This chapter uses Ernesto Laclau’s definition of ‘populism’ as a political logic, rather than a movement attached to a specific political ideology or social base (Laclau 2005: 5). According to this definition, there are two preconditions of populism: (1) An ‘antagonistic frontier’ between ‘the people’ and the ‘power bloc’; and (2) an articulation of social demands (which have been unfulfilled by the power bloc) into an equivalential chain, which allows for the emergence of ‘the people’ as a collective (Laclau 2005: 74). An ’empty signifier’, according to Laclau, is a name or concept that ‘both expresses and constitutes an equivalential chain’ (Laclau 2005: 129, 217). In other words, it is ’empty’ because it loses its own specific meaning when it functions as a substitute for the multiple demands that constitute the equivalential chain (Beasley-Murray 2006).
– ‘Populism and conspiracy theory in Latin America: A case study of Venezuela’, in Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories (2020), p. 661
Conspiracy theories, therefore, helped reconstruct Venezuelan national identity at a time when it was in crisis. They also inspired personal and collective empowerment and agency through their apocalyptic Manicheanism. This heightened sense of agency unquestionably contributed to higher levels of political participation, thus evidencing conspiracy theories’ mobilising capacities.
– Ibid., p. 667
Beasley-Murray, J. (2006) ‘Review of Ernesto Laclau, on populist reason, and Francio Panizza, populism and the mirror of democracy’, Contemporary Political Theory, 5: 362-7.
Laclau, E. (2005) On populist reason, London: Verso.