Left Populism Research Articles

The lusophone world of Iberoamerica: between the “left wave” and the “right turn” (the example of Portugal and Brazil)

The authors analyze political cycles of the Portuguese (Lusophone) world, which is based on Portugal-Brazil civilizational axis. The authors seek to prove the existence of synchronicity and parallelism in the context of the movement of political pendulum from right to left and back within the Lusophone world of Iberoamerica. The main thesis of this study is that the Ibero-American transcontinental macro-region is sandwiched between a “left wave” and a “right turn”, with the conclusion that further continuation of the “left wave” with right-wing fluctuations in the current context is going to continue. As far as Portugal is concerned, the case of the municipal elections of September 26, 2021 is used as empirical material and is subjected to a detailed analysis from the perspective of the Portuguese party-political landscape. In addition, some attention is paid to the early parliamentary elections of January 30, 2022 in Portugal. The authors also assess the development of populism in Portugal, given that in European countries, left-wing and right-wing populist movements are gaining popularity. Similarly, the authors consider the results of the 2020 municipal elections, and political situation in Brazil on the eve of the 2022 presidential elections. We give a forecast about further shift to the left of the Ibero-American Lusophone world, if after the confident victory of the Portuguese socialists under the leadership of Costa the socialist president Lula da Silva comes to power in Brazil, and, as a result, about formation of the left-socialist power pole within the framework of the Ibero-American Lusophony.

Class and race in Latin America’s left populist politics

This article challenges the notion that populist rhetoric in Latin America primarily and consistently arose in response to recent social dislocations and involves, from the onset, a Manichean struggle of the good people against an evil enemy. Instead, this work seeks the origins of polarisation, so often associated with populism, deep in history: in colonial conquest, in highly unequal economic, social and political relations in the post-independence period, and in nation-building myths that denied the existence of exclusions involving race/culture. Through an analysis of speeches given by former president of Argentina Juan Perón and former president of Venezuela Hugo Chávez, the author demonstrates a strong early conciliatory strain in populist rhetoric that calls for the respect and inclusion of racially and culturally distinct lower-class populist followers and acceptance of their importance to the nation. Initially, this rhetoric does not exclude the opposition in the populist leader’s concept of the nation. The Manichean aspect of populist rhetoric emerges later, when populist leaders come to believe that their pleas for material and cultural/racial inclusion have been and will always be rejected by anti-populists. In this interpretation, populism is a symptom of long-standing exclusion and latent pre-existing polarisation, not its cause.

Lessons for Left-Wing Populism from the 2010s Austerity Wave in Europe

Lessons for Left-Wing Populism from the 2010s Austerity Wave in Europe

The Democratic Limits of Populist Politics

The Democratic Limits of Populist Politics

Buen Vivir under Correa: The Rhetoric of Participatory Democracy, the Reality of Rentier Populism

AbstractThis article seeks to understand the relationship between populism and participatory democracy through analysis of Rafael Correa’s left populist regime in Ecuador (2007–2017). It argues that rather than adhering to its own standard for participatory democracy, what the Correa regime referred to as the “Socialism ofBuen Vivir,” it employed the rhetoric of participatory democracy in the service of populist rule. As a result, the Correa regime failed to promote the participatory form of democracy and citizenship promised in Buen Vivir, its version of twenty-first-century socialism. Accordingly, analysis of the Correa regime demonstrates how the concentration of top-down executive power characteristic of populism in general, and rentier populism in particular, impedes the egalitarian and solidaristic mission of participatory democracy. Thus, inductive analysis of the Correa regime reinforces the conceptual understanding that populism is antagonistic and antithetical to participatory democracy.

The symbolic representation of the ‘People’ and the ‘Homeland’ in Spanish left populism: an opportunity for feminist politics?

ABSTRACT This article analyses the symbolic construction of the ‘people’ and the ‘homeland’ in Spain’s left populist party Podemos by exploring the gender and class meanings that Podemos leaders evoke in their representation of these two key elements of populist rhetoric. Distinguishing between the official symbolic presentation of the constituency, that purposely selects certain symbols to evoke particular meanings about the people and the homeland, and the subtext of gendered norms that symbols evoke, allows us understanding the possibilities of the Spanish left populist party to contribute to feminist politics. Podemos has a role in the process of meaning-making that envisions gender and class-aware societal projects through the symbolic representation of ‘the people’ and ‘the homeland’. Yet, ambivalence in the egalitarian discourse and a symbolic subtext of unequal informal gendered norms in the party culture undermine the feminist commitments of the leadership adopted in the official presentation of the constituency. By capturing the gap between the official purposeful symbolic representation, that conveys a message of inclusive and feminist people-homeland, and the symbolic subtext of the party’s discourse and performance, that reproduces exclusionary gendered norms, the article contributes to reflect on the inclusionary potential and contradictions of left populism.

The LATIN AMERICA AND CENTRAL ASIA IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL POLITICAL TENSIONS: POPULISM AND POLARIZATION

The article analyzes the genesis of political regimes in Latin America and Central Asia, the Latin-American polarization during the period of waves of populism and its impact to Central Asian countries. In the twentieth century, the countries acutely experienced two waves of populism, which coincided with the historical periods of political transitions of the change of power, namely, the transition from oligarchy to mass politics, from authoritarian regimes to democracy, which subsequently created the solid ground for neoliberal reforms. The article notes the left-populist regimes and their anti-elitist orientation, and also analyzes that weak institutionalization, class orientation and a high level of polarization of left-wing populism after the consequences of COVID-19 will finally lead to an institutional crisis, a violation and lose of the balances and a straight shift to competitive authoritarianism in the future.

Strains in the US–Mexico relationship

Mexico and the United States are at an impasse over an attempt by Mexico’s president to re-nationalise some parts of the country’s energy sector. Mexico’s government has also taken more combative stances on foreign-policy issues in the last year, joining Latin America’s populist left. While these conflicts will probably not have a major effect on US-Mexico cooperation on critical issues such as bilateral goods trade and immigration, they suggest that a degree of mutual suspicion remains at the heart of the relationship despite the arrival of a new administration in Washington in 2021.

Population health, not individual health, drives support for populist parties.

Recent electoral shifts toward populist parties may have been partly driven by deteriorating health, although empirical evidence on this link is primarily confined to ecological designs. We performed both ecological- and individual-level analyses to investigate whether changes in health are associated with changes in the support for populist parties. Data were used on the strategic Dutch case, the only liberal democracy featuring leftist and rightist populist politicians in parliament for over a decade. We used: (a) fixed effects models to examine whether changes in the standardized mortality ratios and self-assessed health (SAH) in municipalities were associated with changes in the populist vote share in four parliamentary elections (2006/2010/2012/2017); and (b) 10 waves of panel data collected in 2008 to 2018 to investigate if changes in individual-level SAH were linked to movement in the sympathy, intention to vote, and actual voting for populist parties. The ecological analyses showed that: changes in municipality mortality ratios were positively linked to changes in the vote share of right-wing populist parties, while changes in the prevalence of less-than-good SAH were negatively associated with changes in the vote share for left-wing populist parties. The individual-level analyses identified no such associations. Our findings imply that support for populist parties may be driven by health concerns at the ecological, but not the individual, level. This suggests that sociotropic (e.g. perceiving population health issues as a social problem), but not egotropic (e.g. relating to personal health issues like experienced stigma), concerns may underlie rising support for populist parties.

How Do Populists Visually Represent ‘The People’? A Systematic Comparative Visual Content Analysis of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders’ Instagram Accounts

How do populists visually represent “the people”? While the literature on populism has tended to focus on text- and language-based documents, such as speeches, policies, and party documents to consider how populists characterize “the people,” in this article I undertake a systematic visual content analysis to consider how populist leaders on either side of the ideological spectrum visually represent “the people” in images from their official Instagram accounts ( N = 432). Comparing the cases of Donald Trump on the populist right and Bernie Sanders on the populist left, I code for the majority gender, race, and age of “the people” in each image, and supplement this with a discussion of the depictions of these categories. I find that Trump’s images of “the people” are significantly more homogenous across all categories—specifically more white, more masculine, and with less young people—than Sanders’, and situate these findings in the context of the literature on the differences between left and right populism. This article contributes to the study of populist communication by highlighting the role of images in representing “the people”; analyzing how left and right populists do this differently; and developing a method for measuring the demographic characteristics of “the people” in populists’ images that can be used in future studies. In doing so, it seeks to push the literature forward by highlighting that images are not something “extra” to be studied in populist communication, but rather are a central battleground for the construction of populist identities.

Reflections on the spaces of populist politics in Europe

A discussion of the record of left- and right-wing populist parties in Europe in response to the austerity policies that followed on from the financial crisis of 2007-8, focusing both on the populist right and on the trajectories of Syriza and Podemos. Questions discussed include: the issue of definition - whether populism is more than a mobilising strategy/understanding it as a hybrid political practice; what happens to left populist parties when they come into government; what the difference is between left social democracy and populism; the different geographies of populism - how it operates at the local, national and transnational levels; right-wing populism in Spain, including the Partido Popular as well as Vox, particularly in Madrid; authoritarian populism; populism and nationalism, especially in relation to hostility to migration; right-wing populism in Greece.

Far-right intellectual discourse about populism: the case of the German Institut für Staatspolitik

ABSTRACT Despite the ubiquity of work on the populism of the far right, explicit analysis of far-right populist strategizing and discourse about populism has been rare. This article explores such far-right reflections on populism through the publications of the German Institut für Staatspolitik, an organization at the heart of the intellectual Neue Rechte and close to parts of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). We find a sympathetic attitude towards populism, a rejection of mainstream anti-populism and a readiness to learn from left-wing theories of populism. Whilst partially overlapping with left populist critique of technocratic neoliberalism, Neue Rechte reflections about populism are decidedly embedded within an ecosystem of far-right nationalist and anti-liberal discourse. With nationalism seen as a precondition of successful populist strategy, the far right’s innate awareness of the ‘true’ national nature of ‘the people’ is seen as giving it a winning advantage over supposedly naïve left populists unable to grasp this ‘fact’.

Populist discourse and entrepreneurship: The role of political ideology and institutions

Using institutional economic theory as our guiding framework, we develop a model to describe how populist discourse by a nation’s political leader influences entrepreneurship. We hypothesize that populist discourse reduces entrepreneurship by creating regime uncertainty concerning the future stability of the institutional environment, resulting in entrepreneurs anticipating higher future transaction costs. Our model highlights two important factors that moderate the relationship. First is the strength of political checks and balances, which we hypothesize weakens the negative relationship between populist discourse and entrepreneurship by providing entrepreneurs with greater confidence that the actions of a populist will be constrained. Second, the political ideology of the leader moderates the relationship between populist discourse and entrepreneurship. The anti-capitalistic rhetoric of left-wing populism will create greater regime uncertainty than right-wing populism, which is often accompanied by rhetoric critical of free trade and foreigners, but also supportive of business interests. The effect of centrist populism, which is often accompanied by a mix of contradictory and often moderate ideas that make it difficult to discern future transaction costs, will have a weaker negative effect on entrepreneurship than either left-wing or right-wing populism. We empirically test our model using a multi-level design and a dataset comprised of more than 780,000 individuals in 33 countries over the period 2002–2016. Our analysis largely supports our theory regarding the moderating role of ideology. However, surprisingly, our findings suggest that the negative effect of populism on entrepreneurship is greater in nations with stronger checks and balances.

Classical education and Darwinism: Tadeusz Zielinski’s attempt at reconciliation

ABSTRACT Written by a Polish-Russian scholar Tadeusz Zielinski, Our Debt to Antiquity (1903) was a successful attempt to combat the prejudiced view that classical education resists progress. Zielinski argued that Darwinian laws manifest themselves in his discipline in three aspects: (1) in the emergence of Greek and Latin languages as a result of the selection of word-forms and expressions that testify to certain features of national character; (2) in the persistence of classical education across many centuries as the ‘fittest’ educational system; (3) in the selection of schoolchildren for national elites. Although Zielinski’s application of Darwinian laws of selection to human society may appear reactionary to a modern reader, this article argues that in doing so he defends classical education both from the left-wing populists and from attempts at abuse from the right. Moreover, his thoughts prompt modern scholars to reflect on the real presence of Social Darwinism in our present educational system.

Populism and Layers of Social Belonging: Support of Populist Parties in Europe

Although scholars hypothesized early on that social belonging is an important predictor for voting behavior, its role for populist voting remains empirically ambiguous and underexplored. This contribution investigates how different aspects of social belonging, that is, quality, quantity, and perception of one's own social relationships, relate to electoral abstention and to populist voting on the left and right. Employing multilevel regression models using data from four waves of the European Social Survey, this study finds that all measures of social belonging foster turnout, but they exert an incoherent influence on populist voting depending on the party's ideological leaning. While social belonging plays a subordinate role for left populist support, strong social belonging reduces the probability to support populist parties on the right. With that, the study analysis offers a nuanced view on how different dimensions of social belonging relate to electoral behavior. By doing so, this study sheds light on what aspects of social belonging encourage, or inhibit, which form of “protest at the ballot box.”

‘A threat to us’: The interplay of insecurity and enmity narratives in left-wing populism

Left-wing populists are understudied in populism research and little is known on how enmity and insecurity narratives interplay in their rhetoric. Using a narrative framework to capture insecurity in the ‘enemification’ of elites, this article examines left-populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise. The analysis reveals a multifaceted construction of national, supranational and international elites as sources of insecurity, based on (a) the threats they pose, (b) the uncertainty they generate and (c) their failure to protect citizens. The article makes two contributions to the populism and International Relations literatures. First, it provides empirical evidence to contest the hypothesis that left populism promotes pluralist agonism rather than antagonism. Second, it shows how populists across the spectrum can use insecurity-centred narratives to delegitimise elites from speaking security and promote an agenda centred on popular sovereignty.

Left-Wing Populism and Nationalism: A Comparative Analysis of the Patriotic Narratives of Podemos and France insoumise

Left-Wing Populism and Nationalism: A Comparative Analysis of the Patriotic Narratives of Podemos and France insoumise

Radical democracy, the commons and everyday struggles during the Greek crisis

Set against theoretical and strategic debates about theories of radical democracy, left populism and the commons, this article analyses and evaluates everyday struggles in Greek politics after the global financial crisis. It focusses on the cases of Vio.Me – the first workers’ recuperated factory in Greece – and the Metropolitan Community Clinic at Helliniko, which is the largest social solidarity health clinic in Greece. Viewed from the perspective of commoning practices, the article identifies the logics that sustain the beliefs, values, infrastructures and institutions developed at an everyday grassroots level, finding traces of an incipient radical democratic ethos and rationality at work. The new initiatives highlight crucial and often neglected organisational, prefiguring and subjective prerequisites for radical democracy, while challenging elements of left populist political strategy. Our evolving perspective also problematises their political limitations and strategic dilemmas as they struggle to constitute a viable hegemonic alternative to neoliberal rationalities and governance.

Peripheralization, Political Discontent, and Social and Solidarity Economy—Case Studies From Rural Hungary and Germany

The reintegration of Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies into globalized capitalism resulted in increasing regional polarization and the emergence of internal peripheries. The crisis of the globalized capitalist economy in 2008 resulted in the further peripheralization of rural areas, and the related crisis of representative democracies triggered rural resentment against the existing order. Inhabitants of peripheralized areas have a feeling of abandonment and political discontent. The rise of right-wing populism may be understood as a revolt of people living in precarious conditions in peripheralized areas both in Hungary and Germany. Left-wing populism, which builds on equality and social justice and is based on radical democracy, has not been able so far to reach the precaritized inhabitants of peripheralized rural areas. Solidarity economy, which is a contemporary social movement, refers to a comprehensive program aimed at transforming the entire economy, and may have the potential to address the political discontent of people living in peripheralized rural areas. In spite of the rising support for right-wing populism, social and solidarity economy (SSE) initiatives are being carried out in rural peripheries. These initiatives are based on the principles of participatory and economic democracy. Spaces provided by SSE initiatives can become forums for deliberation and co-management to develop economic democracy and become seeds of a solidarity economy movement in CEE. Therefore, based on a critical realist ethnographic approach, this paper aims to answer the question of how SSE initiatives may address the everyday material challenges and political discontent of people living in peripheralized villages by studying two SSE initiatives being carried out in two contrasting cases of peripheralization. Studying SSE initiatives in relation to 1) the locality they are embedded in, 2) “subaltern” groups within the locality, and 3) participatory, economic and 4) representative democracy helps to better understand in what ways SSE initiatives can mobilize political discontent to strengthen the solidarity economy movement in CEE.

Gabriel Boric’ government and the sign of the times

The article maintains that Gabriel Boric`s electoral win was due to the sheer moment in which the social trends and public opinion allowed to convince the society that a bunch of deep changes should be launched and carried out in a bid to replace the political and social system. The democratic energy of the process and its more reformist than revolutionary nature made it feasible for Boric to overcome the communist (Daniel Jadue) and a left-wing populist (Pamela Jiles) candidates in the first round and to defeat the far-right candidate in the second round. In spite of the success, the political environment is rife with contradictions. There is a heavy risk that conservative regression could take place because of the very radical dynamics the period incubates. The author comes round to thinking that Boric should chime his idealistic virtues with greater political realism in action in order to avoid gross blunders and gaffes (particularly, the falling into Jacobin temptation) and get down to building of a new, broader and stauncher coalition which could prop up his project of structural reforms.