UCLA

Since the ascendance of Donald Trump in the Republican Party, much analysis has primarily examined US reactionary populism from the national level. However, this thesis contends that reactionary populism has become firmly embedded at different political scales via the Republican Party, taking on the shape of local contexts in particular ways. To support this claim, this paper uses the case of Northern Idaho to examine different socio-spatial and discursive mechanisms undergirding reactionary populism’s composition, logic, and viability at different political scales. These findings ultimately highlight how and why national reactionary populist politics have become co-constituted through regional, state, county, and municipal levels. This paper concludes that these processes make up a reactionary populist project that seeks to reterritorialize power at the state level, further straining political legitimacy in the US.