Regrounding Populism: Moving Beyond Questions of Definition and Content

Abstract

While conventional studies of electoral populism acknowledge that such mobilizations are linked tosignificant economic crises, their preoccupation with defining what exactly populism is often leads them to downplay the unified structural roots of different sorts of populistmobilizations. Thisessaypresents the  beginnings  of  an  alternative  framework  for  the  study  of  electoral populism that draws on the neo-Gramscian theory of political articulation that links studies of global  economic  crises with conventional  theories  of  populism.While  crisesare  an  endemic feature  of  global  capitalism,  their political manifestation  is shaped  bythe  variedinstitutional structures and legacies in which they are translated.