The advancements beyond the current state of the art can be summarized in three key points:
(1) The concept of anti-populism. Despite the considerable achievements in populism research over the last decade, anti-populism has been simply taken as the default position and remains notably under-studied. Anti-pop developed and operationalised the concept of anti-populism as an analytical category. It demonstrated that we need to study the interactions between populism and anti-populism side-by-side, as they are largely mutually constitutive.
(2) Democracy and public debate. The project’s results call for attention to the ways in which we talk about populism, in order to make better sense of current shifts in public debate and democracy in Europe. Since the talk about ‘populism’ is at the heart of public debate today—crucially, at the heart of debates about democracy—it is important to make sense of the ways in which it shapes and gives direction to these debates. More specifically, taking populism unconditionally as a threat to liberal democracy has been a commonplace—even a cliché—in populism studies. Anti-pop offered evidence and arguments against this entrenched conviction and showed how the overuse and demonisation of populism itself have negative repercussions.
(3) Polarisation from politics to society. The largest part of the study of populism, as well as the younger subfield of the study of anti-populism, take a top-down approach, focusing on political leaders, parties, and so on. Anti-pop showed that it is important to also examine popular, ‘lay’ perceptions of populism, and how they may interact with the discourse coming from ‘the top’. Indeed, the project found that, as the populism/anti-populism divide becomes intensified at the level of official discourse, so do divisions at the social and cultural level, regarding how citizens occupying different sides on contentious issues see each other.
Upon public dissemination of all research results, the project aims to raise awareness within the academic community, the broader public, and key stakeholders, about the effects of the populism/anti-populism divide on democracy, to encourage reflection on the effects of language on our perception of politics and to enrich the public debate on populism.
From a personal career standpoint, the fellowship was incredibly rewarding. It provided the fellow with the time, resources, and necessary environment to build a network, enhance his skills and to develop new insights. All of these promise to be essential in his future development and activity as a researcher.
