What is the article about? The COVID-19 pandemic has affected various aspects of people's lives, including many strict governmental measures. Some citizens accepted these measures, while others protested them or even challenged the leaders' legitimacy for putting these in place. The relationship between the pandemic and populism has raised, among others, the question of how to understand the responses to the pandemic best when the populist responses have been so varied. The article aims to provide a framework for understanding populist responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The framework proposes studying the activities and counterstrategies of citizens. The article reintroduces “the populist divide" framework, which helps show how populism can be used to analyse and predict populist responses during crises. We employ “the populist divide” as an analytical framework for understanding actions and counterstrategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our approach thus brings nuance to how crises are framed depending on the actors' trust levels. Populist relationships are not just about ideology but also about trust. The framework looks at how citizens respond to measures taken by leaders to deal with the pandemic.
Who might it interest?
We have all been through a pandemic, yet different places have had different ways to respond to the challenges the pandemic brought about. This framework offered in this article allows the reader to understand the different responses (activities and counterstrategies) and how they relate to populism and democracy, not just concerning the pandemic but also other crises.
How did this article come out of REDEM's conference?
Anders Hellström chaired a panel and discussion on Populism and the Pandemic at the Pandemocracy Panel 3 of the REDEM conference. During that period, and to date, he lectures on the Populism and Democracy module at MIM. Jellen Olivares-Jirsell was taught at MIM and the GPS departments, where she was involved in the Euroscepticism project led by Anders Hellström. The article "Activities and Counterstrategies; Populism during the COVID-19 Pandemic" grew from a REDEM conference and combines education and research.
What do you hope a reader can learn from your article that has relevance to rethinking democracy?
That populism can be used as an analytical category to explain the activities and counterstrategies related to the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises afflicting democratic societies. Our approach brings forth knowledge on how crises are framed depending on the trust levels between actors, thus presenting populist relationships as determined by selective trust allocation and not necessarily one of fixed ideological paradigms. The article offers that if we can learn to trust each other, progressive democratic action is possible against democratic backsliding. What do you think is necessary to improve democracy?
Democracy is never done. Democracy is an unfinished process that we need to work on as part of the continuous process of rethinking democracy. Learning about activities and counterstrategies during the COVID-19 pandemic encourages democratic awareness as the dynamics of trust between political actors are elucidated. |
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