The Covid-19 pandemic brought to Kyrgyzstan not only major economic recession and impoverishment, but also a spectacular populist turn in politics. Swift constitutional reforms initiated by president Sadyr Japarov moved the country’s semi-parliamentary system back to strong presidentialism. These changes were carried out in the name of ‘the people’ and around an idea of ‘strong state.’ Academic assumptions about the nexus of populism and authoritarianism suggest that populist discourses and politics are the domain of state and elite actors. However, Kyrgyzstan’s populist mobilization can be better understood as a story of re-politicization of a depoliticized polity. Drawing on post-foundational ontology of the political and the recent sociological theories of populism, this mobilization can be viewed as a collective enactment of a populist project.
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