The Laboratory for the Study of Democracy (DemLab) in collaboration with the POPULISMUS Observatory and the “Linking Euroscepticism and Populism” COST action have organized on Monday 16 June 2025 a seminar with Professor Kirk Hawkins entitled “Beyond Populism: A Typology of Discourse” (School of Political Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 12 V. Irakleou Street).
Abstract: Studies of populism from both ideational and discursive approaches emphasize that populism is a unique kind of ideas, a discourse or thin-centered ideology, distinct from traditional ideologies. However, not much attention is given to describing this larger world of ideas or identifying the other types that are presumably found in it. In this seminar, I present a typology of discourse that situates populism alongside other discourses. I provide a theory of the functions of discourse and a grammar that allows us to deductively identify other discourses, including some that are already referenced in the literature, such as nationalism and pluralism. I provide a few illustrations by drawing on the speeches of presidents, then describe some of the current challenges to creating a complete typology.
Biography: Kirk A. Hawkins is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Brigham Young University. He received his bachelor’s degree in international relations and Spanish from Brigham Young University, USA and his PhD in political science from Duke University, USA. He teaches about comparative politics, especially of Latin America, with a special focus on political organization and political ideas. His initial studies focused on political parties and clientelism in Latin America, but his research on Venezuela led him to the study of populist governments around the globe in an effort to better measure and catalog their effects. More recently, he has focused on the study of affective polarization (a significant consequence of populism) and techniques of depolarization, especially by assessing the work of non-profits in the United States. He is the director of Team Populism, a scholarly network dedicated to the global study of populism and its consequences.
Recent publications:
Hawkins, K. (2019). The Ideational Approach: Routledge Handbook of Global Populism. Abingdon: Routledge.
Hawkins, K. A., & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2018). Measuring populist discourse in the United States and beyond. Nature human behavior, 2(4), 241-242.
Hawkins, K. A., Kaltwasser, C. R., & Andreadis, I. (2020). The activation of populist attitudes. Government and Opposition, 55(2), 283-307.
