On the Intersection of Leadership and Populism in North America and Europe
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Politics and Governance (ISSN: 2183–2463) 2020, Volume 8, Issue 1, Pages 107–110 DOI: 10.17645/pag.v1i8.2946 Editorial On the Intersection of Leadership and Populism in North America and Europe Cristine de Clercy Department of Political Science, Western University, London, N6A 5C2, Canada; E-Mail: [email protected] Submitted: 22 February 2020 | Published: 5 March 2020 Abstract This editorial introduces the thematic issue and considers what the articles tell us about new approaches to studying polit- ical leadership and populism. The editorial surveys the set of eleven articles by referring to their geographic concentration (North America and Europe), along with methodological and thematic similarities. In conclusion, the set of articles displays the diverse theoretical and methodological approaches currently employed in cutting-edge research on populism and po- litical leadership. Keywords leadership; party leaders; populism; presidents; prime ministers; social media; Trump Issue This editorial is part of the issue “Leadership, Populism and Power” edited by Cristine de Clercy (Western University, Canada). © 2020 by the author; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu- tion 4.0 International License (CC BY). 1. Introduction Populism can exist comfortably with various types of leadership, and sometimes appears in leaderless form The study of populism in all subfields of political sci- (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2014, p. 1). ence has expanded significantly over the last several This thematic issue of Politics and Governance gath- years. Brexit, Donald Trump’s presidency, the “yellow ers new, cutting-edge research focused on the inter- jacket” protests in France, and Venezuela’s Bolivarian section of populism and political leadership. Here we government are some of the many examples where approach populism as a broad ideology centering on political events spread across countries and continents appeals to “the people” and critiques of “the corrupt have made headlines and attracted scholarly attention. elites.” In the call for papers we invited studies particu- Alongside this trend, the study of political leadership is larly focusing on populism as an instrument employed enjoying a renaissance. Mark Bennister notes that the by leaders, as a challenge for leaders, and examining “recent rich flowering of research presents opportuni- whether populism influences what sorts of leaders and ties for scholars to move the field forward” (Bennister, policies citizens support and eschew. As discussed in 2016, p. 1). more detail below, the final set of eleven articles di- At first blush, the concept of populism seems anti- vides rather cleanly among those concerning populism thetical to leadership; in reality populism is deeply tied to in North America, those focusing on Europe, along with political leaders and the exercise of leadership. Populist a few studies comparing both areas. movements almost always generate or select a cham- pion, a leader who represents the people. However, as 2. Leadership and Populism in North America, or as Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser (2014) warn, Compared with the United States while most manifestations of populism produce flam- boyant and strong political leaders, the link between Seven articles concern leadership and populism in North political leadership and populism is not straightforward. America. Of these, four studies rather directly engage the Politics and Governance, 2020, Volume 8, Issue 1, Pages 107–110 107 populist leadership of the American president Donald press their distrust in established institutions, senti- Trump, who remains in office at the time of writing. In ments which appear to resonate among those citizens his study of “The Populist Radical Right in the US: New who support populism (Hameleers, 2020). Media and the 2018 Arizona Senate Primary,” Jeremy Interestingly, Hameleers finds such criticisms are not Roberts notes that in the wake of Trump’s presiden- articulated by mainstream or left-wing populist leaders. tial victory, “pitched battles for the Republican Party’s In this vein—how national leaders use social media— soul broke out in primaries across the country” (Roberts, Kenny Ie’s (2020) article on “Tweeting Power: The 2020, p. 111). Roberts asks a simple but important ques- Communication of Leadership Roles on Prime Ministers’ tion: Given that populist radical right candidates, à la Twitter” may be usefully read. He analyzes how Canada’s Trump, do not belong to the Republican party establish- Justin Trudeau and Britain’s Theresa May use Twitter ment, how do they win Republican primary contests and to create personalized leader–follower relationships in so access real power? Drawing upon some European terms of their role performance and function. analyses concerning the bases of populism, Roberts con- Following on Trump’s 2016 election, Brian Budd ex- cludes that the case of the 2018 Arizona Senate primary amines whether the nativist and xenophobic rhetoric demonstrates that voters’ expectations about party con- of populist leaders in the US and Western Europe vergence, along with social media consumption, helps to has permeated Canada’s most populous province. Budd explain how populist citizens mobilize to support partic- concludes in “The People’s Champ: Doug Ford and ular leaders in primary contests (Roberts, 2020). Neoliberal Right-Wing Populism in the 2018 Ontario In a somewhat similar vein, Allesandro Nai focuses on Provincial Election” (2020) that while Ford’s election is “The Trump Paradox: How Cues from a Disliked Source one of the few domestic cases of successful populist lead- Foster Resistance to Persuasion” (Nai, 2020). Noting ership, Trumpian politics has not in fact spilled across the that populist leaders often deliberately exhibit a bad- 49th parallel. Instead, he finds Ford successfully created mannered style, that “dislike voting” is increasingly rele- a conception of “the people” using an economic and anti- vant, and that Trump is a widely disliked figure outside of cosmopolitan discourse centered on middle-class taxpay- the United States (US), he probes the persuasive power ers and opposition to urban elites. Budd’s (2020) study, of communications from controversial figures. On the ba- along with the Roberts (2020) analysis, helpfully delin- sis of an experimental study with 272 students, he con- eate some of the ideological variation within populism, cludes that a simple endorsement from the President, and both underscore the creative capacity of populist positive or negative, substantially alters how issue-based leaders to select and incorporate particular aspects of messages are perceived. Nai (2020) suggests the source this ideology. of the message may matter more than the message’s con- Similar to Budd’s concern to probe the implica- tent when populist leaders disseminate communications tions of American populism for neighbouring Canada, to citizens. Mario Levesque takes the entrenchment of the ne- Nai’s interest in discerning what motivates voters to oliberal state and the rise of populist political leaders accept or reject populist leaders is mirrored in my arti- in Canada as key elements in examining local disabil- cle with Gerard Seijts. In “How Do Populist Voters Rate ity leadership. Levesque’s (2020) study of “Leadership Their Political Leaders? Comparing Citizen Assessments as Interpreneurship: A Disability Nonprofit Atlantic in Three Jurisdictions,” we set out to explore how a sam- Canadian Profile” points out that disability leaders may ple of voters in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom face significant challenges where populist politicians on use a leader character framework to assess the charac- the right justify service reductions and budget cuts as ter of some contemporary national leaders (Seijts & de necessary to reduce the resources devoted to such “spe- Clercy, 2020). In probing whether citizens who lean to- cial interests.” Levesque concludes survival in the cur- ward populism view character the same as ordinary vot- rent context means disability leaders have become in- ers, we find these groups are quite different. Populists in terpreneurs, working to sustain operations increasingly all three jurisdictions believe that leader character mat- within dense networks and relying on interpersonal con- ters much less than in the case of ordinary citizens, who nections, shared resources, and superior communication clearly place more value on the importance of leader skills (Levesque, 2020). He expresses some doubt as to character. This finding is important for understanding whether this adaptation is viable over the longer term. how populist voters generally evaluate politicians, and why they may be drawn to some leaders over others 3. Leadership and Populism in European Case Studies, (Seijts & de Clercy, 2020). or in Cross-National Perspective A cross-national comparative approach also grounds Michael Hameleers’ study of “Populist Disinformation: The second group of papers comprises four studies Exploring Intersections between Online Populism and that are situated within Europe, or that reference the Disinformation in the US and the Netherlands” (2020). European context. Tina Burrett’s study of Vladimir Putin Through undertaking a qualitative content analysis of in power, titled “Charting Putin’s Shifting Populism in Donald Trump and Geert Wilders’ social media discourse, the Russian Media from 2000 to 2020,” assesses to what Hameleers finds both leaders use such outlets