The heartland in "Populism" by Paul A. Taggart. Populism as a challenge to democracy

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Politics - Political Theory and the History of Ideas Journal, grade: 1,0, University of Münster, language: English, abstract: This paper is an analysis about what the heartland might be that all populists dream of and if the concept of a heartland can help in getting a clearer picture of populism.

Exemplary I want to prove the heartland's usefulness of the theoretical framework by applying Canovan s work on the two faces of democracy. Defining the heartland purely based on Taggart will be my first step to then embed this concept in the context of other authors, who wrote about the heartland outside of populism. This should reveal dimensions of the heartland but also lead to a critical assessment of Taggart s use of the term.

The concept of the heartland will then be compared to Canovan s concept to see the connections between her redemptive face of politics and Taggart s heartland. In this chapter, democracy will be focused on and how the heartland relates to it. Additionally, I want to compile a short catalog of the heartland s characteristics that go beyond Taggart s conception.