Regrounding Populism: Moving Beyond Questions of Definition and Content

Abstract

While conventional studies of electoral populism acknowledge that such mobilizations are linked tosignificant economic crises, their preoccupation with defining what exactly populism is often leads them to downplay the unified structural roots of different sorts of populistmobilizations. Thisessaypresents the beginnings of an alternative framework for the study of electoral populism that draws on the neo-Gramscian theory of political articulation that links studies of global economic crises with conventional theories of populism.While crisesare an endemic feature of global capitalism, their political manifestation is shaped bythe variedinstitutional structures and legacies in which they are translated.

Keywords

• Political articulation
• Gramsci
• Strategic depoliticization
• Economic crisis