A Theory of Late Populism: Popularism

• In Event: Theorizing the Populist Moment

Abstract

This paper identifies a critical feature of late populism, the phase in which the protest movements that generated populist politics exhausted themselves, leaving leaders without organizational connections to the people: popularism. Traditional populism operates through articulation – actively constructing “the people” as a political category by linking heterogeneous demands together against an elite or other. Popularism functions through refraction. It seeks maximum resonance with pre-existing popular attitudes and treats “the people” as an already-coherent homogenous group. Left popularism emerged from movement demobilization and electoral victories of the right that both reshaped perceptions of what is popular. The paper will explain what popularism is; why left popularism converges on culturally conservative positions, and why popularism commits fundamental errors when it attempts to reflect popular “common sense.”

Author

• Michael A. McCarthy, University of California, Santa Cruz