CONTEMPORARY POPULISM & CRISIS: IS THE TAIL WAGGING THE DOG?

CONTEMPORARY POPULISM & CRISIS:IS THE TAIL WAGGING THE DOG? DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS BENJAMIN MOFFITT

WINNERS?

LOSERS?

WHAT IS POPULISM? • Appeal to ‘the people’ • Crisis, breakdown, threat • ‘Bad manners’ • Political style: the repertoires of performance that are used to create political relations • Upcoming article in Political Studies – ‘Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation & Political Style’ (with Simon Tormey)

CURRENT APPROACHES TO POPULISM & CRISIS • Crisis is a necessary prerequisite, trigger or cause for populism • Crisis mighthelp populism, but we’re not sure • There is no link between populism and crisis All see populism as external to populism

FAILURE VS. CRISIS • Failure provides “the structural preconditions for crisis” (Hay 1995: 64) • Crisis is “a condition in which failure is identified and widely perceived, a condition in which systemic failure has become politically and ideationally mediated” (Hay 1999: 324) Crisis is the spectacularisationof failure

‘PERFORMING’ CRISIS • Identify failure • Elevate to the level of crisis by linking into wider framework and adding a temporal dimension • Frame ‘the people’ vs. those responsible for the crisis • Use media to propagate performance • Present simple solutions & strong leadership • Continue to perform crisis

IDENTIFY FAILURE • Political, economic, moral, cultural… • ELEVATE TO LEVEL OF CRISIS • Link to other failures within wider structural or moral framework • Add temporal dimension

FRAME ‘THE PEOPLE’ VS THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CRISIS • An ‘objective’ rationale for targeting the Other • Link together different enemies of ‘the people’ • USE MEDIA TO PROPAGATE PERFORMANCE • Spectacle, ‘media events’, press coverage, interviews • ‘Unmediated’ events – rallies, gathering, marches

PRESENT SIMPLE SOLUTIONS & STRONG LEADERSHIP • A leader ‘beyond’ politics • Procedural & institutional simplification crisis Problem: Moroccans throw stones at the Dutch Police. Solution: Arrest them, prosecute them and deport them… Problem: This government is breaking record after record in the area of mass immigration. Solution: Don’t allow in any more Eastern Europeans and shut the borders to immigrants from Muslim countries. Now!... Problem: Rotterdam, the second largest city in the Netherlands, will have an immigrant majority by 2012, Solution: Repatriation, repatriation, repatriation. What comes in can also come out (Wilders in de Bruijn 2011: 35).

CONTINUE TO PERFORM CRISIS • Switch conceptions of crisis • Extend size and scope of crisis

CONCLUSIONS • We have a simplistic (and wrong) view of the relationship between populism & crisis • Crisis should be thought of as the ‘spectacularisation’ of failure • Crisis does not cause populism – populism attempts to cause crisis • Crisis is an integral part of populism

CONTEMPORARY POPULISM & CRISIS: IS THE TAIL WAGGING THE DOG?