220205 Popular Power: Culture and Politics of Populism and Popular Movements in the Americas in the 20th and 21st Centuries (S) (SoSe 2025)

"Give me a balcony in every village and I will become president." said once Ecuadorian politician José Maria Velasco Ibarra. And he was expressing a populist idea of direct communication between the political leader and the masses that is very widespread in Latin America in particular. In today's world, the media has changed and Donald Trump in the USA would probably rather say: Give me X access and I'll be president. What is interesting about the phenomenon of populism, however, is the attempt to establish a direct relationship between the political leader and segments of the population that do not belong to the elite. Historically, this has often been a concern of left-wing political forces in Latin America, for example in the 1940s to 1960s and in the so-called Pink Tide of the 1990s to 2010s. In this seminar, different case studies of old, new and completely new populism in the 20th and 21st centuries will be examined.

Bibliography

Bibliography

Grigera, Juan (2017). Populism in Latin America: Old and new populisms in Argentina and Brazil. International Political Science Review, 38(4), 441-455.

Moffitt, Benjamin (2016). The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation (1st ed.). Stanford University Press.

Munck, Ronaldo, Mariana Mastrángelo, and Pablo Pozzi, eds (2023). Populism: Latin American Perspectives. Agenda Publishing, 2023.

Pereira, Anthony (ed.) (2023): Right-Wing Populism in Latin America and Beyond. London: Taylor & Francis, 2023.