This book is a timely addition to studies on the nature, history and transformation of populism in Europe and the Americas. It originates in a 2011 conference motivated in part by the rise of the Tea Party movement in the United States and right-wing populist parties in Europe. The victory of Brexit in Great Britain and Donald Trump in the United States in 2016 further highlights the need for and value of this comparative work.
The volume is organised in 18 chapters covering a wide range of populist experiences in Europe (Germany and the Balkans) and the Americas (the United States and Latin America) from the nineteenth century to the present, preceded by an introduction outlining the theoretical framework. Based on Richard Hofstadter's insights, the essays seek to address how populist ideas and practices, originally linked to ‘progressive ideals such as popular sovereignty, political inclusivity, and egalitarian anti-elitism’, have been ‘effectively appropriated by parties that embraced conservative and even reactionary political, economic, and cultural positions’ (p. xi). This historical quest, in turn, requires the elusive task of defining what populism actually means, which the editors answer with a multi-layered approach identifying three levels of characteristics: a ‘populist minimum’ shared by almost all populist movements, characteristics shared by most populist movements, and notable characteristics not decisive in making a movement populist (or not). They then lay out the key elements of ideal types of both progressive and reactionary populism along issues such as dependence or not on charismatic leaders, spontaneous versus top-down, organised mobilisation, and emphasis on fairness, equality and justice versus maintenance of perceived natural hierarchies.
This flexible approach, combining Hofstadter's thesis with Ernesto Laclau's theories on populism's fractious constitution, is then applied to analyse different cases. Three chapters on Germany by Peter Fritzche, Geoff Eley and Larry Jones present different angles on whether populism is a useful analytical category to understand political transformations that ended in the Nazi regime. Chapters by Mark Biondich, Nenad Stefanov and York Norman outline the trajectory of populist movements in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, pointing out their continuities and fractures from the late nineteenth century to the present in changing contexts marked by imperial competition, world wars and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Regarding the United States, Gary Marotta provides a broader historical and biographical context to Hofstadter's ideas, while Charles Postel argues that twentieth-century conservative movements in the United States also came from historical legacies other than the populist movement of the 1890s. For Ronald Fermisano, the language of populism in United States, embedded in the political system since the beginnings of the nation, is what created the intrinsic progressive/conservative contradiction in American populism, between discursive appeals to and actual rejection of the people's right to rule.
The four chapters on Latin America revise and expand the traditional approach to populism as identified with urban-based, multi-class regimes. Gillian McGillivray and Thomas Rogers explore the commodity-based economies of the circum-Caribbean, where peasants and rural middle classes provided support for populist regimes. Joel Wolfe argues that Brazilian populism was shaped by the country's strong regionalism and the process of construction of national political and economic structures. Matthew Karush provides a valuable historiographical and theoretical analysis of the evolution of studies on Peronism, while Bridget Chesterton focuses on the populist ideals of Paraguayan Febrerismo through the analysis of plays and popular culture. The section on historical theories of populism includes chapters by John Abromeit and Mark Loeffler, analysing the origins and transformation of producerism, the idea of virtuous producers opposed to immoral parasites at the core of populist discourses on ‘the people’. Finally, the last section on recent tendencies offers three chapters by Cas Mudde on European contemporary populist right-wing parties, Peter Breiner on the tensions between economic populism and reform liberalism in the United States, and Carlos de la Torre on contemporary populist regimes in Latin America.
This volume is a fundamental contribution to understanding the role and forms of populist movements and ideas in Europe and the Americas. Its comparative approach, supported by the essays’ sophistication and new historically-grounded analysis, succeeds in highlighting coincidences, differences, continuities and ruptures over a long period and distinct national experiences. At the same time, this large scope inevitably invites further questions. Both Jones for Germany and Postel for the United States raise the issue that populism might not be applicable or have the explanatory power that others assign it. Also, Fermisano and Karush reject the progressive/regressive dichotomy, pointing out that populism had both inclusive and exclusive features in their concrete manifestations in the United States and Argentina. Behind all the cases under consideration, the question of the state looms large and beyond the noted point that populist movements could be pro- or anti-state. In other words, how do different state structures impact the viability of populism as well as its evolution over time? Is it possible to compare, using populism as an analytical tool, the experiences of a centralised state like Nazi Germany with the centrist-conservative Croatian HSS, non-state Muslim populism in Bosnia, and Anastasio Somoza's regime in Nicaragua, for example? Finally, and with the benefit of historical hindsight, Mudde's arguments on the limited impact and threat of contemporary right-wing populism in Europe and Breiner's analysis on the decline of cultural populism in the United States might be revised in light of Brexit, Trump, and the vigorous support for right-wing populism in Europe and elsewhere.
Beyond these questions, this excellent volume combines a sophisticated theoretical and transnational framework covering a broad geographic and temporal range. The result is a solid comparative piece extremely useful both for scholars in many disciplines and the general public interested in critical current developments in different parts of the world.
