What Is Populism?

The term “populism”, increasingly heard in society, is associated with demagoguery. It applies without distinction to governments, political regimes, forms of state, personalities or economic policies.

It’s a term we hear constantly and always in a derogatory tone. However, before it was a word commonly used in media and political discussions, it was an academic term with different nuances.

In this article, we will examine the origin and prospects of populism. We will also study the main characteristics of Latin American populism given its relevance.

Prospects for a populist government

Despite the difficulties of reaching a systematic conceptualization of the term, we can take into account three perspectives:

• Populism as ideology:  an ideology that separates society into two antagonistic groups. On the one hand, the people, pure and true. On the other, the corrupt elite. Under this conception of populism, one can understand the reasons why the term can be used to define such diverse policies.
• Populism as a style of discourse:  this perspective argues that populism is a style of discourse. A rhetoric that sees politics as an ethic and a moral between the people and the oligarchy. The language used by those who claim to speak on behalf of the people: “we” (the people) and “they” (the elite)
• Populism as a political strategy: this  is the most common perspective. Populism here refers to the implementation of certain economic policies (for example, the redistribution of wealth or the nationalization of companies). Likewise, populism is also a mode of political organization in which a leader exercises power with the support of his supporters, generally from marginalized sectors.

Origin of the term

As we have said, this term had academic use before it was common or popular. It was first used at the end of the 19th century to denote a phase in the development of the socialist movement in Russia.

This term has been used to describe the anti-intellectualist wave. In this ideology, socialist activists would have to learn from the people before they could be their guides.

A few years later, Russian Marxists began to use the term in a derogatory sense. He then designated the socialists who believed that the main subjects of the revolution were the peasants and that it was from the rural communes that the socialist society of the future should be built.

Thus, in the international socialist movement, we began to speak of “populism” to designate a movement that opposed the upper classes. But who, unlike Marxism, identified with the peasantry and was nationalist.

On the other hand, and with no apparent connection to the Russian term, it began to be used in the United States to refer to the short-lived People’s Party, which was supported mainly by poor farmers with anti-elitist ideas and progressive. Thus, we see that, in both cases, the term designates a rural movement with an anti-intellectualist tendency.

However, in the 1960s and 1970s other researchers used the term in a different, albeit related, sense. Thus,  it has been used to name a number of Third World reform movements (Peronism in Argentina, Varguism in Brazil and Cardenism in Mexico). The distinguishing characteristic here was the type of leadership: personal rather than institutional, unanimist rather than pluralist, and emotional rather than rational.

Thus, academia has moved from using the concept of “populism” to define peasant movements to using it to denote a broad ideological and political phenomenon. In the 1970s, populism was already any movement that threatened democracy, always with a negative connotation.

Latin American populism

Latin American populism has always been recognized for its inclusiveness. In particular, three elements define this characteristic :

• Popular sovereignty:  after the United States and Haiti, Latin America is the first zone of decolonization. The idea of ​​a nation was born then, building national communities where there were once colonies ruled by white elites. Latin American populism was therefore built on an original idea of ​​popular sovereignty.

• The weakness of the state:  widely recognized. A historic weakness that has made it difficult to fulfill populist promises and transform them into rights. Populist cycles rally on broken promises of rights
• The populist reaction:  Latin American populisms appear as a reaction to the limits of the systems that preceded them. In a context of inequality, instability and political volatility. Thus, the promise of populism has a material and symbolic basis, claiming to give voice and vote to the dispossessed.

We have seen how the term populism has evolved, acquiring a negative connotation that it did not initially have.

Thus, from the principled recognition of ignorance and the need to learn for those who intend to rule, it has come to designate certain political movements that seek to gain the sympathy of the people with their proposals, regardless that what they offer is the best for the people.

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