Short description:

This book offers a new approach to studying “populism”, treating it not as a negative, but as a concept that demands popular participation in democracy. Leading specialists in democratic populism reconnect present-day populism with its past to grasp the anti-democratic roots of the current critique of populism to better redefine it.

Long description:

The Populist Tradition: A Critical-Historic Approach offers a new approach to studying “populism”, treating it not as a negative, but as a concept that demands popular participation in democracy, whether self-organised or representative.

Leading specialists in democratic populism from around the world and across disciplines come together to reconnect present-day populism with its past to grasp the anti-democratic roots of the current critique of populism to better redefine it. Historically, they seek to counter the current unanimity on the antidemocratic nature of populism’s origins with examples that show its historic ambivalence and democratic radicalism. Sociologically, they draw on past examples and concepts to understand current movements and regimes. This excursus into the forms of democratic populism in Western and non-Western societies, today and in the past, allows us to formulate several hypotheses about the presence or absence of the demos in contemporary democracies. They demonstrate, from their examination of this tenacious political phenomenon, the ways in which the people can intervene in post-democratic societies.

This crucial reappraisal is recommended for scholars in history, political sciences and sociology, as well as anyone interested in revisiting populism’s historical trajectories and socio-political dynamics.

Table of Contents:

Introduction.  Part I. Populism: A Concept to be Redefined  1. The Place of the People: Populism Beyond "Democratic Elitism”  2. Myth, Screen and Misunderstanding: Populism or the Blind Spots of an Unfounded Notion  3. Toward a Reappraisal of Russian Populism (1819-1881)  4. The Women’s People. On Historical Populism and Gender  Part II. Populism as a Movement and Populism as a Regime  5. Narodnichestvo: The Life of an Elusive Term  6. American Populism and the Practice of Democracy  7. The Problem of Populism in Latin America. Political Representation and Democratic Communities  8. Peronism as Prototypical Populism : Fleshing out the People  Part III. A European Tradition: Inventing the People’s Sovereignty in Representative Regimes  9. Making the Voice of the People Heard: the Right to Instruct Representatives in Pre-Wilkes Great-Britain  10. Representing the Nation. The Imperative Mandate and Deliberation at the Geginning of the French Revolution  11. French Revolution Populists and Populisms : How the Sovereignty of the People is Shaped for Robespierre and the Enragés  12. Gracchus Babeuf (1760-1797), A Project for Popular Democracy  13. The Moral Economy of the People by François-Joseph L’Ange  14. Populism as Radical Republicanism: a Comparative Approach of Boulangism and Blasquism at the End of the 19th Century (France, Spain)  15. Antonio Gramsci and the “Going to the People”  16. Popular Revolution and Populism in Twentieth Century Ireland  17. The People’s Gathering: the 2010’s Movements of the Squares and the Popular Assemblies as Populist Ritual  18. When the Wave Recedes: Two Routes out of Southern Europe’s Populist Moment  19. Representing the People : Democratic Responses to Populism