Populism i en postkonfliktstat : En studie av Lëvizja Vetëvendosjes retorik om folk, elit och korruption i Kosovo

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how, and to what extent Lëvizja Vetëvendosje uses populist rhetoric in its political communication, and how corruption is constructed and used in this rhetoric. The study focuses on Kosovo as a post-conflict state shaped by weak institutions and recurring debates about corruption, legitimacy and self-determination. Through a text analysis with a discourse-oriented approach, the thesis analyses selected public speeches and statements said by Albin Kurti and other representatives of Lëvizja Vetëvendosje. The theoretical framework combines three different perspectives on populism. Firstly, populism as a thin-centered ideology based on the opposition between “the people” and “the corrupt elite”. Secondly, the perspective of populism as a political logic through which different demands and grievances are connected, and lastly, the perspective of populism as a political style expressed through crisis narratives, direct appeals to the people and confrontational language. The analysis shows that Lëvizja Vetëvendosjes rhetoric contains clear populist elements, but that the elements are not equally present in all parts of the material. The rhetoric becomes most clearly populist when corruption is connected to the suffering of the people, illegitimate elites and the need to reclaim the state. Corruption is not only presented as a legal or administrative problem, but as a moral and political symbol of how public resources have been transformed into private power. The thesis concludes that Vetëvendosjes populism should be understood as context-specific, shaped by Kosovos experiences of post-war statebuilding, international supervision, weak institutional legitimacy and conflicts over who the state should serve.