Populist by a distance: a relational framework for unifying ideology, rhetoric, and leadership style in populism studies

Theories of populism have been troubled by the problem of essentially contested definitions of its basic properties. It is difficult to distinguish populism from conventional political behavior. This produces the problem of ‘degreeism’, while other features of populism are expressed in relationships rather than as specific categories of attitudes and behaviors. These problems cannot be eliminated by redefining or excluding aspects of populism in favor of a more restrictive definition. We argue that, given that conceptual indeterminacy is inherent in populism, it is better conceptualized as a relational concept. The article articulates a new, relational conception of populist ideology, discourse/rhetoric, and leadership style in terms of relative distance from an implicit ‘center ground’. Populism is marked by position-taking of distance away from the center in policy (distal), a wide distance between people and elites and/or outsiders (distal), and close distance between leaders and followers (proximal). A general, relational model of populism is deduced in this form: distal–distal–proximal. Far from being an abstract claim, we illustrate how the relative distance framework offers descriptive and analytical tools for social scientists focused on populism.