Kirk A. Hawkins

Is Chávez Populist?: Measuring Populist Discourse in Comparative Perspective

This article pushes forward our understanding of populism by developing one of the more underappreciated definitions of populism, populism as discourse. It does so by creating a quantitative measure of populist discourse suitable for cross-country and historical analysis. The article starts by laying out the discursive definition of populism in the context of existing definitions. It then operationalizes this definition through a holistic grading of speeches by current chief executives and a few historical figures. The result is a data set of elite-level populist discourse in more than 40 current and past governments from a variety of countries across the world, with special focus on Latin America. This measurement has high reliability comparable to standard human-coded content analysis, compares well to common understandings of actual cases of populism, and is a reasonably efficient technique even in small samples.

Dependent Civil Society: The Circulos Bolivarianos in Venezuela

For several years the Círculos Bolivarianos were a key organized component of the movement supporting President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and the question of their democratic qualities a source of considerable controversy, but until recently there was little data to test the competing claims of supporters and opponents. We report the results of a survey of 110 members of Círculos and several interviews carried out in four Venezuelan states during June and July 2004. After providing basic information on the Círculos, we analyze their tendency to contribute to a democratic civil society. We find that respondents had highly democratic goals and methods; however, their organizations embodied a charismatic mode of linkage to Chávez that undermined their ability to become institutionalized. In addition, although the Círculos performed valuable social work, they often reinforced clientelistic relations between Chávez and the voters, and they did not significantly enhance the level of pluralism in the broader civil society. Durante varios años los Círculos Bolivarianos fueron un componente clave en el movimiento que apoya al Presidente Hugo Chávez en Venezuela y una fuente de controversia considerable en cuanto a sus cualidades democráticas; sin embargo, hasta hace poco tiempo no había suficientes datos para probar las opiniones de partidarios y opositores a dicho movimiento. Presentamos los resultados de una encuesta realizada a 110 miembros de los Círculos y varias entrevistas efectuadas en cuatro estados venezolanos durante junio y julio de 2004. Luego de proveer información básica sobre los Círculos, analizamos su tendencia a contribuir a una sociedad civil democrática. Encontramos que los encuestados tienen altos objetivos y procedimientos democráticos; sin embargo, sus organizaciones personifican un modo carismático de conexión con Chávez que dificulta su habilidad para institucionalizarse. A su vez, y a pesar de que los Círculos realizaron un valioso trabajo social, han reforzado las relaciones clientelísticas entre Chávez y sus votantes; y no han aumentado de manera significativa el nivel de pluralismo en la sociedad civil en general.

Bridging Latin America's Digital Divide: Government Policies and Internet Access

Latin American governments are attempting to close the digital divide by enacting policies to increase access to information technologies. This cross-sectional time-series analysis of nineteen countries between 1990 and 2001 examines government policies and Internet usage. Based on the social shaping of technology perspective, this study finds Internet use is strongly associated with wealth and the telecommunications infrastructure. The government policy with the strongest influence on increasing access is changing the tariff structure—such as creating flat-price dialing schemes. Market liberalization and the worldwide spread of the Internet are also associated with increased access.

Responding to radical populism: Chavismo in Venezuela

What are the effective ways of responding to populists, especially radical populists in government? The pessimistic answer provided by Chavismo is that little can be done; most of the negative impact of highly populist movements cannot be avoided in the short to medium term. The reasons lie not only in Venezuelas unique oil-based economy, but in the countrys previous failures of democratic governance, a condition shared by many developing countries. Such failures make it likely that radical populists will receive broad popular support. This does not suggest that international actors cannot play a useful role in responding to populism. But the most viable democratic strategy is a long-term one emphasizing patient efforts by domestic opponents to reorganize themselves into programmatic, pluralist options for the future.

Local public goods as vote-purchasing devices? Persuasion and mobilization in the choice of clientelist payments

We consider the behavior of an incumbent that can deploy local public goods and private goods to buy votes, and is unable to verify vote choice but capable of monitoring voter turnout, a common scenario in secret-ballot polities. As advanced by recent literature, the ability to monitor turnout rather than vote choice implies that politicians should use targetable private goods to mobilize voters. However, politicians also deploy non-excludable local public goods, which have low mobilization potential because of free-rider incentives. We argue that vote-buying politicians reserve local public goods for loyal constituencies (where they enjoy support from most voters that bother to turn out) and provide private goods in other constituencies where they gain from motivating less committed supporters to turn out. We test aggregate-level implications of our theory on Venezuela’s social programs.

Measuring populist discourse in the United States and beyond

Many have argued that populism dominated the 2016 US presidential election. Textual analysis of electoral discourse in the United States, Greece and Venezuela suggests that the overall level of populism in the US election was in fact moderate. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump engaged in populist discourse, but Trump lacked consistency.

The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela (review)

a clear consequence of how Mexico’s political and economic elites decided to liberalize and restructure the economy. The strict austerity programs of the 1980s and 1990s and the sluggish economic growth over more than 20 years have severely damaged the primary sector that provides the means of subsistence for 25 percent of the Mexican population. The dismantling of the Mexican state is related to the draconian orthodox economic stabilization programs, which meant dramatic cuts in Mexico’s social spending on education, health, and public housing. Mexico’s future leaders will have to tackle these problems with something more than just a strategy of deeper economic liberalization, which has failed as a model of development. Reynaldo Yunuen Ortega Ortiz El Colegio de México