Broad populist coalitions require a common enemy and ambiguous symbols

Evidence

This marked a significant divergence from older socialist approaches. Rather than relying upon the old industrial working class, these new populists sought to construct a broad and inclusive popular subject, capable of reclaiming democratic institutions in the name of “the many not the few.” To a certain extent, this was a pragmatic way to deal with their extreme heterogeneity. As Ernesto Laclau points out, the construction of any broad popular coalition rests upon the identification of a common enemy and the use of symbols that tend toward ambiguity, so as to represent all the coalition’s components. This language, however, was more than a mere strategic tool: as we shall see later in this chapter, it also reflected a specific (populist) imaginary related to the dynamics of the crisis itself. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 94

Categorization

• DEFINE: Succinct statement of Laclau’s mechanism by which heterogeneous demands are concatenated into a ‘people’ against an elite ‘other’.
• XREF: connects to: Many populist movements expand rather than restrict who counts as the people — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 52; Political symbols split into consensus-building versus conflict-marking functions; Populist ambiguity yields lukewarm economics and narrow nationalism in power — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 319 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• National identity requires crafted enemies to become activist ideology #exemplifies (0.85) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1656
• Political symbols split into consensus-building versus conflict-marking functions #expands (0.82)
• Populist ambiguity yields lukewarm economics and narrow nationalism in power #expands (0.80) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 319
• Politicized collective identity requires power struggles reaching beyond immediate antagonists #corroborates (0.78) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4395