Zwischen Populismus und radikaler Demokratie, zwischen Partei und Bewegung: zum diskursiven Nachleben von Platzbewegungen

Syriza

This research project examines how the protest discourses of the so-called square movements in six European countries were taken up by party formations and channeled into different representational offerings. Square movements are understood to be various protest movements that are characterized in particular by collective identity-forming practices of public square assemblies and occupations as well as a radical democratic goal horizon of re(be)founding democracy, which in turn makes them responsive to different party-shaped "representative claims" (Saward) and - according to the preliminary thesis - experiences partial closures of various kinds (e.g. nationalist, left- or right-wing populist) through them.

In this way, the project aims to connect to and link at least two lines of inquiry: first, the tension between radical democracy and populism, which comes to the fore both in the square movements and in party attempts to connect to it, and which can be operationalized for empirical analysis on the basis of shifts within Ernesto Laclau's theory of discourse and hegemony; second, the literature on forms of party organization in transition (e.g., the (re)emergence of populist parties, the (re)emergence of populist parties, the (re)emergence of populist parties, and the emergence of populist parties. e.g., the (re)emergence of "movement parties") especially as a consequential phenomenon of recent protest mobilizations. Using the discourse and hegemony analysis of the so-called Essex School, which is based on Laclau, square movements as well as party-shaped attempts to link to them are examined in the following countries: Germany (PEGIDA), France (Gilets jaunes); Greece (Aganaktismenoi); Russia (Movement "For Fair Elections"); Spain (Democracia Real Ya); Ukraine (Euromaidan).

The aim of the research is to create a typology of party-based "representative claims" that bridges the different conceptualizations of radical democracy and populism theories on the one hand, and party and movement studies on the other, by framing representational claims in terms of both discourse theory and organizational type.


Project-related publications:

Kim, Seongcheol, 2022: Between Radical Democracy and Left Populism on the Margins: Protest Politics and Organization in the Left Front (Russia) and the Left Opposition (Ukraine), in: Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 16 (2) [im Erscheinen].

Kim, Seongcheol, 2022: Between Autonomy and Representation: Toward a Post-Foundational Discourse Analytic Framework for the Study of Horizontality and Verticality, in: Critical Discourse Studies, doi:10.1080/17405904.2022.2077397 (Online First).

Kim, Seongcheol, 2021: Von Lefort zu Mouffe. Populismus als Moment und Grenze radikaler Demokratie, in: Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, doi:10.1007/s41358-021-00263-6

Kim, Seongcheol, 2020: Radical Democracy and Left Populism after the Squares: 'Social Movement' (Ukraine), Podemos (Spain), and the Question of Organization, in: Contemporary Political Theory, 19 (2), S. 211 - 232.

Kim, Seongcheol; Nonhoff, Martin (Hg.), 2022: Platzproteste zehn Jahre danach. Eine Bestandsaufnahme, Mittelweg 36, 31 (4), 96 S.

Leonhardt, Christian; Nonhoff, Martin, 2019: Widerständige Differenz. Transnationale soziale Bewegungen zwischen gegenhegemonialer Institutionalisierung und nicht-integrativer Präfiguration, in: Zeitschrift für Politische Theorie, 10 (1), S. 9 - 28.

Nonhoff, Martin, 2021: Das Politische und die Unerlässlichkeit von Herrschaftskritik, oder: Populismus und das (radikal-)demokratische Versprechen, in: Franziska Martinsen, Oliver Flügel-Martinsen, Martin Saar (Hg.): Das Politische (in) der Politischen Theorie. Stuttgart: Nomos, S. 59 - 77.

Rodi P., Karavasilis L., Puleo L., 2021. When nationalism meets populism: examining right-wing populist & nationalist discourses in the 2014 & 2019 European parliamentary elections, in: European Politics and Society, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23745118.2021.1994809