Papers by Arthur Borriello
Cette contribution a une histoire intellectuelle du populisme replace le conflit au cœur du polit... more Cette contribution a une histoire intellectuelle du populisme replace le conflit au cœur du politique, decentre le regard en insistant sur les experiences latino-americaines, propose une mise en perspective historique et interroge la nature de la democratie.
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Krisis | Journal for Contemporary Philosophy
The paper re-assesses the relation between the economic crisis and the rise of populist parties i... more The paper re-assesses the relation between the economic crisis and the rise of populist parties in the South of Europe. It argues that the former did not cause the latter directly, but rather played out as a catalyst of previously existing trends, i.e. the erosion of party democracy and the disintermediation of Western societies. It combines several theoretical approaches to advance an explanatory model that replaces the relation between crisis and populism – conceived of as political, performative and discursively mediated – within its structural pre-conditions. By doing so, it aims at providing a synthetic and steady explanation of the contemporary rise of populism in Southern Europe and beyond.
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Krisis. Journal for contemporary philosophy., 2021
The paper reassesses the relation between the economic crisis and the rise of populist parties in... more The paper reassesses the relation between the economic crisis and the rise of populist parties in the South of Europe. It argues that the former did not cause the latter directly, but rather played out as a catalyst of previously existing trends, i.e. the erosion of party democracy and the disintermediation of Western societies. It combines several theoretical approaches to advance an explanatory model that replaces the relation between crisis and populism-conceived of as political, performative and discursively mediated-within its structural preconditions. By doing so, it aims at providing a synthetic and steady explanation of the contemporary rise of populism in Southern Europe and beyond.
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European Politics and Society, 2022
After a hopeful electoral debut, left populism in Europe has undergone relative normalization. Wh... more After a hopeful electoral debut, left populism in Europe has undergone relative normalization. While the literature on new parties might regard the persistence of left populist forces as a success, we deem instead that such an outcome should be considered against the backdrop of the initial left populist hypothesis. Based on a discussion of the existing literature and ten semi-structured interviews with party members, this paper analyses the case of Podemos in Spain as a proxy to assess the fortunes of left populism in Europe at large. We describe its political trajectory and explain its failure to go mainstream by reference to the interplay between, at a macro level, the structure of political opportunities and, at a meso level, its interpretation of the populist strategy. In particular, we focus on the paradoxical effects of the representative void, on the specific and unfavorable mutations of the populist moment in Spain for Podemos, and its own organizational and strategic shortcomings.
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Ballast, 2021
Dans les années 2010, une vague idéologique a saisi certaines formations politiques de gauche sou... more Dans les années 2010, une vague idéologique a saisi certaines formations politiques de gauche soucieuses de s’emparer du pouvoir. Podemos voyait le jour en 2014, désireux de « convertir l’indignation en changement politique », et entendait, en lieu et place du clivage droite/gauche et des schémas marxistes traditionnels — à ses yeux caducs —, opposer « le peuple », uni autour de revendications sociales élémentaires, à « la caste », c’est-à-dire l’oligarchie néolibérale. Ceux d’en bas contre ceux d’en haut, en somme. Deux ans plus tard, le Parti de gauche cédait la place à la France insoumise : il n’était plus question de rassembler « l’autre gauche » (la gauche radicale) mais de « fédérer le peuple » contre « les puissants », « les importants », « ceux qui se gavent », autour de l’idée de « révolution citoyenne ». À l’origine de cette inflexion de premier ordre, on trouve essentiellement les travaux élaborés par les politologues Ernesto Laclau et Chantal Mouffe, eux-mêmes inspirés par les expériences progressistes sud-américaines de la décennie précédente. En 2020, « la fin du populisme de gauche » est régulièrement formulée. Sous la forme d’un dossier thématique, les chercheurs Arthur Borriello et Anton Jäger proposent ici de revenir sur 10 ans de théories, de luttes et de discussions politiques.
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Journal of Political Ideologies, 2020
This article provides an internal assessment of Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism. While critiq... more This article provides an internal assessment of Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism. While critiques of Laclau have been made from a variety of traditions, few scholars have sought to work through the contradictions of his thought on internal terms. This article identifies some key antinomies in Laclau’s oeuvre and hints at some redemptive strategies. It starts with a short summary of Laclau’s conception of populism in contextual and conceptual fashion. Subsequently, four possible deficits of Laclau’s theory are examined, ranging from a tension between verticality and horizontality, an ahistorical dimension, a descriptive and normative hyperformalism, and the lack of a reflexive approach to the term ‘populism’ itself. The article finishes with a fresh research agenda for ‘post-Laclauian’ theories of populism.
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Theory & Event, 2020
This paper offers a critical assessment of Ernesto
Laclau’s theory of populism in light of recent... more This paper offers a critical assessment of Ernesto
Laclau’s theory of populism in light of recent populist politics.
Following the 2008 crisis and its fallout, Laclau’s writings have
enjoyed both practical and theoretical prominence, inspiring
movements from Podemos to La France insoumise and an energetic
section of discourse theory. Recent events, however, seem
to testify to the exhaustion of his populist imaginary. Examples
include Podemos’ internal tensions and its uneasy cohabitation
with the Spanish Socialists and Syriza’s troubled European pact,
while discourse theorists have reconsidered some of the tradition’s
tenets. This paper investigates this cul-de-sac and hints at possible
escape routes. It does so by examining two possible deficits in
Laclau’s theory of populism as presented in On Populist Reason: (1)
a tension between verticality and horizontality in Laclau’s variant
of “leadership democracy” and (2) a descriptive and normative
“hyperformalism.” The first deficit is explicated with reference to
recent developments in European party-systems and how these
restructure patterns of political engagement across party lines.
The second digs deeper into Laclau’s earlier oeuvre for the roots
of formalism and insights sidelined in his later work. The paper
finishes with suggestions for a research agenda for post-Laclauian
populism.
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Ballast, 2020
La cacophonie des commentaires politiques et médiatiques à propos du populisme est à la mesure de... more La cacophonie des commentaires politiques et médiatiques à propos du populisme est à la mesure de la confusion qui règne dans l’espace académique lorsqu’il s’agit de le définir. Peu intéressés par l’histoire du phénomène et du concept, les observateurs tendent à l’analyser au travers d’un prisme biaisé, eurocentré et anhistorique. Désirant à tout prix se poser en défenseurs de la « démocratie » contre les formes supposées de son dévoiement actuel, ils finissent par assimiler l’ensemble des maux contemporains (personnalisation de la vie politique, « fake news », méfiance envers les institutions, désaffiliation partisane, tendances autoritaires et xénophobes, etc.) à des manifestations d’un populisme omniprésent et néfaste. Ce faisant, ils mélangent allègrement les causes et leurs effets, augmentant plus encore la confusion qui entoure le concept (et qu’eux-mêmes se délectent de dénoncer). Que nous dit un concept qui se confond avec son contraire ?
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Catalyst, 2020
The last decade has witnessed an explosion of commentary on the topic of populism. More than a co... more The last decade has witnessed an explosion of commentary on the topic of populism. More than a convenient bugbear for polemicists, populism now appears as the sign of a protracted and pervasive crisis ailing European democracies. What the contours and causality of this crisis are, however, is seldom clear. This article remedies the indeterminacy and seeks to place Europe’s current populist moment in thicker context. It begins by locating this trend — including left (i), right (ii), and nonpartisan (iii) populisms — in the context of a broader crisis of mediation in European societies after party democracy. It follows up with a balance sheet for each populist variant, focusing specifically on left-populist outfits. More than a reflexive dismissal or endorsement, it offers a systemic analysis of populism’s rise and draws out an equally systemic response.
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Journal of European Integration, 2019
The multiple crises that the EU has faced over the last decade have
provided fertile ground for t... more The multiple crises that the EU has faced over the last decade have
provided fertile ground for the emergence of new political movements,
often labelled as ‘anti-system’, ‘populist’ and ‘Eurosceptics’.
One defining characteristic of these parties is their claim to represent
‘the people’ and their reliance on the idea of sovereignty. This
article aims at examining how these populist parties have framed
sovereignty in relation to the economic and migration crises. It
argues that the binary opposition between EU integration and
national sovereignty does not tell the whole story, and that the
populist upsurge reflects instead competing versions of sovereignty
at the national level. To test this hypothesis, we conduct
a corpus-based analysis of the discourse of four leading populist
parties between 2012 and 2017: the Front National, the UK
Independence Party, the Movimento cinque Stelle and Podemos.
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Jacobin, 2019
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Imagining the Peoples of Europe. Populist discourses across the political spectrum, by Zienkowski, Jan and Ruth Breeze (eds.), 2019
In this chapter, we compare the discourse of Podemos and Movimento Cinque Stelle in order to answ... more In this chapter, we compare the discourse of Podemos and Movimento Cinque Stelle in order to answer the following question: to what extent do these movements pertain to the same political phenomenon? Based on Laclau’s definition of populism, we provide a “snapshot” of both parties’ discourse between 2012
and 2016 by carrying out a corpus-based analysis that combines lexicography and metaphor analysis. The results show that they display a populist logic and represent two counter-discourses against neoliberal hegemony. However, they also display important differences that could prove to be decisive when it comes to seizing political power and building an alternative to the hegemonic order they challenge, as their recent evolutions have shown.
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Podemos and the New Political Cycle Left-Wing Populism and Anti-Establishment Politics, 2018
Arthur Borriello and Samuele Mazzolini compare Podemos with Italian party-movement M5S, which bar... more Arthur Borriello and Samuele Mazzolini compare Podemos with Italian party-movement M5S, which barely can be considered a Left-wing populist movement. The authors apply Laclau’s framework to prove that both parties pertain to the same political logic (a populist response that attempts to join a number of heterogeneous unsatisfied popular demands) but differ in the sense that only Podemos can be defined as a counter-hegemonic subject with a real possibility of impacting the politics of its country.
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Langage et société, 2019
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Mots. Les langages du politique, 2017
Cet article compare les discours de légitimation des plans d’austérité de trois chefs d’exécutif ... more Cet article compare les discours de légitimation des plans d’austérité de trois chefs d’exécutif (Mario Monti, José Luis Zapatero et Mariano Rajoy) durant la crise de la zone euro. À travers une analyse des métaphores, il cherche à montrer la tension inhérente à ce discours qui, d’une part, consacre l’autonomie de la sphère économique et sa prééminence sur la sphère politique et, d’autre part, doit se plier aux exigences symboliques de la fonction politique.
En esto artículo, se lleva a cabo un análisis comparativo del discurso de austeridad que han mantenido los líderes de Italia y España (Mario Monti, José Luis Zapatero y Mariano Rajoy) durante la crisis de la zona euro. A través de un análisis de las metáforas, el artículo muestra la tensión inherente en el discurso de austeridad que, por un lado, sanciona la autonomía de la esfera económica y, por otro lado, tiene que cumplir con los requisitos simbólicos de la tarea política.
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The Eurozone crisis and the remarkable convergence of national governments towards austerity poli... more The Eurozone crisis and the remarkable convergence of national governments towards austerity policies draw scholars' attention to the discursive strategies that they have used in order to legitimate their economic decisions. This article studies the common features of austerity discourse beyond national and partisan boundaries. It relies on an in-depth analysis combining lexicography and the study of metaphors in speeches of the Italian and Spanish heads of government between 2011 and 2013. While drawing on recent work addressing the legitimation of economic policies, this research takes a step back in order to shed light on the broader discourse on which austerity policies rely and in order to explain the common patterns in various political actors' discourse. Rooted in a post-foundational approach, it identifies several discursive strategies for depoliticising economic issues (e.g. the construction of an economic common sense, the appeal to external constraints and the metaphorical naturalisation of economics), thus unveiling their political nature. The 'restructuring' and 'rescaling' of social practices are identified as the main mechanisms pertaining to the articulation of such a broader hegemonic discourse.
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The recent financial and debt crisis has resuscitated the debate about European federalism – a t... more The recent financial and debt crisis has resuscitated the debate about European federalism – a theme that seemed not to have survived the painful constitutional adventure that ended with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. With the adoption of significant policy and institutional measures for tightening macroeconomic and budgetary coordination (including a constitutionally enshrined debt brake), the reforms of the monetary union have undisputedly brought the European Union further on the path towards an ever closer union. In an era where EU integration has been increasingly politicised, and Euroscepticism has been on the rise and exploited by anti-system parties, national leaders have to face a political hiatus and respond to increased needs for symbolic and discursive legitimation of further federalisation. This is all the more crucial for French and German leaders who have brokered the main decisions during the crisis of the eurozone. Against this background, the purpose of this article is not to assess whether, or to what extent, the recent reforms of economic and monetary union have made the EU more federal. Rather, the purpose is to tackle the following puzzle: How have EU leaders legitimised the deepening of federal integration in a context where support for more European federalism is at its lowest? To elucidate this, a lexicographic discourse analysis is conducted based on all speeches held by the German Chancellor Merkel and the two French Presidents Sarkozy and Hollande, previous to, or after European summits from early 2010 until the spring of 2013. The findings indicate that federalism is both taboo and pervasive in French and German leaders' discourse. The paradox is barely apparent, though. While the ‘F-word’ is rarely spoken aloud, two distinctive visions co-exist in the French and German discourse. The coming of age of a political union through constitutional federalism is pictured as ineluctable, yet as a distant mirage out of reach of today's decision makers. At the same time, the deepening of functional federalism in order to cope with economic interdependence is a ubiquitous imperative that justifies further integration. The persisting gap between the constitutional and the functional vision of European federalism has crucial implications. Insofar as the Union is held responsible for not delivering successful economic policy, political leaders will fail to legitimise both functional and constitutional federalism.
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Papers by Arthur Borriello
Laclau’s theory of populism in light of recent populist politics.
Following the 2008 crisis and its fallout, Laclau’s writings have
enjoyed both practical and theoretical prominence, inspiring
movements from Podemos to La France insoumise and an energetic
section of discourse theory. Recent events, however, seem
to testify to the exhaustion of his populist imaginary. Examples
include Podemos’ internal tensions and its uneasy cohabitation
with the Spanish Socialists and Syriza’s troubled European pact,
while discourse theorists have reconsidered some of the tradition’s
tenets. This paper investigates this cul-de-sac and hints at possible
escape routes. It does so by examining two possible deficits in
Laclau’s theory of populism as presented in On Populist Reason: (1)
a tension between verticality and horizontality in Laclau’s variant
of “leadership democracy” and (2) a descriptive and normative
“hyperformalism.” The first deficit is explicated with reference to
recent developments in European party-systems and how these
restructure patterns of political engagement across party lines.
The second digs deeper into Laclau’s earlier oeuvre for the roots
of formalism and insights sidelined in his later work. The paper
finishes with suggestions for a research agenda for post-Laclauian
populism.
provided fertile ground for the emergence of new political movements,
often labelled as ‘anti-system’, ‘populist’ and ‘Eurosceptics’.
One defining characteristic of these parties is their claim to represent
‘the people’ and their reliance on the idea of sovereignty. This
article aims at examining how these populist parties have framed
sovereignty in relation to the economic and migration crises. It
argues that the binary opposition between EU integration and
national sovereignty does not tell the whole story, and that the
populist upsurge reflects instead competing versions of sovereignty
at the national level. To test this hypothesis, we conduct
a corpus-based analysis of the discourse of four leading populist
parties between 2012 and 2017: the Front National, the UK
Independence Party, the Movimento cinque Stelle and Podemos.
and 2016 by carrying out a corpus-based analysis that combines lexicography and metaphor analysis. The results show that they display a populist logic and represent two counter-discourses against neoliberal hegemony. However, they also display important differences that could prove to be decisive when it comes to seizing political power and building an alternative to the hegemonic order they challenge, as their recent evolutions have shown.
En esto artículo, se lleva a cabo un análisis comparativo del discurso de austeridad que han mantenido los líderes de Italia y España (Mario Monti, José Luis Zapatero y Mariano Rajoy) durante la crisis de la zona euro. A través de un análisis de las metáforas, el artículo muestra la tensión inherente en el discurso de austeridad que, por un lado, sanciona la autonomía de la esfera económica y, por otro lado, tiene que cumplir con los requisitos simbólicos de la tarea política.
Laclau’s theory of populism in light of recent populist politics.
Following the 2008 crisis and its fallout, Laclau’s writings have
enjoyed both practical and theoretical prominence, inspiring
movements from Podemos to La France insoumise and an energetic
section of discourse theory. Recent events, however, seem
to testify to the exhaustion of his populist imaginary. Examples
include Podemos’ internal tensions and its uneasy cohabitation
with the Spanish Socialists and Syriza’s troubled European pact,
while discourse theorists have reconsidered some of the tradition’s
tenets. This paper investigates this cul-de-sac and hints at possible
escape routes. It does so by examining two possible deficits in
Laclau’s theory of populism as presented in On Populist Reason: (1)
a tension between verticality and horizontality in Laclau’s variant
of “leadership democracy” and (2) a descriptive and normative
“hyperformalism.” The first deficit is explicated with reference to
recent developments in European party-systems and how these
restructure patterns of political engagement across party lines.
The second digs deeper into Laclau’s earlier oeuvre for the roots
of formalism and insights sidelined in his later work. The paper
finishes with suggestions for a research agenda for post-Laclauian
populism.
provided fertile ground for the emergence of new political movements,
often labelled as ‘anti-system’, ‘populist’ and ‘Eurosceptics’.
One defining characteristic of these parties is their claim to represent
‘the people’ and their reliance on the idea of sovereignty. This
article aims at examining how these populist parties have framed
sovereignty in relation to the economic and migration crises. It
argues that the binary opposition between EU integration and
national sovereignty does not tell the whole story, and that the
populist upsurge reflects instead competing versions of sovereignty
at the national level. To test this hypothesis, we conduct
a corpus-based analysis of the discourse of four leading populist
parties between 2012 and 2017: the Front National, the UK
Independence Party, the Movimento cinque Stelle and Podemos.
and 2016 by carrying out a corpus-based analysis that combines lexicography and metaphor analysis. The results show that they display a populist logic and represent two counter-discourses against neoliberal hegemony. However, they also display important differences that could prove to be decisive when it comes to seizing political power and building an alternative to the hegemonic order they challenge, as their recent evolutions have shown.
En esto artículo, se lleva a cabo un análisis comparativo del discurso de austeridad que han mantenido los líderes de Italia y España (Mario Monti, José Luis Zapatero y Mariano Rajoy) durante la crisis de la zona euro. A través de un análisis de las metáforas, el artículo muestra la tensión inherente en el discurso de austeridad que, por un lado, sanciona la autonomía de la esfera económica y, por otro lado, tiene que cumplir con los requisitos simbólicos de la tarea política.
The end of this populist decade and the exhaustion of the political cycle opened by the Great Recession – paving the way to the new cycle, opened by the outburst of the pandemic and marked by radical uncertainty – calls for a lucid balance sheet of the political phenomena that the financial crisis has engendered. To do so, it is necessary to give a critical assessment of left populist movements while avoiding the two symmetrical pitfalls that consist in demonizing them or depicting them as the royal road to democratic renewal and regeneration of the Left. In other words, any criticism of left populism should start by taking it seriously and reflecting upon it both “with” and “against” its own theoretical foundations.
The historical and geographical scope of left populism, however, goes much beyond contemporary European politics. It is also most often explicitly linked to a specific theoretical tradition (but not restricted to it), the Essex school of discourse analysis led by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, which analyses the formation of collective identities in a post-Marxist perspective. For these reasons, any critical and comprehensive assessment of left populism must combine at least three complementary approaches: historical genealogy, theoretical reflection, and empirical research. The conference will be structured around these three axes and their permanent dialogue. It is thus open to all disciplines (sociology, political science, history, philosophy, anthropology), to all geographic areas (Europe, Latin America, Asia, etc.) and to all historical periods. The objective is to draw up an inventory, as complete as possible, of the knowledge, debates, and research perspectives on left-wing populism. The paper proposals should fall within one or more of these three research axes:
• History of left populism. This axis will gather papers dedicated to the history of left populism as a phenomenon and as a concept. The paper proposals should focus on issues such as the content, limits, and variety of historical manifestations of left populism, as well as the relations of (dis-)continuity between them.
• Theory of left populism. This axis will welcome papers that address left populism definition, its relation to crises, democracy, and adjacent concepts (nationalism/patriotism, plebeianism, etc.), as well as the relation between academia and the political field in grasping/constructing the populist hype.
• Left populism in practice. This axis will welcome empirical investigations on left-wing populism, based on various methods (sociological, discourse analytic, ethnographic, quantitative, etc.) that focus on its conditions of emergence and growth, the factors fostering or hampering its success, as well as its modes of organisation and communication.
Date and place
April 29 and 30, 2021, University of Liège
Submission
Proposals must be sent before December 10, 2020 to the organizers:
Arthur Borriello (Cevipol/FNRS, Université libre de Bruxelles) artubor@gmail.com
Manuel Cervera-Marzal (Pragmapolis/FNRS, Université de Liège) manuelcerveramarzal@gmail.com
The proposals (title, plan, bibliography, short biography) should be between 1000 and 1500 characters long.
Additional links
https://www.facebook.com/events/440893013563105
8e Congrès de l’Association Belge Francophone de Science Politique (ABSP)
9e Congrès International des Associations Francophones de Science Politique (COSPOF)
Envoi des propositions (500 mots maximum) avant le 15 septembre 2021 à :
artubor@gmail.com / laura.chazel@iepg.fr / david.copello@casadevelazquez.org / federico.tarragoni@gmail.com / info@absp.be