Victimhood as a Legitimation Strategy of Populism in Power: The Case of Poland

Abstract

What legitimation strategy do populists use once they seize power? This article combines insights from literatures on populism in power, populist legitimation strategies, populist foreign policy and populist usages of memory politics to shed light on victimhood as a powerful legitimation strategy of populism in power. The main objective of this study is to understand the role of victims versus perpetrators dynamics as a legitimating strategy of populists in power, while looking at the single case study of Poland under the right-wing populist government led by the Law and Justice party (2015–2023). The empirical analysis traces how populists in power engage in a double game of self-legitimation as both victims and heroes, as well as in a two-level game of de-legitimation of domestic and international actors as perpetrators. It highlights how victimhood-based narratives allow the underdog illusion to be sustained when populists gain power, while copy-pasting the victim-perpetrator relationship from the traumatic past into the present. Finally, the analysis shows how the de-legitimating narrative imposes a principal-agent relationship between foreign and domestic perpetrators.