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CONTEMPORARY POPULISM & CRISIS:
IS THE TAIL WAGGING THE DOG?
FACULTY OF ARTS &
SOCIAL SCIENCES
BENJAMIN MOFFITT
DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
WINNERS?
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LOSERS?
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WHAT IS POPULISM?
• Appeal to ‘the people’
• Crisis, breakdown, threat
• ‘Bad manners’
• Political style: the repertoires of performance that
are used to create political relations
• Upcoming article in Political Studies – ‘Rethinking
Populism: Politics, Mediatisation & Political Style’
(with Simon Tormey)
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CURRENT APPROACHES TO POPULISM & CRISIS
1. Crisis is a necessary prerequisite, trigger or cause
for populism
2. Crisis might help populism, but we’re not sure
3. There is no link between populism and crisis
All see populism as external to populism
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FAILURE VS. CRISIS
• Failure provides “the structural preconditions for
crisis” (Hay 1995: 64)
• Crisis is “a condition in which failure is identified
and widely perceived, a condition in which
systemic failure has become politically and
ideationally mediated” (Hay 1999: 324)
Crisis is the spectacularisation of failure
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‘PERFORMING’ CRISIS
1. Identify failure
2. Elevate to the level of crisis by linking into wider
framework and adding a temporal dimension
3. Frame ‘the people’ vs. those responsible for the
crisis
4. Use media to propagate performance
5. Present simple solutions & strong leadership
6. Continue to perform crisis
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1. IDENTIFY FAILURE
•
Political, economic, moral, cultural…
2. ELEVATE TO LEVEL OF CRISIS
•
Link to other failures within wider structural or moral
framework
•
Add temporal dimension
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3. FRAME ‘THE PEOPLE’ VS THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR
THE CRISIS
•
An ‘objective’ rationale for targeting the Other
•
Link together different enemies of ‘the people’
4. USE MEDIA TO PROPAGATE PERFORMANCE
•
Spectacle, ‘media events’, press coverage, interviews
•
‘Unmediated’ events – rallies, gathering, marches
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5. PRESENT SIMPLE SOLUTIONS & STRONG
LEADERSHIP
• A leader ‘beyond’ politics
• Procedural & institutional simplification crisis
Problem: Moroccans throw stones at the Dutch Police.
Solution: Arrest them, prosecute them and deport them…
Problem: This government is breaking record after record in the area of mass
immigration.
Solution: Don’t allow in any more Eastern Europeans and shut the borders to
immigrants from Muslim countries. Now!...
Problem: Rotterdam, the second largest city in the Netherlands, will have an
immigrant majority by 2012,
Solution: Repatriation, repatriation, repatriation. What comes in can also come out
(Wilders in de Bruijn 2011: 35).
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6. CONTINUE TO PERFORM CRISIS
•
Switch conceptions of crisis
•
Extend size and scope of crisis
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CONCLUSIONS
1. We have a simplistic (and wrong) view of the
relationship between populism & crisis
2. Crisis should be thought of as the
‘spectacularisation’ of failure
3. Crisis does not cause populism – populism
attempts to cause crisis
4. Crisis is an integral part of populism
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