Populism
Populism, according to the RAE, is a «political trend that aims to attract the popular classes». Its origin is a Russian movement of the century XIX, called narodnism (Narodnichestvo, народничество), a term that translates into Spanish as populism, derived from the motto «going towards the people», which acted as a guide for the Russian democratic movements of the second half of the 19th century.
Although it is a difficult concept to define exactly since it designates different realities, in some currents of social sciences it is conceived as an ideology that is based on the distinction and dualistic opposition between "the people" (which is seen as a sovereign entity) and "the elite" (conceived as an expression of unwanted political inequality). On the other hand, the use of the adjective "populist" is usually done in political and academic contexts, in a pejorative way, without the term itself deriving an evident ideological identification, but rather a strategic one - within the left-right spectrum -. In recent times the term "populism" is also used as a catch-all to include difficult political phenomena. classification.
Those who think that populism constitutes a political current with objective characteristics, highlight aspects such as dichotomous simplification, anti-elitism (proposals for social equality or that seek to favor the weakest), the predominance of emotional approaches over rational ones, social mobilization, etc. Other scholars consider that populism is the opposite side of elitism and that the most appropriate political system is pluralism, which does not fall into either extreme, making power fluctuate between all political agents, balancing the differences; this vision questions the initial idea of the United States Constitution, "We the people", to maintain that there is no "the town", but there are multiple towns in each country.
Definition
A controversial term
The term "populism" is often used rhetorically in a pejorative sense with the aim of denigrating political adversaries, to the point of identifying "populism" with demagoguery, as Ralf Dahrendorf does: "Populists on the right, populists on the left. Who says "populism" It enters into difficult territory... In any case, the concept of populism is pejorative... We speak then of demagoguery, and demagoguery has a large repertoire of methods." A similar position is held by Francesc de Carreras.
Likewise, the term "populism" is often used in very different contexts without specifying a clear definition of its meaning. It has come to be applied in the religious field to describe liberation theology and the theology of the people, —Pope Francis himself has been described as a populist— and even to refer to the political action of concentrated economic groups, with the expression "populism of capital." There are authors who go so far as to deny that it is possible to define the term populism. This is the case, for example, of Ezequiel Adamovsky who questions the scientific validity of populism as a category: «Is it a category that can be applied to both the Greek left-wing coalition of Syriza and its enemies in the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn movement? As a concept to understand reality, populism has become extinct." This same author states the following:
It is a term that is used to define a series of very dissimilar political phenomena, which have nothing in common, and that group for example to an authoritarian, misogynist, right-wing and xenophobic person like Donald Trump and also intends to put in the same bag to Podemos in Spain, which in all those areas has exactly opposite ideas. It intends to put the ultra-right together with the left; Latin American left-wing governments along with neo-Nazi groups from Germany. And the way they are grouping them is by putting into the same bag just everything that is separated from what is supposed to be the ideal of good democracy, which is nothing but liberal democracy.
Definitions of «populism» from Latin America
In Latin America, four definitions of the term "populism" have been formulated: structuralist, economic, political-strategic and discursive.
- Structurelist
The structuralist defines populism "as a type of political regime that is based on a multiclass alliance and charismatic leadership with the objective of implementing the so-called development model of industrialization by import substitution."
- Economic
The economics, which has a pejorative meaning, identifies populism with "a set of macroeconomic policies promoted with the aim of winning elections, but which, once implemented, end up generating unsustainable levels of spending and triggering, sooner or later,, deep adjustment policies.
- Policy-strategic
The third definition, the political-strategic one, conceives of populism "as personalist leaderships that are capable not only of mobilizing a large number of voters who have no ties with each other, but also of setting up an electoral machinery with little institutionality that It is directed by the personalist leader in question.
- Discursive
In fourth and last place, the discursive position defines populism as "the construction of a popular identity that articulates a series of unsatisfied demands through the identification of an elite that opposes the designs of the people." It should be noted that this last definition has spread outside of Latin America thanks to the influence of the writings of the Argentine philosopher Ernesto Laclau.
For his part, the Argentine Juan Santiago Ylarri proposes the following as the traits that are most frequently present in those movements classified as populist: rejection of political professionals; distrust in existing public institutions; direct dialogue between the leadership of the movement and the social base; strong will to mobilize and participate; nationalist rhetoric; caudillo leadership.
The «ideational» definition of populism
In the second decade of the XXI century, the so-called “ideational approach” to the definition of populism has spread—which It is perhaps the one that has been most successful—when considering this as a discourse, an ideology or a worldview. Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, starting from this approach, define populism as follows: «a thin ideology, which considers society basically divided into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, the pure people versus the corrupt elite, and which maintains that politics should be the expression of the general will (volonté générale) of the people.
By describing populist ideology as "thin" Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser mean that it is underdeveloped - its ideological core and concepts are limited, unlike "thick" or "full" ideologies such as socialism, liberalism or fascism - so to define their message populists necessarily have to resort to other ideologies - "host ideologies", Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser call them - which would explain why populism has taken multiple forms in different places and times and that there are right-wing and left-wing populisms - those on the right would have some type of nationalism as their "host ideology" and those on the left some form of socialism -. In this sense, populism is "a kind of mental map thanks to which individuals analyze and they understand the political reality. Their opposing ideologies would be elitism, which believes that "the people" are dangerous, dishonest and vulgar; and pluralism, which is contrary to the dualistic and Manichean vision of both populism and elitism.
Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser's definition includes what they call the three "central concepts" of populism: the people, the elite and the general will. The concept "the people" is understood by populism in three senses: as holder of sovereignty - populisms advocate "returning the government to the people" against elites that have usurped it -, as "common people" - claiming the dignity and recognition of groups that due to their socioeconomic or sociocultural position are "excluded" from power, such as the "descamisados" of Peronism - and as the nation - as the national community defined in civic or ethnic terms. For its part, the elite, described as "corrupt" and "usurper" of the voice of the people, is defined on the basis of power, so it would be equivalent to the establishment and would include political leaders, economic and media. The third "central concept" of populism is the general will or "will of the people", an idea taken from Rousseau from which populists share their criticism of representative government and their preference for direct democracy. An example of how populists understand The principle of the general will can be the following fragment from Hugo Chávez's inaugural speech in 2007:
All individuals are subject to error or seduction; but not the people, who possess to an eminent degree the awareness of their good and the measure of their independence. Thus his judgment is pure, his strong will; and therefore no one can corrupt him, no less intimidate him.
These same authors point out three types of populist mobilization: personalist leadership —which constitutes “the form of populist mobilization par excellence”—, the social movement —the least common— and the political party. The predominance of one or another type of mobilization depends on the type of political system in which it operates. Thus, personalistic leadership is more frequent in presidential systems, while the political party predominates in parliamentary systems.
The "ideational approach" has been questioned by other authors. For example, Enzo Traverso proposes considering populism not as an ideology, but as a rhetorical procedure consisting of the exaltation of the "natural" virtues of the people to mobilize the masses against the system.
History
"Populism" was the name of a republican movement that emerged at the end of the 19th century in the Russian Empire, with the aim of replacing the monarchy with a democracy. Neither before nor after, any other movement in the world defined itself as populist. Despite this, some scholars have maintained that, both before and after, other 'populist' political movements and parties appeared, even without themselves recognizing themselves as such. Other scholars prefer to use the word "popular" to define the movements and political parties that place the people as the primary subject of political life, questioning the usual pejorative meaning with which the nickname "populist" is used.
Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser maintain a theory according to which all political movements can be divided into three groups: elitism, populism and pluralism. Elitism is that party or movement that maintains that political power should be held by the elites, populism is that which maintains that political power should be held by the people (sovereignty of the people) and pluralism is that which maintains that the Power must fluctuate between all political agents, balancing differences. According to them, since the 19th century, «populism has went from being a small elitist group in Tsarist Russia, and a large but disorganized group in some regions of the United States, to a diverse political phenomenon that covers the entire planet." Another author, Michel Wieviorka, distinguishes two eras in history. of populism: that which ends in the 1960s or early 1970s; and the second, which they call contemporary populism. Mudee and Rovira Kaltwasser consider that what they call "populism", has had a great development in Latin America due to "the combination of high levels of inequality economic and relatively long periods of democratic government.
19th century
Before Russian populism
In Argentina, historians such as Luciana Sabina and Rubén H. Zorrilla, maintain that the so-called "caudillos", who governed the provinces after independence (1810-1816), were populists. In the States United States, Andrew Jackson, who governed between 1829 and 1839, has been considered the first populist president of that country.
Russian populism (Narodism)
Russian populism, or Narodnism (from народ = narod, town, people, nation; and ник = nik, equivalent to the suffix "ism") began in the middle of the 19th century, as a cultural movement, inspired by socialist thinkers such as Aleksandr Herzen, who formulated in 1861 the slogan "To the people!", promoting a movement of students known as "Walking with the people", who defined themselves as "propagandists" and their mission was to make known to the popular sectors the works censored by the monarchical government.
Russian populism (naródnichestvo) was not a single or homogeneous movement, but rather an ethical inspiration to make contact with the popular sectors, which had a large number of political, cultural and political movements and organizations. Russian artistic societies, in order not to divorce the elites of thinkers, politicians, artists and students, from the popular sectors.
Among the large number of Narodist or populist organizations, there are People's Will, one of whose members assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881, and Black Repartition. None of the Russian populist organizations managed to establish a mass peasant movement, but the principles of Russian populism influenced most political parties that promoted democracy. Russian populists, in turn, influenced the agrarian movements that spread across Eastern Europe during the first two decades of the 20th century. These movements "considered the peasant as the main source of morality, and agricultural life constituted the foundation of society; Furthermore, they vehemently opposed the urban elite, centralizing tendencies, and the materialist basis of capitalism, advocating instead the preservation of small family farms and self-management.
The "prairie populism" American
It emerged in the midwestern states of the United States that at the end of the 19th century were experiencing acute processes of economic change that severely affected the rural world. There it was developed in the last two decades of the 19th century and the first of the XX what has been called "prairie populism" (prairie populism) which considered that "the people" (pure) were the free farmers and independent (yeomen) of European origin and "the elite" (corrupt) were the parasitic bankers who lived off what others produced (in line with the widespread ideology of producerism).) and the politicians who were at his service.
Thus the distinction between the "people" and the "elite" "was moral, geographical and occupational; that is, good rural peasants on the one hand and corrupt urban bankers and politicians on the other. 1890, although it did not have a national presence. In the presidential elections of 1896 he allied himself with the Democratic Party candidate, William Jennings Bryan, who chose the populist Thomas E. Watson as his running mate as his vice-presidential candidate. The defeat in those elections was a serious blow to the Party. of the Town, from which it was never recovered - it would end up being dissolved in 1908.
20th century (until 1989)
The United Farmers of Alberta (Canada)
The United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) was a party that governed the Canadian province of Alberta between 1921 and 1935. According to Francisco Panizza, it was a populist movement.
The Mexican Revolution
In 1910 the Mexican Revolution began, which lasted for decades. Adalberto Santana characterizes it as an "unprecedented populist revolution" in the following terms:
There are certainly many visions and interpretations about the Mexican Revolution. However, from a more objective interpretation it is part of the view that this revolution, far from being the only one, “was far from being a social revolution; rather it constituted a form, unprecedented in history, of political revolution, namely: a populist revolution.
Argentina: radicalism and Peronism
In 1916, the first president elected by secret vote, Hipólito Yrigoyen, of the Radical Civic Union, took office in Argentina. According to Rodolfo Richard-Jorba, it was a populist movement, which would be continued by Peronism, between 1946 and 1955, although neither of the two parties defined themselves as populist. Yrigoyen was succeeded by Marcelo T. de Alvear in 1922 and re-elected in 1928, to be overthrown by an elitist right-wing civil-military coup in 1930, the first in a long sequence of liberal right-wing civil-military coups, which would overthrow all the radical and Peronist governments until 1983. Radicalism returned to govern with Arturo Frondizi (1958-1962), Arturo Illia (1963-1966), Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989) and Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001). Peronism returned to govern with Cámpora-Perón-Martínez (1973-1976), Carlos Menem (1989-1999), Eduardo Duhalde (2002-2003), Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015) and Alberto Fernández (2019-present). Peronism developed a program in which social justice has the highest priority, through a combined representation of local leaders, unions and women.[citation required]
United States: Franklin D. Roosevelt
In 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidential elections in the United States, being re-elected three times until his death in 1945, carrying out a policy of state intervention and income redistribution with union support, known as the New Deal. David Greenberg considers that it was a populist movement.
Getulio Vargas in Brazil and José María Velasco Ibarra in Ecuador
In 1930 there was a military coup d'état in Brazil that placed Getúlio Vargas as president, remaining in power until 1945. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser consider that it was a populist movement, which was a consequence of the Crisis of 1929 and which was related to the first Peronism in Argentina (1945-1955) and Velasquismo in Ecuador (1934-1935, 1944-1947, 1952-1956, 1960-1961, 1968-1972), forming part of what they call the first wave of Latin American populism, who developed an ideology of Americanism that defended the common identity of all the inhabitants of Latin America and at the same time denounced imperialist interference, adopting corporatist tendencies. According to Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, the three essentially agreed in their definition of " pure people", as "a virtuous mestizo community composed of peasants and workers" - excluding indigenous people and blacks - and of the "corrupt elite" as a "national oligarchy in alliance with imperialist forces, which opposed the model of industrialization by import substitution", which did not identify that elite with the establishment but only the part of it that opposed them.
Alberta Social Credit Party (Canada)
The Social Credit Party of the Canadian province of Alberta, led by William Aberhart, governed between 1935 and 1971. According to Panizza it was a right-wing populist movement, which promoted the principles of social credit. The Social Credit movement was developed in Canada between the 1930s and 1960s, articulated in regional parties and in a national political party (the Social Credit Party of Canada).
Gabriel Terra and Luis Batlle in Uruguay
Terra
Gabriel Terra was president of Uruguay between 1931 and 1938. He established a government of an illiberal, nationalist, and populist nature, which was opposed by Batllismo (of the Colorado Party), the Independent Whites (split from the National Party), and the left. In 1933 he carried out a coup d'état together with Luis Alberto de Herrera, through which he dissolved Parliament. Such a de facto presidential term lasted 5 years.
Berres
Luis Batlle Berres was president of Uruguay between 1947 and 1955, with the support of Herrerismo and socialism. His government has been defined as populist by Vivian Trías, assimilating it to Argentine Peronism and Brazilian Varguism.
Poujadism in France
In France, in the French legislative elections of 1956, Poujadism left its mark on French politics to the point that "Poujadism" became synonymous with populism.
McCarthyism in the United States
In the 1950s McCarthyism spread in the United States, a deeply reactionary anti-communist movement for which "the people" were the (true) ordinary and patriotic Americans, and "the corrupt elite", the wealthy sectors of the Northeast. of the country that sympathized with "anti-American" socialist ideas and that lived at the expense of the hard work of the "people." McCarthyism disappeared when the excesses committed during the anti-communist witch hunt led by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy became known, but the right-wing populist wake it left was taken advantage of by some conservative politicians such as Republican Richard Nixon, who appealed to the "silent majority." » in reference to the (true) «American people» who did not allow themselves to be fooled by the (liberal) elite that sought to silence them, or George C. Wallace, former governor of the state of Alabama, who ran in the 1968 United States presidential elections as a candidate of the far-right and segregationist American Independent Party - he obtained almost ten million votes, 13.5% of those cast.
The Cuban Revolution
In the midnight that connects 1958 with 1959, the Cuban Revolution triumphed, with the leadership of Fidel Castro, remaining in power from then on. The Cuban Revolution, which adhered to communism a few years after the triumph, has been described as a populist revolution by Carlos Alberto Montaner.
Robert F. Kennedy in the United States
In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy, brother of former President John F. Kennedy, to whom he was one of his main advisors, was assassinated in the United States. Robert Kennedy was assassinated while campaigning for the presidential elections, with a high chance of winning. His ideas and his government program have been characterized as & # 34; inclusive populism & # 34; by Richard D. Kahlenberg, and Stefano Vaccara.
Indira Gandhi in India
Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister of the Republic of India between 1966-1977 and 1980-1988, less than two decades after her country gained independence from the British Empire, under the leadership of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, after a century of colonial dependence. Indira Gandhi has been considered by scholars such as Bharat Wariavwalla and Prabhash Ranjan, as the first and most important populist leader in Indian history.
Reaganism in the United States
In 1981 Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States, being re-elected in 1985 until 1989. Reagan carried out an economic and social policy known as "conservative revolution" and also called reaganomics. Several authors such as Norman Birnbaum, or Terri Bimes, describe Reagan and his politics as populism.
1989-2000
Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser maintain that in the 1990s what they call the second wave of Latin American populism developed, which has its most representative examples in Argentina, with Carlos Menem; in Brazil, with Fernando Collor de Mello; and in Peru, with Alberto Fujimori ―whose legacy was assumed by his daughter Keiko Fujimori―. The three came to power in the midst of a deep economic crisis, blaming the elite for it (except in the case of Menem) and proclaiming that They came to reestablish the legitimate sovereignty of the "people" (except in the case of Menem). Once in power, the three applied the harsh neoliberal adjustment policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the Washington Consensus, after the victory of the United States in the Cold War.[citation required]
In this second Latin American populist wave, the "corrupt elite", unlike the first, was identified as the "political class" that defended a strong State and opposed the development of the free market - in this case no appeal was made. neither to Americanism nor to anti-imperialism―, while "the people", following the neoliberal perspective, according to Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, "were portrayed as a mass of passive individuals, whose ideas could be deduced from opinion polls." One of the Characteristics of this second populist wave was the adoption of programs to combat poverty. Although that description does not fit the case of Menem in Argentina.
In Europe, populism burst into political life in the 1990s, mostly adopting an authoritarian, nativist and xenophobic form, such as the Progress Party of Norway, the Vlaams Belang of the Belgian state of Flanders or the Italian League, led by Umberto Bossi. Its model was the National Front of France, founded in 1972 by Jean Marie Le Pen, a former Poujadist deputy, and also, but to a lesser extent, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) of Jorg Haider. Other parties, on the other hand, emerged from traditional politics adopting neoliberalism as a “host ideology” – proposing tax cuts and market deregulation. This was the case of the British UKIP led by Nigel Farage, founded in 1993, and of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, founded in 1994.
Where the greatest proliferation of populist (right-wing) parties and organizations occurred during the 1990s was in central and eastern Europe as a consequence of the disappearance of the communist regimes after the 1989 Revolution. In practically all of the first In the democratic elections that were held, populist parties were presented, such as the Civic Forum of Czechoslovakia, which did so with the slogan "Parties are for their members, Civic Forum is for everyone." Some of these parties had a very short life, such as Poland's Party They consolidated themselves as the left-wing populist Directorate-Social Democracy (SMER) of Slovakia.
In the United States, the Texas billionaire Ross Perot ran as a candidate for the 1992 United States presidential elections with the motto United We Stand, America ('United we stand, America') and with a right-wing populist program. He used plain language to attract the "pure" people of the center of the country, who confronted the "liberal elite" (corrupt) of the East Coast of the United States - educated in the "perverse" Ivy League - who had " "appropriate" of the federal government and advocated "un-American" policies. Thus he promised the (true) American people that he would "clean out the barn" of Washington so that it would stop undermining the values of the "people" and granting "special privileges" to minorities, who do not deserve them. He obtained 18.9% of the votes and ran again in the 1996 United States presidential election at the head of the newly founded United States Reform Party. He obtained 8.4% of the votes (about eight million votes), ten points less than four years before.
Outside Europe and America, there was the emergence of populist parties in Australia and New Zealand that were very similar to European right-wing populists. Both New Zealand First (NZF) and Australia's One Nation (PHON) were the result of frustration created in certain sectors by increased immigration and the implementation of neoliberal welfare state reforms. Both parties shared nativism as one of the bases of their ideology. Thus, for example, the leader of One Nation, Pauline Hanson, defended the descendants of the British settlers who inhabit rural Australia against the urban intellectual elite who, according to She "wants to turn this country upside down by returning Australia to the aborigines."
1998-2015
In the 1998 Venezuelan presidential elections, Hugo Chávez won, opening a period of Latin American governments that questioned the neoliberal policies of the Washington Consensus and the International Monetary Fund that had predominated in the 1990s. Governments with similar tendencies joined forces. established in Brazil, with Lula and Dilma Rousseff, in Argentina with Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, in Uruguay, with Tabaré Vázquez and Pepe Mujica, in Bolivia with Evo Morales, in Ecuador, with Rafael Correa, in Paraguay with Fernando Lugo, in Chile with Michelle Bachelet, in Nicaragua with Daniel Ortega, in El Salvador with Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sánchez Cerén. To define the common elements of these governments, adjectives such as "progressive", "anti-neoliberal", "socialist" or "from the left". Among the expressions used to characterize them is also "populist". Regarding the application of the term populist, former Uruguayan president José Mujica said:
The word populist does not use it because they use it for a sweep and a mower. Those who vote in Germany on the right half neo-Nazis are populists, in Nicaragua they are populists. So anything is populism. I draw this conclusion: everything you don't agree with, which bothers, is populist. It's a category that doesn't define.José Mujica
All of them criticize neoliberalism, applied in Latin America in the final two decades of the XX century, one of whose effects had been the increase in inequality, and propose a social alternative aimed especially at poor populations. Thus, as Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser have highlighted, "these leaders have developed a concept of a pure inclusive people that encompasses all excluded and discriminated people", as can be seen especially in the "ethnopopulist" speech of Evo Morales. All of them denounce the corrupt elite and identify it with the establishment that had governed until then.
In the United States in the first decade of the XXI century, two populist movements of different nature emerged - the left-wing populist movement Occupy Wall Street and the right-wing populist Tea Party. However, both agreed that they intended to respond to the serious social consequences of the Great Recession that began in 2008, which is why they shared some traits such as their radical opposition to the bank bailout agreed to by Republican President George W. Bush and continued by Democrat Barack Obama, in addition to both claiming to defend "Main Street" (the "healthy people") against "Wall Street" (the "corrupt elite").
2015 onwards
In 2015, right-wing populism once again burst onto the Latin American political scene with the victory of Mauricio Macri in the 2015 Argentine presidential elections, and then with the victory in the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.
The Occupy Wall Street movement became known with the occupation of Zuccotti Park in the heart of the financial district of Manhattan and with its rhetoric in defense of "the 99%", the American people harmed by the crisis, and "the 1%”, the corrupt economic, political and media elite – rhetoric that was largely assumed by the 2016 Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders. For its part, the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement, one of whose most prominent members was Sarah Palin - vice presidential candidate in the 2008 United States presidential elections - has resorted to producerism to exalt the "productive" majority versus the "unproductive" elite that identifies with the bankers, the Democratic Party and Hollywood.
Many of its proposals were taken up by Republican Donald Trump, who won the 2016 United States presidential election and whose electoral campaign, which combined nativism and authoritarianism and anti-establishment slogans, was led by Steve Bannon, a far-right close to the Tea Party. In one of his campaign speeches, Trump said: "Our movement wants to replace a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people." He reiterated these same ideas in the inaugural speech of his presidency in January 2017:
For too long, a small group of people in the capital of our nation has covered the benefits of the state, while the people bear their cost. Washington prospered, but the people were not part of that wealth. Politicians were barking, but employment was leaving and factories closed. The ruling class protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been yours; their triumphs have not been yours; and while they celebrated it in the capital of our nation, very little cause of celebration had all those families that, everywhere in the country, go through a troubled situation. All this will change from now, from here to here, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.
In this period in central and eastern Europe, right-wing populism was consolidated, even coming to power, as in Hungary, with Viktor Orbán at the head of the Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union (2010), and in Poland, with the party Law and Justice, PiS (2015). Both triumphed with a speech of the "stolen revolution" - in reference to the 1989 revolution that put an end to the communist regimes - according to which the new democratic elites were not distinguished from the communist elites, so they had to be removed from power to return power to the "people." Thus, Fidesz, as soon as it came to power in 2010, modified the Hungarian Constitution, arguing that "we were never able to do what we wanted to do in 1989."
Some of the leaders of the right-wing populist parties in Central and Eastern Europe have adopted anti-Semitic positions - accusing the leaders of their respective countries of being at the service of the Jews or Israel -, such as those of the National Attack Union (Ataka) from Bulgaria or those from the Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik).
Right-wing populist parties also developed in Western Europe, such as the Pim Fortuyn List or Geert Wilders' Freedom Party in the Netherlands. On April 8, 2019, the platform Towards a Europe of Common Sense! was presented in Rome with a view to forming a grand alliance of right-wing populist and anti-European parties for the 2019 European Parliament elections. At the presentation event, the main promoter of the project, the leader of the League and vice president of the Italian government Matteo Salvini, who was accompanied by leaders of the Alternative for Germany, the True Finns and the Danish People's Party, made a call to "rise up." at the polls to "change the Europe of bureaucrats and bankers."
On the other hand, in this period, left-wing populisms appeared in Western Europe in response to the harsh social and economic consequences of the Great Recession that began in 2008. In Greece, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) emerged, which came to power in 2015 with Alexis Tsipras as prime minister, with the support of the far-right populist party ANEL; in Italy the 5 Star Movement, founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo and led since 2017 by Luigi Di Maio, and which formed a coalition government with Matteo Salvini's right-wing populist League party; and in Spain Podemos, emerged from the Indignados protest of March 15, 2011 and whose leader, at that time, was Pablo Iglesias. According to Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, “this left-wing populism resembles the Occupy Wall Street movement in North America, although each actor has its own enemies and specific terminology; For Syriza, the European Union is an important part of the elite, while Podemos is mainly opposed to “the caste”, the derogatory term it uses to refer to the national political elite. In France, the Rebellious France that Michel Wieviorka considers himself a left-wing populist.
Outside Europe and America, populist movements emerged in Southeast Asia as a consequence of the Asian crisis of 1997. All of them attacked globalization and the national elites that applied neoliberal policies. In some cases they were leaders without a political past who came to power although their mandates were brief. This was the case of Joseph Estrada in the Philippines, Roh Moo-hyun in South Korea or Chen Shui-bian in Taiwan. Southeast Asia's most prominent populist was Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand who was overthrown by a military coup but whose project was continued by his sister Yingluck Shinawatra.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, populism has had little development due to the weak roots of liberal democracy in the region, so here, unlike other continents, populism is associated with authoritarian leaders such as Yoweri Museveni of Uganda or Michael Sata from Zambia. The first, when the Ugandan Supreme Court annulled one of his referendums, responded in typical populist fashion: "The Government will not allow any authority, not even the courts, to usurp the powers of the people." In South Africa, another populist leader emerged, Julius Malema, who after being expelled from the African National Congress in 2012 founded a new party called Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). In the Middle East, some populist rhetoric appeared in the Arab Spring with slogans such as "The "The people want to overthrow the regime!", but it is only present in the few democracies in the region such as Israel or Turkey - the Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu or the Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have resorted to populist rhetoric.
In recent years there has been a growth of right-wing populism that the Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde has described as the populist radical right, one of the two subgroups in which Mudde It divides the current far right (the other subgroup would be what Mudde calls the extreme right). Mudde gives as examples the emergence of Vox in Spain in 2018, the entry in 2019 of EKRE into a coalition government in Estonia or the entry in 2020 of Miroslav Skoro's Homeland Movement into the Croatian parliament.
The use of the term «populism»
The polysemy of the term or epithet of “populist” has been able to lead to inaccuracies, contradictions or vagueness that incur improprieties when trying to establish, even if not explicitly, some supposed similes – the “populist” character – between leaders, parties or movements from different parts of the world, which may not have any shared ideological or programmatic characteristics, and even more so, may even be opposed. This situation has been consistently pointed out:
But the main confusion that introduces this identification is the mix of progressive and reactionary leadership, in the indistinct populism caratula. In Europe, this combo casings Melanchon with Meloni, Crobyn with Len Pen and Pablo Iglesias with Orbán. In Latin America, the same salad places Maduro with Bolsonaro, Evo Morales with Kast and Díaz Canel with Milei. The fallacies of that smothering jump in sight. The liberal press often insists on such absurd identifications and whimsical amalgams. Instead of reiterating that inconductible mix, it is more correct to retake the basic political barometer that contrasts the right with the left, to define the location of each force. The two poles are distinguished with sharpness, without any need to incorporate the aditement of populist. With that orientation it is very visible that the radical left is the main antagonist of the ultra right. The usual concept of populism nullifies this distinction, assuming that both ends have been dissolved in some form of ‘occasion of ideologies’.Claudio Katz.
In a negative sense
Populism with a "pejorative meaning" is the use of "popular government measures", aimed at gaining the sympathy of the population, particularly if it has the right to vote, even at the cost of taking measures contrary to the democratic State. However, despite the anti-institutional characteristics it may have, [citation needed] its primary objective is not to profoundly transform social, economic and political structures and relationships (in many populist movements plan to avoid it), but rather to preserve power and political hegemony through popularity among the masses.
In a general sense, socialist and communist sectors have used the term "populist" to define governments that ―even favoring the "popular sectors" (mainly the working class)― do not intend to end the capitalist system.
Both Keynesian economics and a critical position on US foreign policy have been substantial practices of Latin American populism, both from the years 1930-1950, and the most recent wave of the "new left" of the 2000s.[citation required] In In the European case of the 2010s, the main criticism is of the hegemony and dominance of German political interests and the global financial sector.
The crisis of political representation is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition of populism. In order to complete the situation picture, another factor needs to be introduced: a "crisis on heights" through which leadership emerges and gains leadership that is effectively postulated as an alternative leadership and outside the existing political class. It is he who, in short, exploits the virtualities of the crisis of representation and makes it articulated the unsatisfied demands, the political resentment, the feelings of marginalization, with a speech that unifies them and calls for the rescue of popular sovereignty expropriated by the party establishment to mobilize it against an enemy whose concrete profile, although it varies according to the historical moment, "the oligarchy", "the plutocracy", "the aliens". In its most complete version, populism then involves a suture operation of the crisis of representation through a change in the terms of discourse, the constitution of new identities and the reordering of political space with the introduction of an extra-institutional excision.
From an opposite point of view, conservative sectors have used the term "populist" to define governments that present the interests of the economically higher classes (large economic groups, etc.) as separate and contrary to those of the lowest considered as a permanent majority with self-evident homogeneous interests that would not require political pluralism, destroying the possibility of political dissent and economic growth through private means.
According to Ylarri, the most characteristic feature of populism is the construction of the idea of the "people" as a historical agent, repository of the social virtues of justice and morality and responsible for social change, confronted with the "other" who impedes development. of the destiny of the town.
The Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater in an interview collected in El Confidencial by Javier Caraballo when asked: Can we conclude, then, that the rise of populist and reactionary movements in Europe Are they the result of misery and ignorance?, he responds by establishing the following parallel:
They are a reaction to misery from ignorance. And previously, there are a set of factors that are added: a very severe economic crisis, unfulfilled political promises and ineffective in managing that crisis, immigrant stock exchanges that unbalance the idea of themselves in many countries... In such an environment, the healers immediately emerge. That's what happened, just like when a person is diagnosed with a very serious illness and goes to the healer or Lourdes. This is populism, the healer of politics that, faced with real problems, poses illusory solutions that are born and nest in ignorance.Fernando Savater
In a positive sense
Various sociopolitical movements throughout modern world history have claimed that "the people" - that is, the farmers and peasants, the workers, the small businessmen, the lower clergy, the professional classes (doctors, teachers, professors, accountants, engineers, public employees, etc.) - whoever holds power in democratic States, thus against the elites or dominant classes.
These populist movements have been based on the political ideas of native culture without necessarily claiming nationalism, and always opposing imperialism. Examples of this type have been Russian populism and American populism of the 19th century (the latter also called “productivism”); Spanish cantonalism; Mexican agrarianism; the Italian carbonarians. They may be influenced (or not) by one or several defined ideologies or political projects. However, they usually do not adhere to them explicitly.
In his review of the novel All the King's Men, by Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Penn Warren, Esteban Hernández makes an interesting analysis of the relationship between populism and aristocracy. Hernández maintains that in less developed countries, populism goes hand in hand with the fight against hunger, increasing taxes on the rich and subordinating the business world to politics, as proposed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the United States. United with the New Deal. Hernández points out that, in those countries, populism would define a much more likely alternative to aristocracy than communism, and that for that reason it has been (and is) reviled by conservative sectors.
At a conference in 2014, presidents Enrique Peña Nieto and Barack Obama discussed the term populist; For the Mexican, populism is a danger that could "destroy what has been built" and for the American it is "a fight for social justice". It should be noted in this regard that both leaders express themselves about the same term, but in a different semantic context (English and Spanish). In Spanish, the pejorative interpretation of the term has had greater relevance or use today than the positive one. On the other hand, in the United States (or the English language) this has not been the case; both positive and negative interpretations are used. This greater duality for the English language is reflected in the definitions of the term in the main reference dictionaries of said language (Merriam-Webster, Collins, Oxford Archived on January 29, 2018 in the Wayback Machine.). In the aforementioned previous meeting, the then US president stated the following:
"(...) I want to add one thing, for I have heard it in several questions, and it is the question of "populism". Maybe something could quickly see in a dictionary what that term means. I am not, however, agreed to concede that part of the rhetoric we have heard is "populist".In 2008 when I was a candidate, and the reason why I was a candidate again, and the reason why after leaving the government I'm going to work in the public service is that I'm interested in people, individuals, and I want all children in the United States and North America to have the same opportunities as I enjoy. I care about the poor, who work very hard, but who have no chance to progress. I am concerned about the workers, so that they have a collective voice in the workplace and receive their share. I want to ensure that children receive good education, that a working mother takes care of her child in which she can trust, and we should have a fair tax system, and that people like me, who have benefited from the opportunities offered by society, should pay a little more to ensure that children of others, less fortunate, can also have those opportunities. I think there should be limits on the abuses of the financial system, not repeating the 2008 disaster. There should be transparency in how our systems work, so that there are no people who evade tax payments, establishing offshore accounts, and who take advantage of situations that other citizens cannot, because they do not have lawyers or accountants that allow them to use these tricks. I guess that could be said that I am a "populist", but another person who has never shown concern for the workers, who have never fought for social justice, or to make sure that the poor children have a chance or receive medical care, and who in fact have worked against the economic opportunity of the workers and ordinary people, they do not transform overnight into "populists" because they say something controversial simply to get more votes. That is not a measurement of what it is to be populist, that is nativism or xenophobia perhaps, or even worse, is to be a cynical.
Then I would say: be careful to give to anyone who emerges in a moment of anxiety the title of populist Where has he been?, has he been fighting for the welfare of the worker?, has he created opportunity for more people? No. There are people like Bernie Sanders who deserve that title, because he has really been worried and has fought for these issues and there we can simply say that we share values and objectives, and how to achieve them."Barack Obama
Populism and liberal democracy
Political scientists Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser have proposed the following table on the positive and negative effects of populism in liberal democracy:
Positive effects
Populism can give voice to groups that are not represented by political elites.
Populism can mobilize excluded sectors of society, improving their integration into the political system.
Populism can improve the responsiveness of the political system, fostering the adoption of preferred policies by the excluded sectors of society.
Populism can increase democratic accountability including political and political issuesNegative effects
Populism can use the notion and praxis of the majority government to circumvent minority rights.
Populism can use the notion and praxis of popular sovereignty to erode institutions specialized in the protection of fundamental rights.
Populism can promote the establishment of a new political division that prevents the formation of stable political coalitions.
Populism can promote a moralization of politics that is extremely difficult to reach agreements, or even impossibilite.
Factio popularium in ancient Rome
In the period of the last Roman Republic, a series of so-called popular leaders (or factiō populārium, 'party or faction of the people') appeared who opposed the traditional conservative aristocracy and They opted for the use of people's assemblies to carry out popular initiatives aimed at better distribution of land, debt relief for the poorest, and greater democratic participation for the majority of the population. Among its leaders are several of the Gracchi, Publius Clodius Pulcher, Marcus Livy Drusus, Sulpicius Rufus, Catilina, Gaius Marius and Julius Caesar.
This group (factio) was staunchly opposed by the aristocratic party of the optimates led by Cicero, who used his political power and rhetoric to eliminate political power (and sometimes the lives) of the leaders of the popular ones.
Populisms of the right and the left
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Right-wing populism is a specific category within populism, which is used in some cases to identify politicians and governments that use various manipulation mechanisms to obtain popular support, in order to implement right-wing policies. Politicians such as Donald Trump in the United States, Marine Le Pen in France and Mauricio Macri and the Cambiemos alliance in Argentina, UKIP led by Nigel Farage, a party that helped to define the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union, the far-right Alternative for Germany party and the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, a right-wing nationalist; Polish leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, among others, have been described as right-wing populists.
In Europe, right-wing populism generally has a Eurosceptic character. Right-wing populism stigmatizes groups that it considers dangerous for society, such as the least productive—generally foreigners and believers of religions different from that of the majority culture— and affirms the existence of conspiracies against the common good. On the economic level, it normally supports a combination of liberal measures such as tax reductions. They also have in common a hostility towards immigrants, combined with xenophobic discourses. Populism The right-wing movement contains programmatic elements that are part of its proposal, such as associating immigration with crime and the disintegration of the homeland, or concern for citizen security.
As far as the populist left is concerned, they are usually ideologically characterized by anti-capitalism and anti-globalization, while social class ideology or socialist theory is not as important as for traditional left parties. Among examples of left-wing populism we find the rise of the Greek party Syriza. In the Ibero-American sphere, populism has manifested itself in different countries, such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina.
Populism in Latin America
In Latin America there are several examples of governments that, with their various nuances and temporal and spatial characteristics, have been branded as "populist" by their opponents:
- Mexico
Mexico: Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-current)
Argentina: In Argentina, all elected democratic governments have been qualified as populists by some analyst, with the exception of Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001). To know: Hipólito Yrigoyen (1916-1922, 1928-1930), Marcelo T. de Alvear (1922-1928), Juan Domingo Perón (1946-1955, 1973-1974), Arturo Frondizi (1958-1962), Arturo Illia (1963-1966), Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989), Carlos Menem (1989-1999), Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández de Kirnerch. Several articles relate Mauricio Macri to “populism” and “rightwing poleism”.- Bolivia
Bolivia: Evo Morales (2006-2019). and Luis Arce Catacora (2022-current). - Brazil
Brazil: Getúlio Vargas (between 1930 and 1945, and between 1951 and 1954), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2002-2006 and 2023-current), Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016). Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) - Chile
Chile: In the sense “positive”, Arturo Alessandri, Carlos Ibáñez del Campo and the Frente Popular; in a peyorative sense, Sebastián Piñera, Michelle Bachelet. - Colombia
Colombia: Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953-1957), Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2010), Iván Duque (2018-2022) - Ecuador
Ecuador: In the “positive” sense, Jaime Roldós Aguilera (1979-1981) in the negative sense José María Velasco Ibarra (1934-1935, 1944-1947, 1952-1956, 1960-1961 and 1968-1972), Abdalá Bucaram (1996-1997), Lucio Gutiérrez (2003-2005) and Rafael Correa (2007-2017) - Nicaragua
Nicaragua: Daniel Ortega (1985-1990 and 2007-current). - Venezuela
Venezuela: Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974-1979 and 1989-1993), Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), Nicolás Maduro (since 2013). - Peru
Peru: "positive" Guillermo Billinghurst Angulo (1912-1914), in a pejorative sense Augusto Bernardino Leguía (1919-1930), Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro (1931-1933), Manuel Odría (1948-1956), Fernando Belaúnde Terry (from 1963-1968 and 1980-1985), Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-1975), Alan García (from 1985-1990 and from 2006-2011), Alberto Fujimori Similarly some influential politicians were also tagged by populists such as Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, Keiko Fujimori, Verónika Mendoza and Antauro Humala.
In this line of political criticism, both right-wing and left-wing governments have been questioned as "populist": the former identified with the capitalist system and the leadership of the United States, and the latter identified with nationalist positions and a detached from the United States. In 2006, the former president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who carried out neoliberal reforms in his country, in an article titled "Populism threatens to return to Latin America", maintains that among the elements that make a government not populist, They find themselves having "prudent and sensible public policies", as well as a greater rapprochement with the United States.
Francisco Panizza offers a reading of populism as a mirror of democracy whose central point of discussion is the possibility of putting the people in a place of objective reality. Populism is not possible without the rhetorical articulation of a “constructed” people as a collective but abstract social actor. In these processes, leaders not only speak on behalf of the people, but also resort to the sense of emergency to introduce policies that would otherwise be rejected.
For his part, Ernesto Laclau (1935-2014) affirmed that populism is the best form of political organization because it gives greater space and representation to classes that until now were relegated. Laclau affirms that populism is, of the republican forms, the best possible because it allows the participation of larger social groups in the struggle for power and resources. Populism is no longer a mere expression of politics that enriches democratic life. The theorist introduces a neologism, the populist reason to help understand its relationship with the ideological apparatus of the state.
Reviews
Laclau's position was criticized by some left-wing scholars, most of them with Marxist roots, for two specific issues. The first is that by widening the distributive base of wealth, the basic asymmetry is not corrected but rather inequality increases. This happens not only because of the repatriation of capital in the hands of the capitalist elites but because the principle is not transformed. of surplus value rooted in the fetishism of the commodity, a fact by which capitalism can be consolidated. David Kelman suggests that there is a new way of doing politics that takes conspiracy theory as a disciplinary form, in order to gain adhesion in one's own cluster. In this way, a void is produced which is filled through mystery and axioms that cannot be empirically validated. In perspective, modern populisms adopt a root of simulation, while deep down they legitimize the interests of the capitalist elite.
An important part of Latin American studies questions the Eurocentric and universalizing use of the term "populist", when applied to Latin American political currents, ignoring the specific study and their particular historical circumstances.
Regarding the application of the term populist, former Uruguayan president José Mujica has said:
The word populist does not use it because they use it for a sweep and a mower. Those who vote in Germany on the right half neo-Nazis are populists, in Nicaragua they are populists. So anything is populism. I draw this conclusion: everything you don't agree with, which bothers, is populist. It's a category that doesn't define.José Mujica