Article published in:
Discourse Theory: Ways forward for theory development and research practice
Edited by Benjamin De Cleen, Jana Goyvaerts, Nico Carpentier, Jason Glynos, Yannis Stavrakakis and Ilija Tomanić Trivundža
[Journal of Language and Politics 20:1] 2021
► pp. 178–195

Beyond populism studies

| Vrije Universiteit Brussel
| University of Essex
‘Populism’ has become ever more ubiquitous in political analysis, to the extent that ‘populism studies’ appears on course to establishing itself as a field of research in its own right. This article warns about the dangers of such a development. Taking a discourse theoretical approach as our starting point – but also critically engaging with this tradition’s contribution to the hype about populism – we suggest that ‘populism studies’ (and the preoccupation with populism this field embodies) risks reifying populism by focusing on populism as a phenomenon ‘as such’, and through an over-reliance on the concept of populism to approach that phenomenon. This, we argue, hampers a nuanced and contextualized understanding of the exact role populism plays in different populist politics. This is not a call for abandoning the concept of populism altogether, but a call for de-centring the concept and for moving beyond academia’s ‘populist moment’.
Keywords: populism, discourse theory, populism studies
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The paradox of populism studies: The unfulfilled promise of minimal definitions
  • 3.Against the reification of populism
    • Countering reification 1: Against populism as analytical focus and explanatory nucleus
    • Countering reification 2: Interrogating populism as signifier
  • Conclusion: Beyond populism studies
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 December 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20044.dec
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De Cleen, Benjamin, Jana Goyvaerts, Nico Carpentier, Jason Glynos & Yannis Stavrakakis
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