What if populism is not just something "they" do, but that "we" do? – Toward a dynamic theory of populism

Time period:

1 July 2025 – 30 June 2029

Project leader:

Karl Ekeman

Funder:

Swedish Research Council

Type of award:

Grant for positions or stipends

Total funding:

4,050,000 SEK

The project contributes to non-positivist research on populism by rethinking populism as a political imaginary produced through dynamics of political contestation. Populists do not emerge in isolation; they acquire their symbolic form in a rhetorical playfield where their self-representation is both opposed and reinforced. The project explores dynamics where anti-populist discourses unwittingly contribute to the counter-hegemonic role that populists assume, thus giving shape to what they explicitly resist. The inquiry proceeds through an internal critique of Ernesto Laclau’s populism theory as a paradigmatic case of non-positivist theory building. The project seeks to show how Laclau’s work contains the elements of a dynamic perspective but that it remains to be fully articulated. The project does so by shifting focus: asking not only how populists construe their characteristic role in politics, but how that role is co-produced through rhetorical dynamics between conflicting actors, involving an interplay between "empty signifiers".The theoretical investigation incorporates empirical case studies. These include discourse surrounding the Sweden Democrats (SD) in which the party and its opponents converge in awarding SD the status of exception – arguing that it is “not a party like any other.” In doing so, the project explores populism not just as an attribute of certain actors on the Lefortian "political stage", but as a particular symbolic configuration of the stage itself.