Populism

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Populism Summary

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The Social Science Encyclopedia, Second Edition

populism

Populism is one of the least precise terms in the vocabulary of social science. The political phenomena to which it refers are extraordinarily diverse, with few connecting links. Only one feature is shared by all so-called populists, namely a rhetoric of appeals to ‘the people’ understood in a variety of senses. However, a distinction can be drawn between two broad families of populisms, each of them internally differentiated: populism as a form of radical movement based on or oriented towards rural grievances, and populism as a style of politics.

Populism as rural radicalism has three variants, which overlap to some extent but also show sharp differences:

First, there are radical farmers’ movements, of which the paradigm case is the US People’s Party of the 1890s. This movement, whose adherents coined the label Populist, grew out of the economic grievances of farmers in the western and southern states, and for a time appeared to threaten the US two-party system. The Populists, whose manifesto declared ‘We seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of “the plain people” ’, demanded a variety of reforms, including monetary inflation by increased coinage of silver.

Second, there are movements of radical intellectuals, aiming at agrarian socialism and romanticizing the peasantry. The model here is Narodnichestuo (Populism), a phase of the nineteenth-century Russian revolutionary movement during which disaffected intellectuals went to the people to try to provoke them to revolution. At the height of the movement in 1874, thousands of young people flocked to the countryside to preach the gospel of agrarian socialism. They believed that since communal cultivation of land still survived in the Russian village, a new socialist society could be constructed upon this rural foundation once the state was destroyed. When the peasantry proved unresponsive, some of the Narodniki took to terrorism instead.

Third, there are spontaneous grassroots peasant movements, aimed at control of the land and freedom from elite domination. There is no acknowledged paradigm movement, but examples include the Zapatistas in the Mexican Revolution and the peasant parties of Eastern Europe after the First World War. Third World revolutionary movements with a peasant base, such as Maoism, may be regarded as a fusion of Marxism with populism. Agrarian populism is often thought to be characteristic of developing countries, and has been plausibly linked to the strains of economic and social modernization.

Populism as a political style includes a variety of diverse phenomena:

First, populist dictatorship includes cases in which a charismatic leader appeals beyond conventional politicians to the masses, and gains unconstitutional power by giving them ‘bread and circuses’. Juan Peron, who (with the help of his wife Eva) built up a loyal popular following in Argentina in the 1940s, is an obvious case.

Second, populist democracy is hostile to representation and seeks to keep as much power as possible in the hands of the people. Its characteristic institutional devices are the popular referendum on legislation passed by a representative assembly; popular initiative, whereby voters can bypass the assembly and initiate legislation to be voted on in a referendum; and the recall, whereby representatives can be forced by dissatisfied constituents to undergo an extra election before the end of their term of office. Some populists are attracted by the opportunities offered by modern technology for the electorate to offer instant judgements on political issues.

Third, ‘reactionary populism’ describes politicians who play to the prejudices of the masses in democratic countries against what are taken to be the more enlightened views of the political elite. Politicians who gain popularity by playing on ethnic hostilities or rightwing views about law and order are particularly liable to the charge of populism in this sense.

Finally, ‘politicians’ populism’ is the style of politicians who avoid ideological commitments and claim to speak for the whole people rather than for any faction, and of catch-all people’s parties that are short on principles, eclectic in their policies and prepared to accept all comers.

These populist political styles may be combined but do not necessarily occur together. Similarly, agrarian populists may use some populist political styles, as in the case of the American Populists of the 1890s.

When used to describe a political style, the term populist is usually derogatory. However, as democratization spreads, opportunities for political populism grow with it, because these political styles exploit the gap between democratic theory and practice. There is an unavoidable tension between democracy as a form of state and democracy’s legitimizing principle, the sovereignty of the people. Populists mobilize support by appealing through past democratic institutions and politicians to the people they are supposed to represent. In doing so they make use of the ambiguities of the notion, ‘people’. In English, this can refer to ‘the united people’, that is, the nation as a whole as opposed to squabbling factions; the ‘common people’, as opposed to the rich and powerful; ‘ordinary people’, as opposed to professional politicians; and ‘our people’, as opposed to foreigners or ethnic minorities. Populist politicians often use these ambiguities to appeal to a number of different constituencies simultaneously.

As political populists incline to a demagogic style and frequently mobilize support by playing on nationalist or ethnic hostilities, there are affinities with some versions of fascism. However, political populism can be distinguished from fascism in the strict sense by its characteristic lack of ideological commitments.

Margaret Canovan

University of Keele

Populism

populism

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