Transnational Populism? Representative Claims, Media and the Difficulty of Constructing a Transnational “People”

Abstract

What does populism look like beyond the nation-state? This article introduces the concept of transnational populism as a way of understanding how populists construct “the people” above the national level, thus disentangling the oft-conflated concepts of populism and nationalism. It defines transnational populism, distinguishes it from international cooperation between populists and provides illustrative examples from across the globe to demonstrate what it looks like in practice. The article also addresses why transnational populism is so rare, arguing that “the people” of transnational populism is far more difficult to construct than nationally bounded conceptions of “the people”. To flesh out this claim, the article draws Ernesto Laclau’s work on populism together with the work of those authors associated with the “constructivist turn” in political representation, exploring the role of both audiences and constituencies in answering representative claims made on behalf of the transnational “people”. Finally, the article turns to the role of media—both old and new—in broadcasting and (more problematically) answering transnational populist claims.

KEYWORDS:

• populism
• transnationalism
• nationalism
• “the people”
• media
• representation

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Benjamin De Cleen and Yannis Stavrakakis for their excellent advice and editorial guidance, and to the reviewers, whose in-depth comments improved this article immensely.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Benjamin Moffitt http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1843-6032

Notes

1. While this definition builds on the work of Laclau (2005a) and has much in common with similarly influenced definitions of populism (see Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014; De Cleen forthcoming), it also has some subtle differences, including a clearer focus on the performative and political communication aspects of the phenomenon. See Moffitt (2016, 39–41) for a detailed discussion of these differences.

2. There is also some ambiguity with regards to whether we should even view Occupy or the Indignados movements as populist: some scholars have sought to stress the difference between these movements and populist movements, with Tormey (2015) calling them “post-representative” and Gerbaudo (2017) referring to them as “citizenism”.

3. Wilders announced the formation of this group in both 2010 and 2014, but it seems that this Alliance was never actually established, with no headquarters or even official web presence to speak of.

4. While these references to “the West” and “our Judeo-Christian civilisation” are inherently transnational, they share with nationalism an in/out directionality, as opposed to the down/up logic that De Cleen (2017) argues characterises populism.

5. The Italian text reads “Vorremmo contribuire ad attuare in Italia (e diffondere/esportare nei paesi in cui viviamo) il programma e i principidel moVimento 5 Stelle, affinché nessuno venga lasciato indietro”.

6. See http://www.meetup.com/meetupeuropa/ (accessed 13 February 2017).

7. For a far more detailed examination of the transnational populist character of DiEM25, see Panayotu (2017).

8. On the “standard account” of political representation, see Castiglione and Warren (2013).

9. Disch has explicitly acknowledged the influence of Laclau and Mouffe (1985) on the work of those associated with the “constructivist turn” in political representation, as these authors put forth “the idea that acts of representation do not refer to the represented in any straightforward way but work to constitute the represented as unified as (typically) as a bearer of interests and demands” (Disch 2015, 490; original emphasis).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Benjamin Moffitt

Benjamin Moffitt (corresponding author) is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Government, Uppsala University, Sweden.