Please cite as:
ECPS Staff. (2026). “ECPS Virtual Workshop Series / Session 15 — From Populism to Global Power Plays: Leadership, Crisis, and Democracy.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). April 8, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00146
Session 15 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series offered a timely and theoretically rich interrogation of how populism, personalized leadership, and systemic crisis are reshaping the horizons of democratic politics. Bringing cybernetics, political sociology, and democratic theory into productive dialogue, the session illuminated the deep entanglement between emotional mobilization, institutional fragility, and global governance under conditions of accelerating complexity. Dr. Robert R. Traill’s systems-theoretical analysis of “populist panic” and Professor Lorenzo Viviani’s political-sociological account of “manipulated resonance” together revealed populism not as a peripheral disruption, but as a central mode through which legitimacy, leadership, and “the people” are being redefined today. Enriched by incisive discussant interventions and a conceptually fertile Q&A, the session underscored the need for new democratic vocabularies capable of confronting both exclusionary affect and global instability.
Reported by ECPS Staff
On Thursday, April 2, 2026, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) convened the fifteenth session of its Virtual Workshop Series, “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches,” under the title “From Populism to Global Power Plays: Leadership, War, and Democracy.” Bringing together perspectives from political sociology, economics, and cybernetics, the session explored the evolving relationship between populist leadership, systemic crisis, and the changing architecture of democratic governance in an increasingly complex and unstable global order.
The participants of the session were introduced by ECPS intern Reka Koleszar. Chaired by Dr. Amir Ali (Jawaharlal Nehru University), the session was framed around a central question of contemporary political life: how can democratic systems sustain legitimacy and effectiveness amid intensifying global pressures, including geopolitical conflict, economic uncertainty, climate crisis, and the rise of populist movements that challenge institutional mediation and pluralist norms? As Dr. Ali underscored in his opening remarks, the current conjuncture is marked not only by a crisis of representation but also by deeper transformations in how “the people” are constructed, mobilized, and governed across diverse political contexts.
The panel featured two analytically distinct yet conceptually complementary presentations. Dr. Robert R. Traill (Brunel University) offered a cybernetic and systems-theoretical intervention on the limits of democratic decision-making in the face of global-scale challenges. His presentation examined how complex adaptive systems—from individual cognition to national governance and global coordination—struggle to maintain stability when confronted with phenomena such as climate change and limits to economic growth. By introducing the notion of “populist panic” as a systemic response to perceived breakdown, Dr. Traill’s contribution invited participants to reconsider populism not merely as a political ideology, but as a symptom of deeper failures in collective decision-making.
In contrast, Professor Lorenzo Viviani (University of Pisa) advanced a political-sociological framework centered on the concept of “manipulated resonance” to analyze personalized leadership in populism. His presentation interrogated how populist leaders construct direct, emotionally charged relationships with “the people,” reconfiguring political representation through processes of identification, embodiment, and symbolic power. By foregrounding the role of emotions—particularly resentment—and the strategic bypassing of institutional intermediaries, Professor Viviani illuminated the cultural and affective foundations of contemporary populist mobilization.
The session was further enriched by the critical interventions of its discussants, Dr. Azize Sargin (ECPS) and Professor Ibrahim Ozturk (University of Duisburg-Essen), whose comments deepened the theoretical stakes of both presentations. Their reflections engaged key issues such as the distinction between democratic responsiveness and manipulated resonance, the tensions between technocratic solutions and populist distrust, and the broader challenges of governing complexity in a rapidly changing world.
Together, the contributions of chair, speakers, and discussants generated a rich interdisciplinary dialogue that bridged micro-level analyses of leadership and emotion with macro-level concerns about global governance and systemic stability. Session 15 thus provided a compelling exploration of how populism, far from being a peripheral phenomenon, is deeply embedded in the contemporary reconfiguration of democratic life and global political order.
Dr. Robert R. Traill: “Can Democracy (or Anything Else) Rescue Civilization While the Rules Keep Changing?”
Dr. Robert R. Traill delivered a conceptually ambitious presentation titled “Can Democracy (or Anything Else) Rescue Civilization While the Rules Keep Changing?” Drawing on cybernetics, cognitive psychology, and systems theory, Dr. Traill advanced a multi-level framework for understanding the limitations of contemporary governance systems in addressing global crises.
At the core of Dr. Traill’s argument lies a diagnosis of what he terms a “problem landscape” defined by systemic challenges—most notably inequality and climate change—that demand coordinated global responses but remain resistant to consensus-based solutions. These structural issues, he argues, exceed the decision-making capacities of existing political systems, particularly when public discourse is distorted by populist dynamics that prioritize proximate symptoms—such as migration—over underlying causes.
To conceptualize governance under such conditions, Dr. Traill employs W. Ross Ashby’s cybernetic model of adaptive systems, notably the metaphor of the “clever thermostat.” In this framework, intelligence is structured hierarchically across meta-levels (MnL), where base-level actions (M0L) are monitored and adjusted by successive layers of oversight (M1L, M2L, M3L, etc.). Crucially, higher levels enable reflexivity: the capacity not merely to act, but to revise the rules governing action. When such adaptive mechanisms fail—due to insufficient options or cognitive limitations—systems may either stagnate or resort to arbitrary “panic” decisions, a dynamic Dr. Traill associates with contemporary political volatility.
Extending this model to political organization, Dr. Traill draws on Stafford Beer’s Brain of the Firm to argue that governments function as collective intelligence systems. Effective governance requires a balance between directive action (M1L), normative frameworks (M2L), and rational, analytical reasoning (M3L). However, he contends that modern political discourse is frequently “dragged downward” by powerful actors who instrumentalize fear-based narratives, thereby suppressing higher-level reasoning and fostering conditions conducive to populist mobilization.
The presentation offers a comparative analysis of democratic and autocratic systems through this lens. Democracies, Dr. Traill suggests, rely on voters as meta-level selectors among competing policy frameworks. Yet, when mainstream options appear inadequate, electorates may “panic,” turning to untested alternatives that can generate either innovation or instability. Autocracies, by contrast, simplify decision-making hierarchies by collapsing advisory functions into command structures. While this may yield short-term stability, it renders such systems brittle, as reform becomes politically dangerous and often triggers repression or systemic breakdown.
A particularly innovative dimension of Dr. Traill’s framework is his integration of three parallel “intelligence hierarchies”: individual cognitive development (via Piaget), organizational governance (via Beer), and global systemic coordination (via Aslaksen). This triadic model highlights a critical mismatch between the complexity of global challenges and the cognitive-institutional capacities available to address them. Dr. Traill argues that effective solutions to transnational problems require decision-making at higher meta-levels (at least M3L), implying the need for enhanced educational, institutional, and analytical capacities across societies.
The presentation identifies two “elephants in the room”—climate change and limits to economic growth—as paradigmatic MtopL (highest-level) challenges. These systemic pressures cascade downward into observable socio-political symptoms, including economic precarity, migration, and political polarization. However, populist movements frequently misattribute causality, focusing on these symptoms rather than the structural dynamics driving them. This misrecognition, Dr. Traill argues, not only exacerbates instability but also undermines democratic problem-solving capacity.
Dr. Traill further underscores the growing influence of transnational “mega-companies,” whose economic power rivals that of nation-states. Existing regulatory frameworks, he suggests, are inadequate for addressing their systemic impact, particularly given their ability to exploit global tax and governance asymmetries. As a provocative institutional innovation, he proposes the creation of a UN-adjacent “House of Mega-Companies” to enhance transparency and facilitate coordination between corporate and political actors.
In concluding, Dr. Traill outlines a series of reform proposals aimed at mitigating what he terms “populist panic.” These include expanding higher-order education, regulating misinformation, leveraging artificial intelligence for complex problem-solving, and introducing institutional reforms such as ranked-choice and compulsory voting. Ultimately, he argues that the survival of democratic governance—and potentially civilization itself—depends on the capacity to develop higher-level collective intelligence capable of adapting to an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world.
Professor Lorenzo Viviani:“The Politics of Manipulated Resonance: Personalized Leadership in Populism”
Professor Lorenzo Viviani (University of Pisa) presented a theoretically rich and analytically nuanced paper. His contribution advances a political-sociological framework that moves beyond descriptive accounts of personalization to interrogate the structural, symbolic, and affective mechanisms underpinning populist leadership.
Professor Viviani’s intervention is guided by three interrelated research questions: first, what distinguishes populist personalization from other forms of leader-centered politics; second, how the direct relationship between leader and people reshapes political representation through what he terms “manipulated resonance”; and third, how populist leadership constructs a hegemonic project by signifying “the people” in emotionally charged and politically consequential ways.
A central premise of the presentation is that political personalization is not a uniform phenomenon. While contemporary politics across democratic systems has undoubtedly become more leader-centered, Professor Viviani insists on differentiating between leader democracy and populist leader democracy. In the former, personalization remains compatible with liberal-democratic norms: leaders may become more visible and central, yet they operate within institutional constraints, pluralistic competition, and electoral accountability. Figures such as Barack Obama, Tony Blair, or Gerhard Schröder exemplify this model, where leadership personalization does not fundamentally disrupt representative mechanisms.
By contrast, populist personalization entails a qualitative transformation of political representation. Here, the leader is no longer merely a representative actor but becomes the symbolic locus of political belonging. Drawing on insights from Pierre Bourdieu, Professor Viviani conceptualizes representation as a performative and relational process of claim-making, through which leaders actively constitute the very collective they claim to represent. In populist contexts, this symbolic power is intensified: leaders such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, or Giorgia Meloni claim to embody the “authentic people,” often positioning themselves against liberal institutions, constitutional norms, and pluralist mediation.
This reconfiguration shifts the foundations of representation from delegation and authorization toward identification and embodiment. The leader does not simply “act for” or “stand for” a constituency but becomes the site through which “the people” are imagined, unified, and politically mobilized. As such, populist representation is not anti-representational; rather, it reconstructs representation as a morally charged, direct relationship between leader and people.
A key contribution of Professor Viviani’s framework lies in foregrounding the constitutive role of emotions in this process. Populist leadership, he argues, operates not primarily through programmatic coherence or rational persuasion but through the strategic mobilization of affect. Political emotions are not incidental but foundational to the construction of collective identities. In particular, Professor Viviani highlights resentment as the paradigmatic populist emotion—though he conceptualizes it not as a singular feeling but as a complex emotional cluster encompassing frustration, anger, humiliation, moral alienation, and perceived loss of agency.
This emotional structure is both retrospective and anticipatory. It reflects not only grievances rooted in past experiences of exclusion or injustice but also anxieties about future loss—of status, security, identity, or opportunity. Such dynamics help explain the broad resonance of populist mobilization across diverse contexts, from the American Midwest’s support for Trump’s “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” narrative to the backing of Brexit in deindustrialized regions or the electoral success of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in eastern Germany. In these cases, economic grievances are intertwined with deeper cultural and existential insecurities.
Professor Viviani further situates these dynamics within a broader cultural-sociological perspective, drawing implicitly on Jeffrey C. Alexander’s concept of cultural trauma. Populist leaders act as “entrepreneurs of emotion,” translating diffuse anxieties and fragmented experiences into coherent political narratives. These narratives not only articulate grievances but reorganize them into a shared interpretive framework that defines both collective identity and political antagonism.
It is within this context that Professor Viviani introduces his central concept of manipulated resonance. Resonance, in his formulation, refers to an affective mode of political connection that makes social reality appear responsive and meaningful to individuals’ lived experiences. However, in populist politics, this resonance is not spontaneous or organic; it is strategically constructed through media performance, symbolic codes, and carefully staged displays of proximity. Leaders present themselves as “one of us,” embodying ordinariness while simultaneously occupying positions of extraordinary power.
This performative proximity is often reinforced through the personification of victimhood. Populist leaders portray themselves as targets of elites, media, or judicial institutions, thereby aligning their personal struggles with those of “ordinary people.” In doing so, they transform individual or collective grievances into political capital. Shame, frustration, and perceived marginalization are rearticulated as sources of legitimacy and mobilization.
Professor Viviani emphasizes that this process operates across multiple registers—strategic, stylistic, and symbolic—but is ultimately anchored in the leader’s capacity to re-signify social reality. Drawing on Stuart Hall, he underscores that politics is fundamentally a struggle over meaning. Populist leadership intervenes at this level by detaching signifiers—such as “the people,” “sovereignty,” or “democracy”—from their established meanings and rearticulating them within new chains of equivalence. This re-signification process enables the construction of a hegemonic project that reorganizes political identities and boundaries.
Importantly, Professor Viviani argues that populism should not be understood as a coherent ideology but as an ongoing hegemonic project—a dynamic process of meaning-making, identity construction, and symbolic struggle. In this process, the leader’s role is pivotal: by naming and defining “the people,” the leader exercises symbolic power that reshapes the political field.
The implications of this framework are far-reaching. Populist resonance, Professor Viviani concludes, constitutes a profound transformation of political representation. The traditional distance between representatives and represented is compressed, replaced by a direct, affective, and symbolically mediated bond. This bond, however, is inherently exclusionary. By defining “the people” in morally homogeneous terms, populist leaders often exclude migrants, minorities, and other marginalized groups from the political community, advancing a form of differential nativism characteristic of contemporary sovereignist movements.
In sum, Professor Viviani’s presentation calls for a reorientation of analytical approaches to populism. Rather than focusing solely on institutional arrangements, party systems, or strategic behavior, he advocates for a political sociology that takes seriously the interplay of symbolic power, emotional dynamics, and performative representation. What is at stake, he suggests, is not merely who governs, but how “the people” are constructed, how political belonging is defined, and how legitimacy is produced in an era of increasingly personalized and affect-driven politics.
Discussants’ Feedback
Feedback by Dr. Azize Sargin
Dr. Azize Sargın offered an analytically rich set of remarks, engaging critically with both presentations while highlighting their broader theoretical implications for the study of populism, political representation, and governance under conditions of complexity.
Focusing first on Professor Lorenzo Viviani’s paper on “manipulated resonance,” Dr. Sargin commended the presentation for moving beyond conventional leader-centric explanations of populism. Rather than treating leadership as an individual attribute or charismatic essence, she underscored the value of conceptualizing it as a relational and symbolic mechanismthrough which “the people” are actively constructed. In this respect, she emphasized that Professor Viviani’s framework departs from the assumption that leaders merely represent pre-existing constituencies, instead positing that populist leadership continuously produces and redefines the collective subject it claims to embody.
Dr. Sargin identified the concept of resonance as a particularly significant contribution. By framing populist leadership as a process that amplifies lived anxieties, cultural codes, and affective experiences into politically meaningful narratives, the paper captures the dynamic interplay between emotional identification and political mobilization. However, she suggested that the notion of manipulated resonance would benefit from further theoretical clarification. Specifically, she called for a more precise distinction between manipulative resonance and democratic responsiveness, noting that resonance inherently implies a two-way relational process. This raises an important question: to what extent are “the people” passive recipients of elite-driven narratives, and to what extent do they actively shape and co-constitute the leader’s discourse?
In this regard, Dr. Sargin encouraged a deeper exploration of the reciprocal nature of the leader–people relationship. Clarifying whether populist resonance operates primarily as a top-down mechanism or as a mutually constitutive process would, in her view, significantly strengthen the analytical framework. Relatedly, she highlighted the importance of the concept of disintermediation, which in the context of populism extends beyond the mere bypassing of parties and media to encompass a broader redefinition of political legitimacy. Disintermediation, she argued, rests on the normative assumption that institutional mediation is inherently corrupting, while direct, unmediated connection is equated with authenticity—an insight that resonates strongly with contemporary populist leadership practices.
Turning to Dr. Robert R. Traill’s presentation, Dr. Sargin praised its ambitious attempt to connect democracy, authoritarianism, and global governance challenges—particularly climate change and limits to growth—within a cybernetic framework of decision-making systems. She identified the notion of “decision-system breakdown” in a populist age as especially compelling, suggesting that the paper opens a productive line of inquiry into populism as not only a crisis of representation but also a crisis of cognitive governability.
At the same time, Dr. Sargin proposed several avenues for theoretical deepening. One key issue concerns the tension between complexity reduction and democratic legitimacy. While all political systems necessarily simplify complex realities to render them governable, she argued that not all forms of simplification are normatively equivalent. The critical question, therefore, is which modes of simplification remain democratically accountable, and which risk drifting toward authoritarian, technocratic, or populist distortions.
She also engaged critically with the reform proposals advanced in Dr. Traill’s paper, particularly the use of artificial intelligence and institutional innovations such as ranked-choice and compulsory voting. While recognizing their potential as responses to evolving decision environments, Dr. Sargin highlighted a fundamental tension: if populism is partly driven by distrust of mediation, the introduction of AI-assisted decision-making may exacerbate rather than alleviate public suspicion—unless embedded within robust frameworks of transparency, accountability, and contestability.
Finally, Dr. Sargin reflected on the paper’s broader theoretical ambition to extend models of individual cognition to collective and global decision-making. While acknowledging this as a bold and innovative move, she cautioned that collective actors cannot be treated simply as scaled-up cognitive systems. Instead, they are inherently asymmetrical and stratified, requiring more careful theorization of what is gained—and potentially lost—when translating cybernetic analogies into political theory.
Thus, Dr. Sargin underscored the shared contribution of both papers in advancing a more nuanced understanding of populism—not merely as rhetoric or ideology, but as a complex configuration of symbolic, emotional, and institutional processes. Her reflections and feedback thus highlighted the need for interdisciplinary approaches capable of grappling with the intertwined challenges of representation, legitimacy, and governance in an increasingly complex political landscape.
Feedback by Professor Ibrahim Ozturk
As discussant at the workshop, Professor Ibrahim Ozturk offered a concise yet incisive set of remarks, raising critical questions that probe the intersection of populism, technocratic governance, and institutional mediation. Framing his intervention as a preliminary engagement pending a full reading of the papers, Professor Ozturk focused on one key question for each presenter, thereby highlighting core tensions within both contributions.
Addressing Dr. Robert R. Traill’s presentation, Professor Ozturk expressed particular interest in the application of cybernetic models—especially the Ashby–Beer “collective brain” framework—to explain populist “panic” in response to structural crises such as climate change and limits to economic growth. From an economic perspective, he found the linkage between systemic instability and environmental constraints especially compelling. However, he raised a critical concern regarding the proposed institutional and technological remedies, including artificial intelligence and ranked-choice voting. Given that populism often emerges as a backlash against expert-led governance and technocracy, Professor Ozturk questioned whether such reforms might inadvertently intensify populist distrust. In a context marked by growing anxieties about “techno-feudalism” and the expanding influence of large digital corporations, he asked whether the integration of algorithmic decision-making risks deepening perceptions that democratic agency is being displaced. Crucially, he challenged Dr. Traill to account for the emotional and irrational resistance that may arise against ostensibly rational, technocratic solutions.
Turning to Professor Lorenzo Viviani’s presentation, Professor Ozturk engaged with the concept of disintermediation and the personalization of leadership in contemporary populism. While acknowledging the analytical strength of the argument that populist leaders construct direct, unmediated bonds with “the people,” he raised a fundamental question about the durability of institutional mediation. Specifically, he asked whether traditional intermediaries—such as the free press, independent judiciaries, and other liberal-democratic institutions—can regain their legitimacy once bypassed by populist leadership. Or, alternatively, whether the politics of proximity and performative identification has permanently reshaped citizens’ expectations toward a more direct, anti-institutional model of governance.
In sum, Professor Ozturk’s remarks foregrounded a shared concern across both papers: whether contemporary transformations in political representation and governance signal reversible disruptions or more enduring structural shifts in democratic life.
Response by Professor Lorenzo Viviani
In his response to the discussants, Professor Lorenzo Viviani offered a clarifying and theoretically grounded elaboration of his framework on populist personalization and “manipulated resonance.” Engaging directly with the comments of the discussants, Professor Viviani reaffirmed the relational and sociological foundations of his approach while addressing key concerns regarding agency, manipulation, and the role of institutions.
At the core of his response was a rejection of overly individualistic or essentialist interpretations of leadership. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, Professor Viviani emphasized that political representation and resonance necessarily emerge within a social field. Leadership, including charismatic leadership, cannot be understood as an intrinsic quality of the individual leader; rather, it depends on an interactive process of mutual recognition between leaders and followers. Even in populist contexts, resonance presupposes the existence of shared, albeit unstructured, social dispositions that leaders can activate and organize. Without such symbolic and cultural preconditions, the mechanisms of identification—whether authentic or manipulated—would fail.
Addressing the question of manipulation, Professor Viviani clarified that it does not primarily consist in offering concrete solutions to crises, but rather in framing and interpreting those crises in ways that resonate emotionally with individuals’ lived experiences. Populist leaders, he argued, construct narratives that position individuals as victims of systemic injustice, thereby fostering a sense of shared identity grounded in perceived grievance. In this context, “similarity” between leader and people functions as a substitute for traditional forms of representation. However, this similarity is largely performative rather than substantive, constituting what Professor Viviani described as a “functional equivalent” of representation.
Professor Viviani further acknowledged the discussants’ concerns regarding the reciprocal nature of resonance. While affirming that resonance involves mutual recognition, he noted that populist dynamics often weaken the demand for responsiveness. Unlike conventional representative systems, where social demands generate policy responses, populist resonance relies on emotional identification rather than programmatic accountability. This dynamic becomes particularly fragile during moments of acute crisis—such as the COVID-19 pandemic—when symbolic proximity alone proves insufficient, and the limits of disintermediated leadership are exposed.
Expanding on the concept of disintermediation, Professor Viviani situated it within broader processes of societal individualization and the erosion of traditional political cleavages, such as class and religion. In increasingly fragmented and competitive societies, the decline of collective identities creates a vacuum that populist leaders fill through emotionally charged, “catch-all” forms of representation. These bypass intermediary institutions and instead establish direct, affective bonds with individuals. Yet, Professor Viviani cautioned that such populist appeals are often defensive in nature, centered on identity and recognition rather than substantive socio-economic transformation.
Professor Viviani also distinguished populist leadership from classical Weberian notions of charisma. Whereas charismatic authority, in the Weberian sense, rests on the perceived superiority of the leader and their capacity to enact transformative change, populist leadership operates through a performative identification with “ordinary people.” It is, in his terms, a form of “servant leadership,” albeit a strategically constructed and manipulated one, in which the leader claims equality with followers while symbolically embodying them.
Moreover, Professor Viviani addressed the broader normative implications of his argument by contrasting populist resonance with what he termed democratic resonance. While populist resonance is often exclusionary—constructed “against” perceived enemies—democratic systems can also generate forms of resonance grounded in principles of freedom, equality, and pluralism. Institutions such as constitutional courts and the rule of law, he suggested, embody an alternative, “anti-populist” resonance that affirms equal rights and collective belonging within a pluralistic framework.
Thus, Professor Viviani’s response not only clarified the conceptual underpinnings of manipulated resonance but also opened a broader reflection on the possibility of reclaiming resonance as a democratic resource rather than a purely populist mechanism.
Q&A Session
The Q&A session evolved into a rich and multilayered discussion that brought into sharp focus the tensions between populist mobilization, constitutional democracy, and the evolving nature of political representation. Anchored by interventions from participants and responses by Professor Viviani, the exchange moved beyond clarification to engage foundational theoretical debates concerning ideology, emotional politics, mediation, and the future of democratic legitimacy.
The discussion was initiated by Dr. Amir Ali, who reflected on the applicability of constitutional patriotism—associated with Jürgen Habermas—in the context of contemporary populist governance, drawing on the case of India under Narendra Modi. Dr. Ali highlighted a striking contrast between the “sobriety” of constitutional patriotism and the emotionally charged, performative nationalism characteristic of populist politics. While constitutional patriotism relies on mediated institutional frameworks and normative commitments, populism thrives on what he described as a “raw,” unmediated construction of “the people,” often driven by urgency, anxiety, and affective intensity.
This contrast, Dr. Ali suggested, may help explain why constitutional patriotism has struggled to mobilize broad public support in contexts where populism has consolidated power. Invoking Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the alliance between elites and mass mobilization in The Origins of Totalitarianism, he further argued that populism often operates through a volatile fusion of elite strategy and popular sentiment, thereby destabilizing mediated forms of democratic representation.
Professor Viviani’s response acknowledged this asymmetry but sought to reframe constitutional patriotism as a potentially more dynamic and assertive project. Rather than viewing it as a purely procedural or technocratic model, he argued that constitutional patriotism embodies substantive cultural and normative values—freedom, equality, and pluralism—that can themselves generate forms of political resonance. In this sense, he suggested that constitutional democracy may evolve into a more “militant” form, capable of actively contesting populist narratives and reconstructing collective identities around inclusive principles.
Central to Professor Viviani’s intervention was a Gramscian understanding of politics as an ongoing struggle for hegemony, drawing on Antonio Gramsci. Populism, in this view, represents only one hegemonic project among others, rather than an inevitable or irreversible transformation. The contemporary populist moment, he argued, reflects not the end of democratic politics but the re-emergence of ideological contestation following decades marked by the assumption that liberal democracy constituted the “end of history.” The task, therefore, is not merely to defend existing institutions but to articulate alternative democratic projects capable of mobilizing both normative commitment and emotional identification.
The discussion then shifted toward the nature of populism itself, particularly in response to a comment by Dr. Amadeo Varriale regarding whether populism should be understood as an ideology. Drawing on the influential work of Cas Muddeand Michael Freeden, Dr. Varriale suggested that populism may be conceptualized as a “thin-centered ideology,” given its structured set of ideas about the primacy of “the people” and its normative critique of elites.
Professor Viviani, however, rejected this classification, offering a sociological reinterpretation. He argued that populism lacks the comprehensive normative and programmatic architecture characteristic of full-fledged ideologies such as liberalism or socialism. Rather than providing a structured vision of society, populism functions as a political logic or hegemonic project that simplifies social reality into antagonistic categories—“the people” versus “the elites.” While this simplification may resemble the mapping function of ideology, as described by Freeden, Professor Viviani maintained that it remains fundamentally limited: it organizes political perception without articulating a coherent model of social organization.
Importantly, he acknowledged that when populist movements enter government, they often incorporate elements from other ideological frameworks—such as nationalism, nativism, or sovereignism—thereby becoming more ideologically structured. In this sense, populism may serve as an entry point into broader ideological transformations rather than constituting an ideology in itself. His distinction between Donald Trump’s first and second presidencies illustrated this dynamic, suggesting a shift from a primarily populist mode of governance toward a more explicitly ideological, nationalist-authoritarian project.
A further line of discussion, raised by Dr. Azize Sargin, addressed the apparent paradox of populist leadership: namely, that many populist leaders emerge from elite backgrounds while claiming to represent “ordinary people.” Professor Viviani responded by emphasizing the centrality of emotional identification in populist politics. The bond between leader and followers is not grounded in objective socio-economic similarity but in the performative construction of shared victimhood. Leaders such as Trump or Silvio Berlusconi—despite their elite status—successfully position themselves as targets of cultural, political, or institutional elites, thereby aligning themselves symbolically with broader publics.
This dynamic, Professor Viviani argued, reveals a fundamental departure from rational models of political representation. Populist legitimacy is not derived from policy outcomes or material alignment but from affective resonance. Consequently, empirical contradictions—such as policies that disproportionately benefit economic elites—do not necessarily undermine populist support. The emotional bond between leader and followers operates independently of, and often in tension with, rational evaluation.
The discussion further explored alternative modes of political identification, particularly through Dr. Sargin’s suggestion that populist leaders may also be perceived as “heroes” rather than merely as “one of the people.” Professor Viviani acknowledged this possibility but introduced an important distinction between populist and authoritarian forms of personalization. While populist leadership emphasizes similarity and proximity, authoritarian leadership tends to elevate the leader into a superior, heroic figure. This transition, he argued, reflects a shift from populist to autocratic modes of governance.
Drawing on historical examples such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Professor Viviani noted that authoritarian regimes often combine politics of fear with what he termed “dark hope”—a forward-looking, albeit exclusionary and often destructive, vision of collective renewal. In contemporary contexts, he suggested that some leaders initially emerging from populist movements may evolve toward more authoritarian forms of personalization, as illustrated by the trajectory from Hugo Chávez to Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
A recurring theme throughout the Q&A was the role of emotion in structuring political allegiance. Professor Viviani contrasted the “politics of fear,” which underpins much populist mobilization, with the potential for a “politics of hope” capable of fostering inclusive forms of identification. Drawing on examples such as Barack Obama’s rhetoric of unity, he argued that democratic politics must also engage affective dimensions if it is to counter populist narratives effectively. Hope, as a positive and inclusive emotion, offers an alternative basis for political belonging that does not rely on the construction of enemies or exclusionary identities.
At the same time, the discussion highlighted the challenges inherent in such an endeavor. As Dr. Sargin observed, many supporters of populist leaders may perceive their alignment not as a choice but as a necessity, shaped by structural conditions and limited alternatives. This raises important questions about agency, constraint, and the socio-political contexts that sustain populist appeal.
Overall, the Q&A session underscored the need for a multidimensional approach to populism—one that integrates insights from political sociology, political theory, and cultural analysis. It revealed populism not merely as a set of political strategies or ideological claims, but as a complex process involving the construction of collective identities, the mobilization of emotions, and the reconfiguration of institutional relationships.
In doing so, the exchange also pointed toward a broader normative challenge: how democratic systems can reconstruct forms of political resonance that are both emotionally compelling and normatively inclusive. As the discussion suggested, the future of democracy may depend not only on institutional resilience but also on the capacity to articulate alternative narratives of belonging, identity, and political community in an increasingly fragmented and contested political landscape.
Conclusion
Session 15 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series demonstrated with particular clarity that contemporary populism must be understood not as an episodic disturbance of democratic normalcy, but as a revealing expression of deeper transformations in political representation, collective identity, and the governance of complexity. Across the two presentations, the discussant interventions, and the extended Q&A, the session illuminated how populism operates at the intersection of affect, symbolism, institutional erosion, and systemic instability.
Dr. Robert R. Traill’s contribution situated populism within a wider crisis of cognitive and political governability, showing how democratic systems struggle to respond adequately to global problems whose scale exceeds inherited frameworks of decision-making. Professor Lorenzo Viviani, by contrast, traced the micro-foundations of populist leadership, emphasizing how “manipulated resonance” reconfigures representation through emotional identification, symbolic power, and the performative construction of “the people.” Taken together, these perspectives offered a valuable synthesis: populism emerges both from failures of institutional adaptation and from the affective reorganization of political belonging.
The discussants’ critiques and the subsequent discussion further sharpened the normative and theoretical stakes of the session. Questions concerning the democratic limits of simplification, the ambivalent promise of technocratic remedies, the durability of institutional mediation, and the distinction between populist and democratic forms of resonance revealed the analytical richness of the session’s interdisciplinary approach. Particularly significant was the recurring recognition that democracy cannot be defended through procedure alone. If populism succeeds in mobilizing fear, resentment, and immediacy, democratic actors must also grapple with the emotional and cultural dimensions of legitimacy.
In this sense, the session pointed toward a broader conclusion: the future of democracy depends not only on preserving institutions, but on renewing the social, symbolic, and normative bonds that make democratic life meaningful. To confront populism effectively, democratic politics must offer more than resistance; it must articulate compelling alternatives capable of reconnecting freedom, equality, pluralism, and collective agency under conditions of global uncertainty. Session 15 thus made a significant contribution to ongoing debates on how democracy might still be reimagined—and sustained—in an age of crisis, personalization, and escalating power struggles.
