Populism, Public Spheres, and the Politics of Participation

This seminar is part of InDocSem, the first interdisciplinary doctoral seminar series at Sciences Po. It offers a unique space for intellectual exchange, where doctoral researchers from across the School of Research come together to explore questions that transcend disciplinary boundaries. By inviting diverse perspectives on research and fostering dialogue across fields, InDocSem encourages participants to challenge methods, blur disciplinary lines, and uncover synergies between approaches. Each session features a presenter from one discipline and a discussant from another, creating a dynamic conversation that deepens our understanding of shared topics while cultivating a vibrant and engaged academic community.

Alexandra KOROLEVA

Third-year doctoral student in History at Centre for History

Title: 'Difficult but happy years': (Post)Soviet Academic 'Periphery' and Local Public Sphere(s) in the 1980s-1990s

Abstract: This research deals with social, cultural and political aspects of the history of a scientific town of Akademgorodok near Novosibirsk, Western Siberia, created in the 1950s to concentrate applied research in the vast Siberian region. A political project, this town quickly became associated with cultural freedom and variability of Soviet scientific intelligentsia (professors, scientists, scholars, engineers) who engaged in and founded different clubs, among them the local cells of the nature protection society, the cultural and historic preservation society (1960s), music clubs, sobriety cell (1980s) and some quasi-political organisations, that in the late 1980s participated in democratized elections and stood on nationalistic, right-wing positions. This research attempts to trace these alterations and transformations, as well as define the social networks of the Akademgorodok residents who partook in these clubs and groups. The research puts forward the questions of civil activism in authoritarian Soviet regime, of the degree of success or failure of soviet ‘social engineering’ project(s), as well as the specificities of ‘peripheral’ academic community, its inner power relations, resistance to or cooperation with the Soviet authorities and engagement in what can be considered as a local public sphere.

Saga OSKARSON KINDSTRAND 

Second-year doctoral student in Political science at Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE)

Title: From Anti-Party to Mass Party? An Ethnographic Study of Political Linkage

Abstract: This thesis investigates the endurance and transformation of mass-party legacies in contemporary European democracies through a comparative study of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) and the Sweden Democrats (SD). Much of the scholarship on party decline argues that citizens no longer wish to engage in formal political participation, while parties themselves lack incentives to cultivate large memberships. Yet, the emergence of populist parties that actively invest in grassroots organisations with growing memberships suggests otherwise. Situated within debates on party decline, mass-party legacies, and theories of representation, this project seeks to understand how parties continue to connect citizens to political life, and under what conditions they may reinvent themselves as representative platforms. By placing the Social Democrats and the Sweden Democrats side by side, a historically dominant mass party and a newer populist formation, it investigates what it means to be a mass party, and how different party models connect citizens to politics and legitimise representation.