Inventing “Populism”: Notes for the Genealogy of a Paranoid Concept

Damiano Palano

doi:10.3390/genealogy6010002

Abstract

This article proposes a “genealogical” rereading of the concept of “populism”. Following the idea of “genealogical” analysis that was suggested by Michel Foucault, the aim is to show the “political” logic of the reinvention of the concept of “populism”, which was carried out between the 1950s and 1960s by the social sciences in the United States. First, this contribution reconstructs the history of the concept, identifying five different phases: (1) Russian populism of the late nineteenth century; (2) the Popular Party in the United States; (3) the Perón and Vargas regimes in Argentina and Brazil, respectively; (4) the reformulation carried out by the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s; and (5) the subsequent extension of the concept to Western Europe. It is argued that the decisive turning point took place in the 1950s when the social sciences “grouped” the traits of heterogeneous movements into a single theoretical category.

Highlights

Adopting the Foucaultian conception of “genealogy”, the purpose of this article is to recognize the “political” logics that have marked the history of the concept of populism and, in particular, its arrival in the lexicon of the social sciences
The formula of “populism” was adopted only in retrospect; that is, the label was applied to those governments at a later time, probably only between the late 1950s and early 1960s, and almost certainly recording the use of the term that was adopted by North American social scientists to define movements, regimes and leaders who were charged with both an ideological and institutional proximity to fascism and the adoption of policies and references that were close to the tradition of left-wing radicalism
It went on to identify a much longer American political tradition rooted in the Jacksonian conception of democracy and whose subsidiaries extended up to “McCarthyism”

Summary

Introduction

Adopting the Foucaultian conception of “genealogy”, the purpose of this article is to recognize the “political” logics that have marked the history of the concept of populism and, in particular, its arrival in the lexicon of the social sciences The aim of this reconstruction is not to point out the derogatory meaning that often marks the term and, as a result of this, calling one’s opponent as a “populist” is equivalent in the language of journalism and daily controversy to accusing them of using demagogic rhetoric or of inciting the most sinister resentments for electoral purposes. Each of these experiences bequeaths some traits to the theoretical discussion on the “essence” of the phenomenon It is in many ways during the fourth sequence (between the 1950s and 1960s) that the decisive step in the “reinvention” of the concept took place.

The Three Historical Roots of Populism

The Reinvention of the Concept

The Global Extension of the Concept

Findings

A “Paranoid” Concept?