How to assess populist discourse through three current approaches

Journal of Political Ideologies

Volumn 20, Issue 2, 2015, Pages 201-218

  Poblete, Mario E ^a  

^a Library of the National Congress   (Chile)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK; HOLISTIC APPROACH; POLITICAL DISCOURSE; POPULAR PROTEST;

EID: 84937731506     PISSN: 13569317     EISSN: 14699613     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13569317.2015.1034465     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. Narodnik or populist comes from narod which means people. In this sense, populism is known as narodchietsvo.
2. E. Tijeras, ‘Venturi: “El populismo ruso”’, Triunfo, 17 (1976), pp. 104–108;
3. F. Venturi, Il Populismo Russo (Torino: G. Einaudi, 1972);
4. A. Walicki, ‘Russia’, in G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (Eds) Populismo: sus significados y características nacionales (Buenos Aires: Amorrortu Editores, 1970), pp. 81–120.
5. R. Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963);
6. M. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995), pp. 9–77.
7. H.-G. Betz and S. Immerfall (Eds), The New Politics of the Right: Neo-Populist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998);
8. H. Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995);
9. C. Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007);
10. P. Taggart, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
11. In this paper, I consider as neopopulist only those European phenomena from the last quarter of the 20th century to the present. Instead, I assert that the ‘Latin American neopopulism’, that is to say the so-called ‘radical populism’ (C. de la Torre, ‘Populismo radical y democracia en Los Andes’, Journal of Democracy en Español, 1(1) (2009), pp. 24–37), is a phenomenon essentially similar to populism of the middle 20th century.
12. F.E. Cardoso and E. Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979);
13. G. Germani, Política y sociedad en una época de transición; de la sociedad tradicional a la sociedad de masas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidó s, 1965);
14. G. Germani, Authoritarianism, Fascism, and National Populism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1978);
15. O. Ianni, A formacão do Estado Populista na América Latina (Sao Paulo: Editora Á tica, 1989).
16. L.C. Bresser (Ed.), Populismo economico: ortodoxia, desemvolvimentismo e populismo na América Latina (Sao Paulo: Nobel, 1991);
17. R. Dornbusch and S. Edwards (Eds), The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1991).
18. K.M. Roberts, ‘Neoliberalism and the transformation of populism in Latin America: the Peruvian case’, World Politics, 48 (1995), pp. 82–116;
19. K. Weyland, ‘Neopopulism and neoliberalism in Latin America: unexpected affinities’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 31(3) (1996), pp. 3–31.
20. P. Taggart, Populism (Buckingham-Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 2000).
21. P.-A. Taguieff, L’Illusion Populiste (Paris: Champs Flammarion, 2007);
22. A. Knight, ‘Populism and neopopulism in Latin America, especially Mexico’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 30 (1998), pp. 223–248.
23. A representative work of this approach corresponds to the Alejandro Groppo’s research which compares the government of Juan Domingo Perón of Argentina to the government of Getulio Vargas of Brazil. Thus, Laclau’s view on poststructuralism is empirically developed in: The Two Princes: Juan D. Perón and Getulio Vargas: A Comparative Study of Latin American Populism (Córdoba: EDUVIM, 2009).
24. The second instance I examine corresponds to the research of Kirk Hawkins which is representative of the positivist and hermeneutic approaches as such, and his aim is to measure the latent populist discourse in several presidents’ speeches around the world through holistic grading. His work is formally presented in: ‘Is Chávez populist? Measuring populist discourse in comparative perspective’, Comparative Political Studies, 42(8) (2009), pp. 1040–1067;
25. Venezuela’s Chavismo and Populism in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
26. Jan Jagers and Stefan Walgrave carried out research on Belgian populism from a quantitative and positivist perspective. They analysed television programme texts written by six Flemish parties focused on the case of the Vlaams Block party;
27. The technique employed was based on counting phrases through human coding. This research can be found in: ‘Populism as political communication style: an empirical study of political parties’ discourse in Belgium, European Journal of Political Research, 46 (2007), pp. 319–345.
28. D. Howarth, ‘Applying discourse theory: the method of articulation’, in D. Howarth and J. Torfing (Eds) Discourse Theory in European Politics: Identity, Policy and Governance (Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
29. K.A. Hawkins, ‘Measuring populist discourse through holistic grading’, Paper prepared for the annual Conferencia de la Asociación Chilena de Ciencia Polı´tica (Santiago: Chile, 2006).
30. D. Howarth, Discourse (Buckingham-Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 2000), pp 101–103.
31. E. Laclau, ‘Ruptura Populista y Discurso’, in Labastida and Del Campo (Eds) Hegemonía y Alternativas Políticas (México: Siglo XXI, 1985), pp. 39–44.
32. Groppo, The Two Princes
33. Groppo considers the concepts of discourse and ideology at the same level, as Laclau also asserts (E. Laclau, ‘The death and resurrection of the theory of ideology’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 1 (1996), pp. 201–220).
34. However, Howarth presents the existing differences between these concepts Howarth, Discourse
35. Howarth, Discourse pp. 122–123.
36. Jagers and Walgrave, ‘Populism as political communication style’ p. 322.
37. There are mainly two kind of content analysis of manifest populist discourse (M. Rooduijn and T. Pauwels, ‘Measuring populism: comparing two methods of content analysis’, West European Politics, 34(6) (2011), pp. 1272–1283).
38. On the one hand, the content analysis based on human codification e.g. Jagers and Walgrave, ‘Populism as political communication style’
39. A.M. Wü st and A. Volkens, ‘Euromanifesto coding instructions’, Working Paper 64 (Mannheim: Mannheimer Zentrum fu¨r Europäische Sozialforschung, 2003);
40. on the other hand, the content analysis based on computer codification (e.g. T. Pauwels, ‘Measuring populism: a quantitative text analysis of party literature in Belgium’, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 21 (2011), pp. 97–119).
41. E. Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005).
42. E. Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism (London: NLB, 1977), p. 167.
43. Hawkins, Venezuela’s Chavismo and Populism p. 41.
44. C. de la Torre, ‘Populism and democracy: political discourses and cultures in contemporary Ecuador’, Latin American Perspectives, 24(3) (1997), pp. 12–24, p. 14;
45. C. de la Torre, Populist Seduction in Latin America: The Ecuadorian Experience (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000), p. 4.
46. K.A. Hawkins, ‘Populism in Venezuela: the rise of Chavismo’, Third World Quarterly, 24 (2003), pp. 1137–1160, p. 1139.
47. Jagers and Walgrave, ‘Populism as political communication style’ pp. 322–323.
48. Laclau, On Populist Reason
49. F. Panizza (Ed.), ‘Introduction: populism and the mirror of democracy’, in Populism and the Mirror of Democracy (London: Verso, 2005), pp. 1–33.
50. Hawkins, Venezuela’s Chavismo and Populism, p. 346.
51. C. Mudde, ‘The populist Zeitgeist’, Government and Opposition, 39 (2004), pp. 542–563.
52. Hawkins, ‘Is Chávez populist?’ pp. 1046–1047.
53. Hawkins, Venezuela’s Chavismo and Populism, pp. 54–69.
54. Jagers and Walgrave, ‘Populism as political communication style’ p. 322.
55. Laclau, ‘Ruptura Populista y Discurso’ pp. 41–44.
56. Mudde asserts that the minimal definition of populism is shaped thank to a conversation with Jan Jagers (Mudde, ‘The populist Zeitgeist’ p. 543).
57. Howarth, ‘Applying discourse theory’ pp. 319–321.
58. H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 1989).
59. Hawkins, Venezuela’s Chavismo and Populism pp. 17–29.
60. M. Canovan, ‘Trust the people! Populism and the two faces of democracy’, Political Studies, 47 (1999), pp. 2–16.
61. Hawkins, Venezuela’s Chavismo and Populism pp. 37–38.
62. Howarth, ‘Applying discourse theory’ p. 337.
63. I was told by Kirk Hawkins that he had found in speech codifications certain steadiness in the populist discourse depending on the category of speech. Thus, the most populist allocutions are campaign and famous speeches, and the less populist allocutions are ribbon-cutting and international speeches.
64. N. Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990);
65. H. Maturana and F. Varela, El Á rbol del Conocimiento. Las Bases Biológicas del Entendimiento Humano (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1987).
66. In the context of his research strategy, Groppo does not distinguish between ideology and discourse due to the fact that the manifest and the latent content of a text are sufficient to explain his arguments. He argues that discourse and ideology are concepts that help to understand the social realm. Nevertheless, like Hawkins, Groppo pays more attention to the latent content of a text than to the coherent ideas of an ideology as Freeden refers M. Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
67. Freeden, Chapter 7.
68. Mudde, ‘The populist Zeitgeist’ pp. 543–546.
69. The broadcasts are completely controlled by the parties’ headquarters.
70. Jagers and Walgrave, ‘Populism as political communication style’ pp. 325–326.
71. Groppo, The Two Princes, p. 38.
72. Chapter 5 of Groppo’s book.
73. The assessed Latin American presidents from high to low populism were: Chávez, Velasco Ibarra, Morales, Perón, Vargas, Menem, Saca, Cárdenas, Duarte, Palacio, Toledo, Fernández, Fox, Lula, Vásquez, Kirchner, Pacheco, Torrijos, Mesa, Lagos, Berger, Bolaños, Maduro y Uribe. For the rest of the world the scale was: Lukashenko, Bush, Ahmahdinejad, Yushchenko, Arroyo, Putin, Blair, Kufuor, Stoltenberg, Enkhbayar, Stanishev, Harper, Halonen, Mbeki, Zapatero, Persson.
74. Hawkins, Venezuela’s Chavismo and Populism pp. 1053–1054, pp. 76–77.
75. K.A. Hawkins and D. Hansen, ‘Dependent civil society: the Círculos Bolivarianos in Venezuela’, Latin American Research Review, 41 (2006), pp. 102–132.
76. Chapter 6 in Hawkins’ book.
77. Jagers and Walgrave, ‘Populism as political communication style’ p. 326 and pp. 338–343.
78. C. Ragin, The Comparative Method: Moving beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
79. F. Panizza, ‘Neopopulism and its limits in Collor’s Brazil’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 19(2) (2000), pp. 177–192.
80. P. Cammack, ‘The resurgence of populism in Latin America’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 19 (2000), pp. 149–161, p. 152.
81. Jagers and Walgrave, ‘Populism as political communication style’ p. 338.
82. Hawkins, Venezuela’s Chavismo and Populism pp. 195–230.
83. Groppo, The Two Princes