Applying the Holistic Assessment Method in Populism Research: Dynamics of the Four Main Aspects of Rhetoric

This study examines populism using the holistic grade method. The authors aim to identify the interaction and dynamics over time of four key aspects of populist rhetoric through a holistic grade method. The four aspects in this paper refer to the following elements of populist rhetoric: Manichaeism, people-centrism, anti-elitism, and the fourth aspect, which is separately identified and theorized by the authors - anti-systemicism. Identification of the interaction between the aspects is supposed to be done by testing four research hypotheses on a sample of seven political leaders: J. Biden, J. Bolsonaro, A. Ventura, B. Sanders, P. Echenique, J. Corbin and R. Erdogan. Also, the list of objectives of the study includes the following items: constructing a theoretical framework for studying the holistic grade method, expanding this framework to study specific aspects of populist rhetoric in more detail, justifying growth points and ways to optimize the holistic grade method to improve the qualitative interpretation of the results, assessing the possibility of refining the method and enriching it by analyzing the interaction of the four key components of rhetoric based on the results of case analysis and hypothesis testing, and presentation of the results of the study. The main results obtained in the paper include the confirmation of two research hypotheses: the interaction between people-centrism - anti-elitism and Manichaeism - anti-systemicism. Also, the authors present the dynamics of aspects of populist rhetoric for each of the seven cases analyzed by comparing speeches from different time periods. The authors emphasize the emergence of a new bifurcation point in populist rhetoric, the Hamas attack on Israel, and present an improved holistic grade method as a versatile and reliable tool for studying populism.