The tensions of populism in power: a discursive-theoretical analysis of the Catalan secessionist push (2006–2017)

ABSTRACT

The article explores one of the most under-researched aspects surrounding populism, namely the political logics followed by governing populisms, and more specifically, the transitions of populisms from ‘protest to power’. It does so from a theoretical perspective rooted in the work of Ernesto Laclau. This implies conceiving the relationships between populism and state institutions as governed by distinct types of discursive logics: as different ways in which socio-political spaces are organized and political identities enacted. The article theorizes the conflictive relationship between populism and institutionalism as expressed in four main tensions that face a governing populism: between autonomy and hegemony, between being ‘people’ and being the State, between being government and being street opposition, and between the democratic and the liberal principles. By focusing on this relationship, the article seeks to illuminate not only theoretical issues but also an empirical case that we consider particularly relevant: the recent push for secession in Catalonia (Spain). The article contends that the Catalan separatism constitutes a paradigmatic case of a populist social movement that has not only reached institutional power, but which has also remained populist once in power; a condition which implies using acquired institutional power with the aim of institutional subversion.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• Catalonia
• nationalism
• Spanish politics
• Laclau
• discourse analysis
• social movements

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank to Benjamin De Cleen his encouraging, perceptive and constructive comments on an earlier version of the article. I also would like to thank to the reviewers of Distinktion for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 See, for exceptions, Albertazzi and McDonnell (2015); Aslanidis and Rovira Kaltwasser (2016); De la Torre and Peruzzotti (2018); Pappas (2019).

2 In the first regional Parliament after the end of the dictatorship, only two parties (the Andalusian Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Andaluz – PSA)), and Centrists of Catalonia (Centristes de Catalunya – CC), that represented 13% of the vote share, did not self-identify with the Catalanist tradition.

3 For an account of the gradual formation of an inchoate political dissatisfaction within Catalan society towards the Spanish state from the late 1990s onwards, see Bel (2015) and Dowling (2017).

4 Like populism, nationalism also revolves around the nodal point of the people (De Cleen 2017). However, ‘the people’ of nationalism is articulated with another nodal point, that of the nation. In consequence, as argued by De Cleen and Stavrakakis (2017), while nationalism constructs ‘the people’ through a horizontal (in/out) antagonisms, ‘the people’ of populism is articulated around a vertical (down/up) axis. However, as forcefully argued by Anastasiou (2019), the rhetorical construction of the people, to the extent that it is performed in the symbolic field of modernity constituted by ‘the world of nations’ (Billig 1995), often comes to be overdetermined by nationalist discourses associated with the hegemonic signifier ‘the nation’.

5 Catalonia has a population of about 7.400.000 people in 2019.

6 The main party within the electoral coalition CiU, Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya – CDC), had adopted for first time an independentist political programme in its sixteenth national congress in March 2012.

7 Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ijNQUnSpk (last time accessed: 19 June 2019).

8 Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP – Candidatura d’Unitat Popular) is an anti-capitalist pro-independence party that decided for the first time to run for Catalan parliamentary elections in 2012, gaining 3 MPs out of 135. In the 2015 elections the CUP obtained 10 MPs.

9 Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHz0EGdcsyU (last time accessed: 19 June 2019).

10 Available at: https://www.parlament.cat/web/canal-parlament/sequencia/videos/index.html?p_cp1=8099821&p_cp3=8100511 (last time accessed: 19 June 2019).

11 Available at: https://www.parlament.cat/web/canal-parlament/sequencia/videos/index.html?p_cp1=8099821&p_cp3=8100511 (last time accessed: 19 June 2019).

12 This opinion is shared by all the people interviewed by the author in the context of this study.

13 Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RicXhOaV-SE (last time accessed: 19 June 2019).

14 On October 16 of 2017, the presidents of the ANC and Òmnium, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart, were jailed in Madrid prisons.

15 Available at: https://www.parlament.cat/web/canal-parlament/sequencia/index.html?p_cp1=8113675 (last time accessed: 19 June 2019).

16 Communication to the author made by a member of Puigdemont's cabinet.

17 According to a communication to the author made by an official working in the foreign policy services of the Catalan government, two European states (one member of the EU), another from Latina America and a de facto state in the Caucasus seemed willing to recognize the declaration of independence.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joan Miró

Joan Miró is postdoctoral researcher at Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Milan. His research interests include comparative social policy, discourse analysis, international political economy and EU integration theory. He has recently published in international peer-reviewed journals, such as Constellations, Socio-Economic Review, Social Politics (with Marga León, Antonino Sorrenti and Emmanuele Pavolini) and Review of International Political Economy.