Undemocratic Democracy: Venezuela and the Distorting of History

President Hugo Chávez has been the subject of much frenzied comment, as much at academic conferences as in the press. Criticism has been to a great degree personalised against his very visible public profile. The crisis of democracy in Venezuela has been widely ascribed to faults committed by the traditional parties since the early 1980s and reflected in the coterminous rise in crime and violence. Support for Chávez, or even objective comment, has been at a premium. This article looks at the crisis of democracy across a wider timescale and sees the ‘most stable democracy in Latin America’ to have been deeply flawed from the outset. It reflects an earlier propaganda campaign, similarly short on meaningful analysis, aimed at undermining the popularity of a previous unconventional leader of Venezuela, Marcos Pérez Jiménez. It is claimed that Venezuelans want to preserve democracy but are also ready to support military coups to oust corrupt or inefficient politicians. Is Chávez merely representative of transient anti‐party feeling or could the history of Venezuelan democracy have caused a more fundamental change in relationships between the mass of the people and their leader?     

Different Types of Right-Wing Populist Discourse in Government and Opposition: The Case of Italy

Does right-wing populist discourse change when parties move from opposition to government? How do different ideological types of right-wing populist parties express this discourse? Through an analysis of the Lega Nord and Forza Italia/Popolo della Libertà between 2006 and 2013, we find that while the switch to office does bring some changes, the main elements of their populist discourse remain largely the same. We also show how their respective emphases on ‘elites’ and ‘others’ distinguish the parties: FI/PDL focuses overwhelmingly on ‘elites’ while the LN places similar emphasis on both ‘elites’ and ‘others’.     

Populism in Taiwan: The Rise of a Populist-Democratic Culture in a Democratising Society

Taiwan's democratic transition has emerged alongside a rise of populism. Based on an analysis of post-electoral survey data, it is shown that populist resentments – embodied in such emotion-laden campaign issues as ethnic identity, national identity and a party's image of interest representation and clean politics – have been the most efficient vote-getting appeals in Taiwan's post-authoritarian electoral competition between two major political parties, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT). In Taiwan's democratic transition, mass demands for the ‘indigenisation’ of politics and the people's worry about an ever-increasing military threat from Mainland China have also popularised as well as polarised these populist appeals. As empirical data show, due to its position as the first Taiwanese party with a lion's share of populist advantages, the DPP was able to win the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. In sum, Taiwan's electoral politics in the past decade have given rise to a kind of ‘populist-democratic culture’, which inclines Taiwanese politicians to bring up populist issues rather than the rational policy debates of an electoral democracy.     

A Distant Mirror: Nineteenth-Century Populism,Nativism, and Contemporary Right-Wing Radical Politics

Nineteenth-century America witnessed two major waves of populist mobilization. The first started in late 1840 in response to the massive influx of immigrants, predominantly from Catholic Ireland. The second occurred in the 1880s and 1890s, provoked by large-scale structural changes affecting rural America. Both movements promoted a far-reaching social and political reform agenda, which they believed would restore the country to its foundational roots: evangelical Protestantism directed primarily against the Catholic “invasion” in the first case, Jeffersonian republicanism directed against the collusion of money and politics in the second. Although both movements failed to realize their goals, they had a profound and lasting impact on the evolution of American identity. Nineteenth-century American populism thus offers a useful model for understanding present-day populist mobilization in Western Europe.     

The puzzle of populism in Iran’s electoral politics

The article examines the impact of an unsettled electoral market and evolving political predispositions on the rise and fall of populism in Iran. The article argues that the absence of a polarized electoral contest between reformists and conservatives paved the way for the victory of the populist candidate in the 2005 presidential election in Iran, while the deep economic recession resulting from conservative administration policies created a long-term political experience which influenced voters and led to the victory of the pragmatist candidate in the 2013 and 2017 elections. Quantitative analysis indicates that in the 2005 election, the struggle between conservatives and reformists did not impact the competition between candidates, and consequently depoliticized attitudes, for example distributive demands, ideology, and anti-ruling elite sentiment gained significance, whereas polarization between conservatives and a coalition of reformists and pragmatists enhanced the role of partisanship and triggered the fall of populism in the 2013 election.     

Flirting with Authoritarian Fantasies? Rodrigo Duterte and the New Terms of Philippine Populism

This commentary aims to take stock of the 2016 presidential elections in the Philippines that led to the landslide victory of the controversial Rodrigo Duterte. It argues that part of Duterte’s electoral success is hinged on his effective deployment of the populist style. Although populism is not new to the Philippines, Duterte exhibits features of contemporary populism that are befitting of an age of communicative abundance. This commentary contrasts Duterte’s political style with other presidential contenders, characterises his relationship with the electorate and concludes by mapping populism’s democratic and anti-democratic tendencies, which may define the quality of democratic practice in the Philippines in the next six years.     

乌克兰民粹主义的特征及影响(2000-2019年)

乌克兰自独立以来,政治民粹主义伴随其政治经济转型进程不断蔓延加剧。进入21世纪,虽然民粹主义政党和运动出现仅十几年,但乌克兰已然成为后苏联空间中遭遇民粹主义浪潮席卷的突出案例。在经历了2014年的政治危机和持续的顿巴斯冲突后,乌克兰政治逐步进入了民粹主义全面盛行的新阶段。乌克兰民粹主义相较整个欧洲区域具有一些显著的特征,主要表现在:反精英和反建制的极端化,强烈的反民主属性和家长制政府偏好,分裂矛盾的意识形态,过度渲染和营造社会危机,以及盲目的区域一体化期待。究其成因,可归结于该国历史上对统治精英"外来化"的认知,独立后缺乏新的民族国家认知与主流意识形态,"团结主义"的政治文化传统,以及整个社会对阶层分化和等级制度的共识。这种特殊的民粹主义,将对乌克兰政治持续产生一系列负面影响。     

The personality of populists: provocateurs,charismatic leaders,or drunken dinner guests?

Abstract

The ‘populist phenomenon’ has received a lot of attention in recent years. Yet little is known about the populists themselves: who are they? They are often described as bad-mannered provocateurs disrupting the political game, but also as charismatic leaders able to persuade and motivate. Can a populist ‘style’ or ‘personality’ be identified? This article assesses to what extent populists score differently from ‘mainstream’ politicians on established personality inventories. Using a new dataset based on expert ratings for 152 candidates (including 33 populists) having competed in 73 elections worldwide, it is found that populists score lower on agreeableness, emotional stability and conscientiousness. At the same time, populists score higher on extraversion, narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. These results have important implications for the study of the success of populists in contemporary democracies and beyond.     

Neopopulism and its limits in Collor's Brazil

The election of Fernando Collor de Mello as President of Brazil in 1989 was regarded as part of a new wave of neopopulist leaders in contemporary Latin America. The article explores the conditions of emergence of Collor's neopopulist project, the nature of his appeal and the causes of his downfall. The article argues that the emergence of Collor's neopopulist challenge was the result of a crisis of representation in Brazil's edging democratic order. The article concludes that Collor's demise from power in 1992 had to do with the precarious nature of his appeal and his failure to ground his project in a new set of political institutions.     

The Decline and Fall of Democracy in Venezuela: Ten Theses

This paper presents an argument about the causes of the decline and fall of the 1958–1999 system of democratic politics, commonly known in Spanish as puntofijista , in Venezuela. Competing explanations of this process are evaluated, and an interim assessment of President Hugo Chávez and his political project is offered.