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Is Populism A Relevant Concept For Understanding The Rise Of The Right In India And The Us?
Essay for the module `Concepts and Arguments in Sociology`
Date : 02/03/2022
Is populism a relevant concept for understanding the rise of the right in India and the US?
Introduction
Populism is a relevant concept for understanding the rise of the right in India and the US so long as it is conceptualised as a discursive frame. Viewed as such, populism is simply a loose set of political messages that can be appropriated, adapted, and shared as a part of anybody s framing strategy. This approach avoids the pitfalls of concepts either rooted in form or content , allowing it to fully grasp the dynamism of how populism works in an environment where political communication is personalised and generated intersubjectively. In studying the rise of the right I focus on the processes of discursive construction during the election campaigns of Donald Trump and Narendra Modi in 2016 and 2014, respectively. I consider these two politicians as right-wing based on their conservative and nationalist stance and their politics of traditional values. Modi and Trump won because they were able to craft an omnipresent and personalistic brand that dominated the public discourse. Often overlooked in this process, and in discussions of populist movements more generally, is the the integral role of social media. Trump and Modi are currently the two most followed world leaders with, 47 million and 39.6 million followers, respectively. Not only did this allow them to directly communicate to their supporters, it was also a primary terrain for the formulation and circulation of discourse more generally. I aim to explore the relevance of populism for understanding this dynamic an intersubjective process of meaning-making. I begin by outlining the conceptual debate between formalist and ideational perspectives on populism. Here, I evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these two conceptual poles before exploring how populism conceptualised as a discursive frame is able to respond to their deficiencies while reconciling their contributions. The subsequent section applies this conceptual argument to an analysis of the process of discursive construction and political communication during the election campaigns of Trump and Modi. I explore how the use of hashtags disrupts both the ideational assumption that only the leader is agentive in a populist movement and the formalist assumption of the inevitability of the equivalential moment (Laclau, 2005, pg.129). Overall, I argue that the relevance of populism in understanding this discursive construction is contingent upon how we understand the location and structure its conceptual core : the specific set of ideas or messages we associate with it, such as anti-elitism and the valorisation of the people . By locating this conceptual core in neither the ontic nor ontological realms, and constructing it as a loose set of political messages, the populist discursive frame is dynamic enough to grasp the mercurial nature of political communication during the elections.
The conceptual discussion: formalist versus content-based approaches
The debate around how best to conceptualise populism has largely taken place between two theoretical poles: formalist versus content-based approaches. While content-based approaches see populism as a constituted by essential ontic features, formal approaches see it as an ontological phenomenon with a specific form but no essential content (Gidron and Bonikowski, 2014). I will evaluate the strengths and weakness of concepts rooted in either of these poles before proposing populism as a discursive frame (Aslandis, 2016) as a middle-ground that reconciles the contributions of both while eliminating their deficiencies. I begin by interrogating Laclau s formalist perspective: exploring how even though its lack of conceptual essentialism eliminates the implication of normativity in analysis, by locating its conceptual core in the ontological realm it fails to provide any discriminatory power for analysis and its structural inevitability leaves no room for agency in the study of a political phenomenon. Next, I evaluate Stanley and Mudde s ideational response to Laclau s formalism. I argue that even though its interpretive dimension affords some agency to political actors, it is still too party-centric. Furthermore, its conceptual essentialism invites the analyst to use populism as a pejorative label. Lastly, I explore how Aslandis conception of populism as a discursive frame is able to find an adequate middle-ground between these two conceptual poles. It maintains discriminatory power while resisting the implication of normativity in analysis. Furthermore, its dynamic structure does not assume a party-centric approach.
While Laclau s formalist approach is able to mitigate the implication of normative elements in analysis, his approach shows the limits of a formalist approach (Stavrakakis, 2004, pg.253). By locating the concept purely in the ontological, it is far too deterministic and it becomes too abstract to operationalise for scientific analysis. Laclau pioneered the conceptual shift from the ontic to the ontological because of his frustration with how contemporary authors were preoccupied with a futile search for the essence of true populism (Laclau, 2005, pg.13): for every proposed definition of the specific content of populism, there was an anomaly that did not fit classification (ibid.). Their essentialist approach contaminated analysis with normativity because populism was a label to identify a political phenomenon or brand a politician. His response was to conceptualise populism as the formal logic of equivalence and antagonism through which disparate political demands are articulated during the discursive construction of a communitarian space: it is a ubiquitous dimension of the political (Laclau, 2005). It is the structural effect that arises when a power fails to respond to demands in the population, resulting in the equivalential moment (Laclau, 2005, pg.129) when empty signifiers (Laclau, 2005, pg.67) constitute the people by stabilising the equivalence between these demands in the very act of naming them. With this conceptual movement to the ontological, it becomes impossible for analysis to be tainted by normativity because populism is an omnipresent metaphysical form without specifiable contents: it can no longer be a pejorative label.
Despite this contribution, Stavrakakis and Stanley criticise the excessive formalism of Laclau s approach. For Stavrakakis, Laclau s perspective shows the limits of the formalism. By locating populism in a metaphysical logic, it looses all conceptual unity. It becomes impossible to distinguish between a populist phenomenon and any other phenomenon when populism is equated with the political: in its omnipresence it looses any coherence (Stavrakakis, 2004). Stanley (2008) extends Stavrakakis critique to argue that Laclau s movement to pure formalism also elides any agency in analysis: by locating political consequentiality in the metaphysical, the formation of the popular identity is just a structural effect of a formal logic immanent in politics itself (Stanley, 2008, pg.95).
Building on these critiques of formalism, Stanley and Mudde return to a more ontic position with an ideational concept. Populism is defined as a thin-centred ideology that considered society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic camps, the pure people versus the corrupt elite, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the general will of the people. (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017, pg.6) The ideational approach has become popular in academia, inspiring many scientific studies on the prevalence of populist ideology in different regions, because of its central contribution: it provides denotational clarity (Aslandis, 2016). By delineating a distinct interpretive framework and locating these core concepts in the ontic realm, it is easily operationalised for empirical observation: populism is no longer an empty analytical shell as it is for Laclau.
While Aslandis (2016) recognises the merit of this denotational clarity, he argues that the essentialism of its conceptual genus, ideology, reintroduces the normative elements into analysis that Laclau sought to dispel (ibid.). The conceptual core, the specific set of ideas of the populist ideology, take the form of Freeden s (1998) essentialist morphology of ideology: they constitute a coherent interpretive framework. This essentialism forces the analyst to classify a political actor as either populist or not based on whether they subscribe to the complete set of populist ideas. Given this absolute choice, this essentialism tempts the analyst to classify the actor based on their subjective judgement. As such, the ideational approach repeats the deficiencies of traditional essentialist understandings: in completely abandoning Laclau s formalism, they also abandon its response to a normative analysis.
While the interpretive characteristic of the ideational approach introduces agency into the populist equation, by locating it in an ideology, Mudde and Stanley force the analyst into a supply and demand binary that only affords agency to political leader. In response to Laclau s structural inevitability, in the ideational approach, political consequentiality arises not from the political demand itself, but from its interpretation: agency is reintroduced because it follows that someone must be responsible for formulating and communicating that medium of interpretation (Stanley, 2008). Mudde (2009) applies the ideational approach to an analysis of the rise of the populist radical right in Europe. In doing so, he is forced into a party-centric approach that elides any agency on the part of the people . He first investigates the underlying cause for political demands to arise among the population, and then observes how political parties mobilise these people by formulating the populist ideology and supplying it to them. The ideational approach forces him into this party-centric analysis because, in viewing populism as a rigid interpretive edifice, only a party, having the adequate capacity, is able partake in the construction and dissemination of the ideology. It lacks the malleability and dynamism for the people to be equally agentive in the populist equation.
In defining populism as a discursive frame , Aslandis (2016) finds a middle-ground between formalist and content-based approaches. The populist discursive frame is simply a loose schemata of interpretation (Aslandis, 2016, pg.98). Its conceptual core mirrors that of Mudde s thin ideology , although its dimensions manifest not as an essentialist interpretive framework but as a malleable and easily communicable set of political messages. By locating the conceptual core in the morphology of a discursive frame, this concept is simultaneously able to maintain the denotational clarity of the ideational approach while resisting the implication of normative elements in analysis. In borrowing the dimensions of the ideational conceptual core and locating it in discourse rather than in a metaphysical effect, it retains conceptual unity necessary for scientific investigation. At the same time it mitigates a normative analysis because it replaces ideational essentialism with degreeism : given that the conceptual core is not a coherent entity, but an incongruous set of messages, the analyst is not forced into an absolute classification of the phenomenon or actor.
Furthermore, Aslandis discursive frame, unlike the populist ideology, is not forced into a party-centric approach. By locating the conceptual core in a loose set of political messages, rather than a rigid interpretive framework, the discursive frame is dynamic enough to be implicated in everyday framing strategies. Below, I explore how independent dimensions of the populist frame are used in personalised framing strategies by supporters of Trump and Modi, showing that the people are not passive recipients of a superimposed ideology but are agentive in the co-production of discourse during the election.
The formation and circulation of discourse during the election of Trump and Modi
In this section I explore the process of discursive construction and communication during the election of Trump and Modi to illustrate why we must avoid a concept of populism rooted in either form or content and instead follow the middle-ground by understanding populism as a discursive frame. I mainly do this by analysing the appropriation and circulation of hashtags during the elections and exploring how this intersubjective process of meaning-making confounds the assumptions made by concepts rooted in either ontology or the ontic. I begin by exploring how the degreeism (Aslandis, 2016, pg.93) of the discursive frame, as opposed to the essentialism of the ideational approach, lets us understand how populist ideas were communicated by Trump and Modi as a fragmented discourse rather than as a coherent ideology. Next, I explore how populist hashtags were appropriated by supporters of Trump and Modi, adapted to articulate personal demands, before being shared to become part of the discursive milieu. I argue that to account for this degree of discursive dynamism, we must conceptualise populism as a discursive frame, not a rigid interpretive framework. I go on to explore how this malleability of the discursive frame lets us account for how Modi and Trump s voting coalitions were an amalgamation of heterogenous demands rather than being unified in the way envisioned by Laclau s populist equivalential moment (Laclau, 2005, pg.129). I then explore how the concept of a populist discursive frame, in resisting a full commitment to the ontological, is able to account for how the antagonisation of Trump and Modi supporters by their political opponents was an active discursive practice rather then just a discursive effect.
By structuring the conceptual core of populism as a coherent interpretive framework, the ideational approach fails to account for the fragmented nature of populist discourse in Trump and Modi s tweets to their followers. The degreeism of the populist discursive frame, as opposed to this essentialism, both elucidates this and mitigates the implication of normativity in our analysis of the material. In the following tweets we can see how the populist conceptual core, when entering the discursive arena, is not articulated in its entirety but through its individual dimensions:
Fig.1 - @narendramodi (02/05/2014)While I was speaking I could see large number of people gathered at the various locations. I derive lot of strength from their enthusiasm
Fig.2 - @narendramodi (02/05/2014)Congress` appetite for corruption is legendary! From the earth, seas till the skies they spared nothing! UP will not accept this any longer.
Fig.3 - @realDonaldTrump (03/10/2014)We must bring the truth directly to hard-working Americans who want to take our country back. #BigLeagueTruth http://www.BigLeagueTruth.com
Fig.4 - @realDonaldTrump (30/09/2014)Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?
Clearly, 140 characters is not enough space to transmit the fully fledged interpretive framework of the populist ideology but only isolated dimensions of it. In Fig.1 Modi only implies a single populist idea: that through his embodiment of the people , politics should be an expression of the volont g n rale (general will) of the people. (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017, pg.6) In Fig.2 and Fig.4 Modi and Trump only address the issue of the corrupt political establishment. In Fig.3 Trump only articulates the idea of a homogenous and the pure people (ibid.). This is not to deny that cumulatively Trump and Modi s tweets may express the complete conceptual edifice, but when these populist messages actually enter the twittersphere , people encounter them as fragmented ideas, not as a coherent ideology. According to Mudde s ideational approach, it is ambiguous whether these tweets can be studied as part of an analysis of the election Trump and Modi: his essentialist conception would require the complete conceptual core to be communicated for it to qualify as populist ideology. In reality, only fragments of it can be transmitted within 140 characters. Conceptualised as a discursive frame, on the other hand, we can fully appreciate the populist nature of these tweets. While the dimensions of its conceptual core mirror that of Mudde s, they are independent political messages: ideological essentialism is replaced by degreeism . This chimes with the fragmented nature of populist messages in Trump and Modi s tweets. This move away from ideational essentialism also mitigates the invitation of normativity in our analysis: we are not forced to label Trump and Modi as populists based on these tweets because they are just seen as using aspects of a populist message that form part of everyday political conduct.
To account for the way in which Trump and Modi s election slogans were appropriated, adapted, and shared by their supporters on Twitter, it becomes clear that we must conceptualise populism as a discursive frame. Unlike Mudde s populist ideology, the discursive frame is versatile enough to explain how the process of discursive construction during the election was more than just a party-centric imposition of an ideology. While the slogans Drain The Swamp and Abki Baar Modi Sarkaar (meaning, this time, Modi! ) may have originally been used by Trump and Modi to criticise the elite political establishment, supporters on twitter adopted them as loose political messages, used them to articulate their own demand, before sharing them to become part of the discursive milieu during the election:
Fig.5 - @sgtmolly06 (24/09/16)Revelations prove why no charges were ever pressed. Our government is corrupt. Top to bottom. Inside out. #DrainTheSwamp #copolitics
Fig.6 - @KetzerHexe (05/11/16)Trump SOON> @OANN #OANN @RSBNetwork #MAGA #TrumpTrain #DrainTheSwamp #WomenForTrump #1A #2A #GunVote #NRA #tcot #sot
Fig.7 - @SeanTDEl (18/10/16)Where is the #ProjectVeritas story? #MediaBias #HoaxingMedia #EnoughLies #EnoughofHillary #LockHerUp #CriminalClintons #TraitorHillary
Fig.8 - @vikrantgautam56 (29/04/2014)Vote for rural development!#AbKiBaarModiSarkaar @narendramodi @ModiArmy@pragnik
Fig.9 - @imarorapuneet (06/05/2014)@narendramodi means Development! #BrandVaranasi "#AbKiBaarModiSarkaar #abkibaar300paar
Fig.10 - @JayHinduRastram (19/04/2014)To prevent India becoming another Dar Ul Islam like Pakistan vote for #BJP to ensure Hindutva!! #AbKiBaarModiSarkaar
Mudde s populist ideology is unable to account for this degree of discursive dynamism because the notion of an interpretive framework lacks the malleability of a simple discursive frame. Viewing Drain The Swamp as a populist ideology elides the mercurial nature of its use in practice: the supporters above do not simply echo Trump s critique of the Washington elite. Instead, they use it as a hashtag to articulate their own demands. While @sgtmolly06 may also be using it to criticise the political establishment, @SeanTDEI uses it to criticise the media elite, and @KetzerHexe implicates it in her pro-gun stance. Similarly, Abki Baar Modi Sarkaar goes beyond Modi s attack on Congress: @vikrantgautam56 uses it to express a rural developmental message, while @imarorapuneet implicates it in a message about urban development. @JayHinduRastram, on the other hand, uses it to articulate an anti-Muslim Hindu nationalist message. For Stanley (2008, pg.98), ideologies are interpretive frameworks that emerge as a result of the practice of putting ideas to work in language as concepts. While this interpretive dimension may introduce some agency, when populism is conceptualised as an ideology, this agency only extends to Trump and Modi, not their supporters. Populism is a rigid interpretive edifice, so only powerful individuals can be seen as capable to engage in this practice of formulating and disseminating the framework. As such, it cannot account for how social media has democratised access to this discursive practice.
By conceptualising populism as a discursive frame we are able to account for how these populist slogans were appropriated and shared as personalised messages, which in turn helps us to appreciate the active role of these supporters in the co-production of populist discourse. By discarding the ideological genus, the interpretive framework is replaced by a simple interpretive frame: the conceptual core is just a loose set of political messages. Discursive frames are more flexible and situationally influenced constructs than formal ideological systems and are more easily and rapidly communicated to target groups, adapted to change, and extended to blend with other frames. (Tarrow, 1992, pg.190) As such, it can account for how @SeanTDEl, for example, appropriates #LockHerUp as a loose anti-elite message, adapts it to articulate a critique of the media before distributing it to others. So the malleability of populism as a discursive frame allows us to appreciate how framing is a deliberate activity (Benford, 1997) available to anyone, not just a practice reserved for political insiders.
Beyond disrupting the party-centric analysis of the ideational approach, this dynamic capacity of the populist frame to be adopted and adapted to a personalistic demand also lets us account for how the heterogeneity of the voters was not united into a coalition in the way that Laclau s populist equivalential moment (Laclau, 2005, pg.129) envisions, but how the voting blocs were more of an amalgamation of disparate demands articulated with a common frame. Many have diagnosed the election of Trump and Modi as a direct result of them exploiting right-wing sentiments to unite voters under shared majoritarian demands. For Gusterson (2017), Trump s anti-minority rhetoric allowed him to unite voters of disparate socio-economic backgrounds because it capitalised on majoritarian cultural backlash sentiments. In a similar vein, for Kenny (2017), Modi was able to garner support beyond the just upper-caste urban Hindu constituency because he exploited the communal divisions between Hindus and Muslims. While I do not deny that Trump and Modi were divisive during their campaigns, as the following tweets show, there was not a common popular grievance to which the divisive rhetoric responded do, many of the demands remained highly personalistic:
Fig.11 - @chefknifefetish (18/07/16)this nigger bastard is dividing our country, our heritage is being destroyed at every turn...#makeamericagreatagain #dixieland
Fig.12 - @johnny4arizona (25/10/16)@realDonaldTrump is best for Ohio. Restore Ohio`s greatness, jobs, rebuild factories, military, infrastructure, coal #MakeAmericaGreatAgain
Fig.13 - @iAsura_ (09/08/2013)Anybody who truly believes in #IndiaFirst is a Hindu according to me!! That`s the simple definition of #Hindutva according to #RSS
Fig.14 - @intweeple (03/04/2014)@Satyamyes @waglenikhil @BDUTT @rahulkanwal #paidmedia #Newstraders have ruined india enough. Now #development agenda #indiafirst
Laclau s notion of the equivalential moment fails to account for this degree of heterogeneity in the demands among Trump and Modi supporters. In Laclau s theory of populism, this is the point at which the disparate demands of a population become bound by equivalence because they congeal around the same popular empty signifier (Laclau, 2005). This stabilises the equivalential chain between the individuals because the disparate demands come to be articulated through it as a popular demand. This results in the populist moment where the people are constituted. For Laclau, this equivalential moment is characterised by the tension between the particularity of a single demand and the universality of the popular demand. By viewing Make America Great Again and India First as these types of popular demands, we fail to account for how personalised political expression based on these slogans actually is. While for @intweeple #IndiaFirst means a moderate demand for a more developmental agenda, for @iAsura_ it stands for Hindu nationalism. While for @johnny4arizona #MakeAmericaGreatAgain articulates a demand to restore the industrial American Dream, for @chefknifefetish it represents the revision back to a white supremacist past. These slogans cannot be viewed as popular demands because despite being mutually appropriated by the supporters we cannot observe a common articulation of a shared demand at the expense of the particularity of their demands. Not only do these demands maintain their particularity when they use these slogans, but that particularity can be seen as formative in the construction of the popular identity given that they are being shared as discourse.
Unlike Laclau s idea of the popular demand , the populist discursive frame allows us to account for this degree of discursive heterogeneity among the Trump and Modi supporters. Given that the populist frame is a loose set of political messages, it is simply a discursive vessel through which particular demands can be articulated. The mutual appropriation of the frame does not assume a common demand, only a common frame through which particular demands may be articulated. As such, the coalition of voters is not assumed to be constituted through the elision of particularity. Instead, we can fully grasp how it is more of an amalgamation of particular demands.
By resisting a full commitment to the ontological, the concept of a populist discursive frame is able to account for how the antagonisation of Trump and Modi supporters by their opponents was an active discursive practice rather than just a discursive effect. During the election of Trump and Modi, the demonisation of the supporters by their opponents played a role in constituting a popular identity among the supporters. In the US, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, branded half of Trump s supporters as deplorables who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamaphobic. This rallied support for Trump s cause because it confirmed his accusations: a condescending liberal elite has taken over the establishment. Trump supporters went on to embrace the label of deplorable as marker of their loyalty to him . The term internet hindus was popularised as a pejorative label for Modi s hardline social media supporters when Sagarika Ghose called them a swarm of bees (Dasgupta 2012). They came to embrace this label as an umbrella term for their collective online identity (Mohan, 2015). So Trump and Modi s opponents, in antagonising the supporters, are complicit in creating these social divides, garnering more support for the candidates by delineating and constituting the antagonised people .
By locating populism in the ontological, Laclau s formalist perspective fails to grasp how this antagonistic discourse had an effect, rather than just being an effect of a structurally inevitable logic. In defining populism as discursive construction along the loin of equivalence and antagonism, Laclau (2005) relegates discourse to an effect of the ontological. As such, he is unable to account for how, for example, Hillary s demonisation of Trump supporters as deplorables played an active role in rallying support for Trump: by being appropriated and used by the supporters as identity markers, antagonistic discourse was effective, not merely effect.
Instead, by conceptualising populism as a discursive frame we are able to grasp the effective nature of this antagonistic discourse because it resists a full commitment to the ontological. Populism is simply located in discourse rather than in the logic of construction of that discourse. This locates populism within the scope of human practice by eliminating structural inevitability. We are therefore able to appreciate the antagonistic rhetoric by opponents as effective.
Conclusion
Populism is a relevant concept for understanding the process of discursive construction and circulation during the elections of Trump and Modi so long as we define it as a discursive frame. Only this perspective adequately forms and locates the conceptual core of populism: locating it between the ontic and ontological realms and structuring it as a loose set of political messages. Understanding the conceptual core as such results in a concept of populism that is versatile enough to account for the degree of discursive dynamism evident in the election of Trump and Modi. In essence, only the populist discursive frame is able to fully grasp how populism was practice during the elections: populist messages were not just transmitted by a leader, nor did they emerge from a metaphysical effect, but they were applied by a myriad of people in personalised framing strategies. The ideational approach cannot grasp this because it understands the conceptual core as an interpretive framework constituted by specific ideas. This means it lacks the malleability to account for how populist messages were adopted and adapted. By being an ontic entity constituted by ideas it fails to realise how the messages functioned more as platforms for the articulation of personalistic ideas. The formalist approach cannot grasp the idea of populism as practice either, although for the opposite reason: it locates the concept in the absolute ontological. This means that political analysis lacks any degree of agency: by being an inevitable political logic, populism is out of the scope of human intelligibility and action. Only when populism is conceptualised a discursive frame can we account for how populism was practice. The conceptual core is neither a set of ideas nor a metaphysical logic, but a set of loose populist messages: it is dynamic enough to be implicated in any framing practice.
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Introduction
Populism is a relevant concept for understanding the rise of the right in India and the US so long as it is conceptualised as a discursive frame. Viewed as such, populism is simply a loose set of political messages that can be appropriated, adapted, and shared as a part of anybody s framing strategy. This approach avoids the pitfalls of concepts either rooted in form or content , allowing it to fully grasp the dynamism of how populism works in an environment where political communication is personalised and generated intersubjectively. In studying the rise of the right I focus on the processes of discursive construction during the election campaigns of Donald Trump and Narendra Modi in 2016 and 2014, respectively. I consider these two politicians as right-wing based on their conservative and nationalist stance and their politics of traditional values. Modi and Trump won because they were able to craft an omnipresent and personalistic brand that dominated the public discourse. Often overlooked in this process, and in discussions of populist movements more generally, is the the integral role of social media. Trump and Modi are currently the two most followed world leaders with, 47 million and 39.6 million followers, respectively. Not only did this allow them to directly communicate to their supporters, it was also a primary terrain for the formulation and circulation of discourse more generally. I aim to explore the relevance of populism for understanding this dynamic an intersubjective process of meaning-making. I begin by outlining the conceptual debate between formalist and ideational perspectives on populism. Here, I evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these two conceptual poles before exploring how populism conceptualised as a discursive frame is able to respond to their deficiencies while reconciling their contributions. The subsequent section applies this conceptual argument to an analysis of the process of discursive construction and political communication during the election campaigns of Trump and Modi. I explore how the use of hashtags disrupts both the ideational assumption that only the leader is agentive in a populist movement and the formalist assumption of the inevitability of the equivalential moment (Laclau, 2005, pg.129). Overall, I argue that the relevance of populism in understanding this discursive construction is contingent upon how we understand the location and structure its conceptual core : the specific set of ideas or messages we associate with it, such as anti-elitism and the valorisation of the people . By locating this conceptual core in neither the ontic nor ontological realms, and constructing it as a loose set of political messages, the populist discursive frame is dynamic enough to grasp the mercurial nature of political communication during the elections.
The conceptual discussion: formalist versus content-based approaches
The debate around how best to conceptualise populism has largely taken place between two theoretical poles: formalist versus content-based approaches. While content-based approaches see populism as a constituted by essential ontic features, formal approaches see it as an ontological phenomenon with a specific form but no essential content (Gidron and Bonikowski, 2014). I will evaluate the strengths and weakness of concepts rooted in either of these poles before proposing populism as a discursive frame (Aslandis, 2016) as a middle-ground that reconciles the contributions of both while eliminating their deficiencies. I begin by interrogating Laclau s formalist perspective: exploring how even though its lack of conceptual essentialism eliminates the implication of normativity in analysis, by locating its conceptual core in the ontological realm it fails to provide any discriminatory power for analysis and its structural inevitability leaves no room for agency in the study of a political phenomenon. Next, I evaluate Stanley and Mudde s ideational response to Laclau s formalism. I argue that even though its interpretive dimension affords some agency to political actors, it is still too party-centric. Furthermore, its conceptual essentialism invites the analyst to use populism as a pejorative label. Lastly, I explore how Aslandis conception of populism as a discursive frame is able to find an adequate middle-ground between these two conceptual poles. It maintains discriminatory power while resisting the implication of normativity in analysis. Furthermore, its dynamic structure does not assume a party-centric approach.
While Laclau s formalist approach is able to mitigate the implication of normative elements in analysis, his approach shows the limits of a formalist approach (Stavrakakis, 2004, pg.253). By locating the concept purely in the ontological, it is far too deterministic and it becomes too abstract to operationalise for scientific analysis. Laclau pioneered the conceptual shift from the ontic to the ontological because of his frustration with how contemporary authors were preoccupied with a futile search for the essence of true populism (Laclau, 2005, pg.13): for every proposed definition of the specific content of populism, there was an anomaly that did not fit classification (ibid.). Their essentialist approach contaminated analysis with normativity because populism was a label to identify a political phenomenon or brand a politician. His response was to conceptualise populism as the formal logic of equivalence and antagonism through which disparate political demands are articulated during the discursive construction of a communitarian space: it is a ubiquitous dimension of the political (Laclau, 2005). It is the structural effect that arises when a power fails to respond to demands in the population, resulting in the equivalential moment (Laclau, 2005, pg.129) when empty signifiers (Laclau, 2005, pg.67) constitute the people by stabilising the equivalence between these demands in the very act of naming them. With this conceptual movement to the ontological, it becomes impossible for analysis to be tainted by normativity because populism is an omnipresent metaphysical form without specifiable contents: it can no longer be a pejorative label.
Despite this contribution, Stavrakakis and Stanley criticise the excessive formalism of Laclau s approach. For Stavrakakis, Laclau s perspective shows the limits of the formalism. By locating populism in a metaphysical logic, it looses all conceptual unity. It becomes impossible to distinguish between a populist phenomenon and any other phenomenon when populism is equated with the political: in its omnipresence it looses any coherence (Stavrakakis, 2004). Stanley (2008) extends Stavrakakis critique to argue that Laclau s movement to pure formalism also elides any agency in analysis: by locating political consequentiality in the metaphysical, the formation of the popular identity is just a structural effect of a formal logic immanent in politics itself (Stanley, 2008, pg.95).
Building on these critiques of formalism, Stanley and Mudde return to a more ontic position with an ideational concept. Populism is defined as a thin-centred ideology that considered society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic camps, the pure people versus the corrupt elite, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the general will of the people. (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017, pg.6) The ideational approach has become popular in academia, inspiring many scientific studies on the prevalence of populist ideology in different regions, because of its central contribution: it provides denotational clarity (Aslandis, 2016). By delineating a distinct interpretive framework and locating these core concepts in the ontic realm, it is easily operationalised for empirical observation: populism is no longer an empty analytical shell as it is for Laclau.
While Aslandis (2016) recognises the merit of this denotational clarity, he argues that the essentialism of its conceptual genus, ideology, reintroduces the normative elements into analysis that Laclau sought to dispel (ibid.). The conceptual core, the specific set of ideas of the populist ideology, take the form of Freeden s (1998) essentialist morphology of ideology: they constitute a coherent interpretive framework. This essentialism forces the analyst to classify a political actor as either populist or not based on whether they subscribe to the complete set of populist ideas. Given this absolute choice, this essentialism tempts the analyst to classify the actor based on their subjective judgement. As such, the ideational approach repeats the deficiencies of traditional essentialist understandings: in completely abandoning Laclau s formalism, they also abandon its response to a normative analysis.
While the interpretive characteristic of the ideational approach introduces agency into the populist equation, by locating it in an ideology, Mudde and Stanley force the analyst into a supply and demand binary that only affords agency to political leader. In response to Laclau s structural inevitability, in the ideational approach, political consequentiality arises not from the political demand itself, but from its interpretation: agency is reintroduced because it follows that someone must be responsible for formulating and communicating that medium of interpretation (Stanley, 2008). Mudde (2009) applies the ideational approach to an analysis of the rise of the populist radical right in Europe. In doing so, he is forced into a party-centric approach that elides any agency on the part of the people . He first investigates the underlying cause for political demands to arise among the population, and then observes how political parties mobilise these people by formulating the populist ideology and supplying it to them. The ideational approach forces him into this party-centric analysis because, in viewing populism as a rigid interpretive edifice, only a party, having the adequate capacity, is able partake in the construction and dissemination of the ideology. It lacks the malleability and dynamism for the people to be equally agentive in the populist equation.
In defining populism as a discursive frame , Aslandis (2016) finds a middle-ground between formalist and content-based approaches. The populist discursive frame is simply a loose schemata of interpretation (Aslandis, 2016, pg.98). Its conceptual core mirrors that of Mudde s thin ideology , although its dimensions manifest not as an essentialist interpretive framework but as a malleable and easily communicable set of political messages. By locating the conceptual core in the morphology of a discursive frame, this concept is simultaneously able to maintain the denotational clarity of the ideational approach while resisting the implication of normative elements in analysis. In borrowing the dimensions of the ideational conceptual core and locating it in discourse rather than in a metaphysical effect, it retains conceptual unity necessary for scientific investigation. At the same time it mitigates a normative analysis because it replaces ideational essentialism with degreeism : given that the conceptual core is not a coherent entity, but an incongruous set of messages, the analyst is not forced into an absolute classification of the phenomenon or actor.
Furthermore, Aslandis discursive frame, unlike the populist ideology, is not forced into a party-centric approach. By locating the conceptual core in a loose set of political messages, rather than a rigid interpretive framework, the discursive frame is dynamic enough to be implicated in everyday framing strategies. Below, I explore how independent dimensions of the populist frame are used in personalised framing strategies by supporters of Trump and Modi, showing that the people are not passive recipients of a superimposed ideology but are agentive in the co-production of discourse during the election.
The formation and circulation of discourse during the election of Trump and Modi
In this section I explore the process of discursive construction and communication during the election of Trump and Modi to illustrate why we must avoid a concept of populism rooted in either form or content and instead follow the middle-ground by understanding populism as a discursive frame. I mainly do this by analysing the appropriation and circulation of hashtags during the elections and exploring how this intersubjective process of meaning-making confounds the assumptions made by concepts rooted in either ontology or the ontic. I begin by exploring how the degreeism (Aslandis, 2016, pg.93) of the discursive frame, as opposed to the essentialism of the ideational approach, lets us understand how populist ideas were communicated by Trump and Modi as a fragmented discourse rather than as a coherent ideology. Next, I explore how populist hashtags were appropriated by supporters of Trump and Modi, adapted to articulate personal demands, before being shared to become part of the discursive milieu. I argue that to account for this degree of discursive dynamism, we must conceptualise populism as a discursive frame, not a rigid interpretive framework. I go on to explore how this malleability of the discursive frame lets us account for how Modi and Trump s voting coalitions were an amalgamation of heterogenous demands rather than being unified in the way envisioned by Laclau s populist equivalential moment (Laclau, 2005, pg.129). I then explore how the concept of a populist discursive frame, in resisting a full commitment to the ontological, is able to account for how the antagonisation of Trump and Modi supporters by their political opponents was an active discursive practice rather then just a discursive effect.
By structuring the conceptual core of populism as a coherent interpretive framework, the ideational approach fails to account for the fragmented nature of populist discourse in Trump and Modi s tweets to their followers. The degreeism of the populist discursive frame, as opposed to this essentialism, both elucidates this and mitigates the implication of normativity in our analysis of the material. In the following tweets we can see how the populist conceptual core, when entering the discursive arena, is not articulated in its entirety but through its individual dimensions:
Fig.1 - @narendramodi (02/05/2014)While I was speaking I could see large number of people gathered at the various locations. I derive lot of strength from their enthusiasm
Fig.2 - @narendramodi (02/05/2014)Congress` appetite for corruption is legendary! From the earth, seas till the skies they spared nothing! UP will not accept this any longer.
Fig.3 - @realDonaldTrump (03/10/2014)We must bring the truth directly to hard-working Americans who want to take our country back. #BigLeagueTruth http://www.BigLeagueTruth.com
Fig.4 - @realDonaldTrump (30/09/2014)Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?
Clearly, 140 characters is not enough space to transmit the fully fledged interpretive framework of the populist ideology but only isolated dimensions of it. In Fig.1 Modi only implies a single populist idea: that through his embodiment of the people , politics should be an expression of the volont g n rale (general will) of the people. (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017, pg.6) In Fig.2 and Fig.4 Modi and Trump only address the issue of the corrupt political establishment. In Fig.3 Trump only articulates the idea of a homogenous and the pure people (ibid.). This is not to deny that cumulatively Trump and Modi s tweets may express the complete conceptual edifice, but when these populist messages actually enter the twittersphere , people encounter them as fragmented ideas, not as a coherent ideology. According to Mudde s ideational approach, it is ambiguous whether these tweets can be studied as part of an analysis of the election Trump and Modi: his essentialist conception would require the complete conceptual core to be communicated for it to qualify as populist ideology. In reality, only fragments of it can be transmitted within 140 characters. Conceptualised as a discursive frame, on the other hand, we can fully appreciate the populist nature of these tweets. While the dimensions of its conceptual core mirror that of Mudde s, they are independent political messages: ideological essentialism is replaced by degreeism . This chimes with the fragmented nature of populist messages in Trump and Modi s tweets. This move away from ideational essentialism also mitigates the invitation of normativity in our analysis: we are not forced to label Trump and Modi as populists based on these tweets because they are just seen as using aspects of a populist message that form part of everyday political conduct.
To account for the way in which Trump and Modi s election slogans were appropriated, adapted, and shared by their supporters on Twitter, it becomes clear that we must conceptualise populism as a discursive frame. Unlike Mudde s populist ideology, the discursive frame is versatile enough to explain how the process of discursive construction during the election was more than just a party-centric imposition of an ideology. While the slogans Drain The Swamp and Abki Baar Modi Sarkaar (meaning, this time, Modi! ) may have originally been used by Trump and Modi to criticise the elite political establishment, supporters on twitter adopted them as loose political messages, used them to articulate their own demand, before sharing them to become part of the discursive milieu during the election:
Fig.5 - @sgtmolly06 (24/09/16)Revelations prove why no charges were ever pressed. Our government is corrupt. Top to bottom. Inside out. #DrainTheSwamp #copolitics
Fig.6 - @KetzerHexe (05/11/16)Trump SOON> @OANN #OANN @RSBNetwork #MAGA #TrumpTrain #DrainTheSwamp #WomenForTrump #1A #2A #GunVote #NRA #tcot #sot
Fig.7 - @SeanTDEl (18/10/16)Where is the #ProjectVeritas story? #MediaBias #HoaxingMedia #EnoughLies #EnoughofHillary #LockHerUp #CriminalClintons #TraitorHillary
Fig.8 - @vikrantgautam56 (29/04/2014)Vote for rural development!#AbKiBaarModiSarkaar @narendramodi @ModiArmy@pragnik
Fig.9 - @imarorapuneet (06/05/2014)@narendramodi means Development! #BrandVaranasi "#AbKiBaarModiSarkaar #abkibaar300paar
Fig.10 - @JayHinduRastram (19/04/2014)To prevent India becoming another Dar Ul Islam like Pakistan vote for #BJP to ensure Hindutva!! #AbKiBaarModiSarkaar
Mudde s populist ideology is unable to account for this degree of discursive dynamism because the notion of an interpretive framework lacks the malleability of a simple discursive frame. Viewing Drain The Swamp as a populist ideology elides the mercurial nature of its use in practice: the supporters above do not simply echo Trump s critique of the Washington elite. Instead, they use it as a hashtag to articulate their own demands. While @sgtmolly06 may also be using it to criticise the political establishment, @SeanTDEI uses it to criticise the media elite, and @KetzerHexe implicates it in her pro-gun stance. Similarly, Abki Baar Modi Sarkaar goes beyond Modi s attack on Congress: @vikrantgautam56 uses it to express a rural developmental message, while @imarorapuneet implicates it in a message about urban development. @JayHinduRastram, on the other hand, uses it to articulate an anti-Muslim Hindu nationalist message. For Stanley (2008, pg.98), ideologies are interpretive frameworks that emerge as a result of the practice of putting ideas to work in language as concepts. While this interpretive dimension may introduce some agency, when populism is conceptualised as an ideology, this agency only extends to Trump and Modi, not their supporters. Populism is a rigid interpretive edifice, so only powerful individuals can be seen as capable to engage in this practice of formulating and disseminating the framework. As such, it cannot account for how social media has democratised access to this discursive practice.
By conceptualising populism as a discursive frame we are able to account for how these populist slogans were appropriated and shared as personalised messages, which in turn helps us to appreciate the active role of these supporters in the co-production of populist discourse. By discarding the ideological genus, the interpretive framework is replaced by a simple interpretive frame: the conceptual core is just a loose set of political messages. Discursive frames are more flexible and situationally influenced constructs than formal ideological systems and are more easily and rapidly communicated to target groups, adapted to change, and extended to blend with other frames. (Tarrow, 1992, pg.190) As such, it can account for how @SeanTDEl, for example, appropriates #LockHerUp as a loose anti-elite message, adapts it to articulate a critique of the media before distributing it to others. So the malleability of populism as a discursive frame allows us to appreciate how framing is a deliberate activity (Benford, 1997) available to anyone, not just a practice reserved for political insiders.
Beyond disrupting the party-centric analysis of the ideational approach, this dynamic capacity of the populist frame to be adopted and adapted to a personalistic demand also lets us account for how the heterogeneity of the voters was not united into a coalition in the way that Laclau s populist equivalential moment (Laclau, 2005, pg.129) envisions, but how the voting blocs were more of an amalgamation of disparate demands articulated with a common frame. Many have diagnosed the election of Trump and Modi as a direct result of them exploiting right-wing sentiments to unite voters under shared majoritarian demands. For Gusterson (2017), Trump s anti-minority rhetoric allowed him to unite voters of disparate socio-economic backgrounds because it capitalised on majoritarian cultural backlash sentiments. In a similar vein, for Kenny (2017), Modi was able to garner support beyond the just upper-caste urban Hindu constituency because he exploited the communal divisions between Hindus and Muslims. While I do not deny that Trump and Modi were divisive during their campaigns, as the following tweets show, there was not a common popular grievance to which the divisive rhetoric responded do, many of the demands remained highly personalistic:
Fig.11 - @chefknifefetish (18/07/16)this nigger bastard is dividing our country, our heritage is being destroyed at every turn...#makeamericagreatagain #dixieland
Fig.12 - @johnny4arizona (25/10/16)@realDonaldTrump is best for Ohio. Restore Ohio`s greatness, jobs, rebuild factories, military, infrastructure, coal #MakeAmericaGreatAgain
Fig.13 - @iAsura_ (09/08/2013)Anybody who truly believes in #IndiaFirst is a Hindu according to me!! That`s the simple definition of #Hindutva according to #RSS
Fig.14 - @intweeple (03/04/2014)@Satyamyes @waglenikhil @BDUTT @rahulkanwal #paidmedia #Newstraders have ruined india enough. Now #development agenda #indiafirst
Laclau s notion of the equivalential moment fails to account for this degree of heterogeneity in the demands among Trump and Modi supporters. In Laclau s theory of populism, this is the point at which the disparate demands of a population become bound by equivalence because they congeal around the same popular empty signifier (Laclau, 2005). This stabilises the equivalential chain between the individuals because the disparate demands come to be articulated through it as a popular demand. This results in the populist moment where the people are constituted. For Laclau, this equivalential moment is characterised by the tension between the particularity of a single demand and the universality of the popular demand. By viewing Make America Great Again and India First as these types of popular demands, we fail to account for how personalised political expression based on these slogans actually is. While for @intweeple #IndiaFirst means a moderate demand for a more developmental agenda, for @iAsura_ it stands for Hindu nationalism. While for @johnny4arizona #MakeAmericaGreatAgain articulates a demand to restore the industrial American Dream, for @chefknifefetish it represents the revision back to a white supremacist past. These slogans cannot be viewed as popular demands because despite being mutually appropriated by the supporters we cannot observe a common articulation of a shared demand at the expense of the particularity of their demands. Not only do these demands maintain their particularity when they use these slogans, but that particularity can be seen as formative in the construction of the popular identity given that they are being shared as discourse.
Unlike Laclau s idea of the popular demand , the populist discursive frame allows us to account for this degree of discursive heterogeneity among the Trump and Modi supporters. Given that the populist frame is a loose set of political messages, it is simply a discursive vessel through which particular demands can be articulated. The mutual appropriation of the frame does not assume a common demand, only a common frame through which particular demands may be articulated. As such, the coalition of voters is not assumed to be constituted through the elision of particularity. Instead, we can fully grasp how it is more of an amalgamation of particular demands.
By resisting a full commitment to the ontological, the concept of a populist discursive frame is able to account for how the antagonisation of Trump and Modi supporters by their opponents was an active discursive practice rather than just a discursive effect. During the election of Trump and Modi, the demonisation of the supporters by their opponents played a role in constituting a popular identity among the supporters. In the US, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, branded half of Trump s supporters as deplorables who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamaphobic. This rallied support for Trump s cause because it confirmed his accusations: a condescending liberal elite has taken over the establishment. Trump supporters went on to embrace the label of deplorable as marker of their loyalty to him . The term internet hindus was popularised as a pejorative label for Modi s hardline social media supporters when Sagarika Ghose called them a swarm of bees (Dasgupta 2012). They came to embrace this label as an umbrella term for their collective online identity (Mohan, 2015). So Trump and Modi s opponents, in antagonising the supporters, are complicit in creating these social divides, garnering more support for the candidates by delineating and constituting the antagonised people .
By locating populism in the ontological, Laclau s formalist perspective fails to grasp how this antagonistic discourse had an effect, rather than just being an effect of a structurally inevitable logic. In defining populism as discursive construction along the loin of equivalence and antagonism, Laclau (2005) relegates discourse to an effect of the ontological. As such, he is unable to account for how, for example, Hillary s demonisation of Trump supporters as deplorables played an active role in rallying support for Trump: by being appropriated and used by the supporters as identity markers, antagonistic discourse was effective, not merely effect.
Instead, by conceptualising populism as a discursive frame we are able to grasp the effective nature of this antagonistic discourse because it resists a full commitment to the ontological. Populism is simply located in discourse rather than in the logic of construction of that discourse. This locates populism within the scope of human practice by eliminating structural inevitability. We are therefore able to appreciate the antagonistic rhetoric by opponents as effective.
Conclusion
Populism is a relevant concept for understanding the process of discursive construction and circulation during the elections of Trump and Modi so long as we define it as a discursive frame. Only this perspective adequately forms and locates the conceptual core of populism: locating it between the ontic and ontological realms and structuring it as a loose set of political messages. Understanding the conceptual core as such results in a concept of populism that is versatile enough to account for the degree of discursive dynamism evident in the election of Trump and Modi. In essence, only the populist discursive frame is able to fully grasp how populism was practice during the elections: populist messages were not just transmitted by a leader, nor did they emerge from a metaphysical effect, but they were applied by a myriad of people in personalised framing strategies. The ideational approach cannot grasp this because it understands the conceptual core as an interpretive framework constituted by specific ideas. This means it lacks the malleability to account for how populist messages were adopted and adapted. By being an ontic entity constituted by ideas it fails to realise how the messages functioned more as platforms for the articulation of personalistic ideas. The formalist approach cannot grasp the idea of populism as practice either, although for the opposite reason: it locates the concept in the absolute ontological. This means that political analysis lacks any degree of agency: by being an inevitable political logic, populism is out of the scope of human intelligibility and action. Only when populism is conceptualised a discursive frame can we account for how populism was practice. The conceptual core is neither a set of ideas nor a metaphysical logic, but a set of loose populist messages: it is dynamic enough to be implicated in any framing practice.
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