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.
This study examines the pillarised and partitocratic nature of Belgian political parties via an empirical overview of their party on the ground. Two main research questions guide the study: To what extent can party membership figures in Belgium be considered as ideal-typical of pillarised or partitocratic parties? And how does the social and political profile of party members in Belgium correspond to what one might expect from pillarised or partitocratic parties? The study relies on two types of data set: party membership figures since WWII and membership survey data of the four 'dominant' relatives in each party family in Belgium. The article shows contradicting results. Although party membership figures have nuanced the idea of partitocratic and pillar parties, the analysis of the profile of party members has produced more conclusive results. The members of some parties (PS, CD&V) still display a strong encapsulation in their sociological world, report specific reasons for joining, as well as lower levels of activism than in other parties. The pillar parties in Belgium seem to have reached a paradoxical situation in which their anchorage in civil society is still very strong, yet it relies on a shrinking social basis. These results raise the question of the incentives that parties offer to their party on the ground to mobilise citizens for participation. They indicate a need to look more systematically and empirically at this neglected aspect of party organisation, as it provides important information for the debate on party decline.
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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