Mapping Populism and Nationalism in Leader Rhetoric Across North America and Europe

Replication files for Jenne, Erin K., Kirk A. Hawkins, and Bruno Castanho Silva. 2021. "Mapping Populism and Nationalism in Leader Rhetoric Across North America and Europe", Studies in Comparative International Development.

We conceptualize populism and nationalism as vertical and horizontal discursive frames of sovereignty, and we investigate the prevalence of these frames in the speeches of chief executives (presidents and prime ministers) in Europe and North America to assess whether these discourses are on the rise at the highest levels of government. To do so, we compile an original database of leader speeches, measuring both discourses using a technique called holistic grading. We find that neither populism nor nationalism is on the rise across Europe and North America over the past twenty years; instead, the rise is concentrated in sub-regions and specific countries. We also find that populism and nationalism are highly but imperfectly correlated in leaders’ speeches in the corpus as a whole, but that populism is far less common in the speeches of western leaders. In the penultimate section, we use a selection of speech vignettes to demonstrate that state leaders employ populism to counter political opponents, nationalism to counter hostile nations, and a combination to mobilize against conjoined threats from above and beyond the “people-nation.”

本研究复刻文件由Jenne, Erin K.、Kirk A. Hawkins以及Bruno Castanho Silva于2021年所著《北美及欧洲领导层修辞中的民粹主义与民族主义映射》一文中提供。作者将民粹主义与民族主义视为主权之纵向与横向的话语框架，并探究这些框架在欧洲及北美各国元首（总统与首相）演说中的普遍性，以评估这些话语是否在政府最高层呈现上升趋势。为此，研究者构建了一个原创的领导层演说数据库，采用整体评分技术对两种话语进行衡量。研究发现，在过去二十年里，民粹主义与民族主义在欧洲和北美并未普遍上升；相反，其上升趋势集中于次区域与特定国家。此外，研究发现，在语料库整体中，民粹主义与民族主义在领导层演说中高度但并不完全相关，且民粹主义在西方领导层演说中远较不常见。在文章倒数第二部分，研究者通过一系列演说片段的选取，展示了国家领导层如何运用民粹主义对抗政治对手，运用民族主义对抗敌对国家，以及结合两者动员应对来自上至下及超越“人民-民族”的联合威胁。