Please cite as:
Tauil, Rafael Marchesan. (2026). “Toward a Three-Dimensional Understanding of Populism: Discourse, Ideology, and Democratic Mediation.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). September 6, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000131
Abstract
The aim of this article is to contribute to the theoretical debate surrounding the concept of populism through an interpretation that considers three inseparable dimensions of politics: discourse, ideology, and democracy. Various theoretical efforts have sought to understand and explain populism through one-dimensional frameworks and, although fundamental to advancing the theoretical field, these approaches ultimately limit understanding by consistently privileging one dimension at the expense of others (strategy, political style, logic of action, etc.). It is from this gap that we propose an interpretation of populism capable of bringing together the theoretical formulations of Ernesto Laclau, Cas Mudde, and Pierre Rosanvallon. We advance the hypothesis that populism consists of a form of political articulation based on: (1) the discursive construction of social equivalences; (2) a moral division between the people and the elite; and (3) a plebiscitary simplification of democratic mediations. As a phenomenon of considerable complexity, populism can only be adequately understood by taking into account different dimensions of politics that interact, merge, and overlap with one another. The article is divided into four sections: first, we provide a brief introduction to the challenges involved in the study of populism; second, we present a brief overview of empirical cases in order to demonstrate how these three dimensions combine and complement one another; third, we outline the foundations of the three interpretative dimensions proposed; and finally, in the conclusion, we sketch possible causal relationships among these dimensions and raise questions that may be addressed in future research.
Keywords: Populism, Discourse, Ideology, Democracy, Ernesto Laclau, Cas Mudde, Pierre Rosanvallon, Political Antagonism, Moral Polarization, Democratic Mediation, Popular Sovereignty, Plebiscitary Democracy
Introduction
The article takes as its starting point a conceptual problem arising from theoretical debates on populism: the diversity of conceptual formulations of the phenomenon has stimulated the construction or mobilization of highly valuable interpretative frameworks but has not yet satisfactorily resolved the problem of identifying a minimal structure capable of recognizing populism across distinct national, historical, and ideological contexts. This article seeks to address this problem through a three-dimensional theoretical-conceptual framework, bringing together the formulations of Ernesto Laclau, Cas Mudde, and Pierre Rosanvallon on populism.[1] The challenge is to preserve the conceptual variability of populist contents and manifestations without allowing the interpretation to become so broad that it is forced to adapt contextually to the different expressions of the same phenomenon.
This is a predominantly theoretical-conceptual study, complemented by an exploratory empirical exercise involving the analysis of four distinct cases. The hypothesis is that the articulation of these three dimensions makes it possible to apprehend the fundamental properties of populism in a coordinated manner, while simultaneously preserving its conceptual unity and contextual variation.
The framework distinguishes three analytical levels that do not correspond to independent phenomena, but rather to constitutive dimensions of the same political dynamic. At the ontological-discursive level, Laclau makes it possible to apprehend the logic through which frustrated social demands, initially particular and heterogeneous, produce an antagonistic fissure within the social sphere and reorganize political positions and identities around an opposition between “we” and “they.” This division thus constitutes the relational structure through which political identities and hegemonic forms are rearticulated in populism.
At the ideological level, Mudde makes it possible to apprehend the specific way in which this antagonistic relationship is organized by populism through moral polarization. Because of its thin-centered character, populist ideology does not substantively determine the constitutive essence of the two poles but structures their relationship through a moral division between the people and the elite. The concrete contents of these poles remain contingent: different actors and groups may occupy the position of the elite or represent the people according to the context. What constitutes the populist dimension is the persistence of the moral polarized form of the relationship, rather than the stability of its contents.
At the democratic level, Rosanvallon makes it possible to apprehend the unfolding of this antagonistic and polarized configuration within democracy itself. The opening of an antagonistic fissure and its ideological organization as moral polarization tend to reduce the plurality of forms of representation and mediation to a conception of direct, immediate, and polarized popular sovereignty. Democratic indetermination thus appears not as a third property simply added to the previous ones, but as the level at which the political consequences of the articulation between antagonism and polarization become manifest. The plebiscitary simplification of democracy therefore constitutes the unfolding of the specific way in which populist conflict organizes the relationship between the people, power, and representation.
The relationship between these levels is therefore constitutive rather than causally linear. At the ontological-discursive level, antagonism structures the political fissure constituted through frustrated demands; at the ideological level, populist ideology organizes this fissure into a moral polarization whose content remains contingent and currently assumes the form of an opposition between the “pure people” and the “corrupt elite”; and, as this configuration is projected onto democracy, it tends to produce its simplification in terms of direct, immediate, and plebiscitary sovereignty.
The framework thus articulates discursive-ontology, ideology, and democratic indetermination as different analytical dimensions of the same process, allowing for the formulation of three distinct but complementary questions through which the cases analyzed here can be empirically examined: 1) does the article identify the presence of an antagonistic fissure that divides the social field between “we” and “they” and produces new political identities through processes of hegemonic rearticulation? 2) does the article identify the organization of this antagonistic division through an ideological form that divides the “pure people” and the “corrupt elite” according to a moral yardstick? 3) does the article identify the simplification of forms of democratic representation, mediation, and sovereignty, expressed through the production of a unitary, direct and/or immediate popular will exercised in a polarized and plebiscitary manner?
The empirical exercise consists of assessing the plausibility of this architecture through the analysis of four scientific articles addressing distinct manifestations of populism, selected for the diversity of their national, historical and ideological contexts. The analysis seeks to identify, in each case, the presence and articulation of the three dimensions, assessing whether the framework is capable of producing a common interpretation of empirically heterogeneous manifestations of populism.
The cases selected for the empirical assessment were chosen according to the criteria of the Global Populism Database (GPD) populist classification. The project aims to identify populist features in the speeches of leaders from different countries and periods. The GPD emerged from a project initiated in 2006 to construct a database on the populist discourse of political leaders, initially focused on Latin America and subsequently expanded to different countries and historical periods. The methodology employed is holistic grading, a technique originally developed to assess latent aspects of texts, such as tone, style, and argumentative quality. In the GPD, trained coders assign speeches a score from 0 to 2 according to a rubric that identifies the presence and intensity of populist elements. For a discourse to be considered populist, it must present some conception of popular will; the mere existence of a Manichean worldview is insufficient. For each term in office, the sample normally includes four speeches: a campaign speech, a domestic/commemorative speech, an international speech, and a speech considered representative or famous of the leader.
In addition to this classification, the GPD separates cases and selected speeches according to different ideological, temporal, and geographical dimensions. To maintain case diversity in this analysis, populist leaders were selected with the greatest possible diversity across cases, thereby preventing potential methodological bias. Leaders from the Philippines, Turkey, Nicaragua, and Bolivia were considered, classified across the left, center, and right, with GPD scores of 1.375 (Duterte), 1.466 (Erdogan), 1.25 (Ortega), and 1.462 (Morales), and who were in government between 2002 and 2022. This temporal period was defined in order to test the empirical application of the framework to the political context of the twenty-first century.
