Mainstreaming the Rebellion? The “Populist Zeitgeist” Between Diffusion and Normalization

Populist politics seems to have become an increasingly established sight. While previous studies have focused extensively on assessing the intensity and character of a “populist Zeitgeist”, they mostly assess the “diffusion” aspect of populist mainstreaming, or the extent to which more conventional parties adopt elements of populism in their own programmatic. Less attention has been put on the “normalization” aspect of populist mainstreaming: the ways by which political actors themselves actively attempt to establish populist ideology as part of the political mainstream. The goal of this paper is thus to comparatively analyze both aspects of populist mainstreaming. For this purpose, we deploy a rule-guided computer-assisted qualitative data analysis of social media electoral campaigns in countries across Central and Eastern, Southern, and North-Western Europe. Drawing on recent literature, we assess the extent to which parties adopt not only anti-elitism and people-centrism, but also invocations of monist General Will. We then explore how these claims are being actively framed in relation to the political mainstream. The findings promise to deepen our understanding behind patterns, dynamics and impact of populist mainstreaming on European representative democracies.