Populism in three acts: Discourse, ideology and democratic mediation

Abstract

How can we identify what is common to populism across very different historical, national, and ideological contexts? The diversity of conceptual approaches has enriched the study of populism, but it has also left unresolved the question of whether a common political structure can be identified beneath its different manifestations. This lecture proposes a three-dimensional understanding of populism that brings together Ernesto Laclau’s conception of populism as an ontological-discursive process, Cas Mudde’s understanding of populism as a thin-centred ideology, and Pierre Rosanvallon’s account of populism as a form of democratic indetermination. Rather than treating these perspectives as competing definitions or simply combining them, the lecture presents them as analytically distinct dimensions of the same political dynamic. It argues that populism can be understood through the articulation of three processes: the constitution of an antagonistic fissure between “we” and “they”, the moral organization of this divide as a conflict between the people and the elite, and its projection onto democracy through the simplification of representation, political mediation, and popular sovereignty. The lecture will then use four heterogeneous cases—Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Erdoğan, Daniel Ortega, and Evo Morales—as a basis for a collective assessment of the analytical pertinence of this conceptual framework. Rather than presenting these cases as definitive empirical tests, the discussion will invite participants to consider whether the three dimensions can be meaningfully identified across substantially different contexts, whether they capture what is distinctive about populism, and where the framework may encounter conceptual or empirical limitations. The lecture thus concludes by opening the proposed approach to critical discussion and comparative evaluation.