Populism, Ideology and Discourse in the Global South
Didem Seyis
Contact: seyisd(at)ceu.edu
Post-doctoral Researcher, CEU Democracy Institute
She has two primary academic goals: understanding why populists are still popular among voters and how populist governments undermine democratic institutions. She collected election data on 18 Latin American countries. Her work appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature, Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, Frontiers in Political Science, and Turkish Studies.
Previously, she was a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University, exploring the media-based strategies of populist leaders to shape Ingroup and Outgroup identities, and a lab member of the COVID-19 Protective Policy Index (PPI) Project at Binghamton University.
Research project
Planting the Seeds of Populism at Democratic Transition: Exclusion and the Rise of Populism to Power
Populism is on the rise all over the world. While populist parties and candidates are increasingly popular globally, populism is in government only in some countries. Why is populism in government in some countries, although it is often in opposition elsewhere? This research project concentrates on the exclusion of some social groups during the democratic transition from authoritarian regimes to explain the rise of populism. In this proposal, I argue that countries, where some social groups are systematically excluded from accessing social, political, and economic power are more likely to experience populism in government. More specifically, social groups excluded by the established democratic system are predisposed to support anti-establishment populist parties. Hence, populists are more likely to have large vote shares in elections and become incumbents in countries with high exclusion. To explore this issue, I plan to follow a mixed-method approach and combine a large-N statistical analysis with process tracing and focus group research on Turkey, Poland, and Bolivia.