Populism in abeyance: the survival of populist repertoires of contention in North Italy

Abstract

Long seen as divergent in nature, the fields of populist studies and social movement analysis have rarely been the focus of cross-disciplinary research. This paper, by encouraging such convergence makes two significant contributions to both the study of populism and social movements. First, by combining a discourse theoretical approach to populism with social movement theories of abeyance and ‘cultural repertoires’, it examines populist discourse as a form of contentious politics. Second, using primary and secondary sources of both a textual and visual nature, it applies this framework to a case study of North Italian populist regionalism and in doing so takes a diachronic approach to populism. This allows for a clearer understanding of not only of the decline of certain populist movements, but also how these movements’ repertoires are transmitted between separate waves of activism.