The role of (in)security in the narratives of the populist radical left. the case of Jean-Luc Melenchon and la France Insoumise (2017-2020)

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Bonansinga, Donatella (2023). The role of (in)security in the narratives of the populist radical left. the case of Jean-Luc Melenchon and la France Insoumise (2017-2020). University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This research investigates how and to what extent the European populist radical left (PRL) engages with the ‘politics of (in)security’. It aims to disentangle the link between insecurity and populism that the existing literature has mostly substantiated with empirical cases centring on the populist radical right. By focusing on the ‘less likely scenario’ of the PRL (given the left’s traditional ‘discomfort’ with security), the thesis argues that insecurity is a key dimension of the populist ideology that structures how populists conceive the struggle people vs elites, that is, as a relationship of insecurity where the people are in danger and the elites are the danger.
This thesis brings together elements of different literatures - from political science to international relations and political psychology studies - to offer a multidisciplinary take on how (in)security can be integrated in populist communication. Empirically, the thesis focuses on the case of French populist radical left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his party, La France Insoumise (LFI), to answer two key questions: (RQ1) How do political parties and leaders espousing radical left populism interpret and communicate (i.e., frame) (in)security in their external communication? Are their (in)security narratives predominantly shaped by populist ideas or their radical left ideology? (RQ2) Why does the populist radical left engage with the politics of insecurity (if this is widely associated with their - often loathed - radical right competitor)? Is it a matter of ideas or strategy?
To answer the first question, the project looks at the so-called ‘supply side’ of populist politics, carrying out an extensive content analysis of the party’s and its leader’s communication (including blogs, editorials, tweets and videos from Mélenchon’s YouTube channel) in the period 2017-2020. This communication study also offers a qualitative analysis to reconstruct the overarching story that Mélenchon and LFI use to interpret and make sense of contemporary insecurity. To answer the second research question, the project turns to expert interviews with academics specialising in Mélenchon and LFI and generally close to the party. This second study helps further disentangle what (in)security means for Mélenchon and LFI, and unpack the role that strategies and ideas can play in understanding the engagement with the politics of insecurity.
Overall this research offers four contributions to the literature on populism. The first contribution is developed by demonstrating that insecurity is a key ideational resource that different populists can use to articulate the struggle ‘people vs. elite’, and hence by proposing an important hypothesis for testing to what extent insecurity can be considered a core concept in the populist ideological structure. The second contribution is developed by providing an extensive account of how the populist features and left positioning of Mélenchon and LFI come together to shape their narratives on the state of insecurity in contemporary societies, hence broadening our understanding of the populist radical left and ensuring an accumulation of knowledge on a case that has been comparatively less studied than its radical right counterpart in Europe. The third contribution is developed by problematising how other populist actors beyond the ‘usual suspects’ of the populist radical right talk about security with their public, hence unpacking the agency of populist actors in interpreting social reality and guiding processes of sense-making. The last contribution is developed by bringing populism studies in conversation with other research traditions most notably in the field of security studies and political psychology, hence adding to the cross-fertilisation between disciplines that is of vital importance to understanding complex real-world phenomena such as populism.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):