The “return” of the people? Understanding populism by exploring citizens’ conceptions of peoplehood in Western Europe

Despite extensive research on rising populism, we still know little about the relation between populist politics and how ordinary citizens engage with, and act upon, the identities that populism mobilises. To address this blind spot, I develop an inductive approach that moves from a focus on populism to a broader exploration of peoplehood, and from a variable-centred to a person-centred approach employing Latent Class Analysis. The results indicate attitudes towards peoplehood can be grouped into 6 major conceptions across Western Europe, and that support for populism is concentrated among citizens who hold particular conceptions of peoplehood, offering insight into the ideas of the people that underlie support for populism. These findings show peoplehood is a useful theoretical framework for understanding collective belonging, and that it can help to grasp more comprehensively the social grounds of contemporary populism. Finally, using regression analysis, I find the association between conceptions of peoplehood and electoral behaviour is significant in the case of populist right supporters, but not populist left supporters. Overall, I argue these findings offer new hypotheses regarding the meaning and implications of populism, and can also help explain the differing success of right and left populist parties.