POLITICAL SOCIETY, FEAR OF SMALL NUMBERS AND ELECTORAL POLITICS

The objectives of this study are, empirically, to understand the political mechanisms through which right-wing populist parties have fragmented and antagonized the political landscape in Europe, with Austria as a case study; conceptually, to “reverse the gaze” by applying postcolonial conceptualizations of “political society” and “fear of small numbers”, developed to explain crises of political identity in South Asia, to the study of electoral politics in Europe; and theoretically, to craft a new vocabulary to study the “cultural politics” of democratic elections.