Populist Communication about World Politics: Using the International for Domestic Mobilization
Populists are constantly on the campaign trail, even after having been voted into power, 16 and they adopt a performative style to engage with different domestic audiences to deliver on their promises. Thus, foreign policy issues are perfectly suited for domestic political mobilization. Since a dichotomy between ‘the people’ and ‘the others’ (foreigners, minorities: horizontal dimension) and between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ (including international organizations and foreign governments: vertical dimension) is a crucial element of populist discourse, challenges and tensions in international relations may provide discursive and strategic opportunities for populism at the domestic level. Populist discourse will entail a tight interweaving between the vertical and horizontal dimensions, presenting (domestic and international) elites as not only detached from the lives of ordinary people, but also uprooted from the nation, cosmopolitan, and loyal primarily to international structures (e.g. the European Union), and even conspiring against the ‘people’. All this can happen in combination with the self-depiction of populist leaders as particularly strong masculine figures able to save the ‘people’ from existential threats. The gendered dimension of populist mobilization discourses will be given particular consideration. Adopting a political communication perspective allows us to focus both on ideology (expressed in statements and actions taken by political actors) and on the role of the media in disseminating such ideology through different performative acts and strategies. Social media are often the channel preferred by populists as they allow an unmediated communication between the leader (understood as the embodiment of the ‘popular will’) and the ‘true people’ – as opposed to ‘elitist’ mainstream traditional media. The analysis will address how populist mobilization exploits existing societal divisions by addressing specific groups that see themselves as marginalized or disadvantaged as a consequence of the policies promoted by the ‘establishment’, and how this ultimately fosters political polarization. Moreover, we will focus on how populist narratives about international issues are contested by various societal actors domestically. This WP addresses the close link between foreign policy and domestic politics by studying how populist use foreign policy issues and ‘the international’ broadly speaking to generate support within their countries. It thereby closely relates to all other WPs.