What Kind of Populism? Analysing the Link Between Identity, Discontent, and Populism in Spain and Portugal

Despite growing research on populism, we know little about the relation between wide-spread discontent, rising populist politics, and how citizens actually engage with con-structions of the people. Yet we cannot explain populism, or understand its meaning and implications for democracy, without grasping the social identities it is grounded in. To do so, this research proposes an interpretive turn is necessary to shift the focus from populism to peoplehood, and from top-down to bottom-up research. In this paper, building on a comparative research project on Spain and Portugal (approx-imately 90 interviews), I explore the nature of populism as a social reality: What are citi-zens discontent about? How does discontent develop into populism? What are the iden-tities behind it? And what are the implications for political change in democracies that face significant challenges in terms of political trust, legitimacy and performance? The findings enrich and contest both the ideational and Essex theories in populism stud-ies. First, I propose populism takes shape as a discourse aimed not so much at “corrupt” elites, but at structural factors that constrain the process of representation. Second, I ar-gue populism expresses not a vertical vindication of the “pure” people against the elites, but a horizontal anxiety at the (im)possibility of constructing/performing a viable “We” among fellow citizens. Finally, I propose we make sense of populism not as a moral or agonistic discourse, but as an epistemic one that emerges from perceived failures in communication and representation. I show that unpacking the nature of populism helps to understand the aspirations and expectations of Spanish and Portuguese citizens. Moreover, applying these insights to behavioural outcomes, I show these dynamics help to understand why Spanish citizens are more prone to (populist) participation than Por-tuguese citizens.