DePopReDem – Deconstructing our understanding of populism, reconstructing the idea of democracy
Matteo Antonini & Maria Sophia Heering
Current representation and financial crises have resulted in unsatisfied demands and discontent towards politics. In a changing world, this has fostered the growth of far-right ‘populist’ parties advocating simple remedies for complex problems. Social sciences endeavour to make sense of the rise of populism typically focuses on the political supply-side (e.g., the social-financial antecedents, personality of populist leaders, communication styles). However, there is low consensus about what “populism” means and refers to.
We argue that this reflects the lack of theoretical modelling of the concept. DePopReDem aims at achieving a theoretical model of populism, by analysing how this phenomenon develops through the changing symbolisations of “the political”. A psychological framework of the social relationships will allow to analyse populism’s symbolic and relational aspects embedded with its under-explored demand-side.
We will adopt a mixed-methodology in order to gather data from three different sources: the European Social Survey, targeted interviews with Italian citizens and a national survey. Each method will be shaped building on the insights coming from the previous one in order to progressively scale and widen the collected insights.
Activities aim at involving the academia and public stakeholders (citizens, public bodies, informal groups).
Italiano 
English