The dominant theoretical paradigm originating in the work of Cas Mudde conceives of populism as a thin-centered ideology that focuses on the antagonism between people and elites against the backdrop of popular sovereignty. While this framework has contributed significantly to an improved scientific analysis of populism, it is argued in this article that its ideological connotations are ill-conceived both conceptually and methodologically, and that its normative implications and failure to acknowledge the graded nature of populist behavior hinder the further evolution of the field of populism studies. Combining insights from the work of Ernesto Laclau and the proponents of frame theory, the article suggests dropping the ideological clause and simply conceiving populism as a discursive frame. The article contends that frame analysis reveals a strong fit between discursive elements and cognitive features of populism, furnishing solid methodological foundations to conduct empirical research and encouraging cooperation with neighboring fields of social science.

Populism is usually treated as an exclusively top-down affair where political party leaders mobilize diverse constituencies to reap electoral benefits. This perspective discounts a rich universe of bottom-up populist mobilization that remains exogenous to strict electoral contestation, thus unreasonably constraining the empirical study of the phenomenon. This chapter draws from social movement studies and social psychology to examine populist social movements under a comprehensive theoretical framework, aiming to bring together theorists of populism with scholars of social mobilization and encourage their mutually beneficial interaction. It argues that populism—as a compelling political dialect—has traditionally informed and continues to inform significant waves of grassroots contention around the world, triggering seemingly extraordinary developments at the party system level while also potentially determining processes of democratization. The chapter concludes by predicting an increasing relevance for grassroots populism, urging scholars to widen their scope of study by embracing it alongside its top-down variant.

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Social movement scholars have thus far failed to give populism its deserved attention and to incorporate it into their field of study. Although sociologists, political scientists, and historians have explored diverse facets of the intersection of populism and social dissent, there has been no concerted effort towards building a comprehensive framework for the study of populist mobilization, despite its growing significance in the past decades. In this article I combine insights from populism studies, social movement scholarship, and social psychology to build a unified framework of analysis for populist social movements. I suggest populism is best understood as a collective action frame employed by movement entrepreneurs to construct a resonant collective identity of “the People” and to challenge elites. I argue that populism depends on the politicization of citizenship, and I apply this framework to the movements of the Great Recession to classify Occupy Wall Street and the European indignados as instances of a populist wave of mobilization, using data from archival material and a set of semistructured interviews with Greek activists.

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