Radical right and populism: are they consubstantial or contingent? Clarifications regarding the case of VOX
Keywords:
radical right, populism, Spain, VOX, discourse analysisAbstract
Recently, VOX has managed to institutionalize itself in the political arena, ending the so-called “Spanish exceptionalism”. VOX has been immediately defined not only as a radical right party, but also as populist. This is in the line with a considerable part of the literature which conceives any radical right’s expression as intrinsically populist. Notwithstanding, there are reasons to question this view, which is sometimes uncritical and has little empirical foundation. Using the Discourse-Theoretical Analysis (DTA) approach, electoral manifestos and speeches are analyzed with the aim to examine in depth VOX’s discourse. Our findings show that VOX’s ideological offer is basically a nationalist narrative rooted on an antagonism between the endogroup vs. the outgroup. Hence, it is not possible to identify any attempt in order to build discursively a popular subject. In sum, our findings point the need to develop a new research agenda about the radical right which conceives populism not as inherent, but as a contingent feature. Moreover, this approach should be more nuanced and systematized, being necessarily rooted in the empirical evidence.
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