Examining Leaders’ Relations with Bureaucracy in the Context of Right-Wing Populism: The Case of Trump
Öz
This study examines the populist politics of Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, and analyzes the impact of populism on Trump’s leadership style. The research evaluates political discourses produced during the 2016 and 2024 election campaigns—including campaign speeches, political advertisements, campaign slogans, and posters within the framework of critical discourse analysis. The study is guided by the central question of how Trump, as a populist leader, mobilized emotions, utilized the media, and employed a populist style of communication. It investigates how Trump produced and legitimized power through his populist approach, and how this process was shaped along the axis of power and discourse. Furthermore, the study explores the extent to which concepts such as power, domination, inequality, and discrimination—core elements of critical perspectives are embedded in and articulated through Donald Trump’s populist rhetoric. This study aims to demonstrate, through the case of Donald Trump, how a populist leader employs political language, produces power through discourse, and how this process is reflected in the political rhetoric of the Republican Party. Accordingly, the impact of populism on political leadership style and the representational strategies constructed through discourse are analyzed in depth, and the relationship between leadership and populism is evaluated at both theoretical and empirical levels. The findings indicate that Trump primarily employed populism at the level of style rather than as a coherent ideology. In this context, Trump’s populism is characterized by rhetorical strategies such as the people–elite dichotomy, the emphasis on “us versus them,” the use of simple, plain, and direct expressions, appeals to locality, nationalism, and traditionalism, frequent references to crisis and threat, as well as the use of coarse manners and exaggerated statements.
Anahtar Kelimeler
Populism, Donald Trump, Critical Analysis, Leadership, Style
Kaynakça
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