Please cite as: Aslam, Muhammad Faizan. (2026). “Mandate Inflation: How Populists Claim Authority to Challenge Global Constraints.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). August 24, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000130
Abstract
Populist leaders often say they are restoring popular sovereignty against treaties, courts, trade rules, migration regimes, expert bodies, and international organizations. Yet their behavior toward international order varies. They may withdraw, renegotiate, obstruct, selectively comply, or perform public defiance while remaining inside institutions. This article explains that variation through mandate inflation: a process of turning a vote into a broader political claim in which an election or referendum is recast from a limited permission to govern into wider authority to challenge constraints in the name of the people. A structured comparison of Trump’s ‘America First’ politics, Brexit’s ‘take back control’ discourse, and Viktor Orbán’s conflict with EU constraints shows four recurrent moves: mandate condensation, construction of ‘the real people,’ reframing of constraints as anti-democratic obstruction, and assertion of special authority to act. The argument does not replace material, institutional, or nationalist explanations. It shows how leaders present these strategies as the will of the people; it does not assume that audiences accepted those claims or that rhetoric alone caused policy choices. The article contributes to recent debates on global populism by showing why exit is only one possible outcome of populist constraint politics.
Keywords: Populism, mandate, global governance, international institutions, sovereignty, Brexit, Trump, Viktor Orbán
By Muhammad Faizan Aslam*
Introduction
Populist leaders rarely challenge international order by saying only that a treaty, court or organization is inefficient. They often say something stronger. They argue that constraints on government action stand between the people and democratic control (Dijkstra & Ghassim, 2025). Trade agreements become “bad deals” made by globalist elites (Finbow, 2023). Courts become “foreign” or “unelected bodies.” Migration rules become “imposed commands.” Expert advice becomes “technocratic obstruction.” The point is not only policy disagreement. The point is authority (Wajner et al., 2024).
This creates a puzzle for international relations as populist leaders do not respond to global constraint in a single way. Some withdraw from agreements. Some seek better terms. Some stay inside institutions while blocking decisions. Some comply with parts of a regime while attacking other parts. Some use defiant language even when policy change is limited. Recent research on global populism has made this variation clear (Pacciardi et al., 2024; Wajner & Giurlando, 2024). It has also shown that populist foreign policy is now a serious research programme rather than a side question for domestic politics (Ozdamar & Yanik, 2024; Wajner & Giurlando, 2024). What remains underdeveloped is the democratic authorization mechanism that makes such varied strategies appear legitimate to supporters.
This article calls that process of turning a vote into a broader political claim “mandate inflation.” Mandate inflation is the process through which a populist leader recasts an election or referendum from a limited permission to govern into a wider claim of authority to challenge, override or rewrite constraints in the name of the people. The concept is deliberately narrow. It is not a synonym for nationalism, anti-globalism, sovereignty talk or ordinary treaty renegotiation. It is present when four claims appear together: a complex vote is condensed into one clear mandate; that mandate is attached to “the real people”; international or EU-level constraints are described as illegitimate barriers to that people; and the leader claims authority to act against those constraints. Mandate inflation is therefore observed in actors’ claims; whether those claims generate public acceptance or independently cause policy outcomes is a separate empirical question.
The argument matters because global constraints are not self-explanatory objects, and their political effects depend on observable factors such as legal form, institutional location, economic impact and domestic visibility. They can be legal commitments, institutional procedures, market pressures, treaty obligations, policy standards, rights regimes or expert rules. Many have been voluntarily accepted by elected governments. Some are popular because they provide security, market access, rights protection or credibility. Others are weakly accountable, socially unequal or politically remote. Populist leaders exploit this mixed character. They do not need to prove that a constraint is legally invalid. They need to make it look democratically suspect (Ecker-Ehrhardt et al., 2025; Tallberg & Zürn, 2019).
This is why the argument avoids a simple defense of global governance. It does not assume that international institutions are always democratically healthy or that popular control is a false problem. Many voters experience international commitments through job loss, austerity, migration pressure, border disputes, legal complexity or distant expert language (Bellodi et al., 2024; Scheiring et al., 2024a). The issue is not whether these concerns should be dismissed. The issue is how a leader turns them into an exclusive claim to speak for the people against constraints that may also have democratic authorization of their own.
This article compares three cases: Trump’s “America First” politics, Brexit’s “take back control” discourse and Viktor Orbán’s confrontation with EU constraints. The cases are not treated as identical. Trump shows presidential mandate inflation in a great power setting, with exit, renegotiation and symbolic defiance. Brexit shows how a referendum can be converted into a mandate to leave a regional legal order. Orbán shows that mandate inflation can also work from inside an institution through obstruction, selective compliance and public defiance. The cases vary by mandate source, institutional location and strategy toward constraint. This variation is useful because the argument does not predict one outcome. It explains how different strategies are justified through a similar claim about the people. The relevant actors are the Trump administration, the Leave-to-government coalition centered on the May government, and the Orbán government; campaign rhetoric, official government claims, legal acts and institutional responses are treated as distinct forms of evidence.
The article makes three contributions. First, it adds a mechanism to recent work on populism and international affairs. Existing scholarship shows that populist governments affect foreign policy, international institutions, trade, migration, security and world order visions in uneven ways (Brusenbauch Meislova & Chryssogelos, 2024; Destradi & Plagemann, 2024; Wajner & Giurlando, 2024). Mandate inflation explains how this unevenness can still share a common democratic grammar. Second, it connects populism research to work on international institutions and unilateral challenges. Institutions face not only legal non-compliance, but also domestic struggles over whether their constraints count as legitimate democratic commitments (Walter & Plotke-Scherly, 2025). Third, it separates voter-side causes from leader-side authorization. Economic insecurity, status grievance, territorial loss and backlash against globalization may help explain why populist appeals resonate(Carter & Pop-Eleches, 2025; Koenig & Mendelberg, 2026; Scheiring et al., 2024b). They do not by themselves explain how leaders turn a vote into authority to contest courts, treaties or international organizations.
The article proceeds in five steps. It first places the argument in recent literature on global populism, foreign policy and international institutions. It then defines “mandate inflation” and its boundary conditions. The empirical sections trace the mechanism in the United States, the United Kingdom and Hungary. The comparative discussion explains why the same authorizing logic supports different strategies toward constraint. The conclusion draws implications for scholars and policy practitioners who face populist challenges to global governance.
Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen’s book offers a compelling reinterpretation of American populism through the lens of political theology. Challenging conventional accounts that reduce populism to anti-elitism or electoral strategy, Rev. Dr. Bossen demonstrates how competing visions of “the people” are constructed through narratives of belonging, redemption, and collective identity. By tracing the historical continuity of white supremacist, Pan-African, and pluralistic populisms from the Progressive Era to Trumpism, the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, and progressive labor politics, the book makes a significant contribution to contemporary populism scholarship. While its comparative framework occasionally risks creating an unintended moral symmetry between emancipatory and exclusionary movements, it remains an original, theoretically sophisticated, and highly recommended study for scholars of populism, political theology, religion, and American political development.
Few concepts have generated as much scholarly debate over the past two decades as populism. Whether understood as a thin ideology, a political style, a discursive logic, or a mode of constructing “the people,” populism has become one of the defining frameworks through which scholars interpret democratic transformation in the twenty-first century. Yet despite the flourishing literature on populism, comparatively little attention has been devoted to its religious dimensions or to the theological narratives that shape collective political identities. Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen’s The Political Theologies of Populism: The Garveyites, the Klan, and the Wobblies, 1905–1930. enters this crowded field with an ambitious and refreshingly original intervention. Rather than approaching populism primarily through electoral politics, party systems, or charismatic leadership, Rev. Dr. Bossen investigates the theological imagination underlying populist movements, arguing that populism is fundamentally a process of “people-making” through narratives of salvation, ritual, belonging, and collective identity. The book thus offers an innovative synthesis of political theology, American religious history, social movement studies, and populism scholarship.
The volume examines three influential movements of the Progressive Era: the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and the Second Ku Klux Klan. Although these organizations pursued radically different political objectives, Rev. Dr. Bossen argues that each sought to answer the constitutional question embedded in the opening words of the American Constitution—“We the People”—by constructing its own vision of who genuinely belonged within the political community. In doing so, he identifies three enduring forms of American populism: pluralistic populism, Pan-African populism, and white supremacist populism. These competing projects of collective identity, he contends, have not disappeared with the Progressive Era but continue to shape American political life into the twenty-first century.
Rev. Dr. Bossen is unusually well positioned to write such a study. Trained as both a historian and a scholar of religion, he is also an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister whose long involvement in labor activism—particularly within the IWW—deeply informs his analytical perspective. Rather than concealing his normative commitments behind claims of detached neutrality, Rev. Dr. Bossen openly acknowledges that the book emerged during a period marked by the resurgence of white supremacist politics in the United States. Echoing Howard Zinn’s famous observation that one cannot remain neutral on a moving train, he explicitly rejects the possibility of complete scholarly neutrality and instead argues that historical inquiry should contribute to understanding and resisting contemporary threats to democratic life.
This methodological transparency constitutes one of the book’s principal strengths. Rather than pretending to occupy an impossible position of complete objectivity, Rev. Dr. Bossen clearly situates his scholarship within broader democratic and ethical concerns. His extensive archival research, coupled with his experience as both minister and labor organizer, enables him to bridge historical analysis with contemporary political theory in a manner rarely achieved within existing populism scholarship.
Equally impressive is Rev. Dr. Bossen’s conceptual innovation. Instead of defining populism through anti-elitism, charismatic leadership, or ideological “thinness,” he shifts analytical attention toward the construction of collective political identity. Populism, in his account, is less about particular policy agendas than about the creation of a populus—an imagined political community whose boundaries define inclusion and exclusion. This emphasis resonates with Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populist articulation while simultaneously incorporating insights from Charles Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary and Margaret Canovan’s work on “the people.” Yet Rev. Dr. Bossen moves beyond these traditions by arguing that political identities are sustained not merely through discourse but through deeply embedded theological narratives, rituals, myths, and symbols inherited from American Protestant culture.
Perhaps the book’s most significant contribution lies in demonstrating the historical continuity of these three competing populist traditions. Contemporary discussions of populism often begin with Donald Trump, Brexit, or the European radical right, inadvertently suggesting that populism is primarily a recent electoral phenomenon. Rev. Dr. Bossen persuasively demonstrates instead that today’s political conflicts are rooted in much older struggles over belonging, sovereignty, race, labor, and democracy. The three traditions he reconstructs during the Progressive Era continue to reverberate throughout American political development.
White supremacist populism, represented historically by the Second Ku Klux Klan, survives today in modified forms within elements of Trumpism and the broader MAGA movement. Its rhetoric of reclaiming the nation, defending “real Americans,” protecting traditional values, restricting immigration, and portraying demographic change as existential decline echoes many of the exclusionary narratives that Rev. Dr. Bossen identifies in early twentieth-century white populism. While contemporary movements operate within vastly different institutional and constitutional contexts, the underlying logic of constructing “the people” through exclusion exhibits remarkable historical continuity.
Similarly, the tradition Rev. Dr. Bossen describes as Pan-African populism did not disappear with Marcus Garvey and Garveyism. Rather, it evolved through successive generations of African American political mobilization—from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Power and, more recently, Black Lives Matter. Although these movements differ profoundly in strategy, ideology, and organizational form, each represents an effort to redefine democratic membership by confronting the historic exclusion of Black Americans from the full promise of citizenship. Rather than simply demanding policy reform, they have sought recognition, dignity, and inclusion within the American political community itself.
Rev. Dr. Bossen’s third tradition, pluralistic populism, likewise extends beyond the IWW. Its aspiration to construct solidarity across racial, ethnic, and occupational divisions can be traced through segments of the American labor movement, democratic socialism, Occupy Wall Street, and Bernie Sanders’ campaigns. Here, “the people” are constituted not by ethnicity or race but through shared economic interests and democratic participation. This continuity illustrates one of the book’s central insights: populism is not inherently authoritarian or democratic, progressive or reactionary. It is instead a contested political logic capable of generating radically different democratic projects depending upon how “the people” are imagined.
This tripartite framework represents one of the most original contributions of The Political Theologies of Populism. By recovering these competing historical traditions, Rev. Dr. Bossen challenges simplistic understandings that reduce populism either to an authoritarian pathology or to a democratic corrective. Instead, he demonstrates that American political development has long been characterized by competing populisms, each offering rival answers to the enduring constitutional question of who belongs within “We the People.” The chapters of the book develop this argument through a richly detailed historical reconstruction of the Progressive Era and its lasting influence on contemporary American politics.
The Enduring Legacies of White Supremacist, Pan-African, and Pluralistic Populisms
Rev. Dr. Bossen develops his central thesis through an eight-chapter structure that moves systematically from conceptual foundations to historical case studies before returning to the contemporary implications of his argument. Rather than presenting the Ku Klux Klan, the IWW, and UNIA as isolated historical phenomena, he demonstrates how each movement constituted a distinctive political theology—a comprehensive moral vision that sought not merely political power but the construction of a particular understanding of the people. This emphasis on “people-making” distinguishes the book from much of the existing literature on populism, which has frequently privileged electoral mobilization, anti-elitist rhetoric, or leadership styles over the deeper ontological question of collective identity.
The opening chapter situates American populism within the unresolved constitutional ambiguity surrounding the phrase “We the People.” Rev. Dr. Bossen argues that American political history is characterized less by a stable democratic consensus than by recurring struggles over membership, belonging, and sovereignty. Every major populist movement attempts to answer the same foundational question: who legitimately constitutes the American people? This conceptual move immediately elevates the discussion beyond conventional institutional analysis. Instead of treating populism as a temporary electoral pathology, Rev. Dr. Bossen understands it as an enduring contest over political ontology—that is, over the very constitution of the political community itself.
The subsequent chapter introduces what is arguably the book’s most original analytical contribution: the identification of three distinct varieties of American populism. White supremacist populism constructs the people through racial exclusion; pluralistic populism seeks solidarity across class and ethnic divisions; Pan-African populism builds collective identity around the shared historical experience of Black oppression and aspirations for racial self-determination. These three traditions are neither merely ideological positions nor electoral constituencies. They represent competing moral universes, each grounded in narratives of redemption, sacrifice, community, and historical destiny. In Rev. Dr. Bossen’s formulation, theology becomes less a matter of organized religion than of symbolic frameworks through which political communities understand themselves and their collective futures.
The conceptual richness of this framework becomes particularly evident in the chapters devoted to political ritual, mythmaking, and collective memory. Rev. Dr. Bossen convincingly demonstrates that each movement employed remarkably similar organizational mechanisms despite radically different political goals. All developed founding myths, sacred texts, ceremonial performances, songs, symbols, and narratives of salvation that transformed fragmented social groups into imagined political communities. The Klan’s rituals of racial purity, the UNIA’s Pan-African ceremonies, and the Wobblies’ labor songs all functioned as instruments for constructing political solidarity. Here, Rev. Dr. Bossen successfully bridges political theology with social movement theory by showing that identity formation depends not only upon ideological programs but also upon emotionally resonant symbolic practices.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its sustained attention to historical continuity. Rather than treating the Progressive Era as a closed historical episode, Rev. Dr. Bossen demonstrates that the competing populisms of the early twentieth century established durable political traditions whose influence extends well beyond their original organizational lives. This historical perspective offers a valuable corrective to contemporary scholarship, which frequently treats populism as a phenomenon emerging primarily after the global financial crisis of 2008 or the electoral victories of Donald Trump and other contemporary populists.
Indeed, one of the most illuminating aspects of the book is the ease with which Rev. Dr. Bossen’s historical framework can be extended into subsequent periods of American political development. The Pan-African populism represented by Garvey’s movement did not disappear with the decline of the UNIA. Instead, it evolved through successive generations of Black political mobilization. While Martin Luther King Jr.’s Civil Rights Movement emphasized constitutional equality and nonviolent democratic inclusion, Malcolm X and later Black Power organizations increasingly embraced forms of collective self-determination that echoed certain elements of Garveyite political thought, albeit under profoundly different historical circumstances. Contemporary movements such as Black Lives Matter similarly continue the struggle over democratic membership by insisting that Black Americans be recognized as fully equal participants within the American political community rather than perpetual outsiders.
Importantly, however, continuity should not be mistaken for identity. The Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, and Black Lives Matter differ significantly in leadership, ideology, organizational structure, and strategic objectives. Yet they share with Garveyism a fundamental concern with redefining political belonging and confronting structures of racial exclusion. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s framework allows readers to perceive these continuities without collapsing important historical distinctions.
A similar continuity characterizes pluralistic populism. The IWW’s aspiration to unite workers across race, nationality, and occupation prefigured later forms of progressive labor politics that sought to construct solidarity through shared socioeconomic interests rather than ethnic or racial identity. Although the organizational influence of the Wobblies declined dramatically after the 1920s, their broader democratic imagination survived within segments of the American labor movement, the New Left, Occupy Wall Street, and, more recently, Bernie Sanders’ campaigns for democratic socialism. These movements likewise understand democracy as requiring broad popular participation against concentrated economic power, illustrating the remarkable persistence of pluralistic populism across more than a century of American political development.
Rev. Dr. Bossen’s discussion of progressivism further enriches this historical narrative. Rather than equating progressivism with contemporary liberal politics, he defines it as a political theology centered upon the administrative state, legal reform, and technocratic expertise rather than the construction of popular identities. Whereas populists seek to constitute a people, progressives seek to reform institutions. This distinction provides a useful analytical vocabulary for understanding why progressive governments often struggle to respond effectively to populist mobilization. Administrative competence alone rarely satisfies citizens searching for belonging, recognition, or collective purpose.
This insight carries considerable contemporary relevance. Much of the political conflict surrounding Trumpism cannot be adequately explained through policy preferences alone. Trump’s political success rested less on detailed programs than on constructing an emotionally resonant narrative of “real Americans” reclaiming their nation from perceived elites and outsiders. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s historical reconstruction demonstrates that this style of political mobilization has deep roots within American history. Trumpism thus appears less as an unprecedented rupture than as the latest manifestation of a much older tradition of exclusionary people-making.
Yet Rev. Dr. Bossen avoids the temptation to reduce populism to authoritarianism. His historical comparison instead reveals that competing populisms have long struggled against one another. White supremacist populism has consistently encountered resistance not only from institutional liberalism but also from alternative populist projects rooted in racial justice, labor solidarity, and democratic inclusion. This recognition substantially enriches contemporary debates by reminding readers that populism has never been politically monolithic. It has always been a contested terrain upon which rival democratic and anti-democratic visions compete to define the boundaries of political community.
By the midpoint of the book, therefore, Rev. Dr. Bossen has accomplished something remarkably difficult. He has transformed three seemingly disparate historical movements into components of a coherent analytical framework that explains not only the Progressive Era but also enduring patterns of American political development. His combination of archival depth, theoretical sophistication, and interdisciplinary ambition makes these chapters among the most intellectually stimulating contributions to recent scholarship on American populism and political theology.
The Political Theology of Populism from the Progressive Era to Trumpism
The latter half of the book represents the culmination of Rev. Dr. Bossen’s broader intellectual project. Having established that populist movements are fundamentally engaged in the construction of collective identities, Chapters Five through Eight examine the symbolic practices through which these identities are sustained. Here, the book moves beyond conventional political history into the domains of ritual, performance, salvation, memory, and political imagination. The result is an unusually sophisticated account of populism that integrates insights from religious studies, historical sociology, and political theory without sacrificing empirical depth.
Particularly illuminating is Rev. Dr. Bossen’s discussion of ritual and performance. Rather than treating ceremonies, uniforms, hymns, catechisms, or mass meetings as peripheral cultural phenomena, he demonstrates that they constituted the very mechanisms through which “the people” came into existence as a political community. The Garveyites’ elaborate parades, the Klan’s carefully choreographed ceremonies, and the Wobblies’ musical traditions each transformed abstract political ideas into lived collective experiences. Politics, in this account, becomes inseparable from emotion, symbolism, and shared moral narratives. Populism succeeds not merely because it articulates grievances but because it offers individuals a compelling sense of belonging during periods of profound social dislocation.
Rev. Dr. Bossen’s treatment of political soteriology (his analysis of competing narratives of salvation) is equally original. Each movement promised redemption, albeit in radically different forms. The Klan envisioned the restoration of a purified White Protestant nation. The UNIA promised racial dignity, Black self-determination, and collective liberation from centuries of oppression. The IWW anticipated emancipation through industrial democracy and working-class solidarity. These contrasting visions demonstrate that populism cannot be reduced to anti-elitist rhetoric alone. Rather, it constitutes a moral project that offers comprehensive explanations of social crisis while simultaneously identifying the agents of redemption and the enemies of collective flourishing.
The chapters examining decline are particularly noteworthy because Rev. Dr. Bossen refuses to interpret organizational decline as ideological disappearance. Although each movement experienced institutional fragmentation, repression, or internal crisis, their underlying political imaginaries survived. This distinction between organizational collapse and ideological continuity represents one of the book’s most valuable contributions. Political movements may disappear, but the symbolic resources they generate often remain available for subsequent generations confronting new historical crises.
The concluding chapter, significantly entitled “Look for Me in the Whirlwind”: Enduring Populisms, demonstrates precisely this point. Rev. Dr. Bossen argues that the three competing populisms identified in the Progressive Era continue to animate American political conflict well into the twenty-first century. This historical continuity is arguably the book’s central achievement and provides an important corrective to interpretations that portray recent populist mobilization as historically unprecedented.
Indeed, contemporary American politics vividly illustrates the durability of Rev. Dr. Bossen’s analytical framework. Trumpism, despite its distinctive twenty-first-century media environment and electoral strategies, can be understood as the latest manifestation of the exclusionary populist tradition that Rev. Dr. Bossen identifies with the Second Ku Klux Klan. Such a comparison does not imply organizational continuity or ideological identity. Rather, it highlights recurring political logics. Both movements define “the people” through exclusionary conceptions of national identity, portray demographic change as existential decline, invoke nostalgia for a lost national greatness, and frame political conflict as an existential struggle between authentic citizens and corrupt elites allied with threatening outsiders.
The slogan “Make America Great Again,” for example, functions as more than an electoral slogan. It evokes a redemptive political narrative that promises national restoration following perceived moral decline. Immigration, globalization, demographic transformation, and multiculturalism become interpreted not merely as policy disagreements but as threats to the moral integrity of the nation itself. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s emphasis on political theology helps explain why such narratives resonate so powerfully. They address questions of identity and belonging rather than simply economic interests or governmental performance.
Conversely, Rev. Dr. Bossen’s category of Pan-African populism illuminates important dimensions of contemporary Black political mobilization. Although the Civil Rights Movement pursued constitutional equality through integrationist strategies largely absent from Garvey’s separatist vision, both sought to redefine democratic membership by challenging the exclusion of Black Americans from full political belonging. Later movements, including Black Power, increasingly emphasized cultural autonomy, community empowerment, and independent political agency—concerns that resonate more directly with aspects of Garveyite political thought.
More recently, Black Lives Matter has continued this broader historical struggle, albeit through decentralized organizational forms and digital activism unimaginable during the Progressive Era. Like earlier Black movements, it insists that democracy cannot be understood solely through formal legal equality but must confront enduring structures of racial domination embedded within public institutions. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s framework thus demonstrates that Pan-African populism has undergone significant transformation while retaining its central concern with reconstructing political community around principles of racial dignity, recognition, and justice.
Likewise, pluralistic populism continues to shape contemporary progressive politics. The IWW’s aspiration to organize workers across divisions of race, nationality, gender, and occupation anticipated later democratic socialist traditions emphasizing broad-based economic solidarity. Occupy Wall Street’s distinction between the “99 percent” and the “1 percent,” the resurgence of labor organizing across multiple sectors, and Bernie Sanders’ repeated appeals to working-class democracy all reflect attempts to construct an inclusive political people grounded primarily in shared economic interests rather than ethnic or racial identity.
Rev. Dr. Bossen’s historical reconstruction therefore challenges one of the dominant assumptions in current populism research: namely, that populism is inherently anti-democratic or necessarily associated with the political right. His comparative analysis instead demonstrates that democratic inclusion and authoritarian exclusion have long competed through rival populist projects. The decisive analytical question is not whether a movement is populist, but rather how it defines the people, who is permitted membership, andwhich forms of solidarity it seeks to institutionalize.
This insight significantly enriches ongoing scholarly debates surrounding populism. It moves beyond the binary opposition that has often characterized the literature, in which populism is either celebrated as democratic renewal or condemned as democratic pathology. Rev. Dr. Bossen instead presents populism as a contested political field within which multiple normative projects coexist. White supremacist populism, Pan-African populism, and pluralistic populism each mobilize “the people,” but they do so toward fundamentally different political horizons.
At the same time, the book’s impressive conceptual synthesis occasionally invites further reflection. By organizing these movements within a single comparative analytical framework, Rev. Dr. Bossen necessarily foregrounds structural similarities in their methods of identity construction. This comparison is intellectually productive and yields important theoretical insights regarding ritual, symbolism, and collective identity. Nevertheless, the comparative architecture also raises difficult normative questions that deserve closer consideration. Similarities in political form should not obscure profound differences in historical purpose, ethical orientation, or democratic aspiration.
This tension does not undermine Rev. Dr. Bossen’s larger argument. On the contrary, it demonstrates the analytical richness of his framework. Yet it also prepares the ground for a broader critical discussion concerning the limits of comparison itself—a discussion that becomes central to assessing both the book’s enduring significance and its principal limitations.
A Critical Assessment of Rev. Dr. Bossen’s Contribution
The greatest strength of the book lies in its intellectual ambition. Rev. Dr. Bossen successfully brings together fields that too often remain isolated from one another—American religious history, political theology, social movement theory, labor history, African American studies, and populism research—and demonstrates that each can enrich the others. His archival work is extensive, his command of the historical literature is impressive, and his conceptual framework offers an original vocabulary for understanding populism as an enduring struggle over collective identity rather than merely an electoral phenomenon. Particularly noteworthy is his insistence that populism should be understood as a process of “people-making,” one that is sustained through narratives, rituals, symbols, and moral imagination as much as through political programmes or charismatic leaders. In this respect, the book deserves to become a significant reference for future scholarship on American populism.
Equally commendable is Rev. Dr. Bossen’s willingness to acknowledge his own intellectual and political commitments. Unlike many scholars who present normative assumptions as methodological neutrality, Rev. Dr. Bossen explicitly situates himself as a Unitarian Universalist minister, labor activist, and advocate of democratic participation. His long engagement with the IWW informs both his historical sensitivity and his appreciation for grassroots democratic organization. This transparency strengthens rather than weakens the credibility of his scholarship because readers are never left wondering about the standpoint from which the analysis proceeds.
Nevertheless, precisely because the book is so theoretically ambitious, it also raises important methodological questions. The most significant concerns the comparative architecture itself. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s decision to analyze the Ku Klux Klan, the UNIA, and the IWW within a single conceptual framework is undoubtedly productive. It reveals common mechanisms through which populist movements construct collective identities and mobilize followers. Yet comparison, while indispensable as a historical method, carries its own risks.
Most notably, placing emancipatory and exclusionary movements within the same analytical structure can occasionally generate an unintended impression of moral symmetry. Rev. Dr. Bossen is careful throughout the volume to distinguish white supremacist populism from Pan-African and pluralistic populisms and repeatedly affirms his opposition to racial domination. His normative position is therefore never in doubt. Yet the comparative framework itself sometimes places disproportionate emphasis on structural similarities—rituals, myths, narratives of salvation, political symbolism, and collective identity formation—while giving comparatively less analytical attention to the fundamentally different ethical purposes toward which these mechanisms are directed.
This distinction matters considerably. White supremacist movements emerged historically to preserve racial hierarchy, political exclusion, and systems of domination. By contrast, Garveyism, despite its own ideological contradictions and internal tensions, developed as a response to centuries of racial oppression, disenfranchisement, colonialism, and segregation. Likewise, later African American political movements—from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Power and contemporary struggles for racial justice—cannot be adequately understood without recognizing that they sought democratic inclusion, equal citizenship, and protection from institutionalized violence rather than the exclusion of others from political membership.
To acknowledge that these movements all engaged in “people-making” is analytically illuminating. However, democratic theory also requires distinguishing between the politics of emancipation and the politics of domination. Similar mechanisms of collective identity formation do not necessarily imply comparable normative projects. A movement struggling to secure equal citizenship for historically excluded communities occupies a fundamentally different moral position from one seeking to preserve racial privilege through exclusion and violence. Future editions might therefore benefit from engaging more explicitly with scholarship on historical injustice, democratic inclusion, and recognition theory in order to sharpen this distinction further.
Relatedly, while Rev. Dr. Bossen convincingly demonstrates the persistence of three populist traditions across American history, greater engagement with contemporary comparative populism scholarship would have strengthened the book’s broader theoretical intervention. The framework developed by Ernesto Laclau regarding populist articulation, Cas Mudde’s influential conception of populism as a thin-centered ideology, Jan-Werner Müller’s emphasis on anti-pluralism, Nadia Urbinati’s work on populism and representation, Benjamin Moffitt’s theory of populism as political style, and Pierre Rosanvallon’s reflections on democratic legitimacy all offer fruitful points of dialogue. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s contribution stands comfortably alongside these major theorists, yet the conversation occasionally remains more implicit than explicit.
The book also invites reflection on developments beyond its historical period. Although Rev. Dr. Bossen concludes by emphasizing the endurance of the three populisms he identifies, readers are naturally drawn toward contemporary politics. Trumpism illustrates the remarkable resilience of white supremacist populist narratives centred upon national restoration, exclusionary conceptions of citizenship, and nostalgia for an idealized past. Conversely, Black Lives Matter, contemporary labor organizing, democratic socialism, and broader progressive coalitions demonstrate that Pan-African and pluralistic populisms likewise continue to evolve in response to changing social and political conditions. One of the book’s lasting achievements is precisely that it provides a conceptual vocabulary through which these contemporary developments can be interpreted within a much longer historical trajectory.
In sum, The Political Theologies of Populism succeeds because it fundamentally reframes the study of populism. Rather than asking whether populism is inherently democratic or authoritarian, Rev. Dr. Bossen encourages readers to ask a more fundamental question: Who constitutes “the people,” by what moral vision are they united, and whom does that definition inevitably exclude? In shifting attention from electoral competition to the moral construction of political communities, he significantly expands the conceptual horizons of populism research.
If one reservation remains, it concerns not the historical scholarship—which is exemplary—but the comparative balance of the analytical framework. While comparison reveals important structural affinities, greater normative differentiation between emancipatory and exclusionary populisms would have further strengthened the book’s democratic argument and prevented any possible reading that places victims of racial oppression and architects of racial domination within an overly symmetrical analytical space. This is, however, a criticism directed at the limits of comparison rather than the quality of the scholarship itself.
Taken as a whole, Rev. Dr. Bossen’s book is an impressive, original, and intellectually courageous work. It enriches our understanding of American political development by demonstrating that populism has never been a singular phenomenon but rather a contested field of competing democratic and anti-democratic projects. Combining historical depth with theoretical sophistication, it offers an important contribution not only to the study of populism but also to political theology, American intellectual history, religion and politics, and democratic theory. It deserves a wide readership among historians, political scientists, scholars of religion, and anyone seeking to understand why struggles over belonging continue to define American democracy in the twenty-first century.
Colin Bossen. The Political Theologies of Populism: The Garveyites, the Klan, and the Wobblies, 1905–1930. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2026.
Please cite as: Ali, Karrar & Urooj, Aamina. (2026). “Beyond Islamo-Populism: Religious Framing and Sectarian Mobilization among the Far-Right Islamist Parties in Pakistan.” Populism & Politics (P&P). European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). July 07, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/pp0055
Abstract
Pakistan’s far-right Islamist political parties hold a significant space in the electoral and mobilizational base, yet their scholarly examination is quite limited in the existing literature. Although these parties have different doctrinal positions and unique political agendas, the existing literature treat them all under broad umbrella terms assuming that they share a common narrative and have homogeneous logic. This paper challenges this assumption by conducting a first systematic comparative framing analysis of three far-right Islamist parties that represent three different sectarian constituencies namely the Tahreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazlur Rahman Group (JUI-F), and Majlis Wahdate-e-Muslimeen (MWM) representing Barelvi, Deobandi, and Shia sects respectively. The study applies Benford and Snow’s (2000) framing theory that constitute three core framing tasks and four frame alignment processes. For data sources, the study relies on party manifestos, campaign slogans, party leadership statements, and documented public discourse spanning from the period of 2015 till 2024. The chosen time period starts from the point when TLP was formed, till 2024 that marks the latest elections in the country. The findings of the study reveal that although all three parties conduct their activities within the same political environment and invoke Islamic symbols, but they manifest different political logics and mobilization strategies. TLP’s positioning is built upon religious populism that centers on Khatm-e-Nabuwwat (the finality of prophethood), constructing a moral antagonism between the pious people and corrupt elites. JUI-F operates through Islamist conservatism, pursuing the state to institutionalize Sharia in the country, and MWM mobilizes through sectarian minority identity politics, constructing their political narrative around Karbala symbolism to frame Shia Muslims as a persecuted community demanding protection and recognition. These distinct logics of each party are shaped by sectarian identity and historical grievances which demonstrate that religious political mobilization in Pakistan is internally differentiated in ways that umbrella categorization does not reveal. The findings of this study contribute to how scholars theorize religious populism in Muslim-majority states and help understanding the structural sources of political polarization and sectarian tension in Pakistan.
PTI supporter at Jinnah Cricket Stadium during a political rally of cricketer turned politician Imran Khan on March 23, 2012 in Sialkot, Pakistan. Photo: Jahanzaib Naiyyer.
The far-right Islamist landscape in Pakistan presents an analytical puzzle, manifested by three political parties: Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazlur Rahman Group (JUI-F), and Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM), which operate within the same religious-political field, draw on the same Islamic tradition, and all deploy religious symbols to construct political narratives and mobilize public support. Yet, they do through strikingly different strategies, targeting different constituencies, invoking different symbols, and constructing different political logic. TLP shows their support from the Barelvi sectarian tradition, JUI-F from the Deobandi tradition, and MWM from the Shia community. This paper argues that these differences are not incidental but are analytically significant. Through a systematic comparative framing analysis grounded in Benford and Snow’s (2000) framework, this study examines how each party strategically constructs its political narrative through religious symbols and what those differences reveal about the internal differentiation of far-right Islamist mobilization in Pakistan.
The involvement of far-right Islamist parties in the political sphere in Pakistan has remained significant since its inception. They have played an important part in Islamization of the state and society especially since late 1970s under the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq. To legitimize his military rule, he reorganized governance around “Islamic” norms, most notably through the Hudood Ordinances (1979) and the creation of the Federal Shariat Court (1980). These strategies soon became an enforceable state policy that strengthen the role of religious parties and clerical networks extending their leverage into the public life, law, and political bargaining (Kennedy, 1990: 65). The Islamic provisions in the constitution of 1956, 1962, and 1973 are one such manifestation of their involvement (Roy, 1994: 23). This Process did not redefine constitutional language, but it normalized the use of Islamic symbolism in political discourse and opened institutional space for religious parties to claim moral authority in the public sphere.
The Islamist political parties under focus of this study have emerged in different times having different objectives to come into politics, but they all share common popular strategies to remain in power and have significant voter base. JUI-F, Pakistan’s largest Islamist political party currently holds fourth-most seats in the Senate and fifth-most in the National Assembly and has proven street power, largely drawn from the students of madrassas (Rahimullah, 2021). TLP became 4th largest party in Pakistan following the 2024 general election, securing nearly 2.89 million votes (Gallup Pakistan, 2024). Although still struggling to make significant presence in the political space, MWM has also secured seats in both national assembly and senate in 2024 general election (Hussain, 2024).
An initial step toward an understanding of these parties is the scholarship on religious populism, which is helpful but insufficient. The scholars of religious populism such as Mudde (2004), Yilmaz, Batool and Shakil (2023), and Hadiz (2014) have demonstrated how Islamist movements use the same rhetoric by replacing the term “the people” with “ummah” and the term “political opposition” with “moral and theological opposition.’ TLP fits this description quite well; it builds a moral dichotomy between the righteous and the corrupt, it defines blasphemy as an existential threat to the civilizational values of Islam and it sees itself as the true voice of the Barelvi Muslim community against what it considers to be the secular, corrupt, and morally bankrupt government.
The situation becomes much more complicated, however, if JUI-F and MWM are viewed the same way. JUI-F’s politics are not directed against the political system but toward its completion on Islamic lines, it doesn’t involve protesting against the corrupt elite but the creation of Sharia institutions in the current political system. The dominant discourse on the other hand, which MWM is best known for, is one of sectarian community protection, in which Shia Muslims are portrayed as apersecuted minority that deserves recognition, security and representation from a government “ignoring their plight.” These are different political logics, and it is important to consider them as different, otherwise the comparative analysis will lose the value of comparing the differences that make it possible.
Though the use of populism and religious symbolism has been researched in other contexts, such as Hindu populism in India (Jaffrelot, 2021: 85) and Christian populism in Europe (Brubaker, 2017: 1191–1226), few in-depth scholarly studies have explored how far-right Islamist parties in Pakistan use framing strategies to mobilize popular support. This research seeks to address that gap. To the best of our knowledge, there is still no systematic comparative study of far-right Islamist parties in Pakistan. Much of the existing scholarship has explored these actors separately, mainly as a religious populist movement (e.g., Sabat et al., 2020; Zahid et al., 2022; Yilmaz & Shakil, 2022), and has not considered the possibility of their doing the same political work with other symbols, or of them representing truly different styles of religious political mobilization. This paper goes to the heart of the issue.
At the outset, it should be noted that framing analysis, though analytically useful, is not a full account of the political career of these parties. But the framing is not the only key to success or failure; structural conditions are, as well. In addition to framing strategies, outcomes are influenced by resource access, organizational capacity, political opportunity structures and institutional patronage. In TLP, Javid (2021) has shown that although the party was able to mobilize its supporters on street, its clientelist nature and competition among the religious right limited its electoral success. This paper does not assert that the only forces behind these parties’ political paths are framing. Instead, it uses framing analysis as a fruitful tool for examining how they shape political meaning, build their constituencies and position themselves in relation to each other; something that structural approaches are unable to do.
The key research question of this paper is: How do far-right Islamist political parties in Pakistan strategically use religious symbolization and framing to construct political narratives and mobilize public support, and what do differences in their framing strategies reveal about the differentiation of religiously inflected political mobilization within Pakistan? A related sub-question follows: Why do these groups, despite operating within the same political context and drawing on the same Islamic tradition, construct different political logics, and to what extent do sectarian identities explain these differences?
The paper is organized as follows. The theoretical framework presents Benford and Snow’s (2000) framework, including the three core framing tasks (diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational) and the four framing processes (bridging, amplification, extension, and transformation). It also defines the type of discourse employed in this study. The methodology explains the case selection, data sources, time period, and analytical process. The discussion is organized thematically, with an emphasis on comparative analysis rather than a party-by-party examination. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the main findings, discusses the study’s theoretical implications for understanding religious populism in Muslim-majority states, and outlines its limitations.
Theoretical Framework
Framing theory, conceptualized by Benford and Snow (2000: 611–639), has emerged to be one of the foundational frameworks for understanding the dynamics of social and political movements. It focuses on how movements construct, articulate, and disseminate meanings in efforts towards mobilization. Movements do this by addressing three primary framing tasks: diagnostic framing, prognostic framing, and motivational framing. These empower a movement to create resonance with its target audience and to translate grievances into actionable agendas.
Diagnostic framing involves the identification of social problems, attributing specific actors or structures with blame. While the specific targets of diagnostic framing vary across movements, secular elites, minority communities, foreign powers, or rival sects there are an underlying logic remains consistent: identifying a threat, assigning blame, and constructing a moral boundary between those who belong and those who do not.
Prognostic framing offers solutions to the grievances thus identified. In most cases, these solutions may be found within the ideological or cultural ethos of the movement. For instance, in the case of the JUI-F, the framing of Shariagovernance as the missing panacea for corruption and inequality is rooted in religious ideology. The credibility of prognostic framing depends on its alignment with the movement’s broader ideological identity; the proposed solution must appear morally necessary within the movement’s own normative universe.
Moreover, motivational framing inspires action by appealing to moral obligations and evoking emotional resonance. This framing task often contains religious, historical, and cultural symbols to galvanize collective action. In religiously inflected movements, motivational framing shows particularly on sacred history, martyrdom narratives, and divine obligation, transforming political participation into an act of faith and collective moral duty.
In addition to core framing task, Benford and Snow (2000) underlines frame alignment processes as key devices by which movements link their frames with wider societal discourses. It is through processes of frame bridging, frame amplification, frame extension, and frame transformation that movements reveal strategic responsiveness to shifting political and social terrains.
While frame bridging refers to the linking of disconnected but congruent grievances or stories, it allows movements to expand their scope by linking their goals to interests in society (Van Dijk, 2023: 153–178). Frame bridging itself is particularly consequential in fragmented political contexts, where each movement must stitch together disparate constituencies by demonstrating that their specific demands serve broader shared interest.
Frame amplification involves heightening the salience of specific values or issues to enhance their relevance and urgency. Through amplification, movements can elevate particular grievances above others, constructing a hierarchy or urgency that channels collective energy toward specific symbolic and political objectives.
Frame extension broadens the scope of a movement’s narrative by incorporating additional issues to appeal to a wider audience. Frame extension reflects a movement’s strategic awareness of its own limits, by reaching beyond its core constituency which trades ideological purity for broader coalition appeal.
Frame transformation redefines existing narratives, creating new meanings that resonate with changing sociopolitical contexts. Frame transformation is the most ambitious of the alignment process, because it requires movements to reinterpret the established meanings.
There is a need for a theoretical clarification before moving on. The definition of populism by Mudde (2004) is a thin-centered ideology, namely a rather coherent body of ideas about society organized around the moral polarity between the pure people and the corrupt elite. This is an ideological conception that is not the discursive approach followed in this paper. This study views framing as a strategic communicative action whereby political actors are actively shaping meaning, defining problems, solving them, and calling them to action, following the example of Benford and Snow (2000) and Entman (1993). The distinction is significant: in this paper, the idea of party is not understood as an ideology merely in advance of the evidence but is rather analyzed as the kind of story each party tells, who they’re going to fight, what they’re going to offer as a solution, and the people they’re going to rally behind. This is how the empirical differences between the three parties come out of the analysis and not assumed as a prerequisite, which is the reason the comparative results are possible.
In this study, Benford and Snow (2000) model is used to examine political communication by TLP, JUI-F, and MWM.Importantly, the discussion section is not party by party, but rather thematically. All three parties are compared to one another in each framing task so that the framework can shed light on the similarities and differences in the way they make sense of the political position. It is this comparative thematic structure that enables the paper to go beyond description to an explanatory argument as to why these parties frame their political positions in such different ways, despite the fact that they operate within the same political reality. The methodological decisions that provide the basis for this analysis are described below.
Research Methodology
This study used a qualitative research design, with framing analysis as the primary analytical technique. In line with Benford and Snow (2000), framing analysis is understood as the systematic investigation of how political actors, through public communication, create meaning by defining a problem, identifying those responsible, proposing a solution, and calling for collective action. The study is situated within the broader field of political discourse but does not adopt discourse analysis as a method per se, such as Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995) or Discourse-Historical Analysis (Wodak, 2001). Instead, framing theory is employed as the specific analytical tool through which the discourse of the three selected parties is examined. This distinction highlights two important differences: first, framing analysis focuses on the strategic and purposeful dimensions of political communication; second, it is particularly useful for studying parties that consciously employ religious symbols to construct political narratives and mobilize constituencies (Snow et al., 1986: 464).
Case Selection
The three groups selected for this study—Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazlur Rahman Group (JUI-F), and Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM)—were chosen based on two explicit selection criteria. First, they each represent different sectarian constituencies within Pakistan’s far-right Islamist landscape: TLP mobilizes the Barelvi-Sunni community, JUI-F mobilizes the Deobandi-Sunni community, and MWM mobilizes the Shia community in Pakistan. This sectarian variation constitutes the key variable for explaining differences in the framing strategies employed by the three parties, and it is this variation that the paper seeks to explain. Second, during the study period, all three groups were actively engaged in political mobilization and maintained a public presence across all three modes of participation—electoral politics, street mobilization, and public communication—thereby providing a sufficient basis for the systematic analysis of their discourses.
The most important omitted case requiring explanation is Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). On theoretical grounds, JI is excluded because, unlike the three selected parties, it does not mobilize a specific sectarian constituency but instead represents a pan-Islamist ideological platform that transcends sectarian boundaries. Its organizational model and discursive logic are therefore fundamentally different from the sectarian community-based mobilization that constitutes the analytical focus of this study. Including JI would introduce a different type of case that could not be analyzed using the same analytical dimensions as the three selected cases. Likewise, smaller organizations such as Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan were not included because they lacked sufficient publicly documented discourse during the study period to permit systematic analysis.
The inclusion of MWM warrants particular comment because its electoral presence is relatively limited. However, electoral size is not the key consideration here; rather, it is its discursive distinctiveness. MWM is the only organized Shia political party within Pakistan’s far-right political landscape and mobilizes a Shia community that has received far less scholarly attention than Sunni Islamist parties (Rajani, 2013). Its inclusion is therefore both theoretically justified and empirically meaningful, as it allows us to examine whether Shia political mobilization follows the same framing logic as Sunni Islamist parties or instead reflects a distinct form of religious political mobilization.
Data Sources and Time Period
This analysis is based on publicly available political communications produced by the three political parties and their leaders between 2015 and 2024. The starting point, 2015, was chosen because it marks the founding of TLP, which laid the foundation for the contemporary far-right Islamist contest in Pakistan. The end point, 2024, represents the most recent general election cycle and encompasses a complete period of contemporary political mobilization for each of the three parties.
The data corpus consists of four types of sources. First, it includes official party documents, such as Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan’s Election Manifesto 2024 (2024), and documented party materials, such as Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan’s Official Anthem 2018 (Allama Khadim Hussain Rizvi Official, 2018). Second, it draws on the verbatim speeches of party leaders as reported in Pakistan’s leading national newspapers—Dawn, The Express Tribune, The News International, and Business Recorder—which serve as the principal public archive of political communication in Pakistan. Third, it incorporates party social media content, including verified hashtag campaigns and documented social media slogans used by all three parties on platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. Fourth, it draws on academic studies that directly cite and analyze party discourse, particularly the works of Sabat et al. (2020), Zahid et al. (2022), Yilmaz and Shakil (2022), and Javid (2021).
This corpus has certain limitations. The analysis relies heavily on reported statements rather than on a comprehensive collection of primary texts. However, full transcripts of leaders’ speeches are not always available in digital or searchable formats, nor are many Urdu-language primary sources, such as party newspapers like Sada-e-Wahdat published by the MWM. Consequently, the findings are based on credible journalistic and academic sources that document the parties’ public political communication rather than on an exhaustive corpus of primary source materials.
Analytical Procedure
The analysis is conducted at two levels. First, the publicly documented discourse of each party is analyzed according to the three fundamental framing tasks identified by Benford and Snow (2000): diagnostic framing, in which each party defines the problem and assigns blame; prognostic framing, in which each party proposes solutions; and motivational framing, in which each party constructs moral and emotional appeals for collective action. Second, the four frame alignment processes—bridging, amplification, extension, and transformation—are employed to examine how each party connects its core frames with broader societal concerns and adapts its framing practices to changing political environments (Snow et al., 1986).
The study adopts a thematic comparative analysis rather than a party-by-party analysis. In other words, the discussion does not examine all three framing tasks for each party individually; instead, it compares how the three parties approach each framing task. This design is intentional, as it highlights the comparative logic of the analysis and allows convergences and divergences among the parties to become clearly visible at each analytical stage, rather than being merely inferred from three separate case descriptions.
The coding of party discourse was carried out deductively, with the framing tasks and frame alignment processes serving as the principal analytical categories for coding the data. Recurring religious symbols—such as Khatm-e-Nabuwwat for TLP, Sharia governance for JUI-F, and Karbala for MWM—were identified as the symbolic anchors around which each party organizes its diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing in its public communication.
Discussion: Comparative Framing Analysis of Far-Right Islamist Parties in Pakistan
The following analysis applies Benford and Snow’s (2000) framing framework comparatively to the three parties examined in this study: TLP, JUI-F, and MWM. The discussion is organized thematically around the three core framing tasks. The following subsections examine each party’s approach to the issues it emphasizes. The analysis focuses on the problems each party identifies, the solutions it proposes, and the motivational appeals it employs to mobilize collective action. It also examines how these frames align with broader societal discourses. This structure makes it possible to identify both the convergences and divergences that distinguish these parties on analytical grounds. The preliminary study of all parties suggests that even though all three parties deploy Islamist symbols strategically, they do so from a different political logic that dictate their behavior shaped by their distinct sectarian identities and historical grievances.
Diagnostic Framing: Identifying the Problem and Assigning Blame
Diagnostic framing refers to the identification of social problems and the attribution of blame. It is the fundamental process through which political actors derive their political identity and demarcate the boundary that separates them from their opponents, thereby constructing the distinction between “us” and “them” (Benford & Snow, 2000: 615). Examining each party through the lens of diagnostic framing reveals that they identify strikingly different problems, assign blame to different actors, and construct distinct categories of enemies. These differences are not arbitrary; rather, they reflect the sectarian identities of each party and the specific grievances of the constituencies they seek to mobilize.
Tahreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP)
A large numbers of people gathered to attend funeral prayer of Khadim Hussain Rizvi, Chief of TLP, held at Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore on on November 21, 2020. Photo: Asianet-Pakistan.
TLP emerged in 2015 as a major political force in Pakistan. It was established by Khadim Hussain Rizvi. TLP claims that it is the true herald of the deep-rooted Barelvi school of thought and is one of the proudest fighters of the Khatm-e-Nabuwat, which is also the ideology that underpins the very existence of TLP. The party became popular quite quickly because it raised a monumental rally against principles threatening its existence by the Ahmadi community, calling them Ahmadis alongside all such incidents of alleged blasphemy (UK Visas and Immigration, 2025). It employs a combination of street protests, social media campaigns, and religio-symbolic imagery to mobilize conservative Muslim constituencies under the banner of saving Islamic values from the secular political machinations of Pakistan’s sociopolitical scene.
In this regard, TLP has claimed that they have diagnosed the real problems of society, such as the failure of true spirit of Islam and undue lenience towards acts of blasphemy. In this way, these factors have been indicated as the causes of societal disintegration and moral decay in Pakistan. These narratives are strongly propagated through their party anthem, which is filled with religious fervor, designating the party as the sole savior of Pakistan, bringing Sharia into the political system, and categorically alienating the previous governments and political parties as looters, and corrupt, and label them as one and the same group who are dividing Pakistan. The anthem is filled with rhetorical lines such as “Pakistan banaya tha, Pakistan bachana hai (We created Pakistan, and we have to save it),” “deen ko takhat par lana hy (we have to bring religion to govern),” “watan ko katne wale sabhi ye aik chakoo hain (those dividing the country are all one group),”alluding that we are going to come and be the sole savior of the country by bringing religious rule (Allama Khadim Hussain Rizvi Official, 2018).
The party particularly identifies the Ahmadi community as its primary target, declaring Ahmadis to be non-Muslims (IHRC, 2024). The central basis for this allegation is the sanctity of Khatm-e-Nabuwwat, as Ahmadis believe in a prophet after Muhammad. This is not merely a theological disagreement but is presented as an attack on the very political identity that TLP has built around defending the doctrine of the Finality of Prophethood.
Ahmadis have been affected by TLP campaigns directed against them, with cases such as Mubarak Sani, who was lynched on suspicion of blasphemy in 2014, cited by TLP as exemplary cases against Ahmadis (Mahmood, 2024; Persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, 2022). This incident was similarly framed by TLP as a successful expression of public piety against heresy, reinforcing its claim that social grievances stem from the ineffective implementation of blasphemy laws (Jalil, 2024).
TLP thus diagnoses the fundamental ills of society—namely, the erosion of the true spirit of Islam and undue leniency toward acts of blasphemy—as the causes of social disintegration and moral decay in Pakistan. The outrage expressed by TLP leaders following the acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted on blasphemy charges, was particularly intense. At a protest in Lahore, TLP leader Afzal Qadri declared: “The judges who have ordered the release of the accursed Asia are all liable to be killed under religious edict” (Al Jazeera, 2018; Khan, 2018).
For diagnostic framing through social media, TLP employed hashtags such as #Tajdar_Khatam_e_Nabuwat and #Labbaik_Ya_Rasoolallah. These slogans were instrumental in constructing a narrative of moral urgency that resonated strongly with its support base. This emphasis further reinforced an “us versus them” dichotomy, portraying the party’s supporters as the pious defenders of Islam in opposition to secular elites, Ahmadis, and Western influences (Mahmood, 2024).
During protests demanding the expulsion of the French ambassador, TLP demonstrators were confronted by law enforcement agencies. In response, Khadim Rizvi questioned the ideological foundations of the Pakistani state, stating: “We cannot forgive the enemies of the Prophet (PBUH). While traveling to Islamabad, I wondered whether we could send back the French Ambassador. [Alas] the Muslims living in France can protest, but in the state, which was achieved in the name of Islam, the nation is not allowed to protest for the honor of the Prophet. Now, we have to ask a question about the type of leadership we have been led by for the last 72 years. Had Labbaik (TLP) been ruling the country, it would have executed them [blasphemers],” (Zahid et al., 2022).
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazlur Rahman Group (JUI-F)
JUI-F has its roots in the Deobandi movement, which sticks to some rigid fundamentals of the Sharia and Sharia legalism over literalism and puritanical reforms. JUI-F has possessed both a religious and an organizational face in Pakistan ever since its inception as a party. The party entered the political limelight by taking advantage of its communication network of religious institutions, called madrassas, and aligning itself with the conservative Muslim culture and belief system of the voting population (Karamat et al., 2019: 29–36). Throughout the years, JUI-F has sustained its political relevance by masquerading as a protector of Islamic values amidst perceived threats posed by secular and liberal ideologies. In the political context, JUI-F uses its political symbol, the book, referring to the Quran, the holy book of Muslims, and its candidates refer to their audiences by saying that not stamping its symbol is equivalent to rejecting the holy book (Nazar, 2013).
In this broader context, JUI-F traces the root of the crises affecting society to the inability of others to properly implement Islamic law. The party continuously criticizes secular models of governance for promoting corruption, inequality, and moral decline (Khan, 2019). At a 2016 press conference, Fazlur Rahman stated that he would “not let Pakistan become secular,” asserting that secular legislation was “in conflict with the Holy Quran, the life of Prophet Muhammad, the Constitution of Pakistan, and the values of our country” (Express Tribune, 2016). This framing was reiterated during the 2024 election campaign, with the party urging voters to support JUI-F as the party committed to Islamic values and governance (Express Tribune, 2024b).
In 2019, during the Azadi March, Fazlur Rahman argued that the policies adopted by the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had undermined the country’s Islamic traditions. He framed the actions of the ruling government as being entirely contrary to the injunctions of the Sharia (Batool, 2019). During the march, he portrayed the PTI government as an existential threat to both the constitutional order and Islamic governance, declaring that the march aimed to “protect the Constitution, democracy and Pakistan” from a government that had made “the Constitution a joke” and put “the survival of the country at risk” (Shaikh & Hussain, 2019). This narrative resonates with JUI-F’s core constituency, which views the party as a representative of conservative Muslims.
Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM)
MWM came into being in 2009 to fight against the systematic persecution and escalating violence targeting Shia Muslims in Pakistan (Shah, 2019). Guided by the tenets of Shia Islam, especially those rooted in the history of Imam Hussain and his martyrdom at Karbala, MWM serves both as a force for the protection of Shia rights and as a force for unity among Pakistan’s Muslim communities. The ideological foundation of the party is thus deeply embedded in notions of justice, sacrifice, and resistance, which are represented by its electoral emblem, the Khama (the tent)—the tent of Imam Hussain (Naqvi, 2025). This reinforces MWM’s claim to follow in the footsteps of Imam Hussain and his struggle for truth and justice. Additionally, in recent elections, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has been a political ally of Majlis-e-Wahdat-ul-Muslimeen (MWM) (BR Web Desk, 2024). Allama Raja Nasir Abbas, the Chairman of MWM, was elected to the Senate in the 2024 elections and was nominated as the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate with the support of PTI at a time when PTI Chairman Imran Khan was incarcerated (Sadozai & News Desk, 2026).
Within this frame of reference, MWM identifies sectarian violence, institutionalized discrimination, and foreign interference as the causes of social unrest in Pakistan. The party often refers to the Quetta Hazara killings (Baloch, 2021) and the Parachinar bombings (Mehdi, 2024) as examples of the state’s failure to provide security for Shia Muslims. Through slogans such as “Pakistan Banya Tha – Pakistan Bachyanga (“Pakistan was made, and Pakistan will be saved”),” MWM underlines its role as a guardian of the country’s ideological and territorial integrity.
It further draws on the legacy of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, who was claimed to be a Shia Muslim, to give legitimacy to its position as the protector of Pakistan’s Islamic identity. This becomes a narrative not only within the Shia community but also in broader nationalist sentiments, presenting this as a collective responsibility toward the ideals on which Pakistan was founded.
Although all three parties possess a clear religious narrative, the diagnostic framing reveals a fundamental divergence in how they construct political antagonism. TLP’s diagnostic frame clearly alludes to Mudde’s (2004) definition of populism: it constructs a moral antagonism between the pious Muslim people and a corrupt secular elite that is complicit in blasphemy and moral decay. JUI-F’s diagnostic framing stands in contrast to that of TLP, targeting secularism as an ideological failure of statecraft rather than political elite corruption. It identifies the absence of divine governance as the enemy, rather than the political elite per se, which reflects a conservative rather than a populist logic. MWM’s diagnostic framing is categorically different from that of its counterparts. It identifies the Shia community as a persecuted minority within a hostile majority environment and views sectarian enemies and state negligence as blameworthy, rather than a generalized corrupt elite, as TLP does. This framing reveals that the convergent factor among all three parties is the use of Islamist referents to frame grievance, while they differ in the structure of the antagonism they construct and the identity of the enemy they identify.
Prognostic Framing: Proposing Solutions
Prognostic framing concerns how actors advance solutions to the problems they have diagnosed (Benford & Snow, 2000: 616). The analysis of each party highlights that the proposed solutions are closely tethered to their diagnostic frames, showing the logical connection between the defined problems and the solutions proposed. Examining these solutions comparatively not only reveals what each party wants but also sets out its vision for the political project it seeks to implement.
Tahreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP)
TLP believes the remedy for the real moral and social crises in the fine land of Pakistan is the lawful, strict, and complete application of blasphemy laws and the exclusion of Ahmadis from the public domain. It has demanded the full implementation of laws concerning crimes against the Holy Prophet Muhammad. For instance, during one of the sit-ins at Faizabad in 2017, TLP demanded the resignation of the lawmakers responsible for amending the electoral oath relating to Khatm-e-Nabuwwat (Dawn, 2017). The government’s surrender to TLP’s demands at Faizabad, including the resignation of the minister responsible for the oath amendment, was framed by the party as strong proof that street pressure grounded in religious obligation could force the state to comply with Islamic imperatives. Its ritualized symbolic practices at public gatherings, including collective prayers and recitations, further reinforced its prognostic framing by embedding its political demands within a register of religious observance and constructing compliance with the party’s agenda as an act of devotion rather than a simple act of political choice (Sabat et al., 2020).
Designating the government and opposing state institutions as mere stooges of the West, the TLP leadership proposes a solution by expressing its intention that “once we are in power, we will treat them (the West) with an iron fist” (Zahid et al., 2022). Its solutions are mostly emotive rather than based on rational or practical grounds. For instance, at a public gathering, the firebrand Rizvi proposed launching a missile attack against the USA and the IMF if they asked Pakistan to repay its loans, stating, “Lo ji fer aaya je Ghauri (here comes the Ghauri missile to hit you)” (Zahid et al., 2022).
Designating the government and opposing state institutions as a mere stooge of the West, TLP leadership proposes a solution by expressing their intentions as “once we are in power, we will treat them (West) with an iron fist,” (Zahid et al., 2022). Their solutions are mostly emotive rather than based on rational or practical grounds. For instance, in a public gathering, firebrand Rizvi proposed to launch a missile attack against the USA and IMF if they ask Pakistan to pay back its loan stating “Lo ji fer aaya je Ghauri (here comes the Ghauri missile to hit you) (Zahid et al., 2022)
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazlur Rahman Group (JUI-F)
JUI-F prefers the implementation of Sharia law as the ultimate solution to the governance issues in Pakistan. The party’s rhetoric has consistently emphasized that only an Islamic model of governance can overcome the deeply ingrained problems of corruption, inequality, and societal discord. Additionally, it presents itself as the protector of democracy and the guardian of the sanctity of the Constitution, while portraying others as diminishing its value (Dawn, 2024a).
Election campaigns are often marked by calls to establish an “Islamic state” as a moral imperative (Dawn, 2024b; Karamat et al., 2019). Symbolic actions, such as leading prayers at political gatherings, further reinforce this vision and create a sense of urgency among supporters to rally behind the party’s agenda.
Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM)
The prognostic framing by MWM can be reduced to three main postulates that it propagates: the unification of all sects, the strict application of the law in dealing with extremist groups and increased political representation for Shia Muslims. The electoral campaigns frequently feature the slogan “Life for Hussain—Vote for Hussain,” which alludes to tying political action to religious devotion. This framing helps MWM present its political platform as a continuation of Imam Hussain’s struggle for justice, playing a catalytic role in mobilizing its followers to view voting as a religious and moral obligation.
Image credit: Taken from the party’s Facebook page. The flyer was produced by MWM for the 2013 general election campaign, in which the Khama (tent) represents the party’s political symbol, while the slogan at the top reads, “Life for Hussain, Vote for Hussain.”
The party advocates for an independent foreign policy, free from Western influence, as can be witnessed eloquently in its slogans, such as “Down Down America” and “Down Down Israel” (Hasan, 2012). These slogans demonstrate MWM’s resistance to liberal, Western-appeasing policies, which, according to the party, are against the Islamic identity of Pakistan. The emphasis on self-reliance and resistance to foreign dominance reinforces the party’s populist appeal among the ranks of nationalist and religiously conservative voters.
The prognostic frames are different for each party, further illuminating their distinct political logics as their proposed solutions correspond to the problems identified earlier. TLP emphasizes the implementation of strict blasphemy laws, the expulsion of Ahmadis from public life, and taking strict action against the perceived enemies of the Prophet. These reflect a rupture logic in its prognostic framing that alludes to the existing order being morally compromised and, hence, needing to be purged.
JUI-F’s proposed solutions are different. They reflect a completion logic by calling for the institutionalization of Sharia within the existing state. It points to a political order that, in its view, should not be dismantled but rather fulfilled along Islamic lines, which puts forward a fundamentally conservative rather than populist orientation.
Meanwhile, MWM’s proposed solutions, including sectarian unity, legal accountability for anti-Shia violence, and increased Shia political representation, reflect a recognition logic, in which the party is not seeking to transform the political order outright but instead wants to secure a legitimate place within it for a marginalized community.
These three qualitatively different political projects reflect distinct political logics advanced by different actors, all expressed in the shared language of Islamic governance.
Motivational framing revolves around how actors push for action based on the narrative they have been creating. It concerns how movements translate diagnostic and prognostic frames into calls for collective action by constructing moral obligations and emotional imperatives that drive participation (Benford & Snow, 2000: 617). All three parties demonstrate the use of religious symbols in constructing motivational framing. It is here that the specific symbolic repertoires of each sectarian tradition are most directly deployed to generate emotional zeal and a sense of duty among those who support their cause.
Tahreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP)
Their solutions are often filled with emotive zeal, pushing their followers to take to the streets, incite violence, and, at worst, lynch people on accusations of blasphemy. Their aggressive fervor motivates their supporters to champion the cause of defending the blasphemy laws in Pakistan and the finality of the Prophet.
TLP’s motivational framing for mass protests is centered on calling upon religious zeal and defining a common identity. Thus, the party relies on slogans such as #Member_o_Mahrab_Se_Siyasat (Politics from the Pulpit) as evidence of how the authority of religious leaders shapes the boundaries of political discourse. The tradition of Prophet Muhammad, together with that of other Islamic martyrs, is extensively used to build emotional and spiritual commitment among TLP supporters.
Social media is at the center of all motivational action by TLP. Through public campaigns using hashtags such as#Labbaik_Ya_Rasoolallah, the party encourages its followers to mobilize for protests and political rallies, presenting participation as a communal duty. Digital platforms further expand the party’s community, drawing more people to the message it espouses through these calls to action.
The “us versus them” framing presents the secular elite, liberal policies, and Ahmadis as existential threats to Islamic unity, as reflected in TLP’s political rhetoric. The sentence handed down to Mubarak Sani provided a significant opportunity to highlight what TLP portrayed as a moral victory over the Ahmadis by drawing attention to their alleged heretical status (Mahmood, 2024a). Such narratives not only carry the potential for grassroots mobilization but also marginalize minorities by portraying them as enemies of Islam.
Their criticism extends beyond the influence of Western cultural traits, which they perceive as corrupting values and eroding the Islamic identity of Pakistan. Their focus relies more on the dichotomy of “pious defenders” and “corrupt elites,” through which they legitimize their populist claims and strengthen their support among conservative constituencies. In practice, symbolic mobilization means that TLP makes effective use of religious congregations, media, and Madaris (madrassas) to spread its narrative. Mass protest events, such as the 2017 Faizabad sit-in, have demonstrated how the party is able to transform symbolic mobilization into concrete political power. Madaris serve as sites of ideological dissemination, providing a steady supply of activists committed to the mission of TLP.
Symbolic mobilization of TLP through social media has therefore turned out to be completely essential. Tweets carrying the hashtag #Tajdar_Khatame_Nabuwat and numerous widely shared posts across social media platforms have allowed the party to promote its agenda broadly. Through both conventional and new media, TLP sustains its populist appeal and defines itself as the defender of Islamic Shariah (Zahid et al., 2022: 276–295).
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazlur Rahman Group (JUI-F)
Motivational framing serves as a primer for the conditions that enhance the potential for large-scale mobilization, and JUI-F demonstrates considerable capacity in this respect. The “book” as the electoral symbol is portrayed as the Holy Quran, and thus, for any religious Muslim, voting for anyone other than JUI-F would be sinful to their faith. In another instance, JUI-F takes time to remind people of various episodes in Islam and, at times, of the great sacrifices of leaders who fought for Islam in order to evoke a particular emotional response that influences their political choices. Such framing rebrands election campaigns as a religious mission and cultivates, with great vigor, a powerful sense of identity and purpose among its supporters (Dawn, 2025).
Additionally, JUI-F uses the “us vs. them” dichotomy as a tool for maintaining its hard core and demarcating its territory and identity. It portrays secular forces as the enemies of unity among Islamic states, while presenting the liberal elite and other sects as enemies of the correct Islamic values, and portrays itself as the defender of the correct Islamic values (Ashfaq, 2024). This not only mobilizes its supporters but also dismisses opposition groups as enemies of Islam. For instance, JUI-F has blamed secular elites for their penchant for embracing Western culture and easily portrays such groups as symbols of corruption and moral decadence. This type of narrative increases polarization and simplifies the binary between the sacred and the profane.
Symbolic mobilization is at its best in JUI-F’s religious meetings, madrassah network, and media presence, all of which speak to the organization’s commitment to symbolic action. Party structures enable the diffusion of party narratives as well as the reinforcement of its identity as the defender of Islam. Like all political parties, madrassas are an integral part of JUI-F’s organizational setup and a strategically important component in terms of ideological indoctrination and network mobilization. The framing strategies are further developed and disseminated through media appearances and speeches. These practices not only facilitate JUI-F’s political mobilization but also solidify the party’s ties with its religious voter base.
Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM)
MWM is able to marshal its base through effective motivational framing, coupling religious symbolism with nationalist rhetoric. Its “Khama” electoral symbol turns out to be a very potent reminder of the sacrifice of Imam Hussain and evokes the feeling among its followers that political participation is part of their religious duty. Slogans such as “Life for Hussain – Vote for Hussain,” displayed on campaign materials, reinforce this message by framing political choice as a matter of faith.
MWM also resorts to emotive slogans such as “Pakistan Ka Matlab Kya? La Ilaha Illallah” (What is the meaning of Pakistan? There is no God but Allah) to mobilize the people (Iqbal, 2014). These slogans link national identity with Islamic principles, thereby constructing a shared identity among Pakistan’s Muslim population while excluding those perceived as “others”: the liberal elite, foreign influences, and extremist groups threatening Shia Muslims.
MWM has engaged in several symbolic practices to mobilize its base. Religious gatherings during the months of Muharram and Ashura, considered the most prominent, are crucial for the party in reaching out to the Shia community and propagating its narratives. These events provide ample opportunity for MWM leaders to underline issues of resistance and justice, drawing parallels between the sacrifices of Imam Hussain at Karbala and present-day struggles (Rajani, 2013).
The motivational frames of the three parties draw on distinct sectarian symbolic traditions that help construct different modes of political duty among their targeted constituencies. TLP mobilizes through what can be characterized as sacred outrage, invoking narratives of blasphemy as an existential civilizational threat that demands an immediate, emotionally charged response (Sabat et al., 2020; Zahid et al., 2022).
JUI-F places religious incumbency at the center of its motivational framing, presenting electoral participation as a religious obligation and positioning its candidates as stewards of Islamic governance, while bringing the Quran as a reference book that equates voting for the party with affirming one’s faith (Nazar, 2013).
MWM’s mobilizing strategy revolves around martyrdom solidarity, drawing on the Karbala narrative. It helps construct political participation as a continuation of Imam Hussain’s struggle against injustice, transforming the act of voting into an act of religious remembrance and communal resistance that supporters perceive as a religious duty (Rajani, 2013).
Each mode of motivational framing is thus culturally specific and sectarianly grounded, appealing to the particular audience of its targeted constituency. This is why the symbols are not used interchangeably across parties, as Karbala cannot motivate Barelvi constituencies in the way Khatm-e-Nabuwwat can, and vice versa.
Frame Alignment Processes: Strategic Adaptation and Broadening
Supporters of the religious political party TLP chant slogans during a protest following the Supreme Court decision on Pakistani Christian woman Asia Bibi in Lahore on November 02, 2018. Photo: A.M. Syed.
Beyond the three core framing tasks identified by Benford and Snow (2000), their framework also stipulates four frame alignment processes. These refer to the ways in which movements link their frames to wider societal discourses and adapt strategically to shifting political contexts. The four frame alignment processes include frame bridging, frame amplification, frame extension, and frame transformation (Snow et al., 1986). Examining these processes across the three parties reveals the ways in which each expands its reach beyond its core sectarian constituency and responds to changing political opportunities.
Frame Bridging
Frame bridging refers to grievances that are otherwise disconnected from religious appeals but affect the parties’ voter base. All three parties employ frame bridging differently, while commonly attaching it to their proposed solutions to the identified problems.
JUI-F, for instance, bridges economic grievances such as poverty, unemployment, and IMF-imposed austerity with its demand for Sharia governance, arguing that material deprivation exists because of the absence of divine law (Khan, 2019; Express Tribune, 2025). Through this bridging, JUI-F becomes able to appeal to economically marginalized populations who might not be primarily motivated by theological concerns.
TLP, on the other hand, bridges blasphemy politics with broader nationalist sentiment, arguing that a state that loses the ability to honor the Prophet has forfeited its Islamic legitimacy. By doing this, it connects a specific religious grievance to a wider crisis of national identity (Zahid et al., 2022).
MWM bridges Shia-specific sectarian grievances with broader Pakistani nationalist narratives by invoking Jinnah’s claimed Shia identity. By doing so, it argues that a state persecuting Shia Muslims is actually demonstrating a betrayal of Pakistan’s founding vision, connecting minority rights claims with majoritarian national sentiment (Iqbal, 2014).
Frame Amplification
Frame amplification refers to the heightening of the salience and urgency of specific issues. It is highlighted in each party’s treatment of its central symbol.
TLP amplifies Khatm-e-Nabuwwat from a theological doctrine into an existential civilizational crisis requiring an emergency response, arguing that any perceived compromise on the finality of prophethood would pose a catastrophic threat (Shakil & Yilmaz, 2021). The deployment of hashtags such as #Tajdar_Khatame_Nabuwat and the 2017 Faizabad sit-in are instances of this amplification, elevating a specific doctrinal issue to the level of a national emergency.
JUI-F amplifies the moral authority of its clerical leadership by conflating electoral choice with religious observance, placing them side by side to amplify a political act into a matter of faith and sin.
MWM amplifies incidents of anti-Shia violence into clear evidence of a systematic existential threat to the Shia community by citing the Quetta Hazara killings and the Parachinar bombings. By doing so, it constructs a sense of urgency around a situation that might otherwise be understood as a localized security failure (Baloch, 2021; Mehdi, 2024).
Frame Extension
Frame extension helps broaden a movement’s narrative to incorporate additional issues and appeal to wider audiences. In the case of these three parties, it reflects each party’s attempt to transcend its sectarian base.
TLP extends its blasphemy-centered frame to encompass anti-Western foreign policy positions, linking the sanctity of the Prophet to resistance against Dutch politicians, French cartoonists, and Western cultural imperialism more broadly (Zahid et al., 2022). This extension takes TLP beyond its Barelvi base to constituencies of Muslims who perceive Western secularism as a threat to Islamic identity.
JUI-F extends its Sharia governance frame to encompass constitutional democracy. By doing so, it paradoxically positions itself as both the defender of Islamic law and the protector of the democratic process against military interference. This places the party in a strategic position that broadens its appeal to anti-establishment voters as well (Dawn, 2024a).
MWM’s frame extends beyond its Shia-centric grievances to encompass inter-sectarian unity. This extension positions the party within a broader Muslim solidarity base, framing its struggle not merely as a Shia cause but as a defense of justice and pluralism within the Pakistani state (Rajani, 2013).
Frame Transformation
Frame transformation occurs when a movement tries to redefine an existing narrative to create new meaning that resonates with changing contexts. All parties use frame transformation from time to time, but it is most visible in MWM’s treatment of the Karbala narrative. The Battle of Karbala is specifically associated with a Shia historical event commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussain in 680 CE. MWM transforms this sectarian religious event into a universal symbol of resistance in the face of injustice. It does not limit Karbala merely to Shia heritage; rather, it constitutes a moral framework applicable to all communities facing persecution (Naqvi, 2025). This transformation not only speaks to the Shia audience but also potentially expands to communities beyond it.
TLP has also engaged in frame transformation over time. Its earlier framing was centered narrowly on blasphemy enforcement, but it has progressively transformed into a broader civilizational discourse about the moral corruption of the Pakistani state and its subservience to Western powers, as is evident from a comparison of its 2018 and 2024 electoral manifestos (Allama Khadim Hussain Rizvi Official, 2018; Tahreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, 2024).
Comparative Synthesis: Convergence, Divergence, and What it Means
The comparative analysis of all three parties presents a picture of Pakistan’s far-right Islamist landscape that is more internally differentiated than the umbrella categories in the literature suggest. At the level of surface convergence, all three parties deploy religious symbols, construct “us vs. them” narratives, and invoke religious duty to motivate their supporters toward political participation. These strikingly similar strategies explain why they are often treated as variants of the same phenomenon. However, a deeper analysis through the framing framework shows that, beneath these surface similarities, lie three structurally distinct political logics.
TLP employs a logic of religious populism by constructing a moral antagonism between the pious Muslim people and a corrupt secular establishment, calling for a rupture with the existing moral order, and mobilizing through sacred outrage. This positioning places TLP within the analytical category of religious populism as defined by Mudde (2004) and Yilmaz et al. (2023): a movement that channels popular anger simultaneously against internal elites and external civilizational enemies, with the ummah serving as the populist people.
JUI-F operates through a logic of Islamist conservatism that does not seek to dismantle the current political order but to complete it under the guidance of divine law. It does not portray the corrupt elite, in the populist sense, as its enemy but rather an ideologically misguided system of governance that has failed to implement God’s law in the land. JUI-F does not remain isolated from the current system; rather, it works within democratic institutions, forms coalitions across the political spectrum, and frames its demands as those that, in its view, will fulfill Pakistan’s constitutional identity. This positioning is closer to what scholars of political Islam describe as institutional Islamism (Roy, 1994), reflecting a conservative rather than a populist logic.
MWM occupies a very different place on this spectrum. Rather than posing a people-vs.-elite antagonism, its primary frame revolves around communal persecution, recognition, and protection, providing a picture that is closer to a logic of sectarian minority identity politics than a populist one. The Karbala narrative does not construct a populist people; rather, it speaks directly to a suffering community that experiences political persecution and injustice. This positioning is closer to the minoritarian political logic identified in the comparative literature on identity-based movements (Brubaker, 2017).
The explanatory variable for these differences is the sectarian identity. It suggests that framing strategies cannot be interchangeably used for these parties, as they are anchored in specific theological tradition, communal grievances, and historical memory that is attached to the sectarian constituency it mobilizes. Barelvi theology emphasizes the personal sanctity of the Prophet, which perpetuates TLP’s blasphemy-centered outrage politics. Deobandi theology promotes jurisprudential governance, which underpins JUI-F’s Sharia institutionalism. The foundational martyrdom narrative of Shia Islam informs MWM’s Karbala-centered solidarity politics. This backdrop demonstrates that sectarian identity does not merely provide background information; rather, it structurally embeds these parties’ framing strategies and determines their content, logic, and tone.
Conclusion
This paper examines the space and scope of far-right Islamist parties in Pakistan that use religious symbols and framing strategies to construct political narratives and mobilize public support. The comparative analysis of these parties’ framing strategies reveals that, although they are often referred to as uniform religious groups under the generalized term Islamo-populism, far-right religious parties exhibit significant internal differentiation that shapes their political mobilization.
This study applies Benford and Snow’s (2000) framework to TLP, JUI-F, and MWM, which represent the Barelvi, Deobandi, and Shia sectarian constituencies, respectively. The framing analysis of these parties reveals that, despite operating within the same political environment and drawing on a shared Islamic tradition, they construct fundamentally different political logics. TLP’s framing contours suggest a religious populist positioning, mobilizing Barelvi constituencies through sacred outrage centered on Khatm-e-Nabuwwat and constructing a moral antagonism between the pious Muslim people and a corrupt secular establishment. JUI-F’s positioning resonates more with Islamist conservatism, seeking the institutionalization of Sharia within the existing state structure rather than mobilizing outright against the corrupt elite. MWM operates through sectarian minority identity politics, calling for the protection of minority rights within a majority environment. It derives its political stance from the Karbala narrative to frame the Shia community as a persecuted minority demanding recognition, security, and political representation from a state that is not paying heed to its suffering. Their divergent political logics demonstrate that these are three structurally distinct political projects expressed in the shared language of Islamic governance.
The findings of this study extend substantive implications for the study of religious populism in Muslim-majority states. The existing literature on religious populism treats all religious groups from a monolithic viewpoint by arguing that Islamist movements adapt the populist logic of people-vs.-elite antagonism, where the ummah represents the people, framing political conflict in moral and theological terms (Mudde, 2004; Yilmaz et al., 2023; Hadiz, 2014). This paper’s comparative findings suggest that, although this framework provides a useful analytical lens for cases such as TLP, it does not offer a general account of far-right Islamist mobilization. Not all religious parties that deploy Islamic symbols, invoke religious duty, and construct a general us-vs.-them narrative engage in populism; rather, some are engaged in advancing conservatism, while others pursue identity politics, and these differences are important for making analytical distinctions. Applying the term “Islamo-populism” indiscriminately to religious parties risks obscuring the internal variation that provides a comparative logic for understanding these parties. Given this context, this paper proposes that sectarian identity is not merely background information but plays the role of a structural variable that shapes not only the symbols these parties use but also the political logic they carry. This finding calls for a more rigorous analysis of the sectarian foundations of Islamist mobilization rather than treating religious framing as analytically equivalent across cases.
Applying this framing model to Pakistan’s case demonstrates a diverse political landscape that the existing literature has not sufficiently addressed. The far-right Islamist space that scholars often view as a shared entity does not constitute a monolithic bloc united by a common Islamo-populist project; rather, it is a fragmented and internally competitive field in which parties mobilizing different sectarian communities pursue different political objectives by employing different framing strategies. This context makes understanding internal differentiation important and helps explain the political polarization and sectarian tension in Pakistan. Diagnostic framing not only highlights existing sectarian divisions but also reveals an active and systematic political structure that assigns blame to different entities, identifies different enemies, and builds political identity around different symbolic repertoires. The four frame alignment strategies, especially frame extension and frame transformation, further reveal that these parties make deliberate attempts to transcend their sectarian space and appeal to larger constituencies. This suggests that the boundaries between sectarian communities are not static but are porous and susceptible to expansion. For civil society actors and policymakers working to understand and address religious mobilization, these findings underscore the importance of disaggregating the far-right Islamist landscape rather than treating all its actors under unified labels.
This study has several limitations that invite further research to address them. First, the analysis largely relies on leadership statements as documented in reputable journalistic sources and existing academic studies rather than on a fully systematic corpus of primary texts. While this approach is defensible given the scattered and largely non-digitalized nature of primary party documentation, it creates the possibility of selection bias, as the statements receiving journalistic coverage may not fully represent the broader discursive stance of the party. Future research could construct a systematic primary corpus using empirical evidence from Urdu-language party publications, archived social media content, and direct speech transcripts. Second, this study is confined to a single case study, which limits the possibility of establishing the generalizability of its findings. The relationship between sectarian identity and framing logic observed in this study may take different forms in other Muslim-majority states with different sectarian configurations and political opportunity structures. Third, this study treats framing as a discursive practice and does not examine the organizational, institutional, or financial factors that affect each party’s ability to disseminate its frames. This dimension can be further explored by applying structural approaches to social movements (Javid, 2021). These limitations do not undermine the paper’s core findings; rather, they mark the boundaries of what can be claimed on the basis of the evidence presented here.
These findings open several directions for future research on this issue. The most immediate is a systematic primary source study of all parties’ Urdu-language communications, including party newspapers, manifestos, madrassa curriculum materials, and social media archives, which will allow the framing analysis conducted here to be rigorously tested against a comprehensive empirical corpus. A second important direction would be extending comparative research across Muslim-majority states with similarly fragmented sectarian landscapes, including Indonesia, Lebanon, and Iraq. This will reveal whether sectarian identity functions as an explanatory variable shaping Islamist framing strategies in other national contexts, as it appears to do in Pakistan. Finally, the relationship between the parties’ framing strategies and their constituencies deserves empirical attention: how do the recipients of these parties’ framing strategies internalize and interpret the frames constructed by the party leadership? Survey-based and ethnographic approaches will provide pertinent answers to these questions, which framing analysis of public discourse alone cannot address.
Corresponding author Karrar Ali and Aamina Urooj are from Universitas Islam International Indonesia (UIII). Email: karrar.ali@uiii.ac.id
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[1]Statement of Acknowledgment: The authors would like to express sincere gratitude to the faculty members and mentors at Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia (UIII) for their academic guidance and intellectual support during the development of this research. The authors also acknowledge the valuable insights gained through scholarly discussions and institutional resources that contributed to the completion of this study. Any errors or omissions remain the sole responsibility of the authors.
Please cite as: Sharma, Dinesh & Streich, Gregory W. (2026). “The Orphan Paradox in India and the USA.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). July 06, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000128
Abstract
Why do some societies repeatedly elevate leaders marked by childhood loss, trauma, and adversity during periods of national crisis, while at other times they prefer leaders from established political, economic, and social elites? The Orphan Paradox explores a psychological, cultural, and developmental theory of democratic leadership that integrates developmental science, political history, economics, and personality theory to explain this recurring pattern in the United States and India. Drawing on biographical analyses of presidents and prime ministers from the eighteenth century to the present, the paper distinguishes between traumagenic outsiders—leaders whose identities were shaped by parental loss, family disruption, poverty, or other forms of early adversity—and patrician insiders, who emerged from stable, privileged, and institutionally embedded backgrounds. The central argument is that democratic electorates respond not only to policy preferences and economic conditions but also to symbolic narratives of resilience, authenticity, and continuity. During periods of war, economic inequality, institutional crisis, or social upheaval, voters are more likely to identify with leaders whose life histories embody hardship and recovery. Conversely, during periods of stability and prosperity, electorates tend to favor experienced insiders who represent institutional continuity, expertise, and elite governance. This dynamic produces a recurring epistemic or structural oscillation in democratic leadership between outsider reformers and insider custodians, which is not just a political phenomenon but a deeply psychological process.
Keywords: Orphan Paradox, Democratic Leadership, Political Psychology, Populism, Political Dynasties, Democratic Resilience, India, United States, Leadership
By Dinesh Sharma & Gregory W. Streich
Dynastic Politics in India and the USA
In both India and the United States, political dynasties have played a defining role in shaping democratic leadership, revealing how personal lineage and inherited legitimacy continue to intersect with modern electoral politics (Dal Bó et al., 2009; Hess, 2016).[1] In India, the Nehru–Gandhi family has dominated Congress Party politics for decades, serving as the symbolic and organizational center of the party since independence (Brass, 1994; Guha, 2007). Beyond the Congress, regional parties often mirror this pattern, functioning as quasi-familial enterprises in which leadership succession passes through kinship lines—examples include the Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh, the Thackerays in Maharashtra, and the Karunanidhi family in Tamil Nadu’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) (Jaffrelot & Verniers, 2016; Wyatt, 2013; Palshikar & Kumar, 2004). These familial structures often blur the boundaries between public service and private inheritance, creating networks of loyalty that reinforce both political continuity and resistance to internal reform (Chandra, 2016).
The United States, though formally committed to competitive primaries and elections with open political participation, exhibits its own dynastic patterns. The Kennedys, Bushes, Roosevelts, and Adams–each representing distinct political eras and ideological lineages—have used family name recognition, donor networks, and the symbolic capital of service and sacrifice to sustain their influence across generations (Hess, 2016; Feinstein & Masur, 2020). More recently, the Trump family’s growing presence within Republican politics underscores how populism, too, can potentially become dynastic, converting media visibility and brand identity into a new form of hereditary legitimacy (Saldin & Teles, 2020; D’Antonio, 2015). Trump may be the first modern president to combine outsider populism with explicit aspirations toward patrician and founder-level historical status. He attacks existing dynasties (Bush, Kennedy) yet simultaneously attempts to create a new one and to place himself in the symbolic lineage of Washington, Lincoln, and other nation-defining presidents such as Jackson and McKinley.
Across both democracies, the enduring appeal of dynastic politics reflects a paradox: voters simultaneously profess faith in meritocracy while responding to the familiarity, continuity, and symbolic legitimacy that political families provide (Besley & Reynal-Querol, 2011). Dynasties persist by drawing upon accumulated forms of capital—symbolic, financial, social, and emotional (Bourdieu, 1986)—yet their influence often weakens during periods of public disillusionment, corruption scandals, economic distress, or generational fatigue (Vaishnav, 2017). Dynastic politics thus functions as both a stabilizing and destabilizing force within democracy, embodying the tension between inherited privilege and democratic renewal.
Yet the counterpart to the dynastic heir is the political orphan or the outsider—the individual who possesses neither inherited status nor established networks of privilege. In many democracies, moments of political upheaval create opportunities for leaders whose authority derives not from lineage but from narratives of adversity, resilience, and personal struggle. Among the most striking of these figures are those who experienced significant childhood loss through parental death, family disruption, abandonment, or displacement. The Orphan Paradox proposed here, which constitutes our main thesis, suggests that early experiences of rupture may cultivate psychological characteristics—such as independence, ambition, resilience, and a heightened sensitivity to insecurity—that can later translate into political leadership.[2] Whereas dynastic leaders inherit political capital, orphan leaders are often compelled to construct it. Their biographies resonate with citizens who perceive themselves as marginalized, overlooked, or excluded from established systems of power. It allows outsiders, such as orphans, to speak for the people against the establishment, as is evident in recent years in the populist turn and the rise of amateur politicians. In this sense, the orphan and the heir represent two competing pathways to political legitimacy: one rooted in inheritance and continuity, the other in adversity and self-creation.
The Orphan Paradox describes the condition of loss: the absence of foundational support—whether parental, institutional, cultural, or even genetic—creates a dual trajectory. On one hand, it heightens vulnerability to instability, alienation, and maladaptive coping; on the other, it can spark remarkable resilience, innovation, and self-determined leadership. This paradox applies across multiple domains of human experience, from individual psychology to political systems and technological development (Sharma, 2026, 2025).[3]
This paper examines these dynamics – the outsider and the heir, the orphan and the patrician – in two of the world’s largest and most populous democracies, India and the United States, both of which emerged from profound historical ruptures and continue to grapple with competing demands for continuity and change (Moffitt, 2016; Jaffrelot & Tillin, 2017). In particular, we connect the rise of Modi in India and Trump in the USA – two political populists, one of whom left home early as a teenager to seek spiritual renunciation and the other who carries the scars of a fraught relationship with his demanding and wealthy parents – with the current trend towards nationalists who take on corrupt elites on behalf of the people (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). Ironically, while in both India and the USA, there is a turn away from the familiar, stable, dynastic family names, both Modi and Trump are examples of how populists position themselves as outsiders seeking to become establishment insiders by creating their own autocracies or dynasties.
[1] This paper in large part is adapted from the forthcoming book, The Orphan Paradox (Sharma, 2026), which presents a detailed psychocultural, historical, and political analysis of leadership cycles in India and the US. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the ECPS workshop on September 4. 2025. We thank Professor Akis Kalaitzidis for his comments on this paper and the book. We are also immensely grateful to Dr. Arturo G. Munoz, senior political scientist at RAND Corporation, Washington DC, for his commentary on this project. This paper was partly inspired by the contemporary rise of nationalism worldwide. An earlier version of the proposal was reviewed by Dr. Munoz, who suggested that the argument would benefit from a stronger engagement with current political developments. In particular, he encouraged a more explicit comparison between Narendra Modi and Donald Trump as contemporary leaders whose rise reflects broader global trends.
Parts of this paper were originally developed for an edited volume on WEIRD psychology, which critiques the overreliance on Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic populations in psychological research (Joseph Henrich et al., 2010); the goal here is to show how democracy takes different forms in different contexts.
[2] For a full treatment of the underpinning of psychological, cultural, and political arguments, see the book, The Orphan Paradox (Sharma, 2026).
[3] The idea of the Orphan Paradox is interdisciplinary. First, developmental perspectives in leadership studies suggest that early experiences of trauma and loss can shape resilience, ambition, and identity formation over the life course. Work in political psychology and leadership analysis (e.g., Jerrold M. Post, 2003) highlights how formative adversity often informs leadership style and worldview. Second, my professional experience in the pharmaceutical sector exposed me to the concept of “orphan drugs” and “orphan markets,” terms institutionalized through policy frameworks such as the Orphan Drug Act. These refer to conditions or markets that lack early institutional support yet later become sites of innovation and intervention.
Please cite as: Kalaitzidis, Akis. (2026). “From Economic Crisis to Democratic Backsliding: Evidence from Thailand, Argentina, the United States, and Greece.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). July 06, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000127
Abstract
Economic crises often serve as incubators of populism. When currencies collapse, or debts spiral out of control, mainstream parties lose credibility, creating openings for leaders who claim to defend “the people” against distant elites. The cases of Thailand, Argentina, the United States, and Greece illustrate how crises enable populism, how populists frame economic struggles, and use them to subvert the political order.In Thailand, the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis led to IMF-imposed reforms that hurt the rural poor. Thaksin Shinawatra rose on a populist platform of cheap healthcare and rural development, casting himself as defender of the countryside against Bangkok elites (Phongpaichit & Baker, 2009). In Argentina, the 2001–2002 default discredited neoliberal economic policies. Néstor and Cristina Kirchner mobilized popular anger against the IMF and creditors, mixing subsidies and protectionism with nationalist rhetoric (Levitsky & Murillo, 2008). In the United States, the 2008 financial crash produced dual populist currents: the Tea Party and Donald Trump on the right, and Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders on the left, both targeting elites, including Wall Street and the Washington establishment (Skocpol & Williamson, 2012; Frank, 2016). In Greece, Syriza rose during the Eurozone crisis, opposing austerity and demanding sovereignty from the EU “Troika” (Pappas, 2019).Across these cases, populists reframed abstract economic shocks as moral struggles, pitting ordinary people against elites, technocrats, or foreign powers (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). Their policies emphasized immediate relief—subsidies, redistribution, debt resistance—over fiscal orthodoxy. Yet each also confronted the hard limits of global capitalism, leading to compromise, backlash, or renewed instability (Dornbusch & Edwards, 1991; Kahler & Lake, 2013). Economic crises highlight the tension between national democracy and global markets; populism thrives in this gap, using it to decay institutions and norms in democratic states. I argue that economic crises lead to democratic backsliding.
Keywords: Populism, Economic Crises, Democratic backsliding, Greece, USA, Thailand, Argentina
Do economic crises necessarily lead to democratic backsliding? My argument in this paper is that it does. Economic crises lead to increased populism, which ultimately erodes public confidence in the political system and degrades not only democratic regimes (Levitsky & Murillo, 2008) but also authoritarian ones (O’Donnell, 1999; Schedler, 2013). Bunce and Wolchik (2011) argued that the exclusionary populist politics of Slobodan Milosevic destroyed the multicultural authoritarian regime in Yugoslavia. Others have argued it is not necessarily the economic crises that produce populism but the conflict between the “winners and losers” of said economic crisis, which increases the feeling of loss among the many, something in conflict studies we call the Relative Deprivation thesis (Gurr, 1970). Others argue that it is race and status that are responsible for the increasing populism worldwide (Palmer, 2019). Finally, some blame global migratory patterns for being zero-sum, arguing that every newcomer is a net negative for the country that receives them (Palmer, 2019).
Populist regimes are, par excellence, illiberal, argues Pappas (2019). In this sense, democracies decline step by step, embracing new institutional structures that undermine the preceding democratic ones and replace them with illiberal ones. Often personalistic, these new regimes create institutions closer to authoritarianism than to actual democracy and dominate their countries for a long time, for example, Hungary, Turkey, Argentina, etc.
In this paper, I will examine four cases, in the order of the economic crises that affected them: Thailand in 1997, Argentina in 2001, the US in 2008, and Greece in 2015. It is my argument that economic crises arising from global economic dislocations and contagion (Desai, 2003) produce populist regimes that wreak havoc on established institutions and lead countries to political backsliding (Foa & Mounk, 2017). I will explain how populism works in light of severe financial crises, addressing the key elements such as a) its social base, b) the policies associated with the regime, c) its rhetoric, d) the organizational strategy of the regime, e) its leadership style, f) the mobilization associated with regime change, and finally, g) the legacy of each regime.
Populism and Its Discontents
What is populism? And how does it affect different countries? Before I analyze my case studies, it is important to examine how these populist movements form and what they mean. Considering the variation in regimes and political cultures that produce populism, as well as the nebulousness of the concept, it is essential to define it as precisely as possible. Generically, the definition of populism is “a thin center ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus the ‘corrupt elite’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.” (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). Although Ernesto Laclau (2005) argued that populism does not lead to authoritarianism, my research finds evidence to the contrary. In fact, using populism as an intermediary variable, one can see that economic crisis can lead to political backsliding that takes the form of authoritarianism (Thailand, the USA) or not (Argentina and Greece), depending on political culture. I agree with Laclau that populism is a form of politics, not an ideology, but unlike Laclau, I view populism as a challenge to democracy and argue it should be viewed as such.
Benjamin Moffit describes the various approaches to defining the concept through the years with a) the ideational approach, b) the strategic approach, and c) the discussive performative approach (Moffit, 2020). The Ideational approach argues that populism is a worldview and an ideology. Populism, sure enough, increasingly appeals to even the younger generation and has made inroads in even the strongest liberal democracies. Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk argue that there are signs of the deconsolidation of democracies across the board (Foa & Mounk, 2017). Americans have long been growing dissatisfied with the state of their political system. As survey researchers have chronicled over recent decades, an overwhelming majority of citizens now believe that the US is ‘headed in the wrong direction,” (Foa & Mounk, 2017).
In Europe, the shock of Brexit was felt in the corridors of European capitals, and some decided to work against the established order. Several populist leaders, among them the leaders of Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria, made an extra effort to dismantle liberal justice requirements and regress their country’s democracy (The Guardian, 3.30.2026). It remains to be seen whether the trend of democratic backsliding can be reversed following Viktor Orbán’s decisive defeat.
In general, there are two forms of backsliding according to Nancy Bermeo (2016: 6): “Backsliding can take us to different end points at different speeds. Where backsliding involves rapid and radical change across a broad range of institutions, it leads to outright democratic breakdown and to regimes that are unambiguously authoritarian.” In one of my cases, a complete deconsolidation of democracy happened with the end of a populist regime in Thailand. Essentially, the end of the Thaksin experiment was the rise of the Thai military. In the other three cases, the backsliding has been much more gradual, and in those cases, Bermeo argues: “Where backsliding takes the form of gradual changes across a broad range of institutions, it is less likely to lead to all-out regime change and more likely to yield political systems that are ambiguously democratic or hybrid” (Bermeo 2016: 6). In other words, illiberal democracies.
The last three cases here, Argentina, the US, and Greece, experienced a decline in democratic values, with the US doing the heavy lifting under the Trump Administration. Yet, even in the mild cases of Greece and Argentina, we have seen a serious weakening of democratic institutions, thus “Democratic backsliding can thus constitute democratic breakdown or simply the serious weakening of existing democratic institutions for undefined ends. When backsliding yields situations that are fluid and ill-defined, taking action to defend democracy becomes particularly difficult,” (Bermeo, 2016:6). So as Palacios (2025: 1832) notes, “a large body of studies has found that populism ‘in the real world’ also has detrimental effects on the quality of democracy. Due to their ambiguous relationship with democracy, once in power, many populist forces adopt an agenda of institutional change that seeks to better approximate their illiberal democratic ideals to the practice.”
What I argue in this paper is that populism transforms economic woes into political and, especially, moral conundrums, pitting parts of society against one another for the benefit of the leadership. The result of populism’s divisiveness is frequent democratic backsliding, as seen in Thailand, where it led to a coup d’ etat against Thaksin and renewed authoritarianism. In Greece, the collapse of the party system and increased violence among people, and in the US, the establishment of an authoritarian pronged leadership. Only in Argentina have the populists from the left been replaced by the populists of the right, with no discernible end to their economic woes.
[1]Akis Kalaitzidisis aProfessor of Political Science at the Department of Government, Law, and International Affairs, University of Central Missouri. Email: kalaitzidis@ucmo.edu
Please cite as: Streich, Gregory W. (2026). “Liberal Democracy in the United States: The Challenge of Trumpism.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). July 01, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000126
Abstract
Liberal democracy is increasingly challenged by the rise of populism in the twenty-first century. In the United States, the rise of President Donald Trump, a populist leader pursuing policies that differ from those of traditional Republican Presidents, is increasingly challenging the norms and institutions of liberal democracy. In this paper, I examine populism as an ideology, style, and strategy, and apply those criteria to Trumpism as a unique form of populism in the US. I also examine the economic, political, and cultural themes of Trumpism. And while Trumpism has a domestic orientation highlighted by the slogan “Make America Great Again,” it also has an international orientation highlighted by the slogan “America First.” In both orientations, it is transforming US liberal democracy from within and altering its position as a leading defender of liberal democracy and free trade on the international stage.
The twenty-first century has not been kind to liberal democracy: there are now fewer democratic nations in the world than at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In 2005, there were 27 democratizing regimes compared to 12 autocratizing regimes, but by 2025, the numbers flipped to 18 democratizing regimes compared to 44 autocratizing regimes (Nord et al., 2026). Researchers at V-Dem have found that liberal democracies declined from 22.03% of all nations in 2000 to 17.83% by 2023, while over the same period, electoral autocracies held steady, representing 32.2% of all nations in 2000 and 31.84% in 2023 (Nord et al., 2025). Additionally, V-Dem dedicated a section titled “USA – A Democratic Breakdown in the Making?” in their Democracy Report 2025, drawing attention to President Trump’s actions that purged military and civil servants as well as threatened independent media outlets, judges, universities, and more (Nord et al., 2025: 46-47). As a result, V-Dem’s 2026 report concluded that the United States has lost its status as a liberal democracy for the first time in fifty years, and instead joins the ranks of “electoral democracies” in which “liberal characteristics of established democracies – such as checks and balances on the executive, respect for civil liberties, and the rule of law – are eroding”(Nord et al., 2026: 10).
Similarly, a February 2025 report from Bright Line Watch found that the “overall performance of American democracy on a 0–100 scale has fallen to the lowest levels observed since they began tracking this measure in 2017: 53 among the public and 55 among experts” (Bright Line Watch, 2025). In their 2026 report, the public’s rating of democracy in the US dipped to 49 in April 2025 before rebounding back to 52 in early 2026, while expert ratings were relatively unchanged at 56 (Bright Line Watch, 2026). Additionally, the US has seen its Freedom House scores drop in recent years from 89/100 “free” to 84/100 in 2025 to 81/100 in 2026 (Freedom House, 2025, 2026). To be sure, the US is still a strong democracy. But when the world’s oldest, wealthiest, and, in many ways, most powerful democracy is identified as a case of democratic backsliding (Levitsky & Way, 2025), this is a significant development that has important ramifications for the health of liberal democracy both domestically and globally.
While liberal democracy is in retreat around the world for several reasons, one is the rise of populism. Both left- and right-wing populist leaders and political parties have emerged in various countries in reaction to the economic challenges of globalization and the rise of migration, both of which have sparked the anti-globalist and anti-immigration reactions that fuel populism (Eatwell & Goodwin, 2018; Judis, 2016; Moffitt, 2016; Norris & Inglehart, 2019; Scheiring et al., 2024). As such, populism is a symptom of those underlying causes but also exacerbates those anxieties and fears. While the US has seen the emergence of a left-leaning populism in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders as a national political figure, in this paper, I focus on the rise of Trumpism as a right-leaning populism led by Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” and “America First” movement. Indeed, political journalists have claimed that President Trump is undertaking the “Orbánization” (Beauchamp, 2024; Marantz, 2022, 2025) or even the “Putinization” of the US (Glasser, 2025; Kasparov, 2025).
Donald Trump is not alone in using populist appeals and styles to consolidate power and pursue his agenda. Populists of the left and right, such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, have all come to power through legitimate electoral mechanisms. However, once in office, “these populist leaders have skewed political competition by implementing discriminatory electoral rules, orchestrating partisan takeovers of the judiciary and of other independent institutions, and launching constant attacks on the media” (Rovira Kaltwasser & Taggart, 2025, p. 97). President Trump is following a similar playbook by using the power of the Presidency to reward friends and punish foes, all while consolidating more power in the Executive branch. For example, Trump has used Executive Orders, the Justice Department, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to purge civil servants and attack judges, independent journalists, and political opponents. He has also intimidated and threatened legal action and regulatory review of universities, media outlets, late-night talk show hosts, and law firms. And, he has asserted (and attempted to assert) Executive control over independent agencies such as the Federal Reserve, National Labor Relations Board, and the National Science Foundation (among others), usurped Congress’s power of the purse, and has gone to war in Iran without Congressional consultation or approval (Luttig, 2025).
To the extent that Trumpism appeals to social conservatives who openly admire Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin for their defense of traditional gender roles and opposition to what they see as decadent liberalism, immigration, and LGBTQ rights, it is little wonder that the domestic policies of Trump reflect some of the same policies pursued by Orbán as he has turned Hungary into an illiberal democracy (Beauchamp, 2024b; Field, 2025: 17; Marantz, 2022; Rudolph, 2024). Indeed, Orbán has attended and spoken at several CPAC events in the US as well as hosted CPAC events in Hungary, cementing the ideological convergence of Orbánism and Trumpism. Further, Snegovaya et al. (2023) highlight many socially conservative policies on traditional gender roles and opposition to LGBTQ rights of Putinism that overlap with Trumpism in the US. While there are important differences, these overlapping policy interests are why some social conservatives in the US view Putin and Russia as an ally of the US in the battle against what they see as decadent liberal Western values.
Given the populist turn in the US and elsewhere, we are witnessing the formation of a new ideological conflict that will shape the twenty-first century: the battle between liberal democracy on one side and various forms of populism, autocracy, and authoritarianism on the other. An open question is which side the US will take in this battle, especially when it is being transformed from within by Trumpism.
The remainder of this paper consists of four parts. In Part 2, I review the literature on populism to argue that Trumpism meets the criteria of populism in its ideology, style, and strategy. I then examine the economic (Part 3), political (Part 4), and cultural dimensions (Part 5) of Trumpism and, in so doing, draw out some of its domestic and international manifestations. I then conclude (Part 6) with some observations about future research questions for the study of populism in general and Trumpism in particular.
Please cite as: Sharma, Dinesh; Romagna, Britt; Lowenthal, Zara & Perez-Hosein, Jamilla. (2026). “Daughters of the Dynasties: Father-Daughter Succession in Asia and the United States.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). June 30, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000125
Abstract Why do some democracies consistently produce female national leaders from political dynasties while others—with equally prominent political families—do not? This article addresses this puzzle through a comparative analysis of father–daughter succession in South and Southeast Asia and the United States. Although both regions feature competitive electoral democracies, influential political families, and mass media politics, they have produced markedly different patterns of female executive leadership. While South and Southeast Asia has generated numerous female prime ministers and presidents from political dynasties, the United States has produced no comparable case of a daughter of a president ascending to the presidency. Drawing on psychohistory, political psychology, comparative politics, and gender studies, the article argues that populism assumes different institutional forms across democratic contexts. In much of South and Southeast Asia, populist politics frequently operates through dynastic legitimacy, allowing daughters to inherit symbolic authority from charismatic or martyred fathers. By contrast, American populism has historically defined itself against entrenched political dynasties, making hereditary succession a political liability rather than a source of democratic legitimacy. The analysis combines two complementary studies. The first compares patterns of political and corporate father–daughter succession across Asia and the United States, including contemporary comparisons such as Chelsea Clinton and Paetongtarn Shinawatra. The second presents a psychohistorical comparison of Indira Gandhi and Rosemary Kennedy, demonstrating how family socialization, gender norms, disability, political culture, and historical context shaped radically different life trajectories. The article concludes that female dynastic succession is shaped not by democracy alone but by the interaction of political institutions, populist narratives, patriarchal norms, historical memory, and elite family structures. By integrating comparative politics with psychohistory, it offers a novel framework for understanding how democracies construct legitimacy, political inheritance, and pathways to female executive leadership across cultures
Keywords:Populism, Political Leadership, Female Political Leadership, Political Dynasties, Leadership Succession, Gender and Politics, Political Psychology, Chelsea Clinton, Indira Gandhi, Rosemary Kennedy, India, United States, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thailand
By Dinesh Sharma, Britt Romagna, Zara Lowenthal & Jamilla Perez-Hosein
Introduction
During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, South and Southeast Asia produced an unusually large number of female national leaders compared with global trends. Many of these women—including Indira Gandhi in India, Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, Corazon Aquino in the Philippines, and Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar—emerged from powerful political dynasties as daughters, widows, or wives of assassinated, persecuted, or charismatic male leaders. Scholars argue that these women inherited symbolic legitimacy through family lineage, particularly in contexts where political parties and nationalist movements were deeply personalized around founding fathers and political martyrs (Richter, 1990; Derichs et al., 2011).
Paradoxically, patriarchal political cultures sometimes facilitated rather than prevented the rise of elite women leaders. Because these women were viewed through traditional gender roles—as mothers, daughters, or widows of the nation—they were often perceived as morally virtuous and less threatening than male rivals (Choi, 2015). This gendered moral capital enabled them to unify fragmented political movements and inherit charismatic authority from deceased or persecuted male relatives. In the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, for example, her identity as the daughter of Burmese independence hero Aung San provided symbolic continuity that strengthened opposition to military rule (Fleschenberg, 2008).
However, scholars also note that the same patriarchal structures that enabled women’s political ascent often constrained their authority once in power. Female dynastic leaders frequently faced military coups, assassination, corruption allegations, or resistance from male political elites who expected them to serve symbolic rather than executive roles. Moreover, many studies conclude that these leaders did relatively little to advance broader women’s rights or challenge patriarchal systems, often relying instead on traditional gender norms and dynastic legitimacy to maintain political authority (Blackburn, 2004; Jalalzai, 2013). Thus, the rise of female dynastic leaders in Asia illustrates the complex relationship between patriarchy, populism, political inheritance, and gendered legitimacy in democratic and postcolonial societies.
Research Question
Why are some democracies able to consistently produce powerful female leaders from political dynasties, while others exhibit a lack, or near absence, of national female leadership? Utilizing a quasi-experimental design and a naturalistic or qualitative methodology that examines the life histories of the daughters of national leaders in different democratic contexts—namely South and Southeast Asia and the United States—reveals important differences in how these political systems construct female power and authority (Mahoney & Thelen, 2010). Both regions contain large electoral democracies with mass political participation, modern media environments, and long traditions of competitive politics (Dahl, 1971). Yet, the trajectories of the daughters of national leaders differ strikingly across these settings, with many prominent female leaders emerging from South and Southeast Asian political systems (Jalalzai, 2013). This paper attempts to address this comparative difference by using a multi-method approach.
By contrast, daughters of US presidents have rarely entered formal political leadership. Figures such as Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Bill Clinton, and Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald Trump, participated in political campaigns or held advisory roles, yet neither became a nationally elected leader. Despite the prominence of political families in the United States, dynastic succession through daughters has not produced a female president or equivalent national executive leader (Kazin, 1995; Lipset, 1996).
This contrast creates a useful naturally occurring comparative experiment. Both regions share electoral democracy and highly visible political families, yet they produce different outcomes in the political careers of daughters of national leaders. Examining these divergent life histories helps illuminate how political institutions, dynastic networks, gender norms, and populist narratives shape pathways to female national leadership (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017).
Please cite as: Solaja, Oludele Mayowa. (2026). “Waste Sovereignty and Plastic Colonialism: Environmental Power and Populism in the Global Political Economy of Waste.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). June 11, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000124
Abstract
Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental problems of the twenty-first century, but the governance of global plastic waste is remarkably unequal. Significant volumes of plastic waste from developed countries are exported to developing countries in the Global South, where waste management infrastructure and regulatory capacity are often limited. While this movement of waste across borders is frequently discussed in terms of recycling efficiency or waste management capacity, these transactions are deeply embedded in unequal power relations within the global political economy. This article proposes a theoretical framework called Waste Sovereignty Theory (WST), which explains how international waste trade reproduces environmental power asymmetries between exporting and importing nations. Drawing on political ecology, environmental justice, postcolonial environmental governance, and emerging scholarship on environmental populism, the paper conceptualizes transboundary plastic waste flows as a form of plastic colonialism in which the ecological costs of production and consumption in wealthy countries are displaced onto less powerful states. The article introduces a Waste Sovereignty Theory Framework (WST Framework) that links four key dynamics—plastic production, transnational waste trade, governance inequality, and sovereignty claims—to explain contemporary struggles over environmental authority in the Global South. Using illustrative cases from Southeast Asia and Africa, the article demonstrates how states and communities respond through waste import bans, stricter regulatory regimes, waste repatriation policies, and the promotion of domestic recycling industries. These responses are interpreted not only as efforts to reclaim environmental governance but also as expressions of environmental populism, whereby affected populations challenge environmental burdens perceived as imposed by distant political, economic, and technocratic elites. Waste sovereignty thus emerges as both a claim to environmental justice and a form of political resistance against unequal structures of global environmental governance. The article argues that addressing the global plastic crisis requires more than technological improvements in waste management; it demands institutional reforms capable of confronting the structural inequalities embedded in contemporary systems of production, consumption, and environmental governance.
Keywords: Waste Sovereignty, Plastic Colonialism, Environmental Populism, Global Waste Trade, Environmental Governance, Political Ecology, Environmental Justice, Circular Economy, Global South
Plastic waste constitutes one of the leading contemporary environmental problems in the 21st century. Over the last decades, production of plastics in the global South have rapidly increase from less than 1 million tons per year in the 1950s to more than 400 million tons in a year and rapidly growing international plastic waste trade networks (Geyer et al., 2017; Zhao et al., 2021; Clapp, 2022). Although plastic waste is created around the globe, its environmental burden has been distributed unevenly, that is, wealthy industrialized countries ship vast amounts of their waste to the Global South countries whose institutions and capabilities are often unable to manage this commodity (Brooks et al., 2018; Clapp, 2021). This paper considers that what often appears as technical problems with waste management or efficiency of recycling, are the consequences of underlying structural power relations within political economy that shaped global politics of waste management.
The political ecology literature frames such dynamics within a politics of unequal access to environmental resources. International industrial and consumer economies are producing vast flows of unwanted materials whose disposal is often externalized, whereby they can find an outlet within the weaker regulatory systems found in some Global South countries, leading to environmental contamination and informal dumping and recycling networks (Pellow, 2018; Liboiron, 2021). This is a pattern of waste colonialism where environmental harm produced by global industrial capitalism can be displaced from wealthy consumer economies to the periphery through the waste trade (Pellow, 2018; Liboiron, 2021). This in turn constitutes ecological distribution conflicts, whereby environmental burdens and their subsequent harm fall unevenly between social groups and geographic territories (Martinez-Alier, 2002).
Emergent trends in international waste markets highlight the politicization of these dynamics. The closure of the Chinese market to the majority of foreign waste exports under the National Sword policy in 2018 led to the redirection of massive flows of plastic waste to countries in Southeast Asia and Africa, overwhelming the existing domestic waste management systems of these recipient countries. Consequently, governments from the Global South such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and a host of African states have since imposed new regulations and repatriated illegal shipments of plastic waste, showing the burgeoning politics of the waste system.
Most academic literature on the global plastic crisis frames plastic waste as a technical problem of recycling efficiency or waste management systems, however there is an important politics of why environmental problems and the burden of waste are distributed unevenly. More focus has not been paid to the issue of environmental sovereignty – a State’s/Community’s authority over their environmental resource system, including regulation of trans-boundary flows and their control over development pathways, as a source of environmental power and control within global waste flows governed by the trade regime, global corporate supply chains, and disparities in regulation.
This article theorizes the politics of global waste governance by developing the Waste Sovereignty Theory (WST), which frames global waste systems as arenas of political struggle over authority where States and communities contest the uneven distribution of ecological burden. Waste Sovereignty Theory framework links four key mechanisms-production, trade networks, disparity in regulation, and sovereignty claims-to illuminate the operation of environmental power within current waste regimes. Waste sovereignty, within WST, signifies the authority of States, communities and social movements to assert control over the management of waste systems, including import flows, domestic recycling industry development and environmental common preservation.
In this article, waste sovereignty is defined as the capacity of states, communities, and social institutions to exercise political, ecological, and economic authority over the governance of waste within their territories. This includes the power to regulate transboundary waste flows, control domestic recycling infrastructures, determine environmental standards, and shape the economic systems through which waste materials are managed or transformed into resources. Within the Waste Sovereignty Theory Framework (WST Framework), waste sovereignty therefore represents a form of environmental authority through which political actors contest the unequal distribution of ecological burdens generated by global production and consumption systems.
The theory of Waste Sovereignty extends the field of environmental governance in three main ways; first, situating the plastic crisis within the politics of production, consumption and the externalization of environmental impact. Second, it develops the discourse of environmental justice by placing issues of ecological inequity alongside control over environmental governance systems. Third, it theorizes responses to plastic waste in the Global South as claims to sovereignty from the peripheries in the form of restrictions on imports, new legislation, domestic recycling industries development etc.
Therefore this paper answers the questions: how does global plastic waste trade create a power disparity and how can the Waste Sovereignty Theory frame the emergence of fights for environmental governance in the Global South? Showing the dynamics of the WST through cases from Southeast Asia and Africa, the paper argues that plastic waste has become a politically embedded global issue and its solutions need to transcend purely technical strategies of waste management and recycling, and include the politics of environmental power and sovereignty within the waste system.
Lightcap, Tracy. (2026). “Do Economic and Identity Cleavages Account for the Differences Between Left and Right Populism? Hungary, Venezuela, and the United States.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). May 27, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000123
Abstract
Right- and left-wing populism are widely used concepts, but they lack a coherent theoretical framework. In this paper, I describe a new model developed by Dani Rodrik for understanding how right- and left-wing populist regimes function, and I test the model empirically. First, I describe some aspects of populism in both its left- and right-wing varieties and briefly outline the development of populism research. Second, I present the cleavage model proposed by Rodrik. Third, I examine two cases—the PSUV regime in Venezuela (left-wing populism) and the Fidesz regime in Hungary (right-wing populism)—as examples of the two populist trends. Fourth, I test the cleavage model using a classic computer-generated content analysis by creating dictionaries based on the manifestos of the PSUV and Fidesz in order to analyze speeches by the leaders of left- and right-wing populist regimes, Hugo Chávez and Viktor Orbán. Finally, I test the model on out-of-sample cases using speeches by Barack Obama and Donald Trump. I conclude that the model shows promising results and offer reflections on how the cleavage model advances our understanding of the differences between right- and left-wing populist regimes.
Populism is a difficult concept to define. Populist movements embrace the entire spectrum of conventional politics but have a similar core appeal. Dani Rodrik defines them this way: “What all these (populist movements) share is an anti-establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the people against elites, opposition to liberal economics and globalization, and often (but not always) a penchant for authoritarian governance,” (Rodrik, 2018: 1).[1]
Judis (2016) divides such regimes into right-wing and left-wing varieties. However, the difficulties in defining different tendencies in populism are reflected in the difficulties in conducting empirical research on the phenomena. There have been both qualitative (see, for example, Aslandis, 2016a, 2016b; Bánkuti et al., 2012, Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013) and quantitative (see Fernández-Gracia & Leungo, 2018; Popping, 2018; Hawkins, 2009; Ernst et al., 2017) efforts to distinguish right and left populist regimes from each other. A distinguishing aspect of these studies, however, is that they are descriptive in character, dividing populist regimes generally by reference to a historical inheritance of populism or to particular aspects of the political history of the countries examined. Theoretical explanations for right and left populism are less common.[2] This shortfall creates a problem for research on varieties of populism going forward.
In his papers Rodrik (2018, 2019) has presented a convincing model for how different populist regimes arise in different situations. Their scheme divides society into three main groups: elites, majorities of the middle class and poor, and minorities identified by ethnic, religious, or citizen status differences. This leads to two major potential divisions that populist movements exploit: economic (income/social class) and identity (ethnic-nationalist/cultural) cleavages. He argues that these cleavages shape the anti-establishment politics that Judis (2016) identifies in right- and left-wing populist regimes, but in different ways.
This paper aims to test the cleavages model proposed by Rodrik. The identification of economic and identity cleavages with right- and left-wing populist regimes will constitute a significant theoretical advance if the model proves valid. However, the identification of income/class and ethnic-national identity cleavages with, respectively, left- and right-wing populist regimes has yet to be tested empirically. I will test these hypothetical linkages through an empirical examination of the appeals made by populist regimes themselves.
First, I will provide a short overview of Rodrik’s model. I will then examine the two cases used to develop the analysis in this paper: the Fidesz regime in Hungary as an example of right-wing populism and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in Venezuela as an example of left-wing populism.
Then, applying the framework suggested by Rodrik, I examine Fidesz and PSUV manifestos in order to develop dictionaries of abstract terms distinguishing right- and left-wing regimes along cleavage lines. I use a classic content analysis of speeches by the leaders of the regimes in Hungary and Venezuela to determine how closely their public discourse tracks the differences proposed by Rodrik.
I then test the model beyond the initial cases by comparing speeches by Barack Obama and Donald Trump with those of Hugo Chávez and Viktor Orbán. Finally, I offer a few remarks about what has been learned and the future direction of the research.
[1] The difficulty with defining populism is, I think, a product of the way the politics in these movements works. There is an intentional unwillingness to express any general policy that would allow easy identification of a populist movement with establishment politics. Instead, the concerns of populist adherents are distracted by elite/mass divisions, concern about national economic and political independence, and, in right-wing populism, extreme nationalism and ethnic scapegoating. This is why some scholars (Aslandis, 2016b, Moffitt & Tormey, 2014) have refused to see populism as an ideology at all.
Please cite as: Ragheb, Ali. (2026). “Silenced Voices in a Democratic Dawn: How Iranian Constitutionalists Weaponized ‘the People’ Against Minorities.” Populism & Politics (P&P). European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). May 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/pp0054
Abstract
The Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911) marks the genesis of modern Iranian political discourse, introducing concepts like nation, liberty, and the people as citizen rather than ra’iyat (in landlord-peasant system). Conventional explanations attribute its failure to foreign intervention, elite factionalism, or ideological extremism. A closer look shows another perspective: the revolution collapsed due to the leadership’s deliberate post-victory narrowing of “the people” as an empty signifier, excluding women, the urban poor, and religious/ethnic minorities who had fueled initial mobilization. Employing qualitative content analysis of primary sources – including underground leaflets, parliamentary debates, police and spy reports, photographs, historical books and memoirs – coded via Atlas.ti, the study traces discursive and institutional mechanisms of exclusion. Integrating Laclau’s theory of populism (empty signifier), Rancière’s “part of no part,” and Chatterjee’s civil/political society distinction, it identifies four causal pathways: class interests, clerical hegemony, legal fixing, and performative contempt. These exclusions eroded the multiclass coalition, rendering the Parliament indefensible in 1908 and 1911. By reframing failure as coalition disintegration, the article contributes theoretically to populist rupture studies and empirically to Iranian historiography, offering a cautionary global lesson on revolutions that mobilize broadly but consolidate narrowly.
Keywords: Iranian Constitutional Revolution, populism, the people, political exclusion, social movements, democracy, Qajar Iran, Women, Urban Poor, Minorities.
By Ali Ragheb*
A Brief Historical Overview of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran
The Constitutional Revolution was a pivotal event in modern Iranian history, interpreted in sharply divergent ways. Traditional accounts focus on liberty and constitutionalism, while Marxist historiography (Jazani, 2009) sees it as a bourgeois revolution. Neither fully captures its social complexity. The movement was driven by intellectuals, artisans, traders, and urban workers, with clergy and merchants playing indispensable but ambivalent roles. Protests in 1905–1906 forced Moẓaffar al-Dīn Shah to grant a constitution and national assembly, with Tehran and Tabriz as strongholds. The telegraph spread the uprising, and a flourishing press expanded political speech. However, suppression of protesters and the royalist coup of June 1908 by the Cossack Brigade broke the fragile equilibrium. The court mobilized the urban poor through poverty and clerical influence. Tabriz became the radicalized resistance center; in Gilan, constitutionalist leaders restrained peasant uprisings. A rift widened between secular intellectuals and conservative clergy like Shaykh Fażl-Allāh Nūrī, who was executed in 1909. Conservative forces then gained influence, and factional strife between Moderates and Democrats (later Social Democrats) paralyzed reform. Russian military intervention, accepted by Britain, led to the dissolution of the Second parliament in December 1911 and the revolution’s defeat. The revolution thus shows a paradox: high mobilization and political innovation could not sustain the coalition that made them possible. Understanding this requires examining social diversity, political strategy, and institutional choices over time, beyond narratives privileging ideas or class alone.
Introduction and Research Problem
The most iconic photographs of the Constitutional Revolution (Rostami, 2006; Tabatabaei, 2011; Purhossein Khoniq, 2020) depict the sanctuary-taking (bast-nishīnī) or general strike at the British Embassy in the summer of 1906 as the movement’s turning point. According to accounts, “around 14,000 people” participated in this scene, a figure close to one-third of Tehran’s workforce (Afary, 1996: 55). Yet, these photographs only capture the urban protesters in Tehran, whereas historical narratives indicate that vast populations in other major Iranian cities, such as Tabriz and Rasht, also joined the revolutionaries.
General strike in British Embassy in Tehran.
What is most striking about these scenes is not merely their scale, but their diversity. The social composition of this crowd was notably diverse, encompassing clergy and students, intellectuals, merchants, guild members, traders, artisans, and both skilled and unskilled laborers. As one eyewitness recounted, “I saw over 500 tents; every craft, even shoemakers, nut-sellers, and tinsmiths, had at least one tent,” (Abrahamian, 1969: 133). Similar reports from the supplementary constitutional protests speak of “one hundred thousand people” in the streets (Abrahamian, 1979: 411). This sheer scale of participation lends significance to the concept of “the people,” despite its inherent ambiguity, within the social context of the time.
This broad solidarity, however, proved short-lived. The constitutionalists secured their initial demands with remarkably little bloodshed, yet less than two years later, on 23 June 1908, when Colonel Liakhov shelled the Parliament on the Shah’s orders, the great crowds had vanished. Only a small core of committed revolutionaries remained to resist -a disappearance that cannot be explained solely by repression, because mass mobilization had previously withstood severe violence.
The central question of this study is therefore straightforward: why did “the people” disappear from the scene, and why was the Revolution unable to withstand the counter-revolutionary assault? Although the populace returned to the fray and recaptured Tehran after the Minor Tyranny 1908–1909, the Second Parliament suffered the same fate as the first.
I approach this question by examining the concept of “the people” not as a fixed social category, but as a politically constructed and contested one. It argues that the meaning of “the people” shifted over time, shaped by competing discourses and strategic considerations. These shifts were not merely semantic; they had concrete political consequences, influencing patterns of inclusion, exclusion, and mobilization. I examine the concept of “the people” in juxtaposition with “statesmen,” “revolutionaries,” and “revolutionaries in power,” demonstrating that the term possesses a fluid meaning whose referents shift depending on the prevailing discourses. This fluidity was not accidental but politically weaponized. In pre-Constitutional Iran, society was defined by the binary of arbāb and ra’iyat (landlord and peasant), and reforms from above (such as the activities of Amīr Kabīr and Sipahsālār) were implemented without the engagement of the masses. Yet, the expansion of new relationships and the influx of modern concepts, including law and parliament, fractured the ancient structure and allowed for the emergence of “the people” as rightful holders of political rights.
To comprehend this transition, one must consider the landlord-peasant structure and patrimonialism, where the Shah was the “Shadow of God” and the source of justice and security. The Constitutional movement challenged this system by introducing concepts such as the nation, law, and representation. Even religious scholars such as Mīrzā Muhammad Hossein Nāʾīnī sought to reconcile sharīʿa with ʿurf in order to legitimize the new understanding of the people. However, this reconciliation remained partial and elite driven. This dialogue between traditional and modern forces was evident in the First and Second Parliaments, though the mechanism of dialogue gradually eroded with the ascendancy of landowners and the gentry, and the language of power was once again reproduced from above. The Constitutional experience thus revealed that the transition from ra’iyat to citizen was the outcome of intense intellectual and social struggle, but that transition was never institutionalized. Although law, suffrage, and parliament temporarily reshaped popular political consciousness, internal divisions and external pressures combined to arrest the process before it could mature.
The present study focuses on this rupture, by re-examining primary documents and tracing social dynamics after the initial victory. The analysis therefore proceeds along two axes: first, identifying which groups were incorporated into the revolutionary category of “the people” during the initial phase of mobilization; and second, tracing how and why certain groups were subsequently marginalized or excluded. By answering these interrelated questions, I offer a new internalist theory of revolutionary failure that complements – but does not dismiss – existing externalist and structural accounts.
Here, I argue that the failure of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution cannot be fully explained by external intervention, ideological radicalization, or institutional weakness alone. Instead, it resulted from the progressive narrowing of “the people” as a political category after the initial revolutionary victory. During mobilization (1905–1906), “the people” functioned as an expansive and flexible category that enabled the formation of a broad, multi-class urban coalition. However, once the constitutional order was established, this inclusive category was gradually restricted through legal design, institutional practices, and political discourse. This narrowing excluded key segments of the original coalition -particularly the urban poor, women, religious minorities, and peripheral populations- undermining the Revolution’s social base. As a result, when the counter-revolutionary assault occurred in 1908 and again in 1911, the constitutional regime was unable to remobilize the mass support that had initially secured its success. What becomes visible here is that this process was not merely incidental but partly deliberate, driven by elite concerns over order, property, and political control. The central claim is therefore that exclusion was not a by-product of failure- it was one of its primary causes.
Background and Mapping Gaps
Scholarship on the Constitutional Revolution has adopted social, discursive, and political perspectives, all of which confirm that reconstructing the role of social forces is inseparable from analyzing mechanisms of representation and exclusion. Najmabadi (2005), through close reading of speeches and clandestine leaflets, shows that even at the height of mobilization the dominant discourse constructed a male addressee and symbolically excluded women. This selective logic operated on a far wider scale. Afary (1996) has demonstrated that decisions about what enters the official record and what is omitted are never neutral; they silence groups that were effective participants but later deemed inconvenient.
Many dominant narratives – whether presented as the “true history” or as Iran’s “first national uprising”- have relegated local, regional, or transnational dimensions to the margins. Examples abound: the sale of girls in Quchan eclipsed by the killing of theology students (Najmabadi, 1998); the ideas of educated elites privileged over the actions of the popular classes; local movements judged solely by their alignment with “national” events. All such choices constitute acts of cultural power. De Groot (2010) illustrates how Constitutional historiography has redistributed agency among groups according to subsequent ideological needs, while Cronin (2010) interprets the Revolution as a state-building project in which tension between elites and popular forces shaped the emerging power structure. Abrahamian (1969), finally, emphasizes collective action and street mobilization as the movement’s driving force.
Despite this rich body of work, no study has yet systematically traced how the victorious revolutionary leadership actively narrowed the meaning of “the people” after 1905 in order to consolidate power, nor has the causal link between such exclusion and the Revolution’s inability to defend the parliament in 1908 and 1911 been rigorously established.
I address that gap by advancing a more focused argument: that one of the key factors in the revolution’s failure was the inability or unwillingness of the victorious leadership to sustain the broad coalition that had enabled its success. Once in power, revolutionary actors faced competing demands from a highly heterogeneous base. Rather than accommodating this diversity, they often responded by narrowing the scope of political inclusion, excluding certain groups for both political and material reasons.
This perspective engages directly with alternative explanations. A common argument in the literature is that exclusion emerged unintentionally, as a by-product of ideological radicalization or external pressures. While such factors were undoubtedly present, the evidence suggests that exclusion was frequently more deliberate and strategic than is often assumed. It was not merely something that happened to the revolution; it was, in part, produced from within. By foregrounding these internal dynamics, I propose a reinterpretation of the revolution’s trajectory. It suggests that the collapse of the popular coalition -and the contradictions among the groups that initially formed it- played a more central role than is typically acknowledged.
Theoretical Framework and Method
In studies of the Constitutional Revolution, the “crowd” or “street force” is an ever-present yet under-theorized actor. Despite the decisive role played by popular mobilization in modern Iranian history, neither historians nor sociologists have subjected it to systematic analysis. Contemporaries either celebrated the crowd as heroic defenders of liberty and justice or dismissed it as “riff-raff” and “vagrants” manipulated by rulers or foreign powers. European observers produced caricatures that ranged from exotic fascination to outright contempt, while literary representations cast the crowd as a fickle, uncontrollable force capable of toppling governments overnight. In short, the crowd has remained an abstract symbol -admired, feared, or ridiculed- rather than an object of empirical investigation (Abrahamian, 1969: 128–129).
Classical studies of popular collective action, notably George Rudé’s (1964) studies of European crowds, as well as more recent theories of “the people” as a performative and always contested political subject (Laclau, 2005; Rancière, 1999, 2016; Chatterjee, 2020), provide a useful starting point by demonstrating that crowds are not inherently irrational but operate within recognizable patterns shaped by social and economic conditions.
The descriptions related to the crowds active in the Revolution are mainly extracted from Persian and English historical sources: works by Browne (1910), Dawlatābādī (1983), the British Foreign Office correspondence on Iran, newspapers like Ḥabl al-Matīn and Ṣūr-i Isrāfīl, as well as Constitutional histories by Kasravi (1975), Malekzadeh (1984), Sharif Kashani (1983) and Nazem-al-Islam Kermani (1978) among others. Together these texts provide a rich, if heterogeneous, portrait of crowd behavior and social composition, making clear that understanding the role of “the people” demands moving beyond the stereotypes of “thugs” or “national heroes.”
Equally ambiguous and closely related is the Persian term mardom (“people”). No conception of “the people” ever includes the entire population within a given territory; every version excludes and marginalizes some groups even as it claims universality (Rockhill, 2014; Chatterjee, 2020). Didi-Huberman (2016) reminds us that there are always multiple, coexisting “peoples” whose unity is far less coherent than imagined. Rancière (2016) goes further: the people have no existence independent of the conflicting representations produced of it, each with its own attributes, beliefs, and practices.
In Iranian culture, the closest conceptual equivalent to the word mardom in the Persian language is the term mellat(“nation”). When the European concept of “nation” was first translated into Persian, mellat was chosen, yet before the Constitutional period mellat retained its pre-modern meaning of religious community or sect. Only during the Revolution did it begin to acquire its modern sense.
Therefore, this study rests on three interconnected theoretical pillars to theorize the populist dynamics of “the people”:
(1) Ernesto Laclau’s concept of the empty signifier (Laclau, 2005): During the revolutionary upsurge, “the people” (mardom/mellat) functioned as an empty signifier, flexibly uniting heterogeneous demands against the patrimonial order. Post-victory, it was differentially filled with particular content (male, propertied, Shiʿi), producing necessary exclusions in the populist chain of equivalence.
(2) Jacques Rancière’s “the part of no part” (Rancière, 1999): Women, the urban poor, and religious minorities embodied those with no countable part in the pre-revolutionary police order, briefly disrupting it through egalitarian claims. Their post-victory “disqualification” was a reimposition of police logic, rendering them invisible in the new perceptual distribution of the sensible.
(3) Partha Chatterjee’s distinction between civil and political society (Chatterjee, 2004): The Revolution forged a narrow civil society of literate, propertied males while relegating the subaltern majority to a managed “political society,” whose mobilizations were tactical and revocable.
Taken together, these perspectives provide a framework for analyzing the shifting meaning of “the people” during the Constitutional Revolution. They allow us to move beyond static definitions and instead examine how this category was constructed, contested, and redefined over time.
Methodologically, I employed qualitative content analysis, combining thematic and discourse-analytic coding performed with Atlas.ti 24. The analysis draws on a diverse corpus of primary sources, including newspapers, memoirs, parliamentary debates, police and intelligence reports, underground leaflets, communiqués, historical works and visual materials.
Discursive construction of “the people”; public debate
Parliamentary Debates
Proceedings of the First National Assembly
1906–1908
Institutional decisions; legal exclusion
Memoirs & Chronicles
Dawlatābādī, Kermani, Kasravi
Retrospective
Elite perceptions; narrative framing
Leaflets & Proclamations
Underground publications, political declarations
1905–1908
Mobilization language
Archival Reports
British Foreign Office reports
1905–1911
External observation; social reactions
Local Anjumans
Tabriz Association records
1906–1908
Centre–periphery dynamics
These sources offer multiple vantage points on the revolution, though they also reflect the biases and limitations of their respective contexts. The corpus selection inevitably reflects archival survival biases, and contemporary police/intelligence reports often exaggerate disorder to justify repression. To address these limitations, the study adopts a strategy of triangulation, comparing different types of sources in order to identify recurring patterns and discrepancies.
The coding scheme includes three primary clusters:
Exclusion Codes: explicit or implicit boundary-making (e.g., references limited to Muslims, men, propertied groups, or “respectable” citizens)
Delegitimation Codes: representations of segments of the population as ignorant, disorderly, or politically unfit
These codes are applied across source types to identify shifts in discourse and their alignment with institutional decisions. Analytical emphasis is placed on moments where discursive narrowing coincides with legal or political exclusion.
Findings
Social Configuration and the Revolutionary Construction of “the People”
Qajar Iran was characterized by an exceptional degree of social, ethnic, and religious diversity. This diversity was not merely demographic but structurally embedded in geography, economic organization, and patterns of political authority. Mountain ranges, deserts, and regional isolation had long preserved distinct local identities, resulting in a mosaic of linguistic, ethnic, and sectarian communities. Persians, Bakhtiyārī, Qashqāʾī, Lurs, and Arabs inhabited the central plateau; Baloch and Afshār communities were scattered across the southeast; Kurds, Lurs, and smaller Arab groups lived in the west; Azerbaijanis, Shahsevans, Armenians, and Assyrians dominated the northwest; Gilaks, Talesh, and Mazandaranis lined the Caspian shores; while the northeast contained Persians alongside Turkmen, Kurds, Afshārs, Taymūrīs, Baloch, Tajiks, and Jamshīdīs. Political unity thus coexisted with profound cultural and linguistic fragmentation. This extreme heterogeneity constitutes the essential backdrop for understanding why an apparently inclusive revolutionary discourse of “the people” could so rapidly become a weapon of exclusion.
Within such a context, Iran’s social structure was also complex and multi-layered. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, Iranian society could be categorized into four principal classes. The highest was the large-landowning class: the Shah and Qajar princes, courtiers, tīyūldārān [holders of land grants], mustawfīyān [financial administrators], ministers, governors, and a collection of government officials. This central elite, alongside local aristocrats, tribal khans, and chiefs, formed a network of political and economic power. A segment of the official clergy, such as judges, Friday Prayer leaders, and Shaykh al-Islāms, were also intertwined with this class. The second class consisted of the wealthy middle class: merchants, small landowners, artisans, and bazaar traders. The bazaar was not only the center of the urban economy but also the lifeblood of religious and educational institutions. Many mosques, religious schools and mourning centers were funded by the capital of merchants and artisans. This fostered a complex, reciprocal relationship between the bazaar and the clergy, from preachers to high-ranking mujtahids. Alongside them, some bazaar merchants were recognized as Sayyids and held significant religio-social roles.
The third class was made up of urban wage laborers: journeymen, apprentices, skilled workers, servants, construction workers, bathhouse attendants and porters. Finally, the fourth class, the majority of society, comprised villagers and īlāt (nomadic tribes): landless or smallholding peasants caught in the landlord-peasant structure, living far from the center of political power (Abrahamian, 1979; Ashraf & Banuazizi, 1992). The extraordinary occupational diversity of the period is vividly illustrated by the 1877 tax register of Isfahan, which recorded some two hundred independent guilds ranging from silversmiths and bookbinders to bath attendants and porters (Taḥvīldār, 2009).
Religious diversity further complicated the social landscape. Twelver Shi‘ism predominated, yet Sunni minorities -Kurds, Turkmen, Arabs, and Baloch- coexisted alongside non-Muslim communities of Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. Even within Shi‘ism, sectarian divisions persisted between Ni‘matī and Ḥaydarī orders, orthodox believers, Shaykhīs, Ismā‘īlīs, and followers of the Karīmkhānī lineage. Urban space reflected these cleavages: Shiraz was divided into Ni‘matī, Ḥaydarī, and Jewish quarters; mid-nineteenth-century Tabriz comprised distinct aristocratic, orthodox believers, Armenian, guild, and laboring neighborhoods.
Qajar society, in sum, was a mosaic of ethnicities, languages, sects, neighborhoods, classes, and power networks -a structure that simultaneously enabled coexistence and harbored deep fissures, and no satisfactory interpretation of the movement is possible without grasping its underlying diversity.
An investigation of social forces during the Constitutional Revolution shows that the primary nucleus of change emerged from cities, with artisans, tradesmen, urban laborers, and intellectuals forming the revolutionary core against the Court, landowners, and Russian/British influence. The clergy and merchants, initially supportive, became fragmented, with some defecting to the counter-revolution. Tribes shifted allegiances based on local interests, while peasants and ‘ashāyir played no decisive national role beyond limited uprisings (e.g., in Gilan). Thus, the revolution was an urban, multiclass, popular movement sustained by a heterogeneous, brittle, and tactically inclusive coalition vulnerable to post-victory pruning.
The counter-revolutionary front coalesced around the court, landowners, conservative clergy, dependent tribes, and segments of the urban poor. The 1908 coup relied on the Cossack Brigade and court pensioners; in Tabriz, royalist crowds from impoverished neighborhoods were mobilized by high bread prices and clerical authority. Contrary to older narratives of peasant neutrality, rural unrest did occur in Gilan, villagers attacked landlords, believing constitutionalism meant absolute freedom, but constitutionalist deputies in Tehran ordered their suppression. Elsewhere, clerical or landlord pressure turned peasants against the revolution. Rural participation was real but localized and weak. In cities, the cleavage widened between secular intellectuals and conservative clerics. Intellectuals promoted legal equality, an end to despotism, and liberation from foreign domination via newspapers, but traditionalist clergy resisted. Large merchants and foreign-dependent capitalists also weakened initial unity.
In the Second Parliament, the share of artisans and intellectuals decreased, while landowners, tribal chiefs, and Qajar bureaucrats gained dominance. The suppression in Tabriz revealed this trend: most of the 35 executed were artisans and shopkeepers (Foran, 1991). Concurrently, royalists exploited religious and ethnic differences to prevent the spread of independent associations and the press in many regions.
The Urban Poor and the Economic Logic of Mobilization
The precarious economic situation of the Qajar era -poverty, unemployment, and injustice- brought the urban poor into the scene from the outset. These groups were motivated primarily by the hope for bread, work, and social security (Momeni, 1966: 15–19). Many of them did not understand the meaning and function of the “Constitution.” Majd al-Islam Kermani (2017: 44) reported, “One in a thousand knew the meaning of Constitution; that is, in Tehran and other cities of Iran, one in a hundred thousand did not know the meaning … Some rioted for the dismissal of Ain al-Dawleh, a group for the dismissal of Monsignor Naus, some to collect treasury receipts they held from Mushir al-Saltaneh, and others with other motives.”
Among the lower classes, the Constitutional Revolution was perceived in a profoundly economic sense, to the extent that Motahhari (1999: 382) wrote, “In the Constitutional era, some people were propagated with the idea that Constitution means that every morning fresh bread and kebab will be delivered to everyone’s house.” A similar account is recorded in Tabriz, stating that “Constitution means cheap kebab” (Khalili, 2022: 46).
These satirical anecdotes are not merely amusing anecdotes; they reveal a profound mismatch between elite political objectives and popular material expectations -a mismatch the victorious leadership never attempted to bridge and instead exploited to demobilize the poor when convenient. This mindset is also evident in popular literature and the poetry of Nasīm-i Shomāl and Iraj Mirza. English translation of Persian poems: In the turmoil of Tehran, the clamor was at the Parliament, / Because the seekers of the Constitution were a chain of destitutes. / Behold the fervor and tumult of the poor, / Behold the commotion of the weak (Hosseini, 1991: 362). Or: The poor are entrapped by subsistence, / They are striving for their nightly bread. / The reason they sometimes speak the word ‘law’ (qānūn), / Is because the last letter of ‘law’ is Nūn [which suggests nūn (bread)]. / If they enter politics, / It is for the sake of job, work, and high office (Iraj Mirza, 1993: 94).
The Tehran poor -day laborers and the unemployed- initially joined the constitutional movement influenced by preachers and clerics, but their lack of organization and clear ideology made their political behavior volatile. Both sides deliberately engineered this volatility through selective distribution of food, cash, and religious rhetoric. Their presence in events like the destruction of the Russian Bank and sanctuary-taking at the British Embassy required such material incentives.
Victory and the First Parliament raised expectations, but economic deterioration -soaring bread prices, shortages, unemployment- spread disillusionment. Shaykh Fazlollāh Nūrī’s anti-constitution fatwa found support among those with traditional religious loyalties. Moḥammad-ʿAlī Shah worsened the crisis by withholding court salaries and subsidizing anti-parliamentary agitation. During the Artillery Square clashes, segments of the poor fought on both sides.
Lūṭīs and Jāhilān (neighborhood toughs) played a dual role: some supported the revolution, but many, bribed by the Court, joined the opposition with slogans like “We want the Prophet’s religion, not a constitution” -though these same groups had previously defended the Parliament. The bombardment of Parliament by the Russian Cossacks ended the revolution’s first phase; some lūṭīs received military rewards. Many poor had sincerely sought social justice, but lacking organization and political awareness, they became victims of elite competition and foreign maneuvering.
Intellectuals focused on law and liberty, not the subsistence needs of the lower classes. Thus, the urban poor were instrumentalized as revolutionary “muscle,” then deliberately abandoned and re-mobilized against the revolution -because their inclusion threatened the property and status of the new parliamentary elite. Poverty, political inexperience, unawareness, and disorganization fundamentally altered the revolution’s course, rendering it fragile against the royalist coalition and Russian intervention.
Fractures, Exclusion, and the Collapse of the Popular Coalition
The initial unity of the constitutionalist coalition unraveled soon after the establishment of the new political order, most notably with the formulation of the Electoral Law. Rather than preserving broad inclusivity, the law restricted participation: women, lower classes, and the illiterate were disenfranchised. Only six classes (Qajar princes, clergy, aristocracy, landowners, merchants, and guild members) could enter Parliament, and only if they met property or business criteria (Abrahamian, 1979: 407-408).
This was the first deliberate act of legal exclusion, transforming “the people” from a broad revolutionary subject into a narrow propertied and Muslim male citizenry. The First Parliament’s composition confirmed this: affluent bazaar and wealthy middle-class strata secured 60 percent of seats, while lower classes had no role. Victors’ indifference to the poor -refusing tax reductions or addressing bread prices- deepened the fissure. As the British Minister reported, Parliament lost its “general credit.” Constitutionalists lost poor support, alienated cautious religious leaders, and retained only the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. Middle-class neighborhoods remained revolutionary centers, while lower-class poor neighborhoods became counter-revolutionary strongholds.
The revolutionary leadership chose class consolidation over coalition maintenance, directly causing the disappearance of crowds in June 1908. This class division was acutely visible in Tabriz: constitutionalists drew strength from affluent neighborhoods like Amirkhīz (merchants, artisans, tradesmen), while royalists based themselves in poorer districts like Davahchī and Surkhāb (porters, muleteers, laborers, unemployed). Religious sectarianism compounded the cleavage: many middle-class constitutionalists followed the Shaykhī school, whereas the orthodox tendency predominated among lower classes, turning the conflict into a quasi-religious war (Abrahamian, 1969: 142–144).
The Center–Periphery Divide
A second structural fracture separated Tehran from the provinces. Tehran was allotted sixty-two deputies, Azerbaijan only twelve, and major provinces such as Fārs, Kermān, and Khorāsān a mere six each. Tribes, who constituted roughly one-third of the population, and rural areas were granted no representation whatsoever (Kermani, 2017: 56). Ethnic and linguistic minorities were thus structurally erased from the new political imaginary of “the nation.”
This inequality was exacerbated when the First Parliament began its work solely with Tehran representatives -a revolutionary strategy to deny the counter-revolution an opportunity- with delegates from other cities joining late. Meanwhile, the Tehran assembly operated under the direct pressure of enormous crowds of spectators. Majd al-Eslām Kermani observed that “the entire population of Tehran intervened in the Iranian Parliament,” compelling deputies to vote according to shouted demands from the galleries (Ibid: 62). Although public access was eventually restricted, the early chaos left a lasting imprint.
Distance and poor communications further marginalized the provinces. Remote regions struggled to form effective anjumans (association), and where such associations emerged, they frequently remained subordinate to local notables. Even royalists established rival anjumans—Anjuman-i Khidmat, Anjuman-i Akābir, Anjuman-i Aʿyān—that competed for allegiance with promises of patronage (Kharabi, 2020: ch. 13). The democratic potential of the anjuman movement was thus neutralized, and power remained concentrated along an unequal center–periphery axis.
Exclusion of Religious Minorities and the Curtailment of Liberties
A third fracture concerned religious minorities. Conservative clerics insisted only Muslims could sit in parliament. Secular revolutionaries, anxious to retain clerical support, initially acquiesced, making Sayyid ʿAbd-Allāh Behbahānī and Sayyid Muḥammad Ṭabāṭabāʾī proxies for non-Muslims. Armenians and Jews accepted, but Zoroastrians protested and secured a single dedicated seat (Shāhrukh, 2002: 72).
The draft Supplementary Constitutional Law originally declared “all Muslims equal before the law”; sustained protests forced amendment to “The inhabitants of the Iranian realm shall be equal in the possession of their rights before the state law” (Ibid: 73) -a reluctant concession revealing that equality was never a principled commitment but a tactical retreat.
During these phases, victorious clergy and revolutionaries began restricting liberties. Revolutionary tools before victory were criminalized afterward. Bihbahānī opposed underground leaflets -a principal revolutionary tool- declaring in Parliament: “If they have a word or a speech, they should write it and bring it to the Parliament… the Parliament must… prohibit these corrupt and malicious persons from these ugly movements” (Session 16, 18 December 1906).
After victory, leaflets took on an intimidating tone: “Whoever reads this proclamation and fails to circulate it… shall be deemed a traitor and a despot” (Mu‘izzī, 1999: 304). Many armed associations threatened the populace by using the label “despot.” Kermani (2017: 73–74) wrote: “Any poor wretch who fell short in executing what was demanded of him was immediately called a despot… and was branded as invalid.”
Some leaflets showed contempt for the people, e.g., regarding the June 1908 bombardment, the people of Tehran were addressed as: “Die, O less than animals… Let the women of Tabriz acquire freedom for you! Let the children of Azerbaijan sacrifice their lives for the preservation of your religion, honor, and liberty” (Mu‘izzī, 1999: 301). This illustrates how the revolutionary elite shifted from mobilizing “the people” to despising them once they ceased to be useful.
Prominent intellectuals also held this view: Yaḥyā Dawlatābādī (1983, V. 2: 84) wrote that except for a few, others do not know what law, parliament, or constitution are. Majd al-Islām Kermani (2017: 119, 144–145, 162, 223, 319) described the people as “self-serving,” “wildly ignorant,” “tyrannical and malicious,” “lazy,” and “parasitic.” Thus, intellectuals who had invoked “the people” as sovereign now recoded them as an obstacle to enlightened governance, deepening the chasm between elite and social body.
Women as Active (but Silenced) Subjects
Women were also practically excluded in this discourse. Most leaflets and communiqués addressed only men: “O religious brothers and O zealous men of Iran” (Mu‘izzī, 1999: 281), or “O companions and O brothers…” (Ibid: 282). Women were only mentioned when listed alongside orphans or widows. Although revolutionary discourse was overwhelmingly male-addressed, women were far from passive recipients of exclusion. Women participated in some demonstrations and helped with strikes and sit-ins. Also, from earlier times, women were the vanguard of protests and bread riots (Cronin, 2018). They played a prominent role in the plan to establish a national bank and boycott foreign goods. Moreover, secret women’s anjumans, organized economic boycotts against foreign goods, and even armed themselves during the Tabriz siege of 1908 (Afary, 1996: Ch 7).
Figures like Bibi Maryam Amjadi and Sedigheh Dowlatabadi led petitions for suffrage, framing women’s inclusion as essential to the egalitarian “people.” Yet, the Electoral Law and Supplementary Fundamental Laws explicitly barred them, justified by claims of unreadiness for civil society (Bayat-Phillip, 1978). This intersectional exclusion -gender compounded by class- highlights how the new police order silenced active disruptors, further eroding the populist coalition.
Similarly, religious minorities were effectively ignored in many texts through addresses like “The Nation of Islam.” The revolutionary “people,” therefore, was performatively constructed as male, Muslim, and Persian-speaking from the very first days of victory. For instance, in a leaflet entitled “The Request of the Hidden Well-wisher…” (Ibid: 277–278), or in a telegram from “The Constitutionalist Clergy of Tabriz Regarding the Fatwa of the Marja‘s of Najaf and the Opening of the National Consultative Assembly,” signed by city elders, it is written: “It will not be within the honor of the possessor of the sharī‘at that the Nation of Islam be so degraded and the lives, property, and honor of Muslims become the prey of the oppressive group’s sword… and a revolution will occur that will inflict great damage upon the great monarchy, and all the Nation of Iran is prepared to obey the decrees of the Imām; moreover, all Shī‘a co-religionists will become agitated and tumultuous.” (Jamshidiyān, 2016: 139).
As is evident from this statement, while the language refers to “all the Nation of Iran,” the concrete referent is nothing but Muslims and Shī‘a. In other words, the letter writers, by emphasizing Islam and Shī‘a, firstly exclude and marginalize all Iranians adhering to other religions (Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Armenians) and, secondly, all non-Shī‘a Muslims. Furthermore, terms such as “Nation” (Millat), “Public” (‘Umūm), and Ra‘iyat are highly ambiguous in these texts, and it is unclear exactly who they encompass. Even in the Parliament, representatives rarely spoke specifically of the people in their constituencies.
Parliamentarians Indifference and Structural Constraints
Another clear sign of the rupture between the Parliament and the people was the representatives’ indifference to daily, common issues. In the fourteenth session of the First Parliament, when Ḥājjī Sayyid Ibrāhīm warned about the high price of meat, he was answered: “The issue of meat is related to the government… it has nothing to do with the Parliament.” The same pattern repeated with the Anzalī fishermen’s complaint about the Lianazov contract. This indifference was also structural: incorrect delineation of īyālat and vilāyat boundaries deprived Bāndar-i Langah, Muḥammarah, Anzalī, and Ṭālish of a Provincial Association, allowing only a Municipal Association. Protests of Rasht residents claiming “Rasht is a Province (īyālat), not a District (vilāyat)” yielded no result (Kermani, 2017: 56–58).
The Law of Associations prohibited all unofficial local associations, restricting local self-organization instead of strengthening popular participation. The contemporary press mirrored this rift. The newspaper Rūḥ al-Qudus initially criticized the government but soon turned on Parliament, writing, “For nearly two years, they have assumed a name without form, a body without a soul—meaning a constitution without reality,” and regarding the Parliament Speaker, stated that “The Speaker of the Parliament must be knowledgeable of the necessities of the time… not deaf…” (No. 27, 4th June 1908: 4).
Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, in Charand-o Parand, complained about representatives’ disarray and inexperience. Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Vā‘iẓ wrote: “The Sacred National Consultative Assembly… must all be united and of one accord…” (Al-Jamal, No. 15, 27th June 1907). But by late 1907, he attributed Parliament’s inefficiency to hasty election and delegate inexperience (Ibid, No. 26, 22th November 1907).
The newspaper Musāwāt, despite defending the constitution, criticized the “ignorance of the delegates” (No. 2, 27th October 1907: 4), wrote “We have been deceiving ourselves for two whole years…” (No. 13, 16th February 1908: 1), labeled Parliament as “incapable of defending the poor” and “a tool in the hands of the malicious,” and asked representatives why they used to hide “like veiled women” until yesterday and now shout so brazenly? (No. 18, 22th March 1908: 2–3). Its conclusion: when Tehran is so chaotic, the condition of other cities is self-evident (Ibid: 5).
In Tabriz, the Tabriz Association repeatedly protested delays in sending the Constitutional Law and Tehran’s passivity. City clerics warned: “As long as they do not dispatch the Constitution towards Azerbaijan… we will not leave the telegraph office” (Tabriz Association, No. 81, 6th May 1907). The Association’s summary of parliamentary debates showed divergence between perception and reality: “The inhabitants have conceived that we are constitutionalized so that we may now commit aggression and injustice ourselves” (Ibid, No. 39, 24th January 1907). A Christian complained that even the purchase of “one kilo of grapes” was forbidden to him, contrary to liberty and equality (Ibid, No. 7, 14th October 1907). The Tabriz Association cited extravagance (No. 6), currency depreciation, population growth without income growth, hoarding, weak transport, and “ignorance” as the “first cause” of economic turmoil. In No. 25, quoting the people of Tabriz, it wrote that Christians had been placed in customs offices without competence instead of Muslims, and another stated: “The Constitutional nature of the government in Iran is a statement, not an action” (Ibid, No. 25).
The Erosion of the Revolution’s Social Base
The murder of the Zoroastrian Farīdūn and the impunity of his killers struck another blow to the Parliament’s credibility. Majd al-Islām Kermani (2017: 321–322) recounts that following this incident, “all devout and civilized souls” turned away from the Parliament, attributing this distrust to the actions of “irreligious clerics,” “dishonorable orators,” and judiciary components who took bribes and “took an axe to the root of Constitutionalism.” He traced the problem to the electoral structure, which sent “bankrupt merchants” and “money-collecting clerics” to Parliament to pursue personal interests.
At the societal level, for many people, the Constitution meant nothing but chaos and anarchy. Every disturbance was interpreted with the phrase “Mashrūṭeh (Constitution) became reality”: “Gradually, the businesses of hat-making [a derogatory reference to Westernized constitutionalists] and mujāhid [freedom fighter] games expanded, leading to a loss of trust in the Constitution and the constitutionalists; moreover, the word Mashrūṭeh was translated among the people as murder and plunder, so that whoever killed anyone or plundered anywhere, they would say: Mashrūṭeh became reality.”(Mardūkh Kurdistānī, 2000: 549–550). Some constitutionalists regretted that a “plague should have come and they had died” before the Constitution was realized (Afshār, 1980: 52).
Fiscal mismanagement further undermined confidence: the Finance Commission failed to balance the budget or curb inflation, and soaring bread prices turned roughly a third of the urban population against the assembly. The resulting backlash culminated in the royalist riot at Artillery Square, where court muleteers, neighborhood poor, and followers of Shaykh Fażl-Allāh Nūrī converged to demand abolition of constitutional rule (Kermani, 2017: 276).
Despite these transformations, constitutionalist historians typically reduced anti-revolution gatherings to “hired thugs,” “gamblers,” and “paid hooligans,” without questioning motivations. Only Malik al-Shuʿarāʾ Bahār briefly mentioned that a segment of the “upper class and lower classes” supported despotism, and only the middle class backed the revolution, but failed to explain factors shaping this alignment (Abrahamian, 1969: 136). Based on Abrahamian, three forces were present in royalist demonstrations: aristocrats and employees dependent on the palace economy; conservative clergy and their students; and segments of the lower classes. Crucially, the lower classes who joined the counter-revolution were often the same people who had earlier filled the streets for the revolution -demonstrating that their “volatility” was produced by deliberate elite abandonment rather than inherent backwardness. This pattern appeared elsewhere: court-dependent muleteers in Tabriz, the retinue of Qawām al-Mulk in Shiraz, and Kermanshah’s division into the “People’s Party” and the “Aristocrats’ Party.”
Conservative clerics played a decisive role: Sheikh Fazlollah and Ḥājjī Mīrzā Ḥasan mobilized students, mullahs, and religious employees. A British Foreign Office report indicated that “a large portion” of the clergy sympathized with conservatives on minority issues. Lūṭīs and pahlavāns linked to guilds and religious institutions were active in Tabriz disturbances and the Artillery Square gathering. The urban poor -dyers, carpet weavers, bricklayers, peddlers, porters, laborers- were easily drawn to this counter-movement due to poverty, unrest, and distrust. Kasravi wrote that Fazlollah’s secession was a severe blow because he was “respected by the people.” Malikzādih admitted his provocations affected the “common people.” Amīrkhīzī confirmed bazaar commoners followed Fazlollah. Low-income guilds felt, as early as the sanctuary-taking at the British Embassy, that they would gain nothing from the Revolution. Field gatherings included a mix of the poor, clergy and students, lūṭīs, courtiers, and palace-dependent workers (Abrahamian, 1969: 138–144).
Even in the National Bank project, public distrust was evident: Sa’d al-Dawlah complained in Parliament that people who days before had “sacrificed life and property” for the bank, now not even ten had taken steps to buy shares, warning this inaction would “cause insult” to Parliament in the eyes of the world (Session 6, 1 December 1906). The evidence reveals that popular disaffection was neither abrupt nor reducible to a single event, but unfolded through cumulative political missteps, economic hardship, heightened insecurity, and religio-ideological competition. Contrary to the narrative blaming “mass ignorance,” this distancing was a rational response rooted in lived experience. A revolution that was supposed to bring the “rule of law” became, in many eyes, a source of instability and a lived experience of betrayal, exclusion, and inefficiency, which ultimately eroded its social base.
Causal Mechanisms of Exclusion
The transformation of “the people” from an inclusive mobilizing category into a more restricted political constituency did not occur through a single process. Rather, it resulted from the interaction of several mechanisms, each of which contributed to the gradual erosion of the revolutionary coalition.
1. Class Interest and Fear of Anarchy (Chatterjee’s Political Society): The propertied leadership -merchants, landowners, and intellectuals- prioritized protecting guild privileges and private property over addressing the urban poor’s demands for bread subsidies or wage guarantees. As Chatterjee (2004, 2020) argues, subaltern groups in political society are mobilized for disruption but governed through exception; here, the fear of “anarchy” justified suppression. The Gilan peasant uprisings of 1906 exemplify this: villagers, interpreting constitutionalism as land redistribution, seized estates, only to be crushed by Tehran deputies who viewed them as threats to order (Afary, 1996: ch. 6). This mechanism demobilized rural and poor urban elements, fracturing the chain of equivalence Laclau (2005) describes as essential to populism.
2. Clerical–Secular Competition for Hegemony (Laclau’s Empty Signifier):Conservative clerics like Shaykh Fażl-Allāh Nūrī contested the signifier “mellat” by filling it with Islamic content, defining “the people” as true Muslims against secular “Western imitations.” He actively accused Muslim revolutionaries of being Bābī Azalī, or Bahā’ī, and of holding anti-Islamic sentiments. Secular leaders, who needed clerical legitimacy in their struggle against the court, ultimately acquiesced to the clerics’ demand to deny parliamentary representation to religious minorities. This hegemonic struggle (Laclau, 2005) thus produced exclusion as a bargaining chip: Nūrī’s fatwas against non-Muslims gained traction among the poor, effectively splitting the revolutionary coalition along sectarian lines.
3. Legal-Institutional Fixing (Rancière’s Police Logic): The Electoral Law of 1906 and Supplementary Fundamental Laws of 1907 legally codified exclusion, restricting suffrage to propertied males and assigning minorities token seats. As Rancière (1999) posits, this was police work: re-partitioning the sensible to count only the “countable” (propertied Shiʿi men), disqualifying the “part of no part.” Archival evidence from parliament debates shows delegates explicitly debating -and rejecting-women’s and illiterates’ inclusion to prevent chaos.
4. Performative Contempt and Demobilization (Integrated Framework): Post-victory discourses shifted from adulation to derision, with leaflets and speeches labelling the masses “ignorant parasites” or “less than animals.” This performative disqualification justified demobilization, turning former allies into counter-revolutionary recruits via bribes and fatwas. Economic data corroborates bread price hikes from 1907–1908 correlated with poor neighborhood defections.
These mechanisms were intertwined, sometimes deliberate, sometimes reactive. The result is a populist revolution that imploded from within, unable to summon “the people” in 1908. These mechanisms and concepts operationalize the analysis as a populist rupture followed by exclusionary consolidation. In this sense, exclusion was not merely a by-product of the revolution; it became part of its trajectory (see Table 2).
Table 2 – Theorising the Changing Meaning of “the People”
Phase
Dominant Signifier
Included Groups
Excluded Groups
Mechanism (Laclau/Rancière/Chatterjee)
Pre-1905
raʿiyat (peasant)
None
Everyone
Traditional police order
Mobilisation 1905–06
mardom (people)
All urban classes + some tribes
–
Populist rupture (empty signifier)
Consolidation 1907–08
mellat (nation)
Propertied male Shiʿi citizens
Women, urban poor, non-Shiʿi, rural
Filling signifier + re-policing (part of no part)
Collapse 1908-09
ʿavām /ʿubāsh (riff-raff/vagrants)
Only loyal subjects
Former revolutionaries
Managed political society
A clear example of the exclusionary mechanism can be observed in the relationship between discourse, institutional design, and social response. First, revolutionary discourse initially mobilized a broad and undifferentiated notion of “the people,” encompassing diverse urban groups. Second, the Electoral Law and parliamentary practices restricted political participation to propertied male groups, formally excluding large segments of the population. Third, these exclusions coincided with increasing elite dissatisfaction with mass participation, reflected in discourses portraying the lower classes as disorderly or politically immature. Finally, this combination of institutional exclusion and discursive delegitimation contributed to the withdrawal -or reversal- of popular support, particularly among the urban poor, thereby weakening the Revolution’s capacity to resist the 1908 coup. This sequence illustrates how exclusion operated not as an isolated decision but as a cumulative process linking discourse, institutions, and political outcomes.
Comparative Perspective
The pattern observed in the Iranian case -broad mobilization followed by more selective forms of political inclusion- finds parallels in other historical contexts. In several major revolutions, expansive coalitions formed around shared opposition to existing regimes, only to fragment once the question of institutional consolidation arose.
In the French Revolution (1789–1791), the Third Estate’s empty signifier “the nation” united sans-culottes and bourgeoisie against absolutism, but post-Bastille, suffrage was restricted to propertied males, alienating the urban poor and leading to Thermidorian reaction (Soboul, 1974). Similarly, the Young Turk Revolution (1908) mobilized diverse Ottoman subjects under “liberty and equality,” yet ethnic Turks quickly filled the signifier with Turkic-Muslim content, marginalizing Armenians and Arabs and fracturing the coalition against the Sultan (Zürcher, 2010). More recently, Egypt’s 2011 uprising invoked “the people” to topple Mubarak, but the Supreme Council of Armed Forces and Muslim Brotherhood’s power-sharing excluded labor unions and Copts, paving the way for Sisi’s counter-revolution (El-Mahdi, 2011).
Comparative examples suggest that this trajectory is not unique. In different settings, the category of “the people” has often functioned as a unifying but indeterminate concept during periods of mobilization. Its strength lies precisely in its flexibility, allowing diverse groups to align temporarily. However, this same flexibility can become a source of tension when more precise definitions are required.
What distinguishes the Iranian case is not the existence of such dynamics, but their particular configuration. The relatively rapid institutionalization of exclusion, combined with the interaction of religious, social, and regional factors, shaped a specific way of coalition breakdown. The role of clerical authority, the structure of urban society, and the balance between central and provincial actors all contributed to this outcome.
Rather than treating the Constitutional Revolution as an isolated case, this perspective situates it within a broader pattern of revolutionary politics. It highlights a recurring tension between the inclusive language of mobilization and the more limited realities of political consolidation. Understanding how this tension is managed -or fails to be managed- offers insight not only into the Iranian experience but into the dynamics of revolutionary change more generally.
Conclusion
The Constitutional Revolution did not collapse simply because of external intervention, ideological radicalization, or the limitations of social development -although all of these factors played a role. What ultimately proved decisive was a more gradual and internally driven process: the weakening of the broad social coalition that had made the revolution possible, and the inability to stabilize an inclusive and durable understanding of “the people” within the new political order.
The evidence suggests, through systematic analysis of primary sources, that the revolutionary leadership actively narrowed the meaning of “the people” after victory in order to protect class, gender, religious, and ethno-national privileges, thereby destroying the only force capable of defending the parliament in 1908 and 1911.
Early intellectuals had sought to elevate the raʿiyat from powerless subject to political agent, yet this conceptual leap never translated into durable practice. The parties that emerged in the Second parliament -whether moderate or democrat- proved incapable of forging lasting ties with a largely illiterate society. Their political vocabulary remained alien, their rhetoric opaque, and their programs offered no tangible place for the subaltern majority.
In reality on the ground, the active forces of the revolution, contrary to the exaggerated “thuggish” image some writers portrayed, were mainly composed of the urban middle class, merchants, tradesmen, artisans, and various social, religious, and ethnic groups. It was the middle class and the poor who ignited the engine of the revolution, but subsequently, the rift between intellectuals carrying Western ideas, clerics with religious concerns, and merchants with demands for economic security, eroded the initial cohesion.
The confrontation between the Democrats and the Moderates is a prime example of this cleavage, where traditional bazaar forces were able to marginalize the radical discourse of the intellectuals and reclaim the political trajectory. The result was that even historians like Kasravi and Nazem-al-Islam Kermani, who deemed the revolution a product of intellectual awakening, ultimately attributed its failure to the “ignorance” of the masses -an analysis that this study rejects as ideologically convenient elite self-absolution.
Moreover, no fundamental restructuring of class relations occurred. The old elites -monarchy, clergy, landowners, tribal khans- donned constitutional garb yet retained effective power. “Political brokers” whose sole concern was personal advantage neutralized attempts at genuine democratic institution-building (Kāveh, No. 1: 2). The Constitutional Revolution thus amounted to a limited rotation of elites rather than a social revolution.
This structural incapacity was accompanied by a kind of theoretical ambiguity regarding the “people” -a concept that carried heavy normative weight in the constitutionalists’ discourse but lacked precise definition and political clarity in practice. It was unclear which groups the “people” included: women? religious minorities? villagers? the lower classes? ethnic groups? The result of this ambiguity was the political misuse of the term. Before the revolution’s victory, all these groups were called upon for general mobilization; however, immediately after the establishment of the parliament, the first political act -the electoral law- was to exclude these very segments from the right to participate.
The exclusion of women, the lower classes, minorities, smaller cities, and the law restricting associations amounted, effectively, to throwing a large portion of society off the revolutionary train. The forces that were the mainstays of resistance, protest, and mobilization for the revolution, not only remained unrewarded after the victory but were cast out of the political structure and gradually joined the opposition. This process, coupled with the intensification of the economic crisis, caused a segment of the urban poor -who were the initial driving force of the revolution- to gravitate toward counter-revolutionary forces. This shift was not a sign of instability or ignorance; it was a sign of disillusionment with unfulfilled promises and a political structure that had no place for them.
The failure of the revolution was determined not from the outside but from within: the elimination of pluralism, the inability to hold together the multi-class coalition, and the absence of a clear, inclusive definition of political belonging. By showing that exclusion was deliberate, systematic, and causally linked to collapse, I offer a new internalist explanation that challenges both nationalist hagiography and external-determinist accounts.
Combining Laclau’s empty signifier, Rancière’s police logic, and Chatterjee’s political society, has demonstrated that exclusion was not an unfortunate by-product but the central mechanism that transformed a broad populist rupture into a narrow civil-society regime incapable of defending itself. This failure did, however, leave a legacy of new political consciousness -a legacy that reappeared in the movement for the nationalization of oil and subsequently in the 1979 Revolution.
Yet, the Constitutional Revolution experience still holds a clear historical warning, not only for Iran but internationally: no movement or revolution can survive without preserving social pluralism, without rigorously defining its constituency, and without genuinely sharing power among those who made victory possible. Triumph achieved through mass mobilization yet consolidated through exclusion is doomed to internal collapse. The lesson is universal: any revolution that mobilizes “the people” as an empty signifier yet consolidates power by filling that signifier with particular content is doomed to internal collapse.
The contribution of this article has been to highlight the central role of processes of inclusion and exclusion in shaping the revolution’s trajectory. By tracing how the meaning of “the people” shifted over time, and how these shifts were linked to institutional and political developments, it offers an internal perspective on revolutionary failure that complements existing explanations.
More broadly, the analysis suggests that the durability of revolutionary change depends not only on the capacity to mobilize, but also on the ability to sustain inclusive forms of political belonging. Where the gap between the language of mobilization and the structure of governance becomes too wide, the foundations of the revolutionary project may gradually erode. The experience of the Constitutional Revolution illustrates this dynamic with clarity, offering insights that extend beyond its immediate historical context.
(*) Dr. Ali Ragheb has a Ph.D. in Cultural Sociology, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Iran, ali.ragheb@ut.ac.ir, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4213-2960)
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