No populism’s land? Religion and gender in Romanian politics

ABSTRACT

While populism is one of the most analysed aspects of contemporary politics, we know little about its interaction with religion and about motivations leading political parties to oppose or support a secular appropriation of religious themes and symbols beyond any spiritual or doctrinal dimension. This paper aims to disentangle the intersection of religion and populism in Romania with regard to the concept of family, by exploring how parliamentarians use religious symbols and contents within their speeches during the debates preparing the 2018 referendum on family in Romania. The analysis is based on a dataset of parliamentary debates covering the adoption of the referendum in the Parliament (2012–2018) and the follow-up period (2018–2020). We aim to provide a nuanced understanding of how political actors conceive and represent religion and gender in contemporary politics based on a case-study in which overtly populist parties remain isolated in the extra-parliamentary arena.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• religion
• gender
• family
• referendum
• Romania

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ov Cristian Norocel, Alberta Giorgi, and the anonymous peer-reviewers for insightful comments that helped improve this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).