Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and the discursive approach

This chapter provides an overview of Ernesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse-theoretical approach to populism. The chapter starts by placing their work within their post-Marxist theory of hegemony and discourse, explaining how they develop their approach in critical conversation with the Marxist tradition. I then lay out Laclau’s theory of populism as developed in On Populist Reason, focusing on the key concepts of that theory: antagonism, equivalence and the empty signifier. The theory is distinct as it takes populism as a discourse that constructs the people; moreover, the construction of a people is seen as central to politics more generally. The chapter also examines Laclau’s and Mouffe’s arguments for left populism in Latin America and Europe, respectively. It ends by considering three key issues from the critical literature on Laclau’s and Mouffe’s approach: formalism and crypto-normativity; the relationship between populism and institutions; and verticality and homogeneity.