Populism for political theorists?

Abstract

Political theorists do not in general pay much attention to populism; are there any good reasons why they should do so? This paper will consider a number of positive answers to this question. Most attention has so far been paid to issues of methodology—can we define ‘populism’? Recently there has also been some interest in the relation between populism and democracy, but there are two further topics that may be worth investigating, first the possibility of a distinctive political ideology that might be called ‘populist’, and second the meanings and significance of populism's core concept, the elusive ‘people’.

Notes

C. Hill, ‘The many‐headed monster’, in C. Hill (Ed.), Change and Continuity in Seventeenth‐Century England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), pp. 181–204.

H.‐G. Betz, Radical Right‐Wing Populism in Western Europe (London: Macmillan, 1994); H.‐G. Betz, ‘Conditions favouring the success and failure of radical right‐wing populist parties in contemporary democracies’, in Y. Mény and Y. Surel (Eds), Democracies and the Populist Challenge (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002); S. Immerfall, ‘Conclusion: the neo‐populist agenda’, in H.‐G. Betz and S. Immerfall (Eds), The New Politics of the Right—Neo‐Populist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies (London: Macmillan, 1998).

P. Taggart, ‘New populist parties in Western Europe’, West European Politics, 18, 1 (1995), pp. 34–51; P. Taggart, Populism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000).

Taggart, ibid.

P. Mair, ‘Populist democracy vs party democracy’, in Y. Mény and Y. Surel (Eds), Democracies and the Populist Challenge (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002), p. 96

C. Calhoun, The Question of Class Struggle—Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982); G. Stedman Jones, Languages of Class—Studies in English Working Class History 1832–1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); P. Joyce, Visions of the People—Industrial England and the Question of Class 1848–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

F. Venturi, The Roots of Revolution (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1960); R. Wortman, The Crisis of Russian Populism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).

L. Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); J. D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961).

Di Tella, ‘Populism into the twenty‐first century’, Government and Opposition, 32 (1997), pp. 187–200.

G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (Eds), Populism: its Meanings and National Characteristics (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969); E. Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory—Capitalism—Fascism—Populism (London: Verso, 1979); M. Canovan, Populism (London: Junction Books, 1981); M. Canovan, ‘Two strategies for the study of populism’, Political Studies, 30, 4 (1982), pp. 544–552; D. Westlind, The Politics of Popular Identity—Understanding Recent Populist Movements in Sweden and the United States (Lund: Lund University Press, 1996).

M. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Y. Mény and Y. Surel, Par le peuple, pour le peuple—le populisme et les démocraties (Paris: Fayard, 2000); M. Canovan, ‘ “People”, politicians and populism’, Government and Opposition, 19, 3 (1984), pp. 312–327; Westlind, ibid.

Y. Mény and Y. Surel (Eds), Democracies and the Populist Challenge (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002).

Mény and Surel, ibid., p. 9.

M. Canovan, ‘Trust the people! Populism and the two faces of democracy’, Political Studies, 47, 1 (1999), pp. 2–16.

W. Bagehot, The English Constitution (London: Henry S. King, 1872).

M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

M. Canovan, ‘Taking politics to the people: populism as the ideology of democracy’, in Mény and Surel, op. cit., Ref. 12.

I. Budge, The New Challenge of Direct Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1996).

K. Anderson, R.A. Berman, T. Luke, P. Piccone and M. Taves, ‘The empire strikes out: a roundtable on populist politics’, Telos, No. 87, 1991, pp. 3–37; Telos staff: ‘Populism vs the new class’, No. 88, 1991, pp. 2–36.

M. Canovan, G. K. Chesterton—Radical Populist (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977).

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (London: Fontana, 1961).

Laclau, op. cit., Ref. 10; Kazin, op. cit., Ref. 11; Westlind, op. cit., Ref. 10; Mény and Surel, op. cit., Ref. 12.

Canovan, op. cit., Ref. 11.

These arguments are further explored in my forthcoming book on The People (Cambridge: Polity Press, to be published).

H. Arendt, On Revolution (London: Faber and Faber, 1963).