FACULTY OF ARTS & SOCIAL SCIENCES

CONTEMPORARY POPULISM & CRISIS:IS THE TAIL WAGGING THE DOG?

DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

BENJAMIN MOFFITT

2

WINNERS?

3

LOSERS?

4

WHAT IS POPULISM?

• Appeal to ‘the people’

• Crisis, breakdown, threat

• ‘Bad manners’

• Political style: the repertoires of performance that are used to create political relations

• Upcoming article in Political Studies – ‘Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation & Political Style’ (with Simon Tormey)

5

CURRENT APPROACHES TO POPULISM & CRISIS

1. Crisis is a necessary prerequisite, trigger or cause for populism

2. Crisis might help populism, but we’re not sure

3. There is no link between populism and crisis

All see populism as external to populism

6

FAILURE VS. CRISIS

• Failure provides “the structural preconditions for crisis” (Hay 1995: 64)

• Crisis is “a condition in which failure is identified and widely perceived, a condition in which systemic failure has become politically and ideationally mediated” (Hay 1999: 324)

Crisis is the spectacularisation of failure

7

‘PERFORMING’ CRISIS

1. Identify failure

2. Elevate to the level of crisis by linking into wider framework and adding a temporal dimension

3. Frame ‘the people’ vs. those responsible for the crisis

4. Use media to propagate performance

5. Present simple solutions & strong leadership

6. Continue to perform crisis

8

1. IDENTIFY FAILURE

• Political, economic, moral, cultural…

2. ELEVATE TO LEVEL OF CRISIS

• Link to other failures within wider structural or moral framework

• Add temporal dimension

9

3. FRAME ‘THE PEOPLE’ VS THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CRISIS

• An ‘objective’ rationale for targeting the Other

• Link together different enemies of ‘the people’

4. USE MEDIA TO PROPAGATE PERFORMANCE

• Spectacle, ‘media events’, press coverage, interviews

• ‘Unmediated’ events – rallies, gathering, marches

11

5. PRESENT SIMPLE SOLUTIONS & STRONG LEADERSHIP

• A leader ‘beyond’ politics

• Procedural & institutional simplification crisisProblem: Moroccans throw stones at the Dutch Police.

Solution: Arrest them, prosecute them and deport them…

Problem: This government is breaking record after record in the area of mass immigration.

Solution: Don’t allow in any more Eastern Europeans and shut the borders to immigrants from Muslim countries. Now!...

Problem: Rotterdam, the second largest city in the Netherlands, will have an immigrant majority by 2012,

Solution: Repatriation, repatriation, repatriation. What comes in can also come out (Wilders in de Bruijn 2011: 35).

12

6. CONTINUE TO PERFORM CRISIS

• Switch conceptions of crisis

• Extend size and scope of crisis

13

CONCLUSIONS

1. We have a simplistic (and wrong) view of the relationship between populism & crisis

2. Crisis should be thought of as the ‘spectacularisation’ of failure

3. Crisis does not cause populism – populism attempts to cause crisis

4. Crisis is an integral part of populism