The rise of populist electoral politics 1990 - 2020: a comparative political geography of the Economic Freedom Fighters and the Rassemblement National
Keywords: populism
COVID-19
Economic Freedom Fighters
neoliberalism
Front National

This work draws on scholarly agreement about the core features of populism, which have made populism an analytically useful term, to examine the rise of contemporary populism and populist electoral politics in neoliberal democracies of the global North and the global South. The core features of populism include claims to one leader, one people and one (popular) will. These features are used as the ontological and definitional basis of the study. Considering longstanding debate about the conditions under which populism is likely to succeed and “the people” to whom populism refers, the thesis goes beyond ‘supply-side’ theories of populist politics to interrogate the ‘demand-side’ of populist electoral politics. Whereas work on populism per se remains episodic and fragmentary in Geography, this thesis mobilises case studies and literatures in human and political geography, including the political geography of the state, labour geography, and military geographies to contribute to a spatialised theorisation of contemporary populist electoral politics.
The research primarily relies on a mixed methods approach. It focuses on two cases of populist electoral politics, in two established neoliberal democracies, to contrast and compare the potential factors driving contemporary populist votes. By interrogating the rise of France’s Rassemblement National (RN) and South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) between 1990 – 2020, the work argues that populist politics can behave and manifest similarly across contexts which are mediated by the neoliberal democratic model. I approach the ‘populist turn’ from the perspective of my interlocutors; residents and employees of industry dominant regions of France and South Africa who are often politicised as ‘working class’, whose political identity has been mediated by neoliberal state accumulation strategies, and whose votes in favour of populist parties have given a contemporary purchase to populism. From this vantage point, I advance that the factors which potentially facilitate populism in neoliberal democracies are: state accumulation strategies, their necessary and constitutive political identities, their inherent mechanisms of order and control, and the contradictions and contestations which these accumulation strategies give rise to as the neoliberal state ultimately retreats from conventional politics.
The thesis pays attention to longstanding supply-side arguments of populism, including how populist parties leverage crises to exploit the political economy of space, the precarity of nationhood and belonging, and an unashamedly performative political culture to gain votes. However, I move beyond supply-side theories towards a demand-side and spatialised conceptualisation of populist electoral politics. Especially, how local space, its characterising norms, symbols, and values (including gender) seep into everyday practices of both society and the populist party, regulating their use of militarising moves, leadership and organisational structures, and their articulation of governance even in crisis.
The arguments advanced in the thesis are exemplified by voting patterns in favour of the RN and EFF, the party’s respective political campaigns and internal structures, and the culmination of these factors in topical issues such as the Corona Virus (COVID-19) pandemic which exemplify the contradictions and contestations of neoliberal democratic models and the resulting political subjectivities facilitating populism today more than any other time in history.