given, the conditions under which it can be exercised must be empirically mapped and subsequently integrated into normative theory. The ultimate goal is to make citizens aware of their own cognitive and affective biases, so that they can reflect upon them when taking decisions and appraising political phenomena.

Conclusion This chapter has argued that as emotions are back in politics in the aftermath of the Great Recession, they cannot be approached without taking into account the insights resulting from the affective turn that has been taking place in the social

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sciences and the humanities for some years now. And the same goes for those political phenomena most explicitly driven by human passions, as is the case with populism – all the more since populist theories often claim that political emotions must be put at the core of democratic life. The affective turn is partly a reaction to the exhaustion of poststructuralism, but also a response to the spectacular development of neurosciences. Tomographic techniques for observing the brain have provided an unprecedented access to those neuronal operations where emotional responses are originated. Much is yet to be known, but there is a growing consensus around the idea that human beings are less rational than previously assumed, or else that reason operates not so rationally after all. We are affected selves, postsovereign subjects that decide and behave through complex intertwining of cognitive and affective processes that relate to each other in multifarious, dynamic and ambiguous ways. Far from being a disappointment to the Western aspiration to rationality, though, this realization constitutes a step forward in the much-rational self-problematization of the human subject. Such is the paradox of the postsovereign subject: as we grow aware of our emotional biases, we know ourselves better, thus gaining autonomy instead of losing it. It goes without saying that this reconstruction of personal autonomy, which goes hand in hand with the defence of the autonomy of politics, requires avoiding the reductionist trap that conflates emotional responses with brain reactions. Instead, the link between affects and meaning must be emphasized, as the former rarely operate with exclusion of the latter. But whereas normative claims must not be replaced by the mere description of brain reactions to moral or political quandaries, neuronal insights are not a mere curiosity either: they must be taken seriously if social and political phenomena, populism among them, are to be better understood.

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Corlett, W. (2014). Self and the other. In M. T. Gibbon (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 3382–3392. Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam. De Sousa, R. (1987). The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Demertzis, N. (2013). Introduction: Theorizing the emotions–politics nexus. In N. Demertzis (ed.) Emotions in Politics. The Affect Dimension in Political Tension, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1–16. Dennett, D. (1995). Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. New York: Touchstone. Dennett, D. (1996). Kinds of Minds. New York: Basic Books. Downs, A. (1997). An Economic Theory of Democracy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Elster, J. (1999). Strong Feelings: Emotion, Addiction, and Human Behavior. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Evans, D. and Cruse, P. (2005). Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fisch, A. (2008). Social functions of emotion. In Lewis et al. (eds.) Handbook of Emotions, New York: Guilford Press, 456–470. Forgas, J. P. (2000). Feeling and Thinking: The Role of Affect in Social Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Freeden, M. (2013). The Political Theory of Political Thinking. The Anatomy of a Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Oxford. Frijda, N. (2008). The psychologists’ point of view. In Lewis et al. (eds.) Handbook of Emotions, New York: Guilford Press, 68–87. Greco, M. and Stenner, P. (2008). Emotions: A Social Science Reader. London: Routledge. Greene, J., Sommerville, B., Nystrom, L., Darley, J., and Cohen, J. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science, 293, 2105–2108. Greene, J., Nystrom, L., Engell, A., Darley, J., and Cohen, J. (2004). The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron, 44, 389–400. Greene, J., Morelli, S., Lowenberg, K., Nystrom, L., and Cohen, J. (2008). Cognitive load selectively interferes with utilitarian moral judgment. Cognition, 107, 1144–1154. Greene, J: (2013). Moral Tribes. Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. London: Atlantic Books. Grosz, E. (1999). Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Gunnell, J. (2007). Are we losing our minds? Cognitive science and the study of politics. Political Theory, 35(6), 704–731. Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgement. Psychological Review, 108(4), 2001, 814–834. Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind. Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York & London: Penguin. Hammack, P. and Pilecki, A. (2012). Narrative as a root metaphor for political psychology. Political Psychology, 33(1), 75–103. Hessel, S. (2011). Time for Outrage: Indignez-Vous!New York: Twelve. Just, M., Crigler, A., Buhr, T. (1999). Voice, substance, and cynicism in campaign media. Political Communication, 1999, 16(1), 25–44. Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgement and choice: Mapping bounded rationality. American Psychologist, 58, 697–720. Kingston, R. and Ferry, L. (eds.) (2008). Bringing the Passions Back In: The Emotions in Political Philosophy, Vancouver: UBC Press.

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Kirman, A., Livet, P., and Teschl, M. (2010). Rationality and emotions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 365, 215–219. Krause, S. (2011). Bodies in action: Corporeal agency and democratic politics. Political Theory, 39(3), 299–324. Krause, S. (2015). Freedom Beyond Sovereignty. Reconstructing Liberal Individualism, Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press. Larsen, J., Berntson, G., Poehlman, K., Ito, T., and Cacioppo, J. (2008). The psychophysiology of emotion. In Lewis et al. (eds.) Handbook of Emotions, New York: Guilford Press, 180–195. Lazarus, R. (1991). Emotion and Adaptation, New York: Oxford University Press. Lewis, M., Haviland-Jones, J., and Barrett, L. (eds.) (2008). Handbook of Emotions, New York: Guilford Press. Lodge, M. and Taber, C. (2000). Three steps toward a theory of motivated political reasoning. In A. Lupia, M. McCubbins and S. Popkin (eds.), Elements of Reason: Cognition, Choice, and the Bounds of Rationality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 183–213. Lodge, M. and Taber, C. (2013). The Rationalizing Voter. New York: Cambridge University Press. Marcus, G., Neuman, R., and MacKuen, M. (2000). Affective Intelligence and Political Judgement. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McIntyre, A. (1981). After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. London: Duckworth. Mercier, H. and Sperber, D. (2017). The Enigma of Reason. A New Theory of Human Understanding. London: Allen Lane. Moore, D. (2015). The Developing Genome. An Introduction to Behavioral Epigenetics. New York: Oxford University Press. Neuman, R. G.Marcus, Crigler, A., and MacKuen, M. (eds.) (2007). The Affect Effect: Dynamics of Emotion in Political Thinking and Behavior. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Nussbaum, M. (2001). Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pinker, S. (2003). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. London: Penguin. Rosenberg, S. (2014). Political psychology. In M. T. Gibbon (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2792–2793. Sandel, M. (1982). Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sartre, J.-P. (2001). Sketch for a Theory of Emotions. London: Routledge. Scherer, K. (2005). Unconscious process in emotion. The bulk of the iceberg. In L. Barrett et al. (eds.), Emotion and Consciousness, New York: Guilford, 312–334. Sinclair, B. (2012). The Social Citizen. Peer Networks and Political Behavior. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press. Stets. J. and Turner, J. (eds.) (2006). The Handbook of Sociology of Emotions. New York: Springer. Solomon, R. (2004). Not Passion’s Slave. New York: Oxford University Press. Solomon, R. (2008). The philosophy of emotions. In Lewis et al. (eds.), Handbook of Emotions, New York: Guilford Press, 3–16. Sunstein, C. (2016). The Ethics of Influence. Government in the Age of Behavioral Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taber, C. S. (2013). Political cognition and public opinion. In R. Shapiro and L. Jacobs (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 368–383.

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2 POPULISMS AND EMOTIONS1 Nicolas Demertzis

Introduction Since late 1960s almost every single publication on political populism (not to be equated with cultural populism) refers to its conceptual elusiveness. In spite of its being an “elusive political animal” (Fieschi 2004, 237), populism ranks among the most fashionable and, concurrently, most essentially contested concepts in the social sciences. It is indicative that in 2016, the number of searches for the word ‘populism’ documented on Google Trends has increased by a factor of five, compared to its average in 2012–2015 (Guiso et al. 2017). Throughout various waves of scholarship (Pappas 2016; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017, 2–4), political populism has been analysed mainly from the supply-side. It is scrutinized in terms of actors, organization, style, consequences, and normative implications (Pappas 2016; Rooduijn 2014). Much research points to official political discourse and as soon as the lion’s share of the research has focused on the definition, on the causes for its emergence and on the impact of political populism on public affairs, less prominent in the literature are measurements of populist attitudes at the individual level. As the “empirical studies of populist attitudes are still in their infancy” (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017, 99), researchers from either side of the Atlantic (e.g. Hawkins et al. 2012; Akkerman et al. 2014; Andreadis et al. 2016; Bruno et al. forthcoming) have recently tested different scales of populist outlooks in an effort to tap the essentials of the phenomenon at the micro level (peoplecentrism, anti-elitism, ‘us and them’ dichotomy). As a matter of fact, even less under-laboured are the emotional underpinnings of political populism. 1

This chapter is a further development of my previous work Demertzis, N. (2006). Emotions and populism. In Emotion, Politics and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 103–122.

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This chapter tries to disentangle these underpinnings through a political sociology of emotion approach. I will (a) discuss thematizations of the affective dimensions of political populism; and (b) refer to the emotion itself as an equally elusive concept employed in the apprehension of the emotions-politics nexus, on the one hand, and to the concomitant concept of political emotions, on the other. The chapter will focus on particular emotions that have been used or could be engaged in the understanding of the affective properties of populisms. As a way of definitional statement, I distance myself from the mainstream ideational definition in favour of a ‘schematic’ conception. Although it is true that populism has an inherent incapacity to stand alone outside an ideological host vessel (Fieschi 2004, 237) and that its ‘chameleonic’, ‘symbiotic’, ‘parasitic’, and ‘articulating’ nature makes that it goes always along with other political ideologies than the other way around, it seems to me that this does not render it an ideology in itselfsoft, thin-centred or otherwise. Acknowledging populisms’ lack of coherence and continuity in terms of values, policies, and programs (Stavrakakis et al. 2016, 4), I see it as an orienting schema – i.e. as a mental structure by which individuals represent the political world and assimilate new information from their political environment. The populist schema has two principal slots through which individuals orient meaningfully themselves towards the political field: ‘the people’, and the division of society between two main power blocs. It is this schema which is likely to attach to different ideologies, contexts and conjunctures. Notwithstanding its roots in Kant and Bergson, the way I use ‘schema’ in this chapter draws not only from cognitive psychology, where it is registered as a perceptual, cognitive and emotive structure (Arbid 1985; Davou 2000, 288–295), but also from Bourdieu’s (1976) habitus which consists of schemata of perception, cognition and practice that make possible the interplay of internalization and externalization of reality in social interaction.2 In this respect, the populist schema as an attribute of thinking and feeling individuals is located primarily at the demand side of the populist phenomenon.

Emotionally Analysing Populism Populism can be studied jointly or not as a political discourse, as an ideology, as a movement, as a regime, as a party, as a code or a syndrome, as a mentality, as political cognitive schema, as a dimension of political culture. In one way or another, throughout all phases of its study ever since late 1960s, many interpretations of populism embrace the affective factor while pointing to the charismatic leadership, to romantic folkish appeals, anti-elite stance and the like. 2

Influenced by the notion of populist Zeitgeist (Mudde 2004), Tarchi (2016) construes populism as ubiquitous phenomenon in today’s representation politics and defines it as distinctive mentality, as a specific forma mentis, connected to a vision of the social order based on a belief in the innate virtues of the people whose primacy is viewed as the source of legitimacy of governmental activity and of any other political action what so ever.

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Analytically, however, the affective dimension had been mainly studied in a disguised or implicit way since, well before and yet after the emotional turn in the social sciences, much more attention has been given to the ideological and discursive aspects of populism, to its organizational forms, to the structural drivers for its appearance, and of course to its very definition. Oftentimes, then, emotions and feelings in its analysis are used in a metonymic way. Namely, the analysis of populism in general and each case study are carried out through the use of general affective categories and not through the interpretation and explanation of concrete emotions or sentiments. The concrete and particular emotions are hidden beneath generalities such as ‘passion’, ‘affect’, and ‘populist sentiment’ (e.g. Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017, 27, 35–6, 59, 102, 104, 108, 111). For example, it has been argued that the ‘discontent’ of the farmers and lower middle class caused by the enforcement of economic modernization, as well as the ‘antipathy’ and ‘alienation’ they felt towards the power elites (Hennessy 1969, 29, 46; Taggart 2000, 43) contributed to the appearance of North American and Latin American populism. Also, ‘frustration’ caused by neoliberal fiscal policies is said to foster contemporary European populist demands (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017, 38, 40, 102) the analysis of which should account for their “affective investment” (Stavrakakis, in De Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017, 7).3 But ‘discontent’, ‘alienation’, ‘frustration’, ‘antipathy’, and ‘affective investment’ are general affective categories which may cover a wide range of specific emotions such as hatred, rage, envy, indignation, and sorrow. Likewise, in the interpretation of the Russian populism (but not restricted to it) the romantic idealization of the peasant community by the intellectuals and the myth of ‘the people’ are referred to as being central analytic categories (e.g. Walicki 1969, 79; Taggart 2000, 46). However, idealization and mythologization are mechanisms producing imaginary constructions, which only indirectly refer to ‘real’ feelings, which actually are their ‘raw material’: joy, hope, nostalgia, admiration, pride, exultation, etc. The same holds with the logic of equivalence, advocated by Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 130), according to which the complexity of societal-class differences is simplified into two antagonistic camps with the signifier ‘the people’ to be the nodal point which discursively organizes the populist space. Apparently, a lot of emotional energy is involved in this process but yet again the emphasis is placed on the description of the identification mechanisms and not on the concomitant feelings supporting them. 3

Rightly arguing against the ideational definition of populism, by promoting their discursive approach which, in their account, allows taking into consideration more thoroughly populism’s crucial strategic dimensions as well as its material, performative and affective dimensions and investments, De Cleen and Stavrakakis (2017) are actually calling for a linking of their approach to that of the (political) sociology of emotions. The likelihood is that the discursive analysis of particular populisms would be enhanced by the analysis of particular emotions.

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Apart from the metonymic there are also incomplete uses of the emotions in the analysis of political populism. A case in point is the ‘mythical heartland’, which Taggart (2000, 95–8, 117) considers as a sine qua non of every populism. But apart from its imaginary substance, Taggart does not clarify the affective content of this notion. Another example is the notion of the ‘populist mood’ presented by Canovan (1999) as a fundamental ingredient of populist movements. She argues that populist politics cannot but be based on ‘heightened emotions’ for charismatic leaders, ‘enthusiasm’ and spontaneity. This is so not only for the historical cases of reactionary populism (Nazism, Bonapartism, etc.), but also for the ‘healthy’ populisms which spring in western democracies and aim at the ‘redemptive revival’ of politics, beyond the managerial and pragmatic style of post-democratic governance. But apart from this general call, Canovan does not elaborate the populist emotional ‘mood’ any further. At any rate, then, the emotive underpinnings of populism(s) cannot be ignored. Speaking in terms of movement activity, Minogue (1969, 197) was crystal clear: “to understand the (populist) movement is to discover the feelings which moved people”. As a form of political thought, it has been recently argued that populism is “no doubt based more on emotional inputs than on rational considerations” (Tarchi 2016, 12). Why then emotions have been underlaboured for a long time in the analysis of populism? For one thing, it seems to me that this is due to the fact that many scholars, especially when cross national comparisons were at stake, have focused themselves on the macro than on the micro level of analysis. Micro-analytical methods involve surveys, in depth interviews, ethnography, discourse analysis, and so on. On the contrary, macro-level analysis involves comparative tools of historical sociology and structural-functional categories that are likely to overwhelm the allegedly individual-based emotions elicited in political populist phenomena. Nevertheless, the need to bridge the macro and the micro level of analysis has been highlighted in the post-parsonian social theory and political sociology (Giddens 1984, 139–144) and thereafter the study of populism should follow the same research line. More so as the sociological and the socio-psychological analysis of emotions inherently involves the linkage between the social action and social structure (Barbalet 1998, 4). Another major reason for the misconception of emotions in the analysis of populism is the prevalence of an ‘emotions-proof’ style of political sociological research, a symptom, as it were, of the ‘non-emotions period of sociology’ (Barbalet 1998, 19). The ‘rationalist’ theorizing of political affairs (be it political change, voting, opinionating, decision making, and so on) has drawn heavily from the Western ideal of reason vis-á-vis passion, according to which individuals and humanity alike will progress to a better world if they rely on reason and interest rationality (Marcus 2003). In a nutshell, democracy was thought to be sustained when reason beats passion. However, in parallel to the rational choice there has been the political culture paradigm according to which continuity and change in political systems and sub-systems are premised on the

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postulate of orientational variability; people engage in politics in different modalities through the interplay of cognitive, affective and evaluative predispositions (Almond and Verba 1963). Henceforth, the Michigan School underscored the affective dimension in electoral behaviour by the notion of ‘party identification’. Nevertheless, either paradigm was embedded into the intellectual climate of the ‘emotions-proof’ political research; consequently, the first exorcized emotion and affectivity altogether from the theorizing of political action, while the other treated emotion in a more or less metonymic way. ‘Affective orientations’ and ‘party identification’ served as sweeping categories for the accommodation of distinct emotions (for instance, pride, gratitude, joy, solidarity, enthusiasm, devotion, or loyalty). To a large extend, these shortcomings were resituated because in the meantime an ‘emotional’ or ‘affective turn’ (Turner and Stets 2005; Clough and Halley 2007; Hopkins et al. 2009) has been taking place since the mid-1990s, first on the western and later on the eastern side of the Atlantic and Australia. This turn, embedded itself in the much broader ‘cultural turn’ seems to engulf almost all major disciplines and sub-disciplines in the humanities and the social and political sciences. This turn has fundamentally altered the way the academic community conveys political analysis (Thompson and Hoggett 2012). It has contributed to the postulation that in all its modalities, that is, action, thought, discourse, rhetoric, institutional setting – be it contentious or consensual- politics is ultimately affective in nature. As the other of rationality, bringing emotions back into political analysis has been described as a return of the repressed (Goodwin et al. 2000). Consequently, what is currently of interest is how political sociologists and political psychologists are theorizing the politics-emotions nexus (Demertzis 2013). To put it differently, what matters now are the nature of the linkage and the blend of cognition and emotion in political action and thought in different time and space settings. In this respect, political structures (parties, governments, parliaments, trade unions, etc.) are interwoven with ‘structures of feeling’ which are procedural experiences of individuals and collectives understood as ‘not feeling against thought, but thought as felt and feeling as thought’ (Williams 1978, 132). The sociology of emotions and the emerging sub-field of the political sociology of emotions are primary drivers to this end and of course the analysis of populism could not remain untouched. Yet, before proceeding further we should stop here and make a number of necessary clarifications.

Definitional Conundrum and Political Emotions When analysing the emotionality of populism, scholars are facing a crucial and sometimes poignant problem with the very notion of emotion as with populism itself: definitional sloppiness. Within the relevant multidisciplinary scientific fields (psychology, psychoanalysis, political or social psychology, sociology, history, social anthropology, social and political neuroscience etc.) there is a great deal of

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divergence regarding the conceptualization of emotion and other cognate terms (sentiment, feeling, affect, passion, and so on). This is not just a conventional definition problem; this dispersion emanates from deep paradigmatic inconsistencies that call forth similar yet different classifications. The literature on this issue is vast and there is no need to go into unnecessary detail here. Despite the ‘emotionology’ or ‘feelology’ of our times, a generally accepted sociological definition of emotion and a universally accepted typology are not currently available. As yet there is no common thread to draw the innumerable emotional differentiations into a single definitional basket. Usually, in the sociology of emotions, the terms ‘emotion’, ‘affect’ or ‘sentiment’ – primarily – but also ‘passion’ and ‘feeling’ are used interchangeably (e.g. Turner and Stets 2005, 2). Albeit this may be congruent with sociologists’ research agendas, it compromises interdisciplinary communication and, additionally, it might be the reason why some of them are reluctant to offer a precise definition (Elster 1999, 241; Barbalet 1998, 26; Ben-Ze’ev 2000, 12). Nevertheless, among a good many sociologists there is a consensus over the assumption that emotions are not of autonomic and innate bio-physiological nature but mediate between physiological reactions and cultural norms. In this respect, and according to a ‘mild’ constructionist approach, it could be claimed that while emotions are not reducible to biology, not everything is a construction or is constructible with regards to emotionality. Beyond the biological substratum which simply cannot be denied, emotions themselves are extremely plastic, subject to historical variability (Thoits 1989, 319; Rosenwein 2001, 231). From this viewpoint, emotions are constructs which result from the collaboration between the body and society (Kemper 1991, 341). More important, however, is that many psychologists, political psychologists, and sociologists endorse a componential conceptualization according to which emotion is made of (1) an appraisal of an internal or external consequential stimulus, relational contexts and objects; (2) physiological changes and activation of key body systems leading to action readiness towards something; (3) overt, free or inhibited facial expression, voice and paralinguistic expressions; (4) a conscious subjective feeling; (5) an adaptation function to the environment; (6) culturally provided linguistic labels of one or more of the first three elements; and (7) socially constructed rules on what emotions should be experienced and expressed (Averill 1980; Thoits 1989, 318; Gordon 1990, 147, 151–152; Scherer 2009; Turner and Stets 2005, 9). Evidently, each of these components involves a huge variety of dimensions and disputed sub-issues such as the nature of the appraisal, the relation between emotion and motivation, motivation and action, the direct and indirect effects of emotion on political judgment and so on. Be noted that there is no need for all these seven elements to be present simultaneously for an emotion to exist or to be recognized by others. Nor is it necessary that all these elements are self-consciously experienced. In this

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respect, emotion can be viewed as a ‘multi-component phenomenon’ (Frijda 2004a, 60) and as an ‘open system’ (Gordon 1981). Coping with the emotions-politics nexus in general and the emotionality of populism in particular one is bound to come across political emotions. Political emotions are not a generically different kind of affective experience; they are emotions that play a crucial role in the formation of political reality. As a notion, they are used more often and systematically by political philosophers (Koziak 2000) than by political psychologists or sociologists. I define them as lasting affective predispositions supported reciprocally by the political and social norms of a given society, playing key role in the constitution of its political culture and the authoritative allocation of resources (Demertzis 2014). It goes without saying then that the affectivity of populism consists of political emotions. Here are some of their principal characteristics: (a) They should not necessarily be consciously felt; one may be thoroughly proud of one’s country while at the same time hating unconsciously other nationalities or one’s conscious anger against a political opponent or group may be symptomatic of suppressed shame (Scheff 1994). (b) They work out as high order ‘programmatic emotions’ (Barbalet 2006). (c) A political emotion may be ‘self-targeted’ or ‘introjected’ (e.g. shame, pride, fear, anxiety) or ‘other-targeted’ or ‘extrojected’ (e.g. admiration, compassion, anger). (d) As there are no exclusively political emotions but only figurations of the politics-emotions nexus any emotion may acquire political significance. (e) They are individual as well as collective or shared emotions. (f) Political emotions proper or ‘salient political emotions’ (Sokolon 2006, 181), should be differentiated from the ‘politically relevant emotions’, i.e. urges, reflex and highly transient affective experiences which in general play a marginal role in the longue durée of political realities and processes, like nationalism, populism, political participation, and the like.

Populism: An Emotionally Charged Phenomenon Conceptualizing emotions and political emotions is the necessary probe for analysing the emotionality of political populism within the intellectual milieu of the affective turn in social sciences and humanities. As already mentioned only recently the demand side of populism has started to be studied via attitude scales. Quantitative and qualitative research of the emotional dimensions of different versions of populism is even fresher and thus we know little about how emotions arise, at which objects (individuals, political issues, social institutions, etc.) they are directed and how they are linked to social and attitudinal predictors of populist support. What, however, marks this type of research is the operational analysis of distinct emotions and/or clusters of emotions rather than metonymic or vague conceptualizations as the ones referred to above. Although we know by now that in the context of particular populisms within particular national political cultures one can find a wide range of sentiments, emotions and feelings which, among

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others, consists of nostalgia, anxiety, helplessness, hatred, vindictiveness, ecstasy, hope, gratitude, pride, dignity, melancholy, anger, respect, trust, confidence, sympathy, fear, indignation, shame, and envy, we are just exploring ways to study them and trying to build up operative research agendas. This is more likely as emotions are not actually felt one at a time but in flow and in relation to each other. In the remainder of this chapter I shall analytically refer to some of these emotions.

Nostalgia Although it has been rarely researched and only recently attracted systematic scholarly interest within memory studies, one cannot but think of nostalgia as an important driver of populism (Kenny 2017). Defining it as a backward-looking, anti-liberal, reactionary ideology, Betz and Johnson (2004) argue that radical right-wing populism reflects a deep sense of nostalgia for the good old days. Another case in point is the so-called ‘Ostalgie’, the German designation for the inclination of many voters of far right-wing populist parties and movements to long for the communist period and the way of living in the former GDR. Echoing Richard Hofstadter’s liberalist understanding of American populism of the early 20th century, Minogue (1969, 206) spoke of nostalgia as an integral element of the ‘actual ideology of populism’. At the micro-level, nostalgia is thought of as a compensation for the difficulties of current socio-economic settings and therefore as an emotional-mnemonic means to build a sense of continuity in one’s own personal identity. Yet nostalgia is not confined to individual biographies but has collective properties as well. At the macro-political level, nostalgia addresses the myth of the golden age which is very often evoked in populist and nationalist politics in tandem with other myths, like the myth of unity (of the people, the nation, the race) and the saviour (charismatic leader) which are also related to nostalgia (Girardet 1997). What is called ‘historical nostalgia’ (Stern 1992; Scherke 2017), differentiated from ‘personal nostalgia’, is a longing for times or situations that one is to experience vicariously, i.e. not in the first hand but through group identifications or mediatized historical accounts. Thus the past is selectively reconstructed. Hence, nostalgia is not necessarily a short affective episode, but it can be experienced as a long last mood formed as a response to stressful situations. Understood in these terms, nostalgia is compatible with Taggart’s notion of ‘heartland’ as integral element of many populisms. Through selective memorization of the past nostalgia is likely to intertwine with melancholy; i.e. one longs for something that actually never existed in the first place. It is very likely linked to reactionary and conservative attitudes and right-wing populist outlooks. Nevertheless, as Kenny (2017) shows with regards to British politics, nostalgia is not an inherently negative emotion normatively associated with traditionalism, pessimism, and restorationism; it can be associated with anti-establishment left-wing populism that

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raises strong objections to liberal elites and the post-democratic arrangements escorted with some sort of utopian sensibility. What is called ‘radical’ and ‘reflexive’ nostalgia (Boym 2002) may be engaged with progressivism and leftwing populism; radical nostalgia claims the past as a means for remaking the present, not as a refuge, and hence radical nostalgics do not wish to return to the past, but instead use it to cope with perceived historical injustices. To the opposite, ‘restorative nostalgia’ makes people want to live within the past in terms of an ethnocratic exclusionary version of populist politics (Robinson 2016; Kenny 2017, 263). Thus contemporary populist currents can be understood in relation to these two socio-historical modalities of nostalgia.

Anger, Efficacy and Fear The ‘us and them’ slot referred to earlier renders populist politics an inherently adversarial and polarizing enterprise and therefore the populist schema cannot endure unless it is affectively supported. As a primary and basic attack emotion, anger overwhelms the anti-elitist/anti-establishment posture by motivating individuals to participate in politics in conventional and unconventional ways, populist or otherwise. It is commonly accepted that the 2008–9 economic crisis in the USA and many European countries has been triggering angry reactions among the disadvantaged citizens and the so-called losers of globalization and that, apart from the structural and socio-demographic factors, anger is a strong predictor of populist attitudes and support for populist parties (Magni 2017; Davou and Demertzis 2013). Anger is first and foremost a ‘power emotion’ in the sense that (a) it is triggered when individuals and/or collectives encounter physical or psychological restraints and blocks to need satisfaction or goal achievement (Ten Houten 2007, 39–40) and (b) it helps mobilization and resistance against deprivation of resources or unfavourable conditions (Schieman 2006). As long as anger is elicited in the political realm it becomes a political emotion the object of which is chiefly other persons rather than the ‘mankind’ in general (Aristotle 1991, 1378a), while its evaluative concern is always one’s own self-interest or one’s own fellows’ wellbeing. In political anger, then, agents are able to locate external accountability and blame others for the precarious, risky and threatening situations they face. Economic, political and intellectual elites and their representatives, as well as immigrants and refugees are identifiable targets of grievances and blame attribution for current misfortunes. It is argued that, “angry citizens appear to be more receptive to populist discourse” (Rico et al. 2017, 12); yet, political anger seems not to be enough for populist support; in tandem with appraisal theories of emotion, Magni (2017) has demonstrated that the effect of anger is conditional on (internal) political efficacy and that it is the angry and inefficacious citizens those who are mostly prone to support ‘anti-systemic’ populist parties and familiarize with populist discourses. Grown frustrated with mainstream actors

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politically powerless citizens within the system are expected to engage in politics offered a pathway to action outside the conventional party system. At first, Campbell et al. (1954, 187) defined political efficacy as “the feeling that individual political action does and can have impact upon the political process, i.e., that it is worthwhile to perform one’s own civic duties”. Eventually, researchers (Niemi et al. 1991) came to the conclusion that political efficacy actually had two dimensions: (1) internal efficacy, or self-efficacy, which refers to citizens’ feelings of personal competence “to understand and to participate effectively in politics”; (2) external efficacy, which refers to citizens’ perceptions of the responsiveness of the political system to citizens’ demands (Demertzis et al. 2013). Angry and efficacious individuals are likely to support mainstream political parties and appropriate established political styles of discourse (Magni 2017); the same holds true with hopeful and politically powerless subjects (Davou and Demertzis 2013) and with fearful individuals who are likely to opt for political conservatism, since defending the status quo serves to reduce fear and uncertainty. In their analysis of current Spanish populism, Rico et al. (2017) found that it is anger rather than fear that is conducive to both right- and left-wing populist attitudes.

Resentment and Ressentiment The action readiness of anger does not consist only in moving away the impediments to one’s aim in the midst of a task; more importantly, it encompasses intentional actions to remedy or rectify wrongdoings against one’s power, status and/or self-esteem (Kemper 1991) in which case the other actor is perceived as responsible for real or potential loss or harm. Due to blame attribution anger is a “highly social emotion” (Schieman 2006, 495); further on, whenever anger, and political anger for that matter, goes beyond the removal of impediments for goal achievement and involves blame attribution it acquires a moral pointer. According to Aristotle (1991, 1378a) anger is “an impulse, accompanied by pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight directed without justification towards what concerns oneself or towards what concerns one’s friends”. It is precisely the lack of ‘right justification’ and the concomitant violation of fairness as well as the transgression of a sense of justice that render anger more than an egoistic, self-targeted, emotion and that is also why populism is so often moralistic in its anti-establishment polarization (Müller 2016, 21, 23). Whenever a sense of justice is involved in an ‘angerlike emotion’, Rawls (1971/1991, 488) contends that we should speak of indignation and resentment as proper moral sentiments. Likewise, for Strawson (1974, 7), resentment is a negative reactive attitude that a person develops in view of another person’s indifference, insult and injury towards him/her and therefore it implies a disapproval of the injurer who is considered responsible for his actions with good reason. Resentment against someone is premised on the moral responsibility of the wrongdoer and on a built-in sense of justice. Insofar the lack of the right justification of a ‘conspicuous

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slight’ is for Aristotle the cause of anger it would be better to translate orge- and thumos as resentment rather than as anger. Barbalet’s account stands in between Aristotle’s resentment/anger and indignation (nemesis); for Aristotle (1991, 1386b) indignation is a painful feeling caused by the unjust and unmerited good fortune of others. Barbalet (1998, 68, 137) defines resentment as the feeling of someone who: (1) judges unworthy the position that someone else has in the social hierarchy; and (2) thinks that someone else – a person or a collective agent – deprives him of chances or privileges that he himself could enjoy. Every now and then, populist outlooks have been ascribed to resentment sparked by grievances against globalization, immigration, and political corruption (Betz 2002, 198–200; Betz and Johnson 2004; Minkenberg 2000, 188; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017, 103; Müller 2016, 11, 16–7, 57, 65; Fieschi and Heywood 2004, 292). The notion of resentment is so powerful in the analysis of populism that scholars frequently lose sight of its next of kin, ressentiment, an equally commanding and yet different notion (Demertzis 2006; Müller 2016, 18; Meltzer and Musolf 2002; Brighi 2016). These are unpleasant moral sentiments triggered by a lived experience of injustice. Yet resentment as moral outrage is a less complex emotion than ressentiment which is a cluster emotion the analysis of which starts actually with Dostoyevsky’s ‘mouse-man’ (1864/2000) and then picked up by Nietzsche (1994/1887) and Scheler (1994/1913). It is an unpleasant moral sentiment that includes a chronic reliving of repressed and endless vindictiveness, hostility, envy, and indignation due to the powerlessness of the subject in expressing them, and resulting, at the level of values, in the negation of what is unconsciously desired. Psychoanalytically, ressentiment is a reaction formation, a compensatory defence mechanism that expedites transvaluation so that the person can stand and handle her/his frustrations. Another difference is that while resentment is normally associated with action, in ressentiment the link between emotion, motivation, and action (Frijda, 2004b) is usually blocked or ruptured (Demertzis 2006; 2014). Apart from Betz (2002), who belongs to the ideational approach to populism, Pierre-André Taguieff, a prominent representative of the rhetoric approach, has also paid considerable attention to ressentiment as a constituting element of populism and racism in contemporary European societies. In his analysis, the moralistic character of populism is fuelled by the sense of injustice ingrained in the resentful state of mind, an injustice created by the effects of global neo-liberal policies (Taguieff 2007, 75). Yet, either author oscillates between resentment and ressentiment and no substantive conceptualization of these terms is provided.4 4

The conceptual relation between resentment and ressentiment has been theorized in more than one way. They may stand apart alongside the difference between the Nietzschean and the non- Nietzschean line of thought (Demertzis 2006; 2017); as an encompassing negative emotion, ressentiment is said to prevail over resentment which is deemed a positive emotion conducive to civic engagement (Brighi 2016, 415); resentment is considered a generic moral emotion whose latest version, ever since the 19th century, is ressentiment elicited in competitive societies (Moruno 2013); though

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Scrutinizing the emergence of the far right European populist parties during the period 1990–2000 Betz holds (2002, 198–200) that in the early phase of their appearance they were greatly buttressed by the defuse grievances of working and lower middle class electorate against globalization, the immigrants, the fiscal crisis of the welfare state, politicians’ corruption mobilizing thus grassroots ressentiment. The likelihood is, however, that according to the nietzschean and the schelerian conceptualizations ressentiment does not lead to mobilization as it explains political inaction rather than political action. It is ‘resentment’, qua moral anger and indignation (i.e. as legitimate and valuable form of anger in response to perceived moral wrongs), which may explain better the initial phase of populist mobilization. Ressentiment might be better used for the understanding of the emotional climate wherein resentful grievances have been incubated. A case in point for such an interpretation is Andreas Papandreou’s populism in Greece, which was engendered by ressentiment (Demertzis 2006, 15–121). Papandreou’s Socialists (PASOK) were heavily supported by new middle strata created by the defeated of the civil war (1946–1949). Although they were more or less integrated socially and economically, until the mid-70s they were politically marginalized and dominated. During the seven years military dictatorship (1967–1974) their political marginalization was experienced as an inexorable destiny leading thereby to an experience of impotence and inferiority. In contradistinction to the 60s, where the defeated of the civil war articulated public grievances and demands out of resentment qua moral anger, during the dictatorship they developed a deep feeling of ressentiment. As soon as PASOK took office in 1981 and the lower middle strata (the ‘non privileged’ in Papandreou’s rhetoric) found themselves integrated into the political system, ressentiment gave place to vengeance precisely because it could be released and acted out publicly through the value reversal between ‘the people’ and the ‘establishment’. The first one, however, who systematically used ‘resentment’ for the interpretation of the American populism in the 1950s was Edward Shils, who thought of resentment in terms of moral rage and indignation and described populism as “an ideology of resentment against the social establishment imposed by the long-term domination of a class, which is considered to have the monopoly of power, property and civilization” (Shils 1956, 100–101). Much later, without delving into the concept, Mudde (2004, 547) accounted for resentment as an affective element of the populist Zeitgeist. Building on previous work, Mikko Salmela and Christian von Scheve have recently proposed an interesting interpretation of current right-wing populisms on the basis of the schelerian version of ressentiment, which they conceive it as a ‘psychological mechanism’ rather than as a cluster-complex emotion. Like of identical moral nature, they differ as to the intensity of the incurred injury and their duration: resentment is transient and caused by minor insults while ressentiment is persisting and elicited by major wrongdoings (Meltzer and Musolf 2002).

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Demertzis (2006; 2014), they carefully distinguish resentment and ressentiment and criticize Betz for his diffuse conceptualization of either terms. Influenced by Scheff’s theory of shame, they strongly argue that, besides its other affective ingredients, the crucial dimension in experienced ressentiment is the ways shame is addressed by the individuals (Salmela and von Scheve 2017, 7–8). When shame remains repressed and unacknowledged due to chronic impotence, it is transformed into resentment, anger and hatred at alleged ‘enemies’ of the precarious self and associated groups, such as refugees, immigrants, sexual minorities, the long-term unemployed, political and cultural elites, and the ‘mainstream’ media. This is the case of right-wing populism. In left-wing populism, they argue, shame is acknowledged and thus it is morally transformed into indignation against neoliberal policies and institutions. While the authors do not discuss transvaluation – a crucial part of Scheler’ theory – it seems that they focus on the interplay between acknowledged/unacknowledged shame (Scheff 1994) as the main psychological mechanism of ressentiment. For all its innovative direction in the understanding of populisms’ emotionality, their account of shame in the analysis of ressentiment is somehow unwarranted because: (a) Scheler himself does not include shame among the emotions that give rise to ressentiment; and (b) their statement that shame can be seen to be implicated in Scheler’s account in feelings of inferiority when one compares oneself negatively with others in social interaction has to be supported by empirical evidence, which, for the time being, is lacking in the relevant literature. Anyway, quantitative (e.g. Ball 1964; León et al. 1988) and qualitative research (e.g. Demertzis 2004) on ressentiment is limited and their assumption remains to be supported by further evidence. That Scheler offers no discussion or reference to shame may not be accidental; possibly, in his mind, impotence and inferiority are linked directly with envy, hatred, malice, and rancour, rather than mediated by shame. Dismembering, however, shame from ressentiment by no means implies that the former plays a minimal role in contemporary populism.

Short Conclusion Previous work on support for populist parties and populist discourse has often neglected the role of emotional factors and focused on socio-demographic characteristics. This chapter has offered an overview of different thematizations of affectivity in populisms by showcasing that, moving beyond diffuse and incomplete accounts, international research has started to focus not only on distinct emotions and sentiments but also on complex emotions such as ressentiment. To be sure, focusing on emotions for the understanding of populisms does not rule out structural, economic, and discursive approaches; contrarily, it complements them offering more nuanced empirical and theoretical analyses. And of course, pointing to emotions in populism research what is of real interest is not the psychosomatic etiology of individual affective dispositions – what William James

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once called ‘medical materialism’ – but their inter-subjective and moral significance. This makes for the in situ interpretation of the meanings involved in the supply and the demand side of political populisms. Such an interpretation begs for the most appropriate theoretical approaches to be drawn from the theoretical and conceptual pool of the sociology of emotions, on the one hand, and for sound and solid methodological triangulation, on the other. What is more, one should take into account the concrete local, national or international political cultural landscapes where the populist phenomena occur and at the same time make sure that the level of analysis goes beyond the individual scale. By and large, emotions in populism are shared and collectively constructed and this can be better analysed via the interaction ritual theory of emotions (Durkheim, Randall Collins, Erica Summers-Effler) and qualitative methodologies. This not to say, though, that measuring populist attitudes and constructing indices of populist mind-sets is of lesser importance. Since a good many scholars agree that there is paucity of research in the demand side of populist phenomena, a lot remains to be done as to the specification of their emotive underpinnings.

References Akkerman, A., Mudde, C., and Zaslove, A. (2014). How populist are the people? Measuring populist attitudes in voters. Comparative Political Studies, 47(9), 1324–1353. http s://doi.org/10.1177/0010414013512600 Almond, G. A., and Verba, Sidney (1963): The Civic Culture. Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Andreadis, I., Stavrakakis, Y., and Demertzis, N. (2016). New indices for right wing populism. In IPSA World Congress. http://paperroom.ipsa.org/papers/paper_64103.pdf Arbid, M. A. (1985). In Search of the Person. Philosophical Explorations in Cognitive Science. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press. Aristotle (1991). On Rhetoric. Trans. George A. Kennedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press Averill, J. R. (1980). The emotions. In E. Staub (ed.) Personality: Basic Aspects and Current Research. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Ball, D. W. (1964). Covert political rebellion as ressentiment. Social Forces 43(1): 93–101. Barbalet, J. (1998). Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure. A Macrosociological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barbalet, J. (2006). Emotions in politics: From the ballot to suicide terrorism. In S. Clarke, P. Hoggett, and S. Thompson (eds.) Emotion, Politics and Society. London: Palgrave. Ben-Ze’ev, Α. (2000). The Subtlety of Emotions. Massachusetts, MA: The MIT Press. Betz, H.-G., (2002). Conditions favoring the success and failure of radical right-wing populist parties in contemporary democracies. In Y. Mény, and Y. Surel (eds.) Democracies and the Populist Challenge. Hampshire: Palgrave, pp. 197–213. Betz, H.-G. and Johnson, C. (2004). Against the current – stemming the tide: the nostalgic ideology of the contemporary radical populist right. Journal of Political Ideologies, 9(3): 311–327. Bourdieu, P. (1976). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boym, S. (2002). Future of Nostalgia. London: Basic. Brighi, E. (2016). The globalisation of resentment: Failure, denial, and violence in world politics. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 44(3): 411–432.

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Bright, E. (2016). The globalisation of resentment: Failure, denial, and violence in world politics. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44(3), 411–432. Bruno, C. S., Andreadis, I., Anduiza, E., Blanua, N., Corti, Y. M., Delno, G., Rico, G., Ruth, S.Spruyt, B., Steenbergen, M.. and Littvay, L. (forthcoming). Public Opinion Surveys: A new scale. In Kirk A. Hawkins, Ryan Carlin, Levente Littvay, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser (eds.) The Ideational Approach to Populism: Theory, Method & Analysis. London: Routledge. Campbell, A., Gurin, G., and Miller, W. E. (1954). The Voter Decides. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson. Clough, P. T. with Halley, J. (2007). The Affective Turn. Theorizing the Social. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Davou, B. (2000). Thought Processes in the Information Age. Issues of Cognitive Psychology and Communication. Athens: Papazissis Publications. Davou, B. and Demertzis, N. (2013). Feeling the Greek financial crisis. In Nicolas Demertzis (ed.). Emotions in Politics. The Affect Dimension in Political Tension. London: Palgrave/MacMillan, pp. 93–123. De Cleen, B.and Stavrakakis, Y. (2017). Distinctions and articulations: A discourse theoretical framework for the study of populism and nationalism. Javnost – The Public, doi:10.1080/13183222.2017.1330083 Demertzis, N. (2004). Populism and Ressentiment. A Contribution of the (political) Sociology of Emotions. Science and Society, 12: 75–114. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10. 12681/sas.7688 Demertzis, N. (2006). Emotions and populism. In S. Clarke, P. Hoggett, and S. Thompson (eds.) Emotion, Politics and Society. London: Palgrave/MacMillan, pp. 103–122. Demertzis, N. (2013). Introduction: Theorizing the emotions-politics nexus. InNicolas Demertzis (ed.), Emotions in Politics. The Affect Dimension in Political Tension. London: Palgrave/MacMillan, pp. 1–16. Demertzis, N., Milioni, D., and Gialamas, V. (2013). Internet use and political efficacy: The case of Cyprus. International Journal of Electronic Governance, 6(3): 187–208. Demertzis, N. (2014). Political emotions. In Paul Nesbitt-Larking, Catarina Kinvall, and Tereza Capelos (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Political Psychology. London: Palgrave/Macmillan. Demertzis, N. (2017). Forgiveness and ressentiment in the age of traumas. Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Politics, Oxford University Press, USA. doi:10.1093/acrefore/ 9780190228637.013.146 Dostoyevsky, F. (1864/2000). Notes from the Underground. Athens: Govosti Publications (in Greek). Elster, J. (1999) Strong feelings. Emotion, addiction, and human behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fieschi, C. (2004). Introduction. Journal of Political Ideologies 9(3): 235–240. Fieschi, C. and Heywood, P. (2004). Trust, cynicism and populist anti-politics. Journal of Political Ideologies 9(3): 289–309. Frijda, N. H. (2004a). The psychologists’ point of view. In M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones (eds.) Handbook of Emotions. New York, London: The Guilford Press (2nd edition). Frijda, N. H. (2004b). Emotion and action. In A. Manstead, N. Fridja, and A. Fischer (Eds.). Feelings and Emotions: The Amsterdam Symposium. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

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Girardet, R. (1997). Myths and Political Mythologies. Ias¸i: European Institute. Goodwin, J., Jasper, J. M., and Polletta, F. (2000). The return of the repressed: The fall and rise of emotions in Social Movement Theory. Mobilization, 5(1): 66–83. Gordon, S. (1981). The sociology of sentiments emotion. In M. Rosenberg and R.H. Turner (eds.) Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives. New York: Basic Books, pp. 551–575. Gordon, S. (1990). Social structural affects on emotions. In Kemper, Th. (ed.), Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions. New York: State University of New York Press (145–179). Guiso, L., Herrera, H., Morelli, M., and Sonno, T. (2017). The spread of populism in Western countries. http://voxeu.org Hawkins, K. A., Riding, S., and Mudde, C. (2012). Measuring populist attitudes. Political Concepts Committee on Concepts and Methods Working Paper Series, 55, 1–35. Hennessy, Alistair (1969). Latin America. In G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (eds). Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics. New York: Macmillan, pp. 28–61. Hopkins, D., Kleres, J., Flam, H., and Kuzmics, H. (eds.) (2009). Theorizing Emotions: Sociological Explorations and Applications. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag. Kemper, Th., (1991). An introduction to the sociology of emotions. In Strongman, K. (ed.), International Review of Studies on Emotion. Vol. 1, New York: John Wiley (301– 349). Kenny, M. (2017). Back to the populist future?: Understanding nostalgia in contemporary ideological discourse. Journal of Political Ideologies, 22(3), 256–273, doi:10.1080/ 13569317.2017.1346773 Koziak, B. (2000). Retrieving Political Emotion: Thumos, Aristotle, and Gender. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania University Press. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso. León, R., Romer, C., Novara, J., and Quesada, E. (1988). Una escala para medir el resentimiento. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 20(3): 331–354. Magni, G. (2017). It’s the emotions, Stupid! Anger about the economic crisis, low political efficacy, and support for populist parties. Electoral Studies, 50, pp. 91-102. Marcus, G. E. (2003). The psychology of emotions and politics. In D. O. Sears, L. Huddy, and R. Jervis (eds.). Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 182–221. Meltzer, B., Musolf, G.-R. (2002). Resentment and ressentiment. Sociological Inquiry. 72(2): 240–255. Minkenberg, M. (2000). The renewal of the radical right: Between modernity and antimodernity. Government and Opposition, 35: 170–188. doi:10.1111/1477–7053.00022 Minogue, K., (1969). Populism as a political movement. In G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (eds.). Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics. Hertfordshire: The Garden City Press, pp. 197–211. Moruno, D. M. (2013). Introduction. On resentment: Past and present of an emotion. In Bernardino Fantini, Dolores Martín Moruno, and Javier Moscoso (eds.) On Resentment: Past and Present. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 1–18. Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 542–563. Mudde, C. and Kaltwasser, R. C. (2017). Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Müller, J.-W. (2016). What is Populism?Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Niemi, R. G., Craig, S. C., and Mattei, F. (1991) Measuring internal political efficacy in the 1988National Election Study. American Political Science Review 85: 1407–1413.

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Nietzsche, F. (1994/1887). On the Genealogy of Morality (transl. C. Deithe). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. PappasT. S. (2016). Modern populism: Research advances, conceptual and methodological pitfalls, and the minimal definition. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. doi:10.1093/ acrefore/9780190228637.013.17. Rawls, J. (1971/1991). A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rico, G., Guinjoan, M., and Anduiza, E. (2017). The emotional underpinnings of populism: How anger and fear affect populist attitudes. Swiss Political Science Review. doi:10.1111/spsr.12261 Robinson, E. (2016). Radical nostalgia, progressive patriotism and Labour’s ‘English problem’. Political Studies Review, 14(3): 378–387. Rooduijn, M. (2014). The nucleus of populism: In search of the lowest common denominator. Government and Opposition, 49(4): 572–598. doi:10.1017/gov.2013.30 Rosenwein, B. (2001). Writing without fear about early medieval emotions. Early Medieval Europe, 10(2): 229–234. Salmela, M. and von Scheve, C. (2017). Emotional roots of right-wing political populism. Social Science Information 56(4), 567–595. Scheff, Th. J. (1994). Bloody Revenge. Emotions, Nationalism and War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Scheler, M. (1994/1913). Ressentiment. Ashland, OH: Marquette University Press. Scherer, K. R. (2009) The dynamic architecture of emotion: Evidence for the component process model. Cognition & Emotion, 23(7): 1307–1351. Scherke, K. (2017). Nostalgia. Historical consciousness in everyday life from a sociologyof-emotions-perspective (unpublished paper). Schieman, S. (2006). Anger. In J. Stets, and J. Turner (eds.) Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions. New York: Springer, pp. 493–515. Shils, E. (1956). The Torment of Secrecy: the background and consequences of American security policies. London: Heinemann. Sokolon, M. (2006). Political Emotions: Aristotle and the Symphony of Reason and Emotion. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. Stavrakakis, Y.Andreadis, I., and Katsambekis, G. (2016). A new populism index at work: Identifying populist candidates and parties in the contemporary Greek context. European Politics and Society, doi:10.1080.23745118.2016.1261434. Stern, B. B. (1992). Historical and personal nostalgia in advertising text: The fin de siècle effect. Journal of Advertising, 21: 11–22. Strawson, P. F. (1974). Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. London: Methuen & Co Ltd. Taggart, P. (2000). Populism. Birmingham: Open University Press. Taguieff, P.-A. (2007). L’illusion populiste. De l’archaϊque au médiatique. Paris: Flammarion. TenHuten, W. (2007). A General Theory of Emotions and Social Life. London & New York: Routledge. Thoits, P. A. (1989). The sociology of emotions. Annual Review of Sociology, 15: 317–342. Turner, J. H. and Stets, J. E. (2005). The Sociology of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarchi, M. (2016). Populism: Ideology, political style, mentality? Czech Journal of Political Science, 23: 95–109. TenHouten, Warren D. (2007). A General Theory of Emotions and Social Life. New York: Routledge.

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Thompson, S. and Hogget, P. (eds.) (2012). Politics and the Emotions. The Affective Turn in Contemporary Political Studies. New York and London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Turner, J. H. and Stets, J. E. (2005). The Sociology of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walicki, Andrzej (1969). Russia. In G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (eds). Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics. New York: Macmillan, pp. 62–96. Williams, R. (1978). Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

3 POPULISM VERSUS TECHNOCRACY: PERFORMANCE, PASSIONS, AND AESTHETICS1 Benjamin Moffitt

Populism is often contrasted or presented as a reaction to technocracy. Substantively, the divide between the two is premised on the question of who is best equipped to make decisions on behalf of a populace – ‘the people’ for populism, or those with the requisite expertise and specialist training for technocrats. However, less attention has been paid to the vast performative, stylistic and aesthetic divides between populism and technocracy, and the role these divides play in the mobilization of passions. This chapter sets out to engage with this under-explored area of study. First, it outlines a definition of populism as a political style, highlighting this approach’s utility for understanding the passionate and performative dimensions of the phenomenon. It then turns to conceptualizations of the divide between populism and technocracy, building on recent work by Caramani (2017) and Bickerton and Invernizzi Accetti (2017) to outline the core stylistic differences between populism and technocracy – namely, the former based on an appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’; ‘bad manners’; and the performance of crisis; while the latter is based on appeal to expertise; ‘good manners’; and the performance of stability and progress (Moffitt 2016). Finally, it argues that populism more inventively and effectively engages with the passionate dimension of politics, challenging dominant notions of citizens as rational homo politicus, and contending that the populist style is far more attuned to mediatized dimension of contemporary politics than the technocratic style. 1

Aspects of this chapter are adapted from The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation by Benjamin Moffitt. Copyright 2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher, Stanford University Press, sup.org.

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Populism as Political Style To say that populism is a contested concept is something of an understatement. While academic debate about the meaning and status of populism has been happening in force since the influential May 1967 London School of Economics conference ‘To Define Populism’ (see Ionescu and Gellner 1969), it has arguably hit a peak in recent years given the confluence of the growing influence of populist actors across the globe – particularly in the wake of the shock of the Trump presidency and Brexit referendum outcome in 2016 – and the subsequent academic and popular interest that has followed. Despite general agreement between different camps about a divide between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ being core to populism, there is far less agreement about what kind of phenomenon it is: is it an ideology (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017), strategy (Weyland 2001), discourse (Stavrakakis 2017), logic (Laclau 2005) or something else? My own contribution to this debate has been to reinvigorate and rebuild the concept of ‘political style’ as a way of understanding populism (see Moffitt 2016) – a concept with much utility for understanding the role of passions in populism. Influential authors such as Taguieff (1995), Canovan (1999, 1984), Kazin (1998) and Knight (1998) had all used the term to describe populism, but the concept remained slippery and poorly defined, with Weyland’s (2001, 12) critique of the approach – “political style denotes the forms of political performance and emphasizes populism’s expressive aspects, including its discourse. But political style is a broad not clearly delimited concept” – still unfortunately ringing true. In order to rebuild the concept, I took a step back and examined the usage of the term ‘political style’ in the wider literature. Synthesising the work of Ankersmit (1996; 2002), Hariman (1995) and Pels (2003) in the fields of rhetoric, political philosophy and political sociology respectively, I defined political style as the repertoires of embodied, symbolically mediated performance made to audiences that are used to create and navigate the fields of power that comprise the political, stretching from the domain of government through to everyday life. The aim here was to offer a social scientific category that took account of the discursive, rhetorical and aesthetic aspects of political phenomena, framing them under the rubric of performance to take account of the intensely mediated – and mediatized – condition of contemporary political life. Furthermore, the focus on performance acknowledges that there is always an ever-present power dimension regarding who is able to perform, the audiences that performances are aimed at (and the role of mobilising passions in the reception of these performances), and who is able to distribute or broadcast political performances (Alexander and Mast 2006). I then used the concept of political style to discern inductively the features of populism as a political style. This was done by examining twenty-eight contemporary cases of leaders from across the globe that are generally accepted as populists within the academic literature, and identifying what links them in terms of political style (Moffitt 2016). The assumption here was that while there is wide

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disparity in the literature as to how to conceptualize populism, there is at least some (mild) consensus regarding the actual cases of actors that are usually labelled as ‘populist’.2 These leaders were drawn not only from the ‘usual’ regions of Europe and the Americas, but also from Africa and the Asia-Pacific, two regions that are usually marginalized in the comparative literature on populism (Moffitt 2015a). Populist leaders, rather than populist movements or parties, were focused upon, because they are most clearly the central performers and ‘embodiments’ of populism as a distinct political style. It is important to note that this was not an attempt to capture the very ‘essence’ of populism. Rather, this approach allowed me to chart, as a baseline, what links a number of disparate cases of contemporary populism across the world and to construct a minimal concept (in line with a number of alternative approaches to populism) that outlines the three necessary and sufficient characteristics constitutive of the populist style. These three features were found to be: appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’; ‘bad manners’; and the performance of crisis, breakdown or threat.

Appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’ ‘The people’ is both the central audience of populists, as well as the subject that populists attempt to ‘render-present’ (Arditi 2007) through their performance. ‘The people’ are also presented as the true holders of sovereignty. This appeal to ‘the people’ can take many forms, from invocations of ‘the people’, ‘the mainstream’, ‘the heartland’ or other related signifiers, to performative gestures meant to demonstrate populists’ affinity with ‘the people’. Connected to the appeal to ‘the people’ is the dichotomic division of society between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ (or other related signifiers, such as ‘the Establishment’ or ‘the system’) – a divide that is acknowledged throughout the majority of contemporary definitions of populism. Populists may also target particular Others – such as asylum seekers, immigrant workers or particular minority groups – as enemies of ‘the people’, but these Others will be always be linked to ‘the elite’. For example, it might be argued that ‘liberal elites’ have allowed increased immigration, which has led to an influx of migrants, which has threatened ‘the people’s’ livelihood. In such cases, it is ‘the elite’ or ‘the Establishment’ that is the source of crisis, breakdown, corruption or dysfunctionality, as opposed to ‘the people’ who in turn have been ‘let down’, ‘ripped off’, ‘fleeced’, rendered powerless, or badly governed. The appeal to ‘the people’ can also include claims against the ‘political correctness’ of ‘the elite’, which are used to demonstrate that the populist ‘really knows’ what people are thinking as well as prove their exteriority from such entities. This often takes the form of the denial of expert knowledge, and the 2

Rooduijn (2014) has made a similar argument in his development of a definition of populism that seeks to find the phenomenon’s ‘nucleus’.

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championing of felt experience or ‘common sense’ against the bureaucrats, technocrats, representatives or ‘guardians of our interests’. This was particularly evident in the language of Preston Manning’s Reform Party of Canada, whose charter declared “we believe in the common sense of the common people” (Reform Party of Canada 1993, 2) as well as figures like Evo Morales or Pauline Hanson’s valorization of wisdom of ordinary citizens.

‘Bad Manners’ A function of the appeal to ‘the people’ as the arbiters of ‘common sense’, the ‘way forward’ and of the urgency of the matters that populist actors present is a coarsening of political rhetoric, and a disregard for ‘appropriate’ modes of acting in the political realm. Canovan (1999, 5) has identified this as the ‘tabloid style’ of populism, while Ostiguy (2009) has identified this as the ‘low’ of a high-low axis that runs orthogonal to the traditional left-right axis. Such elements of this ‘low’ include use of slang, swearing, political incorrectness, and being overly demonstrative, passionate and ‘colourful’, as opposed to the ‘high’ behaviours of rigidness, rationality, composure and use of technocratic language. An American example of this high-low distinction would be to compare the refined manner of Hilary Clinton to the populist manner of Donald Trump. Clinton’s manners are very much those of the establishment: earnestness, gravitas, intelligence and sensitivity to the positions of others. Trump’s are those of the ‘outsider’: directness, playfulness, a disregard for hierarchy and tradition, ready resort to anecdote as ‘evidence’, and a studied ignorance of that which does not interest him. What constitutes the ‘bad manners’ of populism may differ from one cultural context to another: as Ostiguy (2009, 5–6) makes clear in his conceptualization of populism, notions of what is considered ‘high’ or ‘low’ “link deeply with a society’s history, existing group differences, identities, and resentments”, meaning that such divisions are often culturally specific, yet have great political and cultural resonance.

The performance of crisis, breakdown, threat Populism gets its impetus from the perception of crisis, breakdown or threat (Taggart 2000) and at the same time aims to induce crisis through passionate dramatization and performance (Moffitt 2015b). This in turn leads to the demand to act decisively and immediately. Crises are often related to the breakdown between citizens and their representatives, but can also be related to immigration, economic difficulties, perceived injustice, military threat, social change or other issues. The effect of the evocation of emergency in this fashion is to radically simplify the terms and terrain of political debate. For example, Hugo Chávez ramped up his populist style in the light of a perceived crisis regarding an imperialist conspiracy perpetrated by the United States, while Geert Wilders has posited the increasing Islamization of the Netherlands as an imminent threat to social and economic wellbeing.

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This performance of crisis, breakdown, or threat relates to a more general distrust of the complex machinery of modern governance and the complicated nature of policy solutions, which in contemporary settings often require consultations, reviews, reports, lengthy iterative design and implementation. In contrast, populists favour short-term and swift action rather than the ‘slow politics’ (Saward 2011) of negotiation and deliberation. Politics thus becomes highly instrumentalized and utilitarian. That which gets in the way of addressing ‘the issue’ or the ‘crisis’ has to be ignored, supplanted or removed. As such, taken together, populism can be defined as a political style that features an appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’, ‘bad manners’, and the performance of crisis, breakdown or threat. Thinking of populism in this way has four central repercussions. The first is that the notion of populism as a political style allows us to understand populism’s ability to appear across a number of contexts. As a political style, there is little difficulty in understanding why populism can travel across the ideological spectrum, from left to right, as well as making sense of populist actors who are more difficult to map on the traditional leftright divide, such as Beppe Grillo (Corbetta and Vignati 2013). It also delinks populism from certain modes of organization, allowing us to see that populism can rely on loose or grassroots structures, as well as highly organized structures of tight party discipline. The second implication of seeing populism as a political style is that we can now make sense of what other approaches to populism have seen as the phenomenon’s lack of ‘substance’. Taggart (2000, 4) has referred to populism’s ‘empty heart’; Mény and Surel (2002, 4) have called it an ‘empty shell’; while others have referred to it as a ‘thin’ or ‘thin-centered’ ideology (Stanley 2008, Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017). The political style approach allows us to make sense of populism’s alleged lack of ‘substance’ or its ‘emptiness’, not by seeing at as somehow deficient or ‘thin’, but instead by taking its stylistic characteristics seriously. What is ‘on the surface’ when it comes to populism matters, and this approach gives style the analytical weight it deserves, without condemning populism to being something ‘superficial’ – it acknowledges that style and content are interrelated, and style can generate, affect and interact with content in quite complex ways, particularly when it comes to the mobilization of passions. The third repercussion of this approach is that it offers up a new conceptual vocabulary for studying populism, focusing on performers, audiences, stages and the mise-enscène of the phenomenon. This vocabulary captures the inherent theatricality of contemporary populism, while also bringing the mechanisms of populist representation into focus. The emphasis on performance shifts the focus from forms of representation to the actual mechanisms of representation – mediated enactments, televisual performances, rallies, speeches, riots, use of certain dress, vernacular and so forth – and in doing so, stresses the very important (and sometimes forgotten) role of presentation in representation.

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Lastly, the political style approach moves away from the dominant view of seeing populism as a binary category towards conceptualising it as a gradational concept. Binary approaches view the category as a simple populism vs. non-populism binary, whereas the political style approach acknowledges that political actors can be more or less populist at certain times. Put in another way, while binary approaches see populism in a ‘black-and-white’ fashion, the political style approach accounts for the ‘grey area’ between the two extremes. Focusing on this grey area acknowledges that “the degree of populism that a given political actor employs may vary across contexts and over time” (Gidron and Bonikowski 2013, 9).

Populism vs. Technocracy However, if we are to see populism as a gradational concept, then it is important to identify what is on the ‘other end’ of the spectrum: that is, what is the opposite of populism? While Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2017) have argued that populism is the opposite of pluralism and elitism, and Müller (2016) has argued that populism is the opposite of liberalism, when it comes to political style, populism should be opposed to technocracy.3 I am not the first to oppose populism to technocracy. The divide has been put forward by a number of prominent thinkers on populism, including Laclau (2005), Mouffe (2005) and Žižek (2006), and has also been invoked in recent policy and popular debates about populism in Europe (Freeland 2012, Leonard 2011) and the United States (Kenneally 2009, Williams 2010). More recently, Caramani (2017) and Bickerton and Invernizzi Accetti (2017) have provided some of the most sustained reflection thus far on the relationship between the two phenomena. Caramani is particularly interested in populism and technocracy as forms of political representation – the former “claiming that political action must be guided by the unconstrained will of the people” and the latter “stressing the prominence of expertise in the identification and implementation of objective solutions to societal problems” (Caramani 2017, 55). Interestingly, Caramani claims that populism and technocracy are linked in their ostensibly ‘anti-political’ and ‘anti-party’ stance, sharing: (1) a unitary and homogenous view of the common interest of a political community; (2) a non-pluralistic view of the social and political landscape; (3) a belief in the unmediated relationship between ‘the people’ and their leaders; and (4) a lack of horizontal and vertical accountability. However, populism and technocracy 3

The understanding of the technocratic political style offered here combines elements of Hariman’s (1995) bureaucratic style and Ostiguy’s (2009) conception of the political ‘high’ with the characterization of technocracy offered by Centeno (1993) and the technocratic ‘mode of reasoning’ outlined by Ribbhagen (2013).

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differ on several other dimensions of representation, namely the aforementioned split between faith in ‘the people’ versus experts; populism’s descriptive representation (as one of ‘the people’) versus technocracy’s distance from it; a split between responsiveness and responsibility; a focus on inclusivity versus exclusivity; and ultimately, a delegate versus trustee model of representation. Bickerton and Invernizzi Accetti (2017) also see populism and technocracy as being opposed to party democracy, specifically its two central features of the mediation of political conflicts through the institution of political parties and the idea that the specific conception of the common good that ought to prevail and therefore be translated into public policy is the one that is constructed through the democratic procedures of parliamentary deliberation and electoral competition. (2017, 188) However, rather than focusing on populism and technocracy as forms of representation (as Caramani does), they see the phenomena as “forms of discourse” (2017, 188), and while not really expanding on this particular phrasing, they put to use Laclau’s On Populist Reason (2005) and Rosanvallon’s Democratic Legitimacy (2011) as texts that exemplify populism and technocracy respectively. They argue that Laclau and Rosanvallon, while adopting “normatively opposed positions”, actually “converge in their criticisms of party democracy”, thus showing that “how populist and technocratic forms of discourse can be considered as two sides of the same coin” (2017, 201). I agree with many of the points raised by Caramani, Bickerton and Invernizzi Accetti, and think they offer an important understanding of both the differences and commonalities between populism and technocracy in regards to party democracy, in terms of either their representative function or their discursive structure. However, it is also important to focus on the differences between populism and technocracy as distinct political styles – that is, not as modes of governance or ideological dispositions, but as distinct embodied, performative phenomena. In other words, in outlining this difference, I am interested in the way that political actors present themselves along a technocratic-populist scale, not just in the models of government they might present or advocate. Leonard (2011, 2) sketches the performative differences between populism and technocracy as such: “technocracy and populism are mirror images: one is managerial, the other charismatic; one seeks incremental change, the other is attracted by grandiose rhetoric; one is about problem solving, the other about the politics of identity”. In this regard, a spectrum between populist and technocratic political styles can be visualized as such:

56 Benjamin Moffitt Technocratic-Populist Political Style Spectrum Technocratic Political Style Appeal to expertise ‘Good manners’ Stability& progress

Populist Political Style Appeal to ‘the people’ vs ‘the elite’ ‘Bad manners’ Crisis, breakdown, threat

FIGURE 3.1 Technocratic-Populist political style spectrum Source: Created by author.

Each of the features of the technocratic style is directly opposed to the features of populist political style outlined earlier in this chapter. While populists appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’ and argue that we should trust ‘common sense’ or the wisdom of ‘the people’, technocrats place their faith in expertise and specialist training, and by and large do not concern themselves with ‘the people’. While populists utilize ‘bad manners’ in terms of their language and aesthetic self-presentation, technocrats have ‘good manners’, acting in a ‘proper’ manner in the political realm, utilising ‘dry’ scientific language, dressing formally and presenting themselves in an ‘official’ fashion. This divide is also marked by the role of passions: while populists rely on passionate performances, technocrats aim for emotional neutrality and ‘rationality’. Finally, while populists aim to invoke and perform crisis, breakdown or threat (again, through passionate performances), technocrats aim for and perform stability or measured progress (often with a sense of dispassion or remove).4 Here, the ‘proper’ functioning of society is presented as being able to be delivered by those with the requisite knowledge, training and standing. The point here is that the populist/technocratic divide is not just about modes of governance, or relations to party politics, but also about important differences and dispositions towards the role of passions and the so-called ‘appropriate’ mode of acting in the political realm. Indeed, Caramani notes the importance of this dimension, especially when it comes to populists’ tendency towards descriptive representation and aiming to appear as one of ‘the people’, which “probably explains to a large extent populist communication strategies and styles by populist leaders stressing similarity to the people in clothing, speech, and lifestyles on which so much of the literature on populism insists” (Caramani 2017, 62). Technocrats, on the other hand, he notes, “are supposed to be better educated, more knowledgeable, and possess expertise that common people do not have” (2017, 62), and this likely should also be reflected in their aesthetic choices and

4

While populists may sometimes promise stability, this stability will always be balanced or at the cost of constructing a crisis or emphasizing an imminent threat: for example, while Rafael Correa sought stability in some regards in Ecuador during his time as President, this was framed in terms of a ‘citizens’ revolution that “paints politics as a clash of opposing historical projects” (de la Torre 2013, 37) and sought to identify and destroy Correa’s many enemies.

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wider habitus too – formal business wear, dry language, clear diction, and distinguished or at least respectable tastes. This is not to suggest that all political actors are either populist or technocratic. Like Caramani, Bickerton and Invernizzi Accetti, I see them as ideal types. But where I differ from these authors is that I think it is useful to see them as part of a spectrum. Plotting political actors along this scale rather than seeing populism as a simple either/or proposition has a number of benefits. As noted earlier, it is more nuanced than a binary approach. Second, it avoids implicit normative views overshadowing the categorization of political actors. While seeing populism as part of a binary category may allow comparativists to put political actors and parties in neat boxes for categorization, too often it is the case that researchers are not clear about where the blurred line between their chosen categories is actually drawn, thus allowing them (either purposefully or not) to impose their own normative views on populism on their cases. The populism/non-populism binary too often echoes its usage in media debates, becoming shorthand for ‘political actors I dislike/political actors I like’, a distinction that is often not just about ideology, but also about what is considered ‘proper’ behaviour in the political realm. The gradational approach between populism and technocracy does not leave this division up to the researcher’s implicit normative views, and instead acknowledges that some of those actors who are commonly labelled as ‘populist’ may not actually be as populist as we think when scrutinized carefully, while other actors, especially those usually subsumed under the vague notion of ‘mainstream’ political actors, might actually utilize the populist style in some form. To illustrate the difference between populism and technocracy, and the central role of feelings of familiarity, closeness and a sense that a representative is ‘one of us’ in the case of the former, it is instructive to examine the extremes that populist actors go to versus their mainstream competitors in order to ‘prove’ their stylistic closeness to ‘the people’ and thus fulfil the descriptive representative role that Caramani outlines. While most leaders in the contemporary political setting have to play the game of making themselves seem regular or ordinary to some extent – witness Barack Obama’s professed love of beer, basketball and hip-hop (McDonald and King 2012) or John Howard’s much-publicized love of cricket (Hutchins 2005) – populists go one step further. Examples of these performances of ‘ordinariness’ abound: Sarah Palin (2008) went to great lengths to prove her ordinary nature, calling herself “just your average hockey mom” and a “mama grizzly” to prove her maternal credentials, and displayed her ‘regular’ family at every possible moment to back up these claims. Hugo Chávez (2005) presented himself as a “farm kid … from a very poor family”, and used a folksy and common language on his television show, Aló Presidente, to display his ordinary roots. Zambia’s Michael Sata often played up his lack of education and mocked his central opponent, a former accountant, as a ‘calculator boy’ – a truly technocratic slur – to demonstrate the difference between them (Resnick 2010), while South Africa’s Jacob Zuma used a similar tactic against his rival, Thabo Mbeki

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(Vincent 2011). Meanwhile, Pauline Hanson (2007, 59–60) has made much of her regular nature as an owner of a takeaway fast food shop in suburban Queensland, claiming that “the fish and chip shop put me directly in touch with the average Australian”. This descriptive and stylistic closeness is further reinforced in fashion and aesthetic self-presentation: Evo Morales’s chompa (an alpaca wool sweater) signifies a tie to rural areas and the land, as does Yoweri Museveni’s ever-present broad-brimmed hat, which associates him with the farming sector of Uganda (Muth 2011) – both aesthetic gestures that technocrats would never deign to embrace. Yet claiming to be close to ‘the people’ can only get you so far. Any politician can ‘talk the talk’, but ‘walking the walk’ and actually demonstrating that you are not a ‘regular politician’ or a technocrat is more valuable in proving your populist credentials. The most pertinent way that populist leaders do this is through using ‘bad manners’. As already outlined, this concept refers to populist leaders’ apparent disregard for ‘appropriate’ ways of acting in the political realm, and the deliberate flouting of such expectations and practices. The looseness of the term is deliberate, given that these performances of ‘bad manners’ may manifest in a number of different ways, including self-presentation, use of slang, political incorrectness, fashion or other displays of contempt for ‘usual’ practices of ‘respectable’ politics. The term also reflects the fact that considerations of what constitutes bad manners in one political arena may not be considered bad manners in another. Let us look at a few concrete examples of how ‘bad manners’ are performed by populist leaders. One way is by lowering the level of political discourse through swearing, taunts or over-the-top claims. For example, Hugo Chávez would often make crude and overly offensive remarks about his opponents; Marine Le Pen has accused political rivals of being paedophiles (Warren 2011); meanwhile Beppe Grillo held ‘V-Day’ rallies against Italian politicians and the mass media – the V standing for Vaffancullo, an Italian expletive. Zambian populist Michael Sata was so well known for his passionate attacks on the opposition and his enemies that he was nicknamed ‘King Cobra’, while Trump’s mocking of his opponents in the US Republican primaries was equally relentless and effective. Another way is through the type of language that is used. Sarah Palin has employed so many non sequiturs and malapropisms – from claims about non-existent “death panels” (Nyhan 2010) to made-up words such as “refudiate” (Weaver 2010) – that her garbled sayings earned their own label, ‘Palinisms’, while Pauline Hanson became similarly well known for her misuse of the English language. More broadly, ‘bad manners’ can simply mean acting or presenting oneself in more ‘colourful’ ways than we usually expect from politicians or representatives: Chávez would sing and dance on his television show Aló Presidente; Raila Odinga has sung parodic songs and improvized riddles to mock the opposition in Kenya (Resnick 2010); Pauline Hanson has appeared as a contestant on numerous Australian reality television shows; and Australian populist Clive Palmer appeared in a

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promotional video for a radio station dancing while dressed in a rabbit ‘onesie’, and ‘twerked’ in another radio stunt. Needless to say, none of these examples represent ‘traditional’ behaviour towards the technocratic end of the populisttechnocratic spectrum, and therein may lay their appeal, or at very least their attention-grabbing qualities. Populist leaders’ ‘bad manners’ can also take the form of political incorrectness. Often presenting political correctness as a project of elites, populists tend to ‘mention the unmentionable’, and merely claim to be tapping into the emotions or thoughts of ‘what everyone thinks’ – hence the constant references to ‘common sense’ or ‘the silent majority’. This political incorrectness frequently takes the form of claims of favouritism or slurs against minority groups. For example, Hanson has continuously rallied against Asian immigrants, Islam and Aboriginal rights. Wilders compares the Koran to Mein Kampf, and has called the prophet Muhammad a paedophile (Wilders 2010), while Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni has consistently targeted homosexuals, accusing them of “recruiting normal people” and being “mercenaries” and “prostitutes” (in Monitor Online 2014). Chávez constantly taunted his rivals as pitiyanquis (‘little Yankees’) (Romero 2008), and declared disgraced Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi a “martyr” (in Romo 2011). Sarah Palin (in Smith 2009) summed up the populist approach: “Screw the political correctness”. Whether such statements are sincere does not matter. Instead, the aim is to get a passionate reaction – often negative – which allows populist leaders to receive media coverage, and further position themselves as being outside ‘the elite’ or the establishment, who would not dare to utter such things. The central point is that it is populists’ performances – not just their policies, ideology or discourse – that are disruptive to ‘mainstream’ politics. We usually expect our political representatives, if not necessarily acting honourably, to make at least an effort towards the technocratic side of the spectrum. We assume that they should be polished, professional, composed and ‘play the game’ correctly. In short, we expect them to have ‘good manners’. As such, the unpolished, seemingly off-the-cuff ‘bad manners’ of populist leaders can appeal in an era when political performances often seem homogenous, circumscribed, stage-managed and predictable across the political spectrum. Indeed, in fields of candidates who often seem to be cut from a very similar cloth, these allegedly more ‘authentic’ and entertaining performances have a certain novelty. This is something that often gets skirted past in the many analyses of Donald Trump: much of his appeal stems from the fact that he is entertaining, no doubt a by-product of years on reality television and media training. Although being entertaining and amusing may seem trivial when we talk about politics, these things matter. Populists understand that contemporary politics is not just a matter of putting forward policies for voters to deliberate rationally upon as some kind of homo politicus, but rather appealing to people with a full performative package that is attractive, emotionally resonant and relevant.

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Indeed, there is reason to believe that this passionate dimension is becoming increasingly important in the divide between populism and technocratic styles in the contemporary political landscape – and the former is positioned in the far more enviable position. Although earlier work on populism had focused not only on its valorization of the democratic goodness of ‘the people’, but also faith in their common sense knowledge (what Saurette and Gunster (2011) refer to as ‘epistemological populism’), this has recently hit something a fever pitch. Since 2016, terms like ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ have entered the everyday political lexicon, with concerns about the increasing partisan divide of media (particularly in the American context) together with the proliferation of low-cost online propaganda through social networks feeding a narrative in which (mostly technocratic and liberal) commentators worry about the epistemological unmooring of a shared sense of ‘rationality’ and ‘truth’ as a common ground for those in the public sphere. Here, those who support populist candidates are seen as having been ‘duped’, and giving into their passions instead of rationally dealing with ‘the truth’, having “traded in feelings more than confirmable facts” (Polletta and Callahan 2017, 392). Narratives, emotions and experiential knowledge are seen here to have triumphed over the allegedly usual meat-and-potatoes of media reporting: cold, hard facts, with the former associated with ‘the people’ and the latter with ‘the elite’. In such a context, a yearning for good manners, civility and an appeal to expertise begins to look hopelessly outdated. The world of fake news and posttruth – if that is indeed where we find ourselves today – is one ruled by what Bakir and McStay call the “economics of emotion: specifically, how emotions are leveraged to generate attention and viewing time, which converts to advertising revenue” (Bakir and McStay 2017, 2) – and I would add to this, political attention and often, electoral success. While this fake news and post-truth paradigm obviously has problematic normative outcomes, including the production of wrongly informed citizens, the creation and self-reinforcement of ‘echo chambers’, and the production of deliberative inflammatory content (Bakir and McStay 2017, 6), it is also evident that simply insisting on ‘facts’ and ‘the truth’ instead of passions has little rhetorical appeal at the current juncture. Populist actors have clearly worked that out, and the populist style’s embrace of passion likely means that it will continue to enjoy success across the political spectrum for some time to come.

Conclusion In the famous 1969 Ionescu and Gellner collection on populism mentioned earlier in this chapter, Worsley (1969, 245) argued that populism needs to be understood as an “emphasis, a dimension of political culture in general, not simply a particular kind of overall ideological system or type of organization”. The same still holds, but this ‘emphasis’ is best expressed in the idea of political

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style, the repertoires of embodied, symbolically mediated performance made to audiences that are used to create and navigate the fields of power that comprise the political. This chapter has outlined the key features of populism as a political style – an appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’; ‘bad manners’; and the performance of crisis – and contrasted these to the features of technocracy as a political style – an appeal to expertise; ‘good manners’; and the performance of stability and progress. It has argued that this approach to the populism-technocracy divide can build upon and add to existing theorizations of the divide, contributing a gradational understanding of the concepts, as well as an approach that takes seriously the passionate dimension of the phenomena at hand. Finally, it is has argued that this stylistic divide has increased resonance at the current historical juncture, where ‘fake news’ and claims of living in a ‘post-truth’ world indicate that both political and knowledge elites are viewed with suspicion, and technocrats’ dispassionate trust in rationality, facts and progress is not shared by large swathes of the voting populace across the globe. Instead, the populist embrace of passions is looking increasingly popular and resonant, and rather than being a flash-in-the-pan, is proving to be a resilient and permanent part of the contemporary political landscape. In 2005, Chantal Mouffe warned that the “incapacity to grasp the central role of passions in the constitution of collective of collective identities, are in my view at the root of political theory’s failure to come to terms with the phenomenon of populism” (Mouffe 2005, 51). However, this failure is no longer just one that abstractly concerns political theory, but rather concretely affects liberal-democratic politics the world over. A renewed engagement with the role of passions in populism – and the technocratic avoidance of it – is key to understanding our political future.

References Alexander, J. C. and Mast, J. L. (2006). Introduction: Symbolic action in theory and practice: the cultural pragmatics of symbolic action. In J. C. Alexander, B. Giesen, and J. L. Mast (eds.) Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 29–90. Ankersmit, F. (1996). Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy Beyond Fact and Value. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ankersmit, F. (2002). Political Representation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Arditi, B., (2007). Politics on the Edges of Liberalism: Difference, Populism, Revolution, Agitation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bakir, V. and McStay, A. (2017). Fake news and the economy of emotions. Digital Journalism, doi: doi:10.1080/21670811.2017.1345645, 1–22. Bickerton, C. and Accetti, C. I. (2017). Populism and technocracy: Opposites or complements? Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 20(2): 186–206. Canovan, M. (1984). People, politicians and populism. Government and Opposition, 19(3): 312–327. Canovan, M. (1999). Trust the people! Populism and the two faces of democracy. Political Studies, 47(1): 2–16.

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Caramani, D. (2017). Will vs. reason: The populist and technocratic forms of political representation and their critique to party government. American Political Science Review, 111(1): 54–67. Centeno, M. A. (1993). The new leviathan: The dynamics and limits of technocracy. Theory and Society, 22(3): 307–335. Chávez Frias, H. (2005). Transcript: Hugo Chávez Interview. Nightline. 16 September. Available from: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/International/story?id=1134098&pa ge=1#.Tz2–FwS01I. Corbetta, P. and Vignati, R. (2013). Left or right? The complex nature and uncertain future of the 5 star movement. Italian Politics & Society, 72–73 (Spring-Fall), 53–62. De la Torre, C. (2013). Technocratic populism in Ecuador. Journal of Democracy, 24(3): 33–46. Freeland, J. (2012). In upcoming elections across the Eurozone periphery, voters are likely to react to austerity by replacing technocracy with populism. LSE EUROPP blog. 12 June. Available from: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2012/06/12/austerity-elections-p opulism/#more-3604. Hanson, P. (2007). Untamed & Unashamed. Docklands, VIC: JoJo Publishing. Hariman, R. (1995). Political Style: The Artistry of Power. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. Hutchins, B. (2005). Unity, difference and the ‘national game’: Cricket and Australian national identity. In S. Wagg (ed.) Cricket and National Identity in the Postcolonial Age: Following On. Oxon: Routledge, pp. 9–27. Ionescu, G. and Gellner, E. (eds.) (1969). Populism: Its Meanings and National Characteristics. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Kazin, M. (1998). The Populist Persuasion: An American History. 2nd ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kenneally, I. (2009). Technocracy and populism. The New Atlantis, 24 (Spring): 46–60. Knight, A. (1998). Populism and neo-populism in Latin America, especially Mexico. Journal of Latin American Studies, 30(2): 223–248. Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. London: Verso. Leonard, M. (2011). Four Scenarios for the Reinvention of Europe. London: European Council on Foreign Relations. McDonald, M. G. and King, S. (2012). A different contender? Barack Obama, the 2008 presidential campaign and the racial politics of sport. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35(6): 1023–1039. Mény, Y. and Surel, Y. (2002). The constitutive ambiguity of populism. In Y. Mény and Y. Surel, Y. (eds.) Democracies and Populist Challenge. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–21. Moffitt, B. (2015a). Contemporary populism & ‘The People’ in the Asia-Pacific: Thaksin Shinawatra & Pauline Hanson. In C. De la Torre (ed.) The Promise and Perils of Populism: Global Perspectives. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, pp. 293–316. Moffitt, B. (2015b). How to perform crisis: A model for understanding the key role of crisis in contemporary populism. Government and Opposition, 50(2): 189–217. Moffitt, B. (2016). The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Monitor Online, (2014). President Museveni’s full speech at signing of Anti-Homosexuality bill. Daily Monitor. 24 February. Available from: www.monitor.co.ug/News/

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National/Museveni-s-Anti-Homosexuality-speech/-/688334/2219956/-/vinrt7/-/index. html. Mouffe, C. (2005). The ‘End of Politics’ and the challenge of right-wing populism. In F. Panizza (ed). Populism and the mirror of democracy. London & New York: Verso, pp. 50–71. Mudde, C. and Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2017). Populism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Müller, J.-W. (2016). What is Populism?Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Muth, K. (2011). An incomplete treatise on hats. Global Policy. 6 December. Available from: www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/06/12/2011/incomplete-treatise-hats. Nyhan, B. (2010). Why the ‘Death Panel’ myth wouldn’t die: Misinformation in the health care reform debate. The Forum, 8(1), 1–24. Ostiguy, P. (2009). The High-Low Political Divide: Rethinking Populism and Anti-Populism. Notre Dame, IN: Kellogg Institute for International Studies, 360. Palin, S. (2008). Transcript: Gov. Sarah Palin At The RNC. NPR. 3 September. Available from: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94258995. Pels, D. (2003). Aesthetic representation and political style: Re-balancing identity and difference in media democracy. In J. Corner and D. Pels (eds.) Media and the Restyling of Politics. London: SAGE Publications, pp. 41–66. Polletta, F. and Callahan, J. (2017). Deep stories, nostalgia narratives, and fake news: Storytelling in the Trump era. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 5(3): 392–408. Reform Party of Canada (1993). Blue Sheet: Principles, Policies and Election Platform. Calgary. Resnick, D. (2010). Populist Strategies in African Democracies. Helsinki: United Nations University, Working Paper 2010/114. Ribbhagen, C. (2013). Technocracy within Representative Democracy: Technocratic Reasoning and Justification among Bureaucrats and Politicians. PhD thesis: University of Gothenberg. Romero, S. (2008). A little insult is all the rage in Venezuela: ‘Pitiyanqui’. The New York Times, 6 September, A9. Romo, R. (2011). Gadhafi’s friend to the death, Chavez calls Libyan leader ‘a martyr’. CNN International. Available from: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/21/world/america s/venezuela-chavez-gadhafi. Rooduijn, M. (2014). The nucleus of populism: In search of the lowest common denominator. Government and Opposition, 49(4): 573–599. Rosanvallon, P. (2011). Democratic Legitimacy: Impartiality, Reflexivity, Proximity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Saurette, P. and Gunster, S. (2011). Ears wide shut: Epistemological populism, argutainment and Canadian conservative talk radio. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 44(1): 195–218. Saward, M. (2011). Slow theory: Taking time over transnational democratic representation. Ethics & Global Politics, 4(1): 1–18. Smith, B. (2009). Palin: ‘Screw the political correctness’. Politico. 5 June. Available from: www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0609/Palin_Screw_the_political_correctness.html. Stanley, B. (2008). The thin ideology of populism. Journal of Political Ideologies, 13(1): 95–110. Stavrakakis, Y. (2017). Discourse theory in populism research: Three challenges and a dilemma. Journal of Language and Politics, 16(4): 523–534. Taggart, P. (2000). Populism. Birmingham: Open University Press. Taguieff, P. (1995). Political science confronts populism: From a conceptual mirage to a real problem. Telos, 103: 9–43.

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Vincent, L. (2011). Seducing the people: Populism and the challenge to democracy in South Africa. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 29(1): 1–14. Warren, M. (2011). Le Pen taunts rival with ‘paedophile’ slur. The Local: France’s News in English. 16 March. Available from: www.thelocal.fr/page/view/1180#.UXdcDLX-F8E. Weaver, M. (2010). Word of the day: Sarah Palin invents ‘refudiate’. The Guardian. 19 July. Available from: www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2010/jul/19/sarah-palin-refu diate-new-word. Weyland, K. (2001). Clarifying a contested concept: Populism in the study of Latin American politics. Comparative Politics, 34(1): 1–22. Wilders, G. (2010). Wilders – Muhammad was a paedophile. YouTube [online video clip]. 8 March. Available from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXuG4KhfCZM. Williams, C. (2010). Technocracy and populism. Dissent. 22 October. Available from: www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/technocracy-and-populism. Worsley, P. (1969). The concept of populism. In G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (eds.) Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 212–250. Žižek, S. (2006). Against the populist temptation. Critical Inquiry, 32(3): 551–574.

PART II

Passionate Logic and Discourse in Times of Austerity

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4 OUR DAMNED WEAKNESS: TENSIONS BETWEEN REASON AND EMOTION IN PODEMOS Emmy Eklundh

Introduction When discussing populism and populist parties, it is often argued that they are too emotional to be taken seriously. This judgment, often intended to discredit the populist movement or party, is used in both academia and public debate (Müller 2016; BBC News 2012). It has become commonplace to equate emotional or passionate speech with an inability to conduct serious political activity, and emotional actors must thus be disregarded. In many cases, these popular opinions are reflecting a deeper division that has informed political thought on populism and social movements for the past century: that there is a distinct Cartesian split between the emotional and the rational, and between the mind and the body. In this chapter, however, an alternative view will be presented, which explains the impossibility to draw sharp lines between emotion/the corporeal, on the one hand, and reason/the cognitive, on the other. Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism offers an account of political identity that recognizes how identity-making is always an affective process, and therefore supersedes the Cartesian ego cogito. In practice, the Cartesian divide is evident when discussing the political party Podemos, which has been a growing force in the Spanish political landscape since 2014. In many senses, Podemos fits the bill perfectly when discussing the emotional populist party. They have a charismatic leader, and are in many senses trying to create a populist political identity, which can create a counterhegemonic frontier in relation to the Spanish governing elites. In this sense, we need not doubt that Podemos are emotional, and that emotions are a key part of their political project; Podemos are perfectly embodying the interplay between emotion/affect and reason, seeing it as a co-constitutive process rather than a clear division.

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On the other hand, there are some factors that could be said to problematize the theory, and relate to Podemos interpretation of what a successful political actor should look like. Podemos wanted to move away from the ineffective Indignados movement, which, in their words “did not reveal the force of the Left, but our damned weakness” (Torreblanca 2015, 121). Podemos is rather trying to maintain the division between emotion and reason, and are leaning towards a more rationalistic idea of political action. They are using emotions towards a specific political end, rather than seeing them as constitutive of political identities. As such, Podemos is moving towards a conceptualization of emotions that is reminiscent of the divisions in social theory, rather than Laclau’s theory of political identity. This chapter will begin with an overview of emotions in social theory, focusing in particular on the divisions between emotion and reason. In a second part, it will describe how a Laclauian perspective on affect and signification can help overcome these stringent divisions. In a third and final part, the chapter considers some of Podemos’ discourse on emotions, and how this may reinforce divisions that a theory influenced by psychoanalysis is trying to overcome. The chapter concludes by arguing that the stark divisions present in theory are difficult to overcome in practice.

Conceptualizing Affect and Emotions In theories of collective identities, there is a tendency to make a sharp distinction between what is emotional and what is rational. This can be seen from the early crowd theorists of the 20th century, to the present day discussions on populism. More than a century ago, Gustave Le Bon (1960), one of the leading thinkers in crowd theory, contributed to our understanding of the crowd. Le Bon believed the crowd to be manipulated by demagogues and charismatic leaders, and was deeply influenced by two seminal thinkers in crowd theory at the time, Gabriel Tarde and Hippolyte Taine. The two both argued that emotions, and more generally the unconscious, were key for the creation of any political identity. However, the role played by emotions was almost entirely negative, and indicated a pathological behavior (Ellenberger 1970, 528). This work on emotions is highly reminiscent of the Cartesian division between emotion and reason, the body and the mind, and although one may consider that this is part of times past, this division has proven a persistent presence in the study of the collective. In the wake of the early crowd theorists, mid-twentieth century political science entirely encapsulated the founding thoughts of Le Bon and others. One of the most prominent examples is Schumpeter, who argued that the citizen “drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyses in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again” (Schumpeter 1976 [1942], 262). This thought that the citizen is a slave under her

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unconscious desires has reverberated through the field, and resurfaces in works of Almond and Verba’s Civic Culture (1963), as well as in Converse, who said that “what needs repairing is not the [survey] item but the population” (1970, 176). Many have later argued that the citizen and the collective should be seen in a more positive light. The rise of rationalism in political science carries witness of an increased confidence in the faculties of the ordinary man and woman, such as seen in Elster (1989). The arrival of rational choice theory indicated a break with the previous pessimism surrounding the democratic process, and gave new hope to the overcoming of the faults of democratic participation of the past, such as the election of Hitler in Nazi Germany (Held 1987, 165). However, as noted by Aminzade and McAdam (2002), the focus on rational choice has largely precluded any study of emotions in collective action for a long period of time, which they attribute to the dominance of a Western culture of masculinity which sees the emotional realm as, if not irrelevant, at least undesirable for the democratic process. This has often been justified with reference to the difficulties in measuring emotions, even though notoriously slippery concepts such as race or class are seen as easily measurable (Calhoun 2001, 48). Nevertheless, the strong dichotomy between emotion and reason remained in place. This perspective, that emotions are dangerous and work to manipulate the crowd, is persisting in current research on populism, as evident in both public and academic debates. For instance, politicians around Europe, such as Herman van Rompuy, have argued that there needs to be a turn away from these ‘illiberal practices’ (BBC News 2012). In academia, Jan-Werner Müller has argued that populism is a “degraded form of democracy” (Müller 2016, 6), and he rejects the notion that “people’s angers and fears have to be taken seriously” to instead suggest the need for nuanced political judgment (ibid.). On a related note, Karp, Nai, and Norris argue that the confidence in democratic institutions, a lack of which can give rise to the populist moment, is “generally rational and based upon knowledge and familiarity” (Karp, Nai, and Norris 2017, 1), thus posing the rational voter against the emotional abstainer, or populist voter. Niall Ferguson, on the other hand, sediments the century-old idea that populism is a manipulation of the masses, and argues that “the flammable ingredient [for populism] is, of course, the demagogue, for populist demagogues react vituperatively and explosively against all of the aforementioned four ingredients” (Ferguson 2017). Ferguson here refers to the other ingredients as a rise in immigration, inequality, perceptions of corruption and a major financial crisis. All of these in combination with demagoguery are recipes for a populist outbreak. In this chapter, I argue that this derogatory simplification is both inaccurate and unhelpful when seeking to understand both contemporary and historical accounts of populism. Instead, there is a need to move beyond the dichotomy between the rational good citizen and the emotional harmful one. Beginning in the 1990s a significant change began to take place in social movement theory, and social theory at large. An increasing number of scholars,

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among them Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta (2000), began to argue that emotions should be seen as not simply undesired accompaniments in social action, but as constitutive forces for social change. Scholars now argued that emotions had been unfairly disregarded, and that by including them one could reach a deeper understanding of the workings of a collective (Flam and King 2005; Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta 2000; Jasper 1998). Building on the insights from new social movement theory – which argued that immaterial factors such as sexuality and racial relations were equally important to class relations – identities were seen in a new light (Melucci 1985; 1992). This led to an explosion of works related to the emotional workings of the collective, (Hochschild 1979; Scheff 1988, Jagger 1989; Rorty 1980; Scheman 1980; Taylor 1996). Scholars increasingly investigated the role of anger, shame, and pride in relation to the creation of collective identities, arguing that the emotion was quintessential for the movement. The question remains, however, whether the clear distinction between emotion and reason was overcome. Even though emotions were now said to be a key aspect of how a movement was formed, most scholars in this emotional turn still abided by a logic in which emotions are seen as a means to an end. Emotions are tools which can be employed by the collective in order to increase or sustain membership, or to attract more attention. Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta argue that “the emotions most relevant to politics, we suspect, fall towards the more constructed, cognitive end of this dimension” (2000, 79). Similarly, Jasper contends that “emotions involve beliefs and assumptions open to cognitive persuasion. We often can be talked out of our anger on the grounds that it is too extreme a response, or that we are misinformed” (1998, 401). There is clear ambition to cognitivize emotions, to rationalize their usage. The consequence of such a perspective becomes a prevailing supremacy of the reasoned citizen, and emotional, ‘irrational’ responses are still less important. In response to this remaining focus on the cognitive, there has in recent years been a move to deconstruct the emotional turn, and put forward an affective turn. Affect, many would say, is different from emotions. Affect is that which precedes an emotion, and can be thought of as a simply corporeal experience, as an intensity. Gould conceptualizes affect as something “non-conscious and unnamed, but still registered, experiences of bodily energy and intensity that arise in response to stimuli impinging the body” (Gould 2009, 19). Affect is thus a fluid, unbound practice. Emotion, on the other hand, is that process in which we name the affect, and the emotional stage is clearly posterior to the affective stage. First, we experience affect, and then we process this into an emotion (Gould 2009, 21). This perspective stems from a long tradition in Cultural Studies, heavily influenced by Massumi’s works, which sees affect as a subject worthy of study, but nonetheless distinct from the cognitive realm (Massumi, 1995). Many have followed the path of Massumi, and argued that the study of political identities must also include the study of affect (Connolly 2002; 2013; Emirbayer and Goldberg 2005; Gould 2009; 2010; Gregg and Seighworth 2013; Thrift 2007).

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However, what often occurs in the study of affect is a similar dichotomization between the emotional and rational, as seen in previous theories on emotions. Several scholars have pointed to this problem, and identified how affect theory thus perpetuates divisions rather than overcoming them. Leys (2011), for instance, argues that the affect theorists, such as Massumi or Connolly, operate “at once with a highly intellectualist or rationalist concept of meaning and an unexamined assumption that everything that is not ‘meaning’ in this limited sense belongs to the body” (Leys 2011, 458). The affective turn may in fact simply reverse the hierarchy between the mind and body, affect and cognition, instead of interrogating its very presence. Similarly, Glynos have pointed to how affect always seems to operate at the limits of discourse, i.e. as distinct from the discursive realm (Glynos 2012). In this interpretation of affect, which Glynos criticizes, there can be no intermeshing of affect and signification, and affect is thus left as simply corporeal. There is thus a clear effort to “dichotomize matter and meaning” (Glynos 2012, 175). This argument has been further strengthened by Zerilli (2012; 2013), who points to that there is no reason why affect should not be seen as a form of signification. Affect has been characterized in an reductionist way: Affect is presented as a distinct layer of experience that is both prior to and beneath intentional consciousness; it gets figured as a stratum of practical attunement that is autonomous of propositional intentionality. It is treated as a level of experience that is already there, independently of language and symbolization. (Zerilli 2013, 514) Zerilli here turns over the Cartesian division that has informed the study of the emotional collective for more than a century, which enables a new position in the study of emotions and affect in collective identities. Conceptually, this has clear repercussions. When studying populism, and also other forms of collective identities, it is clear that the field operates within the realm of the Cartesian ego cogito. However, this perspective is both old-fashioned and theoretically dubious, which is why a theory of populism that can accommodate an affective and emotional idea of collective identity is vital. This chapter argues that emotion and affect should not necessarily be separate concepts, if we want to overcome the distinction between mind/body, and cognitive/corporeal. The introduction of affect in the study of collective identities has rather worked to strengthen the dichotomy than reducing it, which is unfortunate. This chapter operates on the assumption that emotion and affect cannot be completely distinct from cognition or signification, and thus uses the two concepts interchangeably. This chapter also departs from traditional conceptions of emotions and affect as distinct, and argues that clear divisions between them often result in a favouring of cognitive or rational modes of politics. In

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order to understand the emotional/affective as legitimate forms of political action, there is a need to conceptualize political identities as never only emotional/ affective or rational/cognitive, but always both

Understanding the Affect–Populism Nexus The conclusions already drawn in the recent additions to affect theory can be further applied to the case of populism if we consider the works of Ernesto Laclau (Laclau 1990; 1996; 2005; 2006; Mouffe 2015). In his seminal work, On Populist Reason, he outlines how a theory of populism can move beyond theoretical stalemates and argues that any collective identity is by default both affective and capable of signification drawing on insights in psychoanalysis and deconstruction. The theory begins in a basic realization from psychoanalysis regarding the individual subject: the subject is never fully realized, but always in the making, and what we are witnessing is thus not a world of subjects, but a world of subjectifications. Laclau’s theory of the subject, both individual and collective, stems from an engagement with Lacan. In brief terms, Lacan argued that the subject is never fully constituted, but is always trying to realize itself through the Symbolic order (Stavrakakis 1999, 28). In other words, a subject, an individual identity, cannot be fully conceived by the individual, but is constantly compromised by language (Lacan 1964, 67). This rests upon insights in linguistics, which argue that there is no isomorphism, no one-to-one relationship, between signifier and signified (Saussure 1983, 66). Based on the idea that there is no fully constituted individual identity, Laclau transposes this idea to argue that this is also valid for collective identities. He borrows Lacan’s idea of subjectificaiton – the constant on-going process of realizing yourself as a subject – to develop an idea of collective identification. Drawing on Lacan’s constitutive lack, Laclau argues that “lack is precisely the locus of the subject, whose relation with the structure takes place through various processes of identification” (Laclau 1990, 210) According to Laclau, there are no predetermined collective identities present in society, but these are constantly made and remade. The aspect of Laclau’s work most relevant for this chapter is the insight of the role of affect in creating processes of identification, and how this process refutes any clear distinction between affect and signification. This, in turn, has farreaching consequences for the study of populism and affect. One of the key terms Laclau introduces to explain how identities are formed is the empty signifier. The empty signifier signals the very process of meaning-making and identity-making. As concepts do not possess inherent value – as explained by Lacan – there is a political struggle to attach value to a signifier. This signifier, however, is empty; it does not possess content of its own; the signifier is constantly being remade and resignified. The function of the empty signifier in collective identification consists in that since all identities are to some extent incomplete, there is a commonality

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that can be formed into a collective. This is what Laclau terms a ‘logic of equivalence’, which indicates that regardless of the particular identity of any individual or group, they have a potential commonality in their incompleteness. This potentiality is what forms collective identities. Since all signifiers are potentially empty and ‘failed’ in the sense that they are never complete, they can function as a unifying factor (Laclau 2005, 108; Norval 2007, 142). Laclau brings up his seminal example of the Russian movement against tsarism demanding ‘bread, peace and land’. This slogan became constitutive of a highly dispersed movement, ranging from urban working class to the rural peasants. Regardless of their vastly different experiences and life situations, they could attach to the slogan, which formed their collective identity. They all experienced a sensation of lack, which united them. A populist logic, according to Laclau, occurs when an empty signifier represents a wide change of different demands (he terms them democratic demands). The idea of representation here is not an addition of different demands, but rather a process of subtraction, which subsumes democratic demands into populist demands (Laclau 2005: 107). This representation of emptiness is never complete, but there is still a desire for representation: Embodying something can only mean giving a name to what is being embodied; but, since what is embodied is an impossible fullness, something which has no independent consistency of its own, the embodying entity becomes the full object of the cathectic investment. (Laclau 2005, 119) The key term here is ‘cathectic investment’, which signals the centrality of affect for any forms of collective identity-making. Investment in the impossible fullness is what constitutes Laclau’s concept of hegemony. When one populist demand claims to represent all democratic demands, this becomes a hegemonic function. The reason for this, argues Laclau, lies in an inherent quest for order: In a situation of radical disorder, the demand is for some kind of order, and the concrete social arrangement that will meet that request is a secondary consideration (the same can also be said of similar terms such as ‘justice’, ‘equality’, ‘freedom’, etc.). (Laclau 2005, 96) Importantly, Laclau argues that there is no qualitative difference between the formation of meaning linguistically and the formation of identities in society. Identities, like concepts, are empty constructs, to which individual and groups can attach. Due to the constitutive lack, the inability to grasp the entirety of the subject, there is a desire to realize this fullness, a project that always fails (Laclau 2005, 111). As such, identification stems from a desire to fill the constitutive lack,

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but this only creates false universals (Ibid. 115). Populism, in Laclau’s terms, is thus very different from many of the mainstream populism scholars. Populism, in other words, is the “affective [radical] investment in a partial object” (Laclau 2005, 116). The populist project never represents the People, but the People is a chimera, a construct which embodies a mythical fullness. What Laclau’s theory offers is a path towards overcoming the Cartesian ego cogito. Based on the Lacanian insight that meaning and signification are always reliant upon and intrinsically linked with affect, Laclau’s account of populism moves beyond the stale dichotomies depicted in the previous section. In this version, emotions/affect is not an undesirable element of human interaction, it is not irrelevant, nor is it simply a tool to attract or sustain membership. Importantly, neither is it completely disjoint from signification, meaning-making or identity-making. Populism is an inherently affective practice, but this is true for all identities, and is not derogatory.

Continuing Tensions in the Discourse of Podemos Although the theories described earlier may illustrate a neat solution to the difficult tensions between emotion/reason, in practice, relations are rarely quite as simple. Laclau’s theories, although not yet part of the mainstream, have nonetheless proven influential in many populist movement and parties. One of the most recent examples is the party Podemos in Spain, which has taken Laclau’s theories as a roadmap for how to create a counter-hegemonic, populist structure. Podemos, founded in 2014 by a few university professors in Madrid, have realized the potential in creating a ‘People’ that can posit a challenge to the status quo in Spain. Questioning the consensus politics, which emanated from the 1978 constitution after the Franco dictatorship (Carr and Fusi Aizpurúa 1994; Gilmour 1985; Iglesias 2015a; Iglesias 2015b), they have in just a few years secured a firm position in the Spanish electoral landscape, with around 20 per cent of the vote in the general elections of 2015 and 2016. Podemos is thus trying to break the quasi two-party system, which Spain has experienced since the transition, and are riding on a wave of dissent against the two established parties, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, social democrats) and Partido Popular (PP, conservative), on the back of numerous corruption scandals (Jimenéz 2009; Manzano 2013). Podemos’ political practice perfectly illustrates the tensions and dichotomies between emotions and reason, mind/body, and cognitive/corporeal, as already outlined. In the paragraphs that follow, I will outline how, despite the apparent adherence to Laclau, Podemos struggles to overcome the central divisions described in this chapter. On the one hand, Podemos wants to construct a ‘People’, which should lay the ground for political change (Iglesias 2015a; Errejón 2015):

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The supreme ‘name’ of this part of the community that succeeds to become the whole, is the ‘People’: it is a plebs – the most disadvantaged group – who claims to be the only legitimate populus, that is to say, a part that wants to function as the totality of the community. (Errejón 2015, 133)1 The influence from Laclau is prominent in Podemos, and they are trying to implement the ‘People’ as an empty signifier that can serve as the foundation for a new identity. This ambition to create a narrative that incites emotions in the electorate has been evident in Podemos electoral programs since 2014. The programs repeatedly refer to the People, an empty signifier, and the organizational models within Podemos have been intended to strengthen the voice of the members within the party. For instance, the 2015 electoral program was a product of member discussion online where “over 10,000 people expressed their ideas” (Podemos 2015, 10). This was done through Podemos’ online tool Plaza Podemos, which functions as a mass agora where members can vote on proposed policies. Another key feature are the so-called Circles, which are local organizations that can feed policy proposal to the rest of the organization for approval. The People are thus constantly being articulated within Podemos’ organizational structure, a structure that should prevent the traditional top-down practices of other parties. The language used in the party programs is also highly emotive in that it invokes strong senses of injustice (Briziarelli 2016; Stoehrel 2017). Podemos have framed the financial crisis not simply in economic terms, but bring feeling of indignation, of shame, and of outrage, building on the feelings strongly articulated within the Indignados movement: It will not be easy to change the functioning of the judicial power, of the administration and of the government, but we know that we can achieve it, because we are counting on the most powerful ally: the people. We know and we feel that we are the majority, the people who are tired of seeing the institutions defending the interests of the most powerful whilst they remain indifferent to the problems of the people. (Podemos 2015, 11) While Podemos is creating a political subject in the People, they are also promoting the thought that representation is key to electoral success. One way in which this is put into practice is through the presence of a leadership, in this case Pablo Iglesias, a symbol which represents this absent fullness among the Spanish populace, and he aimed “to aggregate the new demands generated by the crisis around a mediatic leadership, capable of dichotomizing the political 1

All translations in this chapter are my own.

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space” (Iglesias 2015a, 14; Gallardo-Camacho and Lavín 2016). In addition, he explains that: This populace […], was not ‘representable’ within the traditional left-right categories of the political space. In the context of high dissatisfaction with the elites, our objective of identifying a new ‘we’ that included the TV nation initially came together around the signifier ‘Pablo Iglesias’. (Iglesias 2015a, 17) Podemos has placed a high importance on the leader, on Iglesias as acting as the ‘false universal’. They even went so far as putting Iglesias’ face on the ballot for the 2014 European Parliament Elections, arguing that voters would recognize his face even though they may be unaware of the political party Podemos. Such a move bears witness to a more emotional investment in politics. In many ways, this fits the bill perfectly for how Laclau envisioned a populist project. However, what can it tell us about emotions/affect? It is clear that Podemos intends to use affective investment in a signifier in order to create a common identity. In this sense, Podemos could be seen as having overcome the strict division between emotions/affect and reason, and as having created a new form of political subjectivity and identity-making capable of encapsulating the inherently emotional and rational qualities of any political identity. This would seem to supersede the mainstream populist literature, seeing emotions/affect as an asset rather than a necessary evil. Nevertheless, there are trends within Podemos which point to the fact that the tension between emotion/affect and reason is not completely resolved. There is a seemingly conflictual stance within the party which questions emotions/affect as an appropriate source of political identity, and which is more affiliated with the perspective that sees emotions as instrumental, as a means to an end, rather than constitutive of any political project. This stance is reminiscent of the works of Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta (2000), and has become particularly evident in recent publications from the party. There are two main trends that reveal the seemingly strong appeal that a rationalistic and strategic agenda still has for the party leadership. The language in Podemos now focuses increasingly on winning elections, as well as the maturity and capacity of the party. The current political program, which was approved by the membership in an assembly at Vistalegre, in Madrid in February 2017, is very clear on what the main strategy for the party should be in the future. The party should not commit the same errors at the anti-austerity movement that preceded it, and, as put by Iglesias, “the movements did not reveal the force of the Left, but our damned weakness” (Iglesias, in Torreblanca 2015, 121). Instead, “we have to assume that Podemos can and should lead the government of this country” (Podemos 2017, 28).

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Whilst the affective forms of identity-making had been very strong within the movement the party should now focus on something which brings results. Emotional investment and identity-making which did not solely focus on party programs or gaining power, has to step aside: “The popular mobilizations are essential, but it is also essential that we forge the keys to open the doors that remain closed to us” (Podemos 2014). In addition to the focus on taking power – thus seeing the construction of a ‘People’ through affective investment as a means to an end – there is a tendency to emphasize the more rational qualities of the party. First, there is a clear understanding that political leaders are the way forward, and that without a leader, political agendas are likely to be ignored: “Is it fundamental to understand that there are extensive social sectors which remain unrepresented, whose demands must be channelled through new types of political figures” (Podemos 2017, 29). Similarly, they argue that “Podemos was born as a project that responded to the necessity of opening a space which made possible the incorporation of social sectors into politics, sectors which demanded the tools to do so” (Podemos 2017, 24). The goal of representation is thus to articulate the popular will, which could be seen as a direct implementation of the Laclaian project. It is, however, important to note that this is a deliberate strategy on Podemos’ part, and not something which occurs organically within the party. This perspective is also phrased rather poetically when Podemos describes how “politics in the 21st century is more similar to rivers than to mountains” (Podemos 2017, 30) indicating a process which flows mono-directionally away from its grassroots towards the end goal: winning. Second, there is a will to signal how Podemos is a capable and reliable party, ruled by “common sense and efficacy” (Podemos 2017, 28). This also points to a more rationalistic view of politics, which is keen to refer the emotional/affective to the background. This perspective becomes even more strongly accentuated when Podemos depict a process of maturing: “If we don’t commit errors of immaturity, we can consolidate our position as the principal force of opposition and advance our electoral position to win the next elections” (Podemos 2017, 12). Here, the key to electoral success is posited against an infantilized version of a political party, or a movement, which has not yet grasped the in-and-outs of the political game. The party, in other words, is intended to “create and put into motion a project capable of endowing a political outcome to this constituent impulse which has advanced in our society since 15M” (Podemos 2017, 24). There is a clear division between the capable party and the ‘impulse’ of the movement, where the former is necessary to articulate the needs of the latter. The difference between the two lies in the capacity to achieve electoral success, a goal that supersedes the emotional/affective qualities of the party. Podemos is, it seems, still struggling to break away from a perspective that favours the rational and strategic over the emotional/affective. Since the overarching goal is to win, the ways in which the People of Podemos is constituted – through affective and emotional investment – becomes a means to an end.

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Conclusion In this chapter, I have discussed how we can understand the relationship between emotions/affect and populism. By tracing how social theory has favoured a strong dichotomy between emotion and reason, which has taken place throughout the 20th century, I have argued that this dichotomy is still present in much research both in populism studies, as well as in research on social movements and collective identities. Even in the most recent affective turn, the division between the mind and the body are seen at play. In opposition to this, I have identified the theories of Ernesto Laclau as a model through which these dichotomies may be overcome. By using a Laconia idea of subjectificaiton, Laclau’s theory of hegemony offers a framework where affect is strongly related to any forms of identity-making. This strongly questions contemporary research in populism studies, which treats affective and emotional expressions as unwanted elements of political life. I have also, however, pointed to how these dichotomies are very difficult to overcome in practice. By referring to Podemos’ view on unity and the creation of a ‘People’, along with their focus on the leader as the empty signifier, I have argued that they could be seen as a prime example of creating new forms of political identity. However, by pointing to their more recent focus on the strategic aims for the party, I have also identified how these new forms are compromised by old assumption about how political identities ‘should’ function in order to be successful politically, and, perhaps more importantly, electorally. This ambivalent approach to emotions/affect indicates how strong dichotomies are still present within our political landscape. Even in a case that is openly in favour of using Laclau’s theory of populism, which overcomes these dichotomies, the urge to favour the rational and the strategic remains strong. This indicates how deeply embedded the Cartesian view is both in academic works, as well as in political practice.

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Karp, J., Nai, A., and Norris (2017). Why cognitive skills strengthen perceptions of electoral integrity. MPSA annual conference, Chicago April 6, 2017. www.electoralintegrityp roject.com/research-papers/. Accessed December 12, 2017. Lacan, J. (1964). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans. A. Sheridan. London: Routledge. Laclau, E. (1990). New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso. Laclau, E. (1996). Emancipation(s). London: Verso. Laclau, E. (2000). Identity and hegemony. In Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek (2000). Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, London: Verso, 44–89. Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. London: Verso. Laclau, E. (2006). Why constructing a people is the main task of radical politics. Critical Inquiry, 32(4): 646–680. Le Bon, G. (1960 [1895]). The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. New York: Viking. Leys, R. (2011). The turn to affect: A critique. Critical Inquiry, 37(3): 434–472. https:// doi.org/10.1086/659353 Manzano, C. (2013). Political corruption in Spain: Will this be Rajoy’s Watergate. Open Democracy, February 1. Massumi, B. (1995). The autonomy of affect. Cultural Critique31, 83. https://doi.org/10. 2307/1354446 Melucci, A. (1985). The symbolic challenge of contemporary movements. Social Movements, 52(4): 789. Melucci, A. (1992). Challenging codes: Framing and ambivalence in the ideology of social movements. Thesis Eleven, 31, 131–142. https://doi.org/10.1177/072551369203100110 Mouffe, C. (2015). Blog Ernesto Laclau, theorist of hegemony, 1–4. Müller, J.-W. (2016). What is Populism?. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Norval, A. (2007). Aversive Democracy: Inheritance and Originality in the Democratic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Podemos (2014). Programma para las Elecciones Europeas. http://podemos.info/progra. Accessed December 14, 2014. Podemos (2015). Queremos, Sabemos, Podemos: Un programa para cambiar nuestro país. https://lasonrisadeunpais.es/wp-content/plugins/programa/data/programa-es.pdf Podemos (2017). Plan 2020: Ganar al PP, gobernar España, construir derechos. Documento político. https://pabloiglesias.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Plan_2020_ def.pdf. Accessed April 12, 2017. Rorty, A. (1980). Explaining Emotions. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Saussure, F. (1983 [1916]). Course in General Linguistics. London: G. Duckworth. Scheff, T. J. (1988). Shame and Conformity: the Deference- Emotion System. American Sociological Review, 53(3): 395–406. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095647 Scheman, N. (1980). Anger and the politics of naming. In Sally McConnell, Ginet R. Borker and Nelly Foreman (eds.) Women and Language in Literature and Society, New York: Praeger, 174–187. Schumpeter, J. A. (1976 [1942]). Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Routledge. Stavrakakis, Y. (1999). Lacan and the Political. Abingdon: Routledge. Stoehrel, R. F. (2017). The regime’s worst nightmare: the mobilization of citizen democracy. A study of Podemos’(aesthetic) populism and the production of affect in political discourse. Cultural Studies, 31(4), 543–579.

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Taylor, V. (1996). Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, Postpartum Depression. New York: Routledge. Thrift, N. J. (2007). Non-representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect. London: Routledge. Torreblanca, I. (2015). Asaltar los cielos: Podemos o la política después de la crisis. Barcelona: Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. Zerilli, L. M. G. (2012). Value pluralism and the problem of judgment. Political Theory, 40(1): 6–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591711426853 Zerilli, L. M. G. (2013). Embodied knowing, judgment, and the limits of neurobiology. Perspectives on Politics, 11(2): 512–515. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592

5 THE POLITICAL LOGIC OF POPULIST HYPE: THE CASE OF RIGHT-WING POPULISM’S ‘METEORIC RISE’ AND ITS RELATION TO THE STATUS QUO1 Jason Glynos and Aurelien Mondon

Introduction Populism is today ubiquitous in the political news coverage in much of the West. While the term has been abundantly used and discussed in the European context for a good part of the 21st century, its invocation has become ever more common since the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States and the Brexit referendum. The term has been used and misused by journalists, pundits, politicians and academics alike, to the point that very little can be discussed in politics today without referring to the rise of populism. Movements and parties traditionally referred to as far, radical, or extreme right, or even as racist and fascist, have become widely described simply as populist. This marked inflation in the indiscriminate use of the populist epithet raises a number of serious issues, beyond mere terminological or typological inaccuracy. To highlight these issues, we characterize this phenomenon in terms of what we call the political logic of populist hype. In order to bring this political logic into focus, this chapter pays special attention to the 2014 European election. We argue that it was during this time that the strong, albeit uneven, performance of so-called populist right-wing parties played an important role in making the populist hype narrative particularly prevalent. For then French president François Hollande, “the European elections have delivered their truth, and it is painful”. His assessment of the 2014 European election results was damning, pointing to widespread “distrust of Europe and of 1

A draft version of this chapter was published as a working paper for Populismus.gr., J. Glynos and A. Mondon (2016). The political logic of populist hype: The case of right-wing populism’s ‘meteoric rise’ and its relation to the status quo. POPULISMUS Observatory Working Paper 4.

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government parties” (Higgins 2014). This evaluation of the result was shared by journalists and politicians commenting on the ‘shock’, ‘earthquake’, or ‘tsunami’ that shook the continent and its leaders to their core. Later that year, the political commentator Tony Barber (Barber 2014) issued a stark warning: “European democracy must keep right-wing populism at bay”. The article appeared in the Financial Times as wave after wave of populist electoral advances following the European elections appeared to test the foundations of European liberal democracy at the regional, national, and local levels. While acknowledging that “right-wing populism displays different characteristics from country to country, possessing a nastier far-right streak in Greece and Hungary than in Germany and the UK”, populist right-wing parties were nonetheless lumped together by Barber to represent a unified albeit murky threat to democracy itself. In this view, democracy epitomizes the ideal of moderation and rational deliberation, while populism carries with it the specter of extremism and passions gone awry. Tellingly, Barber’s explanation of the populist phenomenon to which he is witness is virtually non-existent. How European democracy is to keep rightwing populism at bay is thus left unanswered. Instead, his characterization of the current situation as an impasse sounds fateful and alarmist, conjuring, as he does, a rather curious image of the apparently robust walls of Jericho pitted against the passionate and powerful horn-blowing of the Israelites. We argue that this Financial Times opinion piece is typical of the sort of response in the wake of the so-called populist phenomenon in much of Europe and North America. When reproduced endlessly across mainstream media outlets and even some academic fora, it becomes an instance of what is referred to in this chapter as ‘populist hype’. The term ‘populist hype’ seeks to capture at least three things. First, it aims to capture something about how politicians, as well as media and academic commentators, have tended to skew the meaning of the populist phenomenon. In our case, this involves presenting an overly simplistic and homogenized picture of the ‘meteoric’ rise of right-wing populism across Europe. This is accomplished by individual analyses and commentaries that make assertions on the basis of highly selective use, and decontextualized interpretations, of electoral results. Second, populist hype entails the exaggeration of the significance of the populist phenomenon, particularly as regards its political significance. This is accomplished primarily by the sheer volume of copy devoted to the discussion of the apparent rise of right-wing populism, as opposed to other manifestations of discontent. The ‘hyped’ response to the 2014 electoral outcomes exaggerated the political significance of the populist phenomenon by suggesting, for example, that populist right-wing parties and movements are the only (or main) political alternative to the mainstream status quo. While the Front National (FN) and UKIP had a clear impact on the political agenda as their program and discourse entered the mainstream, we argue that this impact was not simply a reflection of their electoral or strategic achievements, but also a product of the exaggerated role attributed to the

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FN and UKIP by mainstream politicians and commentators. Finally, with the term ‘populist hype’ this chapter highlights how many political commentators tend to characterize the populist phenomenon in apocalyptic terms. There is a tendency in the present case, for example, to emphasize how the rise of rightwing populism signals nothing less than a threat to democracy as such. In looking across the three dimensions of the hyped response to the populist phenomenon, however, it is worth pointing out how they should not be understood as entirely autonomous from one another: they are in fact often found to be in a relation of over-determination with each other (Althusser 2005[1962]). In drawing attention to this generalized ‘populist hype’ we are not suggesting that the varying degrees of success of right-wing parties, in our case UKIP and the FN, do not deserve attention or that they do not have a real impact on politics and exclusion. Our focus is related, but distinct. We draw attention instead to the skewed interpretation of many commentators, which often identifies rightwing populism as itself a disease rather than as a mere symptom. The aim of this chapter is thus not to engage with populist right-wing parties themselves, but rather with a particular interpretation of, and reaction to, their electoral performances by the ‘mainstream’, and how it has helped distort the diagnosis on the current state of liberal democracy in the post-democratic world (Crouch 2004). Yet the chapter does not simply engage in a re-characterization exercise that substitutes one picture of the 2014 populist right-wing ‘wave’ in France and the UK with another more accurate one. This re-characterization is of course essential, but we seek first and foremost to re-problematize the hyped response to the populist phenomenon. In particular, we argue that the problem with populist hype is not merely that it misrepresents what is actually going on. The main issue is in fact that populist hype has a ‘logic’ whose integrity and efficacy does not rely in any straightforward way on its representational truth or untruth. Drawing on the Essex School of discourse theory, and closely associated strands of psychoanalytic political theory (Glynos and Howarth 2007; Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Stavrakakis et al. 2000; Glynos 2001; Stavrakakis 1999; Žižek 1993), as well as recent analyses of populist parties across Europe (see for example, Mral et al. 2013; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2012; Wodak 2015) and their relationship to the media (Mudde 2007; Mazzoleni 2008), we argue that populist hype has functioned as a political logic. By qualifying it as a political logic the aim is to foreground how the dominant ‘hyped’ response to the populist conjuncture by politicians and the media has served to pre-empt the contestation of some troubling norms animating the regimes of ‘really existing’ liberal democracy and to contest other norms which many consider worthy of defense. For example, instead of serving as an occasion to broach a set of debates about the character of liberal democracy as it operates today in Europe, the horrific specter of a populism gone amok is more often used to conjure the image of an imminent threat to democracy as such. This logic tends to marginalize meaningful debate about the way democracy tends to

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operate, i.e., as an electoral democracy that installs and reinforces alienating tendencies (Katsambekis 2015). Moreover, this chapter argues that the tenacity of populist hype – and its continued role as a political logic – indicates how it has successfully tapped into potent affective registers rooted in collective desires and fantasies structured around the idea of ‘theft of enjoyment’, giving it its energy and verve. A key aim of the chapter is to show how the above-mentioned theoretical resources can be deployed to frame the 2014 populist conjuncture (and similar conjunctures) in a productive way. More systematic empirical research can provide sharper accounts of populist hype in precise settings, but given the limited scope of this chapter, and to provide a starting point, our aim rather is to make a theoretical intervention that generates some insight, points to new ‘interpretive’ hypotheses, and reframes problems. Examples to illustrate and help better formulate our hypotheses will be drawn from France and the United Kingdom. These countries were selected because of the electoral gains made by UK and French populist right-wing parties in the 2014 European elections and because of the voluminous commentary these parties have attracted more generally, a commentary that has itself been folded into a narrative about wider European populist trends, despite distinct historical origins of country-specific populist parties (Crépon et al. 2015; Startin 2015). More generally, however, this theoretical intervention offers a framework within which one could subsequently and more systematically explore and probe hypotheses about the character and significance of ‘populist hype’. Rather than applying to the case studies our own theoretical understanding of populism, this chapter explores the implications of the way the term ‘populism’ is mobilized by key ‘enunciators’ (i.e., politicians, political commentators, etc.) in the 2014 populist conjuncture. To this end, the argument of this chapter proceeds in three steps. First, it problematizes right-wing populist hype as a dominant response to the conjuncture of 2014, particularly as regards the EU elections. It then considers how a critique that relies only on pointing to the falsehood presupposed by such hype misses its political and ideological significance. We draw out its political significance by identifying two key norms at stake in ‘really existing’ liberal democracy: electoral primacy and presumptive equality. This entails articulating the political logic embodied in the ‘performance’ of populist hype. Finally, it hypothesizes that its ideological significance is linked to the fantasmatic narratives that shape the affective tenor of the mainstream response to the populist conjuncture.

Characterizing and Problematizing Right-wing Populist Hype It has already been noted that the expression ‘populist hype’ aims to capture at least three, potentially inter-related, dimensions associated with the storylines offered by politicians, journalists, and some academics: (1) a rather selective and

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thus skewed understanding of the populist phenomenon, namely, as a simple and sizeable rise of right-wing party popularity across Europe that obfuscates a more complex set of developments; (2) an exaggeration of the significance of this rise, particularly as regards the political role attributed to populist right-wing parties and movements (by implying they are the main alternative to the status quo); and (3) a tendency to describe the rise of right-wing populism in apocalyptic tones that signal a threat to democracy as such. Each of these dimensions entails claims that can be rebutted through a contextualization process that yields a more nuanced picture. It is first important to restate that our aim here is not to deny that there has been a rise in popularity of some radical right parties or to downplay their impact across Europe. Instead, we focus on the reaction their rise has triggered and the ways in which it may have been skewed and exaggerated, leading to an ideological realignment and shift in political discourse favorable to right-wing objectives and dispositions (Kallis 2013, Mondon 2013). Clearly, some parties achieved remarkable results with the French Front National (FN), the Dansk Folkeparti (DF) and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) winning the ballot in their respective countries. With the return of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) to the forefront of politics in Austria, there were signs that reconstructed extreme right parties made a European breakthrough in 2014. On the more extreme side of alleged ‘rightwing populism’, the relative success of Jobbik (J) in Hungary and Chrysí Avgí (GD) in Greece were also used to warn of the return of a ‘nastier’ politics. Yet, as Cas Mudde (Mudde 2013) noted before the election, caution was needed in interpreting such results as the simplistic rise of a unified ‘populist right’: despite all the talk of the rise of the far right as a consequence of the Great Recession, the sober fact is that far right parties have gained support in ‘only’ eleven of the twenty-eight EU member states, and increased their support substantially in a mere five. The elections confirmed this as parties such as Geert Wilders’ Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) and the Vlaams Belang (VB) suffered setbacks. The performance of ‘populist’ parties was therefore uneven at best in the European elections (see Figure 5.1). However, the skewed character of a simplistic (and panicked) picture portraying a rather monolithic populist right-wing rise across Europe can be further put into question by focusing on the magnitude of this rise, not just on the geographical unevenness already mentioned. Even in those countries that show a rise in popular support for right wing parties, the magnitude attributed to this rise can vary depending on the assumptions underlying the calculation of the magnitude. The figures on page 000 portray popular support as a proportion of the total votes cast. But an alternative measure of popular support can be derived by looking at votes cast in relation to the number of registered voters. Viewed from this latter perspective, panicked pictures of a Europe-wide right-wing rise appear

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30 25 20

2004

15

2009

10

2014

5 0 FPO

FN

DF

UKIP

PVV

VB

J

GD

Right-wing populist party results in the European elections (as a percentage of the total votes cast) Source: European Parliament

FIGURE 5.1

even more skewed (or ‘hyped’) than a simple geographic corrective would suggest (see Figure 5.2).2 As Figure 5.2 shows, apart from the Dansk Folkeparti, all other parties failed to appeal to more than 10 per cent of registered voters. Therefore, the simplistic picture of a rise of right-wing populism can appear skewed as a result of selective evidence-gathering practices linked to geography and vote share measurements. These spatial complications, however, can be supplemented with temporal-contextual complications linked to the comparative historical trajectories of individual parties. Such comparisons can introduce some further rather striking nuance to the above simplistic picture of a ‘rise’, particularly if we look at the two parties poised to lead the debate about a potential populist alliance in the aftermath of the elections. The FN saw a surge in vote compared to the 2004 and 2009 elections when it reached a trough towards the end of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s presidency. However, put in temporal perspective, this increase translated into a sharp fall compared to Marine Le Pen’s 2012 presidential bid (13.95 per cent of the registered vote against 9.3). While European elections attract traditionally fewer voters, this decrease of more than 1.7 million votes in elections favorable to protest parties, and with government ratings at a record low, demonstrated the relatively limited ability of the FN to bring voters (back) to the polling booths. Similarly, UKIP’s increase from 5.61 per cent to 9.11 per cent of the registered vote was far less impressive than the 27.5 per cent 2

In making these points we do not mean to suggest that measuring party popularity as a function of registered voters is necessarily always better than as a function of vote share. However, the interesting point for us relates to the way in which democratic legitimacy and party support is measured, and how the present form of populist hype relies on the selective or predominant use of just one of these measures. One of the aims of the article is to demonstrate that these measures belong very much to a contested area, but that, currently, the most common measure referenced with regard to party support and electoral performance is vote share. While this measure is certainly useful, our aim is to highlight that such a measure is only one of a range of possible measures.

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30 25 20

2004

15

2009

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5 0 FPO

FN

DF

UKIP

PVV

VB

J

GD

Right-wing populist party results in the European elections (as a percentage of registered voters) Source: European Parliament

FIGURE 5.2

commonly advertised. Despite ‘historically unprecedented levels of coverage for a minor party’,3 the party whose platform had always focused only on the European questions failed to appeal to more than one out of nine UK voters. So far, we have sought to demonstrate in what sense the idea of ‘populist hype’ can be said to rely on a skewed portrait of the rise of right wing party popularity. Given a relatively modest popular support, it is interesting to note how much media coverage is devoted to the discussion of the rise of populist right-wing parties (Crépon et al. 2015; Goodwin and Ford 2013). This disproportionately voluminous media exposure tends to assign a rather exaggerated significance to the rise of such parties generally, and a rather exaggerated political significance more specifically. A casual database search reveals a disproportionate number of mentions of UKIP and the FN compared to left-wing alternatives, for example, and – occasionally – even governing parties. In the UK, in the month leading up to the 2014 European elections, the term ‘UKIP’ appeared in 1,116 headlines in the United Kingdom in the main national newspapers, while the term ‘Green Party’ appeared in fewer than 20 headlines. Interestingly the term ‘abstention’ – which would indicate a more nuanced picture emerging – appeared in none.4 UKIP’s television coverage showed a similar picture, with ‘imagebites’ of UKIP and Nigel Farage appear(ing) more than other parties and their leaders (Cushion et al. 2015). It is a short step from here to creating an impression that right-wing parties are widely understood as the alternative to mainstream parties, even if 3 4

Between 2009 and 2013, Matthew Goodwin and Rob Ford (2013) counted ‘25 appearances by Nigel Farage on Question Time and more than 23,000 press mentions’. This includes the print and electronic versions of national newspapers including the Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, the Mirror, the Evening Standard, The Sun, the I, and the Express. Analysis undertaken via the LexisNexis database, from April 22, 2014 to May 22, 2014.

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much of the reporting is negative and large slices of the public vehemently disagree or disapprove of the objectives and ideals of right-wing parties (see Willsher et al. 2014 among others). Cécile Alduy and Stéphane Wahnich (Alduy and Wahnich 2015) have highlighted a similarly disproportionate trend for the FN in the French media. In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy was mentioned 1029 times in the mainstream media, and Jean-Marie Le Pen 518 times, even though the future president received more than three times the number of votes of the FN candidate in the presidential election that year. In 2010, even before becoming leader of her party, Marine Le Pen received more coverage than UMP president Jean-François Copé (581 occurrences to 481) and only marginally less than Francois Hollande (676), then secretary of the Parti Socialiste and future president. Since then, the trend has favored FN coverage despite stringent media laws. A clear indication of this disproportionate media exposure of, and thus exaggerated significance attributed to, FN can be gleaned by looking at BFMTV. BFMTV, one of the most popular news channels in France, received a formal warning from the Supreme Audiovisual Council (CSA) for its coverage of the 2014 local elections between the February 10 and March 14: 42.23 per cent of the time allocated to the campaign concerned the FN, while the UMP received 18.67 per cent and the PS 14.77 per cent (CSA 2014). While BFMTV was forced by law to even out its coverage, Henri Maler and Julien Salingue (2014, 103) rightly noted that “the political reach of the results of the FN can be measured with their media reach. And, in this respect, there is no doubt that the media construct of the Front National is disproportionate”. Finally, we come to the third dimension of the ‘hyped’ response: the portrayal of the rise of right-wing populism in predominantly apocalyptic terms.5 This is an important dimension to foreground because it appears to sustain or ‘energize’ the other dimensions on account of their overdetermined inter-relation. Natural disaster metaphors such as ‘shock’, ‘wave’ and ‘earthquake’ commonly headline the front pages of major newspapers after so-called populist breakthroughs. We qualify these rhetorical flourishes as apocalyptic because they tend to convey a sense of existential threat: the issue is framed in terms of survival, be it for Europe or democracy itself (see for example MacShane 2014). In better understanding the character of this threat, at least as it is portrayed by many politicians and journalists, it is helpful to appeal to the concept of ‘theft of enjoyment’, which derives from the psychoanalytic tradition. ‘Theft of enjoyment’ expresses an idea about how, at a fundamental level, each subject’s enjoyment, associated with the pleasures and pains of one’s way of life, is always already a reflexive enjoyment: my own enjoyment is structured on the basis of how I imagine others enjoying themselves. This reflexivity triggers a whole array 5

While this is outside the remit of this article, a similar argument could be made with regard to left-wing populism and its coverage.

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of different affective responses. For example, it may trigger jealousy if I imagine others enjoying themselves excessively. Or it may trigger feelings of outrage and resentment if I imagine others not merely enjoying themselves excessively, but enjoying themselves at my expense (cf. Chang and Glynos 2011). The idea of ‘theft of enjoyment’ tries to capture what is at stake in this latter case, or similar sorts of cases, because we may experience our own enjoyment as ‘stolen’. As Slavoj Žižek (Žižek 1993, 201) noted regarding the concept of the nation, It appears to us as ‘our Thing’ (perhaps we could say cosa nostra), as something accessible only to us, as something ‘they,’ the others, cannot grasp; nonetheless it is something constantly menaced by ‘them.’ It appears as what gives plenitude and vivacity to our life, and yet the only way we can determine it is by resorting to different versions of the same empty tautology. All we can ultimately say about it is that the Thing is ‘itself,’ ‘the real Thing,’ ‘what it really is about,’ etc. If we are asked how we can recognize the presence of this Thing, the only consistent answer is that the Thing is present in that elusive entity called ‘our way of life’. (Žižek 1993, 201) One can see the relevance of such an idea in trying to better understand the character of the above-mentioned existential threat to democracy. ‘We’ know ‘we’ live in a democracy because we can ‘enumerate disconnected fragments’ of the way our democratic lives work: we are citizens, we are protected by human and political rights, one of these being the right to vote, we can participate in the electoral process freely, we have a free press and freedom of speech, etc. (Rancière 2005). And yet we feel we are at the mercy of ‘Others’ abusing and jeopardizing our way of life, stealing our enjoyment. But who, precisely, are these ‘Others’ who abuse and jeopardize our democratic way of life?6 In relation to the populist hype hypothesis, one prominent figure to whom responsibility for this existential threat has been attributed can be identified: the irrational (populist) voter.7 One example to illustrate this type of unacceptable, and even dangerous, behavior was the reaction to the French presidential election in 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round. Front pages of national newspapers unanimously condemned the vote after the first round, and expressed exaggerated relief after the second, ignoring at the same 6

7

It is worth noting that the logic of ‘theft of enjoyment’ is often – and most obviously perhaps – applied to explain the stance of right-wing parties, their representatives, and some of their supporters. Here, however, we are engaged in the rather unusual exercise of invoking this logic to elucidate the reaction of the normally tolerant elite-liberal politicians and commentariat. Irrational (populist) voters have at times been termed ‘reluctant radicals’; see C. Fieschi, M. Morris, and L. Caballero (2012). Recapturing the Reluctant Radical: How to Win Back Europe’s Populist Vote. London: Counterpoint.

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time the poor performance of the mainstream parties and the rise in abstention (Mondon 2015). A similar picture appeared in 2017. In voting for racist/xenophobic/protectionist/interventionist options, the populist right voter renders obvious the paradoxical character of liberal democracy as the democratic/anti-democratic choice re-appears within democracy itself: you can vote for whoever you want, but you really shouldn’t. In this case, ‘Others’ (those voting for the populist right) irrationally and dangerously enjoy their democratic freedom inasmuch as they vote for seemingly radical options that seem to threaten the existence of democracy itself. This in turn threatens the narrative of the ‘end of history’ where political battles would be waged in the liberal center and democratic choice would be limited to options with comfortable and negligible differences (Fukuyama 1992). The legitimacy of this system was strengthened by the existence of left and right options on the extremes of the political spectrum – options rendered obsolete on account of the stigma attached to crimes committed by their ideological forebears. Yet as the system falters, the appeal of these more radical options can grow again. A common storyline holds that this leads to the rise of an unruly mob (often referred to as ‘working-class’) keen to exercise these more radical options. While many so-called working class voters may have voted for the populist right, the vast majority of the working class did not choose these parties or any others, something that has been overlooked in most mainstream coverage (Mondon 2017). By enjoying their freedom to vote for something ‘radical’, these ‘irrational’ and ‘irresponsible’ voters are impacting on the enjoyment of ‘our’ democracy. When irrational citizens risk moving away from the ‘proper’ parameters of our liberal democracy, this produces a moral outrage directly linked to a perceived threat to our democratic ideals (that is, those of the elite and self-titled middle classes).

Problematizing ‘Really Existing’ Liberal Democracy The storyline figure of the irrational voter energizes narratives about threats to European liberal democracies. They help secure the ‘grip’ of a broader apocalyptic narrative in part because it manages to provoke feelings associated with a theft of enjoyment. But this is not the only thing these storylines have in common. Importantly, the preponderant focus on this figure as a threat to democracy has meant – somewhat paradoxically perhaps – that the idea of democracy presupposed in such a threat has not been sufficiently thermalized. In particular, the operation of ‘really existing liberal democracy’ has been left largely unexamined and unproblematized. This identification of ‘really existing liberal democracy’ as an issue worth thematizing in a more sustained and systematic way brings us a step closer to grasping the political significance of the populist hype we have sketched out thus far. One prominent way the problem of ‘really existing liberal democracy’ has been expressed in academic literature is in terms of a decline of trust in our political

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institutions. Numerous polls have suggested that a majority of Europeans no longer trust their political institutions, whether parliamentary representatives, government or political parties (TNS Opinion 2014a, European Commission 2015). There is a vast literature that points to widespread political discontent in existing liberal democratic societies. Although the more mainstream part of this literature often focuses on the lack of trust in our political institutions, there is also a common recognition that this lack of trust is symptomatic of a deeper problem linked to the idea that, increasingly, people’s experience tells them not only that they are getting a bad (‘utility’) deal, but, more importantly, that they do not have much control over decisions that affect their lives (Agamben et al. 2011; Crouch 2004; Dean 2009; Rancière 1995; Rancière 2005). This suggests we need to be more precise about which norms are at stake when we consider the question of trust vis-à-vis our liberal democratic institutions. In other words, it is not sufficient to point to attitudinal trends. We also need to identify what and how specific norms govern our liberal democratic practices, since these tend to influence our predisposition to trust (or not to trust) associated institutions and officials. This enables us to critically re-cast the political and ideological significance of the phenomenon we have characterized as ‘populist hype’. Populist hype can certainly be understood as perpetuating a kind of false-consciousness. This is because it exaggerates the rise of the populist right and falsely promotes its role as the main alternative to ‘business as usual’. However, it is also important to highlight how populist hype has a certain ‘logic’ to it. This logic has two components. One (ideological) component is related to the idea of enjoyment and the logics of fantasy and desire that make this possible. This has already been mentioned in connection with the apocalyptic dimension of populist hype narratives, and it is something we shall return to again later. Another (political) component is related to the precise norms of our democratic practice that we consider worth contesting or protecting. From this point of view, populist hype can be understood not simply as a propagator of falsehoods but also as embodying a political logic whose effect is to pre-empt the contestation of democratic norms we consider worth contesting; or to contest democratic norms we consider worth protecting. In other words, it is possible to argue that the problem has less to do with a threat to democracy as such and more to do with how a particular conception of democracy has become naturalized. In fact, we argue that the insistent focus on threats to democracy has served to avoid a more systematic and critical examination of, and wider debate about, the democratic system itself, including a more in-depth analysis of the current disillusion within the electorate.

Populist Hype as a Political Logic So far, we have argued that the dominant response to the 2014 populist conjuncture has been ‘hyped’. The story is much more complex and nuanced than the image of a populist right-wing surge would have us believe. Yet we also

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suggested that although it is important to get this nuanced picture right as part of a general process of characterization, it is also important not to lose sight of the ‘logic’ of such populist hype. Thus, this part of the chapter seeks to draw out its political logic in more detail in order to get a better fix on how to critically evaluate the role and function of populist hype. Political logic is a term used by poststructuralist political theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (Laclau and Mouffe 1985) in order to emphasize its difference from what they call social logics. With the term social logics, they aim to capture the relatively stable patterns, rules, or norms manifest in practices or regimes of practice, for example, the norms of ‘really existing’ liberal democracy. Typically, these are understood as ‘natural’, in the sense that they are taken for granted, internalized, and uncontested. The operation of political logics, on the other hand, often becomes clear in times of crisis when ‘things are not quite right’, revealing, even for a brief moment, how what appears to be natural can be otherwise. This ‘visibility of contingency’ is central to understanding the role and function of political logics. Political logics are thus understood to be processes that seek to maintain or disrupt settled norms. The concept of logics has been further elaborated and systematically developed into a ‘logics approach’ to the study of social and political phenomena (Glynos and Howarth 2007). The logics approach situates itself firmly within the poststructuralist tradition of thought, and can thus be contrasted with those approaches grounded in positivist, hermeneutic, and critical realist traditions of thought, among others. Taking the above two logics as its point of departure, and drawing on psychoanalytic insights to supplement key poststructuralist premises, this approach identifies and names a third logic that draws on the concept of fantasy to elucidate ideological processes (Glynos 2001; Glynos and Stavrakakis 2004; Stavrakakis 1999). Social and political logics are thus joined by a fantasmatic logic that aims to capture something about the desire and enjoyment of subjects, independent of whether such desires are considered (un)realistic. Populist hype narratives can, for example, enable us to enjoy hating Others (e.g. right-wing populist voters) because they appear to be stealing or threatening our (democratic) enjoyment; but they also make it possible for us to love Others because we enjoy rescuing them from themselves, bringing them back to the ‘democratic’ fold. Logics of fantasy thus help account for why and how narratives ‘grip’ subjects by rendering contingency less visible. The nexus of social, political, and fantasmatic logics is thus deployed to analyze and interpret the discursively constructed character of practices, including the way the status quo is protected, challenged, and defended (Glynos et al. 2012). In light of this theoretical framework, the political logic of populist hype can be discerned by first getting a fix on the character of the status quo. In other words, a political logic can be identified only in relation to particular norms that are (or should be) the subject of protection, challenge or defense. In our case, this leads to the rather obvious question about which norms in our ‘really

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existing’ liberal democratic regime should be identified as worth contesting or defending. In answer to this question two such norms are considered and elaborated in more detail below: the norm of electoral primacy, and the norm of presumptive equality. It is argued that populist hype functions as a political logic if it can plausibly be claimed that it is operative with reference to key norms which are thought to be worth contesting (the norm of electoral primacy) or are worth defending and reinforcing (the norm of presumptive equality). Our hypothesis, therefore, is that populist hype serves as a ‘master’ political logic that gathers together a clutch of more specific political and rhetorical logics that (1) pre-empt the contestation of, and reinforce, the norm of electoral primacy; and (2) undermine or contest the norm of presumptive equality. We discuss each of these in turn.

Electoral Primacy Electoral primacy is perhaps the most obvious norm in relation to which populist hype can be characterized as a political logic. This is a norm of ‘really existing’ liberal democracy that has been identified by numerous scholars and many commentators at the margins of mainstream media as worthy of contestation (Agamben et al. 2011, Rancière 2005). They argue that an understanding of democracy as predominantly electoral in nature needs to be contested and pluralized. In this view, apart from widespread popular and schoolbook renditions of democracy as predominantly an electoral democracy, a well-financed psephological apparatus is mobilized on a daily basis by a massive expert techno-media-academic network to promote and reinforce this understanding and operation of democracy, crowding out other ways of thinking about and practicing democracy (Cayrol 2007; Lepore 2015). From this perspective the norm of electoral primacy is not necessary and indeed could (and should) be otherwise. Although democracy can be seen in predominantly electoral terms, it can also be understood in ways that emphasize more the deliberative, agonistic, republican, aversive, emancipatory and other participatory aspects of democracy (see, for example, Mouffe 1999; Pettit 1997; Norval 2007; Bachrach 1975; Rancière 2005). Populist hype here serves as a ‘master’ political logic that, in feeding off the above-mentioned mediatic, educational and psephological apparatuses, gathers together a set of more targeted political and rhetorical logics that pre-empt the contestation of, and reinforce, the norm of electoral primacy. Consider, for example, the appeals to political distrust and voter irrationality that draw their energy from the earlier discussed ‘theft of enjoyment’. The logic of political distrust often plays out in terms of how our politicians, as political representatives, no longer ‘hear’ or ‘act on’ the grievances of the public, either due to their growing detachment and/or their corruption. The problem thus tends to be spun as one of personal and professional accountability: politicians

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must learn to take their responsibilities seriously, and regulatory apparatuses must be set up to guarantee this. Only in this way will trust be restored because people will see how their vote carries with it an implicit contract that their elected representative will do their best to make good. It is clear, however, that in constructing the problem in this way, populist hype narratives take for granted the norm of electoral primacy and in this way pre-empt its contestation. Apart from appeals to political distrust, we can also identify appeals to voter irrationality. By focusing our attention on how irrational some voters are in their electoral choices, we both individualize the problem (i.e. it is not a problem of the system but of the individual voter) and reinforce an electoral conceptualization of democracy since the problem lies with individual voters.

Presumptive Equality The liberal democratic norm of presumptive equality is another norm with reference to which populist hype can be characterized as a political logic. It expresses how the principle of equality is understood to operate in a presumptive fashion, in the sense that equality of regard and treatment among people serves as the default assumption governing the relationship between citizens. The idea of a presumptive equality implies of course that it can be rebutted for good reasons in particular circumstances. Crucially, however, it also implies that conditions need to be in place in order to avoid differential, arbitrary, or discriminatory treatment. Our hypothesis here again is that right-wing populist hype serves as a ‘master’ political logic that gathers together a clutch of more specific political and rhetorical logics, which in this case undermines or contests the norm of presumptive equality. More concrete political and rhetorical logics might include references to the specter of ‘out of control immigration’, ‘benefit migrants’, or ‘Islamization’. As was the case with the norm of electoral primacy, the norm of presumptive equality is not a necessary norm. We saw earlier how populist hype can be understood as a political logic with reference to the norm of electoral primacy because it can serve to promote and reinforce it. In this case, however, the political logic of populist hype functions in a way which undermines or contests the norm of presumptive equality. This norm thus could (and should) need defending when undermined. In making this claim we rely on a well-established literature that points out how savvy ‘normalization’ strategies adopted by right wing parties do not prevent us from characterizing their rhetoric and tactics as ‘neo-racist’ (Balibar 1997; Barker 1982). In both our cases, UKIP and the FN pledged explicit allegiance to liberal democratic rules. However, while these parties have denounced forms of traditional racism within their ranks (Sulzer 2015; Saul 2015), albeit unevenly and inconsistently, they have sharpened strategies to render certain forms of exclusion and scapegoating more palatable for, or

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‘inaudible’ to, a mainstream audience, by targeting fantasized versions of Islam in particular (Mondon and Winter 2017; Yilmaz 2011). Treating populist hype as a political logic, however, allows us to contribute to this literature by suggesting that the normalization of these parties involves a dual process that springs not only from these parties’ own strategies, but also from the way ‘second order’ political analysis and commentary of this populist phenomenon is skewed and disseminated (i.e., ‘hyped’). In other words, insofar as the norm of presumptive equality is undermined in the ‘first order’ discourses of UKIP and FN themselves, we suggest that this undermining is also a feature of ‘second order’ populist hype, despite its explicit condemnation of right-wing populism, in part because it disseminates this first order discourse more widely and even serves to legitimize its views as belonging to a voting, and thus democratic, polity (Mondon 2015). For Annie Collovald (2004), applying the term ‘populism’ to these parties has itself played a key rhetorical role in legitimizing right-wing demands and ‘mainstreaming’ prejudice: replacing traditional terms such as ‘extreme right’, ‘far right’ or ‘radical right’ by ‘populism’ has been problematic as it is not only ‘blurrier, but also less stigmatizing than the ones it is meant to replace’. As this terminology has taken root in the public discourse, right-wing populist parties have eclipsed the potential and/or importance of other ‘popular’ alternatives, including more left-wing populist alternatives. After borrowing the rhetoric and even some policies from so-called ‘populist’ right-wing parties, mainstream politicians have claimed they have merely been listening to the ‘people’ and their fears (Mondon 2013). Following a similarly circular logic, the media has been able to explain its focus on immigration (and benefit fraud to a certain extent) by the rise of intolerance within the electorate. Our hypothesis therefore is that right-wing populist hype serves as a ‘master’ political logic that gathers together a set of more specific political and rhetorical logics that undermine or contest the norm of presumptive equality. Although debates about the character of liberal democracy of the sort we advocate no doubt do take place, we argue that the political logic of populist hype tends to narrow the scope of such debate by pushing these discussions to the margins of mainstream political discourse, usually finding a place in ‘radical’ media outlets or ‘minor’ academic fora.

The Fantasmatic logic of Populist Hype The bulk of this chapter has been devoted to the identification and critical evaluation of populist hype, conceived as a political logic, particularly in relation to the norms of electoral primacy and presumptive equality. This final section explores the fantasmatic dimension of populist hype narratives. This is a key part of the argument as the fantasmatic elements of populist hype narratives serve to ‘prime’ readers in one or another normative direction, in the sense that these

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fantasmatic elements (and the enjoyment that they make possible) offer ideological support for one or another policy response to perceived problems. This is why it is usually not particularly effective to counter the political logic of right-wing populist hype (as well as nativist right-wing narratives) by appealing only to ‘facts’. In other words, facts are not only always-already discursively framed; more than that, they are also often fantasmatically inflected. In this view, what makes these narratives ‘grip’ is the enjoyment they make possible, and this enjoyment, in turn, is intimately connected to the subject, conceived as a subject of lack, and thus a subject of desire. As Žižek (Žižek 1993, 203–204) observes, “what we conceal by imputing to the Other the theft of enjoyment is the traumatic fact that we never possessed what was allegedly stolen from us”. Such fantasmatic narratives thereby ‘energize’ political logics, giving them their force and appeal. We have already drawn attention to the powerful idea of ‘theft of enjoyment’ in accounting for the affective power animating the anger and resentment experienced by those horrified by the perceived rise of right-wing populism and the threat this poses to democracy. However, the threat is not so much a threat to democracy as such, as it is to a particular conception of democracy whose privileged definitional criterion is electoral contestation. A political logic of populist hype energized by ‘theft of enjoyment’ thus succeeds in reinforcing a rather narrow conception of democracy that deserves to be contested and pluralized. This is so for several reasons. First, populist hype narratives suggest that democracy should be understood as a predominantly electoral or parliamentary democracy, thereby marginalizing other more deliberative and participatory criteria. Second, populist hype narratives tend to mainstream prejudice in a way that promotes the presumptive exclusion of certain types of people from being equal citizens of our demos. We could add a third reason here, namely, that populist hype narratives suggest that democracy should be understood as a predominantly political democracy, thereby ignoring life experienced outside political institutions. Given how the vast majority of our adult lives are spent in the workplace, of particular note here is the rather systematic exclusion of democratic principles from our economic life generally, and the (neoliberal) production process specifically. Together this deeply troubling triple marginalization can be said to account for a profound and widespread sense of alienation whose source is captured by the term ‘capitalo-parliamentarism’ (Badiou 2007). In some sense, then, the seduction and pull of ‘theft of enjoyment’ tends to deflect attention away from the rather undemocratic character of ‘really existing’ liberal democracy and political economy. But a question remains. Where, more precisely, does fantasy enter the picture here? By fantasy we simply mean to draw attention to those elements of a narrative that provoke enjoyment and desire. For example: what fantasies make possible the affective experiences associated with ‘theft of enjoyment’? At a relatively abstract level,

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these fantasies could be called ‘capitalo-parliamentary’ fantasies. In this case, ‘capitalo-parliamentary’ fantasies sustain a regime of capitalo-parliamentarism. Yet in order to better appreciate the ‘tug’ of a fantasmatic narrative, it is essential to specify more precisely the (lost or threatened) ideals at stake, the obstacles to those ideals, as well as the character and paradoxes of enjoyment as subjects negotiate and transgress those ideals. Importantly, it is necessary to be attentive to the specific national and historical self-images projected in the effort to heighten the urgency of an existential threat or enhance a beatific future to come. Therefore, such fantasmatic patterns will most certainly vary as a function of media outlet (e.g., conservative, liberal or progressive) and national context and history (UK or French in the present case); something which is beyond the remit of this chapter.

Conclusion The importance of our contribution resides in making explicit how populist hype has a ‘logic’ to it that is not reducible to irrationality or misrecognition. The chapter also shows that this ‘logic’ has political and ideological significance. Its political significance is demonstrated by identifying what norms are at stake in such right-wing populist hype, and the mode of relating to them (to pre-empt, reinforce, contest, undermine, or restore certain norms). Its ideological significance is highlighted by pointing to the fantasmatic narratives that underlie and animate the populist hype. The analysis pointed to a potentially powerful source of discontent residing in people’s experience, which tells them that they have little control over decisions that affect their lives. This is a source of discontent that is widely noted to afflict ‘really existing liberal democracies’. An appeal to the category of political logic can serve to bring this discontent into sharper focus in order to tackle it directly, or it can serve to transpose or articulate discontent differently. The chapter identifies right-wing populist hype as one such potent ‘master’ political logic which partakes in a kind of double-action movement targeting right-wing populist parties: by construing right-wing populism as a threat to our existing democracies, it pre-empts the contestation of an important norm that is worth contesting: the norm of electoral primacy; by giving extensive exposure to right wing claims and agendas that are explicitly opposed to an out of touch elite political class, it inadvertently undermines the norm of presumptive equality and installs, restores, and reinforces a set of ethnic, racial, and economic inequality norms.8

8

Insofar as the focus becomes the populism of right-wing parties, it also risks rendering equivalent left and right wing populism, who often have very different views regarding the norm of presumptive equality (Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014).

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Higgins, A. (2014). Populists’ rise in Europe vote shakes leaders. New York Times. May 26. Kallis, A. (2013). Far-right ‘contagion’ or a failing ‘mainstream’? How dangerous ideas cross borders and blur boundaries. Democracy and Security, 9(3), 221–246. Katsambekis, G. (2015). The place of the people in post-democracy. Researching ‘antipopulism’ and post-democracy in crisis-ridden Greece. PostData, 19(2): 555–582. Laclau, E. (2005). Populism: What’s in a name? In F. Panizza (ed.) Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. London, New York: Verso. pp. xii,276. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London, New York: Verso. LBC (4 April 2006). David Cameron: UKIP ‘Fruitcakes And Loonies’, London: LBC. Lepore, J. (2015). Politics and the New Machine. New Yorker, November 16. MacShane, D. (2014). Will Europe survive 2015, the year of all elections? The Guardian, December 30. Maler, H. and Salingue, J. (2014). Front national: Indignations sélectives et banalisation effective. Savoir/Agir, 3(29): 95–103. Mazzoleni, G. (2008). Populism and the media. In D. Albertazzi & D. McDonnell (eds.) Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mondon, A. (2013). The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia: A Populist Hegemony?Aldershot; Burlington, VT/Ashgate. Mondon, A. (2015). Populism, the people and the illusion of democracy – the Front National and UKIP in a comparative context. French Politics, 13(2): 141–156. Mondon, A. (2017). Limiting democratic horizons to a nationalist reaction: Populism, the radical right and the working class. Javnost/The Public: Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture, 24(3): 355–374. Mondon, A. and Winter, A. (2017). Articulations of Islamophobia: From the extreme to the mainstream? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(13). doi:10.1080/01419870.2017.1312008 Mouffe, C. (1999). Deliberative democracy or agonistic pluralism? Social Research 66(3): 745–758. Mral, B., Khosravinik, M. and Wodak, R. (eds.) (2013). Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Mudde, C. (2013). Contrary to popular opinion, Europe has not seen a sharp rise in farright support since the start of the crisis. LSE Europpblog, August 22. Mudde, C. (2007). Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mudde, C. and Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2012). Populism in Europe and the Americas Threat or Corrective for Democracy?Cambridge University Press (online). Norval, A. (2007). Aversive Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pettit, P. (1997). Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rancière, J. (1995). La mésentente : politique et philosophie, Collection La philosophie en effet. Paris: Galilée. Rancière, J. (2005). La haine de la démocratie. Paris: La fabrique éditions. Saul, H. (2015). Ex-UKIP councillor Rozanne Duncan allegedly said she had a problem with black people because there was ‘something about their faces’. Independent, January 8. Startin, N. (2015). Have we reached a tipping point? The mainstreaming of Euroscepticism in the UK. International Political Science Review, 36(3): 311–323. Stavrakakis, Y. (1999). Lacan and the Political. London, New York: Routledge.

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Stavrakakis, Y., Howarth, D., and Norval, A. (eds.) (2000). Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies and Social Change. Manchester:Manchester University Press. Stavrakakis, Y. and Katsambekis, G. (2014). Left-wing populism in the European periphery: The case of SYRIZA. Journal of Political Ideologies, 19(2): 119–142. Sulzer, A. (2015). Racisme en ligne: des responsables et des ex-candidats du Front national se lâchent. L’Express, November 18. TNS Opinion (2014a) 2014 Post-Election Survey: European Elections 2014, Analytical Overview. Brussels: European Parliament. TNS Opinion (2014b). 2014 Post-Election Survey: European Elections 2014, Socio-Demographic Annex. Brussels: European Parliament. Willsher, K., Kington, T., Smith, H., Oltermann, P., Orange, R., McDonald, H., and Kassam, A. (2014). Across Europe disillusioned voters turn to outsiders for solutions. The Observer, November 16. Wodak, R. (2015). The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean, London: Sage. Yilmaz, F. (2011). The politics of the Danish cartoon affair: Hegemonic intervention by the extreme right. Communication Studies, 62(1): 5–22. Žižek, S. (1993). Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

6 POPULISM AND THE USE OF TROPES Paulina Tambakaki

Introduction Democratic politics, it has been argued, is in deep crisis. Some theorists read this crisis as one of representation (Tormey 2012, 2015; Lorey 2011; Hardt and Negri 2012). Others construe it as a crisis of democratic legitimacy (Milligan 2016; Gerbaudo 2017; Crouch 2004; 2011); and yet others see it as a crisis of democracy tout court (Dean 2009, 2012). Common among these readings is the idea that democratic institutions fail to deliver for the people whom they are supposed to serve. This failure, evidenced in the exponential growth of socio-economic inequalities, the ossification of oligarchic leverage over governmental politics and restricted rights for the majority of citizens,1 raises serious questions about the future prospects of the democratic process. Prominent among these questions is whether democracy can survive consistent attacks on the principle of popular sovereignty. If Wendy Brown is right that democracy is neither self-renewing nor self-sustaining – at least not inherently – then it is possible to argue that any further marginalization, if not impoverishment, of the people risks undoing democracy (Brown 2015). But another argument is also possible: the marginalised and excluded, the frustrated and the impoverished – or in other words the majority of the citizens who are failed by representative institutions – have lost their affect for democracy. Popular disaffect finds expression in elections where candidates styled as anti-establishment emerge triumphant; in referenda that foreground the end of politics as usual and in sedentary protests that set out to heighten the need for another leaderless and 1

Here I have in mind arguments such as that of Jason Brennan (2016) who proposes that the time has come to reconsider universal suffrage, limiting it to those who are capable enough to vote wisely.

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direct politics (see Gerbaudo 2017, 61–63; Sitrin and Azzellini 2014). Therefore, it is tempting to speak here of a crisis of affect rather than simply a crisis of representation or legitimacy. If this is the case, then can populist discourse and, particularly populist party discourse, reignite affect for democracy? The present chapter addresses this question by focusing on Syriza – the left populist party that is currently in the driving seat of the Greek government. It probes the party’s discourse as this developed in the early stages of the Greek crisis – that was construed as a crisis of democratic representation; and it shows how Syriza made the struggle for equality the mantra for its election and continued existence by using metonymic displacement – with ‘austerity’ becoming the metonymy for inequality, exclusion and systemic indifference. The upshot of this discursive displacement, argues the chapter, was a successful opposition to the dominant order that, at least momentarily, invited the people to reinvest in the democratic process. The next section begins to examine the nature of this reinvestment that inheres in populist politics.

Populism, Parties and the Use of Tropes According to Yannis Stavrakakis, “populism is nothing less than the way we conceive of the survival and renewal of democratic political subjectivity in times of crisis’ (2015, 275). Therefore, if populism both sustains and renews democratic practice – or at least it has the potential to do so as I suggest in this chapter; then it is useful to start my analysis by considering how populist discourses might manage to renew democracy. It is at this point that the notion of affect or what Laclau refers to as a “radical investment and engagement in signifying games” (2007, 71) starts gaining centrality. For affect, that I read here minimally, as a libidinal tie with matter X, is one force that elicits the renewal of political subjectivity that Stavrakakis brings to our attention. This is partly because political subjectivity, or the people of populism, does not exist prior to its discursive construction (Laclau 2007). But it is also partly because the discursive construction of this people, that opposes the dominant order, mobilizes affect for democracy. In Laclau’s words: “[T]here is no populism without affective investment in a partial object […] If an entity becomes the object of an investment – as in being in love, or in hatred – the investment belongs necessarily to the order of affect” (2007, 116, 110). Affect is, thus, “the essence of investment” (2007, 115). This affective investment is tied with the retroactive effects of naming. It does not, for this reason, naturally align with progressive energies. Laclau makes abundantly clear that there is nothing inherently positive or negative about populist discourses that assume either a right- or left- wing content (Laclau 2007; see also Stavrakakis 2014, 505). Nevertheless, the type of populist discourse that I probe in this piece does assume a left-wing form – because what interests me is precisely the way in which Syriza managed through metonymic displacement to create opposition to the neoliberal order. Metonymy, like other forms of

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rhetorical displacement (metaphor or synecdoche) is decisive to the emergence of this opposition. For a further feature of populist discourses, according to Laclau, is the way in which such discourses tropologically substitute for something that is considered ‘unrepresentable’, ‘nameless’ or ‘empty’ (Laclau 2014). At the same time, it is worth noting that tropological substitution manages both to establish a relation of contiguity between two issues (see Laclau 2007, 109) – in my case ‘austerity’ and ‘equality’; and to solidify the nature of the discourse that arises to oppose the neoliberal order. Tropological operation therefore elicits affect and alternatives to dominant representative orders. The field of representation is important to the development of this argument. On the one hand, reflections on populism “are firmly located in the field of representation in both its meanings: as political representation, or the means to influence decision making on behalf of popular demands and as symbolic or discursive representation, being a process of articulation through which demands are shaped, staged, invested” (Stavrakakis 2015, 275). On the other hand, references to representation and the field of representation in particular open space for rethinking the ways in which institutions such as parties work within and against the system. In the next section, I will return to this argument to show how populist parties use representation to foment democracy. At this point, it is significant to note that as grievances against representative institutions grow, emotions such as anger open the way for the rise of populist parties – such as Syriza. The intimate relation between populism and discrete emotions such as anger is the subject of a growing literature. In ‘The emotional underpinnings of populism: How anger and fear affect populist attitude’, Rico, Guinjoan and Anduiza argue that citizens’ cognitive and emotive judgments are welded together in moments of economic crisis. In such moments, criticism of the political establishment translates into anger at the representative system and this mobilizes support for discourses that tap into the frustration of the voters. “Accompanied by the sense that citizens have some capacity to address the situation, […] anger motivates to take action against the responsible agent, thereby promoting a corrective response” (Rico, Guinjoan and Anduiza 2017, 446–447). In so doing, anger gestures toward populism as that discourse that simultaneously challenges and betters representative democracy. But if populism builds on emotions that aim at representation, are parties the most effective vehicles for mobilizations for and against representation? For some theorists, political parties are in long-term decline – in terms of membership, activism (increasingly taking place in digital media), ideological identification, and citizen trust (Mair 2005; Bader 2014). Paul Webb (2005) puts these negative perceptions of parties to the test – particularly, perceptions of mistrust, elitism, corruption, untrustworthiness and selfinterest. He reviews several dimensions of the alleged party crisis, prominent since the 1960s (weak performance, failing to foster democratic participation, lack of ideological distinction) and he suggests that while there is sufficient “evidence consistent with the view that the popular standing of parties has been weakened

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in most Western democracies … we cannot automatically infer that parties and party politicians are viewed with active hostility by many citizens” (2005, 636). No doubt, Webb recognizes that several party functions have been challenged in the wake of shifts to governance; alternative forms of interest articulation such as single issue groups and social movements that better capture ‘new issues’; new, nonpartisan forms of political communication (the agenda-setting capacity of political parties); and the emergence of a DIY politics (the ability of parties to foster participation through party membership). He also acknowledges the rise of perceptions of waning party legitimacy. Still, he convincingly argues that, despite such constraints that parties are used to facing, they can still fulfil their functions, having a substantive effect on governing processes (2005, 639). Webb’s insights into party politics offer another anchor for my argument, for they help introduce one last distinction necessary in order to grasp populist parties as loci of democratic change. This is the distinction between an institutional crisis of representation more broadly and a party crisis more particularly. If parties still function as imperfectly as Webb suggests and they still have an effect on government, then perhaps it is in parties – and populist parties in particular – that we can look to for the betterment of democratic representation. Indeed, in a step further from Webb I now want to suggest that party representation, an inextricable component of democratic representation, can contribute to the revival of democratic politics. Three important dimensions of party politics, conducive to eliciting such a revival, stand out. The first is that political parties, provided that they make clear claims to represent the people, tend to divide it in a civic way. Civic division is important, if charges of systemic elitism are to be brought into sharper focus and democratic representation to be strengthened through the party system – for there need to be parties that can, at least in principle, put forward a claim to represent the majority of democratic citizens. The second and third dimensions follow from this. As a result of civic division, parties at once unite those who identify with the claims they put forward and elicit affective mobilizations. The next section, which focuses on the case of Syriza, develops this argument further.

The Case of Syriza This chapter has so far suggested that populist parties do not only constitute a necessary component of democratic politics but also they can be vehicles for reigniting affect for such politics. To support this argument I focus on the case of the radical left Greek party Syriza in the period between January 2014 (a year before it came to power) and December 2015. I argue that the case of Syriza, in line with the relevant literature2 (see Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014; 2

In Left Wing Populism in the European Periphery: The Case of Syriza, Stavrakakis and Katsambekis identify, following Laclau, two minimal criteria for a discourse to qualify as populist: first, a discursive articulation “around the nodal point ‘the people’ or other

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Katsambekis 2015), demonstrates that, understood as a populist party, Syriza demonstrates that it is possible, through the mantra of equality, to develop strong enough societal identifications as to include and affectively mobilize segments of the people that have either been excluded or alienated from processes of representation. At the same time, this section argues that Syriza achieved this through metonymic displacement – with ‘austerity’ becoming the metonymy for inequality, exclusion and systemic indifference – rather than through recourse to a conventional left vocabulary (based on claims to redistribution). But there is a caveat. While the use of metonymy has opened the way for novel reworking of egalitarianism (enabling its reinscription in systemic processes and institutions), it has also entrapped Syriza in a certain mapping of egalitarianism (as impossible in the face of austerity) that might do little to sustain its momentum in the long term. Before I proceed to develop this argument, some further clarifications are necessary. The first concerns the particular context of the Greek economic crisis within which Syriza has operated.3 While we are not confronting here an ordinary political context, in view of Greece’s de facto bankruptcy, fraught relations with the European Union (or loss of sovereignty) and the humanitarian crisis that all this has unleashed, we are confronting a context within which what is perceived as a crisis of democratic representation is, if not amplified, at least exemplified. With large segments of the electorate mistrustful, if not hostile, to the political system (blamed for the crisis), the two main parties Pasok and New Democracy in disarray (accused for corruption and clientelism) and high levels of inequality, unemployment, poverty and, ultimately, exclusion from the representative system (either intended or unintended), the Greek crisis has been something more than an economic or political crisis (Sklias and Maris 2013; Teperoglou, Freire, Andreadis and Leite Viegas 2014). It has been a crisis of representation par excellence, and it is this dimension that led me to use Syriza as anchor for a broader discussion of populist parties as loci of change. Second, and closely related, Syriza, despite its solidification as a party in the movement of the squares in the summer of 2011, is neither a simple movement (it is not even anymore a coalition of left groups) nor an anti-systemic party. This is an important point to bear in mind because it is precisely its association and, indeed,

3

non-populist or anti-populist nodal points (class, nation, liberty, nature, etc.)”; and, second, “an antagonistic representation of society, dividing it into two main blocs: the establishment, the power block, versus the underdog, the “people”’ (Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014, 123). They suggest that Syriza meets both criteria and they do a good job in showing, through discourse analysis, why and how. Therefore, it is their discussion of Syriza that here serves as my point of departure. The Greek crisis started in 2008 when Greece showed the first signs of debt default. To avoid the default, the Greek government adopted a series of austerity measures that significantly strained its economy, population and relations with the European Union. See Sklias and Maris 2013; and Teperoglou et al. 2014.

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intention to ‘fight the system from within’ that serves as the starting point for my analysis of its discourse of equality. Third, and as I have already highlighted, it is references to equality that guide my discussion of Syriza. On the back of the assumption that an egalitarian agenda is what constitutes the root cause of contemporary disaffect with democratic representation (and, thus, the root cause of disengagement and exclusion), I have used egalitarianism as a criterion not just for assessing the performance of Syriza but also to draw out wider conclusions about populist parties more generally. Notable among these conclusions is that a credible egalitarian promise is that prior condition that elicits both populist identifications and mobilizations of affect. No doubt, using references to equality as the criterion for my investigation of Syriza’s operation in the Greek political landscape led me to partly employ discourse analysis, delving into the use of tropes (metonymy), in official speeches delivered between January 2014 and December 2015 in constituencies (preelectoral speeches), the media (televised and press interviews), party and European fora. The aim of this type of investigation has been to evaluate the rhetoric of the party (not its promises to the electorate), for it is here that equality begins being consistently inscribed in systemic discourse. The other part of my investigation has consisted of a review of the laws passed between January 2015 and December 2015. The aim of this type of investigation has been to determine how this rhetoric has been put into practice – since I was especially interested in the radicality of Syriza once in government and, particularly, the relation between radical left parties and governing. The observations of this two-part investigation are presented in the next two sections.

Syriza, Metonymy and Equality The overview of the official speeches given between January 2014 and December 2015 immediately makes one thing apparent: direct references to equality have been scarce up until the September 2015 elections. While references to equality increase once Syriza came into power in the second elections (with the first ones being in January 2015), up to this point, equality is alluded to but not spelled out. One reason for this has certainly to do with the peculiarity of the Greek language where the word isos (see iso-nomia) exists to capture ‘the equal’ (interestingly in terms of counting); yet the related word isotita, that denotes equality, carries often legal connotations and has, thus, more restricted usage. However, this does not mean that the term ‘equality’ (isotita) cannot or is not used in modern Greek. Instead, I would say that it is a kind of barred term. While it can be coupled with terms such as ‘political’ or ‘economic’ (to denote what the English usage of the term already encompasses), when it does the word isos points to a perfect, even arithmetical, counting of similarities. Is this reason sufficient to justify the scant references to equality up until September 2015? It is not. Once Syriza won the September elections (after having

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signed the memorandum), its discourse immediately changed: while ‘popular classes’ replaced references to the people, references to economic and social equality not only started appearing but also replacing the family of terms used to denote equality up until September 2015 (for example, repeatedly used terms such as social justice, justice, solidarity, democracy, ‘the weak’, social resistance, economic and social struggle). It is here that metonymic displacement becomes a useful analytical tool. Metonymy is conventionally defined as ‘a figure in which one word is substituted for another on the basis of some material, causal, or conceptual relation’ (Premiger and Brogan cited in Papafragou 1996, 169). Discussed in cognitive linguistics as a figure of speech, a case of ‘deferred reference’ (Nunberg 1978) as well as a way of conceptually or cognitively organizing thought through a linguistic object (Papafragou 1996), metonymy offers a helpful lens to explain the scant references to equality in the party’s discourse up to the elections of September 2015. To see how, we need to distinguish between two types of metonymic displacement evident in the speeches. On the one hand, there is the type of ‘stand-for’, linear relationship between ‘equality’ (absent in the speeches) and terms such as social ‘justice’, ‘democracy’, and ‘solidarity’ (present in the speeches) – in which the meaning of equality is deferred or displaced.4 This is most evident in the speeches delivered in the second part of 2014, after the Thessaloniki Programme where Syriza laid out its governing plan. This can be construed as a positive metonymy insofar as it tacitly projects a task (in this case an egalitarian agenda) without though expressly championing it. But there is another type of metonymic displacement noticeable in the speeches that along with the use of positive metonymy, just cited, works to create or, better, to refigure conventional (old) left, accounts of egalitarianism – as a struggle for redistribution. This type of metonymic displacement is most evident in the speeches delivered in the first part of 2014 – where the emphasis is placed on the effects of austerity policies on citizens, the imperative of figuring out an alternative to neoliberal policies and the need of engaging in resistance. Here it is the word ‘austerity’, repeatedly used throughout the speeches, that stands for inequality, exclusion, oligarchic politics, and systemic failure. The implication of this kind of metonymic displacement – where the word austerity ends up indirectly championing all the limits of the representative system – is that it activates the connection between better representation and the prospect of another, more equal, system, without though again expressly affirming an egalitarian agenda – only hinting to the possibility of an alternative one. Therefore, by activating and projecting egalitarianism, through the use of metonymy, Syriza has managed to name a problem (inequality via ‘austerity’) and 4

For further information on the linearity involved in metonymy (in contrast with metaphor) and the direct replacement of one mental state by another, see Borbely (2011).

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(re)work a left solution (equalization of socio-economic conditions via references to ‘democracy’ and ‘social justice’). What have been the effects of this movement of naming and reworking of left politics? Aside from catapulting it to power twice in the same year – an interesting fact if one considers that the second time Syriza won after having broken its pre-electoral promise to reject the memorandum; it is noteworthy that it has managed to reinstate equality in a manner that renders it a pragmatic task. On the one hand, there has been a clever mapping of inequality through references to austerity – that not just Greeks but citizens all over Europe are familiar with. This mapping elicited an identification between the people and the representatives of Syriza. At the same time, the way this mapping was accomplished, through negative terms such as ‘against austerity’, gave it a more tangible air than normative expressions such as ‘equality for all’ would have done. More than that, the negativity involved in this type of mapping had the effect of both uniting the many and dividing them from the elites – thereby mobilizing them to radically invest in Syriza. On the other hand, the metonymic references to equality, and its projection as a task that directly ingrains socio-economic justice, solidarity and democracy rendered it concrete. Citizens could now see what equality means: persecuting those benefiting from tax evasion, tax immunity and clientelist relations (socio-economic justice); helping the worse off (solidarity); and being transparent and accountable to the people (democracy). The upshot of all this has been the outline of a left vocabulary that does not immediately fit into the straightjacket of the old Left. While here I cannot pursue this point further, it suffices to note that as a result of these metonymic displacements there was generation of affect for Syriza’s oppositional discourse to the neoliberal order. Was this affect intensified by the particular style of Syriza’s populism? It is difficult to tell. While Syriza certainly tapped into discontent (and anger) at the neoliberal order, encouraging investment in the emergence of another more equal society; it is not immediately evident that this generation of affect stemmed from its particular version of left populism. That said, the ample references to equality, justice, solidarity and democracy – indeed, the metonymic operations – cleverly steered affect and attracted voters’ support. The question that remains is whether this affective support extended to cover Syriza’s ascent to power. Did Syriza carry forward its egalitarian agenda once in government? The next section explores some aspects of this idea.

Laws of Equality? As I have already explained, the second part of my investigation into Syriza’s discourse of equality has been to review the laws passed in the period between January 2015 and December 2015. The aim of this review has been not so much to probe whether the party has fulfilled its pre-electoral promises of equality but how it has done so. Two objectives underpin this type of investigation. The first

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is to explore the left revisions involved in the move to government. The second, related, objective is to reflect on the radical dimension of Syriza and the ways this has been reconfigured (or not) once in government. With respect to the first objective, I can confidently suggest that even without an explicit endorsement of a welfare state and, indeed, within the limits of the memorandum and all that this entails, Syriza has managed to sneak in government politics an egalitarian agenda– thereby loosely reinscribing egalitarianism in systemic process. For example, the Humanitarian Crisis Law, passed in March 2015, contained significant measures geared toward the disadvantaged – such as rent supplements; free electricity for uninsured citizens – especially those in precarious, seasonal or temporary employment; abolition of pension cuts and introduction of instalments to help with debt repayment (Government Gazette). Then, the First Buyers’ Act, passed in November 2015, while heavily criticized by the media contains measures clearly aimed at protecting those on the verge of losing their home because they cannot meet their mortgage payments – by stipulating that in cases that meet certain criteria, the state will step in to contribute half of the amount required by the mortgage company. Along similar lines, the Budget of 2016 that was voted in early December 2015 increases social spending and guarantees minimum income for people living in extreme poverty; and a draft law entitled ‘Parallel Programme’ submitted in Parliament on December 14, 2015 suggests tax immunity for vulnerable social groups, health coverage for the uninsured, the creation of community centres for the poor that offer access to several services and a variety of programmes for the unemployed. Finally, Syriza’s proposals for a pension overhaul (2016) stipulated higher insurance contributions for employers than employees and a national pension with a minimum of 15 years of work without income qualifications. Consequently, it is apparent that while in government Syriza has initiated laws, policies and modifications in existing legislation that tally well with its discourse of equality discussed in the previous section. The question now becomes whether these initiatives come down to a reworking of the politics of the populist left. While it is perhaps too early to fully address this question, two issues are noteworthy. The first is that Syriza has been heavily preoccupied with the meaning of ‘left politics’ in the current context – tied with change, progress, solidarity, struggle and the pursuit of social justice. In one sense, this is certainly what one loosely understands by or expects of a left populist party. In another sense, however, the repeated emphases on the necessary shift away from a corrupt, elitist and oligarchic party system, coupled with the association made between change, struggle and the left, slightly redefine the task of left populist parties in the current context – repositioning them within and against the representative system. The negative formulation of this small redefinition must not be missed, for what Syriza seems to engage in is not a ‘struggle to provide X’ but a ‘struggle against those who benefit from the absence of X’.

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The second issue that is noteworthy when looking at the initiatives of Syriza once in government is that a large part of the measures enacted are, again, packaged not in straightforwardly egalitarian terms but as measures necessary to alleviate the humanitarian crisis that has accompanied the economic one. Does recourse to humanitarianism signal a third type of metonymic displacement, in tune with the growing impoverishment characteristic of large segments of citizens in contemporary democracies – what Žižek (2012) refers to as ‘proletarianization’? Or does it work as a ‘distraction’, perhaps even a move away from a strong egalitarian agenda? The answer to such questions largely hinges on whether one dissociates (or not) dynamics of governing from radical left parties. Syriza, a self defined radical left party, is now in a position of governing and this raises interesting questions about whether radicalism – understood as the dimension of a politics that seeks to transform the system – can be made compatible with processes and dynamics of governing. I would suggest that it can, partly because of the contextual influences on the word ‘radical’ (for what is experienced as radical is not the same across decades) and partly because it cannot be readily assumed that governing attaches to ordering and ordering is something that only right wing or centrist parties can successfully undertake. Nevertheless, and as a conclusion to this section, one thing is certain: Syriza’s tacit reinscription of egalitarianism in systemic processes, along with the series of metonymic displacements it has produced, has generated a paradoxical momentum. While an egalitarian politics based on socio-economic claims to equality has come to the forefront of processes of governing, eliciting citizens’ affect and unprecedented mobilizations to its support – this was clearly the case up to the July referendum and then for a brief period prior to the September elections; the way this politics has been reworked, through metonymy and measures defined as ‘humanitarian’, has neutralized it. In the wake of continuous rounds of privatizations and further austerity legislations (demanded by the creditors), Syriza’s egalitarian agenda appears either too little (to carve out wider support) or simply impossible within the context of a crisis-stricken Greece. Either way, one preliminary conclusion is that while left populist parties can be loci of change, sustaining this change once in government, is an intricate task.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on the case of the left populist party Syriza; it has suggested that by making the struggle for equality the mantra for its election and continued existence, Syriza managed to bring back egalitarianism to the forefront of politics. The use of metonymic displacement has been central to this undertaking. With ‘austerity’ becoming the metonymy for inequality and exclusion, and ‘social justice’, ‘democracy and solidarity’ standing for equality, Syriza reenchanted, without alienating, significant sections of the electorate.

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Metonymy thus proved a useful resource for Syriza’s populist discourse. In a society anxious about the effects of the economic crisis on the democratic system, it brought the need for equality into sharp relief. Of course, references to equality rise in moments of crisis, but Syriza’s populist discourse was especially effective even in this moment of crisis. It outlined equality as a political goal and, in so doing, it constructed a critical subject that re-invested in the struggle to renew the political process. If these steps to renewal are anything to go by, then it is safe to conclude that there is scope for populist parties to revive democratic orders. Affects and tropes play a crucial role to this end.

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Teperoglou, E., Freire, A., Andreadis, I., and LeiteV., JoseM. (2014). Elites’ and voters’ attitudes towards austerity policies and their consequences in Greece and Portugal. South European Society and Politics, 19(4): 457–476. Tormey, S. (2012). Occupy Wall Street: From representation to post-representation. Journal of Critical Globalization Studies, 5: 132–137. Tormey, S. (2015). The End of Representative Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Webb, P. (2005). Political parties and democracy: The ambiguous crisis. Democratization, 12(5): 633–650. Žižek, S. (2012). The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. London and New York: Verso.

7 EMOTIONS AND THE LEFT IN DENMARK. TOWARDS LEFT-WING AND MAINSTREAM POPULISM Óscar García Agustín

Introduction Indra Adnan, coordinator of the Alternative UK,1 has commented that Donald Trump has shown how “the human being is a rather emotional creature who can be reached through the emotions”. This, she adds, is nothing new. Thus, the challenge for a new movement-party such as The Alternative (Alternativet) is quite clear: “[W]hat is needed is emotional literacy around our politics,” she concludes (quoted in Elbæk et al. 2017). Similarly, Pelle Dragsted, one of the leaders of the Danish Red-Green Alliance (RGA, Enhedslisten), in a conversation with the radical right-wing populist politician Søren Espersen, reflected on the turn from the centre right and centre left to a politics as mere necessity, void of values and opinions. Therefore he suggests that, similar to what right-wing populism has done, the left wing should leave its fear aside and talk to people’s values and feelings (quoted in Thorup 2014). These reflections, coming from two left-wing parties, are interesting for at least two reasons: First, they observe, rather than condemn, the use that the populist right has made of emotions; and second, they consider that emotions and feelings can (and must) be incorporated into the left-wing discourse. Furthermore, it must be noted that bringing emotions into politics is not an easy task in the Danish context. Besides being associated with populism, particularly from the right wing, the political arena in Denmark, including electoral campaigns, is traditionally

1

The Alternative is a Danish party, but in cooperation with other international groups it has contributed to creating a global network, among others in the UK, to “engage with creative initiatives and people, who are working towards a new political system, culture and vision” (The Alternative UK, nd.).

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understood as a rational arena, and political communication is perceived as spreading information with a rational purpose (Schultz Jørgensen in Drost 2015). However, the general elections in 2015 showed that the so-called ‘old parties’ or the parties that have governed or participated in governmental coalitions were suffering from some exhaustion. The ‘new parties’,2 including the radical rightwing party Danish People’s Party (DF, Dansk Folkeparti), achieved surprisingly good results within an electoral system where there are plenty of options both to the right and to the left. The advance of the ‘new political parties’ was clearly attributed to their opposition to the established political system. They worked as channels to express dissatisfaction or protest and seemed more authentic and clear in the way they formulated their opinions and visions (Redder and Braemer 2016). This was happening in a situation where trust in politicians was at an alltime low. At the end of 2015, in a survey conducted a few months after the general elections, six out of ten Danes declared that they had little or very little trust in politicians; and, indeed, almost one in every four voters expressed very little trust in politicians (Redder and Christensen 2015). The aim of this chapter is to analyse how two political parties, the RGA and The Alternative, open up their discourse to the inclusion of emotions as essential for the shaping of collective identities and of an alternative to the established political system (or what could be seen as the parties of the establishment). Both parties are considered to be part of the ‘red bloc’ (together with the Social Democrats, the Socialist People’s Party, and the Social Liberal Party (Radikale Venstre)), but there are some remarkable differences between them. The RGA has usually been characterized as a radical left-wing party although recently it has taken a noticeable left-wing populist turn (Agustín and Jørgensen 2016) by combining their rejection of the elites with maintaining the defence of socialist principles. The Alternative, on the other hand, self-defines as a green party but assuming new ways of participation, rejecting the traditional mode of doing politics, and having a charismatic leader. Despite their rather clear left-wing profile, The Alternative fit the category used by Alain Minc (in Gardels, nd.) ‘mainstream populist’ due to the combination of politics connecting directly with the citizens and, at the same time, advocating for entrepreneur culture. In this chapter, I argue that emotions are no longer ‘owned’ by the populist radical right wing but are also incorporated by the left, in two different variations of left-wing populism (radical-left and mainstream) as alternatives to the parties of the establishment. The theoretical framework draws mostly on the work of Chantal Mouffe and her reflections about post-politics and how emotions can play a positive role in politics. After a short introduction to the current Danish political landscape, the analysis ensues. Discourse analysis is employed on the use of emotions in the discourses of the RGA and The Alternative, based on a variety of sources such as 2

Besides The Alternative and the RGA, which are the object of study of this chapter, the other new party is the neoliberal Liberal Alliance.

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political programs and principles, interviews, and material from electoral and other political campaigns. The main focus will be on the videos of the RGA and The Alternative which were used in the general election campaign in 2015 and the municipal election campaign in 2017.

Emotions in Politics It is quite common to characterize populism by emotions (Rico et al. 2017); most of the time to accuse populism of playing with popular emotions (Stanley 2008) rather than to theorize the affective dimension of populist identification (Stavrakakis 2005). Chantal Mouffe indeed attends to the affective dimension of populism and attributes the success of right-wing populism to this. Mouffe (in Hackl 2014) prefers to talk about ‘passion’, instead of ‘emotion’ which, according to her conceptualization, would be individual. With the notion of ‘passion’ she refers to the formation of collective identity. Here I consider both terms interchangeable but agree with Michaela Mihai’s appreciation that the term ‘passions’ “alludes to passivity and to a supposed force-of-nature character of affect” while the use of ‘emotion’ highlights that it is “a productive force in social and political life” (2014, 36). To explain the need of emotions to foster democracy, Mouffe criticizes the post-political perspective which, aspiring to overcome ideological differences and move beyond left and right, makes it impossible to think politically. To account for her conceptualization of passion, Mouffe shows how the ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ distinction must be recognized and compatible with pluralism in order to be democratic. It is the difference, essential in Mouffe’s work, between ‘antagonism’ (struggle between enemies) and ‘agonism’ (struggle between adversaries). Passions would contribute to strengthening the agonist model: In the agonistic model the prime task of democratic politics is neither to eliminate passions nor to relegate them to the private sphere in order to establish a rational consensus in the public sphere; it is, rather, to ‘tame’ these passions by mobilizing them for democratic ends and by creating collective forms of identification around democratic objectives. (Mouffe 2002, 9) Mouffe argues that passions must not be eradicated and completely replaced with reason. Interestingly, she also talks about ‘taming’ passions if we want them to fulfil democratic aims. There is a recognition that passions can contribute to undemocratic processes but, on the other hand, that they are necessary to enhance democracy. In terms of the latter, passions must be part of the agonistic model. The agonistic sphere is thus composed by democratic emotions and not inimical passions (Mihai 2014). When the collective forms of identification take shape within the agonistic model, democratic representation is improved and the

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risk of reproducing essentialist identities without any kind of democratic form of identification can be avoided. All in all, the alternative to the populist right wing entails offering alternative forms of identification. This would be the task of leftwing populism if it wants to undo the post-political framework and the negation of adversarial politics. Since emotions “are essential to the construction of political subjects and in their current struggle for democratic sovereignty” (Cossarini 2014, 298), it is important to show how they shape the distinction ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ within the democratic realm (or agonistic democracy, according to Mouffe). As underlined by Sara Ahmed: “It is not just that we feel for the collective […], but how we feel about others is what aligns us with a collective, which paradoxically ‘takes shape’ only as an effect of such alignments” (2004, 27). The formation of political subjects cannot be separated from their opposition to others. Furthermore, the articulation of ‘Us’ through emotions must here be built up in relation to a ‘legitimate’ other, that is, the other as a political adversary. In other words, the alignment of “some subjects with some others and against some others” (Ahmed 2004, 25) must be constructed in terms of political agonism and not antagonism. James Jasper, in the field of social movements, points to the fact that collective identity can barely be imagined as purely cognitive, but its strength comes from its emotional side. He distinguishes between two types of emotions which are very useful to understanding how the alignment is made with and against others. There are ‘reciprocal emotions’ which “concern participants’ ongoing feelings toward each other. These are the close, affective, ties of friendship, love, solidarity, and loyalty” (Jasper 1998, 417). On the other hand, ‘shared emotions’ are “consciously held by a group at the same time but they do not have the other group members as their objects. The group nurtures anger toward outsiders, or outrage over government policies” (1998, 417). Although this categorization is applied to moments of being together (the reciprocal emotions such as the pleasure or joy provoked by the protests), it reflects likewise how emotions, at the discursive level, produce collective identities by enhancing feelings among the members of the group and against others who are considered as the others or outsiders. The way in which emotions shape collective identities (and the kind of collective identities) is crucial. It is not about emotions replacing ideas but rather about recognizing their importance. Roger Bartra (2017) exposes the dilemma about how to deploy emotions politically: Emotions can be used to try to reconstruct an identity in crisis or they can contribute to promoting a new civic culture. Bartra basically warns about the temptation to deploy emotions to rescue an already damaged national identity. Considering populism and nationalism as types of discourse (Katsambekis and Stavrakakis 2017), they appeal to different subjects (the people and the nation) which oppose (or align with) different others (the establishment, other nations or ethnicities). The relation between subjects likewise differs: up/down in the case of populism, and in/out in the case of

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nationalism. Following this distinction, populism could be part of a new civic or democratic culture. Within the logic of Mouffe’s agonistic project, passions would need to be ‘tamed’ in order to adopt such a civic culture. It is convenient to retake Mouffe’s idea of passions not as opposed to democracy or institutions but as an alternative to post-politics and the existing crisis of political representation. Both the crisis of representation and the mistrust towards politicians reflect well how the ‘institutional harmony’ (Villacañas 2015) is broken as well as the fact that there is no correspondence between the institutional offer and the social demand. When populism emerges due to this institutional-social imbalance, emotions can develop a democratic space where reasonable disagreements and coexistence are possible (Cossarini and Alonso 2015). What is at stake in the Danish case is not institutions as such but rather the crisis of traditional parties (and citizens’ trust). The populist right wing has been capable of articulating emotions into a xenophobic and exclusionary discourse, and a homogenous sense of community. The challenge is to see whether the left wing can produce different varieties of progressive populism to foster pluralism and strengthen the linkages between representatives and their constituencies.

The Red-Green Alliance and The Alternative in the Danish political system The RGA self-defines as a socialist party. It was established in 1989 as an alliance of three left-wing parties and entered the Danish national parliamentary scene for the first time in 1994. Initially, their electoral support fluctuated around 2 to 3% until 2011 when their electoral support rose to almost 7%. In the 2015 elections, they gained a 7.8% share of the votes, amounting to 14 seats in the Danish Parliament and the place as the second-most voted left-wing party (see Figure 7.1). The electoral success of the RGA has, to some extent, coincided with the party’s populist turn, led by a new generation of key figures in the party. Particularly, Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen became one of the most popular politicians when she was political spokesperson, and Pelle Dragsted was essential in introducing a leftwing populist discourse into the party. As proof of this turn, in 2013–2014 the RGA reformulated its manifesto and introduced a more pragmatic yet anti-elitist and still socialist direction. In the Danish political landscape, the RGA disputes the space to the left of the Social Democrats (the biggest party) with the Socialist People’s Party (which has been severely affected by their short time in, and departure from, government under the Social Democrat rule) and The Alternative while also competing for votes with the radical right-wing party, the Danish People’s Party. From 2011 to 2015 Denmark was governed by a Social Democrat-led government (together with the Social Liberal Party and during some of their tenure also the Socialist People’s Party), and the RGA served as its parliamentary support. Currently the RGA is in opposition to the centre-right wing coalition government led by the

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69 62

63 52 47

45

44

47 37

22 15

0 1990

13

13

12

6

5

4

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24 11 6 2005

Red-Green Alliance

Social Democratic Party

Danish People's Party

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7

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14

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Socialist People's Party

Voter development (number of seats), 1990–2015 Source: Created by the author

FIGURE 7.1

Liberal Party in power, together with the Conservatives and the neoliberal Liberal Alliance as government coalition. The 2015 elections left a remarkable political landscape in which the Social Democrats were the most voted party (26.3%) followed by the Danish People’s Party (with 21.1% of the votes and very strong support in the rural areas), but the Liberal Party gained sufficient political support to overthrow the previous Social Democrat-led government. At the same time, The Alternative entered the political parliamentary scene as a new party with 4.8% of the votes, well above the minimum threshold at 2%. The party was established in 2013 when Uffe Elbæk, former Minister of Culture and member of the Social Liberal Party, announced the initiative. Elbæk had left the parliamentary group of the Social Liberal Party just a few months earlier. Elbæk was already then considered a charismatic figure in Danish politics, and he is defined, by the party itself, as a ‘political entrepreneur’. At the time of its establishment the party had no political program. Instead, political laboratories were celebrated across the country during the first months of the party’s existence in the efforts to define the political content which was presented as a draft program in May 2014. The party is a self-proclaimed green party with a focus on entrepreneurship and opting very strongly for the development of a new political culture and an activist approach to politics through the continuous engagement of the grassroots. Although they refuse to be either left or right wing, The Alternative has supported mainly the proposals made by the ‘red bloc’ and it is indeed placed within it. Thus, it is expected that the party would support a social democratic government, if relevant. In the most recent municipal elections, the RGA experienced a slight decrease in votes, with the general results going down from 6.9% in 2013 to 6% in 2017.

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The Alternative participated in the municipal elections for the first time; they gained 3% of the votes and ended up as the least voted left-wing party, behind the Socialist People’s Party (5.7%) and the RGA (6%) with the Social Democrats as the most voted party of all with 32.4% of the votes and the clear winner of the elections with an increase of almost 3% in the share of votes. Thus, The Alternative was struggling to gain foothold locally, and – with most of their candidates entering the local political scenes for the first time – they also lacked experience. The polls at the beginning of 2018 (Larsen, 2018) showed a majority of votes for the ‘red bloc’, but this is not without complications to both the RGA and The Alternative. Social democratic leader Mette Frederiksen has assumed a migration and refugee agenda, which places the party close to the radical right wing. It provokes hesitations about how much support the RGA and The Alternative should promise. Besides, the RGA maintains a strong position with 8.9% while The Alternative is losing votes (4.1%) and is behind its closest competitor, the other green left-wing party the Socialist People’s Party, which is recovering (5.8%) from the bad results after participating in the Social Democratled government coalition.

The Red Green Alliance: Welfare and Community Community Works Pelle Dragsted from RGA, who has shown his sympathy for a left-wing populist project, considers that the left wing has focused more on developing an image of the ‘enemy’ than on using narratives that oppose ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. As a consequence, the space opened by the ‘Us / Them’ discourses has been appropriated by the radical right wing, whereby ‘Us’ has been nationalized and culturalized and ‘Them’ has been related to non-Christian religions. Dragsted is aware of the challenge for a left-wing populist turn: “The left wing must take a different ‘Us’ and a different ‘Them’ as its starting point” (quoted in Thorup 2014). In the search for a new collective subject, recognizable from the left-wing tradition in its opposition to ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ capable of enhancing new forms of identification, the RGA deployed the signifier ‘community’ (fællesskab in Danish) already prior to the electoral campaign of 2015. It should be emphasized that fællesskab does not only mean ‘community’ as such; it rather reflects the feeling of community, the sense of being together and of enhancing solidarity relations. Therefore emotions become essential to shaping ‘community’ as a collective subject which is not identifiable with the ‘Us’ (usually, ‘the Danes’) appealed to by the DF. The campaign is based on the idea of ‘Community works’, which historically connects the past with the present, but it does not do so in terms of nostalgia for the past. Rather, it shows how the conflict between the privileged minority and the majority (Danes who produce community) throughout history has been the

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basis for social change and improvements of the welfare system. The introduction to the electoral video campaign from 2015 presents this framework: There was a time when freedom and security were for the few only. While the majority worked hard and had short lives. Profound social and economic differences characterized Denmark. But the majority of the Danes wanted changes and for decades they fought together for social progress. They created a community that changed Denmark […]. Together we have created the welfare society. (Enhedslisten 2016) The campaign is the most complete attempt to articulate an inclusive collective subject which clearly is the result of social struggles, a combination of reciprocal (solidarity) and shared (against the few) emotions, and not directly attached to a national sense of belonging. This enables a discursive articulation of the collective subject that differs clearly from the nationalist one characteristic of the radical right but which has also been considerably assumed by the social democratic party. The distinction between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ is represented as the one between ‘the few’ (de få) and ‘the many’ (de mange) in times of large social and economic inequalities. When the majority desired change they fought for social improvements and created community. Community is thus depicted as the result of many social struggles from the right to parental leave to the six weeks of holiday (see Figure 7.2), and it works because community promotes freedom and a sense of security, which later is assumed by the welfare state. Community cannot be considered essentialist at all (in fact, it is claimed that ‘community cannot be taken for granted’), since it is the consequence of historic struggles and the shaping of security and freedom by collectivity. Community does not pre-exist politics, but it is constituted through collective emotions and actions. The RGA positions itself through this campaign as the defender of welfare state policies (the space abandoned by social democracy) and proposes a

Historical construction of community in the RGA campaign ‘Community works’, 2013 Source: Created by the author FIGURE 7.2.

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collective subject that competes with the one of the radical right wing but without being nationalist and exclusionary even though it narrates the historical development of communities in the Danish context. The welfare state is not, in any case, the result of political parties’ actions (at least, not completely) but of people’s demands. Furthermore, RGA articulates these historic demands of popular movements from a diachronic perspective and, although it was not the party responsible for legislating at these diverse moments, it identifies with and assumes the struggles through time. The constitution of community, as a historic and collective subject, does not aim at provoking nostalgia for an idealized past. The objective is to enhance a new discourse that offers a more inclusive political project in which the community is the main political subject. The election of community as political subject reflects that the sense of identity is less associated with class-based leftish ideology and more based on the sense of belonging and recognition of the achievements accomplished by pulling together. Or in other words, it is an affective approach to the past which generates the hope that community can find solutions to the existing problems and lead social change again.

Welfare Heroes With the occasion of the 2017 municipal elections, usually interpreted as the space for ‘close democracy’, the RGA launched a new campaign called ‘Welfare heroes’. The goal is comparable to ‘Community works’ in the sense that they share an affective approach to welfare. Whilst in the case of ‘Community works’ the efficiency and need for communality to achieve political progress were highlighted, the new campaign introduces ‘faces’ and tells stories about those who embody everyday welfare practices. The intention is to strengthen welfare policies, but the campaign shows the emotional side of the welfare state, shaped by the workers who are passionate about their work. In the main campaign video, RGA political spokesperson Pernille Skipper shows from the beginning that there is a close affective connection between public employees and people. She says: “Some of them comfort our children when they fall and hurt themselves on the playground. […] Then there are the ones who are waiting to receive us at the maternity ward, and the ones who take care of us if we fall ill or if we are unable to take care of ourselves because we are getting old.” For these reasons, they are necessary for everybody and become ‘Welfare heroes’. The emphasis on work as affective labour influences the very definition of the value of labour. Bringing in the emotional dimension, and connections between people, it is used to conflict with the dominant discourse by the right wing about how value is produced. As Skipper notices, the right wing claims that “those who contribute the most are the ones who get the highest salaries” (in Ritzau 2017). Thus, the campaign entails both a re-valorization of labour (together with a conceptualization of labour as affective labour) and an

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emotionally based approach to welfare in which workers are perceived as ‘heroes’. As mentioned in the main campaign video, “we should show [the everyday heroes] the confidence that everyone who is toiling for our community deserves”. Beyond being employees of the state, public servants are mainly essential in the shaping of community and possess the values that keep community together. While the main video is presented by the political spokesperson from the RGA, another video gathers different local candidates. The core of the campaign presents (both in posters on the streets and in videos) the ‘Welfare heroes’. Among the professions selected are early childhood educators, nurses, social and health care workers, teachers, manual workers, and police. The inclusion of the latter in the campaign was quite controversial due to the oppressive dimension of police that was pointed out by sympathizers of the RGA on social media. In the individual videos each welfare employee tells their story and why they work for the public good. From the beginning of the video the name and profession are introduced to both personalize the message and highlight the importance of their work. In the case of Mariette, a midwife, the affective approach to welfare remains quite clear: The experience of seeing a woman and her partner go through the whole process that surrounds a pregnancy but also the great process that a birth is, to experience their huge work, hard work, and to see the redemption and the joy that comes when the child is born, that is so wonderful. It is so vivifying and so inspiring each and every time. (Enhedslisten 2017). Like in the case of the other workers, who are personalized through the campaign, emotions are not only tied to those who receive the benefits from the welfare institutions (patients, students, fathers, citizens) but also to the ‘Welfare heroes’ who share the joy and happiness of their everyday actions. The result is what Raúl Zibechi (2002) calls an “imaginary of the everyday social change” – that is, actions carried out by ordinary people that represent how social change already exists, albeit not always visibly so. This imaginary is, besides, reinforced by reciprocal emotions which strengthen the sense (and shaping) of community. The focus is thus on the capacity of doing together. The conflictual side (meaning the claims to achieve better welfare conditions) belongs properly to the political arena where the RGA assumes the role of defending and representing these claims. Comparing the two campaigns (‘Community works’ and ‘Welfare heroes’), it is interesting to notice that the shaped community is not the national one but a collective subject that results from the historical social struggles and from the everyday actions. In other words, emotions do not appeal to national identity but rather to an inclusive identity (expanding the rights to different social groups) constituted from below (from everyday practices to the direct opposition to ‘the

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few’). In this sense, the RGA combines strong welfare state policies, in line with their socialist identity as a political party, with the shaping of community as a new ‘us’ capable of articulating different demands which point in a left-wing populist direction.

The Alternative: Hope and New Thoughts Need for New Thoughts There is no doubt that The Alternative has challenged the ways of doing politics in Denmark in recent years. In only a couple of years, Danes witnessed all the members of the party gathered in the annual conference dancing to the tunes of ‘Love is in the air’; a happy Uffe Elbæk, charismatic leader of the party, giving high-fives to the Copenhagen cyclists; or Elbæk, dressed in a tutu dancing ballet. The Alternative has from the beginning expressed its interest in doing politics differently where ‘doing politics must be fun’ and emotions become important as part of the organization (the joy of being together) and of the message (hope to change society and politics). In its diagnosis of the economic, political and social situation in Denmark, The Alternative identifies three different types of crisis: empathy crisis, system crisis and climate crisis.3 The first crisis, empathy crisis, is opposed to the economicist understanding of people as machines that respond only to the logic of cost-benefit. The economicist vision does not leave any room for considering people’s motivations. This crisis is depicted in the following terms: “As a society we have throughout the 00s become ever worse at listening to each other without prejudices, at putting ourselves in the other’s place rather than rejecting interaction with each other based on fear and mistrust” (Elbæk 2011). It is relevant that The Alternative emphasizes how the crisis has eroded the relationship between people and provoked negative emotions such as fear and mistrust. Besides relations, the crisis of empathy also affects the value attributed to jobs, based on the wish to make a difference and not only higher wages. Comparing with the RGA, the value does not depend on the job’s contribution to society but is framed within the relations of empathy which enable a better understanding of new entrepreneurs who want to contribute to living together in community as well as marginalized groups such as benefit recipients and the unemployed. According to The Alternative, shaping a new society is only possible by changing the political culture and conceiving empathy as politics. The first electoral campaign of The Alternative, ‘Need for new thoughts’, responds to the idea of creating a new political culture which would provide a 3

It is interesting to note that the diagnosis assumed by The Alternative was already formulated by their leader, Uffe Elbæk, when he was still a member of the Social Liberal Party. The selected quote is, indeed, from that time.

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solution for the three scenarios. The Alternative explains the relevance of the campaign in relation to their emotional position: being worried and hopeful at the same time. The things they are worried about are the pressure on the Earth and the people, whilst the feeling of hope relies on the certainty that Danes are usually good at getting ideas and finding solutions, particularly if they do it together. The message, relayed by the leader of the party, appeals to hope and the sense of being together to offer solutions to the existing crises and move away from the negative feeling of worrying. Hope, which opens up the possibility of change, is attached to the very foundation of the party, since without that initiative it would not have been easy to see how to set forth on a totally different social and political alternative. This is the idea of the video ‘Why am I part of The Alternative?’ where the effect of the leader as founder (and his vision of The Alternative) is one of the major motivations for some of the candidates to join the political project. The opinions of the members of the party reflect how The Alternative becomes an ‘emotional state’ for them. The sense of being together here works internally in the way in which they produce ideas and think of solutions. The members express their emotional attachment and reaction to Elbæk’s proposal. The press officer, Magnus Harald Haslebo, says, for instance: Then we had a cup of coffee, and I fell completely in love with the project. Precisely because it is that idea of “let’s just dream instead”. We start with the dream and then we try to see what can be realized. (Alternativet 2015) Or Adem Fajkovic, who explains that “suddenly someone presents some visions which induce hope that we can actually do something else if we want to” (in Alternativet 2015). A third testimony comes from Nilas Bay-Foged: So we set the basic tone, with some values and courage and empathy and generosity. And then we hope that somebody will come and play with us. It was that feeling of just saying: “Okay, are we ready? Then we play. Onetwo, and one, two …” And where we are today, well, then hundreds of people come join us and are active and provide new ideas, and, well, play with us. And that is the interaction that I feel every single day in The Alternative. (Alternativet 2015) The metaphor of the orchestra playing in concert is relevant in a dual sense: Firstly, it refers to the sense of collectivity created by people doing something together; and secondly, the feeling obtained by playing together predominates over the obtained result (that is, the music). When the Alternative presents the need for the new party due to the need for new thoughts, it prioritizes the collective work and the necessary introduction of new values to change the existing

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political culture in Denmark. The use of emotions does not aim at shaping a collective subject in society but rather at strengthening the sense of affective belonging by sharing values and participating in the internal dynamics of the party.

Planting Hope Although The Alternative could be considered a ‘green’ party, it harbours an interest in increasing democratic participation and developing a system close to citizens that adds a political profile that goes beyond the green party concept. The municipal elections deepened this combination of green and participatory (populist) party through the idea of ‘planting hope’. When the party uses the slogan ‘The Alternative plants green hope in Denmark’, it refers both to the application of environmental politics and to the election of local candidates throughout Denmark, i.e. The Alternative expand their representation from the national Parliament to the municipalities for the first time. ‘Hope’ is deployed to connect the green vision with the participatory project whereby they acquire an emotional dimension since it refers to ‘green hope’ and ‘democratic hope’. This convergence of the green message, the party identity and the emotions shared by party members and sympathizers is reflected in the election posters and caught by one of the election campaign videos. The Alternative used luminescent posters which can be charged by flashlights and mobiles. During the day, the only letter that was visible was the party’s letter Å, but during the night it was supplemented by two other letters to complete the word HÅB (hope). Thus, ‘hope’ appears symbolically to illuminate the streets and their people in the night (‘dark times’) and also depends on the people who charge the posters daily. The latter is a way of claiming for people’s commitment and engagement in politics (Bangslund 2017), but the video additionally reflects the emotions experienced by a group of members and sympathizers when they witness how the party’s letter is transformed into ‘hope’. The same idea of ‘green and democratic hope’ is behind the electoral initiative ‘Tour de Håb’ (‘Tour of Hope’), inspired by the expression ‘tour de force’. In this case, the challenge is to find already existing initiatives and bring people together to develop those initiatives politically. The application of ‘Tour de Håb’ consists of the party leader Uffe Elbæk’s three weeks’ travel around Denmark to visit local candidates, sympathizers or curious people. Thus, he can communicate directly away from Parliament and learn in first person what people are doing in the municipalities. The visual material for the campaign (see Figure 7.3) shows a map of Denmark with the itinerary of the tour and a picture of a happy Elbæk giving a high-five. The inserted text “Uffe finds green hope in your city” reinforces the message of the picture: The combination of territorial and administrative decentralization with a prevalent role played by Elbæk as leader and his ability to come closer to citizens (as captured by the high-five moment as an individualized and informal approach to another person).

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The Alternative, Campaign ‘Tour de Hope’, 2017 Source: Alternativet, Uffe Elbæk campaign.

FIGURE 7.3

A final component of the municipal election campaign that I want to introduce is the video ‘The Alternative History of Denmark’.4 Elbæk introduces the municipal elections as a historical moment since they would entail the shift from representative to ‘involving’ democracy. The meaning of ‘The Alternative History’ is ambivalent in the sense that rather than talking about an Alternative Danish History, the video is about the history of The Alternative as a party. The scenes of collective joy dominate during the narration and after the image of the word ‘hope’, Elbæk appeals to the viewer: “It is you who decide how [The Alternative’s history and the political history of Denmark] ends.” The possibility of change relies on each citizen who decides to adhere to The Alternative as a collective, participatory and inclusionary movement. 4

The video is inspired by the famous documentary series ‘The History of Denmark’ where the actor Lars Mikkelsen shows the audience the most important events which have shaped Danish national identity through history.

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Conclusion The use of emotions in Danish politics has been associated with the populist right wing and in contradiction with the rational and argumentative purpose attributed to the public political debate. The crisis of the traditional parties, which we have witnessed in recent years, has opened up new political spaces both to the left and to the right. In this context, the space of the left wing is being redefined, particularly after the frustrated expectations provoked by the latest centre-left government, when the RGA redefined their political strategy and a new party, The Alternative, emerged as the third-most voted left-wing party. Both parties are aware of the need for changing the way of doing politics, including the major importance of emotions and the role these play in politics. Neither the RGA nor The Alternative can be ‘labelled’ as purely populist, but they share and incorporate some features which are commonly attributed to populism. On the one hand, the RGA maintains their socialist principles and values but, since they can only be fulfilled through parliamentarian majority, they are adapted to a new context. Thus, the RGA assumes some of the principles of left-wing populism, especially the articulation of economic and social conflicts in terms of the elite versus the people (or community) together with other decisions that can likewise be characterized as populist (taxation on higher incomes, reduction of politicians’ salaries, rotation of political posts, etc.). In this regard, one might say that the RGA nowadays combine their socialist position with a left-wing populist one. On the other hand, The Alternative positions itself as a green party and have no references to ‘the people’ in their discursive articulation (since they prefer to talk about ‘democracy’). However, they share several similarities with ‘mainstream populism’, such as the emphasis on citizens’ participation, the importance of the charismatic leader, and the focus on entrepreneur culture. The Alternative might also be considered a combination of, in this case, a green centre-left and a mainstream populist party. This distinction between left wing and mainstream populism becomes relevant to understand the use of emotions and the creation of affective engagement by the two parties. This is particularly evident when comparing the discursive construction of ‘us’. In their campaigns, the RGA aim to create a collective subject which is not reducible to national identity. The collective subject, ‘community’, is historically the result of social struggles and grounded in everyday life. The defence of welfare policies, as articulated by the RGA, finds its emotional dimension through their discourse about community and ‘Welfare heroes’. The Alternative does not carry out a constitution of a collective subject as such but rather focuses on the need for a party like The Alternative to change Danish political culture. Therefore, the emotions shared here are related to the joy of participating together in elaborating new and innovative politics and, by extension, redefining the way of understanding politics and the country (with special focus on the green dimension). While the RGA articulates its discourse around

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‘community’, The Alternative articulates its around ‘democracy’. In the first case, the community is open to new social groups to contribute to strengthening the welfare society; in the latter, it is about expanding democratic inclusion through participation in the project set up and developed by The Alternative. It is important to note that the RGA is ideologically oriented towards welfare policies and defends them from cuts and privatization. The Alternative, although committed to welfare policies, believes that the main focus should be on entrepreneurs and creative workers (what they call the ‘fourth sector’ as a combination of the private, public and voluntary sector). This implies that the RGA supports the dominant role of the state (and the public sector) whereas The Alternative is more inclined towards civil society initiatives. The shared emotions are, consequently, different; the community is related to the welfare state (connecting the state and civil society), on the one hand, and the community of participating together (prioritizing civil society), on the other. The same distinction applies in terms of opposition: The RGA rejects the neoliberal system whilst the case of The Alternative is less clear since it opposes the established mode of doing politics but refuses to be categorized as either a left or right-wing party. In any case, both parties show how emotions are not only the domain of the populist right wing and may be deployed to progressive projects, aimed to shape a new collective subject or to enhance new means of democratic participation.

References Agustín, Ó. G. and Jørgensen, M. B. (2016). Uplifting the masses? Radical left parties and social movements during the crisis. In L. March and D. Keith (eds.) Europe’s Radical Left. From Marginality to the Mainstream?Rowan & Littlefield: London, pp. 71–88. Ahmed, S. (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge. Alternativet (2015). Hvorfor er jeg en del af Alternativet? YouTube, June 11. Retrieved from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0t4hQRLWYk. Accessed March 3, 2018. Bangslund, L. (2017). Undrede du dig i nat? Alternativ valgplakat i mørket. TV2/Lorry, October 29. Retrieved from: www.tv2lorry.dk/artikel/undrede-du-dig-i-nat-alterna tiv-valgplakat-i-moerket. Accessed March 3, 2018. Bartra, R. (2017). La batalla de las ideas y las emociones en América Latina. Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, 229: 129–148. Cossarini, P. (2014). Protest, emotions and democracy: Theoretical insights from the indignados movement. Global Discourse, 4(2–3): 291–304. Cossarini, P. and Alonso, R. G. (2015). El papel de las emociones en la teoría democrática. Desafíos para un uso público de la razón en tiempos de populismo. Revista de Estudios Políticos, 168: 291–315. Drost, A. F. (2015). Ekspert: Alternativet er Danmarks Obama, Avisen.dk, June 1. Retrieved from: www.avisen.dk/ekspert-alternativet-minder-om-barack-obama_ 328907.aspx. Accessed March 3, 2018. Elbæk, U. (2011). Sådan konfronterer vi Danmarks kriser. Ræson, August 27. Retrieved from: http://raeson.dk/2011/uffe-elbæk-r-sadan-konfronterer-vi-danmarks-kriser/. Accessed March 3, 2018.

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Elbæk, U. et al. (2017). Exploring two alternatives. Open Democracy, March 28. Retrieved from: www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/indra-adnan-pat-ka ne-adam-ramsay-rosemary-bechler-uffe-elbaek-rasmus-nordqvist/in. Accessed March 3, 2018. Enhedslisten (2016). Fælleskab fungerer. YouTube, September 4. Retrieved from: www. youtube.com/watch?v=z4Lvv9g9P0I. Accessed March 3, 2018. Enhedslisten (2017). Velfærdens Helte: Mariette. YouTube, October 16. Retrieved from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ2ywR5GiSM . Accessed February 3, 2018. Gardels, N. (nd). Macron’s election signals victory of a new kind of ‘mainstream populism’. HuffPost. Retrieved from: www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/france-election-macron_us_ 5910b036e4b0104c73511698. Accessed March 3, 2018. Hackl, A. (2014). ‘Democratise democracy!’ – Interview with Chantal Mouffe. Transformations, April 16. Retrieved from: http://transformations-blog.com/we-propose-dem ocracy-interview-with-chantal-mouffe. Accessed March 3, 2018. Jasper, J. M. (1998). The emotions of protest: Affective and reactive emotions in and around social movements. Sociological Forum, 13(3): 397–424. Katsambekis, G. and Stavrakakis, Y. (2017). Revisiting the nationalism/populism nexus: Lessons from the Greek case. Javnost – The Public, 24(4): 391–408. Larsen, J. B. (2018). Måling: Rød blok fastholder forspring. DR, January 28. Retrieved from: www.dr.dk/nyheder/politik/maaling-roed-blok-fastholder-forsp ring. Accessed March 3, 2018. Mihai, M. (2014). Theorizing agonistic emotions. Parallax, 20(2): 31–48. Mouffe, C. (2002). Politics and Passions. The Stakes of Democracy. London: Centre for the Study of Democracy. Redder, G. and Braemer, M. (2016). Ledere af de gamle partier må holde ferie med hovedbrud. Ugebrevet A4, June 30. Retrieved from: www.ugebreveta4.dk/ledere-a f-de-gamle-partier-holder-ferie-med-hovedbrud_20549.aspx. Accessed March 3, 2018. Redder, G. and Christensen, M. (2015). Danskernes tillid til politikere er forsvundet. Ugebrevet A4, December 22. Retrieved from: www.ugebreveta4.dk/danskernestillid-til-politikere-er-forsvundet_20331.aspx. Accessed March 3, 2018. Rico, G., Guinjoan, M. and Anduiza, E. (2017). The emotional underpinning of populism: How anger and fear affect populist attitudes. Swiss Political Science Review, 23(4): 444–461. Ritzau (2017). EL åbner kommunalvalg: Kampagne for offentligt ansatte. TV2, September 6. Retrieved from: http://nyheder.tv2.dk/politik/2017-09-06-el-abner-kommunalva lg-kampagne-for-offentligt-ansatte. Accessed March 3, 2018. Stanley, B. (2008). The thin ideology of populism. Journal of Political Ideologies, 13(1): 95–110. Stavrakakis, Y. (2004). Antinomies of formalism: Laclau’s theory of populism and the lessons from religious populism in Greece. Journal of Political Ideologies, 9(3): 253–267. Stavrakakis, Y. (2005) Passions of identification: Discourse, eEnjoyment and European identity. In D. Howarth & J. Torfing (eds.). Discourse Theory in European Politics. Identity, Policy and Governance. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 68–92. The Alternative UK (nd.). The Alternative UK and Alternativet. Retrieved from: www. thealternative.org.uk/alteruk-alternativet. Accessed March 3, 2018. Thorup, M.-L. (2014). Kan populisme bekæmpe nødvendighedens politik? Information, July 15. Retrieved from: www.information.dk/indland/2014/07/kan-populisme-beka empe-noedvendighedens-politik. Accessed March 3, 2018. Villacañas, J. L. (2015). Populismo. Madrid: La Huerta Grande. Zibechi, R. (2002). Poder y representación: ese estado que llevamos dentro. Chiapas, 13.

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PART III

Passions and Democratic Legitimacy

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8 FILLING THE VACUUM? PASSION, ‘THE PEOPLE’, AND AFFECTIVE COMMUNITIES Paolo Cossarini

The Spread of Populism and the ‘Boundary Problem’1 The semantic of ‘the people’ has long saturated the discourse of many political actors across the globe. On opposite ideological poles, and in many geographical contexts, both right- and left-wing parties have been employing, in a significant manner, the idea of speaking ‘in the name of the people’. While this is not surprising – after all, to speak ‘in the name of the people’ is to speak the language of power – it gives, however, an account of the ambiguity of the concept of ‘the people’, and makes manifest the vagueness of the label ‘populism’. Admittedly, the recent rise (or return) of populism is illustrative of the increasing gap between existing representative democracy and the democratic ideal. This dual dimension of democracy, which sees it as a continuous and open-ended process of political readjustments that always remains incomplete, has been stressed from different perspectives (e.g. Dunn, 2005; Kaltwasser 2014, 472; Plattner 2010, 83). One of the key aspects of all the various strains of populism, one might argue, is, precisely, its attempt to return meaning to the democratic ideal, and the significance of ‘popular sovereignty’, against the global neoliberal and technocratic tendency towards emptying out the demos in democracy – to establish a ‘democracy without the demos’. The widespread use of the term ‘the people’ and the rise of populist politics, in other words, allow it to highlight what is at stake: how ‘the people’ is constructed, its legitimate sovereignty as democratic subject, and its relationship to representative politics.

1

In this chapter I use the term ‘the people’ in both singular and plural. When referring to the political community I employ ‘the people’ as a singular noun.

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In this context, studying contemporary populism and its relationship to democracy means dealing with this ‘boundary problem’. How is the political subject of democracy, ‘the people’, constituted? Who are ‘the people’ that form the ultimate source of democratic authority? Should it be conceived in local, national, or cosmopolitan terms? There is no simple answer to these fundamental questions. Indeed, both the ‘boundary’ of the people and its function have, for a long time, been at the centre of different fields of research, being also a key issue in democratic theory and studies on populism (e.g. Espejo 2011; 2014; Erman 2014; Whelan 1983). This chapter finds its starting point with these reflections and explores the current mechanisms in the discursive construction of ‘the people’ and its consequences for contemporary liberal democracy. For the purpose of this analysis, I draw on Ernesto Laclau (2005)’s idea of ‘the people’ as empty signifier. This represents a form of polysemic nomination, sufficiently lax and ambiguous, which can be filled according to different uses. The signifiers then operate through symbolic constructions that, taking into account social demands, acquire a central political value. For Laclau, it is precisely through this linguistic operation that one can understand the underlying logic of all processes of political articulation: the empty signifiers are the nodal points around which political actors attempt, firstly, to dominate the field of discursivity and, then, to establish hegemonic political views. According to Laclau, therefore, the construction of ‘the people’ is “the political operation par excellence” (2005, 153). Studying populism and populist discourse, therefore, means focusing on the “political operation par excellence” (ibid.) while, allowing for the stressing of the ‘paradox of politics’. This paradox consists in the structural indetermination of ‘the people’ – its being a vacuum – and, at the same time, its unquestionable necessity for democratic purpose. The ‘true essence of the political’ is then an empty space that needs to be filled (theoretically and practically) by political actors. Accordingly, in this chapter I argue that populism emphasizes this structural indetermination, and at the same time represents an attempt to disentangle it, determining who constitutes ‘the people’. The aim here is not only to map the essential contestability of the concept ‘the people’, but rather to register the current ways in which this vacuum is filled and investigate the insights of different theoretical and empirical perspectives when dealing with this issue. The chapter is structured as follows. Drawing on contemporary debates about the idea of ‘the people’, I will stress and register its vagueness and indetermination, and relate this to the key dimension of representation. Second, I will pay attention to the current mechanisms of the construction of democratic subjectivity. For this purpose, as I shall argue, it is useful to draw on current developments in populist and discourse theory to the extent they stress the central role of the affective dimension and emotional dynamics in politics. Finally, I will conclude by highlighting the normative debate around the relationship between populism and democracy, and

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the impact taking the role of emotions in politics into account may have on the current dispute around the influence of populism on liberal democratic systems. Overall, it will be stressed that the normative value of populism depends (theoretically and empirically) very much on specific mechanisms of filling ‘the people’s’ emptiness.

Who is ‘The People’? Although, at first glance, talking about ‘the people’ in democracy might seem a tautology, though that is clearly not the case. The relationship between democracy and its political subject – ‘the people’ – is not an obvious, nor axiomatic one. ‘The people’ and democracy have a complex relationship, both historically and theoretically. In order to deal with this complex relationship, the rise of populism and what has been called the “return of the people” (Stavrakakis 2014b), it seems necessary to ask about the current ways in which the same idea of ‘the people’ is conceived. Undoubtedly, this is not a new issue in political studies. While its constitutive polysemic value has been emphasized by many authors (e.g. Canovan 2005; de la Torre 2014; Mény and Surel 2002), its definition remains controversial and leads to conceptual ambiguity. “The blurred boundaries of the people reflect conflicts and dilemmas that continue to bedevil democratic politics” (Canova 2005, 3). Arguably, three dimensions seem to be intrinsic to the notion of people: the political, the social, and the moral. First, the political dimension is explicit when thinking of the people as being the sovereign subject and the source of legitimacy. The social dimension, in turn, is reflected in the extent to which ‘the people’ represents a given group, a community or a social class. Finally, the moral dimension is given since ‘the people’ is seen to be made up of specific virtues, passions and vices. In this sense, ‘the people’ often represents the original community and is generally given a positive value, being perceived as something authentic that must be valued above all other dimensions of social life (Fuentes 2004, 98). According to Margaret Canovan the concept of ‘the people’ involves two problematic circumstances. The first is that the same term produces a division between two separated and differentiated communities. Asking who belongs to the people means interrogating the borders of the political community, us versus them, thereby defining an inside and outside of communal space limiting and defining the political subject. Although it seems clear that the external borders of a state – or a national or regional community – do not automatically correspond to the boundaries of a people, this is a concept intrinsically in need of an external definition. Second, the internal situation is as complex as the external frontier. It is evident that, at the outset, the term “has meant both the whole political community and some smaller group within it” (Canovan 2005, 5). Internal borders, indeed, highlight the fact that within the territorial community there is still a

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contrast between ‘the people’ as a whole – as the set of all the individuals that make up the nation or the State – and ‘the people’ understood as a part of this totality – generally those excluded from power, and the poor. Given this context, it seems accurate to affirm that, throughout history, the idea of ‘the people’ has functioned as a sign of the internal divisions of every political community between a part and a whole, between the few and the many, those governing and those governed, and so forth. In sum, an ambiguous political identity “[h]ence the contradictions and aporias to which it gives rise every time that it is evoked and put into play on the political scene” (Agamben 1998, 178). This theoretical and empirical vagueness has also been echoed by current debates about the best approach to deal with the nature of ‘the people’ and its links to democratic legitimacy. An interesting argument has been advanced in this sense by Sofia Näsström (2007) who underlines the shortcoming of the liberal interpretation in current discussions about political and democratic legitimacy, in so far as it does not account well for the constitution of ‘the people’, considered as merely a contingent and historical event (2007, 638). Liberal and deliberative theorists, in her opinion, consider the constitution of the people in terms of historical contingency, hence external to democracy: “[W]ho gets to be included in the people is not a democratic but a historical question. It results from the contingent forces of history” (625). Conversely, in line with other scholars such as Margaret Canovan, Bonnie Honig, and Chantal Mouffe, who stress the paradox of a legitimate people, Näsström points out that the constitution of a people is not a historical event. Like the constitution of a government, the constitution of a people raises a claim for legitimacy. This would represent a shift that challenges the historical reading of ‘the people’, in so far as ‘the people’ is no longer the source, but the object of legitimacy – thus people-making is related to legitimacy in the first place. It is also worth noting that, throughout history, this intrinsic ambiguity of ‘the people’, and the political theories that have elaborated its concept, have caused paradoxical outcomes. As I have argued elsewhere (Cossarini 2017), invoking ‘the people’ has historically allowed it to be proclaimed as a basic democratic subjectivity, and thusly allowed the inclusion of the popular strata, and their demands, within the political community. At the same time, however, appealing ‘the people’ has also led to the idealization of the populace as (the exclusive) political subject, and in turn triggered a fear of mass mobilizations.

The Vacuum and Representation: The Boundary of Democracy? Referring to the contemporary debates about populism, Michael Kazin shows that in the context of the American Revolution the idea of ‘We the people’ initially functioned more as a charming incantation rather than a description of a concrete reality. As an empty signifier designating the whole of the community, “it indicated who the ultimate sovereign was but did not specify who was actually

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to rule the nation” (Kazin 1998, 13). Although the modern abstraction of popular sovereignty has entered into the constitutional logics in most of the Western democracies, the vacuum of ‘the people’ persists, latent and implicit, characterizing the current tensions between democracy and the collective political subject, typifying what has been defined as “ruling the void” (Mair 2013). Interestingly, Claude Lefort (1988) foresaw the paradoxical risks contained within democratic government, and its aspiration for materializing the collective sovereign subject as if it were a homogenous actor. In the wake of Tocqueville’s critique of democracy, Lefort believes that the idea of ‘the people’ is an abstraction – an unstable notion that is even more abstract than ‘the majority’, and as such cannot be assumed to effectively govern itself. In this vein, democracy is characterized by a void – the ‘empty place’ of the people, as framed by Lefort: Democracy inaugurates the experience of an ungraspable, uncontrollable society in which the people will be said to be sovereign, of course, but whose identity will constantly be open to question, whose identity will remain latent. (Lefort 1988, 304) If, with Lefort, one may argue that this empty space of the political power is the result of historical events – and Lefort emphasizes this through the example of the French Revolution – nonetheless the process of filling this space is noteworthy. Lefort normatively considers that democracy is especially susceptible to demagogy: since the political power in it is ‘empty’, democracy permanently risks turning to tyranny when a populist demagogue or an autocratic political party manages to ‘fill’ the empty space by claiming to embody ‘the people’. Margaret Canovan, for her part, notes the peculiar characteristic of ‘the people’ as sovereign power, and its location between action and myth (2005, 105, 124). On the one hand, ‘the people’ embodies the founding, mythical idea of a political community that gives life to a legitimate order, on the other hand it is problematic to conceive this same community in action: how can ‘the people’ exercise sovereignty? Is representation the only mechanism through which it can act politically? Current debates on the nature of ‘the people’ relate to this notion of representation, the mechanism through which democratic subjectivity has been institutionalized in modern times. Asking about the ‘latent’ nature of ‘the people’ in democracy becomes a relevant task for political research focusing on populism. In this line, Hanna Pitkin rightly pointed out that representation has to be understood – in its most essential formulation – as a process that makes present what is absent (Pitkin 1972, 8–9). In a similar vein, Benjamin Arditi suggests we should think of ‘the people’ in terms of re-presentation and event (Arditi 2014, 92), linking the conformation of ‘the people’ as a question of identity to a matter of legitimacy and concrete institutional functioning. The question of representation,

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then, turns out to be central to any analysis of ‘the people’, populism, and democratic legitimacy. It has been argued that populism, in its different forms, mirrors the crisis of representation (Arditi 2007, 62), and displays a strong refusal to technocratic elites. Besides, in the name of the ‘will of the people’ – which is often to be read as the ‘will of electors’ – populism seeks a more genuine identification between the represented and the representatives, the ruled and the rulers. In this context, stressing hostility to the practice of representation, many scholars have seen it as a potential danger for liberal democracy (e.g. Abts and Rummens 2007; Mény and Surel 2002; Rosanvallon 2008; Urbinati 2014). Borrowing from Bourdieu’s argument of ‘symbolic power’, Canovan (2005, 133) stresses the idea that a group can “exist only by delegating power to a spokesperson who will bring it into existence by speaking for it, that is, on its behalf and in its place” (Bourdieu 1991, 249). However, the objection that ‘the people cannot rule as a corporate body’ is confronted by the fact that elections, referenda and other moments of political participation are the sine qua non for the legitimacy of representatives in that they enable voters to act as if such a corporate body existed (Stanley 2008).

Filling the Vacuum: Passion, Identity, and Communication Dealing with the nature of ‘the people’ and the boundary problem requires taking into consideration the concrete ways of identity formation, hence the role of emotions and affect in this process. The idea that emotions contribute to identity formation and collective action is nothing but new. In this sense, the construction and reproduction of identities is one of the processes through which individuals give meaning to their experiences and relate to the political sphere. As with many other political phenomena, populism (understood as discourse, as a style, as an ideology, or as a concrete political offering) implies the formation of individual and collective identities. Collective identities are based, among other things, on values, attitudes, worldviews, rituals, and shared actions. These factors establish a process of trust between people and groups, so that identity can be both a precondition to and a result of political action. As highlighted by Gamson (1992), within the framework of social movement studies, the process of mobilization and collective action would occur through a precise scheme according to which individuals and groups mobilize to overcome some form of injustice, be it perceived or real. Emotional responses to a situation perceived as unfair can lead individuals and groups to mobilize. Although all kinds of political phenomena (social movements, political parties, etc.) carry with them at the same time an emotional and a strategic element, it is certain that emotional dynamics, by contributing to collective identity, play a central role in political action. As consequences of a harmful act – the ‘experience of injustice’ in Gamson’s terminology – a myriad of emotions (e.g. humiliation, anger, victimization, hope, etc.) can also be generated. In this way, the affective responses to a

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situation perceived as unjust can lead individuals and groups to approach a more antagonistic political discourse. Similar to ideology and interests, the affective dimension moves people to become politically involved. Perceived as the ‘sensitive side’ of ethical precepts, emotions can make an important link between moral principles and political action. How is this related to populism? Emphasizing the emotional dynamics related to populism, scholarship on the subject has recently begun to address a series of significant shortcomings in earlier accounts of this phenomenon. Current developments in discourse theory have been taking on board the so-called ‘affective turn’ (e.g. Mouffe 2013; Stavrakakis 2005, 2014a). Interestingly enough, the dimension of affective investment became a central tenet of Laclau’s late work. Through the notion of radical investment he added a peculiar perspective to his own discursive theory of populism. He indeed argued that “an entity becomes the object of an investment – as in being in love, or in hatred – the investment belongs necessarily to the order of affect”(Laclau 2005, 110). In this vein, since such investment is necessary in order to mark the symbolic unification of a group such as ‘the people’ (Laclau 2005 110), then affect becomes a nuclear element of a discursive analysis of populism. Mixing discourse analysis, populist theory and agonistic democracy, Chantal Mouffe focuses on the way in which emotions play a role in the process of filling the empty signifiers of popular sovereignty and democracy. In her view, the agonistic model of democracy is related to a political struggle, which echoes a specific process of filling (although contingently) the empty space of ‘the people’ – the vacuum of politics – in a fragile balancing between the practical requirements of the system and the emotional appeals to the people (Mouffe 2000): The crucial role played in politics by what I have called “passions”: the affective dimension which is mobilized in the creation of political identities. (Mouffe 2013, 137) Arguably, regardless of the theoretical perspective one adopts, the concepts of ‘the people’ and its counter-group, ‘the elite’, are at the heart of all definitions of populism. The role of affect, then, would precisely consist in shaping these two axes of populism: the antagonistic division of the society in two blocs, and the idea of ‘the people’ and the ‘elite’. While scholarship of social movements describes the process of identity formation according to a ‘we’-versus-‘them’ dynamic that provides a sense of cohesion and solidarity within a given group (Melucci 1996), Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 130) label the logic of equivalence as the process according to which the complexity of social class differences is simplified in two antagonistic fields with the signifier ‘the people’ as the nodal point that discursively organizes the populist space. Much emotional energy is involved in this process, and a minimum level of moral empathy, among other emotions, is

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the necessary step towards the demarcation between ‘we’ and ‘them’, between ‘the people’ and the ‘elite’.

Affective Communities and Social Media Quite intuitively, neither ‘the people’ nor the ‘elite’ are actual entities; rather they are constructed by specific political discourses. As already pointed out, many authors label ‘the people’ as the mythical ideal of a given population or, as Taggart refers to it, the ‘heartland’ (Taggart 2000, 95), the (imagined) community of ‘ordinary’ men and women who shared interest in their opposition to the elite. In this sense, the boundary problem can be interpreted as a matter that, paraphrasing Benedict Anderson (1983), can be defined of ‘affective communities’. Indeed, individual and collective emotions – both as preexisting elements in the social body, and as products of political action – belong to the process of identity formation. As stressed from the field of International Relations, communities are welded together by share emotional understandings of the reality (Hutchison 2016, 4). The ‘bad manners’ that Moffitt (2016, 55) identifies as a stylistic essence of populist politicians, for instance, responds to the performative logic populism activates, increasing the emotional dynamics of the dichotomous division in opposing social blocs. Hence, the labour of emotions precisely consists in shaping the two key entities of all manifestations of populism – that is ‘the people’ and the ‘elite’ – and in so doing establishes the (affective) boundary of the democratic political subject. Examples of this can be found in current trends in social and political communication and especially in the use of social media. Undeniably, the ‘network society’ (Castells 2009) and the ‘information age’ (Webster 2006) have brought about deep political consequences. Since current tendencies in communication have been transforming our way of relating socially, and of interpreting and giving meaning to the world, they directly affect the process of identity formation which, in turn, relates to the boundary problem, interpreted as affective boundary. Therefore, exploring and connecting the role of social media to this process is of particular interest. Arguably, the digitalization of the public debate represents fertile ground for diffusion of all types of content, ideas, values, and of course emotions. It has been pointed out that the digitization of politics and of public space, as well as the role of affect in contemporary politics, could be seen as “phenomena whose understanding becomes essential to shed light on the processes that our societies are experiencing” (Maldonado, 2016a: 30). Moreover, within the field of political communication various forms and channels of populist discourse (Aalberg and de Vreese 2017) have been analyzed and linked to an extensive use of emotional rhetoric (Akkerman 2011; Bartlett et al. 2011; Engesser et al. 2017; van Kessel and Castelein 2016; Rooduijn 2014). Individuals, groups, and political parties find in social media a space for the activation of different evaluative, cognitive, and

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emotional predispositions that would not occur within previous vertical relationships of traditional media. In this sense, it can be affirmed that the relationship between populism, democracy, and emotions passes through the logic of the digital space (Sunstein 2018). As pointed out by Maldonado (2016b, 179–184), this would occur for two reasons. First, because social networks amplify the different affective states of citizens, rather than providing the ideal context for rational deliberation. In this sense, social media’s echo chambers trigger the creation of a new, expressive, communicative style. Secondly, while direct communication through social media parallels the in-mediated relationship between political leaders and the people, it is also characterized by the immediacy and speed of the visual dimension and the re-tweet style of communication, and by which individuals and groups reinforce and perpetuate ideas and feelings, rather than promoting a reasoned, well-structured, and thought out reflection. Significantly, this has been echoed by studies in communication and psychology (e.g. Barberá et al. 2015; Colleoni et al. 2014; Garrett 2009). In this context, citizens’ feeling towards the traditional political class, the elite – as well as other states of mind such as fear and hate towards immigrants, or nostalgia for a lost past – would be moved by digital dynamics. In current times, the boundary of ‘the people’ is very much determined and shaped by online ‘affective communities’.

The Boundary of ‘the People’, Passion, and Democratic Legitimacy: Concluding Remarks From a normative point of view, in this context, it is worth asking: what are the consequences of populism for today’s democratic systems? And what does the future hold for European and Western democracies? Given that populism can appear in varied and contradictory forms, as illustrated here, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to offer a response that can be generalized towards all of its expressions and forms. Populism is often blamed for oversimplification, and the trivialization of public debate. And yet, as such, this is not an element that is necessarily intrinsic to populism. In fact, traditional public argumentation seems to be giving way to more expressive and polarized communication patterns, no longer deliberative or ‘reasoned’. However, it is no less true that it has been a long time since politics as a whole was handed over to the trivialization of an important sector of the media (both traditional and social). The noise often obscures the strength of the argument. Despite this, the impact of social media is ambivalent and, as such, must be judged. However, it is the ‘negative’ aspects that seem to have a more tangible effect and can also explain the rise of (certain types of) populist practices. Therefore, as long as the political confrontation does not take on a violent form, it cannot be considered harmful. In short, any discussion of populism for liberal democracy in our Western societies has to go through an analysis of the

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logic that underlies its two main axes – the idea of ‘people’ and the division of society into two opposing blocks – and, as I have already stressed, this logic has an important emotional component. In addition, the debate about the ambiguity of populism – its positive and negative nature – can gain in quality and depth insofar as we focus on the horizons opened by other scientific fields that teach us the central role of emotional dynamics in political affairs. The a priori demonization of populism that ignores these central aspects is condemned to failure. Criticizing the opponents of ‘populists’ runs the risk of ignoring individuals and groups that forge their identities, their concerns, frustrations, and political needs. In addition, the excessive use of the term makes the different social demands, and different political offers overlap in an uncritical manner. Which, when produced, simplifies the plurality of political discourses, and ultimately trivializes the contextual, historical and geographical differences of our liberal democracies as well. However, focusing on the nexus between politics, in its populist form, and specific emotional dynamics allows us to make sense of the fact that populism is, by its nature, a phenomenon that carries a democratizing promise and, at the same time, is susceptible to authoritarian turns. Undeniably, most of liberal tradition recognises the danger of populism and its manipulative rhetorical effect, in which democracy is “the abstract rule of the people en masse, without the liberal and intricate constitutional trappings” (Freeden 2017, 7). In this sense, what the liberal perspective recognises is that, whereas the act of filling the vacuum can be normatively dangerous, it is at the same time an essential – and inevitable – process that belongs to the same democratic process. Analogous to the ‘redemptive’ aspect of modern politics underlined by Canovan (1999), this process of filling the vacuum is inherent to the notion of popular sovereignty, and belongs to the idea of the ‘will of the people’ as the foundation of any legitimate action. Furthermore, this dimension resonates with a series of elements brought to the forefront by the role of affect in society, and especially in populist politics. As argued in this chapter, the nature of the passion-populism nexus can indeed shed new light on the debate around the positive or negative character of populism for democracy. Depending on the concrete type of emotional dynamics that shape a given political discourse, populism and democracy may tend towards a positive equilibrium in which populism may potentially have a vitalizing effect on contemporary representative politics (Abbott 2007, 438) or, on the contrary, towards a negative relationship and, ultimately, also lead to authoritarian forms of politics (Finchelstein 2017). While aware of the complexity of the relationship between the numerous dimensions of politics, avoiding a narrow rationalist view of politics allows us to grasp the potential passionate intensity of democratic politics, and shed light on the contemporary vectors through which the ideas of ‘the people’, popular and democratic legitimacy are currently filled in.

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9 PASSION, EXCESS, AND FEAR OF THE MOB: POPULISM AS IDEOLOGY Simon Tormey

2016 was the year of populism. The Brexit vote and the election of Trump confirmed for many a sense that the old paradigm of democratic politics is now in crisis and in danger of being displaced by a wilder, less predictable style of politics. Once sublimated passions and energies have been unleashed undermining the sense of calm and orderliness that is supposed to accompany good governance. While 2017 did not produce shocks of similar scale, there were enough worrying developments to underpin the more general hypothesis that we have in effect entered a new age: the age of populism. But what is populism, and how is populism different to other kinds or styles of politics? Here matters get more complicated. There seems to be broad agreement that populism is on the rise, that we are in the midst of contagion; but seeking to understand what populism is has given rise to a minor industry seeking to explain the phenomenon, and how we should understand or explain its appearance at this particular juncture. Scholars in ‘populism studies’ bicker over the precise meaning of the term, and over whether and to what extent it is good or bad for democracy, as well as why it seems to have taken hold at this particular historical juncture. The many followers of Post-Marxist theorist Ernesto Laclau insist that populism is a ‘logic’ or ‘strategy’ that is entirely consonant with how democratic politics works (Laclau 2005). Most comparative political scientists on the other hand, see populism as an incipient threat to democracy that should be combated. Some are more ambivalent, seeing populism as an unusual if predictable part of democratic life (Mény and Surel 2002; Kaltwasser 2012). Notwithstanding the ongoing contestation as to the nature of populism, what is undeniable is that populism is for the most part a ‘boo word’ for academic purposes as well as for wider public commentary. In contemporary discourse populism has become synonymous with ‘anti-systemic’ movements, movements

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that threaten the status quo in some important respect. This includes parties of the right such as the Front National and UKIP, which seek to withdraw from the EU. It includes figures like Trump who seek to rip up the fabric of global governance. It also includes movements of the left such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos, which emerged out of the wake of #15M citizen insurrections to create a platform for ‘rebooting’ Spanish democracy. Anti-capitalists, progressives and socialists are mixed up with nativist anti-cosmopolitans as ‘boo’ movements that should be regarded as a threat to democracy. All this is useful for elites, who instead of finding themselves on the end of a critique of their own failings can take comfort in the narrative of the existential threat posed to democracy by the emergence of outsider movements. We have been here before. In the 1940s and 1950s the concept of totalitarianism was developed to explain why two apparently quite distinct regimes, those of Hitler and Stalin, brought forth dictatorships of genocidal brutality. Since the ideologies underpinning the regimes were acknowledged by most commentators to be quite different (Hannah Arendt’s analysis which conflates ‘Bolshevism’ and Nazism is the obvious exception), the sameness of the two regimes was established on the basis of the inductive assembling of what Friedrich and Brzezinski termed a “syndrome of interrelated traits and characteristics” (Tormey 1995, 82). This was then systematized into the concept of totalitarianism and subsequently applied to any regime or political system that was held to resemble these others (Tormey 1995). Other commentators put the characteristics in a different order or put their own slant on the ‘syndrome’; but the operation was performed in a similar way in each case: determine what regimes you think are totalitarian and then look around for evidence to support the assertion (Fleron Jr 1968; Spiro and Barber 1970). The tagging of far left and far right regimes as two sides of the same coin provided useful ammunition in the wider Cold War crusade against communism and radical leftists more generally (Gleason 1995). Notwithstanding the differences of position already alluded to, I think the concept of populism is becoming the contemporary analogue of the concept of totalitarianism. Fundamental ideological differences, differences in values and outlook, are being waved away in favour of ‘family resemblances’ and lists of supposedly shared characteristics linked by weak ‘ideational’ affinity (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). At the same time ‘populism’ is helping to neutralize the critique of elite governance in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and austerity while undermining the credibility of political initiatives motivated by the desire to address the deep systemic cleavages, chronic inequality and lack of trust in the political class that is arguably the cause of the present crisis. Francis Fukuyama alludes to the function the concept of populism is playing here when he notes that “Populism is a label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don’t like” (Fukuyama 2016) What I argue here is that beyond the obvious point that both left and right wing forms of politics can manifest themselves in non-mainstream ways, there is

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little else linking them. The suggestions that there is, which is key to the concept of populism should given the lie to the ideological and normative orientation of populism. As Fukuyama’s pithy observation makes clear, it is the elites that win from the mainstreaming of populism as a concept, not progressives. Let’s start with some baseline definitions.

What is Populism? As Margaret Canovan advises, ‘populism’ is not an essentially contested term such as ‘equality’ or ‘liberty’ (Canovan 1981). Normative preferences are not intrinsic to its definition. Populism has nonetheless proved an elusive term to pin down giving rise to a minor academic industry of articles and books devoted to clarifying what is and what is not essential to the concept. Of particular note in this regard is a fundamental cleavage in the literature between those who see populism in largely negative terms – that is, as a threat to democracy or good governance – and those who see it as fundamental to democratic contestation. In the latter camp Ernesto Laclau’s work stands out. Laclau’s formative years were formed in the febrile atmosphere of Latin American politics where populism and the powerful Caudillo figure were, and still are, staples of political life. Laclau’s view was if by populism we mean a politics that seeks to assemble a powerful mobilization through appealing to the needs and interests of the people versus those of the elites, then all politics, and especially progressive politics had to be populist to succeed (Laclau 2005). Mobilizations require a clear articulation of a powerful emotive message. Long-winded explanations for why it is that ordinary people are suffering need to be translated into clear, perhaps even simplistic, terms to resonate. The Bolshevik slogan in 1917, ‘Peace, Bread, Land’, is perhaps the clearest articulation yet of how a simple slogan can cut through complexity and provide a rallying cry behind which to mobilize. This is best articulated via a charismatic figure with whom people can identify. Lacking these elements progressive politics is consigned to the margins and to an ineffective, if symbolically worthy, kind of oppositional stance. Laclau’s view has been hugely influential on the left. Many of those influenced by his work continue to advocate for a progressive populism as a way of galvanizing leftist efforts and to prevent the dissipation of social movements into a kaleidoscopic array of distinct causes and identities (Arditi 2003; Howarth 2014; Stavrakakis 2014). On the other hand, Laclau’s approach is undeniably idiosyncratic from the point of view of populism studies. There are important differences of nuance and emphasis among mainstream commentators; but in the main commentary tends to agree that populism is a negative phenomenon (particularly in democratic contexts). It also agrees on why we should view populism in negative terms (Taggart 2000; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2013; Moffitt 2016; Müller 2016). Let us rehearse the main points of agreement between and among scholars to establish this baseline.

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First, and most obviously, commentators agree that what distinguishes populism from other kinds of political phenomena is the key rhetorical distinction between a bad or corrupt ‘elite’ and a good or virtuous ‘people’. The populist message is that the people have suffered at the hands of the elites and that change is needed – change from outside the existing elites. So populist discourse is said to be distinctive in seeing the people as an undifferentiated entity or mass that can and should be represented. This contrasts with the centrality of distinctions between classes, groups, and identities that underpins liberal democratic understandings of politics. This in turn produces a politics based on differences, which then need to be represented via political parties. No one can represent the people as such. Similarly, populist discourse is said to elide differences within and among elites. ‘Elite’ becomes a catch-all term to identify anyone who seems to be acting against the needs and interests of the people. Sometimes it includes just the political class, sometimes state functionaries, and sometimes economic elites are included as well. The undifferentiated character of ‘elite’ is a powerful trope in political terms. It simplifies the political stakes by identifying a single actor as responsible for the present intolerable condition. A further feature of populism then is the simplification or dumbing down of the terms of political contestation. Fine distinctions are displaced by the idea of an elemental antagonism between two constitutive forces in society: the people and the elites. It is for this reason that commentators often ascribe an aggressive antagonistic quality to populist rhetoric. Populists have a simple message to deliver, and they do so using simplifying emotive terms. They display ‘bad manners’, incivility, or lack of toleration or respect for the position of their opponents leading to fears that this will spill over into open confrontation with those who do not share the populists’ analysis (Moffitt 2016). Finally, populism is said to valorize strong or charismatic leadership, leadership of a kind that transgresses democratic norms. Populism is usually characterized as a vehicle for the advancement of a given individual, and serves little purpose or rationale on any other terms. Leaders do not exist to serve the needs of parties and movements; parties and movements exist to serve the need of populist leaders – and have often been created with the intent of providing a platform for that individual to articulate their views, gather support and organize for elections. This contrasts, so it is argued, with the leader of mainstream political parties. In the latter, it is the party that is the permanent bearer of the message or ideology, not the leader. Leaders come and go, but the party lives on. For populism it is the leader who initiates the political party or movement, becomes its identity and who thus determines its fate or fortune. Without the charismatic leader parties whither and die. Projecting forward, this also implies a very different relationship between the populist leader and the people. Populist leaders project themselves as the people’s saviour, as the one who can redeem the people from villainous elites. This is a

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very different model of representation, so it is argued, to that associated with democratic representation. It is an unmediated variant of representation. It is representation based not on trust or accountability, but on the embodiment of the peoples needs and interests, of its innermost desires of a kind that only a charismatic figure could know. So to sum up, populism is characterized in the mainstream literature by a discourse predicated on a distinction between the elite and the people. Both these entities are regarded as homogenous entities, thereby presupposing an absence of the distinctions of class, ethnicity or other marking that is the hallmark of the acceptance of pluralism and by extension democratic norms and distinctions. Populism is a politics of strong leadership, with the particular distinction of the populist leader being a disregard for norms of civility and respect for political opponents that has been a characteristic of liberal democratic politics. Populism is therefore corrosive of civic culture, of pluralism and respect for opponents. Populism is therefore bad for democracy, and by extension should be opposed by those who share an interest in its renewal. Let us look at each of these features in turn.

The Elite and the People So, as noted, the one characteristic that all accounts of populism agree on – including the idiosyncratic reading offered by Laclau – is the centrality of the people as the subject of politics, and equally the identification of the elites as that element opposed to it (Canovan 2005). It is this distinction that puts in motion what might otherwise seem paradoxical: that a defence of ‘the people’ is harmful to democracy, rather than an expression of it. The reasoning is that discussing the people as a homogenous identity necessarily sublimates key differences found within the body of citizens. Denying these difference equates to the denial of democracy. Notwithstanding the intuitive appeal of this account, there are some puzzles to be solved. The first is that, far from being something distinctive or threatening, the idea of the people as a distinct actor is deeply rooted in the democratic imaginary. One of the founding documents of modern democracy, the US Constitution, famously starts with a resounding ‘We the People’ before fleshing out what it is that this people is set to want or need by way of a ‘more perfect union’. The ability to articulate what it is that the people wants or needs has been intrinsic to democracy for over three centuries. This is particularly so when the people comes to constitute itself as a nation. Why then does the figure of the people elicit a positive response under certain circumstances, and yet imply a negative in others? While anarchists and radical critics argue that the trope of the people has historically operated as a convenient fiction dignifying the actions of elites, it is otherwise uncontroversial to note that there are moments when we can and do

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talk about the people as a singular entity (Rosanvallon and Goldhammer 2011). Typical of these uses are periods of national emergency, as for example during war or some other crisis when leaders want to project a message or image of concern for the whole population. But the closer we examine the matter the more curious the issue becomes. As Laclau argues, politics in democracies is about mobilizing people behind a general idea of the good. This involves creating coalitions or alliances to get oneself elected (Laclau 2005). The language of politics is on these terms replete with generality. It’s for this reason that terms like ‘the silent majority’, ‘ordinary people’, ‘the battlers’, and so on are staples of political discourse. Politicians have to break out of the narrow constituency or particular identities with which they might otherwise be associated in order to create a broader base of support. The figure of the people is thus far from threatening in democratic societies. It is the common point of reference for democracy. Take away the people and we are left with an unconnected set of particularistic identities and interests. In short, a democracy needs a demos. Of course it might be objected that what is at stake is less the identification of the people as such and more the distinction drawn in populist discourse between the people and the elites. Isn’t this way of drawing up a hostile or antagonistic relationship between two distinct entities bound to lead to conflict and division? Here the objection is that populist discourse drives a wedge between different elements of society, and this must of itself be harmful to norms of democratic civility. Just as it is wrong to make too much of the figure of the people, so it is wrong to make too much of the elites. At this point it is useful to remind ourselves that the contemporary upsurge of populist politics has come about in the midst of a crisis of representative democracy. Citizens have become disinclined to vote, to join mainstream political parties, or to manifest very much interest in parliamentary politics. Political scientists have not been slow to park the blame at the feet of the political class – too much decadence, corruption, scandal, clientelism, and too little attention to the needs and interests of ordinary citizens (Tormey 2015; Flinders 2012). While this crisis has been brewing for some time, the global financial crisis has exacerbated the sense that politicians and the wider political or economic class has abandoned them, hence the weakening of the left-right scale by a discourse built on a critique of the governing class as a whole. Occupy made headway with its slogan ‘We are the 99%’. This was itself precipitated by the movement of the Indignados or ‘pissed off’ in Spain, which fed off the feeling that the main political parties were more concerned about their own power and prestige than the people (Castells 2012; Mason 2013). A common thread of these initiatives and protests was the feeling that elites no longer cared for ordinary people. This narrative of neglect is one shared in large measure by political scientists. Expert commentary has long lamented the detachment of the elites from the lives and concerns of citizens. The discourse of the people versus the elites arises it seems for good reason in turn rendering the traditional left and right discourse to

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be superseded by one based on insiders versus outsiders. Even centrist figures like Emanuel Macron have found that adopting a discourse of the outsider is the best means of gaining traction with electorates profoundly disillusioned with the political mainstream. There are further curiosities to be uncovered in terms of this framing of the people as injurious to democracy. A striking example is the matter of direct democracy. Populists, it is often noted, favour referenda, assemblies and such like because they can offer the prospect of a ‘presumed general will’ (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). This in turn permits the leader to bypass normal representative democratic institutions and build legitimacy for the idea that he or she has a direct and unmediated relationship with the people. So what could on the face of it seem like an enhancement of democracy, or at least a set of attempts to get citizens to engage, is read as a strategy to bolster the position of the leader vis-à-vis those institutions that in a functioning democracy would be there to hold him or her accountable. In their defence, chroniclers of populism point to the myriad ways in which right-wing politicians have manipulated such devices in order to bolster their own position with the people. It is undeniable that figures like Trump and Farage appeal over the heads of elites in order to whip up a frenzy of indignation in turn providing them with leverage for their own devices and agendas. All this is incontestable. However it is one thing to note the proclivity of right wing leaders to denounce elites and to seek direct mandate through the emotive evocation of the people, and another to say that elites have nothing to answer for, and that the ambition to bring citizens closer to decision making is by association populist. The danger is clear. It suggests that it is churlish to be thinking that we can improve on elite democracy at a point in time when many specialists argue that this has left a void at the heart of democratic culture. Moreover it implies that those who think we reimagine a democracy that is closer to citizens are at best naive and at worse paving the way for something more sinister or despotic.

Problems of Pluralism Related to the above, is the insistence in much of the literature that populism is to be distinguished from other kinds of political phenomena through its rejection of pluralism as a fundamental tenet of democratic life. Pluralism is the view that since differences of opinion, ideology, interest are constitutive of contemporary life our political institutions have to be organized so as to permit these differences to find voice without fear of reproach or victimization. Populism by contrast insists on the univocity of the people and the availability of a ‘general will’ which can then be represented (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). This in turn implies that whatever differences there may be between and among people should be regarded as of second-order compared to the overwhelming unity of character, purpose or mission said to be shared by the totality. Populism thus challenges

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pluralism in favour of a ‘monist’ view whose imprint will be to clampdown on the expression of disagreement or dissent. Populism is on this view but one or two steps removed from fascism and thence totalitarianism (Müller 2016). It’s an undeniably powerful description, and again we are not short of empirical examples showing how an excessive reliance on the idea of a unified people creates an atmosphere of fear and intolerance. In far right discourse the idea of a unified people often has the connotation of ethnic, racial and religious purity, making clear where the borders of the people lie to the detriment of those who find themselves on the outside of the favoured identity. But again, we are in danger of smearing the progressive critique of pluralism with the brush of an intolerant and threatening response to it. The key point here is the positing of pluralism as a fact about the constitution of contemporary society. This is what is being brought into question in left or progressive critiques of democracy. A common component of the latter since the earliest critics of the emergence of liberal democratic societies has been that the latter valorizes pluralism rather than operationalizing it in a meaningful way. So while everyone enjoys equal political rights, we are a long way from parity of voice, influence or representation. A genuine pluralism would ensure that all social classes, all kinds of different viewpoints including those of marginalized, indigenous, excluded parts of society are included. Yet the practice of contemporary democracy is very far from this ideal. Critics of pluralism argue that our societies are dominated by powerful economic interests who ensure that their place and privilege goes unchallenged. Many different kinds of critique have been mounted to describe the effects of this closing down of democratic discourse, from C. Wright Mills’s critique of the military-industrial complex, to Herbert Marcuse’s critique of one-dimensional man, Daniel Bell’s ‘end of ideology’ thesis, through to today’s critics of ‘democracy incorporated’ (Wolin 2017). It is not just radical critics who argue that the rosy image of an open pluralist society needs some revision. Many political scientists without an axe to grind against liberal democracy find reason to query the pluralist credentials of contemporary political culture. Different commentators give weight to different factors. Some emphasize the emergence of new public management and neoliberalism as complicit in the closing of political discourse since the revolutions of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (Hay 2007). Others lament the passing of a generation of politicians devoted to public service and the public interest (Flinders 2012). A common theme is the pressure on national governments to conform to supranational treaties, norms and expectations pushing out minority views and opinions and generally eroding the quality of democratic debate. This in turn leads to the formation of cartel parties and the creation of what Peter Mair memorably termed a ‘void’ where political debate and contestation once took place (Mair 2013). On this view pluralism has been eroded to the point where it is questionable whether we can really regard our political institutions and processes as permitting the free flow of different opinions and

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values. What we are left with is, so it is argued, a form of elite governance that is increasingly deaf to the needs and interests of the citizens it is said to represent. What should be an important factor in explaining the rise of so-called populist movements and parties, the erosion of pluralism, is presented as a cause in the decline of democratic life and a potential threat to it. Yet, as we have heard, the distinction drawn in populist discourse between the people on the one hand and the elite on the other might with good reason be thought to be merely descriptive in sociological terms of the kinds of society created in the wake of new public management, neoliberalism, cartel political parties, the GFC and austerity politics. In crisis-stricken societies distinctions that once formed the basis for political mobilization appear secondary and ephemeral. Left and right come to resemble each other in their seeming indifference to public suffering, and lack of solutions to powerlessness, alienation, and unemployment. This in turn creates the void where those with a more powerful and redemptive message can get traction – whether of the left or the right. But it is the crisis at the heart of the system that creates the void, not the new political actors who come along to fill it. From this point of view the emergence of outsider figures and movements is not idiosyncratic or to be explained in terms of the traits and characteristics of a new brand of leaders, as is often assumed in accounts of populism. It is the perfectly predictable response of the breakdown of cartel politics and the neoliberal, public choice, pro-globalization ideology that sustained it. Given the cartelization of contemporary politics the only place where citizens can find a different set of answers is outside the mainstream. For the chroniclers of populism, however, the very different ways in which left movements respond to this crisis as opposed to right movements is less significant than the contest between pluralism on the one hand and monism on the other. Both variants are said to eliminate difference and diversity under the banner of the people. The leftist project of renewing democracy, encouraging greater participation and deliberation in public life, is tainted by association with rightist attempts to blame immigrants, refuges and minorities for loss of national identity. Populism wards off a politics that starts from the fact of democratic crisis and seeks to offer solutions to it. The elephant in the room (the crisis of contemporary democracy) is left free to graze in the name of defending pluralism and democratic values.

Take Me to Your (Strong) Leader A further feature distinguishing populism from other kinds of political position is the centrality in populist discourse and practice on the strong leader. Asked to think about populism we are supposed to have in mind figures such as Peron, Chavez, Duterte, Trump, the Le Pen(s), Wilders and so forth. The argument is that these aren’t regular or normal political leaders. Under democratic conditions leaders come and go, but the parties and institutions they lead remain. What

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differentiates the populist leader is the fact that the party becomes secondary to the leader him or herself. It is the leader who understands the needs and interests of the people, not the party or the regime. This leads to a distinctive representative claim, which is that the leader enjoys a pure or unmediated relationship with those he or she represents. The leader is in this sense no mere spokesperson or representative for a particular political position, but the embodiment of the people, its ultimate expression. Marine Le Pen in her campaign video for the 2017 Presidential election claimed that she had a “visceral, passionate attachment” to France. She regarded insults about France as if they were “addressed to me directly”.1 All this is designed to reinforce the sense of representing the people not in a formal, legalistic way, but in a way that evokes Hobbes’s Leviathan – a figure who quite literally embodies the hopes, feelings and fears of the constituent body. So far, so unproblematic, so it would seem. Except that this focus on the leader elides important changes to the nature of democratic politics itself over the past half century or so. As political scientists have long noted, we are in the midst of what has been termed the ‘presidentialization’ of politics (Poguntke and Webb 2007). Half a century ago the key actors in many democratic states were political parties. In parliamentary systems like the UK and Australia political parties had mass memberships running into the millions, which in turn meant that parties had power, influence and resources. With the collapse of membership, and thus declining revenues, so parties have waned in importance. The emergence of television and then social media has also put a premium on the ability of parties to find someone who could articulate the message in an attractive, direct and compelling fashion (Tormey 2015). Leaders have gained in prominence and influence at the same time as parties have declined. Charismatic, articulate leaders are now not merely desirable but essential for electoral success. It is not just politics, however, where the impact of the decline of the organization versus the leader can be felt. The shelves of our bookshops groan with a genre of literature extolling the virtue of leadership. Business education focuses on the creation and shaping of leaders using all manner of metaphors and historical examples to drive the leader to excel. Genghis Khan, Machiavelli, Lao Tsu have all been used as positive exemplars to encourage a strongly individualist credo of drive, determination, ruthlessness to get ahead. Those who can make some sort of claim to adding value to their organization are rewarded lavishly on the basis of the rise of shares or some other metric supposedly justifying outlandish rewards. Football managers, company directors, hedge fund managers, university vice chancellors, executives of every stripe and hue become hot property. Strong leadership, decisive leadership, ‘leadership for good’ (the current marketing slogan of my own university) are virtues extolled everywhere one turns, except for one particular category of individuals: populist leaders.2 What’s going on? 1 2

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYWnuQc5mYA www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWUhP6Dj-UQ

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Democratic politics is not supposed to be about strong leaders, except of course when it is confronted with existential threat. Then we need strong leaders in order to ward off threats from outside. So we’re happy for our strong leaders to emerge in times of war as for example in the case of Churchill or Roosevelt, but we are less happy, and feel more challenged, when dominant personalities emerge in times of peace. Witness the ambivalent legacies of figures like Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand, or Helmut Kohl. Democratic politics is supposed to be about institutions and processes. It’s not supposed to be about the domination of a single figure, particularly when that figure seems to play fast and loose with those institutions and processes. Leaders in a democratic setting should be modest, humble and aware of the life-cycle of democratic politics that will ensure their own tenure as leader will be limited by statute or by the pendulum swing of electoral politics. At the heart of this critique of the populist leader is a certain nostalgia for a lost democracy, a democracy where parties reigned, where leaders rotated, where the media was full of the arcane detail of parliamentary committees, reports, and the comings and goings of a range of important figures who shared top billing with the leader – chancellors, treasury secretaries, foreign ministers. The problem, again, is taking a tendency observable in the evolving democratic culture (emphasis on leadership, presidentialization, celebrity, individualization) and assigning it to one particular kind of political phenomenon – the emergence of potent outsider figures threatening the rules of the game. But the rules of the game have been undermined by the broader crisis of democracy, the collapse in faith in the political mainstream, and the emergence of a discourse and repertoire of the outsider – even in terms of advancing a centrist political agenda as in the case of Macron. The emergence of ‘strong leaders’, individuals with radical solutions forcibly expressed, is in this sense a response to crisis. But the effect of focusing on leadership, as opposed to the ideas being offered by the leaders, is to reduce ideas to props and politics to performance. Pablo Iglesias uses emotive language to attack La Casta. Donald Trump uses emotive language to attack Washington. Both must be populists in using emotive language to attack elites and garner support. This elides the most important difference between Iglesias and Trump: one is a progressive politician and the other is anything but. This inductive approach ‘trumps’ ideology and consideration of the merit or legitimacy of what is being argued for. This all matters a lot less than the form in which it appears: the charismatic demagogue who puts us in mind of an altogether more threatening style of politics. What seems a perhaps better way of framing the matter is to note that politics, once a cold technocratic activity, has been swept into the warmer viscerally emotive domain of ‘the Spectacle’. Politics is no longer an activity taking place in ‘smoked filled rooms’ beyond the intrusions of the media. It is now played out in the media, in real time, with tweets, 24/7 reportage, with every wrinkle and anxiety exposed to public view. Politicians have become celebrities, and

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celebrities are increasingly becoming politicians – Trump, Russell Brand, Eddie Izard, and – who knows? – Oprah Winfrey for President. Emotive politics, visceral politics is not the hallmark of populist politics. It is the hallmark of politics – or all politics that wishes to resonate and gain traction with citizens weaned on a diet of game shows and glitz.

Conclusion I began this chapter with reference to Fukuyama’s provocative reading of populism as an elite discourse – and by extension a discourse that works ideologically to support elite prejudices. This is of course at odds with how the academic community think about the concept, and it’s not difficult to work out why. On the other hand, it’s clear that this is less a debate between and among academics, as much as evidence for the existence of two very different ways of thinking about democracy and the political. One follows Laclau’s view of politics as primarily a field of contestation in which the goal is to establish hegemony. Populism is seen as the means to that end. The other sees populism as an exogenous threat to how we think and enact politics under democratic conditions. One attracts a devoted group of activist-theorists who seek to develop a view of populism as a popular strategy as well as a mechanism for reading political phenomena. The other, representing the mainstream in comparative politics, reads populism as a form of self-harm – democracy at war with itself. Notwithstanding the fundamental differences between these positions, Laclau’s view of populism as a positive is clearly a minority position. The view that populism is a negative, and dangerous or injurious to democracy, is hegemonic. The Laclauian project is a sideshow to the main event. Its function is to galvanize left progressives in their battles with anti-statists, horizontals, and neo-communists like Zizek and Dean. On the other hand, the normalization of populism, the making of populism central to democratic contestation, provides a valuable alibi for the mainstream view that seeks to collapse the distinction between left wing and right wing radicalisms. Is Podemos populist? On a Laclauian view, undoubtedly so. But that gesture of affirmation, meant to signal that Podemos has established itself as a proper political force, plays a different role in the discourse of the mainstream. What it signals is that it is perfectly acceptable to lump together political projects that not only have very little in common, but which represent fundamentally different approaches to the problems that confront contemporary democracy. It projects a liberal fear of the unknown and untried, of that very contingency that is supposed to be a defining quality of democratic life, onto a context of political crisis. Psychoanalysts would regard this as ‘displacement activity’. Populism is displacement activity: the confusion of effects with symptoms combined with a desire to blame those produced by crisis for the crisis. My claim advanced in this chapter is that the inductive assembling of characteristics with scant reference to the underlying worldview of the actors in

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question performs an ideological function of a kind that reinforces Fukuyama’s assessment of populism as a discourse of the elites. In doing so, it serves the purpose of papering over the reasons for the emergence of ‘outsider’ groups and movements. This is the catastrophic stewardship of democratic societies in recent decades by elites, leading to a de-coupling of citizens from mainstream parties and leaders and in extremis from the system of representation itself. The force of populism as a concept is to avert our gaze from the causes of disillusionment towards an externality – the outsider movement or leader who threatens the calm, orderly, pluralist, democratic system we are said to inhabit. In doing so it demonizes movements and initiatives that are produced by the disorder and chaos of contemporary democracy. Some of these leaders and movements undoubtedly deserve to be identified as a threat to civility and democratic values. We have a rich vocabulary already to describe them: authoritarian, neofascist, far right, racist, nativist and so on. But some outsider movements and leaders do not deserve this association. Indeed they may be the best hope citizens in crisis afflicted societies have for addressing endemic issues of corruption, clientelism and cronyism among elites, and the lack of voice, power or representation among citizens. In this sense, as Fukuyama remarks, ‘populism’ has been a useful term for containing these political demands, in making them appear unpalatable and ‘excessive’. Rather than helping elites to reinforce this message through rolling up radical democratic demands with nativist, particularistic and divisive ideologies I think we need to be careful to ensure that populism does not go the way of totalitarianism and become a weapon of ideological combat.

References Arditi, B. (2003). Populism, or, politics at the edges of democracy. Contemporary Politics 9(1): 17–31. Canovan, M. (1981). Populism. London:Junction Books. Canovan, M. (2005). The People. Cambridge: Polity Press. Castells, M. (2012). Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fleron Jr, F. J. (1968). Soviet area studies and the social sciences: Some methodological problems in communist studies. Soviet Studies 19(3): 313–339. Flinders, M. (2012). Defending Politics: Why Democracy Matters in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Friedrich, C. J. and Z. Brzezinski (1956). Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fukuyama, F. (2016). American political decay or renewal: The meaning of the 2016 election. Foreign Affairs, 95: 58. Gleason, A. (1995). Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hay, C. (2007). Why We Hate Politics. Cambridge: Polity. Howarth, D. (2014). Ernesto Laclau: Post-Marxism, Populism and Critique. London: Routledge.

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Kaltwasser, C. R. (2012). The ambivalence of populism: Threat and corrective for democracy. Democratization, 19(2): 184–208. Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. London: Verso Books. Mair, P. (2013). Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western democracy. London: Verso Books. Mason, P. (2013). Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions. London: Verso. Mény, Y. and Y. Surel (2002). The constitutive ambiguity of populism. Democracies and the Populist Challenge. London: Palgrave, pp. 1–21. Moffitt, B. (2016). The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Mudde, C. and C. R. Kaltwasser (2013). Populism. In Michael Freeden, Lyman Tower Sargent, and Marc Stears (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, ,pp. 493–512. Mudde, C. and C. R. Kaltwasser (2017). Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Müller, J. W. (2016). What is Populism?Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Poguntke, T. and P. Webb (2007). The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosanvallon, P. and A. Goldhammer (2011). Democratic Legitimacy: Impartiality, Reflexivity, Proximity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Spiro, H. J. and B. R. Barber (1970). Counter-ideological uses of ‘totalitarianism’. Politics & Society, 1(1): 3–21. Stavrakakis, Y. (2014). The return of ‘the people’: Populism and anti-populism in the shadow of the European Crisis. Constellations, 21(4): 505–517. Taggart, P. A. (2000). Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Tormey, S. (1995). Making Sense of Tyranny: Interpretations of Totalitarianism. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Tormey, S. (2015). The End of Representative Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Wolin, S. S. (2017). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

10 POPULISM AND THE RESTRUCTURING OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE1 Fernando Vallespín and Máriam M. Bascuñán

Restructuring of the Public Sphere The current success of populism would be hard to understand without considering the restructuring undergone by the public sphere in the last decades. In this chapter, we consider populism to be a ‘logic of political action’.2 The style and the kind of rhetoric in use and the way in which it seeks discursive supremacy are all more important than doctrinal content. This explains why we talk of left- and right-wing populism; if ideological content had any weight, this distinction would not be possible. This logic, always subjected to a political mobilization strategy, is put into practice in performative activism, in public ‘interventions’, and in the framing of stereotypes that enable the construction of a ‘we’ and its opponent. In this process, new communication technologies are pivotal. We have witnessed it in the case of the Brexit vote and in the 2016 presidential campaigns in the US: the key role played by social networks, the defamation campaigns, the contempt for rational deliberation and factual reality, the way emotional issues predominate over reflexive ones – or passions over expertise and intellectual know-how. In short, media democracy shifts towards what we will call, for the time being, a digital democracy in which the widespread expression of ‘post-truth politics’ fits like a glove. The new outbreak of populism in Europe began in the mid-1990s with Silvio Berlusconi as its most representative icon. The fact that he is a media businessman 1 2

This chapter is based on a revisited version of Chapter 3 of the book Populismos (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2017), written by the same authors. We borrow this expression from Ernesto Laclau (2005) in order to highlight our doubts regarding the more conventional view on populism as a “thin-centred ideology” (Mudde 2004, 543; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017, 6).

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is no coincidence. The secret of his success lays in his familiarity with mass communication media – particularly with television – and in his ability to take better advantage of the winds of change that directed information towards entertainment – infotainment. Berlusconi managed to create a character in line with the type of society that he had previously helped introduce with his significant television resources. A ‘distractive society’, this being both ‘inattentive’ and ‘entertained’, which trivializes discussions of any sort, makes a good breeding ground for new ways of doing politics. Umberto Eco, who like Giovanni Sartori never stopped harshly criticizing Berlusconi, had to admit that each era had its own myths and if “the man of State was the myth in the period when I was born, in these days the myth is the man on television”, also adding “if in our time there is to be a dictatorship, it will have to be a media dictatorship, not a political one” (Eco 2010, 161; translation our own). The crisis of ‘Berlusconism’ soon gave way to a new mode of populism that was built on other communication foundations. This time it was the turn of a true comedian, not an amateur like the Italian ex-president: Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Movement. But the reasons behind his incredible ascent were no longer based on appearances on television, but rather on the clever use of new social media. In the same way that Berlusconi was able to reach his ‘people’ through television and ignore criticism of the press, Grillo did the same with all other media under the wings of Facebook and Twitter that acted as an echo chamber for his messages. Later on, traditional media also followed suit. It was a clear sign of the paradigm shift that was underway in political communication. Media democracy moves on to something else: to what we are here describing as digital politics, and digital democracy. Italy was certainly not the only place where we witnessed this phenomenon, although the continuity with which it shifted from one form of populism to another with different intermediation tools between the leader and the people is an excellent example of (1) how noticeable the changes in the structure of the public sphere are, and (2) the extent to which new media are efficient to satisfy the logic of populist parties and movements. New media are in fact turning democratic politics inside out, since they are centred on the permanent communication between government and citizens, and among citizens themselves. The most important issue is, therefore, to define what has changed since the basic conditions of ‘media democracy’ shifted into a new configuration of the public sphere, in which, deep down, the weakening of the prestigious press and the outbreak of social networks as the main actors in democratic life are truly noticeable. Is this enough to announce the transformation of the model and the appearance of a new paradigm? In order to answer this question, we will focus on the ideal type of ‘media democracy’ and its supposed successor – that is, ‘digital democracy’.

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Media Democracy It is not easy to systemize the features of media democracy or, as Bernard Manin (1997) prefers to call it, ‘audience democracy’. The aspects that this author is interested in derive from its contrast with the supposedly former model, ‘party democracy’, and from its effects on the representative system and the strategy and roles of political parties. Undeniably, the media now set the stage where politics is performed, and political parties must inevitably adapt to the characteristics of this new environment. The heavy party structure of the past must readjust in a public stage that is dominated by communication experts, permanent surveys, and new models of expression that are customized to fit each different medium. To talk about ‘audience democracy’ means there has been a paradigm shift that affects the very core of democracy. In other words, while decades ago political parties structured and de facto conditioned the functioning of the democratic system, the latter is now shaped by mass media communication (Muñoz-Alonso and Rospir 1999). It would be excessive to say that media logic managed to colonize the logics of the political system, though what cannot be denied is that they interact in a symbiotic relationship. They both need each other. Not only because without the free scrutiny of mass media in the public sphere there would be no accountability, and therefore no democracy, but also because it is not possible to imagine information without reporting on politics. The power of mass media, as underlined by Niklas Luhmann (1996), derives from its role of information supplier. There is no reality other than that which appears in the media; they provide us, the scientific system aside, with practically everything we know about the external world. Moreover, media use the dialectic of selection and presentation of subjects, that is to say, they must ‘filter’ what to inform about, what is worthy of achieving news status, what is newsworthy, and also decide how to inform. There is a ‘exaltation of novelty’ in order to extract events, images, narratives, etc. and meet the requirements of ‘surprise’, dramatization, storytelling, and ‘aestheticization’, which respond to the increasingly heightened accelerating dynamics – how long does the newness of news last? – and to the entertainment demands. Hybridization between advertising – always snappy, impressive, and aesthetic – and the way mass media reflect the world is already a fact. Moreover, the framing of subjects in mass media is noteworthy (Lakoff 2004; Vallespín 2012, 39). Through metaphors, clichés, slogans, they try to influence the perception of consumers in order to impose the views they are interested in. There follows a succession of multiple stories, pre-established battle cards, the introduction of specific headlines, etc. All this is what we know as media spin, which we could very well define as ‘witty manipulation’.3 Funnily enough, to 3

It is not clear whether ‘spin’ can be identified simply as ‘political propaganda’ – a wider concept closer to what we could describe as ‘deceitful manipulation’, more

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spin also means ‘to weave’. Thus, if as postmodern philosophers affirm reality always presents itself as a ‘text’ – etymologically from textum, texere, which means ‘weaving’ – it would be a question of tangling and untangling in such a way as to enable us to read what is most convenient at each given time, and more importantly, affecting our own political judgement. These conditions work to the advantage of populism and it is not by chance that its strong reappearance occurred in the context of media society. Being outsiders of a political system which is generally perceived as distant, bureaucratic and unimaginative, allows populist leaders to immediately gain attention. They are the sought-after guests of every TV show. Their presence, their proximity and straightforward language and the way they appeal to moods, to everyday life situations, and to all that is familiar and popular and, above all, the fact that they have a clear definition of where the enemy lies – the noi (us) vs the loro (them) of Berlusconi, for instance – enables them to proclaim themselves the direct representatives of that segment of the people that do not feel represented by the parade of experts, the hot air of the traditional political class or the self-satisfied know-alls in media debates. At the outset, many populist leaders benefit from the surprise factor that results from breaking away from what is politically correct, something that is always necessary in order to catch the attention and audience boost. Subsequently, they improve their dialectic arguments considerably, presenting themselves as the main or sole alternative. It is also significant to point out that this populist wave coincides with the great outburst of private television channels. In Germany and Italy, for instance, liberalizations in this sector were approved in the mid-eighties; in Spain, in the early nineties. In some places it seems as if the tabloids had been transferred to the screen, as was, in fact, already the case with Fox TV in the United States. The irony of Umberto Eco comes in handy once again. Talking of populist practises in election periods in the times of Cicero in the ancient and decadent Roman Republic, he writes: We cannot but believe that Roman democracy began to perish the moment its politicians understood that it was not necessary to take (party) programs seriously, that it was enough to just be pleasant to their (how could I say it?) television spectators. (Eco 2010, 172; translation our own) Mass media, especially television, were tremendously instrumental as a vehicle for the appearance of communication modes between leaders and citizens that left party routines in the background, as did in the case of the intermediate groups – unions, syndicates, associations, diverse powers of the State aside from Parliament. inclined to libel and the crude distortion of truth. On political propaganda, see Stanley (2015).

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All in all, these reflections show how communication strategy becomes ingrained in new mediating organizations that are practically monopolized by mass media. Where the strength of quality press and deliberative public sphere is maintained, the impact of populist trends tends to be smaller; where they give way to the pressure of simplification and more frivolous staging, the contrary will occur. Niklas Luhmann’s (1996) assertion that public opinion is what is left after the action of mass media seems perfectly true.

The Advent of Digital Democracy This is precisely what breaks under the new phase of digital democracy, with its stunning expansion of social networks and media, and the consecutive loss of weight and impact of traditional gate-keepers: the prestigious media. Although it is hard to tell when precisely the transformation took place, we have only become fully conscious of this with the Brexit vote and the 2016 Presidential elections in the US. And yet Obama’s first election was an initial sign of radical change, with the generalization of access to the internet and its communication potential, and the outbreak of new social movements. Undoubtedly, this reconfiguration of the public sphere brought about political consequences. What exactly is it that has changed? Although there is a wide range of elements to be considered in order to answer this question, three factors are particularly noteworthy. 1.

2.

(1) One of the fundamental effects of the appearance of new technologies is the process of continuous loss in the auctoritas suffered by every stance of power. The same applies to traditional mass media, insofar as its information competes with the proliferation of content in the Web which is hardly verifiable. On the other hand, the ongoing decline of newspaper – which turned the act of reading the news into a small daily ritual not lacking in certain fetishism, similar to the relation we still have with paper books – trivializes the reading of opinions or news. Unintentionally, when we access them on-line we jump from page to page while embarking on other activities. In this sense, the newspaper loses its old aura, the solemn nature of staging the way we consume information. (2) Traditional media are also affected in a very direct manner by the general crisis experienced in intermediation. Anyone can now be a journalist or can broadcast information and opinions without having to resort to the established media. A tweet can be more efficient than a letter to a newspaper. The perception is that many of these classic mediators are no longer necessary, something that is perceived in much the same way concerning the disappearance of intermediation instances in the economic sphere. This, obviously, also affects political parties. An audience made up of ‘individual selves’ who are used to log on and off ‘swarm networks’ does not allow for grouping in pre-established partisan affiliations that are more or less

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3.

4.

predetermined. This also helps explain why volatility in opinions and elections is here to stay. The notion that almost all web content is free has led most newspapers to offer a great part of their merchandise for free. At the same time, having lost customers in the paper version where advertising was the biggest financial source, they have suffered such a spectacular loss of income that they cannot compensate with online advertising. Instead, they try to do so inciting people to click; the more clicks, the higher the advertising price – which, quite evidently, is not always in line with the traditional accuracy or theme selection of rigorous information. (3) A fierce battle is up for the ‘attention market’ (Webster 2014). The internet has already become a great shop with unlimited offer of, among other things, television channels – over a hundred in many places. The number of online platforms is growing, as are digital press, websites, and blogs of different nature, chat-rooms, social networks and media –Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and so forth. The competition for audience attraction is ruthless. As one of its main characteristics is precisely the limitation of the human attention span, there are already many strategies underway, all aimed at ‘tempting’ consumers to log into certain web pages, or extend the social media consumption. The result is a cruel battle for the audience such as we had not seen since the appearance of private TV channels. What implications does all this have on democratic politics?

The Self or the We? It is important to establish a distinction between (1) websites aimed at the general public and that cover matters of general interest; (2) websites with specialized information that seek to satisfy more precise and personal interests; and (3) those that, as happens with social networks, are aimed at socializing. In the former, the prestigious media no longer possess the integrating power they had, and their filtering role is combined with the selection that each user makes when choosing one sites, blogs, newsfeeds and similar products; each one manages his own filter, his Daily Me (Negroponte) in exactly the same way as those included in (2), thought out precisely for that end. The problem with these ‘self-filtered’ news and opinion menus is that, as Cass Sunstein (2017) underlines, they reduce the intermediation of general interests, isolating groups in their own niche as ‘echo chamber’ of their own worldviews and political ideas. It is as if we moved away from the public dimension, as if we denied ourselves the surprise of unexpected encounters in a street or a park, with all the array of possibilities that come when meeting others. This means, in fact, retreating from what is common ground, from what is related with the public sphere as a space in itself. Drawing on the hackneyed Rousseaunian distinction, it is the equivalent of denying the citoyen in us to operate exclusively as bourgeois, as beings moved by the maximization of our

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own interest; to acting less as citizens who share a public link, and more as consumers. The model that is becoming predominant is, therefore, the opposite of the ideal of ‘public forum’ and the promotion of ‘solidarity goods’, an interesting concept introduced by Edna Ullmann-Margalit (see Sunstein 2017, 142–143). It refers to those goods that increase in value because they are consumed or enjoyed by others. As an example, Sunstein mentions following an election debate but also those goods that help to secure the foundations of communality, the broadcasting of the football championship final, participation in certain patriotic celebrations or the invocation of a shared tragedy every September 11 – everything that helps instil us with shared experiences that contribute to forge a ‘social glue’. They “make it possible for diverse people to believe – to know – that they live in the same culture. Indeed, they help constitute that shared culture simply by creating common memories and experiences and a sense of common enterprise” (Sunstein 2017, 143). Sunstein would thus coincide with Jürgen Habermas, who also sees a trend in which the internet will end up favouring the creation of “disorganized public spheres” where, in opposition to what the old public spheres allowed, fragmentation will make it impossible for citizens to concentrate on what is public instead of on spinning attitudes, and also favours visiting sites in cyberspace where perception of reality or the news and information on offer is no longer trustworthy. (Habermas 2008, 161 and following).4

Social Movements and Political Turmoil Yet we all know that the internet has been decisive in the taking off of new social movements that relate through the web and use the web to promote their aims. Without the web, it would be impossible to explain the Indignados Movement in Spain, and Occupy Wall Street in the US and across the globe. In other words, the use of the web does not satisfy private objectives in these movements; rather the opposite, it transports widely extended demands and mobilizes great segments of the population. Its huge capacity to link isolated individuals enables new modes of communication and organization that, as Manuel Castells (2012, 26 and following) points out, make it possible to fight for change to revert standards of the new power and the construction of meanings in people’s minds. Certainly, television keeps its influential capacity intact, although now it has entered a hybridization process with the web. What’s new is that each of these appearances on TV is anticipated in the social networks, summoning followers to watch the TV show and paving the way to multiple comments while the program is underway or after it ends. The effect on the public thus becomes exponential. It is true that in this, as in other cases, we are witnessing a ‘flock effect’, 4

It is also the well-known thesis of Eli Pariser (2011) on the “filter bubble” and the Google algorithm’s responsibility for this.

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where impact is mainly on those who are already convinced. This is partly true, because these ‘network swarm democracy’ groups (Byung-Chul Han 2014a), as we stated earlier, are generally made up of people who think alike. But we also have to consider the repercussion this has on the mobilization of sympathizers placing ordinary politics in a state of alert similar to that of election time. According to Castells, many mass demonstrations disappear or languish, but we cannot write them off as dead. Thanks to a permanent interconnection, they can burst back into the scene in other modes and maybe with other objectives, but they’re still there. This is what is truly new, what makes them different from what came before; it is also the source of their strength. Recently, the idea of ‘political turmoil’ (Margetts et al. 2015) has been introduced, referring to new online practices as modes of collective action undertaken by citizens. The most relevant aspect is the analysis of the tiny acts of political participation (Margetts et al., 34–74). These ‘tiny acts’ of slacktivism include practices such as voting for petitions or donating small amounts of money to support a particular political cause or to share through a mobile phone app a protest image to boycott a particular product or attend a demonstration. This focus is relevant because it drafts two affirmations that go against a great part of prevailing literature on social movements. The first one, that any collective action in order to be considered as such, requires an offline display; and the second one, that this type of display must imply ‘hard effort’, not merely tiny acts. We are in front of emerging collective action models that shift from the off sphere to the on and vice-versa without the possibility of pinpointing a more or less stable rule to explain these interactions. It is no longer obvious, therefore, that a hierarchy can be established concerning the importance between the participation generated in those internet flows and networks and those that happen in the ‘real’ sphere outside Internet forums. What is clear is that the viral capacity of these tiny acts is precisely what explains their potential. The central role of the internet as the key instrument for mobilization stems from what we said above. We are witnessing the surge of new modes of collective action that may be very local but that occur in a similar way in very different parts of the planet. Turmoil refers to the instability, fluctuation and sways that are present in this kind of collective action progressively characterizing the imprint of our present political life (Margetts et al. 2015, 74). These new political participation protests made up of tiny acts in daily life show an exponential growth in new participation figures thanks to the fact that it takes very little effort. Sometimes, the platforms on their own show what other people are doing in real time, making other people aware of what is happening, multiplying interaction or chains of reactions that in turn influence the behaviour of others. It is what is known as Cybercascades. 5 These modes of mobilization create an environment of instability and uncertainty when we try to predict the success or failure of these initiatives – in fact, most of them perish shortly after birth (Margetts et al. 2015).

5

On cybercascades (Sunstein, 2017: 98 and following).

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These seemingly weak links generated by connectivity to spark collective action are, however, powerful incentives to get involved in political action.

Balkanization, Polarization, Emotions, and Fuss The provisional conclusion we could reach, therefore, is that the internet is ambivalent; its usefulness to boost democratic action patterns depends on the use it is put to. Although the internet is to be blamed for the new polarization or the way in which political discussion is ordered nowadays, we cannot ignore that deep down it is nothing more than a means of expression for the state of feelings or ideas that already exist, even if it does play the role of a powerful amplifier and unrivalled broadcaster. As Oliver Nachtwey says, “echo chambers or filter bubbles on the internet reinforce resentment”, but it would be too simplistic to say that they explain it as “to blame the algorithms would be like making the radio responsible for Goebbel’s actions” (Nachtwey 2017, 250). And yet, we all know that without the radio the messages of the Minister of Propaganda of the III Reich would not have had the same impact, in the same way that we do not ignore the role of television in favouring one type of expressivity over another; images impact in a different way to reading, as Sartori (1998) warned. The internet is ambivalent, as we say, but it is not neutral. That is why it is important to move forward in the delimitation of some of its features. What we could characterize as the ‘balkanization’ of the internet, the proliferation of niches in which followers of different political positions isolate themselves favours polarization as Cass Sunstein (2017, 66 and following) explains with conviction. Concerning the consequences of deliberation, several empirical investigations unanimously conclude that the widespread trend among people who share the same inclination is to move more in the same direction, reaching an extreme position that is a lot further than the starting point. For example, the members of a moderate feminist group after a discussion will reaffirm themselves in a point of view that is more radically feminist. That is to say, that joining groups of people who are similar to us, who think like us, contributes not only to reinforce our own prejudices but also to radicalize them. Partly, because we are playing with a limited pool of arguments that does not challenge the basic position; also due to our wish to see ourselves represented in a favourable light before others, in order to be liked, and because being reassured by others strengthens our self-confidence and this excuses us from having to think of another type of argument and inclines us toward extremism and also because in these biased niches, the opposite arguments are only received as paranoia, threat or insult and provoke parallel reactions towards those we label as opponents. An important fact that we tend to ignore is that the role of the news in social networks is more set on ‘community building’ between people who think alike than in providing information. We are only interested in what strengthens it. This is how the identity of the group is built, reasserted through repetition of the same

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messages and contents that are nuclear and essential, and reinforcing them appealing to affects. It is obvious that the best way to build a group community or identity is to define a clear opponent, one that is not like us, the demonized other. The outrage, hate or hostility often solidify in hate groups whose aim is more to defame someone or something than to search for specific social ends. To a great extent, since social networks are also fundamentally reactive, they do not ‘dialogue’ or argue, but move on the basis of flows of praise or discredit (shitstorms, cybermobbing) that shake the public space like an earthquake, filling it with noise and preventing calm reflection. In this context, its effect on practical politics is undeniable, among other reasons because traditional media also echo what is going on in the virtual world. Aside from observing what is occurring, they increasingly tend to reflect an image of those events or news projected in social networks. Virtual reality thus gains a similar status to any other observable reality. In other words, the media do not stop observing reality from cyberspace; some even turn this into the main object of their ‘informative’ work. Maybe this is the reason why Byung-Chul Han (2014a, 19) states with exaggerated rhetoric – paraphrasing Carl Schmitt – that “sovereign is who disposes of shitstorms in the web”. As a first provisional conclusion, we can state, therefore, that traditional public argumentation is giving way to communication patterns that are more expressive, witty and polarized than deliberative or ‘reasoned’. The noise often dulls the strength of the argumentation that is confined, more and more, to the prestigious press. However, it is not less true that it has been a long time since ‘serious politics’ was left behind due to the trivialization of an important sector of traditional communication media, more attentive to show and entertainment than to reflexive attitudes. Despite that, the social networks are not only useful to broadcast groans, insults or irony about our opponents; through them we can also access links to brainy articles, political debate videos, and information on new or old books. Their impact is therefore ambivalent, and as such it should be judged. Yet, it is the ‘negative’ aspects that seem to have a more tangible effect when trying to explain the surge of populist practices.

Post-Truth, Post-Facticity, or Bullshit? As we have just seen, the factual, what is real, is confused with fiction, with what was designed to entertain, not to inform; limits between reality and fiction are lost. Video games, series, films are hybrids with media reflection – now in a strict sense of objective reality. In the end we can doubt whether House of Cards is closer to reality than what we know of the White House and whether or not it is more real; and the politics experienced by the leaders of Podemos was, by their own confession, like a battle for power with epic features that brought the emotion of Game of Thrones to the democratic election battle. In fact, the gift that Pablo Iglesias gave to the King of Spain in their first meeting was not something

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written by Karl Marx or Ernesto Laclau, but the DVD’s of the series. We jump from one world to the other without clearly knowing where fiction begins and where the true facts are; fictionalization of facts runs parallel to the factification of fiction. This is one of the features of what is now known as post-truth, a trendy word that everyone seems to have an opinion about. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it would mean something more specific: “Relative or referred to circumstances in which the influence of objective facts on public opinion is smaller than feelings and personal beliefs.” The term was originally used to refer to the deceitful strategies used during the Gulf War that later fell into disuse. It was reintroduced during the Brexit vote and the last US Presidential campaign in view of the indiscriminate use of lies in both cases. On that first occasion, we all suffered from a massive lack of information. Flabbergasted, we all watched the green deployment of bombs approaching their objective and then exploding without knowing very well what was going on, and if all what we were watching was actually happening; and so it went on, hour after hour. It all seemed like a great simulation. It is no surprise that it should inspire Jean Baudrillard’s provoking book The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991). We would like to rescue a quote from the book: Thus “real time” information loses itself in a completely unreal space, finally furnishing the images of pure, useless, instantaneous television where its primordial function irrupts, namely that of filling a vacuum, blocking up the screen hole through which escapes the substance of the events. (Baudrillard 1995, 31) Having done away with television, this “substance of the event” which escapes could be the best way to describe the meaning of post-truth. At the time the word originated, the facts vanished behind senseless images and the CNN’s continuous blabber from arms and Islamic experts that far from contributing to clear things up actually made them more confusing; something similar happens today in this incredible succession of screens that fill our lives, with the additional problem of the new media that are transforming at an alarming rate the way in which we experience society and the world What is relevant in this case is that we have never been subjected to so much information nor has it ever been so easy to access. And yet, it seems that it has never had less value at least in the sense of allowing us to access facts of a supposedly objective world. Some of the media have already defined our era as the Age of Lies,6 as if before there had been no lies, deceit or distortion of the truth. Fake news has always existed. Certainly, much of it is still present and some of it even survives the explanation of historic events or of specific features of the world we live in. This is not, however, the 6

Headline of The New Statesman of May 21, 2017.

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sense in which we have grown aware of mendacity. What is relevant at this point is that it no longer matters; there is no social penalty linked to its presence or wide circulation. Lies are constantly disclosed, revealed, reported and confirmed but generally to no effect whatsoever. As opposed to what happened in other periods, deceit now seems immune to any social penalization. Remember the effect of the Lewinski case on President Clinton. The question is why? What is it that provokes this public exoneration from the prior positive value of the truth? Is this the result of a cultural change or is it the result of prevailing logics in the new order of digital democracy we referred to? The subject is certainly vast and almost unfathomable on account of all the dimensions involved (Ball 2017; d’Ancona 2017; Davis 2017; RabinHavt 2016; Thomson 2016).7 We will address these questions by concentrating on the aspects that are most relevant to populist political communication.

Uncontrolled Emotions As Manuel Arias Maldonado (2016)8 reminds us, one of the signs of our time is that our progress in neuroscience presents us the evident practical impossibility of distinguishing reason from affects, thinking and feeling; both always appear intertwined in one way or another. This does not exclude, certainly, our capacity to detect when a message appeals to one or the other; or when ‘feeling’ something replaces the capacity of knowing if it is or is not true. The characteristic of post-truth at least in its canonical definition is that it is here that the greatest distortion occurs: what matters is not what is real but what ‘feels’ real. Populists know this well and they repeat the lies that are ironclad by feelings. The heart has its ‘reasons’ – prejudices in most cases – which reason does not understand. But the emotional lining that rejects the facts of reality translates as well in the opinions about it. This is not as much a question of whether something is or is not real, in the sense of an existing correspondence with reality, but rather whether there exists the inclination to let oneself be convinced by the better argument, as presupposed in a deliberative democracy. Theodor Adorno called this assertion on one’s own opinion syndrome ‘opinions’ narcissism’, and said, “whoever has a matter still to be resolved […] tends to settle on this opinion or, in psychoanalytic jargon, to charge it with emotion” (quoted in Vallespín 2012, 117). We end up making it a part of our personality, of our identity and we don’t generally jeopardize it in a rational argument: 7 8

Especially, Mark Thomson is extraordinary for capturing the evolution of political language. This author offers the most successful explanation in the Spanish language of the ‘emotional shift’ in contemporary politics.

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How can you convince someone on the rationality of something if they are not ready to start by abandoning their previous stance? Our conversational partner must at least be willing to listen, and that is precisely what she will not do if she does not want to be “contaminated” by the opinion of others. (Vallespín 2012, 117; translation our own) Expert in the political mobilization of collective emotions, populists know this well. They aim their discursive action, therefore, to implant, reinforce, or manipulate feelings, thus appealing to those who share the same emotions/opinions, creating, in Laclau’s words, “equivalence chains” between affects. Hence, considering their emphasis on binary logics, they aim also at strengthening that which unites – love for one’s country, for example – acting simultaneously on the negative feelings of those perceived as a threat, which are hated or feared. Make America Great Again or Bring back Control, the war call used by Donald Trump and Leave campaign in Brexit referendum respectively, essentially – and almost exclusively – appealed to feelings, which also explains why they were capable of throwing off those who confronted them with cold statistical analysis who were left cornered in their own rationalistic logic. It is not easy to win a public argument if the other party is not willing to resort to arguments and actually distorts them as part of the enemy arsenal. Populism plays at approaching what people perceive as familiar or close, and thus becoming their voice; it is extracted from its former marginality in what the populist views as the ‘official’ public opinion that is conformed by technocrats, elites and intellectuals. In the ‘newspeak’ (created by George Orwell in his novel 1984) it is important to break out of these categories and as we shall soon see, accuse them of ‘ideology’ in the Marxist sense, to be perceived as the instruments used by the elites to protect their own interests. ‘We’ve had enough of the same old story. The time has come to hear the voice of the real people!’ Antagonism in the face of the unknown, both internal and foreign needs, therefore, a suitable scapegoat. When Trump said there’s a lot of rage, the illocutionary effect of this maxim – what he was actually doing when he said it – was to offer a vehicle for all the frustrations and resentment, not necessarily political, of wide sectors of the population. In the end, the one who ‘is right’ is not the one who has the best arguments but the one who can unify the combination of emotions and feelings. It sounds terrifying, but apparently truth seems to be nothing but a feeling. Whoever feels more intensely, will also be instilled with more ‘reason’. Clearly this is absurd and it finds some justification in the rediscovery of the power of emotions. Yet, as the Italian philosopher Franca D’Agostini (2014) very well points out, it does not make any sense to confront feeling to knowledge, pathos to logos. Why should rationality be an enemy of human feelings and passions? To believe there is a conflict between these two abilities is the equivalent of thinking ‘that there is a conflict between tables and chairs’:

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To reach veracity or mendacity it is necessary to believe, reason and talk, and a feeling is not in itself neither true or false, valid or invalid; it is true that it can be wrongly inclined, but if that were the case, the only force capable of helping the unfortunate person affected is precisely that of reason. (D’Agostini 2014, 156; translation our own) However, what works in a philosophical argument does not necessarily work in practice. The truth is that the mobilization of affects promoted by populism aspires to banish the strength of reason; it has always been simpler to manipulate emotions than to convince with arguments. As Daniel Innerarity points out with sharpness, populists are not the only ones to blame for this problem. Communication media actively contribute to create a “permanent emotional alarm in society”, which explains why “the emotional space is now the space par excellence; the substitute of that which we once imagined was guided by an ideological configuration and articulated by the corresponding institutions” (Innerarity 2015, 135). As we observed previously, the lack of attention from “normal politics” to “heartfelt” shortages is finding revenge in the populist reaction. “If moderate politicians ignore these emotional conditions, they are inviting taboo-breakers to occupy the stage left at their disposal” (Innerarity 2015, 139; translations our own). Also, it should be added, these reactions are not bad news for the media that have already entered the same logic but against populism. Instead, those of the traditional reference press have seen in them the opportunity to reclaim their role as gate-keepers of verified information and serious, accurate argumentation. Some, like the New York Times or the Washington Post, have succeeded in increasing their subscriptions considerably after Trump’s election.

Shooting the Expert A logical consequence of what we state above is the contempt and disdain with which populists contemplate those who confront its discourse armed with facts or expertise. This is the reason why their great enemy is precisely communication media that insist on fact-check and rational argumentation. The opposition is no longer in other parties or candidates; it is mainly in the press. Trump expressed this crudely when he referred to it: “Their agenda is not your agenda. Their priorities are not your priorities” (Vitali 2017). They are The Other, the ‘no people’, and the opponent that is still alive despite the fact of us having won the elections. It is not in vain that they fit into the much slandered category of the elite. Their main defence is to pass on the accusation of mendacity to the media. In the German context, controversial Thilo Sarrazin vulgarized the term Lügenpresse (press of lies), which was taken up and profusely used by the extreme right wing. This could be the less liberal aspect of populism, the difficulty with which it coexists with those who do not think alike and stick to their opinions even

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after the people have their say. We saw it already in chavismo where the freedom of the press became the first victim.9 In mature democratic societies they find it a lot harder and despite the fact that they can attack and weaken the separation of powers, such as in Poland or Hungary, this is not only impossible in a country like the United States, but it even tends to reinforce the strengthening and ‘resistance’ to machination and systematic distortion of the reality coming from the White House. All in all, there is something in this aversion to experts that came before the explosion of populism and that became clear during the economic crisis: the notion that technical knowledge had been put to the service of domineering interests. Economy, in particular, lost great part of its prestige due to its inability to anticipate and offer unanimous ‘scientific’ solutions that differed from what the maintenance of neoliberal order demanded. Austerity policies, in particular, presented as the only possible solution, did not come up with believable alternatives and, above all, insisted on the idea of their political dependence – of the most powerful – or in the impossibility of the latter to show opposition to the dictates of the markets. The contradiction is overwhelming: we live, supposedly, in the ‘society of knowledge’, world order has never been so dependent on cognitive understanding and yet it so happens that we discredit and undermine its prestige later in our public sphere. Due to this, the absurdity of shooting down the expert is only justified as a means of keeping alive the efficiency of populists’ simplifications, that these may not be revealed as what they are. That is, in the same way that it explains the animadversion to the press: to avoid it from revealing its tricks. It is necessary, nonetheless, to be fully conscious of how expertise was put to the service of various ends. Experience shows us that politicians and interest groups have the capacity to be in possession of ‘alternative studies’, all supposedly scientific, with which to refute others that could be circulating in the media. The application of one or other methodology leads to different results, or, at least, to a different evaluation of a certain study object – poverty index, for example -, and there is always the possibility of resorting to the one that interests us at each given moment. The impression of a great number of people therefore, is that there are also experts that are ‘biased’ and more interested in satisfying their ‘clients’ requests’ than in reflecting objective knowledge.

Uncontrolled Lies In his short and charming comedy The Decay of Lying, Oscar Wilde has one of his characters, Vivian, say the following about politicians: 9

About current attacks on freedom of the press in Venezuela, please see these contributions of Reporters without borders: https://rsf.org/en/venezuela.

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They never rise beyond the level of misrepresentation, and actually condescend to prove, to discuss, to argue. How different from the temper of the true liar with his frank, fearless statements, his superb responsibility, his healthy, natural disdain of proof of any kind! After all, what is a fine lie? Simply that which is its own evidence. (quoted in F. Vallespín 2012, 13) It is clear that not even Oscar Wilde and his boundless imagination could have foreseen a Trump. When you read the story of his lies he appears as someone ‘who does not condescend to discuss or argue’; his are ‘honest lies’ – they are not wrapped up in anything but their own disclosure. The New York Times published on June 23, 2017 (Leonhardt and Thompson 2017) the whole lot of untruths that Trump had managed to amass until then in his various public speeches, tßweets, and any other means of expression within his reach. What is surprising is not only the number but also, as the newspaper pointed out quite rightly, that “he was trying to create an environment in which reality is irrelevant”. This is precisely, as Hannah Arendt (1951) tells us, the basic characteristic of totalitarianism. Have we fallen into that, into a soft totalitarianism in which the first victim is the truth, just as it generally happens in wars? If that is the case, the New York Times would have been unable to publish these articles, so we are undoubtedly witnessing something different. But we don’t know exactly what this is. With Berlusconi we at least saw quite clearly that in the midst of so many lies there lay hidden something that was true and the truth became a joke, a gag in a performance wrapped in pure trivia. Political reality as a farce was degraded to simple entertainment. We are now before something more serious because it breaks away drastically with everything known so far. In the same way that post-truth does not mean that there were no lies before; and there has always been all kinds of manipulation. As Wilde’s quote shows, it was not necessary to resort to raw lies, it was enough to ‘distort’ or offer the image of the world that was more convenient for a particular political sector (Davis 2017; D’Agostini 2014, 108). If this was achieved, it was possible to deceive without having to resort directly to lying. In any case, before, when a politician got caught lying, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, he always ended up in trouble and suffered a loss of trust. Interestingly enough, in English the term ‘trust’ derives from the same root as the word ‘truth’. We cannot trust someone who lies to us. Nowadays, anything goes, either because, as we mentioned, the truth is only what we ‘feel’ as true, or because we equate freedom to be able to say what we please, freely expressing our opinions about the world ‘despite the facts’ (Vallespín 2012), or due to pure factionalism. There are no red lines any more that a politician cannot cross; they have been erased. What surveys show is that Trump still enjoys the strong support of his core voters: lying has not made any difference in the level of trust he inspires. This could be due partly to the echo chambers and filter bubbles we mentioned before, that is, to the huge change the internet has effected on the culture of

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information. Yet, this does not explain it all; nobody can afford to be so isolated from the real world so as not to know what is going on. It can probably all be elucidated by the terribly intense polarization in today’s US social and political sphere. Journalist Thomas Friedman (2017) thinks here is where the main problem lies, in the creation of two confronting poles, “like Shiites against Sunni” that had already broken the original political agreement of the country. The ‘we’ in We the People no longer exists; there is a crazy race to actively promote division. But he does point at the fact that the origin is in the networks that “eroded trust in virtually any institution” and in a “president who is everyday through Twitter like a one-man accelerator of the erosion of truth and trust and eating away our society”. We have already analysed how the internet is behind this polarization process, but this co-relation cannot be established as the exclusive cause. The media and the internet surely increase polarization, but what makes people willing to fall into it so easily? If we look for explanations, populist rhetoric shows up as the active agent in the creation of social rupture, although it is more a symptom that a cause. It brought to light a background of discontent, a deep malaise that in the new restructuring of the public space does not stop augmenting. But let us move forward with our common thread.

The Disrepute of Truth On this there is consensus. What we do not know is why it happens. The following are some attempts at finding an explanation: (1) Impossibility of reaching the truth: You do not necessarily have to be postmodern to think that there is always a wide space for world interpretation. As Hannah Arendt rightly points out, the facts finally take revenge, although she had time enough to realize that in the public sphere of those days, “half of politics is ‘image-making’ and the other half the art of making people believe in the imagery” (Arendt 1972, 8). The enormous amount of information circulating in the web and the many discrepancies and repetitions always generate a doubt in us concerning what is true or false, why we are to believe this and not that. How can we find our way in this chaos, in the midst of infosmog? We are also aware of the ease with which facts become opinions and opinions become facts. Most times there is not much to work out from the raw facts, from the distinctions with which we simplify the world, always inevitably linked to continuous moralization. Many issues are denied or confirmed based more on moral convictions than cognitive ones; in other words, a judgement about something – poverty here again is a good example – predisposes us to emphasize its presence due to the moral rejection and outrage it provokes in us or the other way around. The logical reaction to this state of affairs is to look for refuge not in one’s own understanding or in the need to find

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one’s way in this jungle by activating cognitive resources; rather by joining those who are alike, those who think as we do, or, what is easier, signing up with the majority positions, entering the ‘spiral of silence’. (2) Indifference in face of the truth: The reaction to this could also become mere indifference or hypocrisy. Harry Frankfurt (2005) defined it as bullshit. What characterizes the bullshitter, making him different from the liar is that he “does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are” (2005, 60–61; Ball 2017). It includes all who express themselves about anything with no sense, paying careless attention to what is real, not because it is hard or not accessible but because doing so allows them to obtain a specific effect on the receiver of their messages. It is not communication aimed at understanding and it is lacking in all truth. Berlusconi fits perfectly into this picture and it is tempting not to see a bullshitter in Trump, who surely is one on many occasions when he follows his impulses. Yet, behind we find a strategy that is more complex than what it seems, aimed at keeping alive the division and polarization of the country (Frankfurt 2016). The authentically indifferent type is the one who shows no surprise when faced with the absence of truth, the cynic ascribes to the simple solutions because, perhaps, deep down, in a more or less conscious manner, considers that the truth has the same value as deceit, having lost faith in a rational reflection of the world or refusing to look for it. In this vein, the bullshitter is more dangerous than the liar because the latter at least plays in a field where he is aware of reality, he knows what the facts are and in order to achieve his aims, he tries to hide them. As Arendt (1972, 31) tells us “the trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods”. In any case, if demand fails or web activism diminishes, it can always be boosted by new schemes, like the bots10 in Twitter, automat profiles with clear instructions aimed at creating fake news, that spread rumours or systematically construed information following, in many cases, a perfect planning; to all this we must now add the interference of foreign powers, Russian hackers in particular, hugely active and involved in favour of populist positions in liberal democracies.

Narcissist Individualism Versus Civic Conscience Notwithstanding, there is room for hope in the web. This can be the home to concealment, incitation to hate and distortion of facts, but also to the clarification 10 An empirical study detected that one third of the total number of tweets posted by Trump’s gang during the first debate for American Presidency, were bots (Kollanyi et al., 2016).

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of the truth. To start with, the pages of prestigious media reside in it as well; some of them, such as Le Monde in a website called Dècodex,11 have opened sections in which, aimed at verifying the truth of specific information. Other similar sites start to appear encouraged by segments of civil society and charities such as Snopes.com, and Media Matters for America. As we keep repeating, the internet is ambivalent and it all depends on the use we make of it. Up to here, we have emphasized the features that have been favouring manipulation of the truth and patterns of mobilization that contribute to explain a great part of populist success. However, as Gloria Origgi reminds us, “[W]hat creates an atmosphere of post-truth is not the fake information, but the absence of democratic responsibility that comes with information these days” (Origgi 2017; translation our own). Every citizen has the civic duty of entering this world activating a reflexive attitude capable of questioning if the findings are true or false, if they are or not well founded. What must be avoided is ‘citizens that are manipulated’ by the information instead of being themselves those who handle it. A great many of these problems derive from the post-political attitude of letting oneself go; of what we described before as the ‘individual selves’ hyperconnected to the internet that lower their cognitive defences and jump from a purely private use of the web to ascribe to gregarious attitudes leaving behind the thoroughness of a critical citizen. The success of neoliberals, as Byung-Chul Han points out, rests precisely in the fact that it has already made sure of taking over our brains, vaccinating us to make any political resistance impossible. The subtlest way of domination is certainly the one that has the capacity of doing without coercion and violence that which is not perceived, the ‘stabilizing power’. This formats our minds without the need to manipulate our feelings, but instead does so with our primary impulse towards freedom, individualization and narcissism. Self-exhibition on the web, for instance, offers multiple data about us without anybody having to bother to ask for them. Consciously or unconsciously, we feed, in this way, the strategies of those who use our movements on the web to extract an array of information that can potentially be used later for ends that escape us. But, in addition, “digital communication strongly erodes the community, the ‘we’. It destroys the public sphere and aggravates man’s isolation. What prevails in digital communication is not the ‘love your neighbour’ but narcissism” (Han 2014b, 75). This explains why this subject endowed with full sovereignty is incapable of perceiving herself as subjected to something that is not the product of her own will or the expression of her preferences. Domination today is not exerted by means of exploitation but through seduction – a seduction aimed at eliminating negativity, where we only affirm, such as the like in Facebook. The culture of ‘I like’ prevails, and everything else is ignored. There is no antithesis, there is no other. Even beauty is now related with ‘flatness’, with having no edges. That is 11 www.lemonde.fr/verification

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why politicians do not want to displease citizens, and they try to adapt to their preferences like a leech. The more they are ‘liked’, the easier governance becomes. Most relevant, however, is the way in which this has allowed the creation of a perfect stabilizing power that would surprise Foucault himself. Power does not need to resort to repression, it facilitates individuals to “internalize” it themselves: “Men are controlled and moved ‘from the inside’ not from outside” (Han 2014a, 81; Han 2014c; translations our own). The ‘performance society’ does not need to impose its disciplines; it is individuals themselves, who, viewing themselves as businessmen, start the self-exploitation, with the illusion, on top of it, of being working on ‘self-fulfilment’. Under cover of individual freedom, society thus spares itself the promotion of efficiency and productivity. Each one takes care of that competing with others; and when domination is mistaken for freedom, ideas of emancipation, resistance or counter-power no longer make sense. If someone fails, the system is not to blame; you are the one to blame. This ‘psycho politics’ is so suggestive philosophically as it is hard to confirm in empirical reality. Unless we imagine these narcissists lost in thought, waking from a long dream and suddenly joining the populist wagon. Undoubtedly, much of what Byung-Chul Han says is in accordance with this provisional victory of posttruth and can explain the cognitive negligence with which many citizens refrain from their citizen responsibility to acquire knowledge about the public and political affairs. What we want to underline here is, however, that post-truth is not a destination, and it is up to us to find an ‘antithesis’. As Matthew d’Ancona says, when we tackle the issue of post-truth we are not witnessing an ideological dispute between progressive and conservatives, populists and “pro-system”; rather, two totally different ways of approaching reality. The ideal one would be that which appeals to our civic implication with more than a contemplative attitude. The relevant question would then be the following: Are you content for the central value of the Enlightenment, of free societies and democratic discourse, to be thrashed by charlatans –or not? Are you on the pitch, or content to stay in the terraces? (d’Ancona 2017, 5) If democracy wishes to recover this lost space, the battle against deceit and distortion of reality becomes an urgent matter. Some years ago we celebrated the surprising role the web played to satisfy civic-political ends, such as the numerous demonstrations and popular flash mobs, as we have already mentioned. Some did in fact have an effect, such as the Spanish Indignados Movement, but others vanished shortly after their surprising emergence. Talking of the overall failure of the Arab Springs, Francis Fukuyama (2012) lowered expectations resulting from this type of gatherings and observed: “Facebook (or Twitter), it seems, produces a sharp, blinding flash in the pan, but does not generate enough heat over an

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extended period to warm the house.” Networking is not the equivalent to organization-building, which is what is needed to later translate the demands to institutions and well-organized political positions. All differences considered, it is most likely that something similar is happening with populism. It does create intense flames in the political life of our societies but it burns out in rhetoric and performance. It lacks a clear design capable of being later translated into specific political proposals worthy of this name. And what is most needed is, as Arendt (1972) suggests, the recovery of the ‘common world’, the indisputable reality to which we can refer when we start the discussion on what is public.

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Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. London, New York: Verso Books. Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t Think of an Elephant. Know Your Values and Frame the Debate: The Essential Guide for Progressives. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publications Leonhardt, D. and Thompson, S. A. (2017). Tump’s lies. New York Times. www.nytimes. com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html?_r=0. Accessed December 14, 2017. Luhmann, N. (1996). Die Realität der Massenmedien. Opladen: Westdt. English Translation, The Reality of the Mass Media, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. Manin, B. (1997). The Principles of Representative Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Margetts, H., John, P., Hale, S., and Yasseni, T. (2015). Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shape Collective Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4): 541–563. Mudde, C. and Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2017) Populism. A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Muñoz-Alonso, A. and Rospir, J. I. (1999). Democracia mediática y campañas electorales. Barcelona: Ariel Comunicación. Nachtwey, O. (2017). Descivilización. Tendencias regresivas en las sociedades occidentales. In Heinrich Geiselberger (ed.). El gran retroceso. Barcelona: Seix-Barral: 240–266. English translation: The Great Regression, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017. Origgi, G. (2017). Post-verità e post-politica. MicroMega, 2. Pariser, E. (2011). The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You. London: Penguin UK. Rabin-Havt, A. (2016). Lies, Incorporated: The World of Post-Truth Politics. New York: Anchor. Sartori, G. (1998). Homo videns. La sociedad teledirigida. Madrid: Taurus. Stanley, J. (2015). How Propaganda Works. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sunstein, C. R. (2017). #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press. Thomson, M. (2016). Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong With the Language of Politics. London: The Bodley Head. Vallespín, F. (2012). La mentira os hará libres. Realidad y ficción en la democracia. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg. Vitali, A. (2017). Trump again attacks media at campaign-style rally in Florida. CNBC. www.cnbc.com/2017/02/18/trump-again-attacks-media-at-campaign-style-rally-inflorida.html. Accessed November 25, 2017. Webster, J. G. (2014). The Marketplace of Attention: How Audiences Take Shape in a Digital Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

INDEX

admiration 21, 33, 37 aesthetics 8, 49 affect: affective communities 9, 135, 142–43; affective dispositions 4, 43; affective investment 33, 76–7, 103, 141; affective logic 8, 10; affective turn 3, 7, 16–9, 23, 26–7, 35, 37, 45, 70–1, 78, 141 agonism 117–18 alienation 33, 97, 156 Alternativet 115, 126, 128 Alternative for Germany 1 anger 1, 8, 37–43, 69–70, 97, 104, 109, 118, 140, 144, 148, 154 antagonism 117–18, 151, 174 antipathy 33 Arendt, Hannah 149, 177–79, 182 Aristotle 4, 39–41 austerity 1, 8, 65, 76, 103–04, 106, 108–09, 111 Berlusconi, Silvio 162–63, 165, 177, 179 boundary: boundary problem 135–36, 140, 142 Bourdieu, Pierre 32, Brexit 1, 50, 82, 148, 162, 166, 172, 174 Canovan, Margaret 6, 34, 50, 52, 137–140, 144, 150, 152 charismatic leadership 5, 32, 151 Chávez, Hugo 52, 57–9

civil: civil engagement 3, civil society 130, 180 collective action 4, 69, 140, 169–170 cognitive schema 32 Community works 121–24 confidence 38, 69, 124, 170 crisis: crisis of democracy 102, 153, 156, 158; crisis of empathy 125; crisis of representation 9, 103, 119, 140; economic crisis 9, 39, 104, 106, 112, 176; financial crisis 69, 75, 149, 153; performance of – 8, 49; 51–3, 56; system crisis 125 Cybercascades 169 Danish Red-Green Alliance 115 Danish People’s Party 116, 119–20; Dansk Folkeparti 86–7, 116 democracy 1–3, 7; ideal of – 6, 9, 91, 135; digital – 10, 162–63, 166, 173; liberal – 4, 83–5, 91, 93–4, 96–7, 136, 140, 143; media democracy 162–64; radical – 5; representative – 6, 9, 104, 135, 153 discontent 33, 83, 92, 98, 109, 178 disgust 21 disposition 4, 20, 22, 43, 55–6, 86 Duterte, Rodrigo 156 echo chambers 60, 143, 170, 177 efficacy 39–40, 77, 84 ego cogito 67, 71, 74

Index 185

elite 7–9, 26, 32–33, 39, 43, 49–51, 53, 56, 59–61, 67, 76, 91, 98, 109, 116, 129, 140–43, 149–54, 156, 158–60, 174–75 emotion 2–10, 15–27, 31–44, 59–60, 67–72, 74–6, 78, 104, 115–19, 121–22, 124–25, 127, 129–30, 137, 140–43, 170–71, 173–75 enjoyment 85, 89–94, 97 Enlightenment 17–8, 181 enthusiasm 34–45 envy 20–1, 33, 38, 41, 43, equality 85, 94–6, 98, 103–4, 106–12, 150 establishment 7, 38–40, 42, 51–52, 59, 102, 104, 106, 116, 118, 120 Europe 1, 8, 51, 54, 69, 82–4, 86, 89, 109, 162 European election 8, 82–3, 85–8 European Union 106 exultation 33 Farage, Nigel 88, 154 fear 10, 20, 37–40, 69, 96, 104, 115, 125, 138, 143, 148, 151, feeling 2–3, 6, 17–21, 23–4, 32–7, 40–3, 57, 60, 75, 90–1, 115, 118, 121, 126, 143, 153, 157, 170, 172–75, 180 Fidesz 1 Five Star Movement 1, 163 Franco, Francisco 74 Freedom Party of Austria 1: Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs 86 Front National 1, 8, 83, 86, 89, 149 frustration 33, 41, 104, 144, 174 Fukuyama, Francis 91, 149–50, 159–60, 181 gratitude 35, 38 Great Recession 15, 26, 86 Grillo, Beppe 53, 58, 163 guilt 20 Habermas, Jürgen 17, 168 hate 20–1, 143, 171, 174 hatred 15, 21, 33, 38, 43, 103, 141 heartland 34, 38, 51, 142 hope 33, 38, 69, 123, 125–28, 140, 157, 160, 179 Hume, David 17–19 Iglesias, Pablo 74–6, 158, 171 identity: collective 71–3, 117–18, 140; identity formation 3–4, 8–9, 140–42 identity politics 9

ideology: thin-centred – 2, 53 illiberal: illiberal regimes 15 immigration 41, 51–2, 69, 95 Indignados 68, 75, 153, 168, 181 indignation 33, 38, 40–3, 75, 154 Jobbik 86 joy 33, 35, 118, 124–25, 128–29 Laclau, Ernesto 2, 5, 7–8, 33, 50, 54–55, 67–68, 72–76, 78, 84, 93, 103–4, 105n, 136, 141, 148, 150, 152–53, 159, 162n, 172, 174 Lefort, Claude 139 legitimacy: legitimatory logic 7, democratic 2, 5–7, 9–10, 55, 87n, 102, 138, 140, 143, 144; political – 3, 5 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 87, 89–90 Le Pen, Marine 58, 87, 89, 157 liberalism 1, 6, 18–19, 54 logic: logic of passion 1, 3, 6, 8, 22; fantasmatic – 93, 96; passionate – 8 loyalty 35, 118 Macron, Emanuel 154, 158 manners: good 8, 49, 56, 59–61, bad 8, 49, 51–3, 56, 58–9, 61, 142, 151 Mitterrand, Francois 158 mood 18, 20, 34, 38, 165 Morales, Evo 52, 58 Mouffe, Chantal 5, 33, 54, 61, 72, 84, 93–4, 116–19, 138, 141 nationalism 15, 26, 37, 118–19 Nietzsche, Friedrich 17–8, 41–2 nostalgia 33, 38–9, 121, 123, 143, 158 Obama, Barack 57, 166 Occupy Wall Street 168 Orbán, Viktor 1 Ostalgie 38 passion 7–10, 15–8, 20–3, 27, 33–4, 36, 49–50, 53, 56, 60–1, 83, 117, 119, 135, 137, 140–41, 143, 144, 148, 162, 174 people: ‘the people’ 6–9, 26, 32, 33, 38, 42, 49–58, 60–1, 74, 75, 77, 102–3, 105–6, 108–9, 118, 126–27, 129, 135, 135n, 136–44, 150–57, 163, 165, 176, 178 Perón, Juan Domingo 156 Podemos 1, 8, 67–8, 74–8, 149, 159, 171

186 Index

populism: degree of – 54, populist conjuncture 84–5, 92; Populist Hype 8, 82–5, 87n, 88, 90–8; populist schema 32, 39; populist Zeitgeist 32n, 42 post-truth 60–1, 162, 171–73, 177, 180–81 pride 33, 35, 37–8, 70 rancour 21, 43 reason 4–8, 10, 17–9, 21–3, 27, 34, 55, 67–70, 74, 76, 78, 117, 173, 175 Red-Green Alliance 9, 115, 119 resentment 21, 40, 41n, 42–3, 52, 90, 97, 170, 174 ressentiment 8, 40, 41n, 42–3

style: political – 2, 40, 49–51, 53–4, 54n, 55–6, 61 sympathy 38, 121 Syriza 1, 9, 103–5, 105n, 106, 106n, 107–12, 149 technocracy 8, 49, 54, 54n, 55, 57, 61 Thatcher, Margaret 155, 158 totalitarianism 149, 155, 160, 177 tropes 9, 102–3, 107, 112 Trump, Donald 1, 50, 52, 58–9, 82, 115, 148–49, 154, 156, 158–59, 174–75, 177, 179n UKIP 8, 83–4, 86–8, 95–6, 149

Sartori, Giovanni 163, 170 sentiment 2, 8, 17, 22, 33, 36–7, 40–1, 43 shame 20, 24, 37–8, 43, 70, 75 solidarity 35, 108–11, 118, 121–22, 141, 168 sorrow 33 sovereignty 23, 51, 102, 106, 118, 135, 139, 141, 144, 180 Swedish Democrats 1

vacuum 9, 135–36, 138–41, 144, 172 Vlaams Belang 86 Welfare heroes 123–24, 129 Wilders, Geert 52, 59, 86, 156 Žižek, Slavoj 54, 84, 90, 97, 111, 159