Defeated populism is absorbed hierarchically into the ruling order

Evidence

Thus the defeat of the ‘democratic promise’ implicit in American populism adopted the pattern we have seen throughout this book: the dissolution of equivalential links and the differential incorporation of sectors within a wider organic society – ‘transformism’, to use Gramsci’s term. And this differential incorporation was not, of course, equalitarian but hierarchical. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 412

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Gramsci’s ‘transformism’ as the term for differential incorporation of defeated popular sectors.
• XREF: connects to: An empty signifier can be captured and reinscribed by opposing sectors — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 403; Absorbing rival elites into the ruling bloc decapitates and neutralizes opposition; Ruling classes absorb and neutralize subversive movements through transformism — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2079 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Transformism absorbed opposition elites into the ruling bloc #corroborates (0.95)
• Ruling classes absorb and neutralize subversive movements through transformism #corroborates (0.90) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2079
• Absorbing rival elites into the ruling bloc decapitates and neutralizes opposition #corroborates (0.85)