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Returning Populism to History<Sup>1</Sup> doi: 10.1111/1467-8675.12131 Returning Populism to History1 Federico Finchelstein Decentering Populism the creation of populism take place. Populism is then a temporal marker for the failure, “late coming,” or suc- Modern democratic populism was originally constituted cess of such structural changes or continuities. Thus in 1945 as a post-fascist response to the left. However, some scholars, especially in Latin America, present a it was not a radical break with the past, and populism static view that fixes populism in the past (or in differ- was not engendered outside a historical continuum. For ent pasts) and disentangles it from the present. Others historians this is clear, but outside the field of history, generally equate historical contexts with a more generic populism is often regarded as a trans-historical phe- view of a cyclic or systemic crisis of democracy. As nomenon. In other words, it is regarded as a happening Alan Knight has pointed out, circularity prevails when without a historical context. crisis and populism are equated. The result is that the Populism emerged as a form of authoritarian democ- former is explained in terms of the latter.2 For Knight, racy for the post-war world; one that could adapt the to- populism needs to be studied historically from the point talitarian version of politics to the post-war hegemony of view of the style of leadership: of democratic representation. While it curtailed political rights, populism expanded social rights; and at the same Defining populism in terms of style has the virtue of it put limits to the more radical emancipatory combi- flexibility and — perhaps most important — historical nations of both. This specific historicity of populism is fidelity. That is, it seems to correspond to the histor- often lost in varied theoretical reconfigurations, includ- ical record in a way that other — often more precise ing those approaches that are (normatively) in favor of theories/models — fail to do. And it is surely prefer- or against the populist phenomenon. able to have a rough rule-of-thumb which works than a highfalutin theory which defies reality.3 Despite the recurrence of academic references to the volatility of populism as a concept and experience, pop- Knight’s criticism of the theoretical failures that reduce ulism is no mystery to scholars reading the sources. In history to an illustration that often ignores historical fact, I would argue that it is not that we lack clarity in reality is salient, especially when he argues that defining the term, but rather that our theories of pop- ulism lack history. Needless to say, the reverse is also theories which, as I said, gain in precision and sophis- true. Historians often neglect the contribution of theo- tication, but fail on the crucial criterion of historical retical approaches to populism. The result is a lack of fidelity. They are neat but wrong. Or, to put it more ac- curately, the neater they are the wronger they are. Thus, understanding between history and theory. while they do not entirely lack insight or explanatory For some political theorists populism constitutes power, they cannot form the basis of a generic model.4 a democratizing response to a widespread crisis of representation, while for others populism presents However, Knight also tends to dismiss the analytical undemocratic limitations to the present and future perspectives opened by critical theory as such. He con- of democratic representation. Thus, in mainstream flates theory as a whole with specific theories of pop- bibliographies populism is regionally presented or func- ulism, including the so-called modernization thesis. At tionally reduced to a symbol, a symptom, or even a the root of the problem with many theories of populism pathology, of democracy. At best, populism is gener- is that these specific theories of populism are often stuck ally presented as a current example of the history of in a centuries-old understanding of history as a posi- contestations of democratic representation. In these ap- tivistic discipline, whereas historians, of course, have proaches history serves a minor role as the illustration of changed their approaches in radical ways over the last theory. It works as its own example. At worst, populism two centuries, rethinking the historical discipline’s own appears as a concept without history. historicity, addressing the limits of representation and Theorists also often treat history as if it were a pas- critically combining contextualization with historical sive space, a receptacle of long-term structural change. interpretation. In this context, dynamic historical processes are often Understandably, historians have reacted against the replaced with more static trans-historical ones such as reduction of history to a cabinet of examples for theorists “modernization,” “caudillismo” and so forth. In this sit- to select when needed. This reduction represents a rad- uation, history represents the particular temporal space ical form of contextualism that is more antiquarian (as where the quasi-transcendental conditions needed for in a receptacle for the collection of things from the past) Constellations Volume 21, No 4, 2014. C 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 468 Constellations Volume 21, Number 4, 2014 than historiographical (the analysis and interpretation of phases of populism — from the authoritarian populism different contexts of the past vis-a-vis` their variations of the first governments of Peron´ (1946–1955) to the and continuities in the present). If some theorists dis- leftist guerrilla of Montoneros, the neofascist right play this antique, and antiquarian, view of history, other wing of Triple A in the 1960s and 1970s, and then theoretical approaches conversely stress the long history to the neoliberalism of Carlos Menem of the 1990s of the term populism without sufficiently addressing the and the neo-populism of the Kirchner administrations different contexts of its political history and theory. To in the new century. be sure, as Pierre Rosanvallon cogently points out, pop- After decades of “sky-high theory,” populism needs ulism is part of a long-term history that includes actors to be returned to its history.6 The need to put populism as varied as the sycophants of ancient Greece, Marat in its modern context is even more pressing, given the at the time of the French Revolution and the Russian current inflation of analyses of populist politics as a and American “populists” of the nineteen century.5 But political malaise that has no specific point of origin. as a contemporary concept and “case,” populism has a Returning the populist phenomenon to its transatlantic more discrete modern history. Populism is not a concept histories forces us to rethink negative stereotypes about without history. That view reduces populism to a tran- populism as a concept and to reconnect it to the context scendental (or trans-historical) metaphor of something of its emergence. What I want to insist on here is the else (be it the constitutive problems of representative need to bring history, and historiography, back to the democracy, technocracy or politics as such). theoretical debates about populism. In sharp contrast with the views presented above, I Populism presented a variety of historical possibil- propose to see populism as the outcome of a modern his- ities that included experiences on the left and right of torical process. In other words, I put forward the notion the political spectrum. Nonetheless, this ideological that populism is part of an ongoing history where the pendulum always maintained several central features: limitations and intrinsic problems of formal democracy (i) an extremely sacralizing understanding of the are met with the interwar and post-war history of con- political; (ii) a political theology that considers the testations of democracy from within and from without. people as being formed by those who follow a unique Fascism and totalitarianism are a key part of this history, vertical leadership; (iii) an idea of political antagonists but the ways in which populism is used are not limited as enemies who are potentially (or in fact) traitors to its origins. Nonetheless, it is important to study to the nation; (iv) a understanding of the leader as a this first populist moment and then assess its various charismatic embodiment of the voice and desires of historical phases from its pre-populist moments (from the nation as a whole; (v) a strong executive and the boulangism in France, to Lueger’s movement in Vienna) discursive, and often practical, dismissal of the legisla- and the interwar proto-populist precedents in Latin tive and judicial branches of government; (vi) a radical America (such as Cardenism in Mexico, Yrigoyenismo nationalism and an emphasis on popular culture, as in Argentina and Varaguism in Brazil) to its subse- opposed to other forms of culture that do not represent quent bifurcations and repercussions. These subsequent “national thought,” (vii) and, finally, an attachment to phases include (i) the free market populism of Menem in a vertical form of electoral democracy that nonetheless Argentina, Fernando Collor de Melo in Brazil, Abdala rejects in practice dictatorial forms of government.7 Bucaram in Ecuador and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy; (ii) the neoclassic populism of the left in Argentina (with the Kirchner administrations), in Venezuela (with Hugo Populism in the Present: Europe and Chavez´ and Nicolas Maduro) and in Ecuador (with Latin America Rafael Correa) and (iii) neo-classic populism of the In the present, populism has returned to Europe with a right and extreme right from the Peronist neo-fascism vengeance. But rather than being a new creation, this of the 1970s to its current predominance in movements return represents a dynamic reformulation of previous that are generally in the European opposition, including populist cases both outside and inside Europe. Most Ukip in England, the National Front in France and critics agree that euro-populists are united in their desire Golden Dawn in Greece, among many others.
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