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Populism in the City: the Case of Ford Nation

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Abstract

Populism is often viewed as a national-level phenomenon that pits a declining periphery against a cosmopolitan, economically successful metropolis. Our analysis of Rob Ford’s 2010 campaign and mayoralty in Toronto reveals the potential for the emergence of populist politics within the metropolis. To comprehend his appeal, principally within the city’s ethnically diverse postwar peripheral areas, we apply Brubaker’s conceptualization of populism as a discursive repertoire. Drawing on qualitative information and analysis of survey research, we first describe how Ford constructed electorally salient protagonists and antagonists. Second, we discuss how his emergence was enabled by institutional, economic, and demographic change. Finally, we explain Ford’s appeal to a diverse electorate in terms of the sincerity and coherence of his performance as the collective representation of suburban grievance. We conclude by arguing that populism may emerge in metropolitan settings with strong, spatially manifest internal social, economic, and cultural divisions.

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Funding

This study was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant number 430-2016-00331).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 725 Spadina Ave, Toronto, ON, M5S 2J4, Canada

    Daniel Silver & Fernando Calderón-Figueroa

  2. Department of Political Science, University of Western Ontario, Social Science Centre Rm 4166, London, ON, N6A 5C2, Canada

    Zack Taylor

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  1. Daniel Silver
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Correspondence to Zack Taylor.

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Silver, D., Taylor, Z. & Calderón-Figueroa, F. Populism in the City: the Case of Ford Nation. Int J Polit Cult Soc 33, 1–21 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-018-9310-1

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