Populism as an object of scientific research
https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-6339-2024-3-47-61
Abstract
Having become a popular term at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, populism at the same time, for a number of reasons, remains one of the most difficult socio-political phenomena to study. Skepticism in the scientific community regarding the phenomenon was so great that well-known political scientists questioned the appropriateness of its use or even suggested abandoning it. The article analyzes the path that political science has followed in the study of populism. The author considers the points of view of political scientists from different countries, summarizes their findings and concludes that by now the academic community has managed to find the key features that make it possible to form the framework of populism as a scientifically researchable phenomenon. However, it seems hardly possible to speak of a universal concept of such a deep and multisided phenomenon. Therethrough, the question of which party can be classified as populist remains equally debatable.
The claim that populism is an ideology seems, in our opinion, not entirely rational. That term is used to denote a set of certain ideas, for example, liberalism or conservatism, whereas populism, on the contrary, does not have specific ideas, representing the style of behavior described above within the framework of the party-political system.
About the Author
V. S. Gribovskii
Independent researcher
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Vasilii S. Gribovskii, Cand. of Sci. (Political Sciences), independent researcher
Moscow
References
1. Albertazzi, D. and McDonnell, D. (2008), Introduction. The Sceptre and the Spectre, Palgrave MacMillan, Houdmills, New York, USA, pp. 1–11.
2. Allcock, J.B. (1971), “Populism. A brief biography”, Sociology, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 371–387.
3. Altermatt, U. (1996), Das Fanal von Sarajevo, Ethnonationalismus in Europa, Paderborn, Germany.
4. Anselmi, M. (2018), Populism. An introduction, Routledge, London, UK. Bauer, W. (2014), Rechtsextreme und rechtspopulistische Parteien in Europa, Wien, Austria.
5. Binder, T. (2005), Die Wahlerfolge rechtspopulistischer Parteien – eine Folge von Modernisierungsprozessen? Berlin, Germany.
6. Brett, W. (2013), “What’s an elite to do? The threat of populism from left, right and centre”, The Political Quarterly, vol. 84, no. 3, pp. 410–413.
7. Canovan, M. (1981), Populism, New York, USA.
8. Canovan, M. (2004), Populism for political theorists? Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 241–252.
9. Decker, F. (2000), Parteien unter Druck, Der neue Rechtspopulismus in den westlichen Demokratien, Leske und Budrich Verlag, Opladen, Germany.
10. Decker, F. (2006), Populismus: Gefahr für die Demokratie oder nützliches Korrektiv? Wiesbaden, Germany.
11. De la Torre, C. (2017), “Populism in Latin America”, in The Oxford Handbook of Populism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, New York, USA, pp. 195–213.
12. Geden, O. (2007), Rechtspopulismus. Funktionslogiken – Gelegenheitsstrukturen – Gegenstrategien, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin, Germany.
13. Goetz, N. (2006), Bedeutung und Tendenzen des Rechtspopulismus unter Berücksichtigung des Aspekts Migration, München, Germany.
14. Grabow K., Hartleb F. (2013), Europa – Nein Danke? Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Berlin, Germany.
15. Hawkins, Kirk A. and Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2019), “Introduction. The ideational approach”, in The ideational approach to populism. Concept, theory, and analysis. Routledge studies in extremism and democracy, Routledge, London, UK, New York, USA, pp. 1–24.
16. Makarenko, B. (2017), “Populism and political institutions. A comparative perspective”, Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniya, no. 1–2, pp. 15–27.
17. Martinets, Yu.A. (2019), “The growth of right-wing populism in modern Europe (according to the estimates of European experts)”, RSUH/RGGU Bulletin. “Political Science. History. International Relations” Series, no. 1, pp. 123–138, DOI: 10.28995/2073-6339-2019-1-123-138.
18. Medushevskii, A.N. (2017), “Populism in Western Europe and Russia. Common traces and peculiarities in the comparative perspective”, Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniya, no. 1–2, pp. 28–47.
19. Medushevskii, N.A. (2019), “Culture of tolerance and historical memory. The collision of opposites in modern Polish society”, RSUH/RGGU Bulletin. “Political Science. History. International Relations” Series, no. 3, pp. 99–111, DOI: 10.28995/2073-6339-2019-3-99-111.
20. Mény, Y. and Surel, Y. (2002), “The constitutive ambiguity of populism”, in: Democracies and the populist challenge, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK, pp. 1–23.
21. Mudde, C. (2002), “England belongs to me. The extreme right in the UK parliamentary election of 2001”, Representation, no. 39, pp. 37–43, DOI: 10.1080/ 00344890208523212. Mudde, C. (2004), “The populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 541–563.
22. Mudde, C. (2011), Voices of the peoples. Populism in Europe and Latin America compared, Working paper of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, no. 378, available at: http://works.bepress.com/cas_mudde/32/ (Accessed 25 March 2024).
23. Mudde, C. and Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2013), “Exclusionary vs. inclusionary populism. Comparing contemporary Europe and Latin America”, Government and Opposition, no. 2, pp. 147–174.
24. Mudde, C. and Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2017), Populism. A very short introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
25. Oskolkov, P. (2019), Pravyi populizm v Evropeiskom soyuze [Right wing populism in the European Union], Institute of Europer RAS, Moscow, Russia.
26. Stanley, B. (2008), “The thin ideology of populism”, Journal of political ideologies, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 95–110. Taggart, P. (2000), Populism, Open University Press, Buckingham, UK.
27. Taggart, P. (2002), “Populism and the pathology of representative politic”, in: Democracies and the populist challenge, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK, pp. 62–80.
28. Tormey, S. (2018), Populism: democracy’s pharmakon? Policy studies, no. 3, pp. 260–273.
29. Werz, N. (2003), “Populismus”, in Populisten in Übersee und Europa, Opladen, Germany, pp. 15–43.
30. Zinnel, A. (1996), Moderner Rechtspopulismus in Frankreich, Frankfurt a/M., Germany.
Review
For citations:
Gribovskii V.S. Populism as an object of scientific research. RSUH/RGGU Bulletin Series "Political Science. History. International Relations". 2024;(3):47-61. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-6339-2024-3-47-61
Views:
152
Email this article 