6

POPULIST MOBILIZATION

A New Theoretical Approach to Populism

Robert S. Jansen

Although the demarcation of [objects of study] is not an end in itself …, it is of prime importance. Before we can pose questions of explanation, we must be aware of the character of the phenomena we wish to explain.

Neil J. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior

Political observers oft en label social groups and political actors that make claims of “power to the people” as “populist.” Perhaps in most cases this characterization is not too far off the mark. But given the current state of populism scholarship, it remains unclear what this label adds analytically. Does it help us to interpret the goals or strategies of these groups or actors? Perhaps more importantly, does it help us to distinguish clearly between positive and negative cases, so that we can construct explanatory comparative analyses of the causes and consequences of such political action? Generally, I argue, it does not. What then, if anything, is the value-added of the “populist” descriptor? This chapter is an exercise in clarification through specification. Most generally, it circumscribes the concept by treating populism as a mode of political practice. The goal is to provide the analytical tools necessary to motivate and underpin a fresh and productive program of research into populist politics. Will this approach apply across the board to all groups and actors claiming to empower “the people”? Or, conversely, do all political practices that this approach labels “populist” genuinely serve popular empowerment? Certainly not. But that is partly the point.

The recent resurgence of so-called “neopopulism” across Latin America has breathed new life into the problem of populism. The term “neopopulism” made its debut in scholarly debate in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a way to characterize a new breed of Latin American politicians who implemented neoliberal policies while continuing to mobilize surprising levels of popular support.¹ It then gained colloquial currency with the turn to the Left in Latin American electoral politics of the 1990s and 2000s, as figures like Chávez and Morales began formulating rhetoric and pursuing policies reminiscent of the classic era of Latin American populism.² More recently, the term has been applied to right-wing politicians in Western Europe and to a range of political movements in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics.³ In the past few years, it has even come into use in depictions of contemporary U.S. politics—whether to characterize right-wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh, grassroots mobilizing by the Democratic Party (like that of John Edwards in the 2004 primaries), the persona of Sarah Palin in the 2008 presidential campaign, or the post-2008 “Tea Party” movement.

But what exactly is populism? It stands alongside nationalism and fascism as notoriously difficult to conceptualize.⁴ The term has been used to describe movements, regimes, leaders, ideologies, policies, modes of incorporation, and state structures. As Ernesto Laclau has noted, “few [terms] have been defined with less precision…. We know intuitively to what we are referring when we call a movement or an ideology populist, but we have the greatest difficulty in translating the intuition into concepts.”⁵

The fundamental problem is that most academic discussions of populism continue to rely on folk theories. Everyday usage of the term is overly general, applying to any person, movement, or regime that makes claims by appealing to ordinary (that is, nonelite) people. Such usage may be appropriate for journalistic purposes, but it is inadequate for social scientific analysis. For one thing, it lacks precision, as it could characterize politics in virtually any modern regime in which legitimacy is understood to ascend from “the people” rather than descend by divine or natural right.⁶ For another, it facilitates use of the term as a flexible epithet, to imply that the accused is corrupt, undemocratic, or cynically opportunistic.⁷ Finally, such flexible usage conjures grossly inaccurate explanatory metaphors, implying that populism is a pathology of political culture that is both contagious and hereditary. Both liberal and Marxist academic discourses fall back on these common-sense understandings, and so for them “populist” remains a pejorative label. In order to make headway, it is necessary to move beyond folk theories—with their stark moral valences—and toward an analytically clearheaded theory of the phenomenon.

Given the deeply social bases of populism’s practices and claims, one would hope that the subfield of political sociology would have something to say on the matter. Unfortunately, it has been largely silent. Though some of the most prominent early populism scholars were sociologists, few have engaged the topic in recent years.⁸ Most sociological studies of political forms fail to incorporate those cases typically labeled “populist.”⁹ Indeed, no scholar (sociologist or otherwise) has yet undertaken a systematic comparative-historical analysis of major populist cases, while there have been many such studies of revolution, state formation, democracy, and the welfare state.¹⁰ The most significant impediment has probably been a general suspicion of “populism” as a concept. Such caution is warranted; but it has meant that a whole set of important cases has been systematically neglected by political and comparative-historical sociology.

The challenge is to impose discipline on the concept without unduly undermining its richness. I argue that there is a coherence to be discovered behind populism, but that identifying it requires viewing the phenomenon from the perspective of political practice. For the purposes of this chapter, this means that—rather than trying to pin down flexible ideologies, pigeonhole entire regimes or movements as if they have a consistent essence, or discover the class coalitional core of a given political form—I focus on actually enacted, spatially and temporally bounded projects of populist mobilization. Populist mobilization is a political means that can be undertaken by challengers and incumbents of various stripes in pursuit of a wide range of social, political, and economic agendas. This implies that populism should no longer be reified as a movement or regime type, but rather understood as a flexible way of animating political support. Reconceptualizing populism as populist mobilization resolves old conceptual difficulties while illuminating new avenues for comparative research.

This chapter explores the utility of such an approach with specific reference to Latin America—the world region with which the phenomenon has been most oft en associated.¹¹ The first part of the chapter assesses existing approaches to populism, identifying theoretical shortcomings and highlighting productive points of departure. The second part outlines a new theoretical approach to the problem of populism. The third demonstrates the analytical utility of this approach by applying it to the classic era of Latin American populism.

Existing Approaches to the Problem of Populism

Over the past fifty years, scholars from various disciplines have disagreed not only about how best to explain populism’s historical emergence, but more fundamentally about what it is. Most of what has been written has come not in the form of theoretical statements or comparative analyses, but as historical studies of individual populist cases. To the extent that these have been explicit in their definitions of populism (most have not), such definitions have varied widely. In the end, most historical studies have used the concept to do little more than label cases according to common-sense understandings. Worse still, most cases end up being treated as exceptional—creating a false impression of their incomparability. This inhibits both attempts at systematic comparison and the development of cumulative knowledge. The resulting body of scholarship is thus highly fragmented; and the few attempts to theorize populism have come up short.

Nevertheless, despite this fragmentation—and at the risk of imputing more coherence to the literature than it actually enjoys—it is still possible to sketch a rough map of the scholarly terrain. Let me suggest that there have been three relatively broad “generations” of scholarly thinking about Latin American populism, subsuming five distinct theoretical approaches. The theoretical approaches have varied widely in their motivating questions, their units of analysis, their definitions of the explanandum, and their explanatory frameworks. Still, within each generation it is possible to identify fundamental similarities, especially in terms of how later scholarship has responded to previous theories. The first generation consisted of modernization and Marxist theories—both of which focused on the economic determinants of populist class coalitions. The second generation was both an ideational and an agentic corrective to these previous structuralist approaches. The third generation situated such ideational and agentic issues in the context of political structures, focusing on how the failures of democratic institutions to incorporate citizens have continued to render populist strategies useful to politicians. I will address each of these generations in turn.

The first generation of populism scholarship was elaborated in the 1960s and 1970s. Propelled by currents in modernization theory and structuralist Marxism, scholars of this generation attempted to understand the social bases of support for classic populists like Perón and Vargas by focusing on the economic determinants of populist coalitions. The majority of these early populism scholars drew heavily on modernization theory (including “mass society” theories).¹² Typically, they attempted to discover the developmental conditions responsible for producing populist coalitions between the socially mobilized—yet politically unorganized—“masses” and some elite class fraction that was in a position to take on a leadership role.¹³ Populist parties were understood to be political expressions of such coalitions. At the same time, a smaller number of first-generation studies were motivated by trends in structuralist Marxism.¹⁴ These studies maintained much of modernization theory’s explanation for the emergence of populism, though they typically couched it in different language—oft en relying on Marx’s concept of “Bonapartism.”¹⁵

Perhaps surprisingly, the modernization and Marxist approaches had a great deal in common. They more or less agreed on the importance of defining populism in social terms, rooted in relations of production and market conditions. In this, they saw populism as specific to circumstances of peripheral development in the mid-twentieth century. While later oft en derided for having been functionalist or materially reductionist, or for denying the agency of populist supporters, these theories deserve renewed attention for a number of reasons. First, their close specification of the phenomenon was an improvement over broad definitions that were of little analytical utility. Second, they pointed out that populism is not just a quality of “the masses,” nor is it reducible to the characteristics of a single personality—but that it exists in the relationships between leaders and supporters. Third, their emphasis on the systematic disruptions produced by large scale social change should not be forgotten, even as questions of agency and culture are brought to the fore.

At the same time, this structuralist generation had its weaknesses. A first limitation is that it usually focused on just two cases—Argentina and Brazil—and tended to have a hard time traveling beyond them. Second, it tended to take classes and social groups for granted, assuming group formation to be an unproblematic process. This assumption foreclosed the possibility that populist mobilization might itself play a role in constituting the social bases of support on which it relies. Third, this generation leapt directly from social conditions to political outcomes, assuming an unproblematic translation from one to the other. The important roles of consciousness, organization, and mobilization in producing these outcomes were hardly discussed. This leap also reinforced a simplistic view of “the masses” as a pool of easily manipulated individuals and contributed to an impression of politics as epiphenomenal of social dynamics. Finally, both modernization and Marxist approaches tended to identify populism as limited to a particular developmental stage. This coincided with a functionalism that saw populism as an aberration—as a breakdown in the organic workings of society at a critical moment.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a second generation of populism scholarship emerged as a corrective to these previous structuralist efforts. In an attempt to understand why supporters followed populist leaders, it took an interpretive approach—exploring the ways in which populism consists of more than top-down manipulation and, at the same time, is not simply given by social structure.

One set of scholars attempted to do this by focusing on populist discourse; another, by highlighting the agency of populist followers. Of the two, the discursive approach has been the more prominent and influential.¹⁶ It attempted to answer a question on which the first generation remained largely silent: What is so compelling about populist discourse to those who support populist politicians? This approach focused on the production and reception—and most of all the content—of the personalities, propaganda, and speeches of populist leaders. Not surprisingly, its warmest reception has been from those sympathetic to the cultural turn. A smaller group of scholars emphasized the agentic foundations of populist support.¹⁷ These “agentic-interpretive” scholars understood populism not as a class coalition or mode of discourse, but rather in terms of collective action. Responding in particular to the proposition that populism was an irrational response to economic change, these scholars attempted to discover the interests of populist followers and to assess their limited options for political action. This approach painted a picture of populist movements as empowered, agentic, rational, and as a force for change—rather than as irrational and conservative.

Both the discursive and agentic-interpretive approaches were responses—albeit quite different ones—to the previous structuralist generation’s failure to specify the steps leading from social conditions to political outcomes. Each had its own strengths. The discursive approach usefully focused attention on populist ideas, subjectivities, and culture. The agentic-interpretive approach was correct in arguing that populist participation cannot be explained away as the emotional exuberance of irrational dopes unmoored from traditional social controls.

While providing useful correctives to the earlier theories, however, neither of these new approaches provided a sufficient alternative to them. First, neither dealt adequately with the concrete material and organizational considerations necessary for explaining mobilization to action. The discursive approach assumed that ideas and subjectivities translate unproblematically into political action. But decades of work on mobilization have shown this to be an overly simplistic model. Likewise, the agentic-interpretive approach failed to go far enough in explaining the actions of populist adherents. It focused on the importance of interests and rational decision-making in producing populist movements. But the social movements literature has shown that it is also necessary to consider the intervening roles of resources, organization al capacity, and opportunity.¹⁸ At the same time, second-generation approaches lacked the conceptual specificity of the first generation. They subsumed too many cases, oft en relying only on the lowest common denominator (an invocation of “the people”) to classify a case as populist.¹⁹ In their efforts to subsume as many cases as possible, these approaches participated in what Giovanni Sartori has termed “conceptual stretching,” wherein “extensional coverage tend[s] to be matched by losses in connotative precision.”²⁰ The second generation thus provided a critique of the first, but not a positive alternative.

Finally, in the 1990s, a third generation reoriented the field yet again.²¹ Focusing largely on cases of “neo-populism,” this generation has taken a political view of the phenomenon. It has argued that populism is a symptom of weak democratic incorporation—that individuals follow populist leaders when they are not firmly incorporated into political life through strong and stable political parties. This generation has produced many fresh insights and infused the study of populism with a new vigor. Its most important contribution has been the decoupling of populist politics from economic policies. Another contribution has been its insistence on the central importance of political incorporation.

But despite these advances, political-institutional approaches are inadequate because they tend to neglect the social factors emphasized by first-generation scholars. Party instability is not the only route to “political availability” (although it is one possible route). It is conceivable that parties might be stable, but that characteristics of the population itself might change (for example, through migration that breaks down traditional political relationships) or that the state’s infrastructural capacity to incorporate different regions might vary over time. Further, established parties are not themselves incapable of operating on populist premises when it suits their requirements for political support.

In the end, the existing interdisciplinary literature has not produced an adequate approach to the problem of populism. Each generation of theory has made important contributions, but each suffers from significant weaknesses. It is thus necessary to rethink the problem.

Reconceptualizing Populism as a Mode of Political Practice

Although past approaches to populism have increased our understanding of particular cases and of populist phenomena in general, it is necessary to consolidate their innovations while avoiding their weaknesses. This requires producing a clear theoretical approach that highlights the specificity of populist phenomena while suggesting promising directions for future research. The approach presented here is not meant to trump all others, but rather to identify a coherent set of phenomena that are amenable to comparison and likely to have patterned causes and consequences.²² If it is to maximize the potential for historical explanation, the central concept needs to be circumscribed at a middle range, between the tightness of first-generation definitions and the expansiveness of those of the second.

To do this, I propose a shift away from the problematic notion of “populism” and toward the concept of populist mobilization. After elaborating this reconceptualization, I consider its implications and clarify the limits of the concept by discussing related phenomena that should be understood as analytically distinct.

DEFINING POPULIST MOBILIZATION

A fundamental problem that cuts across all three generations of the populism literature is that scholars tend to treat populism as a thing. This sets them searching for the true essence of populism—whether in the social origins of its leadership, its bases of support, its ideological content, its policy agenda, or its institutional character.²³ But this way of thinking never fails to generate intense disagreements about the fundamental nature of populism. Ill-conceived polemics have raged for decades over “whether populism is essentially left- or right-wing, fascist or egalitarian, forward-looking and progressive or backward-looking and nostalgic.”²⁴ One might add to this list: military or civilian, authoritarian or democratic, and rural or urban.

The best way to move beyond such debates is to shift the focus from the social content of populism and the ends toward which it is directed to the means by which it is done.²⁵ This requires investigating populism as a mode of political practice—as a specific set of actions that politicians and their supporters do—rather than as a type of movement, party, regime, or ideology. My proposed revision in terminology—from “populism” to “populist mobilization”—is meant to capture this important shift from entity to practice.

The first step in such a reconceptualization is to understand populist mobilization as a political project. I define “political project” as a concerted and sustained set of political activities—a package of mobilizational and discursive practices—that maintains a degree of enduring coherence, both in terms of its rhetorical underpinnings and its ongoing enactment. By “political activities,” I mean those actions “which are likely to uphold, to change or overthrow, to hinder or promote” political authority relations.²⁶ It is worth noting that, in the modern era, such authority relations are typically centralized in the organizational apparatus of the territorial nationstate.²⁷ In referring to political projects that are “concerted and sustained,” I mean those that evidence at least a degree of strategic foresight and organizational coordination, and that are maintained across a series of discrete political events.²⁸

What, then, makes a political project populist? I define as a project of populist mobilization any sustained, large-scale political project that mobilizes ordinarily marginalized social sectors into publicly visible and contentious political action, while articulating an antielite, nationalist rhetoric that valorizes ordinary people.

“Populist mobilization” thus describes any sustained political project that combines popular mobilization with populist rhetoric. In this sense, it is a compound concept that requires definitional elaboration across two domains: one that is mobilizational, the other, discursive. The analytical distinction between popular mobilization and populist rhetoric is important, because each can be practiced in dependently of the other. The term “populist mobilization” should be reserved for only those political projects in which the two are co-present and mutually reinforcing.

Specifying the first half of this equation—popular mobilization—is relatively straightforward. Political sociology’s understanding of mobilization still follows more or less in the footsteps of Charles Tilly, when he identified it as “the process by which a group goes from being a passive collection of individuals to an active participant in public life.”²⁹ As Anthony Oberschall noted, this typically involves some “process of forming crowds, groups, associations, and organizations for the pursuit of collective goals.”³⁰ This basic understanding will suffice for present purposes, with two caveats. First, it is important not to assume that mobilizing actors constitute a solidary collectivity, as the formation of such a collectivity is oft en the result—and sometimes a primary goal—of mobilization. Second, it is important not to assume that mobilizing actors share a fixed set of “collective goals,” since the (re)construction of interests might itself be a product of the mobilization project, and because the interests of those leading the mobilization might not be identical to those of the mobilized.³¹ With these caveats in mind, it is reasonable to define political mobilization as the coordination of the political action of a set of individuals and of the material and organizational capacity for—and ideational bases of—such action.

Popular mobilization might be thought of as a subtype of political mobilization, in that it is the mobilization of ordinarily marginalized social sectors into publicly visible and contentious political action. That is, it is the mobilization of the poor, the excluded, or others not previously mobilized, into coordinated—and oft en confrontational—political activity in public space.³² This might be done through the staging of marches, rallies, demonstrations, or public meetings that challenge dominant sociopolitical conventions, structures, or actors. The specific content of popular mobilizing activities in a given time and place is contingent upon a number of contextual factors, relating to the existing structures of social relations, the targets of the mobilization, the patterns of public life, and the existing repertoires for claims-making. The definition elaborated here is meant to allow for such variation in the specifics of practice, while still identifying a coherent form of mobilization.

Popular mobilization thus defined is not always accompanied by populist rhetoric. Indeed, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Latin American history contains numerous examples of popular mobilization not motivated or justified by populist principles. To take just one example, in Peru’s electoral campaigns of 1872–1874, poor and illiterate Peruvians were mobilized via clientelistic ties and electoral clubs to participate in public marches, rallies, and mob actions; but this did not imply a valorization of common people as common people. Rather, these ordinarily marginalized Peruvians—many of whom were not even eligible to vote—were employed as street troops to seize polling places in public plazas and generally to manifest visible support.³³ To fit the definition of populist mobilization outlined above, popular mobilization must be infused with a populist rhetoric.

By “populist rhetoric,” I mean an antielite, nationalist rhetoric that valorizes ordinary people.³⁴ I use the term “rhetoric” here in its broadest sense, to imply collections of symbolic actions, styles of expression, public statements (spoken or written), definitions of a given situation, and ways of elaborating ideas that broadly invoke or reinforce a populist principle, which reciprocally legitimates and animates political action.³⁵ This principle can be expressed more explicitly in some cases than in others. As Craig Calhoun has noted of nationalism: “The issue is not only whether participants use a specific term…. It is, rather, whether participants use a rhetoric, a way of speaking, a kind of language that carries with it connections to other events and actions, that enables or disables certain other ways of speaking or action, or that is recognized by others as entailing certain consequences.”³⁶

On one level, populist rhetoric posits the natural social unity and inherent virtuousness of “the people”—of the majority of ordinary members of the national community. In this regard, the definition outlined here draws on a broad understanding of “nationalism” that can, but need not necessarily, be circumscribed in ethnic terms.³⁷ Indeed, populist leaders may develop arguments that the national “people” includes workers, the urban poor, the landed and landless peasantry, and indigenous populations, as well as professionals, the middle class, or even certain segments of the elite. In so doing, they adopt nationalist ways of speaking and framing situations (sometimes, in Latin America, alongside tropes of indigenismo or mestizaje). In characterizing such a broad swath of “popular” society, leaders downplay differences and emphasize similarities (or at least unity through functional interdependence). In this respect, populist rhetoric differs from class-based, interest-group, or issue-specific rhetoric. Overall, populist rhetoric represents an attempt to forge a solidary “people” through its rhetorical invocation.

At the same time, populist rhetoric sets up its solidary national “people” as existing in antagonistic vertical relationship to some kind of antipopular “elite” (oft en identified as an economic or political “oligarchy”). Typically, this elite is portrayed as having disproportionate and unjustified control over conditions affecting the rights, well-being, and progress of “the people.” Precisely which social groups get tarred with the elite brush can vary significantly from one case to another. But regardless of how this parasitic popular enemy is constructed, populist rhetoric ultimately aims at forging vertically oppositional solidarities at a national level. Such a Manichaean discourse, emphasizing the immorality of the elite, is instrumental to the rhetorical project of elevating the moral worth of—and collapsing competing distinctions within the category of—“the people.”³⁸

The specific content of populist rhetoric varies historically and contextually. Differences in social structure, productive relations, and political systems—and in the salience of those social categories that result—can facilitate quite different populist rhetorics. At the same time, each country is likely to have its own unique history of political styles and symbolism, of group representations and narratives, of claims-making and issue-framing—all of which contribute to variation in the content of populist rhetoric. The approach presented here is meant to be flexible enough to accommodate such contextual variation while still identifying a core principle of populist legitimation.

Just as popular mobilization need not be infused with populist rhetoric, populist rhetoric is not always instantiated in a mobilization project. Latin American history provides numerous examples of the elaboration of populist rhetoric in the absence of active popular mobilization. To take just one example, also from the Peruvian case, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre developed and spread his populist rhetoric—which valorized urban and rural workers, the highland indigenous population, and the middle classes, while vilifying the old “oligarchy” of aristocratic elites—through correspondence and public writing over the course of nearly ten years in exile during the 1920s before engaging in any kind of sustained, large-scale popular mobilizing.

Populist mobilization projects infuse popular mobilization with populist rhetoric. The populist rhetoric animates, specifies the significance of, and justifies the popular mobilization; and the popular mobilization instantiates the populist rhetoric in a political project. While the two planes remain analytically distinct, there is a clear historical correlation. With a sort of elective affinity, each suggests itself to the other from the perspective of those undertaking political projects, given adequate opportunities for each. For reasons already noted, one populist mobilization project may look quite different from another pursued in a different time and place. The conceptualization elaborated here is meant to provide a consistent basis for identifying what these projects share in common.

IMPLICATIONS

By treating populism as a mode of political practice, the above conceptualization has several advantages over previous approaches. First, it transcends some of the limitations of first-generation scholarship by abandoning the assumption that populism is necessarily tied to a particular developmental stage. Populist mobilization does not reduce to the social content of “populist coalitions,” nor is it linked by necessity to a particular set of economic conditions or policies. Second, this conceptualization is less expansive than those of second-generation approaches, providing better analytical leverage. As noted above, a set of ideas can float about in the ether of political discourse without ever being instantiated in an actual mobilization project. Third, it moves beyond the political institutional focus of third-generation scholarship by understanding populist politics as more than a matter of incorporation.

Further, describing populist mobilization as a political project is significant for a number of reasons. First, it forces us to specify the actors and organizations involved. Suggesting that populist politics is about leaders mobilizing supporters undermines organicist assumptions that populist movements embody some natural confluence of the interests of—or symbiotic relationships between—pre-political social groups.³⁹ Indeed, populist mobilization can be a reasonable strategy for both incumbents (state leaders) and challengers (leaders of political movements seeking to gain control of the state). And the fact that populist mobilization involves leaders mobilizing supporters need not limit our attention to “top-down” movements, to the exclusion of “bottom-up” movements, since both types require the organization and mobilization of supporters by movement leadership.⁴⁰

Second, understanding populist mobilization as a political project highlights the spatial limitations of populist politics. States maintain variable degrees of infrastructural power within their own territories, and social formations oft en vary geographically.⁴¹ For these reasons and others, populist mobilization is oft en spatially circumscribed, targeting only certain geographical areas (regions, provinces, cities, or neighborhoods).

Third, understanding populist mobilization as a project emphasizes its temporal boundedness and variability. Populist mobilization is undertaken at specific historical moments, is sustained for limited durations, and is subject to fluctuation in its character and intensity over time. Approaches to populism based on temporally static (or conventionally periodized) typologies fail to account for the fact that putatively populist regimes and movements vary significantly over time in their propensity to enact populist mobilization projects.⁴² Defining populist mobilization as a project thus identifies a set of practices that are leader-driven and organizationally maintained, while remaining spatially and temporally bounded.⁴³

Given the specificity of this conceptualization, it is worth noting a few phenomena that are oft en conflated with populism that should be kept analytically distinct. First, populist mobilization is different from the rise of mass democratic politics—although the two have oft en occurred together in history. It is possible to conceive of mass politics developing without the enactment of populist mobilization.⁴⁴ And it is possible to conceive of populist mobilization without mass democratic politics.⁴⁵

Second, populist mobilization is not identical with the rise of leftist, reformist, or “popular” movements aimed at helping impoverished social sectors. This applies to the reformism of the mid-twentieth century—in which many Latin American countries saw proposals for land reform, pursued nationalist economic policies, and paid lip ser vice to the importance of social programs—as well as the coming to power of leftist parties in the last decade of the twentieth century. Shifts to the Left, or to reformism, are important to explain in their own right and should not be confused with populist mobilization per se—even if reformers sometimes rely on populist mobilization to build support.

Third and fourth, populist mobilization should not be confused with either traditional clientelism or with caudillismo. Both modes of political control are deeply entrenched in the political history of Latin America and so form part of the cultural repertoires of Latin American politicians. But both have also been too easily conflated with populism. Scholars who see populism as an incorporation project sometimes confuse it with clientelism. But populist mobilization is not simply a mode of incorporation; and reducing populist mobilization to clientelism obscures the fact that it oft en results from the breakdown of old clientelistic systems. At the same time, scholars who see populism as a mode of personalistic and charismatic politics oft en take it to be synonymous with caudillismo. But again, populist mobilization as I have defined it involves much more than charisma—even if it is undeniable that the modern populist oft en cloaks himself in the historical mantle of the virile caudillo. As with mass politics and leftist reformism, clientelism and caudillismo are important to explain in their own right. While oft en practiced in concert with populist mobilization, they should be kept analytically distinct.

The drawing of such careful distinctions is not a frivolous exercise in political labeling. Rather, it is a necessary first step toward providing a sound basis for comparative research. The following section demonstrates this analytical utility by applying the approach outlined here to mid-twentieth-century Latin American politics.

Application: The Classic Era of Latin American Populism

The mid-twentieth-century era of classic Latin American populism provides a unique opportunity to evaluate this theoretical approach, because it has thus far been the primary referent of most populism scholarship. Recasting populism as populist mobilization clarifies the political terrain of this era, while suggesting new and promising avenues for future research. It does so in three respects. First, it brings more analytical precision to the three cases that have been studied most extensively. Second, it shores up meaningful similarities between these high-profile cases and others of the same era that have been almost entirely ignored. Third, it specifies differences between this set of positive cases and a wide range of negative cases.

HIGH-PROFILE CASES: THEORY PROVIDES ANALYTICAL PRECISION

Populist mobilization played a critical role in the twentieth-century political histories of most Latin American countries. Indeed, by the definition outlined above, eight of the eleven Latin American countries considered here experienced at least one episode of populist mobilization before 1955: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.⁴⁶ But just three of these countries have drawn a disproportionate share of the scholarly attention. For these high-profile cases, the conceptualization offered here provides greater analytical precision than past approaches.

The existing populism literature on the classic period elevates the cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.⁴⁷ In Argentina, the focus has been on Juan Domingo Perón, who mobilized workers into a personalistic party in support of his own government. In Brazil, Getúlio Vargas—widely known for his populist rhetoric—has garnered the lion’s share of scholarly attention. In Mexico, the emphasis has been broadly on the Mexican Revolution and the post-revolutionary period, in which peasants and workers were mobilized into a corporatist state party. But Perón held the presidency in Argentina from 1946 through 1955, and then again from 1973 to 1974; Vargas was in office from 1930 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1954; and the period treated as populist in the Mexican case spans roughly twenty-three years, from 1917 to 1940. Clearly, the analytical instrument remains blunt.

Reconceptualizing populism as populist mobilization clarifies the spatial and temporal boundaries of these early populist episodes. Measured against the standard outlined above, it becomes clear that Perón began his project of populist mobilization in Buenos Aires as early as 1943—even before securing the presidency—and that this project had wound down by 1949. It becomes apparent that Vargas—although in office by 1930—did not initiate an active populist mobilization project until 1943 (in anticipation of a postwar democratic opening) and that he sustained this project for just two years. And in the case of Mexico, a practice-based theory makes it possible to specify those periods of the revolution and revolutionary consolidation that were marked by active populist mobilization (in particular, the 1934–1940 period in which Lázaro Cárdenas led a concerted populist project).

Because regimes and movements can move into and out of populist politics, it is not adequate to ask simply whether they were or were not populist in some essential sense. Rather, it is necessary to ask where and when they did and did not actively pursue populist mobilization. Discussing just one of these cases in more detail should suffice to illustrate this point.

Perón is without a doubt Latin America’s most widely recognized populist, past or present. But while others have treated “Peronismo” as a unitary (if vague) phenomenon, it is useful to develop a better specification of when and how Perón actually relied most heavily on populist mobilization. I suggest that Perón’s first mobilizational period (and Argentina’s first large-scale populist episode) ran from 1943 through 1949—from three years before Perón became president through three years before the close of his first presidential term. In 1943, then-Colonel Perón participated in a coup d’état and was subsequently appointed secretary of labor by the new military government. He initiated his first populist mobilization project at this early moment, forging ties with unions and mobilizing workers by encouraging strikes, into which he could then intervene on the side of labor.⁴⁸ This mobilization provoked opposition from other members of the government, who in 1945 had Perón arrested and removed from his post. But by this time, the die was cast. Perón had developed enough support among urban workers that mass demonstrations forced his release from prison and catapulted him to victory in the 1946 presidential election. Supported by steady economic growth between 1943 and 1948, Perón made efforts to build a multiclass alliance; but workers always formed his “principal electoral base as well as a massive counterweight against his inconsistent military, industrial, and middle class supporters.”⁴⁹ Argentina’s first populist episode effectively ended in 1949, when postwar economic crises disrupted Perón’s ability to pursue populist mobilization and led him to rely increasingly on authoritarian measures for maintaining political control. What matters most in all of this is not the question of whether Perón was or was not himself a populist, but the fact that he enacted populist mobilization consistently between 1943 and 1949. Such a periodization does not map onto Perón’s presidential tenure and is obscured by previous approaches to populism; but it captures more precisely the moment of Argentine history that should be compared with other populist episodes (both high- and low-profile).

LOW-PROFILE CASES: THEORY IDENTIFIES OVERLOOKED SIMILARITIES

At the same time that the shift from populism to populist mobilization makes it possible to specify the three most high-profile classic cases with more precision, it also provides clear criteria for the inclusion of other neglected cases in the comparative matrix. As noted above, five other Latin American countries (of the eleven under consideration) also experienced at least one episode of populist mobilization in the classic era. That is, despite the emphases of the existing literature, there have been a handful of other important moments in which quite similar populist projects made an early appearance. These overlooked populist episodes may have been shorter-lived or less consequential than those of Perón, Vargas, and Cárdenas; but from the perspective of populist mobilization, they share many meaningful similarities with the high-profile cases. For illustrative purposes, I will provide a brief narrative of just one of these.

There has been remarkably little scholarship on Bolivian political history. Its revolution of 1952 is probably the least studied in Latin American history; and the country’s first episode of populist mobilization is even less remembered.⁵⁰ This episode began early in 1944, after Colonel Gualberto Villarroel came to power in a coup d’état that was supported by a relatively new political party—the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR). Facing opposition from the Left and the Right, as well as pressure from the United States, Villarroel and the MNR undertook a populist project to mobilize new bases of support.⁵¹ The Villarroel-MNR project appealed to mineworkers, urban laborers, informal sector workers (especially market women), and indigenous peasants. This appeal was made through a rhetoric that valorized the ideal of a mestizo nation allied against an “anti-patria” of mining interests, hacienda owners, and others viewed as the domestic allies of foreign imperialists.⁵² In the run-up to congressional elections to be held in June 1944, Villarroel and the MNR initiated an extensive campaign of mobilization and organization, forming a powerful mineworkers’ union, holding a national Indigenous Congress, and staging importantly symbolic public events and commemorations.⁵³ This first populist episode came to an abrupt end on July 20, 1946, when the Frente Democrático Anti-Fascista—an umbrella organization formed to unite the opposition—staged a violent revolution in which “a street mob burst into the presidential palace, and the corpse of Villarroel was hung from a lamp post in the Plaza Murillo, in apparent imitation of the death of Mussolini.”⁵⁴

Similar stories could be told for each of the other neglected cases. A theory of populist mobilization would acknowledge, for example, the competitive mobilization projects of Peru’s Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre and Luis M. Sánchez Cerro, in the run-up to the 1931 presidential election, as constituting that country’s first populist episode. It would recognize the second presidential campaign of José María Velasco Ibarra (1939–1940) as Ecuador’s first populist episode. Rómulo Betancourt’s 1945–1948 mobilization and organization of peasants, farmers, and youth—while attacking the oligarchy with “extremely aggressive” speeches⁵⁵—would enter into comparative discussions as Venezuela’s first populist episode. And due attention would be paid to Jorge Eliécer Gaitán’s mobilization projects of 1944 through 1948 as representing Colombia’s first populist episode. While each of these has been the subject of at least a few historical studies, they have almost never been incorporated into theoretical or comparative discussions of populist politics.⁵⁶ The continuation of such neglect threatens to impede our understanding of Latin American populism, because all five cases share important practical similarities with the high-profile cases.

NEGATIVE CASES: THEORY SPECIFIES PREVIOUSLY UNAPPRECIATED DIFFERENCES

Too oft en, popular views of Latin American politics suffer from the impression that populism is endemic in the region—that it is simply part of the political culture. But populist mobilization has been pursued only at specific times and in particular places. Thus, at the same time that reconceptualizing populism as populist mobilization brings greater analytical precision to the high-profile cases and incorporates various neglected cases into the comparative fold, it usefully delimits the universe of cases. It makes it possible to specify what populist mobilization is not, thereby excluding cases too casually lumped together under the pejorative folk label “populist.” This identification of meaningful difference is just as important as the discovery of unappreciated similarity for clarifying the political terrain and establishing new lines of research.⁵⁷

Populist mobilization has not been a constant feature of Latin American political history, but rather is an innovation of the twentieth century. Before this point, Latin American politics was defined by the looming presence of the military in political life, by conflicts between caudillo strong-men competing for the spoils of office, by liberal-conservative, rural-urban, and regional rivalries, and—with the rise of electoral politics and political parties—by various, oft en corrupt, forms of elite control over electoral outcomes. But it is only when we conflate populism with authoritarianism, caudillismo, clientelism, corruption—or, somewhat differently, with any anti-status-quo movement—that the phenomenon seems to reach deep back into the nineteenth century. Providing the means to avoid such conflation is one of the advantages of the present theory.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, new social and political conditions began to provide creative politicians with glimpses of novel opportunities for securing and maintaining power. Around this time, some countries experienced short-lived episodes of what might be thought of as “proto-populist” mobilization. But it was not until Peru’s 1931 election that the region experienced its first sustained, large-scale populist episode. While it is important to understand the ways in which populist mobilization was foreshadowed by more limited mobilization projects before 1931, a practice-oriented theory provides clear standards for excluding such previous political activities.

But even after 1931, populist mobilization was far from endemic in Latin America. While by the definition proposed here, most Latin American countries had experienced a populist episode by 1955, non-populist phases still significantly outnumbered examples of concerted populist mobilization—even in those countries. More interesting still, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay experienced no episodes of populist mobilization in the classic era. Remarkably, the populism literature has paid almost no attention to these anomalous cases—likely because it lacks the criteria for identifying them as such. But any theory claiming to explain populist mobilization must also be able to account for negative cases. A practice-based approach thus circumscribes the phenomenon in a way that is both intellectually provocative and theoretically necessary.

This chapter has argued that it is potentially fruitful to reconceptualize populism as a mode of political practice. Admittedly, this means shifting the focus from questions of what populism “really is” to the question of what populist mobilization practices share in common across a wide range of contexts.⁵⁸

I have defined populist mobilization as any sustained, large-scale political project that mobilizes ordinarily marginalized social sectors into publicly visible and contentious political action, while articulating an antielite, nationalist rhetoric that valorizes ordinary people. Such a definition clearly does not apply to all groups and actors claiming to empower the people, as such claims can be quite varied and are by no means always accompanied by mobilization projects of the type described here.⁵⁹ Nor does this definition capture all regimes and movements typically labeled “populist.”⁶⁰ But this is partly the point, as attempts to excavate the true essence of populism seem instead to unearth only antinomies. Rather, it is my hope that the provisional conceptual work outlined here serves to spotlight hitherto underappreciated similarities and differences in contentious political practice. Insofar as it does, it might go a long way toward clarifying the political terrain.

I attempted to demonstrate the analytical utility of this practice-based approach by engaging with the cases of Latin America’s classic populist era, but the approach should be equally applicable to contemporary Latin American politics. The fact that the neo-populists of the 1990s largely pursued neoliberal policies, while others have lately been more progressive, ceases to be problematic when populism is viewed as a flexible practice. Likewise, that not all politicians who might be thought of as representing Latin America’s broader turn to the Left have pursued populist mobilization is also easily understood when means are differentiated from ends. The question remains of whether this framework can be usefully applied beyond the shores of Latin America—a question about which I remain agnostic.⁶¹ But at the very least, this chapter should provide a baseline for the design of rigorous comparative studies aimed at addressing this important concern.

Notes

This chapter is a revised version of an article that first appeared in the pages of Sociological Theory (29, no. 2 [2011]: 75–96) and is used by permission. In addition to those acknowledged in the previous iteration, I would like to thank the participants in the “Power to the People” conference for their encouragement, comments, and specific suggestions for this updated version.

    1. Such politicians include Peru’s Alan García and Alberto Fujimori, Mexico’s Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and Argentina’s Carlos Menem.

    2. See Maxwell A. Cameron and Eric Hershberg, eds., Latin America’s Left Turns: Politics, Policies, and Trajectories of Change (Boulder, Colo.: Lynn Reinner Publishers, 2010).

    3. Mabel Berezin, Illiberal Politics in Neoliberal Times: Culture, Security and Populism in the New Europe (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Hans-Georg Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994); Joseph Held, ed., Populism in Eastern Europe: Racism, Nationalism, and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Jan Jagers and Stefaan Walgrave, “Populism as Political Communication Style: An Empirical Study of Political Parties’ Discourse in Belgium,” European Journal of Political Research 46 (2007): 319–45; Jens Rydgren, From Tax Populism to Ethnic Nationalism: Radical Right-Wing Populism in Sweden (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006); Paul Taggart, “Populism and Representative Politics in Contemporary Europe,” Journal of Political Ideologies 9 (2004): 269–88; Peter Učeň, “Parties, Populism, and Anti-Establishment Politics in East Central Europe,” SAIS Review 27 (2007): 49–62; Kurt Weyland, “Neoliberal Populism in Latin America and Eastern Europe,” Comparative Politics 31 (1999): 379–401.

    4. On the difficulties of conceptualizing populism, see for instance Carlos de la Torre, Populist Seduction in Latin America: The Ecuadorian Experience (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2000), 1–27; Ghiţa Ionescu and Ernest Gellner, Introduction, in Ghiţa Ionescu and Ernest Gellner, eds., Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1969), 1–3; and Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London: New Left Books, 1977), 143.

    5. Laclau, Politics and Ideology, 143.

    6. Craig Calhoun, Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 70.

    7. In the United States, “populism” has sometimes taken on a positive moral valence—as in the use of the term by the contemporary Right. But the problems with this usage remain the same.

    8. The only exception seems to be the U.S. case, which has received a modest share of attention from political sociologists. See for example: Joseph Gerteis, “Populism, Race, and Political Interest in Virginia,” Social Science History 27 (2003): 197–227; Joseph Gerteis, Class and the Color Line: Interracial Class Coalition in the Knights of Labor and the Populist Movement (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007); Kent Redding, “Failed Populism: Movement-Party Disjuncture in North Carolina, 1890–1900,” American Sociological Review 57 (1992): 340–52; Michael Schwartz, Radical Protest and Social Structure: The Southern Farmers’ Alliance and Cotton Tenancy, 1880–1890 (New York: Academic Press, 1976); and Sarah A. Soule, “Populism and Black Lynching in Georgia, 1890–1900,” Social Forces 71 (1992): 431–49. The most prominent sociologists among the early populism scholars were Gino Germani and Torcuato Di Tella. Mabel Berezin and Carlos de la Torre are among the few sociologists to have recently engaged the topic at a conceptual level.

    9. Perhaps the most striking example of this omission is Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly’s much-heralded Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Although it is a wide-ranging treatment of contentious politics, this work does not include a single populist case among its fifteen core examples. Seymour M. Lipset’s Political Man (New York: Doubleday, 1960) is a rare exception.

  10. Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier’s Shaping the Political Arena (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991) might be seen as an exception; but this monumental work focuses on the political incorporation of organized labor, not populism per se. A. E. Van Niekerk’s Populism and Political Development in Latin America (Rotterdam: Rotterdam University Press, 1974) deals with multiple populist cases, but his is more a work of typological schematization than of historical explanation. While a few edited volumes have set a variety of populist cases side by side, these have mostly left the comparison to the reader. See Michael L. Conniff, ed., Latin American Populism in Comparative Perspective (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982); Michael L. Conniff, ed., Populism in Latin America (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999); Ionescu and Gellner, eds., Populism; Maria M. Mackinnon and Mario A. Petrone, eds., Populismo y neopopulismo en América Latina: El problema de la cenicienta (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1998).

  11. There are three reasons for thus circumscribing the project. First, while populism has been noted in a variety of contexts—from late nineteenth-century Russia and the United States, to mid-twentieth-century Africa, to contemporary Europe—Latin America is the region in which the phenomenon has been the most widespread. Second, in terms of scholarly and popular discourse, it is the region with which the term has been most consistently associated—and it is here that the existing populism literature has largely focused. Third, Latin America is the region with which I have the most scholarly expertise. It is consistent with the division of labor among regionalists that I should let those with similar in-depth knowledge of other regions judge for themselves the utility of this approach beyond the confines of Latin America.

  12. Classic statements of modernization and mass society theory include: Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1954); Karl Deutsch, “Social Mobilisation and Political Development,” in Harry Eckstein and David E. Apter, eds., Comparative Politics: A Reader (London: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), 582–603; William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (New York: Free Press, 1959); and Lipset, Political Man. For examples of the modernization vein of the populism literature, see: Torcuato S. Di Tella, “Populism and Reform in Latin America,” in Claudio Veliz, ed., Obstacles to Change in Latin America (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 47–74; Gino Germani, Política y sociedad en una época de transición: De la sociedad tradicional a la sociedad de masas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidos, 1963); Gino Germani, Authoritarianism, Fascism, and National Populism (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978); Alistair Hennessy, “Latin America,” in Ionescu and Gellner, eds., Populism, 28–61; Thomas E. Skidmore, “Workers and Soldiers: Urban Labor Movements and Elite Responses in Twentieth-Century Latin America,” in Virginia Bernhard, ed., Elites, Masses, and Modernization in Latin America, 1850–1930 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), 79–126; and van Niekerk, Populism and Political Development.

  13. Di Tella, “Populism and Reform in Latin America”; Torcuato S. Di Tella, Latin American Politics: A Theoretical Approach (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 17–34.

  14. For examples of this vein of scholarship, see: Romeo Grompone, Fujimori, neopopulismo y comunicación política (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1998); Peter F. Klarén, Modernization, Dislocation, and Aprismo: Origins of the Peruvian Aprista Party, 1870–1932 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973); Anibal Quijano, “Tendencies in Peruvian Development and Class Structure,” in James Petras and Maurice Zeitlin, eds., Latin America: Reform or Revolution? (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, 1968), 289–328; Hobart A. Spalding, Jr., Organized Labor in Latin America: Historical Case Studies of Workers in Dependent Societies (New York: New York University Press, 1977); Carlos H. Waisman, Modernization and the Working Class: The Politics of Legitimacy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); and Carlos H. Waisman, Reversal of Development in Argentina: Postwar Counterrevolutionary Politics and Their Structural Consequences (Prince ton, N.J.: Prince ton University Press, 1987).

  15. Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in David McLellan, ed., Karl Marx: Selected Writings, 1st ed. (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1977), 300–25.

  16. See for example: Robert J. Alexander, Aprismo: The Ideas and Doctrines of Víctor Raúl Haya De La Torre (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1973); Anton Allahar, ed., Ca rib be an Charisma: Reflections on Leadership, Legitimacy and Populist Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001); José Alvarez Junco, ed., Populismo, caudillaje y discurso demagógico (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores, 1987); Emilio de Ipola, “Populismo eideología (A propósito de Ernesto Laclau: ‘Política eideología en la teoría marxista’),” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 41 (1979): 925–60; John Green, “ ‘Vibrations of the Collective’: The Popular Ideology of Gaitanismo on Colombia’s Atlantic Coast, 1944–48,” Hispanic American Historical Review 76 (1996): 283–311; Kirk A. Hawkins, “Is Chávez Populist? Measuring Populist Dis-course in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Political Studies 42 (2009): 1040–67; Osvaldo Hurtado, “Populismo y carisma,” in Felipe Burbano de Lara and Carlos de la Torre Espinosa, eds., El populismo en el Ecuador (Quito: ILDIS, 1989); Laclau, Politics and Ideology; Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005); David Leaman, “Populist Liberalism As Dominant Ideology,” Studies in Comparative International Development 34 (1999), 98–118; Cas Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist,” Government & Opposition 39 (2004): 541–63; Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, “Voices of the Peoples: Populism in Europe and Latin America Compared,” Kellogg Institute Working Paper 378 (2011); Marysa Navarro, “Evita’s Charismatic Leadership,” in Conniff, ed., Latin American Populism, 47–66; Joel Wolfe, “ ‘Father of the Poor’ or ‘Mother of the Rich’? Getúlio Vargas, Industrial Workers, and Constructions of Class, Gender, and Populism in São Paulo, 1930–1954,” Radical History Review 58 (1994): 80–112; and Marta Zabaleta, “Ideology and Populism in Latin America: A Gendered Overview,” in Will Fowler, ed., Ideologues and Ideologies in Latin America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997).

  17. See for example: Javier Auyero, “ ‘From the Client’s Point(s) of View’: How Poor People Perceive and Evaluate Political Clientelism,” Theory and Society 28 (1999): 297–334; Octavio Ianni, “Populismo y relaciones de clase,” in Gino Germani, Torcuato S. Di Tella, and Octavio Ianni, eds., Populismo y contradicciones de clase en Latinoamérica (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, S.A., 1973), 83–150; Octavio Ianni, La formación del estado populista en América Latina (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, S.A., 1975); Miguel Murmis and Juan C. Portantiero, Estudios sobre los orígines del peronismo (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1971); Spalding, Organized Labor in Latin America; and Francisco Weffort, “El populismo en la política brasileña,” in Mackinnon and Petrone, eds., Populismo y neopopulismo, 135–52.

  18. Craig J. Jenkins, “Resource Mobilization Theory and the Study of Social Movements,” Annual Review of Sociology 9 (1983): 530; Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1978).

  19. Alan Knight acknowledges—and in fact flaunts—this looseness, seeing it as an asset, because it allows him to be inclusive of the wide and eclectic range of cases that history has agreed to call “populist” (Alan Knight, “Populism and Neo-Populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico,” Journal of Latin American Studies 30 [1998]: 240).

  20. Giovanni Sartori, “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review 64 (1970): 1035.

  21. This generation of scholarship includes: Julian Castro Rea, Graciela Ducatenzeiler, and Philippe Faucher, “Back to Populism: Latin America’s Alternative to Democracy,” in Archibald R. M. Ritter, Maxwell A. Cameron, and David H. Pollock, eds., Latin America to the Year 2000: Reactivating Growth, Improving Equity, Sustaining Democracy (New York: Praeger, 1992), 125–46; Charles D. Kenney, Fujimori’s Coup and the Breakdown of Democracy in Latin America (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004); de le Torre, Populist Seduction; Steve Ellner, “The Contrasting Variants of the Populism of Hugo Chávez and Alberto Fujimori,” Journal of Latin American Studies 35 (2003): 139–62; Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Kenneth M. Roberts, “Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin America: The Peruvian Case,” World Politics 48 (1996): 82–116; Kurt Weyland, “Neopopulism and Neoliberalism in Latin America: Unexpected Affinities,” Studies in Comparative International Development 31 (1996): 3–31; Kurt Weyland, “Swallowing the Bitter Pill: Sources of Popular Support for Neoliberal Reform in Latin America,” Comparative Political Studies 31 (1998): 539–68; and Kurt Weyland, “A Paradox of Success? Determinants of Political Support for President Fujimori,” International Studies Quarterly 44 (2000): 481–502.

  22. Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968).

  23. This impulse is understandable. Many political scientists persist in trying to determine what populism is, in part because answering this question is a necessary precondition for assessing populism’s relationship to democracy and democratic representation. See, for example, the discussion of political incorporation and representation in Kenneth Roberts’s contribution to this volume.

  24. Kenneth Minogue, “Populism as a Political Movement,” in Ionescu and Gellner, eds., Populism, 200.

  25. The distinction between means and ends (or between form and content) is not new to political sociology. It is in many ways at the core of Weber’s political sociology and of Schumpeter’s understanding of democracy. See Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); and Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962). The major models of social movement mobilization and influence were designed to be neutral regarding ends, so as to be applicable to movements from across the ideological spectrum. See for example: Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention; Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution. And the contentious politics literature’s recent interest in tactical repertoires reinforces this long-standing focus on means. See McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention; Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986); Charles Tilly, Contentious Performances (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Marc Traugott, Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995); Edward T. Walker, Andrew W. Martin, and John D. McCarthy, “Confronting the State, the Corporation, and the Academy: The Influence of Institutional Targets on Social Movement Repertoires,” American Journal of Sociology 114 (2008): 35–76. But for much of the populism literature, means and ends have become thoroughly entangled.

  26. Weber, Economy and Society, 55.

  27. By this same logic, however, it would also make sense to talk about other scales (local, transnational) insofar as the apparatus of political control operates at these levels as well. It is also important to note that, as political authority rests on a foundation of symbolic legitimacy, a political project may also be oriented toward bolstering or undercutting the legitimacy of the state, not just its organizational character. See Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 290–97; Mara Loveman, “The Modern State and the Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power,” American Journal of Sociology 110 (2005): 1651–83.

  28. Of course, such characteristics would need to be further operationalized to be useful in constructing rigorous comparisons. My goal in spotlighting political projects is simply to avoid undue distraction by one-off rallies and speeches that are not constitutive of a broader political strategy.

  29. Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, 69.

  30. Anthony Oberschall, Social Conflict and Social Movements (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 102.

  31. Recent work in political sociology has warned against taking social groups and their interests as given. See for example: Christopher K. Ansell, Schism and Solidarity in Social Movements: The Politics of Labor in the French Third Republic (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity Without Groups (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004); David D. Laitin, “Hegemony and Religious Conflict: British Imperial Control and Political Cleavages in Yorubaland,” in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 285–316. Recent scholarship on social movements has been attentive to this concern. See McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention.

  32. See Tilly’s definition of “social movement” for a similar emphasis on public visibility: Charles Tilly, “Social Movements and National Politics,” in Charles Bright and Susan Harding, eds., Statemaking and Social Movements: Essays in History and Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), 306. See also Gamson’s rationale for focusing on previously unmobilized supporters: William A. Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest (Homewood, Ill.: The Dorsey Press, 1975), 16–17.

  33. Margarita Giesecke, Masas urbanas y rebelión en la historia. Golpe de estado: Lima, 1872 (Lima: CEDHIP, 1978); Ulrich Mücke, “Elections and Political Participation in Nineteenth-Century Peru: The 1871–72 Presidential Campaign,” Journal of Latin American Studies 33 (2001): 311–46.

  34. This rhetorical piece of the definition draws heavily on the discursive approach outlined above and is similar to that advocated by Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser in his contribution to this volume.

  35. I do not mean an ideology, if that term implies an elaborate, coherently structured, and internally consistent system of ideas. Indeed, one of the first criticisms leveled against populists is typically that their ideas are ad hoc, contradictory, and imprecise.

  36. Calhoun, Nationalism, 3. Here, Calhoun mentions Leah Greenfeld’s Nationalism: Five Paths to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).

  37. Rogers Brubaker, “Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism,” Annual Review of Sociology 35 (2009): 21–42. Cf. Mudde and Kaltwasser, “Voices of the Peoples.”

  38. De la Torre, Populist Seduction, 12–20. It is too simplistic to say that populist rhetoric combines a logic of horizontal inclusion with one of vertical exclusion, since it typically maintains some measure of horizontal exclusion (against “outsider” ethnic groups, for example) and vertical inclusion (of particular elite segments seen as allied to the cause of “the people”). But it is safe to say that the vertical, “people-elite” opposition is portrayed as the primary categorical opposition in a social field otherwise characterized by functional interdependence. True virtue and authority rest with “the people,” while elites exercise illegitimate authority.

  39. While populist leaders oft en utilize organicist rhetoric, this does not mean that their movements are organic.

  40. This claim is somewhat controversial among scholars of populism, who oft en distinguish movement types based on the “social origins” of their leadership—i.e., based on whether the leaders emerged “organically” out of their movements, or instead came “from above” to mobilize “the masses.” While I grant that “top-down” and “bottom-up” movements may differ in notable respects, perhaps even warranting a sub-categorical distinction in the future between “top-down” and “bottom-up” populist mobilization, my reason for lumping the two at this point is to provoke inquiries into whether the difference is perhaps less important than has been previously assumed when the object of analysis is the mobilization practice itself, not movement type. Whether the mobilization practice is fundamentally shaped by the social origins of leaders remains an empirical question.

  41. Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results,” Archives Européennes De Sociologie 25 (1984): 185–213.

  42. For example, Lipset’s labeling of Peronism as a “leftist-fascist” regime type (Political Man, 127–79) inadvertently gives the impression that Perón’s tenure was relatively undifferentiated, when in fact—as will be discussed later—Perón practiced populist mobilization only at specific points in time.

  43. This carries the important implication that “populist” may not be an appropriate designation for entire regimes or movements for extended periods of time.

  44. The most obvious example is the rise of mass politics in Western Europe, where strong labor parties incorporated and disciplined more potentially radical action. See Adam Przeworski, Sustainable Democracy (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 54.

  45. The populist mobilization of workers and urban squatters that Peru’s General Juan Velasco spearheaded in 1968, for example, was conducted through his military government—in a distinctly nondemocratic context. Alfred Stepan, The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Prince ton, N.J.: Prince ton University Press, 1978).

  46. The present discussion excludes Central America, the Ca rib be an, and the Guianas. For economy of presentation, it is also limited to the first episode of populist mobilization in each country. This chapter does not set out to construct a comprehensive catalog of all classic era populist cases, but only to start the ball rolling in that direction.

  47. The first and second generations of populism scholarship were developed largely with reference to these cases; and the overwhelming majority of historical studies have focused on these as well. On the Argentine case, see: George I. Blanksten, Perón’s Argentina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); Di Tella, Latin American Politics; Germani, Authoritarianism, Fascism, and National Populism; Joel Horowitz, “Populism and Its Legacies in Argentina,” in Conniff, ed., Populism in Latin America, 22–42; Daniel James, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946–76 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Alberto Spektorowski, “The Ideological Origins of Right and Left Nationalism in Argentina, 1930–43,” Journal of Contemporary History 29 (1994): 155–84; David Tamarin, “Yrigoyen and Perón: The Limits of Argentine Populism,” in Conniff, ed., Latin American Populism, 31–45; and van Niekerk, Populism and Political Development, 135–77. On the Brazilian case, see: Michael L. Conniff, Urban Politics in Brazil: The Rise of Populism, 1925–45 (Pittsburgh, Penn.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981); Michael L. Conniff, “Populism in Brazil, 1925–1945,” in Conniff, ed., Latin American Populism, 67–91; Michael L. Conniff, “Brazil’s Populist Republic and Beyond,” in Conniff, ed., Populism in Latin America, 43–62; John D. French, “Industrial Workers and the Birth of the Populist Republic in Brazil, 1945–1946,” Latin American Perspectives 16 (1989): 5–27; John D. French, “The Populist Gamble of Getúlio Vargas in 1945: Political and Ideological Transitions in Brazil,” in David Rock, ed., Latin America in the 1940s: War and Postwar Transitions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 141–65; Robert M. Levine, The Vargas Regime: The Critical Years, 1934–38 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); and Wolfe, “ ‘Father of the Poor.’ ” On the Mexican case, see: Marcos Tonatiuh Aguila M. and Alberto Enríquez Perea, eds., Perspectivas sobre el cardenismo: Ensayos sobre economí a, trabajo, política y cultura en los años treinta (Azcapotzalco: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 1996); Jorge Basurto, “Populism in Mexico: From Cárdenas to Cuauhtémoc,” in Conniff, ed., Populism in Latin America, 75–96; Wayne Cornelius, “Nation Building, Participation, and Distribution: The Politics of Social Reform Under Cárdenas,” in Gabriel A. Almond, Scott L. Flanagan, and Robert J. Mundt, eds., Crisis, Choice, and Change: Historical Studies of Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 392–498; Alan Knight, “Revolutionary Project, Recalcitrant People: Mexico, 1910–1940,” in Jaime E. Rodríguez O., ed., The Revolutionary Process in Mexico: Essays on Political and Social Change, 1880–1940 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1990), 227–64; Alan Knight, “Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy?” Journal of Latin American Studies 26 (1994): 73–107; Evelyn P. Stevens, “Mexico’s PRI: The Institutionalization of Corporatism?” in James M. Malloy, ed., Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Pittsburgh University Press, 1977), 227–58; and Matthias vom Hau, Contested Inclusion: A Comparative Study of Nationalism in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru, Ph.D. Dissertation (Department of Sociology, Brown University, 2007), 165–227.

  48. Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter H. Smith, Modern Latin America (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1992), 88.

  49. Tamarin, “Yrigoyen and Perón,” 40.

  50. On the Bolivian case, see: Laura Gotkowitz, A Revolution for Our Rights: Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia, 1880–1952 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007); and Laurence Whitehead, “Bolivia Since 1930,” in Leslie Bethell, ed., Latin America Since 1930: Spanish South America (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 509–83.

  51. Gotkowitz, A Revolution for Our Rights, 164; Whitehead, “Bolivia Since 1930,” 530.

  52. Gotkowitz, A Revolution for Our Rights, 164–91; Whitehead, “Bolivia Since 1930,” 533.

  53. For a detailed analysis of the Indigenous Congress, see Gotkowitz, A Revolution for Our Rights, 192–232. On Villarroel’s massive effort at commemorating the heroic actions of mestiza market women in Bolivia’s war for in dependence, see Laura Gotkowitz, “Commemorating the Heroínas: Gender and Civic Ritual in Early-Twentieth-Century Bolivia,” in Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux, eds., Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000), 215–37.

  54. Whitehead, “Bolivia Since 1930,” 534–35.

  55. Steve Ellner, “The Heyday of Radical Populism in Venezuela and Its After-math,” in Conniff, ed., Populism in Latin America, 129.

  56. On the Peruvian case, see: Klarén, Modernization, Dislocation, and Aprismo; and Steve Stein, Populism in Peru: The Emergence of the Masses and the Politics of Social Control (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980). On the Ecuadoran case, see: Rafael Arízaga Vega, Velasco Ibarra: El rostro del caudillo (Quito: Ediciones Culturales UNP, 1985); María Cristina Cárdenas Reyes, Velasco Ibarra: Ideología, poder, y democracia (Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional, 1991); Carlos de la Torre, Velaquista Seduction: Ecuadorian Politics in the 1940s, Ph.D. Dissertation (Department of Sociology, New School for Social Research, 1993); de la Torre, Populist Seduction, 28–79; Juan Maiguashca and Liisa North, “Orígenes y significados del velasquismo: Lucha de clases y participación política en el Ecuador, 1920–1972,” in Rafael Quintero, ed., La cuestión regional y el poder (Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional, 1991), 89–161; and Ximena Sosa-Buchholz, “The Strange Career of Populism in Ecuador,” in Conniff, ed., Populism in Latin America, 138–56. On the Venezuelan case, see: Luis Ricardo Davila, “The Rise and Fall and Rise of Populism in Venezuela,” Bulletin of Latin America Research 19 (2000): 223–38; Steve Ellner, “Populism in Venezuela, 1935–48: Betancourt and Acción Democrática,” in Conniff, ed., Latin American Populism, 135–49; and Ellner, “The Heyday of Radical Populism.” On the Colombian case, see: Herbert Braun, The Assassination of Gaitán: Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); Robert H. Dix, “The Varieties of Populism: The Case of Colombia,” Western Political Quarterly 31 (1978): 334–51; and Green, “ ‘Vibrations of the Collective.’ ”

  57. On the importance of exploring negative cases of populism, see Kaltwasser, this volume.

  58. My approach can thus be contrasted with those of Kaltwasser and Roberts in this volume.

  59. See, for example, some of the insurgencies discussed by Benjamín Arditi in his contribution to this volume.

  60. See some of the diverse examples discussed by Kaltwasser in his contribution to this volume.

  61. Although the reader might bear this question in mind when considering the chapters of this volume that address non-Latin American cases.