Unpacking ‘authoritarian populism’ and rural politics: some comments on ERPI

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper provides an overview of work published under the auspices of ERPI, which remains somewhat elusive as a coherent intellectual and political project. I comment on several matters including lack of distinction between the ‘agrarian’ and the ‘rural’, issues of (spatial) scale and temporality and of identifying agrarian and rural classes, the costs as well as possible benefits of embracing the ambiguities of populism, and instances of ‘resistance’ to ‘authoritarian populism’ that are reported and proposed. The overall conclusion is that ERPI requires a more consistent, sharper and fuller class-based approach.