Populism, Nationalism, and Conceptual Stretching

• In Event: Political Ethnography and Fieldwork in the Study of Contemporary Populism

Abstract

Populism has exploded in the last 20 years, and it is the political phenomenon of the decade.
One study of 31 states in Europe found that 25% of voters are now voting for populist parties.
The academic literature on populism, however, still suffers some conceptual inadequacies and,
in particular, “conceptual stretching” (Müller 2016; Weyland 2001). In my view, too many
disparate types of political parties and political movements are now viewed by some academics
and the mainstream press as “populist.” The term has become a catch-all category that is
increasingly useless, if we are to be academically rigorous. Especially in those cases of populist
parties and movements that combine nationalist ideologies with populist appeals, I argue that
conceptual inadequacies are rampant. See, for example (Martí and Barbier 2017).

I argue in this paper that civic substate nationalist parties in multinational democracies (such as
the Scottish Nationalist Party, Partido Nacionalista Vasco, PDeCAT, Femu a Corsica, Südtiroler
Volkspartei) are not populist parties nor are they exemplars of “populism,” contrary to what
much of the academic literature is arguing (Martí and Barbier 2017). These are very different
civic substatate national parties and movements, to be distinguished from ethnonational
populist parties such as Salvini’s Lega Nord, Orbán’s Fidesz, Abascal’s Vox, and Le Pen’s FN.
Fieldwork can make an important contribution to a scientific research program by laying the
foundation for theory building and the creation of falsifiable hypotheses. It can help us
understand different societies on their own terms rather than merely testing hypotheses
developed elsewhere.

I draw from my own very extensive fieldwork experience studying the formation of political
preferences among sub-state nationalists in sub-state national societies, conducted during the
last decade in four states: Canada (Quebec), Spain (Catalonia), and more recently in Italy (Valle
d’Aosta and South Tyrol), and USA (Puerto Rico). I have studied 15 sub-state nationalist political
parties in four countries, performed over 70 interviews with top-level political leaders, collected
over 850 completed questionnaire responses from the base-level militants of sub-state political
parties, and performed 15 focus group interviews with base-level militants.
Importantly, I was also fully immersed in the languages, cultures, histories, institutions, and the
daily life of these societies for at least one year, observing every aspect of politics and life
firsthand. In sum, I essentially did four “macroethnographies” (or “societal ethnographies”) in
four countries. I analyze the contours of this method, explain why it is macroethnographic, and argue that this
is the best method for studying political preferences in society-wide political movements.

Importantly, this is the best method for making a contribution to the literature on populism, by
showing why civic substate nationalist parties in Scotland, Catalonia, South Tyrol, Puerto Rico,
etc. are NOT populist parties nor are they exemplars of “populism.”

Author

• Jaime Gerardo Lluch, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras