Right-wing populism, religion and democratic backsliding (session 1)

Abstract

The past two decades have witnessed the success of right-wing populist parties and leaders in different parts of the world. Among the wide literature about the subject, an increasing number of academic works has highlighted the possibility that their activity might be the cause of phenomena of democratic backsliding that several countries have experienced in recent years. This panel aims at casting light on this phenomenon and, particularly, on the role played by the religious factor in it. As shown by several studies, religion - intended in an identity-driven and civilizational meaning - is a very important factor for the exclusionary processes that mark the right-wing versions of populism. If we conceive populism as a logic of politics, in Laclau’s terms, religion plays a crucial role in the construction of the chain of equivalences that builds the right-wing populist social coalition, and in creating the boundaries that separate this latter from the excluded segments of society. Very commonly - although the specific dynamics can vary from case to case - this process is related to the field of morality politics (with the exclusion or marginalization of women, the LGBTQ+ community, and secularly oriented people) and immigration/multiculturalism (with the exclusion of migrants, and various types of ethnic/religious/linguistic minorities). This panel welcomes case studies analyzing the role played by religion in these processes in specific national/regional contexts. Each paper will investigate the specific role played by the sacred in the construction of the populist coalition in that specific context; the degree of exclusion experienced by the different minority groups in relation to the two domains of morality politics and immigration/multiculturalism, with particular attention for the exclusionary policies put in place, or just proposed, by populist parties and leaders; and, consequently, the relevance of the consequent process of deterioration and erosion of democratic rights and liberties in the country/region.

Title	Details
Why Japan lies so behind in LGBTQ+ rights? Religious, nationalist and ethical constraints in the Japanese morality politics	View Paper Details
A ‘spiritual’ grammar for a moral project: Godllywood Movement, anti-feminism and Brazil’s New Right	View Paper Details
Right-Wing Populist Parties, Religion and Abortion Policy: Brazil, Chile and Uruguay in Comparative Perspective	View Paper Details
Religion, Populism and Democratic Backsliding in the 2020s: The Case of Italy	View Paper Details