Central European University, Department of Political Science Winter Term 2017
Populism and
the future of modern liberal democracy
Professor Dr. Takis S. Pappas Email: takis.s.pappas@gmail.com
URL: https://uom-gr.academia.edu/TakisPappas
Time period: January 9 – February 17, 2017
Class sessions: Mondays 11:00-12:40 & Fridays 13:30-15:10 Course level: Elective; Graduate (Master’s)
Office hours: By appointment Credits: 2.0
Introduction to the course and objectives
This graduate course focuses on the political nature, mechanics, attributes, and concrete outcomes of populism in pluralist political systems with a particular emphasis on modern and contemporary European politics. Its objective is to rigorously review the most recent developments and state-of-art literature in the booming fields of comparative populism and illiberal politics. It seeks to familiarize students with the intricacies of empirically complex – and, for this reason, theoretically challenging – phenomena, as well as assess their impact on current real politics, be that at specific national, EU, or world level (including recent US developments).
The course is both analytical and comparative in scope. Accordingly, the lectures will be thematic and supported by a large number of concrete cases of populism taken from several country- and time-contexts. Through our explorations of a large number of empirical cases, we will draw from several disciplines besides political science (including history, sociology and cognitive psychology), methodological approaches, continents, and individual countries.
We are moreover going to examine a broad cross-section of topics; engage in re- conceptualizations; try to understand the micro-mechanisms of populist emergence; the rationales of the populist voter; the attributes of populism when in power; and its normative implications for contemporary liberal democracy.
Course requirements
Besides their active participation in class, students are expected to write a medium-sized research essay of about 6,000 words. Please, note that consultation with the lecturer prior to deciding about your essay topic is required. Course grading will depend on class participation (20%) and quality of essay (80%) in terms of conceptual clarity, quality of empirical data, analytical power, theoretical value, and, of course, good language. All papers are due by May 12, 2017 (please send by email to my personal address). No extensions will be granted.
Course outline
(Readings with an asterisk * are optional)
1. The field, so far. How have we studied populism?
How have scholars from different parts of the world studied populism since this phenomenon entered the political and social science agenda in the late 1960s? And how have we tried to conceptualize its main features to this very date? Is it an ideology? A strategy? A style? A certain discourse? Something else? And, crucially, who are “the
Readings:
*Canovan, Margaret. 2004. "Populism for Political Theorists?" Journal of Political Ideologies 9(3):241-52.
Gidron, Noam and Bart Bonikowski. 2013. “Varieties of Populism: Literature Review and Research Agenda.” Working Paper Series. Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Unpublished working paper.
*Mudde, Cas. 2004. "The Populist Zeitgeist." Government and Opposition 39(4):542-63.
2. Wars of definition, and methodological bugs
Could we, possibly, re-conceptualize populism in a way that is at the same time minimal and with sufficient discriminatory power, politically relevant, analytically compelling, operationally feasible, and clearly pointing to an opposite pole? By understanding populism as “democratic illiberalism,” we pit it against contemporary liberal democracy and see how the two concepts contrast. We also make populism fully operational for comparative research.
Readings:
*Canovan, Margaret. 1999. "Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy." Political Studies 47(1):1-16.
*Rooduijn, Matthijs. 2014. "The Nucleus of Populism: In Search of the Lowest Common Denominator." Government and Opposition 49(4):572-98.
Pappas, Takis S. Modern Populism: Research Advances, Methodological Pitfalls, and the Minimal Definition. In W. Thompson (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2016).
*Weyland, Kurt. 2001. "Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin American Politics." Comparative Politics 34(1):1-22.
3. What is populism, who are the populists, and who aren’t
Populism is an omnipresent, multifaceted, and ideologically boundless phenomenon.
What, then, distinguishes its various manifestations in Europe, Latin America, the United States, and elsewhere across time (old vs. new populisms), region (western vs. eastern;
but also Nordic, Alpine, Baltic, and Southern European), regime type in which they develop (democracy vs. non-democracy), and ideological hue (right vs. left populisms)?
Readings:
*Mansilla, H. C. F. 2011. "Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Contemporary Populism in Latin America." Revista De Estudios Politicos (152):11-47.
Pappas, Takis S. 2016. The Specter Haunting Europe: Dinstinguishing Liberal Democracy's Challengers, Journal of Democracy 27(4):22-36.
*Mudde, Cas and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2012b. "Exclusionary Vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America." Government and Opposition 48(02):147-74.
*Williamson, Vanessa, Theda Skocpol and John Coggin. 2011. "The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism." Perspectives on Politics 9(01):25-43.
4. Populist emergence: The mechanics
When, and under which conditions, do populist leaders, movements or parties, and even entire illiberal polities emerge? This class provides an integrated analytical framework for understanding the rise of populism in the seemingly different contexts of Europe and Latin America. It also points to the importance of social resentment politicization, new cleavage formation, and intense polarization.
Readings:
*Barr, R. R. 2009. "Populists, Outsiders and Anti-Establishment Politics." Party Politics 15(1):29-48.
*Enyedi, Zsolt. 2005. "The Role of Agency in Cleavage Formation." European Journal of Political Research 44(5):697-720.
Palonen, E. 2009. "Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary."
Parliamentary Affairs 62(2):318-34.
*Pappas, T. S. 2012. “Populism Emergent: A Framework for Analyzing Its Contexts, Mechanics, and Outcomes.” European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
Unpublished Working Paper.
5. Where populism fails to emerge?
After their almost simultaneous transition to pluralist politics, Greece and Spain countries followed a seemingly similar course of democratic consolidation based on modernization and Europeanization. However, one of them, Greece, became imbued with populism, while the other, Spain, remained until recently populism-free. We use these cases as country-laboratories for understanding the specific causal (and, most often, agency- related) mechanisms that may trigger populism or, when such mechanisms fail to get activated, end up with a non-populist effect.
Readings:
*Elephantis, Angelos. 1981. "Pasok and the Elections of 1977: The Rise of the Populist Movement." Pp. 105-29 in Greece at the Polls: The National Elections of 1974 and 1977, edited by H. R. Penniman. Washington, DC: American Entrerprise Institute for Public Policy.
*Errejón, Iñigo. 2014. "Spain's Podemos: Inside View of a Radical Left Sensation."
Retrieved 2014 (http://links.org.au/node/3969).
*Molinas, César. 2012. "Theory of Spain's Political Class." in El País. Madrid.
Royo, S. 2014. "Institutional Degeneration and the Economic Crisis in Spain." American Behavioral Scientist 58(12):1568-91.
6. Are populist leaders charismatic?
How does charismatic leadership relate to, and work on, populism? And how much does it account for the latter’s continuing success? While several authors have considered charismatic leadership an essential feature of populism, empirical evidence suggests otherwise. This class includes a theoretical reconceptualization of political charisma and its empirical application to a large number of cases from both Europe and Latin America.
Readings:
*Kalyvas, Andreas. 2002. "Charismatic Politics and the Symbolic Foundations of Power in Max Weber." New German Critique 85:67-103.
*Merolla, J. L. and E. J. Zechmeister. 2011. "The Nature, Determinants, and Consequences of Chavez's Charisma: Evidence from a Study of Venezuelan Public Opinion." Comparative Political Studies 44(1):28-54.
Pappas, Takis S. 2016. “Are Populist Leaders ‘Charismatic’? The Evidence from Europe,” Constellations 23(3):378-390.
*van der Brug, Wouter and Anthony Mughan. 2007. "Charisma, Leader Effects and Support for Right-Wing Populist Parties." Party Politics 13(1):29-51.
7. The populist discourse: Symbolic frames
Populist emergence requires a ‘master narrative’, that is, the utilization of symbolic frames for constructing a new political reality in which the (virtuous) ‘people’ is set against some (evil) ‘elite’. What it takes for such a novel construction to emerge out of old politics in which objective cleavages seemed to be long solidified? And how are populist majorities produced?
Readings:
Brysk, Allison. 1995. "Hearts and Minds: Bringing Symbolic Politics Back In." Polity 27(4):559-86.
*Jagers, Jan and Stefaan Walgrave. 2007. "Populism as Political Communication Style:
An Empirical Study of Political Parties' Discourse in Belgium." European Journal of Political Research 46(3):319-45.
*Pappas, Takis S. 2008. "Political Leadership and the Emergence of Radical Mass Movements in Democracy." Comparative Political Studies 41(8):1117-40.
Zuquete, J. P. 2008. "The Missionary Politics of Hugo Chavez." Latin American Politics and Society 50(1):91-121.
8. The populist voter: A mind-frame analysis
What are the determinants of voting motivation for populist parties? And how do they differ from voting mainstream parties? We examine theories of ideological voting;
socioeconomic voting; policy voting; party leader voting; protest voting; strategic voting, and examine their predictive values. We then turn the tables and focus on societies’
“systematically biased beliefs” where populism is strong.
Readings:
*Akkerman, A., C. Mudde and A. Zaslove. 2013. "How Populist Are the People?
Measuring Populist Attitudes in Voters." Comparative Political Studies.
Kahneman, Daniel and Amos Tversky. 1979. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk." Econometrica 47(2):263-92.
*Lupu, N. 2010. "Who Votes for Chavismo? Class Voting in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela."
Latin American Research Review 45(1):7-32.
*Mayer, Nonna and Pascal Perrineau. 1992. "Why Do They Vote for Le Pen?". European Journal of Political Economy 22(1):123-41.
9. Populism in office: Populist democracies
What happens once the populists come into office, as has happened several times in both Europe and Latin America? This class introduces populist democracy as a novel democratic subtype indicating a situation in which both the party in office and the major opposition are populist. It analyzes the particular stages and causal mechanisms of it, and asks whether it is an endemic or more permanent phenomenon.
Readings:
Corrales, Javier and Michael Penfold-Becerra. 2007. "Venezuela: Crowding out the Opposition." Journal of Democracy 18(2):99-113.
*Corrales, Javier. 2011. "Why Polarize? Advantages and Disadvantages of Rational- Choice Analysis of Government-Opposition Relations in Venezuela." Pp. 67-97 in The Revolution in Venezuela: Social and Political Change under Chávez, edited by T. Ponniah and J. Eastwood.
*Kalyvas, Stathis N. 1997. "Polarization in Greek Politics: Pasok's First Four Years, 1981-1985." Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 23(1):83-104.
Pappas, Takis S. 2014. "Populist Democracies: Post-Authoritarian Greece and Post- Communist Hungary." Government and Opposition 49(1):1-23.
10. Normative implications: The good, the bad, and the Hungarian
Turning to contemporary political developments (such as the concurrent elections for the European Parliament], this class asks: Is populism a pathological phenomenon or a most authentic form of political representation? Dow does it matter? Does it all tell us something about the different qualities of democracy in (various pasts of) Europe and
Readings:
*Abts, Koen and Stefan Rummens. 2007. "Populism Versus Democracy." Political Studies 55(2):405-24.
*Canovan, Margaret. 2002. "Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy." Pp. 25-44 in Democracies and the Populist Challenge, edited by Y.
Mény and Y. Surel. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
*Krastev, Ivan. 2007. "The Strange Death of the Liberal Consensus." Journal of Democracy 18(4):56-63.
Foa, Roberto Stefan and Yascha Mounk. 2016. "The Democratic Disonnect." Journal of Democracy 27(3):5-17.
Slater, Dan. 2013. "Democratic Careening." World Politics 65(04):729-63.
11. Populism in the United States: Trumpism
North American populism has a long political pedigree dating from the times of Andrew Jackson and has found in our own days new political avatars, first in the Tea Party movement and Donald Trump. How does this brand of populism compare with the European and Latin American types of populism? And what does it mean for the rest of the world?
Readings: ΤΒΑ
*Kazin, Michael. 1995. The Populist Persuasion. An American History. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
*Skocpol, Theda, & Williamson, Vanessa. 2012. The Tea Party and the Remaking of American Conservatism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
12. Clarifications, amendments, conclusions & wrapping things up
