Populism

An Introduction

Manuel Anselmi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138287150
• eBook ISBN: 9781351975933
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Populism: An Introduction is the first introduction to the theme of populism. It will introduce the principal theories, definitions, models and contemporary debates. A number of global case studies will be used to illustrate the concept:

• Russian populism;

• Latin American populism;

• Italian populism;

• Peronism;

• Media populism;

• Penal populism;

• Constitutional populism.

Populism will reflect on the sociology of democratic processes and investigate the evolution of political consensus in contemporary political systems. This book will appeal to academics and postgraduate students working in the field of sociology, political sociology and politics.

1

PRELIMINARY ELEMENTS OF THE CONCEPT OF POPULISM

A meaningful ambiguity

Populism is a highly polysemous concept, which is prone to many descriptions and is highly ambiguous. Its conceptual definition is the main epistemological difficulty, as trying to restrict it into a rigorous and univocal semantic limitation is not an easy task. It is exactly for these reasons that, in the field of social and political studies, many researchers are still deeply sceptical of the phenomenon’s very own existence. Some even consider it an epiphenomenon, or an uncertain manifestation of something endowed with a bigger social ontological consistency. To complicate things further, there is wide journalistic abuse of the term, which is often used in a very imprecise and contradictory way, leading people to think that populism is everything and nothing.

The aim of this book, although limited by its being only an introduction, is to show that behind the irrefutable ambiguity of this difficult word there is a wide array of themes that are deeply linked to the democratic processes, to forms of political participation and to the social dynamics of political regimes. This is far from being a false problem: investigating it deeply means understanding contemporary democracies’ very own destiny.

Recent scientific literature has dedicated a specific field of analysis to the difficulties of defining populism (Weyland 2001; Krause and Haughton 2009). It has now become a rhetorical topos to talk about populism admitting its own imprecision, its ­vagueness and elusiveness at a theoretical level. Paul Taggart (2000) has defined it as a slippery concept; Taguieff (2006) has argued that it is characterized by “constitutional ambiguity”. However, as Moffitt and Tormey (2014) have stated, it is possible to identify some common defining traits.

As we will see, in the tradition of studies on populism, three strands can be identified which have tried to overcome this difficulty and attempt a conceptualization.

The first strand consists in giving an articulate explanation of populism through a theory of the social dynamics related to the phenomena that were being examined, in the case of Germani and Laclau for example. On the other hand, as we will see later, recent debates have focused on trying to lock populism into a definition: strategy, ideology or communication style.

The work of Margaret Canovan (1981) is particularly original in this aspect, as it proposes to untie the polysemous problem of the concept of populism through Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (2009) theory of family resemblance. This third way, populism is no longer a closed concept, rather a family of concepts or, even better, an open concept, similar to democracy and ideology. Populism indicates a family of concepts that are very similar, while at the same time possessing a specific spatial and temporal characterization. Starting from this premise, Canovan then attempted a first taxonomy of populist forms.

Social expression of sovereignty

As Margaret Canovan stressed many times, a deep correlation exists between populist phenomena and popular sovereignty; therefore, populism can be seen as a shadow of democracy. This correlation is better explained by Mény and Surel, who presented constitutionalism and populism as two opposing forms of popular sovereignty (Mény and Surel, 2001). While in the former it acquires institutionalized and mediating modalities, in the latter it finds a direct expression through a powerful capacity to delegitimize the status quo.

It is therefore possible to provide a first general definition of populism: it is the social expression of popular sovereignty through unmediated modalities. The weakening of the mechanisms of social mediation of power that are established between rulers and ruled, together with the prospect of collective action based on a community-people, are the basic factors of a first form of populism. This definition actually precedes the conceptual opposition between populism and democratic regime.

This happened in Russian populism, which was the first historical form of this type of phenomena. Russian populism developed in the Tsarist authoritarian context, where there was no democratic institutional reference framework, and was able to elaborate a prospect of overturning the authoritarian sovereignty, the same prospect that was reinterpreted in a Marxist vein by the Bolshevik revolutionary movement.

Populism is therefore a social possibility of radical overturn – or at least contrast – of the absolute prevalence of the rulers’ supremacy on the part of the ruled. Popular sovereignty opens the possibility of delegitimizing existing power relations and creating new ones.

A minimum definition of the concept

When a populist phenomenon manifests itself in a non-authoritarian republican and democratic context, it can be defined as fully fledged political populism. Theories abound on political populism. We will examine them in detail, as each one of them allows for a specific in-depth analysis.

In the case of the concept of democracy, of which infinite theories have been elaborated and many definitions have been put forward, political science later turned to the search for a minimum definition, in order to allow for an empirical valuation of different phenomena, which in different ways are all ascribable to the concept of democracy. In the same way, a minimum definition of populism must be attempted.

To do that, populism needs to be considered as a specific configuration of political power with specific socio-political determinations. I use the term configuration, or figuration, as elaborated by Norbert Elias (Quintaneiro, 2006), who by this word meant “a network of interdependences formed between human beings and linked with each other: a structure of mutually oriented and dependent people”.

The basic analytical traits of this configuration are:

•An interclass homogenous community-people who perceives itself as the absolute holder of popular sovereignty. The community-people expresses an anti-establishment attitude. The community-people asserts itself as an alternative to pre-existing elites, which are accused of exclusion and the decadence of the political system.

•A leader in direct connection with the community-people – with the exception of penal populism.

•A discursive, argumentative and communication style which is always Manichean, where “us” means the community-­people and “them” means all that is external to it. The discursive style is aimed at creating political polarization.

Once a minimum definition is established, it will be easier to value, analyze and classify the various forms of populism.

References

Canovan, M. (1981). Populism, New York: Hartcourt Brace Janovich.

Krause, D. and Haughton, T. (2009). Toward a More Useful Concept­ualization of Populism: Types and Degrees of Populist Appeals in the Case of Slovakia. Politics & Policy, 37(4), pp. 821–841.

Mény, Y. and Surel, Y. (2001). Populismo e Democrazia, Bologna: Mulino.

Moffitt, B. and Tormey, S. (2014). Rethinking Populism: Politics, Media­tisation and Political Style, Political Studies, 62(2), pp. 381–397.

Quintaneiro, T. (2006). The Concept of Figuration or Configuration in Norbert Elias’ Sociological Theory, Teoria & Sociedade, 12(1), pp. 54–69.

Taggart, P. (2000). Populism, Buckingham: Open University Press.

Taguieff, P. A. (2006). L’illusione Populista, Milan: Bruno Mondadori.

Weyland, K. (2001). Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin American Politics, Comparative Politics, 34(1), pp. 1–22.

Wittgenstein, L. (2009). Philosophical Investigations, Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing.

PART I

Theorists

2

GINO GERMANI

National-populism and modernization

Gino Germani (1911–1979) was one of the first social ­scientists who studied the phenomenon of populism in a systematic way. He was an Italian sociologist who, having escaped the fascist ­police, moved to Argentina where he started collaborating with the Buenos Aires Institute of Social Sciences. He witnessed the rise of Peronism and studied American sociology in depth. Once his work became renowned, he moved to Harvard, where he taught, and then returned to Italy, where he spent the rest of his life.

His analysis was profoundly conditioned by his direct experience of both fascism and Peronism. Never falling into the trap of preconceived categories, and always starting from a rigorous empirical close examination, Germani elaborated an articulate theory of populist consensus’ social dynamic, as a result of the deep transformations in the social classes involved in the process. His work is considered an important contribution to the study of the social dynamics of democratization processes and their respective crises (Quiroz, 2015; Germani, 2004).

Germani borrowed from the theories of mass and crowd produced by scholars like Le Bon and Tarde; however, his aim was to identify their distorting effect on democratic systems and understand their authoritarian deviations. In particular, Germani focused on social modernization processes and their consequences in terms of social mobilization.

According to Germani, those countries that experienced authoritarian involution phenomena such as fascism and populism also witnessed profound social transformations from a pre-­modern to a more modern structure. The modernization process is at the base of the rise of populist phenomena. Germani used a long-term approach to grasp the social meaning of these phenomena.

In Germani’s opinion, modernization itself is the result of a much bigger dynamic: secularization. Secularization is the main cause of modernity in twentieth-century societies, where the individual enjoys wider freedom, no longer limited by traditional and religious frameworks. This freedom is the basic condition of social mobility, which necessarily generates a conflict as it breaks traditional social equilibriums and generates new power balances. Germani argued that in modern society the institutionalization of change replaces the institutionalization of tradition (Germani, 1978, p. 6). Secularization is therefore the distinguishing criterion between old authoritarianisms based on a hierarchical and traditionalist social system and new authoritarianisms based on social mobilization of social classes and sectors. Germani refused both the interpretation of authoritarianisms as residual forms of the ancient absolutism, and the Marxist interpretation by which authoritarianisms were exclusively products of advanced capitalism.

Through the social mobilization dynamics linked to modernization, Germani also explained the very modern phenomenon of ideological conditioning of citizens who, thanks to mobilization, enjoy freedom of movement across society and the possibility of transforming it. It is exactly this new condition that, according to Germani, is the basis for the ideologization of citizens who, in order to orient society’s transformation, develop and adopt doctrines whose application coincides with an alternative society. Thanks to social mobilization, and therefore to secularization, can citizens become militant.

These are the general traits that Germani identified in both fascism and Perón’s Argentine national-populism, w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The populist option
• 1 Preliminary elements of the concept of populism
• PART I: Theorists
• PART II: Major cases
• PART III: Other typologies and other problems
• Index