Sovereignism through the prism of populism: the case of Law and Justice party
Date
2021
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Due to the unprecedented scale of globalization, the decision-making capacity of
states started moving further from their borders while numerous political actors declared the
fight against the diffuse state power that an interconnected world order entails. Under these
circumstances, sovereignism, being an ideology that seeks to protect and defend “a state’s
sovereignty against supranationalism and global constitutionalism” (Rensmann, as cited in
Mueller & Heidelberger, 2020, p. 182), serves as a tool political actors refer to in order to
take back control over the decision-making processes. Given the fact that claims of a
sovereignist nature are frequently detected within the rhetoric of populist parties and their
leaders, this dissertation is aimed at exploring the relations between sovereignism and
populism. How does sovereignism relate to populism and how did they come together? This
study answers the research question by carrying out the qualitative analysis of the 2014 and
2019 political manifestos of the Polish populist Law and Justice party (PiS). According to the
results of the study, populism and sovereignism are related to some extent empirically,
although sovereignism was much frequently voiced as a distinct phenomenon within a
broader populist discourse. The populist component of sovereignist pledges was most
frequently embodied in the antagonization of the elites whereas the appeal to people and
popular sovereignty has been noticed comparatively less often. Thus, in the case of PiS,
populism occupies a position of a general political strategy with sovereignism acting as a tool
used in that context. Sovereignist pledges are consequently representing populist tactics being
a specific set of actions a political actor might undertake in order to accomplish the strategy.
Additionally, the thesis examines the demand side of politics in order to explore whether such
a developed presence of sovereignist claims within the PiS rhetoric could have served as an
electoral success driving tool. The data on the popular attitudes suggest that sovereignism
might have served as an electoral success driver since the PiS electorate shows much more
developed sovereignist attitudes than the electorate of the PiS main competitors – The Civic
Platform party (PO).