Call for Abstracts

We are inviting submissions for a Special Issue titled Populism and Global Crises. We seek papers that will focus on the relationship between global crises (e.g. COVID-19, climate change, terrorism, & immigration crises) and populist actors (e.g. parties, movements, citizens). Papers can frame populism as an outcome or a key antecedent of different social crises and injustices (e.g. corruption, income inequality), or indeed an amplifier of underlying anxieties caused by global transformations. We are also interested in how populism interacts with the emerging environment of misinformation and social media manipulation that has accompanied global crises. We seek both theoretical and empirical papers that conceptualise and measure these phenomena at many different levels including public attitudes, political rhetoric or government policy.

Ultimately, we aim for a greater understanding of populism that i) accounts for variations across groups, times, and regions; ii) helps model personality, motivational and emotional factors that fuel populist sentiment; and iii) explains how populism interacts with the destabilizing forces of our time both in the Global South and the North.

The Special Issue particularly welcomes submissions that:

Explore populism’s relationship with crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic or climate change as well as with the increasingly relevant issues such as the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. We strongly encourage submissions with an applied focus.

Provide an understanding of populist phenomena that goes beyond established ideological distinctions. How do contemporary populist movements (e.g. “Yellow Vests”) and political parties (e.g. Five Star Movement) overcome traditional ideological divides and create novel alliances between otherwise competing belief sets?

Examine variation in populist movements across groups, time, and regions. We are particularly interested in contributions that include non-Western samples and present underrepresented forms of populism (e.g. religious populism, progressive populism) that emerge from political instability.

Investigate the psychology underlying populism. We invite contributions that research personality, emotion and/or group-based factors that fuel populist sentiments in times of crises.

Please submit abstracts for editorial review to populismpp@gmail.com by May 31st, 2021. Submissions should include:

i. Title;

ii. Anticipated authors’ names and affiliations with contact information for the corresponding author;

iii. An abstract of the proposed submission (up to 500 words) including the research question, methods, data, and anticipated results and/or theoretical contributions of the paper to the literature on the political psychology of populism.

Based of abstract submissions, we will invite full research articles (up to 8,000 words) for peer review. Authors who will be invited to submit a full article will be notified by June 21st. The deadline for full submission will be the final week in September 2021.

Any questions can be directed to Paul Maher (paul.maher@ul.ie).

Editors:
Paul J. Maher & Adrian Lüders, University of Limerick, Ireland,
Matthijs Rooduijn, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
Elif Erisen, Yeditepe University, İstanbul, Turkey,
Eva M. Jonas, University of Salzburg, Austria.