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People, class, democracy

Re-Mapping Left Populism From Populist Social Democracy to Popular Socialism

Bibliographic Data

ID6292869
AuthorsBradley Ward (0000-0003-0123-5023, Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, corresponding author), Marco Guglielmo (0000-0001-9249-456X, Politics, Universitat de Valencia, Valencia, Spain)
Year2024
Pages1-22
Publication date2024-07-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Political Ideologies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-9317 • E-ISSN: 1469-9613
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13569317.2024.2371506
OpenAlexW4400280547
LanguageEN
Citations received3

This article builds on the insights of Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall to introduce the ‘critical-relational’ approach to the analysis of left-wing ideologies that have been defined as populist. In doing so, we identify four distinctive ideologies: ‘populist social democracy’, ‘populist socialism’, ‘popular social democracy’ and ‘popular socialism’. Two key contributions are made. First, the ‘relational’ aspect of this conceptualization establishes clear distinctions between ideologies that appeal to the ‘people’ either to: (i) democratically empower (‘popular’) or disempower (‘populist’) disenfranchised groups; and/or (ii) disrupt economic class relations (‘socialist’) or redistribute them without transforming them (‘social democratic’). These distinctions, we contend, shed light on important differences between left-wing ideologies that are often conflated in the literature on left populism. Second, the ‘critical’ aspect of our interpretation aims to reveal how discourses of the ‘people’ are mobilized within left-wing ideologies to either reproduce or contest economic and political structures of power. Overall, this provides grounding for a more precise empirical analysis of the diverse ideologies that characterize the political left

Class (philosophy · Communism · Democracy · Epistemology · Ideology · Participatory democracy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Populism · Social class · Social democracy · Socialism · Sociology · Law · Political Economy and Marxism

  • Filling a Void

    Open Access•Dwayne Woods•Chinese Political Science Review•2025

  • The ‘Toolmakers Son’

    Open Access•Bradley Ward, Christian Sherrington•British Politics•2026

  • Populism and global infrastructure investment

    Open Access•Lulu Pan, Eddie Chi Man Hui et al.•World Development•2025

Unique citing works3
Citations per year3
Citation span2025 - 2026 (2)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 3
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