Operationalizing the (Populist) Zeitgeist: How Political Actors Shape Party Competition by Transforming Their Rivals’ Issue Positions

Abstract

A copious literature devotes itself to studying how much political actors, parties or candidates, respond to the demands of their opponents and how issues thereby cross party lines. Most prominently, this research has highlighted how radical positions move from the fringes of the political spectrum into the mainstream, in the case of nativism and, to a lesser extent, in the case of radical left ideas. In addition to thick, “host” ideologies, previous research has also proclaimed a “populist” zeitgeist, which is however seldom conceptualized. This panel seeks to address both phenomena through conceptual and empirical contributions, drawing on a diverse set of empirical methods. Addressing these issues from a new, conceptual perspective is particularly valuable for three reasons. First, while differentiating between thin and thick ideologies has become firmly established in the field, scholars rarely distinguish between substantive and discursive contagion. Since both dimensions of party competition are often studied separately, contributions to this panel will primarily study in more detail how they mutually condition each other. Second, the study of strategic party behavior requires and would benefit from broadening the scope beyond single policy positions (e.g. on migration and asylum); therefore, the panel welcomes different thematic approaches. Third, and most importantly, extending the focus to a broader set of substantive issues and discursive frames also necessitates a reconceptualization of the strategic dilemmas that parties face in competition with each other. Where accommodation seems too costly, i.e. when parties risk alienating their core constituency by turning to new issues and away from their ideological ‘core’, other more discursive strategies might be more suitable. Hence, do we observe a softer strategy that involves rhetorical convergence or the mimicking of populist language, in some cases where this is deemed more beneficial (selective frame adoption)? Do parties parrot policy claims, where the risk of voter alienation is comparably low (selective policy adoption)? Or, do parties transform their rivals’ claims into different positions, yet with a similar intended ideological direction (policy or frame adaption)? These different party strategies entail, for instance, the adoption of nativist positions by nominally left-wing parties, green parties’ re-framing of ‘traditional values’, mainstream parties’ use of populist rhetoric, or populists’ attempts at ‘pink-washing’. Across countries and contexts, we observe that political actors take up the core concerns, ‘owned’ issues and frames from their opponents—without, however, possessing the necessary analytical framework to operationalize and systematize these policy adaptions. We see this panel as a platform to approach these questions collectively and to contribute to the literature on positional accommodation and the populist zeitgeist. This panel brings together innovative, empirical research from diverse methodological backgrounds, drawing on quantitative (e.g. text-as-data) approaches as well as qualitative methods. Crucially, it aims at finding common ground with the goal of a joint publication to systematize and analyze the mentioned phenomena from diverse angles.

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