A Global-Historical Approach on the Populist Reconstruction of Integral-states in South Korea and Turkey

• In Event: 2129 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 6. Populism and Revolution

Abstract

Despite the seminal authors’ (e.g., Canovan 1999; Laclau 2005) agnosticism, the newly established mainstream scholars in the literature commit essentialization of populist politics. Whereas the mainstream commentators imply that populism is apocalyptic and destructive, our de-essentialized historical analysis reveals that populists’ politics are rooted in prior structuration process and they even are reconstructive in an agnostic sense. We call for a global-historical approach as an important alternative for the students of populism unsatisfied with the mainstream corpus. We empirically compile populist politics occurred in South Korea, 1961-1979, and Turkey, 2002-onward, in the global-historical context. Performances of populists in South Korea and Turkey were spectacular events (Sewell 2005: 228) addressing hegemonic crises. Simultaneously the populists installed organs of public opinion, including political party, media agency, business elites, semi-clientelist associations, and nominally depoliticized associations holding significant influences to the general public. These concrete observations corroborate our central claim, that the populists in South Korea and Turkey reconstructed the integral-states (Gramsci 1930: 6th-§88) structuring the historical development ex post upon the eventful populist politics. Our analysis offers concrete reasons to believe why those authoritarian populists are unjust. The populists in South Korea and Turkey catered to further accelerations of passive revolution (Gramsci 1930: 7th-§81). Although the macro historical developments were interpretively similar, South Korean and Turkish histories were not entirely governed by the external-determinant of global capitalism. Rather, the populist agents instrumentally utilized the global capitalism for their own benefits. Indeed, the populist politics constituted agency-laden structuration processes.

Authors

• Veda Hyunjin Kim, University of Massachusetts Amherst

• Can Mert Kökerer, The New School for Social Research