Neopopulism in Contemporary Ecuador: The Case of Bucaram's Use of the Mass Media

Abstract

Social and political scientists charge that television endangers democracy. Pierre Bourdieu, for instance, provocatively asserted that television is "a threat to political life and to democracy itself." Giovanni Sartori forcefully argued that television is transforming the meanings of politics and democracy because it personalizes politics, presents politics as a spectacle, and is based on emotional rather than rational appeals. Pierre-Andre Taguieff contends that populism has become telepopulism, a form of "video demagogy: the demagogue acts on his audience by letting himself be seen more than understood." As a result, "citizens are reduced to ... mere consumers of spectacles." In sum, the argument is, that images are replacing open deliberations and the logic of arguments that have characterized traditional forms of politics based on language. The electoral successes of Latin American political mavericks such as Collor in Brazil, Fujimori in Peru, Menem in Argentina, and Bucaram in Ecuador seem to confirm these pessimistic assessments. Fernando Collor's election in 1989 was influenced by the power of the media empire Globo to manufacture his candidacy. Carlos Menem and Abdala Bucaram have used television to broadcast their personal successes in nonpolitical spaces such as sports and mass entertainment as a substitute for debates on their policies. These antipolitical-establishment leaders won elections in the context of economic, political, and ideological crises. This new conjuncture is characterized by the crises of import substitution industrialization, the end of nationalist and distributive state policies, increasing levels of poverty and informal subemployment, distrust of traditional mechanisms of political representation, and by the quandaries of class-based politics and ideologies. Scholars have argued that in this context of rapid transformations control of the mass media and manipulation of the masses by media elites are the