populism | Exploring Latin America

Is populism democracy without liberalism? – week 10

Posted by jacob fischer-schmidt in Week 10

Populism is a difficult work to unpack. And its connotations have probably changed significantly over time. I believe that populism is intrinsically connected to a broad public or mass attraction. As such, it might defy traditional conservative perspectives on politics as exclusionary and being relegated to a certain political class. Populism can be construed as dangerous much as social movements can be (originally analyzed by political scientists as destructive “mob” mentalities). There is definitely a paternalism from political elite when deeming these populist movements as negative or “unfit” to the…read more

Week 5

In the period following “independence” of the former Spanish Empire in the Americas, many of the new nation-states struggled to establish peaceful regimes in the ensuing vacuum of power. What becomes clear is a linear conception of development (in the broad, historical sense) largely defined by Eurocentric (and therefore colonial) ideology. The binary between barbarism and civilization points to the two extremes of this imported historical-determinist trajectory. In turn, the ideal of civilization became dominated by the subsequent royalist-republican binary (along liberal-conservative lines). Through the analysis of the concept of…read more