Populism in power and the discursive construction of collective identity : a comparative analysis of SYRIZA (2015-2019) and Donald Trump (2016-2020)

The proliferation of populist actors, and their transition from the margins of the political system to power, raises the pressing question of how populism changes once it moves from opposition to government. An overview of the literature renders visible a number of hypotheses that have long guided empirical research in terms of the potential transformations populism undergoes in the process of institutionalisation. The first approach conceptualises populists as challenger actors and focuses on policy implementation in order to determine their success or failure in government. On the one hand lie those who argue that populist parties are not durable parties of government, and once in power they will fail to materialise their promises and will be eventually integrated into the mainstream (Canovan, 1999; Mény & Surel, 2002). On the other hand lie those who argue that populists are capable of surviving the governmental experience and, like other political actors, populists too can implement policies (Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2015). The second approach focuses on the effects of populist actors on democratic institutions. A ‘camp’ within this approach argues that populism in power turns illiberal and authoritarian, and ultimately constitutes a threat to democracy (Müller, 2016; Pappas, 2019). Another camp claims that populism may have positive effects on democracy and its representative institutions (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012; Mouffe, 2018). The central argument of this research is that these ascribed trajectories are neither exclusive nor defining features of populism. Populism in power cannot be reduced to particular policy outcomes or consequences to the representative system. In order to study populism in power one needs to rethink the very notion of populism itself. Although ‘populism studies’ agree on the centrality of people-centrism and anti-elitism in populist phenomena, the predominantly anti-populist theorisations that abound conventional wisdom influence the way the phenomenon is thought and talked about. Emanating from a discourse-theoretical (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Stavrakakis, 2007) and socio-cultural/performative (Moffitt, 2016; Ostiguy, 2017) perspective, this research shifts from viewing populism as having essential meaning, fate or outcome. It rather focuses on its function to discursively construct affectively invested collective identifications in the name of the marginalised social majority, ‘the people’ against an illegitimate establishment which steals the rights and enjoyments of the former. Focusing on the cases of Donald Trump and SYRIZA, which have received unprecedented academic, pundit and political attention, this research investigates the ways populist performativity and affect change when populists take office. To do so, this study employs mixed methods. In order to capture the changes in populist performativity it employs discourse, frame and visual analysis on 135 ‘units’ located on the supply side of political communication, including speeches from electoral manifestos, posters, campaign videos. To capture the affective dynamics of populism and give agency to ‘the people’ to express their voice, the research draws upon 56 interviews with grassroots supporters, leading activists, party members and politicians, as well as ethnographic methods involving direct participation in protests, rallies and assemblies. This research makes a number of contributions. First, it fills the gap in the evolving but still thin literature of populism in power, by examining populists governing at the national level, governing outright or leading coalitions. Second, it develops a rigorous and analytically neat conceptualisation for the analysis of the transitions of populism from opposition to power and brings to the study of populism the much neglected area of emotions and collective identification. Third, focusing on both left-wing and right-wing populisms, this research highlights that ideology plays a critical role in the types of socio-political imaginaries and emotions populists articulate. At the same time, it exemplifies that ‘populism’ does not suffice to explain an actor’s consequences on democracy and its institutions. Taking seriously these contributions, this study urges future research to adopt a reflexive approach to the political implications populism has on politics, polity and society, insulated from normatively charged definitions that are uncritically reproduced in the public sphere.