Populism in France, Belgium and Switzerland

Various forms of political populism have taken hold in all regions of the world. Donald Trump in the United States, Narendra Modi in India, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil are all examples of populisms that have come to power. In Europe, populisms of both the right and the left are important and are sometimes at the doorstep of power. In the context of the April 2022 presidential election in France, the candidacies of Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and Jean-Luc Mélenchon have embodied different faces of populism. In order to better understand this phenomenon, we will define what populism is in France and in the French-speaking countries of Belgium and Switzerland, analyze its various manifestations in history, look at its electoral performance, understand the economic, social and cultural reasons for its dynamics, and finally evaluate whether populism can eventually threaten democracy.

We will make use of what has been learned in the social sciences on the subject (mainly in history and political science), the analyses regularly made in the written and audio-visual press, the data accumulated in opinion studies and polls, as well as films and documentaries that deal with the issue of populism. This will allow us to grasp both the differences existing between the various populisms in the mainly European space but also to grasp the invariants that we find whatever the country concerned, in the world, in Europe (Austria, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden...) and particularly in the French-speaking countries of (Belgium, France and Switzerland.

Required texts :
Pascal Perrineau, Le Populisme, Presses Universitaires de France, 2021. ISBN 9782130816539