Dimensional Approach to Populism: Party Communication During 2014 Elections in Serbia

Abstract

The populism has been a prominent topic in academic community quite some time and even proclaimed one of the most contentious issues in political sciences, but scholars have applied populist perspective on party performance in Serbia quite rare. The aim of this paper is to deepen our understanding of populism in the post-communist context by examining the quantity and quality of populism manifested in the mainstream political discourse in Serbia. Although populism is polyvalent concept, this paper argues that significant consistency around dimensions of populism can be identified. Therefore, based on literature review the most common dimensions of populism were abstracted and integrated into the analytical matrix of this research: 1) people centrism 2) anti elitism 3) language style 4) crisis discourse and 5) exclusionism. Following outlined dimensions of populism, quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the electorate TV debates during 2014 parliamentary elections was done. The results reveal the character of centrist populism: populist elements were almost equally dispersed across four out of five dimensions in the discourse of all political parties. Without excluding any group from the people, mainstream parties construct the people as wise diagnosticians of “societal illnesses” and blame each other for inability to implement popular wisdom to solve the systemic societal crisis.