University of Helsinki
This work package studies countries in which populist logic has become dominant or hegemonic insomuch that the political system itself has turned into an antagonistic borderland between “legitimate people” and “illegitimate enemies”. In a country like Turkey, for instance, it is listed in constitution as one of the “founding principles.” The comparison between seemingly unrelated cases, such as Erdoğan’s Turkey and South American countries of Bolivia and Venezuela, is significant for finding out whether there is an underlying tendency in populist politics to turn into authoritarianism. This work package will comparatively analyse different documents, such as public speeches, legislation and policy changes and party documents and programmes.
Main researcher: Halil Gürhanli. Contributions: Urpo Kovala, Emilia Palonen, Virpi Salojärvi.