Populism as political imagination

This chapter approaches the social psychology of populism as political imagination. It presents an approach to political imagination, drawing from the social representations approach, social identity approach, affect theory, and critical and rhetorical discursive psychology. This provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how political imagination symbolically constructs realities, mobilises emotions and identities, crafts influential narratives, and challenges existing power structures. The chapter further elaborates on the interplay between these approaches in the context of populism as a mobilising force and suggests that mobilising populist imagination builds upon four key assumptions: populism as shared knowledge, populism interpreted through the lens of identity, populism as a multimodal practice, and populism as mobilising imagination. Overall, the chapter provides a thorough understanding of populism as a complex interplay of representation, affect, identity, and discourse, shaping social and moral landscapes and influencing collective actions and intergroup relations.