Chapter 1. The populist political logic and the analysis of the discursive construction of ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’

Abstract

Aiming to provide some theoretical context to this edited volume on Imagining the Peoples of Europe, this chapter argues that a discourse-theoretical definition of populism as a political logic is the best basis for discursive analyses of populist politics. In identifying what makes populist politics across the political spectrum populist, the chapter strongly builds on Laclau’s work. But it more explicitly limits populism to a particular political logic that revolves around the claim to represent ‘the people’, discursively constructed through a down/up opposition between the people-as-underdog and ‘the elite’ as a small and illegitimately powerful group that is argued not to satisfy the needs and demands of the people. This definition also emphasizes how populism constructs not only ‘the people’ but also ‘the elite’, and how it presents certain demands as the will of the people. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the proposed definition’s implications for the empirical analysis of populist politics across the political spectrum, suggesting that we need to analyze the ways in which populists construct the down/up opposition between ‘people’ and ‘elite’ as well as how this opposition is articulated with other elements of populists’ particular programs and strategies.