Berkley Center

Published in Politics, Religion & Ideology, this article by Jocelyne Cesari creates an ideal type of the relations between religion and populism by proposing a comprehensive analysis of three main theoretical approaches of populism: ideational, performative, and strategic. To that effect, it utilizes the relational paradigm of populism from Pierre Ostiguy in conjunction with Ernest Laclau's concept of sedimented practices and applies a genealogical method to analyze why and how religion plays a role in populist politics. This combination emphasizes the fluidity of the interactions between religion and populism, their contingency on contextualized political cultures, as well as on the often neglected transnational forms of religion. It focuses on two aspects of this role that have been less discussed: 1) the religious actions toward the political establishment, and 2) the transnational dimension of the populist politics based on religion.