Populism and political communication
An empirical populism assessment of the Flemish political parties
For the last two decades, so called right-wing populist parties have become increasingly successful. They are eye-catching players in the field. If only we look at electoral shifts in Western Europe, a group of look-alike parties has gradually moved away from the sideline. The FPÖ in Austria, media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi and his Forza Italia, the Front National in France, the late Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, the Vlaams Blok in (the northern part of) Belguim, all these political forces are percieved and analysed as a part of a broader tendency called populism.
Recently however, populism also seems to be associated with rather mainstream political leaders and parties, such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Tony Blair, and the most well-liked Belgian politician for the time being, Steve Stevaert. These politicians display a kind of moderate left, alternative variant of populism. But be it left or right, the overall picture shows that populism has become ‘popular’. Despite of the decline of partisanship and the increasing amount of electoral turnout, populists appear to have the most loyal supporters and/or electoral potential. Consequently, the key question is what these seemingly diverse political actors have in common and what it is that distinguishes them from one another. What is the link between Bill Clinton and the Vlaams Blok? What is the secret of their success?
Political scientists and political actors refer frequently to populism to typify certain political phenomena or to brand political competitors in a political conflict. The use of populism causes confusion and the debate about what populism is, has not yet been settled. Then again, following the recent literature on populism we argue that populism must be conceived as a political style rather than as an ideology or some kind of political movement. More concretely populism stands for displaying proximity of the people in political communication; populism is a conspicuous exhibition of closeness to the (ordinary) citizens.
Although proximity can be shown in different ways, most important is the content of the discourse of political actors. Developing a more elaborate assessment of populism, provisionally we operationalised populism as displaying closeness to the people by talking about the people. By referring to the people a political actor claims that he or she cares about the people’s concerns, that he or she is not alienated from the public but knows what the people want. The implicit populist’s motto is: ‘I listen to you because I talk about you’.
Following this notion of populism, we opted to content-analyse the political party broadcasts (PPB) of the six major Belgian-Flemish parties in the 1999-2001 period (a total of 20 hours of television). These 10-minutes programmes were broadcasted on the first channel of the public TV-station VRT and the nature of these audiovisual data allows us to scrutinize other aspects of populism as a communication style as well: whether or not the people are shown on television, whether or not they get the opportunity to speak out…
Proceeding this research project, we will add other kinds of textual and audiovisual data to the existing dataset, in order to widen the scope of our preliminary conclusions.
Recently however, populism also seems to be associated with rather mainstream political leaders and parties, such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Tony Blair, and the most well-liked Belgian politician for the time being, Steve Stevaert. These politicians display a kind of moderate left, alternative variant of populism. But be it left or right, the overall picture shows that populism has become ‘popular’. Despite of the decline of partisanship and the increasing amount of electoral turnout, populists appear to have the most loyal supporters and/or electoral potential. Consequently, the key question is what these seemingly diverse political actors have in common and what it is that distinguishes them from one another. What is the link between Bill Clinton and the Vlaams Blok? What is the secret of their success?
Political scientists and political actors refer frequently to populism to typify certain political phenomena or to brand political competitors in a political conflict. The use of populism causes confusion and the debate about what populism is, has not yet been settled. Then again, following the recent literature on populism we argue that populism must be conceived as a political style rather than as an ideology or some kind of political movement. More concretely populism stands for displaying proximity of the people in political communication; populism is a conspicuous exhibition of closeness to the (ordinary) citizens.
Although proximity can be shown in different ways, most important is the content of the discourse of political actors. Developing a more elaborate assessment of populism, provisionally we operationalised populism as displaying closeness to the people by talking about the people. By referring to the people a political actor claims that he or she cares about the people’s concerns, that he or she is not alienated from the public but knows what the people want. The implicit populist’s motto is: ‘I listen to you because I talk about you’.
Following this notion of populism, we opted to content-analyse the political party broadcasts (PPB) of the six major Belgian-Flemish parties in the 1999-2001 period (a total of 20 hours of television). These 10-minutes programmes were broadcasted on the first channel of the public TV-station VRT and the nature of these audiovisual data allows us to scrutinize other aspects of populism as a communication style as well: whether or not the people are shown on television, whether or not they get the opportunity to speak out…
Proceeding this research project, we will add other kinds of textual and audiovisual data to the existing dataset, in order to widen the scope of our preliminary conclusions.