Excluding emotions: The performative function of populism

Populists are often excluded from political life on the basis that they are too emotional. Both social movements as well as political parties who are labelled as populist are accused of using demagoguery and manipulation in order to attract support and new membership. Often, these critiques emanate from the political establishment, creating a division between emotional and rational actors in politics. In this article, I argue that instead of seeing populism as a nominal or ordinal category, we should look at how the term itself has performative properties. The article is interested in how populism as a concept is used as a tool for exclusion, and how being ‘too emotional’ is used as justification for excluding certain actors. This article first contends that this perspective is endemic to political and social theory, and has long been utilised to marginalise women, non-Europeans, or young people. Second, the article demonstrates how this perspective also pervades much of contemporary studies on populism, which do not sufficiently recognise the political implications of employing a strict divide between emotion and reason. Third, the article further contends that by using a Laclauian framework which sees politics as equal to hegemony as equal to populism, one can conclude that populist actors are no different from other political actors; emotions and affects are always central to any political identity. Instead, the division between emotional and rational in politics serves to sediments exclusionary practices against newcomers and challengers of the status quo. I conclude by using the Laclauian framework, focus can be turned to the performative function of populism, and its political implications

Excluding Emotions: The Performative Function of Populism

Populists are often excluded from political life on the basis that they are too emotional. Both social movements as well as political parties who are labelled as populist are accused of using demagoguery and manipulation in order to attract support and new membership. Often, these critiques emanate from the political establishment, creating a division between emotional and rational actors in politics. In this article, I argue that instead of seeing populism as a nominal or ordinal category, we should look at how the term itself has performative properties. The article is interested in how populism as a concept is used as a tool for exclusion, and how being ‘too emotional’ is used as justification for excluding certain actors. This article first contends that this perspective is endemic to political and social theory, and has long been utilised to marginalise women, non-Europeans, or young people. Second, the article demonstrates how this perspective also pervades much of contemporary studies on populism, which do not sufficiently recognise the political implications of employing a strict divide between emotion and reason. Third, the article further contends that by using a Laclauian framework which sees politics as equal to hegemony as equal to populism, one can conclude that populist actors are no different from other political actors; emotions and affects are always central to any political identity. Instead, the division between emotional and rational in politics serves to sediments exclusionary practices against newcomers and challengers of the status quo. I conclude by using the Laclauian framework, focus can be turned to the performative function of populism, and its political implications

The curriculum and society

Through curricula, society expresses and determines its identity. The curriculum is always a more or less successful picture of what society was in the past, what it is now and what it wants to be in the future. A number of stakeholders and individuals cannot be indifferent to questions like: why, what and how to do it. The basic purpose of determinations (why), content (what) and methods (how) are a kind of a pedagogical vision of the future of a society and determine-that members of a society can be and what human potential can be developed. It largely depends on a successfully prepared curriculum. The question of which we will indulge in this paper is the culture of excellence in university teaching. Whether the quality of university teaching came to the level of metaphysics and became the essence of herself? Bologna process as a modern European trend is designed to cover effective models for teaching the student clearly knows what he teaches and learns why. Do we use models of motivation for academic achievement of students and teachers at universities in Macedonia? Is there a culture of quality? The results of the survey which included students in their final years and graduates as well as business community, showed that more than 60% of graduates have deficiencies in key professional working skills. More than 51% of students said they have not gained any practical skills during their studies. Young people in the region (1) does not possess the appropriate skills for employment, mainly skills that are listed by employers, and (2) there is no relationship between universities, students and society

First assessment of the plant phenology index (PPI) for estimating gross primary productivity in African semi-arid ecosystems

The importance of semi-arid ecosystems in the global carbon cycle as sinks for CO2 emissions has recently been highlighted. Africa is a carbon sink and nearly half its area comprises arid and semi-arid ecosystems. However, there are uncertainties regarding CO2 fluxes for semi-arid ecosystems in Africa, particularly savannas and dry tropical woodlands. In order to improve on existing remote-sensing based methods for estimating carbon uptake across semi-arid Africa we applied and tested the recently developed plant phenology index (PPI). We developed a PPI-based model estimating gross primary productivity (GPP) that accounts for canopy water stress, and compared it against three other Earth observation-based GPP models: the temperature and greenness model, the greenness and radiation model and a light use efficiency model. The models were evaluated against in situ data from four semi-arid sites in Africa with varying tree canopy cover (3 to 65 percent). Evaluation results from the four GPP models showed reasonable agreement with in situ GPP measured from eddy covariance flux towers (EC GPP) based on coefficient of variation, root-mean-square error, and Bayesian information criterion. The PPI-based GPP model was able to capture the magnitude of EC GPP better than the other tested models. The results of this study show that a PPI-based GPP model is a promising tool for the estimation of GPP in the semi-arid ecosystems of Africa.Comment: Accepted manuscript; 12 pages, 4 tables, 9 figure

A Market-driven Requirements Engineering Process - Results from an Industrial Improvement Programme

In market-driven software evolution, the objectives of a requirements engineering process include the envisioning and fostering of new requirements on existing packaged software products in a way that ensures competitiveness in the market place. This paper describes an industrial, market-driven requirements engineering process which incorporates continuous requirements elicitation and prioritisation together with expert cost estimation as a basis for release planning. The company has gained a measurable improvement in delivery precision and product quality of their packaged software. The described process will act as a baseline against which new promising techniques can be evaluated in the continuation of the improvement programme

Applicability of leaf area index products for boreal regions of Sweden

Leaf area index (LAI) of boreal ecosystems were estimated with optical instruments at the Laxemar and the Forsmark investigation areas in Sweden. The aim was to study the relationship between LAI and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from Landsat-5 and SPOT and evaluate the applicability of the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) LAI product for small boreal regions. Relationships between ground-estimated LAI and NDVI were significant for coniferous, deciduous and mixed forest sites in Laxemar. For Forsmark, effective LAI was correlated to NDVI for all sites. LAI estimated from NDVI was also used for evaluating accuracy of the MODIS LAI product. The comparison showed no correlation between MODIS LAI and NDVI-based LAI in Forsmark whereas there was in Laxemar. MODIS LAI was on average 2.28 higher than NDVI-based LAI and it also showed larger scatter. Scale issues were the main explanation to high MODIS LAI, since the heterogeneous landscapes with open areas (given a value of zero in the NDVI estimates) was seen as forest in the large pixels of the MODIS LAI product. Therefore, we do not recommend using the MODIS LAI product in small boreal regional landscapes, such as the Forsmark and Laxemar investigation areas

Left Populism and Foreign Policy: Bernie Sanders and Podemos

This article analyzes how populism is conceptualized and studied in International Relations (IR) and argues that it should be seen as a political logic instead of a political ideology. It does so by demonstrating that populist foreign policy looks radically different when analyzing the populist left, refuting the possibility of any distinctly 'populist' foreign policy positions. We argue that large parts of IR scholarship practice a form of concept-stretching that undermines the quality of analysis as well as the ability to make meaningful policy recommendations. Using the empirical case studies of Bernie Sanders in the United States and Podemos in Spain, the article demonstrates that populism does not translate into any shared ideological positions but is a way of formulating and performing - in these cases - leftist politics through which political actors can interpellate and mobilize different societal groups and demands behind their political projects. In particular, the analysis debunks common assumptions about populism's alleged effects on foreign policy and dangers to pluralist democracy and shows that "populism" neither necessarily opposes multilateralism, migration and global public good provision nor formulates an authoritarian claim to power