Populists in South America: Promoting or Blocking Energy Transition?

• In Event: Comparative Politics and the Energy Transition

Abstract

As “populist” leaders have gained national executive positions around the world, scholars have begun to ask about the consequences of populism for policy outcomes, including for climate policy and climate-led support for energy transition. A literature largely based on European cases has stressed that populism does affect such outcomes, albeit with different outcomes for right and left populist leaders: right populists are associated with greater hostility to environmental protection. The paper will take this debate to South America - where most recent populists have been leftists, in countries with significant fossil fuel resources - requiring some initial conceptual development since substantial literatures on regional populism as well as understandings of left and right there do not map perfectly onto their parallels in the study of advanced industrial democracies. The dependent variable of interest in the paper is executives’ rhetorical and policy support for energy transition. The paper will draw on systematic review of three kinds of evidence for each elected president in South America from 2000-2020: any major presidential statements on climate and energy policy; major policy initiatives and investments in the fossil fuel sector; and major policy initiatives and investments in wind and solar power. While the universe of some 54 cases will allow only simple quantitative analysis, the nature of the data prevents very large n research at this time, so this paper will be an exploratory analysis of the links between populism and energy transition.

Author

• Kathryn Hochstetler, LSE