The Populist Challenge - Hans Kriesi 2
Introduction (p.361) 2
Preconditions for the rise of populism in West European democracies (p.364) 3
The populist challenge in West European democracies (p.367) 3
The rise of populism in Central and Eastern Europe (p.372) 4
Conclusion (p.375) 5
Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America - Mudde &
Kaltwasser 5
Populism defined (p.149) 5
Case Selection (p.155) 6
Inclusion VS. Exclusion (p.158) 6
Conclusion (p.166) 7
Power to the people? Populism, democracy and political participation: a citizen’s perspective - Zaslove, Geurkink,
Jacobs & Akkerman 8
Abstract (p.727) 8
Conclusion (p.742) 8
Hix, S. 2020. Remaking democracy: Ireland as a role-model the 2019 Peter Mair lecture. Irish Political Studies 35(4)
585-601. 8
Abstract 8
Demand side drivers of populism: Ireland should not be immune (p.586) 9
Do Irish voters have populist attitudes? (p.588) 9
The supply side: Ireland’s supplemented representative democracy (p.593) 9
Conclusion: political science needs to understand the supply side of populism (p.599) 10
Farrell, D.M. & L. Field. 2022. The growing prominence of deliberative mini-publics and their impact on democratic
government. Irish Political Studies 37(2) 285-302. 10
Abstract 10
Introduction (p.285) 10
Democratic decline, democratic innovation (p.286) 10
Democratic reforms aimed at giving citizens a greater voice (p.288) 10
Can citizen-centered innovations make a difference? (p.292) 11
Conclusion (p.297) 11
Qvortrup, M. 2017. The rise of referendums: demystifying direct democracy. Journal of 11
Democracy 28(3) 141-152. 11
Introduction (p.141) 11
What’s in a Word (p.142) 11
Referendums in Democracies (p.144) 11
Plébiscités (p.149) 12
Cheneval, F. & A. el-Wakil, 2018. The institutional design of referendums: bottom-up and binding. Swiss Political
Science Review 24(3) 294-304. 12
Introduction 12
Conclusion (p.302) 12
Ikenberry, G. J. 2018. The end of LIO? International Affairs 94(1) 7–23. 12
Liberal internationalism and world order (p.11) 13
The era of American liberal hegemony (p.14) 14
Crises and transformations (p.17) 15
Conclusions (p.21) 15
Mearsheimer, J.J. 2019. Bound to fail: The rise and fall of the LIO. 16
What Is an Order and Why Do Orders Matter? (p.9) 16
Types of Orders (p.11) 17
The Rise and Decline of International Orders (p.16) 18
The Cold War Orders, 1945-89 (p. 18) 19
The LIO, 1990-2019 (p. 21) 19
, 2
The Golden Years, 1990-2004 (p.26) 20
The LO Goes Downhill, 2005-19 (p.28) 20
What Went Wrong? (p.30) 20
The Perils of Democracy Promotion (p.31) 21
Turning the Liberal Democracies against the LO (p.34) 21
The Downside of Hyperglobalization (p.38) 21
Where Are We Headed? (p.43) 22
Conclusion (p.49) 23
Gregorio B. & D. Lewis. 2020. Authoritarian powers and norm contestation in the LIO: theorizing the power politics
of ideas and identity. Journal of Global Security Studies 5(4) 559–577 24
Introduction 24
Norm Dynamics, Contestation, and Power (p.2) 25
Towards a Power Political Approach to Norm Contestation (p.5) 25
Authoritarian Powers and Modes of Power Political Norm Contestation in the Liberal International Order (p.7) 26
Conclusion (p.13) 28
Adler-Nissen, R., & A. Zarakol. 2021. Struggles for recognition: the LIO and the merger of its discontents.
International Organization 75(2) 611-634. 29
Introduction 29
Theorizing the LIO as a Recognition Order with Its Discontents (p. 614) 30
The Center Cannot Hold: Discontent in the Core (p.616) 30
The Widening Gyre: Discontent in the Semiperiphery (p.619) 31
Things Fall Apart: How the Merger of Discontents Hollows out the LIO from Within (p. 622) 31
The Prognosis for IR theory and the LIO (p.626) 32
Acharya, A. 2022. The Return of the West? 32
Week 3: Populism
The Populist Challenge - Hans Kriesi
Introduction (p.361)
● Peter Mair sees populism as linked to the erosion of party systems, leading to a partyless democracy
that opened the doors for populism
● vs Kriesi: sees populism as a productive force for realignment of EU party system, brings it in line with
transformed conflict structures
Populism
● ‘Thin’ ideology that considers society to be separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups,
the ‘pure people’ and the elite’
● Politics should be expression of volonté générale of the pure people, capable to have common interests
as a unity
● Three different conceptions of ‘the people’
1) Political: people as sovereign
2) Cultural: people as nation (right-wing populism)
3) Economic: people as class (left-wing populism)
Populism as democratic illiberalism
● Populism = illiberal because it takes ‘government by the people’, rejects checks and balances on
popular will
● Rule of law, division of power and minority rights rejected because confine people’s sovereignty
○ Strong anti-institutional impulse
○ Monolithic conception of people, popular majority is always right
● Introduces a charismatic leader who is an ‘outsider’
, 3
Distinction between
Populist ideology
Political communication strategies: operationalization of the populist ideology may be based on an analysis of
populist communication strategies
Preconditions for the rise of populism in West European democracies (p.364)
Political parties are the most important organizations linking voters and their representatives in established
democracies. Double function:
1) Link civil society to polity
2) Organize and give coherence to the institutions of the government
→ Mair says that parties have shifted more towards the second function
Erosion of parties’ representation function due to:
● Increased importance of the European and global level in the multilevel governance structures
○ Longer intransparent chains of delegation, reducing accountability of politicians
○ Divorce between front-stage & back-stage politics, non-majoritarian forms are now
front-stage
● Increasing mediatisation of politics
○ Contributes to the shifting balance of party functions, reducing role of party apparatus
○ Adaption to ‘media logic’: more effort into strategic communication, devote more resources to
communication, more direct communication with public audience
→ reinforcing back/frontstage politics
→ depoliticization, technocratic exercise in back-stage and symbolic conquest between
figureheads
The populist challenge in West European democracies (p.367)
● Mair: populist democracy is popular democracy without parties
● Voters get impression that parties who govern are alike, betray all the public behind the scene
→ decline of the parties’ representation function invites populist reactions
● Division of labour between two types of parties:
1) Mainstream parties: parties which habitually govern and take responsibility
→ partyless populism
2) ‘Populist’-style parties: parties which give voice to the people
→ protest populism
According to Kriesi, rise of protest populism takes three different forms:
The rise of new challengers in the party system
● Mairs argument holds that majority of voters still go for mainstream parties
● However, after Great Recession of 2008, people will also go for new challengers who give voice to the
suppressed conflicts
○ Likely that new challengers do so in a populist manner
● New populist challengers may be driving forces of processes of restructuring and realignment of the
party system
● New populist challengers may enter into government or support governments from the outside
‘losers’ to globalization ‘winners’
● New right-populist parties articulate a new structural conflict that opposes globalization
● New populist challenges from the left: take defense of the national welfare state, as well as in defense
of the economic privileges of domestic sectors of the economy and of domestic production sites
, 4
The radical rejection of the party systems as such
● Under pressure of economic crisis, erosion of established parties representation function → wholesale
rejection
● “Pure politics of non-politics’: total rejection of politics, an apocalyptic vision of politics
The expansion of conflict beyond the party system
In absence of immediately available options in electoral arena
→ discontented groups of citizens may mobilize outside of the electoral channel
● Resort to the protest arena, expansion of the conflict
● ‘Movement societies’: protest behaviour is employed with greater frequency, normalization of the
unconventional
○ e.g: Green parties
All three forms of protest populism likely to benefit from mediatization trends.
● Rely on form of ‘media complicity’: media provide a significant degree of support for the rise populist
phenomena in general, as news coverage yields to general popular tastes
● Also like to make use of new strategic communication forms
The rise of populism in Central and Eastern Europe (p.372)
● Institutionalization: refers to a process by which a practice or organization becomes well established
and widely know, if not universally accepted
○ Institutionalized party system: one in which actors develop expectations and behaviour based
on the premise that the fundamental contours and rules of party competition and behaviour
will prevail into the foreseeable future
→ Party systems never institutionalized to the same extent in Central and Eastern Europe
Four conditions must be obtained to institutionalize:
1) Stability in elections: configuration of party system does not change every election, no new challengers
each elections, volatility low
a) High level of volatility in CE Europe
2) Parties have stable roots of society: structure preferences of voters, parties’ relative ideological
positions tend to be consistent
a) No stable roots in society
3) Parties are considered to be legitimate by major political actors
a) Hardly considered as legitimate by the citizens
4) Party organizations matter; not subordinate to interests of ambitious leaders
a) Organizations tend to be unstable
Fact that they are less institutionalized makes them more prone to populism → ‘centrist populism’
● New parties become strongest force in parliament in their first ever elections, newness lets them claim
to fight against corrupt regime
○ ‘Newness’ opposed to ‘old politics’
Conclusion (p.375)
Overall structural trends giving rise to the populist challenges in West-European countries:
→ Erosion of representation function of the parties buttressed by the increasing importance of the supra- and
international level of governance and by the increasing role of the media in national politics
Suggested that there are three forms of protest populism, which all may eventually end up transforming the
West-European party systems. In CE Europe: populist challenges mainly linked to lack of institutionalization
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