ABSTRACT

HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY AND THE STRUCTURAL CONDITIONS OF THE SOVEREIGNIST REACTION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

The investigation of populist movements tends to be monopolized by political science and one of its subfield, that is, international relations. While political science has been scrutinizing populist parties and their agendas, populist leaders and their particular narratives, and also the electoral system specific to a certain country, international relations has paid heed to neo-sovereigntism. This foreign policy populism could produce two major effects. One of these is called systemic sovereigntism and consists in the full withdrawal of a given state from a regional security alliance. The other effect is called lateral sovereigntism and it could lie in a given state’s plan to alter its borders at the expense of the neighbouring states. The research question that this article puts forward is whether historical sociology can insert itself into the investigation of populist movements that appear to thrive within the European Union. The premise that this text works from is that, whether the occurrence and dynamic of populist movements can be related to structural conditions, historical sociology could play a role in the explorations of such movements. To address this research question, the article defines the main concepts, gets into some details of historical sociology’s heuristic mission and looks at structural conditions that could favour the emergence of populist movements.

Keywords: historical sociology, structural conditions, populism, sovereigntism, the Lippmann gap.

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