Emotion and populism within and beyond the negative correlation

Abstract

Populist phenomena have showed to be capable of taking advantage of emotions in politics, which the most common example of right wing populist parties in Europe and elsewhere that are publicly criticized for the instrumental use of emotions in order to mobilise their own membership and impact in vote behaviour. In order to contribute to the increasing – however still relatively marginal – debate on the populist use of emotions, this panel aim to investigate a broader scope and understand how populism help to strengthen the entanglement of emotions a politics, and overcome the thinner conceptions based on the primacy of rationality. In order to do that the panel aims to overcome one of the limit of most existing literature, that is the focus on negative emotions. We will debate how positive as well as negative emotions are mobilized by populist phenomena addressing a range of questions that include the following ones: Who are the social groups target of negative emotions? Which emotions are mobilised against them? Which emotion do populist leaders mobilise when appeal to “the people” (synonyms with political relevance)? Is the charismatic leadership a driving force in the entanglement of populism and emotions? How do charismatic leaders and their spin-doctors identify and mobilise the emotions appealing to the pre-existing socio-cultural markers to promote their political ideas? To what extent does the populist use of emotions create a new cleavage with the rationality inscribed in the political discourse of traditional parties? Can the scholarship on populism provide an innovative contribution to the affective turn in the social science?

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