Qualitative Approaches to the Social Psychology of Populism: Unmasking Populist Appeal

This edited volume presents a social psychological exploration of populism and provides a unique qualitative understanding of the phenomenon’s appeal, bringing together an international mix of experts to interrogate populist attraction worldwide.

Featuring contributions from Finland, Greece, and Switzerland, the book offers nuanced theoretical, methodological, and empirical approaches for understanding populism, with chapters investigating topics such as populist communication, lay discourse, social representations of the elite and the people, and the mobilisation of young people. Unmasking the persuasive appeal of populism, the book provides examples of qualitative approaches within social, cultural, and political psychology. It draws from established theoretical traditions such as social representations theory and social identity theory, as well as critical discursive approaches, to demonstrate how to study complex relational phenomena such as populism.

With its novel inclusion of innovative qualitative methods for examining the social psychology of populism - providing a useful toolkit for qualitative research across various societal and political topics - this book will appeal to scholars, postgraduate students, and researchers studying social and political psychology, communication, qualitative research methods, and political behaviour more broadly.

Inari Sakki is Professor of Social Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland.