Populist Attraction:

Author(s)

Marion Löffler

Abstract

The year 2017 brought about a political change in Austria. The hitherto governing coalition of the Social Democrats (SPÖ) with the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) was replaced with a coalition between the rebranded so-called New People’s Party (ÖVP) and the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) which lasted only 17 months. This paper aims to theorize political masculinity and populism by taking Austria as an example. It combines the theory of Pierre Bourdieu and his conceptions of the political field, masculine domination, and symbolic violence with Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinities and discusses how political masculinities relate to a populist political style. Examining the electoral strategies of the two right-wing parties ÖVP and FPÖ in Austria, the paper illuminates two moments of change in political masculinities when confronted with populism: the transformation from oppositional to governmental populist political masculinity on the one hand, and the populist challenge to hegemonic political masculinity on the other

Organisation(s)

Department of Political Science, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Journal

NORMA, International Journal for Masculinity Studies

Volume

15

Pages

10-25

No. of pages

16

ISSN

1890-2138

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2020.1715118

Publication date

2020

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

504014 Gender studies, 506013 Political theory

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Gender Studies

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/7b0ee999-4665-4235-b686-cbd1131e1a23