A clash of paradigms: Populism and theory building

Abstract

Research on populism often appears to be opaque due to the fact that populism is a label attributed to a variety of phenomena. However, failures to build a theory of populism are not just mere consequences of a blurred object of study - they also result from ontological and epistemological clashes between the dominating research paradigms precisely because debates do not consider the limits inherent to analytical strategies. This paper shows which paradigms structure the field of populism research and evaluates the resulting approaches considering their outcomes and impasses. Furthermore, it enunciates suggestions on the issue of how some additional value can be obtained from this. As a result, this paper's contribution is an attempt to systematize a highly fragmented debate whereas it does not point at content-related discussions but rather at the pragmatic handling of research paradigms.