Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser

The ambivalence of populism: threat and corrective for democracy

Two images of populism are well-established: it is either labelled as a pathological political phenomenon, or it is regarded as the most authentic form of political representation. In this article I argue that it is more fruitful to categorize populism as an ambivalence that, depending on the case, may constitute a threat to or a corrective for democracy. Unfolding my argument, I offer a roadmap for the understanding of the diverse and usually conflicting approaches to studying the relation between populism and democracy. In particular, three main approaches are identified and discussed: the liberal, the radical and the minimal. I stress that the latter is the most promising of them for the study of the ambivalent relationship between populism and democracy. In fact, the minimal approach does not imply a specific concept of democracy, and facilitates the undertaking of cross-regional comparisons. This helps to recognize that populism interacts differently with the two dimensions of democracy that Robert Dahl distinguished: while populism might well represent a democratic corrective in terms of inclusiveness, it also might become a democratic threat concerning public contestation.

Toward post-neoliberalism in Latin America?

Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America? Societies and Politics at the Crossroads. Edited by John Burdick, Philip Oxhorn, and Kenneth M. Roberts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Pp. x + 277.

The Responses of Populism to Dahl's Democratic Dilemmas:

95.00 cloth. Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America. Edited by Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Pp. xvii + 288.

Dealing with populists in government: the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition in Greece

90.00 cloth. Latin American Neostructuralism: The Contradictions of Post-

Vox Populi or Vox Masculini? Populism and Gender in Northern Europe and South America

From Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Sarah Palin in the US, populist leaders claim to offer more power to ‘the people’. However, most scholars argue that populism is in fact a democratic pathology, because it seeks to build a political system devoid of the rule of law. While it is true that populism maintains an ambivalent relationship with liberal democracy, little attention has been paid to the legitimacy of the questions raised by populist forces. Drawing on the work of Robert Dahl, I argue that current manifestations of populism are offering specific responses to two dilemmas that do not have a clear democratic solution: the boundary problem (how to define the people?) and the limits of self-government (how to control the controllers?). My article shows that populist forces are posing legitimate questions about the current state of democracy in Europe and the Americas, although their solutions tend to be more controversial than helpful.

Latin American Populism: Some Conceptual and Normative Lessons

ABSTRACT The Great Recession triggered an unprecedented level of political turmoil in Greece, leading to a major readjustment of the party system and the near disappearance of the once mighty socialists of PASOK. Gradually, SYRIZA – a radical-leftist-turned-populist party – rose to become the key electoral player under the aegis of its young and popular leader, Alexis Tsipras. SYRIZA eventually won two general elections in 2015 and ruled together with the populist radical right Independent Greeks (ANEL) as junior partner, a coalition of great analytical significance, representing the first ever governing alliance of left-wing and right-wing populist parties in Europe. This contribution investigates reactions to the SYRIZA-ANEL government, giving special emphasis to measures undertaken by domestic and external actors. A key finding that warrants further research is that, under the same conditions of economic crisis that bring populists to power, economic institutions and material constraints can play an important role in taming populist actors and socializing them into the standard rules of the liberal democratic regime.

Dealing with populists in government: some comparative conclusions

ABSTRACT Conceptually, populism has no specific relationship to gender; in fact, gender differences, like all other differences within ‘the people’, are considered secondary, if not irrelevant, to populist politics. Yet populist actors do not operate in a cultural or ideological vacuum. So perhaps it is the national culture and broader ideology used by populists that determine their gender position. To explore this argument, we compare prototypical cases of contemporary populist forces in two regions: the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, Party for Freedom) and the Dansk Folkeparti (DF, Danish Peoples Party) in Northern Europe, and the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV, United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and the Bolivian Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS, Movement for Socialism) in South America. Populists in Northern Europe are predominantly right-wing, yet mobilize within highly emancipated societies, while populists in South America are mainly left-wing and mobilize in strongly patriarchal societies. Our analysis provides a somewhat muddled picture. Although populists do not necessarily have a clear view on gender issues, the latter are clearly influenced by ideology and region. While left-wing populists tend to be relatively progressive within their traditional South American context, right-wing populists mainly defend the status quo in their progressive Northern European context. However, in absolute terms, the relatively high level of gender equality already achieved in Northern Europe is at least as advanced as the one proposed by the populists in South America.

Political identities: The missing link in the study of populism

Populism seems to be a pervasive phenomenon in the contemporary world. Many intellectuals are asking themselves whether the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements in the U.S. or the indignados in Spain are examples of populist uprisings. Answering this question is not straightforward, since there is an ongoing debate about how to define populism and study its impact on democracy. This article sheds light on this discussion by undertaking a critical revision of the Latin American debate on populism. Two key arguments are developed. First, populism should be conceived of as a set of ideas characterized by a moral understanding of the world, according to which the people form a homogenous and virtuous community, and the elite a pathological entity. Second, populism is not necessarily an authoritarian force, but rather an ideology that takes for granted the existence of a unified popular will, and that is at odds with deliberative and liberal conceptions of democracy.

Measuring populist discourse in the United States and beyond

This conclusion summarizes the findings of the special issue and offers some comparative conclusions about what we can discover by examining the reactions to populists in government in Austria, Ecuador, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Venezuela. Looking across this set of cases, we show that there is a diverse range of reactions to populists in power in terms of the actors involved, the strategies followed and their effectiveness. We start by summarizing the main ideas advanced in the framework for analysis of the special issue. After this, an overall assessment of the effectiveness of the opposition to populists in power is presented and here we offer an overview of each case study. Finally, the article concludes by proposing some comparative points, which not only seek to capture the main findings of this special issue but also to highlight the role of populists in actively developing strategies that curtail opposition.

Political Elites in Latin America

Political identities are crucial for understanding electoral behavior: individuals who identify with a political party behave as loyal supporters who would hardly vote for competitors old or new. Although this is an obvious observation, it has received little attention in the study of populism—a set of ideas that not only portrays established political parties as corrupt and self-serving entities but also depicts “the people” as a homogenous and virtuous community that should run the government. In this contribution, we develop a novel theory that claims that populism can thrive only when an antiestablishment political identity exists. This identity denotes an emotional and rational repulsion toward all established political parties in a given country. We test our theory by analyzing original survey data from contemporary Chile. The empirical analysis reveals not only that a limited segment of the electorate holds an antiestablishment political identity coalesced by populism but also that there is a large segment of apartisans adverse to populism. These empirical findings have important consequences for the study of populism, particularly when it comes to analyzing its emergence and electoral potential.