Must We Talk about Populism? Interrogating Populism’s Conceptual Utility in a Context of Crisis

ABSTRACT

John Gerring identifies eight criteria to help assess the utility of a concept: familiarity, resonance, parsimony, coherence, differentiation, depth, theoretical utility, and field utility. Populism has often been challenged on these despite much work done by scholars to help clarify and sharpen the concept. Nevertheless, three central criticisms persist: the term remains conceptually loose; analysis is often underpinned by an unacknowledged normative bias toward liberal democracy; and, the concept often acts as a label used to sideline challengers to the political status quo, despite crucial differences between these on socio-economic, political, and identity inequalities. Its conceptual utility is therefore questionable as so-called populism displaces the inequalities; particularly, political inequality, which originally engendered the phenomena in the first place. The article concludes by recommending a return to more traditional concepts such as the left/right axis to help redirect debate to more promising lines of inquiry, which can help resolve what I call the “crisis of inequalities.”

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the journal editors and anonymous peer reviewers, and Timofey Agarin, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK, Tim Gill, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, USA, and Christopher Wylde, Richmond, the American International University in London, UK, who reviewed various drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Holly Ellyat, “Europe Faces ‘Galloping Populism,’ Juncker Warns in State of the Union Address,” CNBC (September 14, 2016), available online at: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/14/europe-faces-galloping-populism-juncker-warns-in-state-of-the-union-address.html.

² France 24, “France’s Hollande Reacts to Trump Win, Calls for ‘Unity’ in Face of Rising Populism,” France 24, International News 24/7 (November 16, 2016), available online at: http://www.france24.com/en/20161115-live-french-president-francois-hollande-interview-france-24-tv5-monde-rfi.

³ AFP, “Angela Merkel: The Rise of Populist Parties is Remarkable and Regrettable,” The Journal.ie (May 26, 2014), available online at: http://www.thejournal.ie/angela-merkel-european-elections-1486214-May2014/.

⁴ AFP, “Barack Obama Hits Out at ‘Populist Strongmen’ Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump in Last UN Address,” ABC News (September 20, 2016), available online at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-21/obama-hits-at-populist-strongmen-in-last-un-address/7863656.

⁵ Based on a Lexis Nexis search for “populism” conducted by the author during this period.

⁶ Marco D’Eramo, “Populism and the New Oligarchy,” New Left Review 82 (July-August 2013), pp. 5–28.

⁷ Found in a WordCat search conducted by the author through Maynooth University.

⁸ IMF, “World Economic Outlook Update,” International Monetary Fund: World Economic Outlook (January 22, 2018), available online at: http://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2018/01/11/world-economic-outlook-update-january-2018.

⁹ Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman, World Inequality Report 2018: Executive Summary, (World Inequality Lab, 2018), http://wir2018.wid.world/files/download/wir2018-summary-english.pdf, p. 4.

¹⁰ See for example Sylvia Walby, Jo Armstrong, and Sofia Strid, “Intersectionality: Multiple Inequalities in Social Theory,” Sociology 46:2 (2012), pp. 224–40; Hae Yeon Choo and Myra Marx Ferree, “Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological Research: A Critical Analysis of Inclusions, Interactions, and Institutions in the Study of Inequalities,” Sociological Theory 28:2 (2010), pp. 129–49. See also the Special Issue on “Intersectionality in the Global Age,” New Political Science 37:4 (2015).

¹¹ Carsten Jensen and Kees van Kersbergen, The Politics of Inequality (London, UK and New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan Educational, 2017), p. 2.

¹² Ibid., 5.

¹³ John Echeverri-Gent, “Persistent High Inequality as an Endogenous Political Process,” PS: Political Science and Politics 42:4 (2009), pp. 633–38.

¹⁴ See for example Colin Crouch, Post-democracy (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2004); Peter Mair, “Ruling the Void? The Hollowing of Western Democracy,” New Left Review 42 (2006), pp. 25–51.

¹⁵ William I. Robinson, “Latin America and Global Capitalism,” Race and Class 40:2–3 (1998/99), pp. 111–31.

¹⁶ D’Eramo, “Populism and the New Oligarchy,” pp. 3–25.

¹⁷ Tariq Ali, The Extreme Center: A Second Warning (London, UK and New York, NY: Verso, 2018).

¹⁸ D’Eramo, “Populism and the New Oligarchy,” p. 25.

¹⁹ See for example Merkel’s three democratic models in Wolfgang Merkel, “’Crisis of Democracy’: Analytical Concept or Empty Signifier?” Paper presented to ECPR 8th General Conference, Glasgow, United Kingdom: ECPR, (2014), available online at: https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/0f0d1311-25e6-4cc2-964f-cdd44aa5ae6b.pdf, pp. 3–7.

²⁰ John Gerring, “What Makes a Concept Good? A Critical Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences,” Polity 31:3 (1999), pp. 357–93.

²¹ See for example: Carlos de la Torre (ed) The Promise and Perils of Populism: Global Perspectives (Lexington, KT: University Press of Kentucky, 2015); Benjamin Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016); Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser and Cas Mudde, Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or Corrective for Democracy? (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

²² Benjamin Moffitt, “How to Perform Crisis: A Model for Understanding the Key Role of Crisis in Contemporary Populism,” Government and Opposition 50:2 (2015) pp. 189–17; Janet Roitman, “Crisis,” Political Concepts, (2011), available online at: http://www.politicalconcepts.org/issue1/crisis/; Sylvia Walby, Crisis (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2015); Merkel, “Crisis of Democracy.”

²³ Tim Houwen, “The Non-European Roots of the Concept of Populism,” Working Paper No 120, Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex and Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (2011), available online at: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=sei-working-paper-no-120.pdf&site=266, p. 9.

²⁴ Houwen, “Non-European Roots of Populism,” p. 10.

²⁵ Ibid., 8.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ibid., 12.

²⁹ Ibid., 13.

³⁰ Ibid., 17.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Kenneth M. Roberts, “Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin America: The Peruvian Case,” World Politics 48:82 (1995), pp. 82–116.

³³ Roger Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards (eds), The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Jeffrey Y. Sachs, Social Conflict and Populist Politics in Latin America (San Francisco, CA: ICS Press, 1990).

³⁴ Nicos P. Mouzelis, Politics in the Semi-Periphery: Early Parliamentarianism and Late Industrialisation in the Balkans and Latin America (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1986); George Philip, “New Populism in Spanish America,” Government and Opposition 33:1 (1993), pp. 81–87, 96.

³⁵ John Crabtree, “Populisms Old and New: the Peruvian Case,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 19:2 (2000), pp. 163–76.

³⁶ See for example: Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism (London, UK: Verso, 1977); Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London, UK and New York, NY: Verso, 2005); D.L. Raby, Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today (London, UK, and Ann Arbor MI: Pluto Press, 2006) amongst others.

³⁷ Jan Werner Müller, “’The People Must Be Extracted from Within the People’: Reflections on Populism,” Constellations 2: 4 (2014), pp. 483–93.

³⁸ Ben Stanley, “The Thin Ideology of Populism,” Journal of Political Ideologies 13:1 (2008), pp. 95–110.

³⁹ Laclau, Politics and Ideology, p. 175.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, “Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America,” Government and Opposition 48:2 (2013), pp. 147–74.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ Ibid., 153.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 154.

⁴⁵ Stanley, “The Thin Ideology of Populism.”

⁴⁶ Werner Müller, “’The People Must Be Extracted from Within the People’” p. 484.

⁴⁷ Michael L. Conniff, “Introduction: Toward a Comparative Definition of Populism,” in Michael L. Conniff (ed), Latin American Populism in Comparative Perspective (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), pp. 3–29; John Crabtree, “Populisms Old and New: the Peruvian Case,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 19:2 (2000), pp. 163–76; Roberts, “Populism and Democracy.”

⁴⁸ Gerring, “What Makes a Concept Good?”

⁴⁹ Ibid., 359.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 367.

⁵¹ Herbert J. Gans, “Uses and Misuses of Concepts in American Social Science Research: Variations on Loȉc Wacquant’s Theme of ‘Three Pernicious Premises in the Study of the American Ghetto,’” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 21:3 (1997), pp. 504–07.

⁵² Ibid., 505.

⁵³ Ibid.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 507.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Ezequiel Adamovsky, “Populism is Out of Control,” Telesur TV (June 3, 2015), available online at: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Populism-is-Out-of-Control-20150603-0042.html.

⁵⁸ D’Eramo, “Populism and the New Oligarchy.”

⁵⁹ William W. Sokoloff, “In Defense of Hatred,” New Political Science 37:2 (2015), pp. 163–80.

⁶⁰ Hanspeter Kriesi, “The Populist Challenge,” West European Politics 37:2 (2014), pp. 361–78.

⁶¹ Matthijs Rooduijn and Tjitske Akkerman, “Flank Attacks: Populism and Left-Right Radicalism in Western Europe,” Party Politics 1:12 (2015), pp. 1–12.

⁶² Stanley, “Thin Ideology.”

⁶³ Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, “Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism.”

⁶⁴ Stanley, “Thin Ideology,” pp. 105–06.

⁶⁵ See below for a fuller discussion on this in the context of the left/right dichotomy.

⁶⁶ Margaret Canovan, “’Trust the People!’ Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy,” Political Studies XLVII (1999), pp. 2–16.

⁶⁷ Benjamin Arditi, “Populism as a Specter of Democracy: A Response to Canovan,” Political Studies 52:1 (2004), pp. 135–143.

⁶⁸ Francisco Panizza (ed), Populism and the Mirror of Democracy (New York, NY, and London, UK: Verso, 2005).

⁶⁹ Müller, “Reflections on Populism.”

⁷⁰ Houwen, “The Non-European Roots of The Concept of Populism,” p. 31.

⁷¹ D’Eramo, “Populism and New Oligarchy,” p. 15.

⁷² Gerring, “What Makes a Concept Good?” p. 379.

⁷³ Andrea Mammone, “The Eternal Return? Faux Populism and Contemporarization of Neo-Fascism across Britain, France and Italy,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 17:2 (2009), pp. 171–92.

⁷⁴ See, for example, Luis Ramiro and Raul Gomez, “Radical-Left Populism during the Great Recession: Podemos and Its Competi-tion with the Established Radical Left,” Political Studies 65:15 (2017), pp. 108–26 and Giorgos Katsambekis, “Radical Left Populism in Contemporary Greece: Syriza’s Trajectory from Minoritarian Opposition to Power,” Constellations 23:3 (2016), pp. 391–403 for the respective Spanish and Greek cases.

⁷⁵ For example: Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, “Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism.”

⁷⁶ Müller, “Reflections on Populism.”

⁷⁷ Thanks to one of the reviewers for making this point.

⁷⁸ William B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 56:1 (1955), pp. 167–98.

⁷⁹ Merkel, “Crisis of Democracy.”

⁸⁰ Phillipp Ther, Europe Since 1989: A History (Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2016), p. 99.

⁸¹ Ibid.

⁸² Houwen, “Non-European Roots,” p. 3.

⁸³ Alberto Barrera Tyska, “What Hugo Chávez Tells Us About Donald Trump,” The New York Times (September 20, 2016), available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/opinion/what-hugo-chavez-tells-us-about-donald-trump.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=RelatedCoverage&region=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article; Rory Carroll, “Insult, Provoke, Repeat: How Donald Trump Became America’s Hugo Chávez,” The Guardian (June 22, 2016), available online at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/22/donald-trump-hugo-chavez-political-similarities; Carlos de la Torre, “Will Democracy Survive Trump’s Populism? Latin America May Tell Us,” The New York Times (December 15, 2016), available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/opinion/will-democracy-survive-trumps-populism-latin-america-may-tell-us.html; Ioan Grillo, “Is Donald Trump an American Hugo Chávez?” The New York Times (November 4, 2016), available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/opinion/is-donald-trump-an-american-hugo-chavez.html; Sean Illing, “Trump Ran As A Populist. He’s Governing As An Elitist. He’s Not The First,” Vox (June 23, 2017), available online at: https://www.vox.com/2017/6/23/15791432/donald-trump-populism-latin-america-republican-party; Jennifer McCoy, “COLUMN-What Hugo Chávez and Donald Trump Have in Common,” Reuters (March 31, 2016), available online at: https://www.reuters.com/article/mccoy-chavez/column-what-hugo-chvez-and-donald-trump-have-in-common-idUSL2N1731U1; Andrés Miguel Rondón, “To Beat President Trump, You Have to Learn to Think Like his Supporters,” The Washington Post (December 26, 2017), available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/12/26/to-beat-president-trump-you-have-to-learn-to-think-like-his-supporters/?utm_term=.8f0cbc8cb19c; Joel Simon, “What Does Trump Have in Common With Hugo Chavez? A Media Strategy,” Columbia Journalism Review (February 17, 2017), available online at: https://www.cjr.org/opinion/trump-chavez-media.php.

⁸⁴ Barrera Tyska, “What Hugo Chávez Tells Us About Donald Trump.”

⁸⁵ Carlos de la Torre, “Will Democracy Survive Trump’s Populism?”

⁸⁶ Pablo Vivanco, “5 Reasons Why Comparing Trump to Hugo Chávez Is Nonsense,” Telesur (October 20, 2016), available online at: https://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/5-Reasons-Why-Comparing-Trump-to-Hugo-Chavez-Is-Nonsense-20161020-0023.html; Tim Gill, “People Are Comparing Donald Trump To Hugo Chávez. That’s Mostly Wrong,” The Washington Post (October 17, 2016), available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/17/people-are-comparing-donald-trump-to-hugo-chavez-thats-mostly-wrong/?utm_term=.47aaeb1a4eac.

⁸⁷ John Patrick Leary, “No, Donald Trump is Not Hugo Chávez,” Venezuelanalysis (October 24, 2016), available online at: https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/12738.

⁸⁸ Gill, “People are Comparing”; Vivanco, “5 Reasons.”

⁸⁹ Vivanco, ibid.

⁹⁰ Gill, “People are Comparing.”

⁹¹ Gabriel Hetland contribution to David Smilde, “Debate on the Hugo Chávez / Donald Trump Comparison,” WOLA Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights Blog (November 6, 2016), available online at: https://venezuelablog.org/debate-on-the-hugo-chavez-donald-trump/.

⁹² Ibid.

⁹³ Ibid.

⁹⁴ Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York, NY and London, UK: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Co, 1936).

⁹⁵ D’Eramo, “Populism and New Oligarchy,” p.13.

⁹⁶ Mother Jones Video, “Paul Ryan’s 47 Percent: The ‘Takers’ vs. the ‘Makers’,” Youtube (October 5, 2012), available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZVfb7Cd4dg.

⁹⁷ The Telegraph, “George Osborne Attacks Welfare Cuts Critics,” Youtube (April 2, 2013), available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux9pbfBtbQo.

⁹⁸ Patrick Cotter, “Leo Varadkar Extreme Rightist,” Youtube (June 1, 2017), available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCsC5r51Jpc.

⁹⁹ Andrés Miguel Rondón, “In Venezuela We Couldn’t Stop Chávez, Don’t Make the Same Mistake We Did,” The Washington Post (January 27, 2017), available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/27/in-venezuela-we-couldnt-stop-chavez-dont-make-the-same-mistakes-we-did/?utm_term=.c0262243aeea.

¹⁰⁰ Mc Coy, “Chávez and Trump in Common.”

¹⁰¹ Carroll, “Insult, Provoke, Repeat.”

¹⁰² Sean Illing, “Trump Ran as a Populist.”

¹⁰³ Examples would be the French Socialist party under Francoise Hollande; German Social Democratic Party (SPD) under Gerhard Schroeder; the Italian Democratic Party led by Matteo Renzi; and, the Irish Labour Party under Eamonn Gilmore, amongst others. All, except Schroeder, were severely punished at the polls, although the SPD has never won a federal election since 2005.

¹⁰⁴ Smilde, ibid.

¹⁰⁵ Smilde, “Trump/Chávez Debate.”

¹⁰⁶ Smilde, ibid.

¹⁰⁷ Moffitt, “How to Perform Crisis.”

¹⁰⁸ Roitman, Crisis.

¹⁰⁹ Walby, Crisis

¹¹⁰ Moffitt, “Crisis of Democracy.”

¹¹¹ Moffitt, “How to Perform Crisis.”

¹¹² Ibid 194.

¹¹³ Ibid.

¹¹⁴ Ibid.,195.

¹¹⁵ Ibid.

¹¹⁶ Ibid.,195.

¹¹⁷ Roitman, “Crisis”; Walby, Crisis.

¹¹⁸ Merkel, “Crisis of Democracy,” p. 19.

¹¹⁹ Ibid.,18–20.

¹²⁰ Ibid.,18.

¹²¹ Ibid.

¹²² Ibid., 19.

¹²³ Ibid.

¹²⁴ Ibid., 20.

¹²⁵ Roitman, “Crisis”; Walby, Crisis.

¹²⁶ Walby, ibid.

¹²⁷ For discussions on these see Jennifer Leigh Disney & Virginia S. Williams, “Latin American Social Movements and a New Left Consensus: State and Civil Society Challenges to Neoliberal Globalization,” New Political Science 36:1 (2014), pp.1–31; on Venezuela see for example Michael M. McCarthy, “The Possibilities and Limits of Politicized Participation: Community Councils, Coproduction, and Poder Popular in Chávez’s Venezuela,” in Maxwell A. Cameron, Eric Hershberg, and Kenneth E. Sharpe (eds), New Institutions for Participatory Democracy in Latin America (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2012); on Bolivia see Walter Arteaga, “Building Citizenship in the Context of the Debate on the Post-2015 Agenda in Bolivia,” Community Development Journal 50:4, pp. 571–88, to provide just some suggestions on the rich literature available on these approaches to democracy.

¹²⁸ Gerring, “What Makes a Concept Good?”

¹²⁹ Norberto Bobbio, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1996).

¹³⁰ Alain Noël and Jean-Phillipe Therién. Left and Right in Global Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

¹³¹ Ibid., 231–32.

¹³² Ibid., 234.

¹³³ Ibid., 198.

¹³⁴ Mammone, “The Eternal Return?”

¹³⁵ Ibid., 185.

¹³⁶ Ibid., 187, emphasis in original.

¹³⁷ Gans,“Uses and Misuses of Concepts.”

¹³⁸ D’Eramo, “Populism and the New Oligarchy.”

¹³⁹ Gáspár Miklós Tamás, “The Mystery of ‘Populism’ Finally Unveiled,” (February 24, 2017), available online at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/wfd/can-europe-make-it/g-m-tam-s/mystery-of-populism-finally-unveiled.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Barry Cannon

Barry Cannon (PhD, Dublin City University) lectures on politics in Maynooth University, Ireland. His research focuses on Latin American politics, especially civil society, democratization, and the left and right axis in the region. He has published in a number of key journals including Third World Quarterly, Latin American Politics and Society, and Democratization. His most recent book is The Right in Latin America: Elite Power, Hegemony and the Struggle for the State (Routledge, 2016).