Populism

Three Types of Populism

The term populism was coined by historians referring to two specific movements at the end of the 19th century. One was the populist movement of the 1880s and 1890s in the United States. This movement, culminating in the People's Party, demanded radical economic reforms and initiated cooperative projects. The other reference was to the narodniki in Russia in the same era. This revolutionary movement of Russian intellectuals viewed the peasantry as the main hope for Russia's future. Drawing on the Russian narod, meaning “people” or “folk,” adherents of this movement came to be known as narodniki. Over time, the accidental application of the label populism to these two specific movements gave way to a generic term denoting a type of radical agrarian politics. Since the 1950s, when the study of populism began to attract attention from social scientists, populism has become a multifaceted phenomenon. Three types of populism have since been identified: agrarian populism, economic populism, and political populism. Agrarian populism can be found in rural movements that identify small farmers and the peasantry as the economic and moral backbone of the people. It includes the U.S. People's Party, the Canadian Social Credit movement in the 1930s, Russian and African forms of agrarian socialism, and the Green Uprising after World War I in eastern Europe.

Economic populism emerged in Latin America in the 1920s and remained influential until the 1960s, but it is not restricted to this period or continent. Characteristically, this type of populism is a cross-class, and mainly urban, phenomenon. Latin American populist parties drew from various social strata: urban and rural working class, lower middle class, and sometimes upper middle class. Their economic programs highlighted growth through import-substitution industrialization, an active role of the state, and redistribution of wealth. The archetypal populism of Juan and Evita Perón in Argentina was based on the slogan Justicialismo, implying economic growth and social justice. The programs of Latin American populist leaders did not fit existing ideologies, but their labels, such as Peronismo, were often derived from adding -ismo to the names of the leaders. Typical for Latin American populism is a leadership characterized by personalismo and centralization.

Political populism is primarily driven by political dissatisfaction with elite-mass intermediation in representative democracies. Political populism opposes government by elites, emphasizing the sovereignty of the people through majority rule and direct forms of representation. It can take the form of an unmediated relation between the people and strong, authoritarian leaders. Examples are Huey Long, governor of Louisiana in the early 1930s, and Latin American leaders such as Perón. Political populism can also take the form of the people directly governing through referendums, initiatives, and recalls. An example is the Progressive movement in the United States in the beginning of the 20th century. The phenomenon of successful radical right populist parties emerging in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s is the most recent manifestation of political populism.

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