ABSTRACT
This chapter uses a social representational approach (SRA) to investigate how lay thinkers construct the notion of ‘the people’. This is one of the key components of a populist social order that mobilises ‘the people’ (‘us’) against ‘the elite’ (‘them’). The findings taken from interviews in Greece indicate that grassroots constructions draw from two organising principles that underlie the meanings of the people: tension between class and nation and tension between empowered and disempowered people. This chapter argues that these constructions have consequences for the politicisation of identities and their relation to politics in modern liberal societies. More studies on populism should be conducted through SRA in order to understand the different audiences of populist discourses and the way populism impacts politics in Western liberal democracies.
