Populist strategy revisited: toward a coalitional framework of populist mobilisation

How do populist movements build and maintain political power? Existing scholarship offers contradictory answers: one approach defines populism through its rejection of organised interests, while another emphasises the collective nature of populists’ rise to power. This article proposes a coalitional framework to resolve this tension, arguing that approaches emphasising collective mobilisation better capture the dynamics of contemporary populism. Through sustained attention to the political-economic context and to the coalitional infrastructure underpinning populist projects, this article builds on existing approaches to populist power and mobilisation. We contend that by attacking organised interests and marginalising their position within mainstream political representation, while leaving them with residual power resources available for populist mobilisation, neoliberal transformation created conditions favourable to populist coalition-building. What distinguishes populist coalitions is the simultaneous destruction of existing institutional arrangements and the construction of controlled alternatives that undermine the autonomy of organised interests while consolidating their dependence. We illustrate the framework’s analytical utility through two cases of right-wing populist governance – Poland’s labour-inclusive coalition (PiS-Solidarity) and Hungary’s business-inclusive coalition (Fidesz-domestic business) – showing how the same coalitional logic can produce divergent policy regimes and distinct pathways toward democratic backsliding.