Популизмът и новите социални разломи: от протестна мобилизация към устойчива претенция за представителство
Populism and the New Social Cleavages: From Protest Mobilization to an Enduring Representative Claim

Author(s): Isidora Dimova
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences, Political Theory, Sociology, Government/Political systems, Politics and communication, Politics and society, Sociology of Politics
Published by: Университет за национално и световно стопанство (УНСС)
Keywords: populism; new political cleavages; crisis of political representation; populist mobilisation; affective polarization
Summary/Abstract: The report examines the persistence of contemporary populism through its relationship with new social cleavages. It argues that populism can no longer be explained only as a protest reaction against elites, economic insecurity, or perceived threats to cultural identity. Rather, it should be analysed as a form of political mobilisation that gains force at the intersection of three processes: the crisis of political representation, the restructuring of party competition around new social cleavages, and the transformation of the communication environment. The report traces how issues of belonging, borders, education, status, territorial marginalisation, climate transition, sovereignty, and geopolitical orientation give concrete political content to the classic populist opposition between “the people” and “the elite”. Populism is examined simultaneously as a symptom of representation gaps, as a mediating force that translates heterogeneous social tensions into a unified claim to responsive representation, and as an accelerator that moralises polarising conflicts and turns them into salient political identifications. In this sense, the relationship between populism and new cleavages is reciprocal: contemporary social cleavages provide populism with mobilisational resources, while populism condenses them, invests them with affective value, and turns them into recognisable lines of political identification.

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