Right-Wing Populism as Gendered Performance: The Cases of V. Putin and R. T. Erdogan

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Abstract

Gender and populism have been extensively theorized separately, but there has not been sufficient study of the way that gender undergirds populism, strengthening its often-contradictory manifestations. Focusing on the cases of Vladimir Putin and Recep T. Erdoğan, we argue that a unifying approach can be seen in their masculine political performance. We characterize this as a Janus-faced masculinity of outsiders-yet-insiders, bad-boys-yet-good-fathers. In their early years they established themselves as transgressive outsiders who developed a profile of power by building up their masculine working-class biographies. As their power became consolidated, they turned more to a paternal role fostering a conservative gender order while attacking the masculinity of their opponents and casting them as outsiders. In this way they have combined political performances that both breach the conventional gender norms and also uphold them. Focusing on the micro-politics of Erdoğan’s and Putin’s performances, we explore the ways in which a particular mode of political masculinity undergirds some of the key elements of populism, namely, leadership, nativism, and undermining of democratic institutions. We argue that the gendered performance of populism serves to create and perpetuate hierarchies and fear, legitimize the shift toward authoritarianism, and normalize arbitrary and repressive rule. The paper also demonstrates how the gendered performance of populism is constructed at the intersection of nationalism, militarism, and religious conservatism.

Keywords: gender and populism; political masculinity; Vladimir Putin; Recep T. Erdoğan

Authors

• Betul Eksi, Harvard University

• Elizabeth A. Wood, Massachusetts Institute of Technology