Social Psychology Of Populism

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The Social Psychology of Populism Conference Paper · March 2018

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The Social Psychology of Populism Paris Aslanidis, Yale University

Draft paper, prepared for ASU Populism Workshop, 15-17 February, 2018

Introduction szociális sérelem

The essential element of populism is an invitation to assess and politicize social grievances as owing to a contest between two distinct groups over the legitimacy of holding power: “the people” versus “the elite”. Given the value of popular sovereignty as a constituent principle, the will of the people should be expected to enjoy absolute primacy in the political decision-making process against other interests. In reality, however, this positive asymmetry is threatened or has already been inverted by elites who have gamed “the system” to serve their own ends. Accordingly, populists urge the people to mobilize and win back their status as sovereigns. The demand for the rehabilitation of popular sovereignty rests on firm normative ground, yet, as with most political claims, it is generally difficult to produce metrics that guarantee a sound verdict on the degree to which elites are indeed manipulating the system. Nevertheless, if a sizeable part of the electorate finds itself in broad agreement with this idea then populist entrepreneurs may benefit from a strong momentum for mobilization. But, in addition to moral redemption against mischievous power-holders, the populist formula further offers a rather vague, yet still discernible, utilitarian promise: the successful abolition of elite domination over the lives of the common folk is expected to rapidly increase society’s overall welfare, and significantly so. On the other hand, as it is well known, the various populist projects that have historically emerged around the world have suggested particularly inconsistent policies to deliver upon this promise. To the despair of trained political scientists, populist policy recommendations fail to map smoothly around established political classifications (Aslanidis 2017). On the contrary, there is ample evidence that the populist frame is flexible enough to accommodate diverse and even contradictory ideas along the traditional left-right and libertarian-authoritarian axes. Fiscally conservative populists decrying Washington or Brussels elites for over-regulating the economy are too numerous to warrant mention, and so are populists on the opposite end of the spectrum who accuse the very same centers of deliberately exacerbating social inequality through economic deregulation. Authoritarian politicians may invest their populist outlook with a law-and-order agenda that promotes xenophobic solutions, yet anti-racist populists advocating post-materialist values and multiculturalism are equally plentiful. Therefore, despite their strict adherence to popular sovereignty and their vehement anti-establishment attitude, populists – as a whole – fail to prioritize specific socioeconomic grievances and suggest consistent solutions for them. Accordingly, there is no coherent set of principles that could establish populism as an ideology with systematic socioeconomic implications (Aslanidis 2016a). Comparative studies of public opinion confirm that the “average” populist voter is nowhere to be found, and that the search for such a construct is manifestly futile (Rooduijn 2017).

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Crisscrossing the cartesian plane of political values while offering highly erratic policy prescriptions, populism is bound to remain elusive for most mainstream theories of voter representation, and especially those based on the epistemology of individual cost-benefit calculations. Given these limitations, we are in need of an alternative analytical paradigm to inspire further research on the phenomenon. Social psychology can perhaps contribute towards this aim. Social psychologists have criticized individualistic conceptions of personal and group processes on the basis that individuals do not operate in a social vacuum. They argue that interpersonal utility decision-making is perhaps captured well by game-theoretical analytical instruments, but actual politics involves complex social processes irreducible to the forces of individual psychology (Brown 2000; Hogg & Reid 2006). Given the overwhelming evidence that collective identification is a significant predictor of collective mobilization (Reicher & Hopkins 1996; Simon et al. 1998; Sturmer & Simon 2004; Turner & Reynolds 2001; Huddy 2013; van Zomeren et al. 2008), social psychologists recommend correcting for the over-individualistic portrayal of social activity by studying the interaction between self and society. In recent years, the relevance of social psychological theories for political science has been repeatedly acknowledged, leading to valuable findings for a variety of research questions (e.g. Miller et al. 1981; Conover 1984; Kinder & Kam 2010; Reicher & Hopkins 2001; Jenkins 2008). Despite the affinities between populism and processes of collective identification, scholars have so far failed to bring the two fields together. This chapter should be seen as an attempt at delineating the contours of a research agenda to potentially fill this gap, focusing in particular on the social psychological function of constructing the dichotomy between people and elites that underpins populism. Understanding how populists render these two categories psychologically salient to reap political benefits can provide us with an alternative perspective compared to the overly reductionist research agenda based on cost-benefit calculations of personal utility. The chapter begins with a brief overview of key social psychological concepts relevant to political contestation and, after examining their fit with the psychological substructure of populist mobilization, proceeds to identify the adversarial nature of populist discourse as the driving force behind populism’s success. The core argument of the analysis is that populist entrepreneurs manage to sever voters from their existing political allegiances by politicizing their social identity as “the people” and benefitting from the normative effects of self-categorization: in-group favoritism, encouraging voting for the populist party/leader, and out-group derogation, which solidifies the identity of the populist camp via sustained hostility against political forces seen as representing the elites. Social identity theory and political mobilization Among other topics, social psychology deals with the complex mechanics of intergroup behavior (Brown & Gaertner 2001; Hornsey 2008). The main premise, drawn from consistently replicated empirical findings, is that identification with a group prescribes personal conduct by rendering the individual sensitive of her commonality with ingroup peers and difference with non-peers, leading to the adoption of stereotypical norms of behavior that can potentially instigate intergroup conflict. Through the pioneering work of Muzafer Sherif (Sherif et al. 1961[1954]) in the Robbers 2   

Cave experiments, it was first established that intergroup behavior was not confined to ascribed identities such as race or sex, as it was commonly held. Dividing individuals of similar background into two arbitrary groups and exposing them to tournament competitions over scarce resources led to the construction of an ingroup identity and a hostility against the outgroup. An even more important breakthrough took place several years later, when Henri Tajfel and his associates (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971; Billig & Tajfel 1973) executed their “minimal group” experiments, demonstrating that competition over resources was largely irrelevant for group identity formation and intergroup conflict. Instead, these researchers found that in experimental settings where instrumental concerns were not encouraged by design, the mere act of categorizing people – with no face-to-face interaction – into arbitrary groups produced a psychological effect strong enough to trigger ingroup bias, in the absence of clear material benefits for the ingroup, and even at an aggregate cost for its members. As soon as the notion of “group” was introduced to participants, in-group favoritism emerged in the absence of explicit social pressure or realistic benefits towards acting in such fashion. Building on the outcome of these experiments, Tajfel formulated a general theory of intergroup relations, known as Social Identity Theory (Tajfel 1974; Tajfel 1978; Tajfel & Turner 1979). Social Identity Theory (SIT), along with Self-Categorization Theory (SCT), developed later by Taijfel’s student John Turner and his associates (Turner et al. 1987), are now the most influential theories of group processes and intergroup relations worldwide (Hornsley 2008) and they will consist the main theoretical paradigms employed in the social psychological analysis of populism undertaken in this chapter.1 The concept of social identity, defined as “that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership [in] a social group (or groups) together with the emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel 1974: 69), is pivotal for intragroup and intergroup behavior. A person will begin acting as part of a group when the social identity associated with the latter acquires enough salience to produce depersonalization, a condition where “individuals tend to define and see themselves less as differing individual persons and more as the interchangeable representatives of some shared social category membership” (Turner et al. 1994). While personal identities influence our self-interpretation as unique individuals, social identities operate at a higher level of abstraction (Sturmer & Simon 2004). In other words, self-categorization – through depersonalization – shifts our assessment of reality from a personal identity viewpoint to a social identity one, from thinking in terms of “I” to thinking in terms of “we”. While different explanations have been suggested, Tajfel and Turner saw categorization as the manifestation of an inherent human need to hold on to positive group identities in our effort to sustain a healthy level of individual self-esteem and personal value (Hornsley 2008; Thoits & Virshup 1997).2 How can we determine whether an individual will indeed experience depersonalization vis-à-vis a specific group identity? SCT’s answer is that the person is required to perceive this identity as reflecting her expectations, values, motives, and needs, as conditioned by the existing social                                                              1

 While there are important differences among the two theories, with the former focusing more on  intergroup relations and the latter more on the psychological basis of intragroup behavior, they are widely  considered as complementary (Thoits & Virshup 1997). See Hornsey (2008) for a historical review.  2  This specific point of the theory is still contested (see Brewer 2001; Hornsey 2008). 

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context. More specifically, group identification has both a cognitive and an evaluative component, represented respectively by the concepts of comparative and normative fit (Turner et al. 1994). Comparative fit is governed by the principle of meta-contrast, which states that we may consider including ourselves into a group if we perceive our intra-class differences as significantly smaller compared to inter-class differences within a given frame of reference (Turner et al. 1987). The ingroup must be seen as internally coherent and adequately distinct from competitive groups. However, mere variation is insufficient on its own; the category’s contents also matter. Normative fit refers to the requirement that the emerging difference between the focal category and its background exhibits consistency with our “normative beliefs and theories about the substantive social meaning of the social category” (Turner et al. 1994: 455). To paint these requirement with a broad brush, the prospective ingroup must exhibit uniqueness and moral merit. The sociocognitive passage from “I”-behavior to “we”-behavior is pivotal for political mobilization. Empirical studies have repeatedly confirmed that allegiance to partisan identities explains electoral behavior better than alternative theories (Campbell et al. 1960; Conover 1984; Dalton & Weldon 2007; Huddy et al. 2015). It is now a truism to indicate that group-based attitudes and behavior arise “from basic cognitive categorization processes that partition the social world into ingroups and outgroups” (Brewer 2007: 695). Moreover, strategic agency in political contestation entails that otherwise normal processes of social categorization are exacerbated “through deliberate manipulation by group leaders in the interests of mobilizing collective action to secure or maintain political power” (Brewer 2007: 703). Politicians are able to do this because group-relevant appeals carry greater legitimacy over claims couched in terms of personal utility (Brewer 2001). This inherently moral element in the mobilization of political identities (Reicher & Drury 2011; Gamson 1992) will always tend to prioritize collective causes over the pursuit of personally beneficial outcomes.3 Social psychological processes in populist mobilization As Klandermans (1984; also Simon 2004) indicates, successful recruitment to any type of collective political cause relies on a long sequence of mobilizing stages: communicating the existence of the ingroup to the targeted individual, conveying her eligibility for inclusion, establishing the social significance of the ingroup for current political affairs, extending an invitation and persuading the individual of the normative value of symbolically enlisting in the ingroup, and, finally, nudging the new member towards adopting and enacting the group’s norms in terms of manifest political behavior at the voting booth or elsewhere. Several psychological mechanisms need to be activated before the last stage can be reached. Since political entrepreneurs will mobilize social identities exhibiting some political bearing, it is crucial to clarify the distinction between membership and reference groups (Turner et al. 1987; Turner & Reynolds 2001). Societies are multigroup structures involving a constellation of social categories in constant competition for salience (Tajfel 1974). Superficial acknowledgment of “objective” membership in a sociological group as defined by outsiders (e.g. woman, Mandarin                                                              3

 This explains why, for instance, clientelism is considered a political pathology rather than a legitimate  avenue of winning or holding power. 

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speaker, etc.) does not necessarily indicate positive or normative attachment that lead to political action. Instead, affiliation with a reference category unlocks the potential for political activity, since the ingroup can act as a nodal point of psychological reference with all the affective, evaluative, and normative implications this entails (Brewer 2007; Hogg & Reid 2006; Turner & Reynolds 2001). Agency emerges as the crucial factor here: to become focal categories for political contestation, social identities require politicization by strategically-oriented political entrepreneurs (Simon & Klandermans 2001). Depersonalization into politicized group consciousness instills the “realization that the inability to gain valued resources in a society is not a consequence of personal failings but rather results from inequities in the decision-making and reward distribution process” (Miller et al. 1981: 508). The individual proceeds from mere identification with a membership group to conscious attachment with a reference group, qualifying the former with a political awareness of the ingroup's relative position in society while instilling a commitment to mobilize and win satisfaction for the ingroup’s aggregate societal demands (Miller et al. 1981). At the same time, any social marker can grow into a politically relevant social identity, from attire (e.g. the Phrygian cap in the French Revolution) to musical preferences (e.g. rock music in the 1960s) and even hairstyles (e.g. far-right skinheads). Nevertheless, some identities hold an advantage. Religion, skin pigment, language, ethnicity, sex, are more or less ascribed markers, easily identified by third party observers, rendering their politicization relatively straightforward. Occupational status (e.g. farmer, factory worker) and other “achieved states” (Ashmore et al. 2004) have also been successfully construed as political identities and mobilized in numerous occasions. Given this schematic overview of social psychological processes, how do populists foster selfcategorization into their ingroup? From a basic conceptualization of populism as an antiestablishment discourse in the name of popular sovereignty (Aslanidis 2016a), we can confidently infer two main social identities at work: the ingroup is defined as “the people”, while “the elite” operate as the adversarial outgroup. Populism can plausibly achieve both comparative and normative fit. First of all, the social category of “the people” is symbolically recognizable and accessible to the average citizen. Looking back at history, the political currency of the popular masses started acquiring real value when the novel fiction of the “sovereignty of the people” started replacing the older fiction of the “divine right of Kings” in 17th century England (Morgan 1988).4 After this monumental transformation reverberated in most parts of the western world, the demand for popular sovereignty became the seed from which the identity of “the people” could develop and become politically relevant. The great democratic revolutions in France and America, as well as the 1848 revolutions, offered constituent moments in the history of mankind that contained a pronounced radical populist element, now part of the global political imaginary (Frank 2010). The principle of self-government by the people rests de jure within the core of our current political credos and its denigration is virtually (or at least morally) unacceptable, even by those skeptical against majoritarian democracy.                                                              4

 It can be argued that popular sovereignty had already become politically relevant outside the modern  western sphere at various points in history, going back to ancient Greece and the Romans. 

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Fulfilling the basic requirements posed by SCT, self-categorization into the populist ingroup can take place in most societies, and certainly those where the axiom of popular sovereignty enjoys recognition by a part of the population, allowing populists to claim the high moral ground as representatives of this political tradition. However, the fact that populist entrepreneurs pit people and elites discursively against each other does not deterministically lead to the adoption of the ingroup’s identity by a given audience. Populism may exhibit a certain level of “out-of-the-box” comparative and normative fit that can function as a springboard for mobilization, yet the social identity of “the people” is usually moot in the absence of a social dilemma that would “here and now” emphasize its significance for the average person. Put differently, as citizens, we may be passively exhibiting allegiance to our social identity of “the people”, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we are also actively assertive about it (cf. Welzel & Dalton 2014).5 On the contrary, the identity of “the people” possesses a notorious fluidity, which can significantly hamper mobilization due to its failure to exhibit quotidian relevance. Populist identity entrepreneurs need to struggle hard to gather that critical mass of adherents to provide mobilizing impetus before the psychological benefits of social categorization can foster wider recruitment. They attempt to overcome these difficulties by means of two psychological mechanisms: constructing the ingroup as wide as possible, and accentuating its acute differences to a specific outgroup. The outcome is a strictly dichotomous identity space where inclusion in the populist ingroup is the only morally acceptable avenue for politically appropriate selfcategorization. The first mechanism takes advantage of the wide scope of the populist social identity and the inward permeability of the boundaries of “the people”. According to SCT theorists, our selfcategorization into partially overlapping social identities follows a hierarchical system of classification (e.g. Chelsea FC fan, Londoner, British, European, liberal) that operates at different levels of abstraction according to the level of inclusivity of each identity (Hornsley 2008; also Simon 2004). Given a hierarchical structure of politically relevant social identities, politicians benefit more by accentuating identities at the higher end of the scale, since, at the margin, potential electoral returns are greater the larger the proportion of the general audience involved (Reicher & Hopkins 1996). This is where populists, with their disdain for sectoral interests and their emphasis on the hyperinclusivity of the valued category of “the people”, stand at an advantage vis-à-vis most of their competitors. Accentuating identity at one level pushes competing identities to the background, attenuating the wider application of the meta-contrast principle (Turner et al. 2006). Open to enlisting any sort of societal grievances, as long as they can be framed as part of the wider struggle between people and elites, while at the same time prohibiting salience for less-inclusive nested identities (e.g. worker, Catholic, student etc.), populists effectively censor competing meta-contrast calculations and delimit self-categorization operations exclusively to the superordinate level of the hierarchy, occupied by the populist ingroup. They thus discursively encompass the whole spectrum of positively valenced political identities, aiming to draw                                                              5

 On the capacity of the populist identity to remain constantly in abeyance and the idea that populism  requires the politicization of citizen identity, see Aslanidis (2016b). 

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maximum support from the general pool of voters who feel part of “the people”, regardless of potential incompatibilities in social identification at lower levels of inclusiveness. A key empirical finding in studies of collective mobilization is that neophyte ingroups can avoid factionalization by focusing attention on achieving a common end (Brewer 2007). Populists will therefore implicitly or explicitly demote subordinate “we”-identities as irrelevant in the face of the ultimate political goal, the restoration of popular sovereignty. For instance, during the years of social turmoil produced by the Great Recession, populist movement entrepreneurs were found to be extremely vigilant with the monopoly of the populist “we”-identity. Conscious of the dangers of allowing subordinate identities to produce centrifugal anomalies in the fragile social coalition under construction, they aligned their populist framing in such a way as to underplay the role of nation, religion, class, and any other social category that could split the movement into competing factions (Aslanidis 2016b, 2018; Gerbaudo 2017). The populist ingroup is not only wide enough to be all-encompassing; its boundaries are further depicted as having highly permeable entry points. Due to its normative and apartisan standing, the social identity of “the people” fashions minimal barriers to entry, allowing the individual to incur limited costs in acquiring it, compared to most other political identities. For instance, the psychological strain involved in shedding a previously cherished conservative political identity to join a progressive ingroup (and vice versa) can be enormous. On the contrary, members of either group can more readily activate the universally respected baseline value of popular sovereignty and join the populist cause. This allows populists to drive a wedge into the existing structure of political identities and encroach into adjacent constituencies, as attested by numerous examples around the world. The second core psychological mechanism in populist mobilization involves using outgroup derogation as a means of recursively enhancing ingroup cohesion. Since self-categorization is inherently comparative, the salience of shared membership in a specific social category entails a “perceptual accentuation of intragroup similarities and intergroup differences on relevant correlated dimensions” (Turner 1999: 11; also Turner et al. 1994). According to Wilder & Shapiro (1984), the cueing of available out-groups against which comparison can be performed the influences social identity salience. Therefore, ingroup behavior leads to a cognitive and affective “dichotomization of the social world into clearly distinct and non-overlapping categories” (Tajfel 1974: 88). However, intergroup conflict is not a determined outcome. Social competition is only realized when no alternative exists for establishing a distinctively positive identity, with intergroup conflict proceeding to operate at the expense of a discernible outgroup (Mummendey and Schreiber 1983; Brewer 2001). Populists frame their in-group wide enough to subsume and police every other positive social identity, and then fixate intergroup hostility towards those who by populist fiat are refused inclusion in the body of the people. While these targets may either be specific individuals or collective interest groups, it is essential that they are seen as forming a coherent group. Persistent derogation in the name of the ingroup elicits an “outgroup homogeneity effect”, a “tendency for within-group accentuation of similarity to apply to outgroups rather more than it does to ingroups” (Oakes 2001; also Jenkins 2008). For those in the populist ingroup, outgroup members begin to “all look alike”. While the ingroup hosts all those entertaining socially beneficial goals, 7   

elites do not represent equally legitimate political perspectives and thus have no legitimate social bearing; they are simply self-serving. What holds “them” together is their desire to retain their illacquired privileges as members of “a caste”, “an oligarchy”, a handful of oppressors of the vast majority of the 99%. Polarization further facilitates the sense of urgency to overthrow “the system” that has stacked the deck against “us”. As Turner et al. (1987) indicate, the more salient ingroup-outgroup categorization becomes, the less will “attraction to ingroup members reflect individuals' relative personal status within the group and the more they will reflect the relative status of the ingroup compared to the outgroup.” Depending on the salience of the acquired populist identity, the individual may switch altogether from expressing grievances as a personal predicament to perceiving her interests in terms of “the needs, goals and motives associated with ingroup membership” (Turner et al 1987). Therefore, populists will constantly avoid bestowing unmitigated primacy to particular grievances and will instead strive to deflect attention away from the intramural discrepancies of their constituency by stressing their differences – as a whole – with the elite outgroup. Since residual (non-populist) identities are denied moral legitimacy and no alternative positive identity can exist at the same level of inclusivity as “the people”, the identity field is effectively dichotomized. The audience is presented with a stark contrast: either acquire the positive social identity of “the people” and join the ingroup in its struggle for popular sovereignty, or retain your old political allegiance and risk becoming “othered” as a disciple of the morally discredited elite outgroup. In this sense, the two pillars of populism, “people-centrism” and “anti-elitism”, can be seen as an amalgamation of an “identity identity” of “we, the people” and an “anti-identity identity” as in “we, the anti-elite”. Assessing identity construction as a strategic undertaking, we can assume that populists will interchangeably focus on solidifying their ingroup ex positivo, stressing the moral primacy of popular sovereignty, or take the ex negativo path, investing in the cultivation of the anti-identity aspect. However, before the group-distinctive perceptions of populism can emerge and prescribe political behavior, its entrepreneurs must eventually weave the two together into a coherent whole, since, conceptually, populism entails their combination. Conclusion: the comparative social psychological advantages of populist entrepreneurship Despite the pivotal role of social psychological processes in political contestation, populist mobilization has never been adequately analyzed from a social-psychological perspective. To investigate possible avenues for further academic collaboration, I have explored how basic principles of the social identity approach apply to our empirical knowledge of populism. My study has proceeded to suggest several psychological processes as operative in the discursive construction of the ingroup of “the people” and the outgroup of “the elite” as axiomatically adversarial social identities. I have consequently pointed to the conclusion that political entrepreneurs who attempt to mobilize may render their project viable by activating latent social psychological advantages of populist discourse. The comparative advantages of populism’s particular social psychological format can be schematically summarized as follows: (a) uncontested availability of comparative and normative fit in most societies due to the historically constituent value of popular sovereignty, allowing 8   

ingroup members to claim the high moral ground; (b) low barriers of political self-categorization due to ingroup boundary hyperpermeability, facilitating compatibility with a wide array of societal grievances and fostering cross-ideological recruitment; (c) superordinate positioning in the hierarchy of social identities due to the hyper-encompassing scope of the category of “the people,” authorizing the censorship of meta-contrast calculations and the repression of competing intragroup identities; (d) strong ingroup cohesion and identity commitment due to the dichotomization of social space by means of outgroup homogeneity effect and the concomitant attenuation of intragroup factionalization. I would like to close this study with two important notes. First, at a meta-theoretical level, my analysis stresses the overwhelming role of the constructed and contextual nature of political mobilization. Given that humans are active meaning-seekers (Simon 2004), and language is the primary domain where political identities are defined and contested (Billig 2003; Reicher & Hopkins 1996), it should be considered unsurprising that political entrepreneurs manufacture ingroups and outgroups using linguistic vectors that encourage self-categorization into groups supportive of their strategic aims (Purdue et al. 1990). As Brubaker & Cooper (2000) stress, groupist political rhetoric has a performative and constitutive quality exactly because social reality can be negotiated and contested; instead of criticizing this aspect of political meaningmaking, we should understand it as normal and even necessary. Accordingly, this chapter does not aim at painting populism in normative terms or presenting populists as taking advantage of manipulative psychological mechanisms. Rather, it is a study of a particular application of otherwise universal social psychological principles and their specific repercussions for populist mobilization. Secondly, identity construction should not be overstated as the exclusive factor conditioning support for a political project. This would render the theory overly groupist and deterministic, swinging the pendulum to the opposite extreme compared to reductionist individualistic approaches. Politicized collective identities may indeed consist unique social psychological motors of political involvement (Simon & Grabow 2010) but our eventual political preferences are also owed to cost-benefit assessments. Social self-categorization will usually operate alongside realistic interest concerns, with context arbitrating whether one of the two additive pathways will receive priority (Ellemers & Haslam 2012; Sturmer & Simon 2004; Turner & Reynolds 2001; van Zomeren 2008). Besides, at a practical level, as Reicher & Hopkins (2001: 23) have put it, the success of identity construction “depends upon hiding all traces of construction and making the definition of identity that is present seem self-evident.” Given these qualifications, I conclude by suggesting an understanding of populist discourse as a powerfully inviting wrapper around a set of possibly substantive political claims. Notwithstanding a perhaps volatile disposition, signals on concrete political issues will inevitably be provided by populist identity entrepreneurs aiming to make electoral inroads. The nominally apartisan nature of populist discourse and its ability to entertain multiple social grievances, allows populists to win at least the initially sympathetic attention for their ideas by a large number of voters with anti-elitist sentiments or a predilection for the axiom of popular sovereignty.

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