Leaving the Discursive Definition of Populist Social Movements: The Case of the Yellow Vest Movement

Abstract

In this article, I analyze whether the case of the Yellow Vest movement fits Paris Aslanidis’ definition of populist social movements, and find that within the discursive theoretical framework Aslanidis adheres to, it does. However, I use the case of the Yellow Vest movement to demonstrate how this discursive approach lacks explanatory potential. I therefore propose moving away from a discursive definition of populist social movements, and advocate for studying political content as a way of detecting common interests shaped by political and societal structures that are shared by participants in a populist social movement. A theory of populist social movements must look at political and economic structures as well as individual agency, framing, and collective identity as a way to explain mobilization. A discursive approach to populism, which only considers language, is therefore not sufficient to explain movements such as the Yellow Vest movement.

The Yellow Vest movement (YVM) emerged in France in the fall of 2018, paralyzing France’s major cities. Originally a protest against rising fuel prices, the movement soon gained traction and mobilized several hundred thousand demonstrators in November and December. In its initial phase, it was supported by as much as 73% of the overall French population (Bulant, 2018). Soon, other issues were added to that of rising fuel prices, and the YVM became a protest movement concerned with a wide range of topics spanning from socioeconomic injustice, austerity politics, and working conditions, to reform of democracy, criticism of corruption, and the politics of centralization. By the spring of 2019, the YVM’s activity and popular support was in decline, although remnants of the movement are still active as of today.

Many scholars have characterized the YVM as a populist social movement (PSM; Chamorel, 2019; Rosanvallon, 2020; Tarragoni, 2019). However, this remark is often given en passant, often without any precise definition of the concept. It thus seems that a thorough review of the populist nature of the YVM remains to be done. In this article, I will address this need by doing two things: first, I will evaluate whether the YVM’s most significant political claims, as formulated in Liste des 42 revendications des Gilets Jaunes dated 29 November 2018 (see Supplemental Appendix), fit Paris Aslanidis’ discursive definition of PSMs. Aslanidis is chosen as a point of reference because he is one of the few scholars within the field of populism studies who is concerned with PSMs (Aslanidis, 2017b). I find that the demands of the YVM largely accord with Aslanidis’ definition, and that the YVM therefore should be considered a PSM within the theoretical framework he proposes. However, I will also argue that such a definition has little explanatory power, since it fails to shed light on what I deem to be the main dynamics at play in the YVM.

Thus, and second, I will make a case against a discursive definition of populism, using the YVM as a case in point. A discursive approach sees populism as a logic of articulation that negatively defines the “people” through its opposition toward the “elite,” and argues that this logic is to be analyzed independently from political content (Aslanidis, 2016a, 2018; De Cleen and Stavrakakis, 2017; Laclau, 2007). By contrast, I will argue that such an interpretation of the YVM fails to account for the fact that the movement’s demands do not concern any kind of people, but at a demographic group that shares common interests due to specific political opportunity structures and changing class structures in post-capitalist societies. Studying a movement’s political content enables us to see how a populist framing is shaped in reaction to societal structures and political context, which is something that Aslanidis’ discursive approach prohibits him from doing. I thus propose to move away from a discursive definition of PSMs. A theory of PSMs should rather draw inspiration from frame theory’s dual focus on political and economic structures, on one hand, and individual agency, framing and collective identity, on the other, a duality Aslanidis’ discursive approach to populism does not allow.

First, however, I will present Aslanidis’ definition of PSMs.

Aslanidis’ Definition of the PSMs

It has become close to an academic cliché that populism is a notoriously difficult concept to define. Indeed, populism is defined variously as an ideology, a strategy, a form of discourse, or a political style. Some scholars argue that populism is a phenomenon present only on the right of the political spectrum (Müller, 2016), some that it is a left-wing phenomenon (Frank, 2020), while others claim that populism might appear on both the right- and the left-wings of politics (Mudde, 2004: 543). Here, I focus on Aslanidis’ understanding of populism, as the objective of this article is to assess and later criticize this definition. Placing himself in the tradition of Ernesto Laclau (2007) and the Essex School, Aslanidis asserts that populism is best defined as:

[. . .] a discourse, invoking the supremacy of popular sovereignty to claim that corrupt elites are defrauding “the People” of their rightful political authority. It becomes an anti-elite discourse in the name of the sovereign People (Aslanidis, 2016a: 96).

Aslanidis (2016a: 95) argues that populism is too malleable and diverse to be described as an ideology. Moreover, he claims that characterizing populism as an ideology turns it into a question of either/or, rather than a question of degree, which furthers the risk of scholars rendering normative judgments on which political actors should be deemed as populists. Aslanidis argues that populism should be measured through the analysis of populist elements in a political actor’s textual production:

To seize and measure populism, it has been found sufficient to meticulously analyze the discourse of political actors and see if discursive elements of exalting the “noble People” and condemning “corrupt elites” in the name of popular sovereignty are there, and how much of them (Aslanidis, 2016a: 97).

Drawing on frame theory, Aslanidis (2016a: 97) views populist discourse as “a collective action frame rather than a type of ideology.” Following Erving Goffmann’s definition, Aslanidis (2016a: 98) views frames as “schemata of interpretation” that allow their users “to locate, perceive, identify, and label” complex events taking place in daily life.” By defining populism as a collective action frame, Aslanidis (2016b: 304) wants us to understand populism “as a strategic meaning-making device employed by social movement entrepreneurs in their struggle to maximize support from the wider audience.”

Aslanidis (2017a: 3) points out two main differences between PSMs and other types of social movements. First, PSMs do not claim to represent a class or a guild, or a specific part of a population—be it women, immigrants, or LGBTQ+ persons. Rather, PSMs claim to speak for “the people” as a whole, while criticizing the “corrupt elite.” Second, PSMs construct a discourse that is not limited to specific political issues but seeks to change and rebuild an entire political system, so as to better serve the will of the “pure people.” The PSMs, which contain different demographic groups and sometimes conflicting interests, are distinguished by a discourse where these differences are downplayed and trumped by an antagonism between the “pure people” and the “corrupt elite.” Aslanidis identifies the anti-austerity movements that emerged after the 2008 financial crisis as examples of PSMs. These were characterized by movement entrepreneurs who:

[. . .] deliberately engaged in populist framing when they saw that this specific type of adversarial framing could seamlessly accommodate the various grievances out there and give birth to a collective subject as a springboard for concerted action against established authority (Aslanidis, 2016b: 316).

Aslanidis (2018) thus argues that what separates PSMs from “old” and “new” social movements is their framing, which has been strategically chosen by central actors in a movement so as to better shape an effective collective identity. He uses the anti-austerity movements, which were characterized by their left-leaning, progressive agendas, and by their demands for economic redistribution, transparency, and democratic reform, as examples of PSMs (Ancelovici et al., 2016; Aslanidis, 2016b; Castañeda, 2012; Fougier, 2012). However, his definition is not limited to progressive, left-wing initiatives such as those created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. On the contrary, Aslanidis’ definition is strictly formalistic, discursive, and anti-essentialist: the use of the “people” as a strategic meaning-making advice can be used by political entrepreneurs on both sides of the political spectrum, and be attached to all types of ideology.

In the next part of this article, I will discuss whether the YVM fits Aslanidis’ definition of PSMs. First, however, I will briefly present the context in which the YVM developed, as well as the main characteristics of the movement.

Case Selection and Method

The YVM emerged in the fall of 2018, 18 months after the election of president Emmanuel Macron and his movement La République en Marche!, which radically transformed the French political landscape and weakened two of its major forces, the Parti socialiste and Les Républicains. Before the Macron government proposed raising the fuel tax, which, as already mentioned, sparked the YVM, it had already put in place several controversial reforms, most notably a repeal of the wealth tax (Mazuir, 2019) and a flexibilization of labor laws (Barré et al., 2016). Macron, who in his presidential campaign appealed largely to an urban, well-off, and highly educated demographic, was soon criticized for being “the president of the rich” (Lemarié, 2018). This criticism increased after a video emerged where Macron said that France spends “crazy money” (un pognon de dingue) on social-welfare programs that only keep people poor” (Chamorel, 2019: 51) and later, in another video told an unemployed man that “I can cross the street and find you a job” (cited in Chamorel, 2019: 51).

In the early fall of 2018, Macron’s approval ratings had dropped from 62% in 2017 to 31% (Walsh, 2018). Then, in October, a petition against the proposed fuel tax gained traction and become what we now know as the YVM. The movement rapidly attracted broad popular support, and more than 300,000 people nationwide attended the first demonstration on 17 November 2018 (Algan et al., 2019: 2), in addition to occupations of roundabouts. The weekly demonstrations continued in December, but became increasingly caught up in violence and vandalism, and at the beginning of 2019 the general popular support and the number of people demonstrating had decreased. In December 2018, president Macron launched a new initiative, le grand débat, public town-hall meetings where people were asked to air their grievances to elected officials (Chamorel, 2019: 55). The government decided not to impose the fuel tax that sparked the initial demonstration and raised the minimal wage with €100. However, Macron did not reimpose the controversial wealth tax.

The YVM has sparked a vivacious academic debate since its emergence, among other things, due to some original and relatively uncommon features, such as a high level of female participants, first-time demonstrators, and participants stating that they do not place themselves on the traditional left–right-wing political spectrum. A majority of participants earn a monthly income below the national median income. Workers, employees, artisans, and shopkeepers were overrepresented in the YVM compared with the overall population, as were inhabitants of rural and periuban areas (Collectif d’enquête sur les gilets jaunes, 2019). Another much-debated feature is the movement’s insistence on heterogeneity and horizontality, notably manifested by its refusal to appoint leaders or spokespersons. As a result, it is difficult to establish what the actual political views of the YVM are. That being said, some of the main demands of the YVM have undisputedly been supported by a large portion of the movement’s participants, and reuttered and rewritten on various vests and placards, in online forums and in popular assemblies. These demands are first and foremost related to the disillusionment with political elites and existing forms of democratic institutions, the critique of increasingly hard socioeconomic and working conditions, and the call for an introduction to a citizens’ initiative referendum (Hoibian, 2019).

I have chosen to use the Liste des 42 revendications des Gilets Jaunes published by the YVM before l’acte III (their third protest rally) in December 2018 as the main corpus for an analysis of the political views of the movement, as I consider this list of demands as the closest one can get to an official program for the YVM. The 42 demands were developed through polls on the YVM’s largest Facebook group, La France en colère, and on several regional YVM groups, before being sent to political representatives and several media outlets (Fabriaz, 2019: 84). The creation of the list was part of an effort to coordinate the movement by central members of the YVM that wished to “[. . .] concretize the demands expressed by millions of French people” (Saviana, 2018). This effort also led to the selection of eight “messengers,” appointed by 44 administrators of YVM’s Facebook groups (Saviana, 2018). According to these messengers, 30,000 adherents participated in the creation of the list, and the 42 claims were the demands that gained the most support. Two of these “messengers,” Priscilla Ludovsky and Eric Drouet, presented a list that largely intersects with the 42 demands to the minister of ecological transition, François de Rugy, in late November 2018 (van Aelst, 2018).

The 42 demands have been used as a point of reference in the French media and by scholars since then (Damgé et al., 2018; Hayat, 2019). The list contains suggestions that span from proposals of comprehensive societal reform, to smaller issues such as a call for a maximum of 25 students in school classes. Most wide-ranging are suggestions aiming at economic reform, which include demands for a more progressive income tax system, a minimum wage elevated from €1218 to €1300 net per month, and a maximum national monthly wage at €15,000. Moreover, the YVM wants to reduce the number of workers who are employed on fixed-termed contracts (so-called CDD—contrats à durée déterminée), to create jobs for the unemployed, and to end austerity politics by beginning “to pay back the debt without taking the money from the poor and the less poor, but from the 80 billion lost in fiscal fraud.” ¹

Democratic reform is the other big theme in the list of demands. The suggestions include the introduction of a réferendum d’initiative citoyenne, a changing of the electoral schedule, and the introduction of a median salary to elected officials. Moreover, the YVM has several demands that align with a protectionist political and economic agenda, such as higher taxes for international companies like Google or Amazon, forbidding postal work, or sending asylum-seekers whose applications have been rejected back to their country of origin. Finally, the interests of rural and periurban France are highlighted. The YVM wants to favor small businesses in villages and city-centers, to ban delocalization, to ameliorate the building and maintenance of roads, and to stop the closing of public services in rural and periurban areas.

In the following, I employ a qualitative content analysis, while also drawing on Ruth Wodak’s (2001) critical discourse analysis, which involves an analysis of rhetorical constructions of a “group” and an “out-group,” with the purpose of legitimizing the former and delegitimizing the latter. In this case, I will ask whether this “group” is the “people” and the “out-group” the “corrupt elites,” to see how the list of 42 demands concurs with Aslanidis’ definition of PSMs, namely, that a diverse population is mobilized by a creation of an antagonistic dichotomy between the sovereign “people” and the “corrupt elite” (Aslanidis, 2016a: 97). In other words, my objective is to analyze the identity construction in the demands of the YVM, pinpoint which groups of the population the YVM claims to represent, and compare it with Aslanidis’ definition. Aslanidis himself claims that the analysis of identity construction is an integral part of studying PSMs:

“Identity talk” reflects a socially constructed interactional process between movement insiders and outsiders. Exploring identity and adversarial framing strategies in detail is necessary if we are to understand how activists collectively perceived themselves through their manifestos and how this subsequently influenced the portrayal of their enemies (Aslanidis, 2018: 453).

As already mentioned, Aslanidis’ definition of PSMs implies that the “group” constituted in the rhetoric of such a movement is “the people” in its entirety, regardless of ethnicity, class, sex, or background and that the “out-group” is the “corrupt elite”:

In populist mobilization, the end result of identity work is the collective identity of “the People as sovereign,” which functions as the primary mobilizing factor. [. . .] participants are empowered by anchoring their diagnosis of the situation upon the legitimizing values of majority rule and popular sovereignty, which no opposing agent can carelessly defy without being labeled undemocratic. This identity is a closely guarded symbolic asset for PSMs, and no secondary attachment is allowed to interfere, since competing identities can potentially apply centrifugal pressure or uncover intramural fault lines (Aslanidis, 2016b: 306).

Aslanidis’ definition thus implies that the discourse of a PSM accentuates the dichotomy between the “moral people” and the “corrupt elite,” while secondary attachments, be it ethnic, economical, or others, are largely left out in these movements’ discourse. By executing qualitative content analysis on the 42 demands, I investigate whether this is the case for the YVM, and thus whether Aslanidis’ definition of PSMs is fitting to the YVM.

Reforming Democracy and Restoring the Sovereignty of the People

As mentioned above, Aslanidis’ definition of PSMs is twofold, and its first part speaks to the question of which groups the movement claims to represent. I will come back to that question shortly. First, however, I use qualitative content analysis to investigate whether Aslanidis’ second criteria for a PSM, namely, that the movement does not limit itself to specific political issues but rather wishes to reform democracy by restoring the sovereignty of the people, is a description that is appropriate for the YVM. As we have seen, the claims made by the YVM are expansive and touch upon many aspects of French political life. Indeed, the demands concerning a réferendum d’initiative citoyenne (RIC) and of a parliamentary election 2 years into a presidential term speak to the YVM’s wish to restore popular sovereignty. A common denominator in these demands is the criticism of economic and political elites and the call for a restored popular sovereignty; in other words, the two central elements in Aslanidis’ definitions of populism and PSMs. The yellow vests rhetorically portray themselves as spokespersons for a “pure people” demanding concessions from the “corrupt elite.” This rhetorical creation of a “group” and an “out-group” becomes visible among other things through use of the pronoun nos (our):

Give comfort to our elderly. It is forbidden to make money on the elderly. The grey gold, that’s over. The era of grey well-being begins. ²

Here, we see a discursive creation of “the people and its elderly” as a “group” and a creation of an “out-group,” namely, an elite that are accused of making money on the elderly. The “group’s” critique of the “out-group” is equally present when the YVM states their wish that “[. . .] the BIG [MacDonalds, Google, Amazon, Carrefour . . .] pay BIG and that the small [artisans, small and medium businesses] pay little.” Here the small businesses are portrayed as part of the “people,” while the international companies and the politicians who are blamed for not taxing them sufficiently, are described as part of the elite. The YVM’s emphatic use of capital letters when referring to major companies serves to further accentuate their criticism of these institutions. The same discursive creations can be seen in the claim where the YVM demands that France’s debt should be paid by the 80 billion lost in fiscal fraud and not by the poor. In several of these demands, we see traces of the commonsensical rhetoric that often characterizes populism: that the wealthy pay more than the poor (March, 2007: 66). In addition, the YVM seems to imply that the economic deficiencies of France, including the billions lost in fraud, are to be blamed on political and financial elites, not on the “pure” people, thus rhetorically contrasting the “out-group” and “the group.” This sense of moral outrage is further accentuated by the messages written on the actual vests of thousands of participants in the YVM, such as “[we are] just here for a more just world” (Garrat-Valcarcel, 2019) “we want to live, not only to survive” (Lucas, 2018). Consequently, I argue that Aslanidis’ second criteria for a movement to be deemed populist, namely, that the movement wishes to change an entire democratic system to better serve “pure and moral people,” is fulfilled. However, the fulfillment of Aslanidis’ first criteria—the issue of who the PSM claims to represent—is more difficult to establish.

As mentioned above, Aslanidis’ first criteria for a PSM is its claim to speak for the “people” as a whole, not only for certain strata of a population, be it women, LGBTQ+ people, or workers. According to Aslanidis, what separates PSMs from other movements, is framing, in this case the catch-all rhetoric employed by movement entrepreneurs. This can occur on both sides of the political spectrum, although Aslanidis only uses the largely progressive and left-leaning anti-austerity movements as examples. These movements overwhelmingly targeted financial and political elites as their “out-group,” thus, in Aslanidis’ (2016b: 310) words, politicizing “[. . .] citizen identity into a collective identity of a moral People that comprises an overwhelming majority, against which stand the corrupt forces of a tiny minority of elites.” The YVM is more difficult to identify politically than these movements, which have constructed a discourse where the “people” mainly criticized political and financial elites “on the top” (Aslanidis, 2016b; Barker, 2013; Della Porta, 2017; Peterson et al., 2015). The “people” in the YVM’s discourse is of a different nature, as it not only differentiates itself from the elites “on the top,” but also from “out-groups” at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Indeed, the YVM presents demands that are protectionist and might be perceived as anti-immigration (Hayat, 2019). For example, the 42 demands state that the YVM wants to impose “an actual system for political integration” and that to live in France “[. . .] implies becoming French (classes in French language, history and civic education with a certification at the end of the track).” This demand implies that French citizens living in France without having certain linguistic and cultural knowledge are not to be considered French. This clearly indicates a rhetorical creation of a “group” and an “out-group.” A similar tendency is evident in demands that proclaim the end of postal work, which will primarily affect workers from poorer countries in the European Union, or the claim that states that rejected asylum-seekers should be sent back to their country of origin. All these claims are speaking of the interests of a “group” that consists of French nationals of origin and immigrants that abide by strict integration requirements. Thus, the demands implicitly name and target an “out-group”: migrants, immigrants who do not fulfill required integration standards, and foreign workers.

The Political Classification of the YVM

The sociologist Rogers Brubaker has tried to theorize the difference between a populist discourse that targets elites “on the top,” and populist discourse that targets elites “on the top” and “out-groups” “on the bottom.” According to his definition, the European Indignados and Occupy Wall Street might be an example of the former, as they operate with one antagonist, the elite, in their discourse. The YVM’s demands, however, seem to incorporate elements of what has been called “triadic” populism, which creates two antagonists: the elite “on the top” and the “out-group” on the bottom (Kaltwasser and Mudde cited in March, 2017: 285). Brubaker explains this phenomenon in the following manner in a critique of Cas Mudde’s definition of populism, which according to him is too narrowly focused on populism’s criticism of elites, and is not sufficiently aware of the targeting of “out-groups” at the bottom:

“The people” can be defined not only in relation to those on top but also [. . .] in relation to those on the bottom. Those on the bottom may be represented as parasites or spongers, as addicts or deviants, as disorderly or dangerous, as undeserving of benefits and unworthy of respect, and thus as not belonging to the so-called decent, respectable, “normal,” hard-working “people.” The downward focus of populist anger and resentment has been much less widely discussed than the upward focus. But it should not be neglected, especially since the upward and downward orientations are often closely connected: those on top are often blamed for being overly solicitous of those on the bottom (Brubaker, 2017: 363).

The ostracizing of the people “on the bottom” is a common feature of many right-wing populist parties in Europe, such as the National Rally (Rassemblement national). The National Rally is also characterized by the tendency to link the elites “on the top” to the people “on the bottom” in their rhetoric, criticizing the mainstream parties for being overly solicitous toward immigrants, and especially France’s Muslim population (Bergem and Bergem, 2019). Although the targeting of the people “on the bottom” is far less evident in the case of the YVM than in the case of the National Rally, the YVM appears to be more “triadic” than the anti-austerity movements that Aslanidis uses as showcases for his definition of PSMs. The YVM’s rhetoric seems to operate with two rhetorical “out-groups,” not one, as did the anti-austerity movements.

Brubaker’s concept of triadic populism has been met with criticism by de Cleen and Stavrakakis, both theoreticians of populism that adhere to a discursive definition of populism, as do Aslanidis and Brubaker. According to De Cleen and Stavrakakis (2020), Brubaker conflates nationalism and populism when describing triadic populism, and thus moves beyond the realms of the populist logic. They argue that:

[p]opulism is a dichotomic discourse in which “the people” are juxtaposed to ”the elite” along the lines of a down/up antagonism in which “the people” is discursively constructed as a large powerless group through opposition to “the elite” conceived as a small and illegitimately powerful group (De Cleen and Stavrakakis, 2017: 310).

To them, populism as a concept is to be considered only as discursive form, as the conflation of different sets of grievances through a “chain of equivalence,” and should be analyzed independently from the political content of this discourse (De Cleen and Stavrakakis, 2017: 311). The “people” are not bound by “[. . .] something positive they have in common, but [the fact and/or impression] that they are all frustrated and endangered by ‘the elite’” (De Cleen and Stavrakakis, 2017: 311). The populist logic is always dichotomous, according to their definition, and solely concerns the creation of a vertical antagonism between the “elite” and the “people.” Any references to an out-group “on the bottom” of the social hierarchy, such as immigrants, are in their opinion examples of political content, not of the populist logic.

Therefore, they argue, references to “out-groups” or what Brubaker calls the horizontal dimension of populism, are in fact examples of nationalist content, which should not be analytically conflated with populism. However, de Cleen and Stavrakakis (2020: 315) admit that populism and nationalism are often combined and intertwined in empirical political discourse Their point is that one should see these phenomena as separate concepts. De Cleen and Stavrakakis write that their understanding of populism and nationalism as separate entities is inspired by the multitude of scholarly work conducted over the past 50 years that conflate nationalism and populism, with the result being that populism, especially in popular culture, is almost entirely associated with the radical right. This is misleading, according to them, as they deem many of the prominent radical right parties in Europe, such as the National Rally, to be leaning more heavily on nationalist and authoritarian discourse, than on populist discourse (De Cleen and Stavrakakis, 2017: 303–305).

Aslanidis’ definition of PSMs populism is aligned with the one defended by de Cleen and Stavrakakis, as he agrees with Laclau that:

a movement is not populist because in its politics or ideology it presents actual contents identifiable as populistic, but because it shows a particular logic of articulation of those contents—whatever those contents are (Aslanidis, 2016a: 448).

In several of his articles on populism, Aslanidis expresses, as does de Cleen and Stavrakakis, an intent to make populism a theoretically stringent concept that only refers to a “particular logic of articulation of content,” not to a specific political content. Their common aim is to be able to measure and compare populism and to avoid regional, policy, or normative biases (Aslanidis, 2017a). I agree with Aslanidis, de Cleen, and Stavrakakis that a discursive definition of populism should be referring to a strict logic of articulation, rather than content. The discursive definition avoids many of the normative and political traps that discussions of populism often fall into and makes it possible to study populism as a discursive repertoire that nearly all political actors utilize to a certain extent. I believe it is worthwhile and warranted to have a minimal discursive definition of populism that “travels well” and that is less prone to ideological and political biases. Therefore, although the anti-austerity movements and the YVM differ in many respects, these variances are political differences, not discursive differences, and thus bear no weight when discussing whether Aslanidis’ definition of PSMs fit to the YVM. Aslanidis’ definition, as is the Laclauian tradition that he places himself in, is strictly anti-essentialist and formalist. The only question the definition poses is the degree to which the antagonism between the “people” and the “elite” trumps other antagonism. Consequently, within this theoretical framework I would argue that the YVM should be considered as a PSM, as it utilizes the logic of articulation referred to in Aslanidis’ definition.

To summarize, does Aslanidis’ definition of PSMs fit the YVM? Yes, it does, as the antagonism between the “people” and the “elite” to a large degree overshadows other antagonisms in the YVM’s discourse. Yet, as mentioned above, the YVM is very different from the anti-austerity movements Aslanidis uses as showcases for the PSM definition. Within the theoretical framework Aslanidis’ places himself in, these differences bear no significance as to whether a movement is populist or not, as populism is a logic of articulation, a language, and not related to specific content. However, the fact remains that the YVM is different from the anti-austerity movements, and the question is how, or rather whether, we can understand and articulate this difference within the theoretical framework Aslanidis adheres to, which I will discuss in the following.

A Critique of the Discursive Definition of Populism

I believe Brubaker’s attempt to conceptualize a “triadic” populism is symptomatic of a scholarly frustration with the vacuousness of a straightforward discursive definition of populism as proposed by Aslanidis, de Cleen, and Stavrakakis. The analysis of the 42 demands demonstrates the rhetorical creation of an antagonism between the “pure and sovereign people” and the “corrupt elites.” However, if one only states that, one will overlook many of the main dynamics that were in play in the YVM. In the following, I therefore question the explanatory potential of a discursive definition, and argue that it must be accompanied by structural explanations to become truly instructive, which in fact entails leaving the discursive definition of populism behind. Moreover, I argue that the 42 demands demonstrate that the YVM is not a movement that is purely negatively defined in opposition to a “corrupt elite”; the demands reveal common political and economic interests among the YVM. However, a discursive definition of populism cannot explain these common interests, as that would entail studying political content, not language, and political and economic structures.

While defending a discursive definition of populism, Aslanidis writes that:

[w]hile lessons from resource mobilization, political opportunity, and rational choice theory remain useful in couching causal inferences within a more general theory, nevertheless, a specific mechanism of identity construction explains much of what takes place in PSMs and deserves our privileged attention (Aslanidis, 2016b: 305).

Aslanidis argues that structural factors cannot explain the appearance or non-appearance of populism, since there are many examples of cases where similar structures have not led to the appearance of a populist movement or party:

Grievances therefore supply a necessary backdrop but do not constitute sufficient factors, being generally ubiquitous and unable to automatically generate mobilization. Economic malaise, a surge in anti-immigration sentiment, or the general discomfort from globalization, can potentially provide a substrate for populist agitation, but aggrieved populations do not take to the streets in a deterministic fashion. [. . .] Grievances remain latent until they become subject to a process of strategic interpretation by politically savvy movement entrepreneurs who sense a ripe moment for their agenda. [. . .] When this mobilization adopts the distinct nature of populist logic, grievances are discursively aggregated and collectively articulated as outcomes of an underlying social division between “people” and “elites” (Aslanidis, 2017b: 3).

Therefore, he argues, it is the populist framing of the movement entrepreneurs that causes populist mobilization, and it is this issue that “deserves our privileged attention.”

I believe Aslanidis makes a compelling argument as to why a populist framing enables populist mobilization. However, I do not believe that this populist framing deserves our “privileged attention,” as he argues, as it does not sufficiently describe or explain the phenomena it tries to capture. This is an epistemological problem with the theoretical framework of discourse analysis, which sees only language, not structures, and consequently overlooks how discourse and structure interact and intersect.

One aspect that stands out in the 42 demands of the YVM is that they are more directed and adapted to some parts of the French population than others. Although they can be characterized as a mix of progressive and regressive policies, the 42 demands are not a list of a random set of grievances equally valid for all demographic groups. It is perfectly possible to detect certain themes such as more taxing and fewer benefits for the upper-middle classes and upper classes, or a demand for more decentralizing policy. Furthermore, there is a call for more restrictions on big business in terms of taxation, use of detached workers, and temporary positions. On the contrary, the list calls for more rights for unemployed, pensioners, and low-wage workers.

If we were to use Aslanidis’ definition, we could say that all of this is a part of the movement entrepreneurs’ ingenious framing of the antagonism between the “pure people” and the “corrupt elite.” That might be, but what does that really tell us, apart from giving yet another example of a certain logic of articulation? I believe such an interpretation leads us to overlook the interactions between political and economic structures on one hand and the discourse of the YVM on the other. To understand the YVM, we must rather ask the following question: who is “the people” that is presented in the demands of the YVM, and what do the people who respond to this discourse have in common?

Here, I believe that the field of social movement studies has something to contribute to the field of populism studies, as it has worked on espousing actor-oriented theories and structure-oriented theories of social mobilization for decades. David Snow et al. describe this in the following manner:

[. . .] our understanding of social movements will be advanced if more attention is devoted, both theoretically and empirically, to how framing intersects with the issues and processes examined via the theoretical lens of resource mobilization, political opportunity, and cultural perspectives. These perspectives should be seen not so much as competing but as addressing different aspects of the character and dynamics of social movements. The framing perspective emerged not as an alternative to other perspectives on social movements, but to investigate and illuminate what these other perspectives have glossed over, namely, the matter of the production of mobilizing and counter-mobilizing meanings and ideas (David Snow et al., 2018: 405).

Framing cannot be solely an alternative to other perspectives on social mobilization: it has to be one of several perspectives that address one aspect of a particular mobilization. Moreover, Snow et al. (2018: 399) argue that frame analysis must be accompanied by “[. . .] direct attention to the cultural contexts in which movements are embedded [. . .].” This is difficult to do with Aslanidis’ definition of PSMs, as it is concerned only with a logic of articulation, not of content. Aslanidis’ definition sets language front and center in the study of PSMs, while culture, context, and structure are set aside. I would argue that this is not the route to be taken if we want to understand what PSMs are. We should rather study how a set of political and economic structures enables a populist framing and subsequent mobilization from a specific group of people. Kriesi et al. (2008: 10) describe this in the following manner in relation to political parties, but the argument has the same salience for social movements. They emphasize that political opportunities are not created solely by a party, or by a movement entrepreneur, they are structurally given potentials that these entrepreneurs may choose to benefit from:

What is at stake is the problem of the articulation of a structurally given latent potential by a political organization [in particular by a political party]. The potentials are structurally given, i.e. they are not created by the party. The preferences of the voters change due to processes of social change that cannot be controlled by political organizations (Kriesi et al., 2008: 10).

In other words, we must move away from a purely discursive definition of the YVM and toward a structural analysis that nevertheless recognizes the importance of agency, culture, and language. The social movement scholar Greg Martin describes this dual focus in the following manner when commenting on Charles Tilly’s work on “repertoires of action”:

“repertoire” not only constrains collective action, for it combines structure and agency—choices are made—but “within structured options,” thus leaving room for agency and strategic decision making while acknowledging the cultural and historical circumstances constraining choice (Martin, 2015: 46).

As the discursive approach assumes that an antagonism is created independently of political content, it has no interest in, nor concept of, how the “people” conveys different, but specific grievances from specific groups. Although the “people” is not a homogeneous or easily identifiable group in the demands of the YVM, it is not just any group, any people. Although an antagonism in theory might unite all kinds of grievances in opposition to the “out-group,” there are still limits to what kinds of demands should be included. The list from the YVM includes a very diverse set of demands, but it would be difficult to argue that these demands speak primarily of a mid-level civil servant in Paris, an entrepreneur, or an investment banker. Similarly, the Occupy Wall Street movement, to take one of the examples Aslanidis uses in his work on PSMs, was not dominated by middle-aged housewives from the Midwest. A weakness with the discursive definition of populism and PSMs is that it does not offer the concepts to articulate these demographic differences. Although both the anti-austerity movements and the YVM were heterogeneous, the heterogeneity was composed of very different sets of demographic groups.

Consequently, I do not oppose Aslanidis’ use of framing theory as a way of explaining PSMs, as framing theory’s dual emphasis on agency and structure is very relevant when trying to describe phenomena such as the YVM. Rather, I object to the discursive definition of populism, which I believe is unable to articulate or conceptualize many of the dynamics at play in social mobilization. I argue that it is incorrect that the “people” is not bound by “[. . .] something positive they have in common, but [the fact and/or impression] that they are all frustrated and endangered by ‘the elite’” (De Cleen and Stavrakakis, 2017: 311). Certainly, the populist framing might gloss over many of the differences that exist within the “people,” and in that way enable a mobilization. However, for that to happen, the “people” must be sharing some common interests enabled by societal structures, a material reality. This realization forces us to leave the discursive definition of populism behind. In the last section of this article, I will briefly propose some of these shared interests that are detectable in the demands of the YVM, and discuss how these might explain the movement’s coming into existence. More specifically, I point at two societal structures, namely, political opportunity structure and economic conditions that might contribute to explaining the emergence of the YVM.

Before that, however, I will add that the case of the YVM also demonstrates that a purely discursive definition of populism can bring about methodological difficulties. Studying discourse implies emphasizing a party of a movement’s verbally articulated outputs, not its nonverbal actions. These nonverbal actions were a central part of the YVM. Occupying roundabouts, setting fire to the famous, luxurious, and celebrity-filled restaurant Fouquet’s in Paris, taking control over the Arc de Triomphe, destroying windows of banks and real-estate agencies while leaving independent shops alone (Shultziner and Kornblit, 2020: 539), all of these are highly symbolic actions that are difficult to analyze when using a discursive analytical approach. Moreover, studying discourse often implies privileging the role of leaders and prominent figures, which again often means privileging educated or more articulated members of a movement to the detriment of other members. In the case of the YVM, privileging discourse is particularly challenging, as the movement’s horizontality makes it difficult to ascertain whether or not a leader or spokespeople’s discourse is representative of the movement as a whole. Supporters of the discursive approach to populism would argue that an insistence on horizontality and rejection of representation is a part of the populist mythology, and that therein reality always will be personalities that play more central roles than others and whose discourse it is possible to study (Aslanidis, 2016b: 313). But recent empirical studies of the YVM showcase that the importance of horizontality, the rejection of representation, and the consequent level of disorganization are characteristics that cannot be emphasized enough in the case of the YVM (Collectif d’enquête sur les Gilets Jaunes, 2019; Della Sudda and Guionnet, 2021). I therefore argue that the case of the YVM demonstrates that it might be methodologically difficult to employ a discursive approach to populism without adding other elements to the analysis, as I do in the following part of this article.

Political Opportunity Structure and Changing Class Structures

Although the novelty and popularity of the YVM shook French society when it erupted in the fall of 2018, its importance cannot be compared with the arguably much larger earthquake that had happened only 18 months in advance, namely the election of Emmanuel Macron and his La République en Marche! Leaving behind the discursive explanations of the coming together of the YVM, I would argue that the election of Macron created a political opportunity structure that prepared growth for the YVM. Specifically, one of Macron’s main messages in his presidential campaign was that the political right/left-cleavage had outplayed its role, and that the new political cleavage was that between “backwards-looking conservatives” and “progressive reformers” (cited in Fougère and Barthold, 2020: 5). He criticized both the traditional left, which he deemed too concerned with people already holding jobs and too opposed to Europeanization and globalization, and the extreme right with its nationalist, anti-immigrant discourse (Fougère and Barthold, 2020: 5).

The political opportunity approach assumes that a mobilization takes place in a “situation in which institutions are [and are perceived to be] particularly closed towards citizens’ demands, at the same time unwilling and incapable of addressing them in an inclusive way” (Della Porta, 2015: 23). One way to look at the YVM is to see it as an amalgam of the parts of France that president Macron disowned in his presidential campaign, as a backlash of the “reactionaries.” Cleavage theory, which views a national party system as a result of underlying social conflicts, would consider the YVM as a part of the political cleavage between the “losers” and “winners” of globalization:

The “losers” of globalization are people whose life chances were traditionally protected by national boundaries. They perceive the weakening of these boundaries as a threat to their social status and their social security. Their life chances and action spaces are being reduced. The “winners,” on the other hand, include people who benefit from the new opportunities resulting from globalization, and whose life chances are enhanced (Kriesi et al., 2008: 5).

It is possible to argue that this political cleavage was reinforced by the election of Macron, with his more neoliberal policies (Giurlando, 2021: 69). The 42 demands of the YVM contradict Macron’s project: whereas the YVM was concerned with rural and periurban areas, protectionist policies, fewer short-term contracts, augmented taxes for the rich and major corporations, and a reinforced welfare benefits, Macron’s electoral message concentrated on strengthening Europe, cutting capital gain taxes to stimulate investment, reducing public spending, and removing worker protection (Giurlando, 2021: 69). In other words, the emergence of the YVM and their demands might be viewed as an expression of a burgeoning political cleavage between different political interests or perceived different political interests, not as a purely negative discursive construction of a “people” that are only united by their opposition to Macron.

The “losers” of globalization theory and an emphasis on diverging political interests lead us onto an analysis that views the YVM as an example and a result of developments in class structure in post-industrial societies (Algan et al., 2019; Fæssel, 2019; Fillieule et al., 2020; Kergreis, 2019; Sainte-Marie, 2019). This is the route proposed by the social movement scholar Donatella della Porta in her work on the anti-austerity movements Aslanidis describes as populist. She describes how these movements occurred in countries dominated by cuts in public spending, deterioration of public services, and rising inequalities and poverty (Della Porta, 2015: 21). Della Porta links the anti-austerity movements to the new division between “winners” and “losers” of globalization (Della Porta, 2015: 33), and asks whether the “losers” constitute a new class consisting of disillusioned young people, blue-collar workers, pensioners, and public servants, who are forming a collective identity as “precarious” or as “the 99 percent” (Della Porta, 2015: 336).

Della Portas’ work on the anti-austerity movements is aligned with several prominent French scholars’ (Bantigny et al., 2019; Dupeux, 2019; Geisser, 2019) work on the YVM. They see the YVM as an example of the broadening of what constitutes the working class in modern society, compared with industrial societies, where working class was tantamount to workers who did not own the means of production, as theorized in classical Marxist theory (Martin, 2015: 61–96). Historian Ludivine Bantigny describes this broadening of the definition of class in the following manner:

Personally, I think that the YVM has manifested a class consciousness. We are a long way from class as defined by not possessing the means of production. But we are well within the realms of an identity claim and of a socio-economical conflict centered around the distribution of wealth (Bantigny et al., 2019: 19).

In the presentation of the YVM’s demands above, we have seen that the YVM’s criticism is largely directed toward financial fraud, poor working conditions, and low wages. Fischbach (2019: 184) reasons that the YVM’s wish to strengthen public services and counteract privatization, a tendency that is very clear in the demands, is an example of class consciousness. Della Porta borders on the same analysis in her description of the anti-austerity movements:

In sum, while multi-class, the various protest campaigns are not interclass. Rather, they tend to reflect some of the changes in class structure that have characterized neoliberalism and its crisis: in particular, the proletarization of the middle classes and the precarization of workers (Della Porta, 2017: 221).

Della Porta thus accentuates the class basis of the anti-austerity movements, as does Fischbach with the YVM. The developments of late capitalism described by Della Porta are equally relevant for the YVM as for the anti-austerity movements.

Based on my analysis of the claims of the YVM, I argue that it is hard to ignore the class consciousness manifested in the demands. The large majority of the claims of the YVM are material, not cultural, and the YVM is an expression of a reconfiguration of the lower-middle and working classes. This fact is easily overlooked by a discursive definition of populism. I therefore believe that the definition of a PSM needs to look past a post-Marxist framing and into the emerging new material class conflicts that movements such as the YVM embody. Barker et al. describe this development in the following way when discussing the anti-austerity movements:

[. . .] the situation is paradoxical. On the one hand, we are witnessing an exhilarating new flourishing of movement activity, a slowly resurgent opposition to the onslaughts of neoliberalism in crisis by a globally expanded and recomposed working class, and the expression of widely popular ideological challenges to the fundamental principles of capitalist society. On the other hand, this is, perhaps, the first time since 1848 when specifically Marxist ideas are not the natural lingua franca of a rising movement (Barker et al., 2013b: 12).

I argue that the YVM is an example of what Barker et al. describe. The fact that Marxism is no longer the lingua franca of social movements does not imply that the material class conflicts have disappeared.

Conclusion

To sum up, I argue that the political opportunity structure that the election of Macron created, as well as the reconfigurations of class structures within French society, are factors that must be taken into account when we try to understand the emergence of the YVM. To be clear, it seems safe to say that the YVM is an example of “populist framing,” and that this framing helped the shaping of a collective identity that enabled the mobilization of the movement. However, this framing was directed at specific demographics that share common interests and experiences as a result of structural factors. To see what these commonalities are, we must study the contents of the YVM’s 42 demands, and not only its logic of articulation, as Aslanidis proposes. To give the populist framing of the YVM, our “privileged attention” makes us overlook some of the main dynamics at play in the YVM. This, I argue, is an example of an epistemological weakness with the discursive definition of populism, which fails to realize the interconnection between structures and agency that enables social mobilizations.

In this article, I have analyzed whether the YVM fits Paris Aslanidis’ definition of PSMs, and found that within the discursive theoretical framework, it does. However, I have also critiqued the explanatory potential of a discursive definition of populism, and advocated for studying political content as a way of detecting common interests shaped by political and societal structures that are shared by participants in a PSM. I thus argue that a theory of PSMs must look at political and economic structures as well as individual agency, framing, and collective identity as a way to explain mobilization. A discursive approach to populism, which only considers language, is therefore not sufficient to explain movements such as the YVM.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-psx-10.1177_00323217211063727 – Supplemental material for Leaving the Discursive Definition of Populist Social Movements: The Case of the Yellow Vest Movement

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-psx-10.1177_00323217211063727 for Leaving the Discursive Definition of Populist Social Movements: The Case of the Yellow Vest Movement by Ingeborg Misje Bergem in Political Studies