Central European University, Department of Political Science Spring 2015

Populism Professor Dr. Takis S. Pappas Email: takis.s.pappas@gmail.com URL: https://uni-freiburg.academia.edu/TakisPappas Time period: January 12 – February 13, 2015 Course level: Graduate (Master’s) 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 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. 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. Trough 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 Students are expected to write a class paper of about 6,000 words and be very active in class discussions. Please, note that consultation with the lecturer prior to deciding about your essay topic is highly recommended. Course grading will depend on class participation (25%) and paper quality (75%) in terms of conceptual clarity, analytical

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power, theoretical value, and, of course, good language. All papers are due by March 15, 2015 (please send by email to my personal address). No extensions will be granted.

General readings on topic In addition to assigned course work, students are advised to read at least two of the following books covering populism in various parts of the world. Each in its own way, all these books are delightful and full of original ideas: • Ionescu, Ghita & Ernest Gellner (1969). Populism: its meanings and national

characteristics. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson • Canovan, Margaret. 1981. Populism. London: Junction Books. • Riker, William H. (1982). Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation Between the

Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice. New York, Waveland Press • Betz, Hans-Georg. (1994). Radical right-wing populism in Western Europe.

Basingstoke, Macmillan • Kazin, Michael (1995). The Populist Persuasion. An American History. Ithaca and

London, Cornell University Press • Oakeshott, Michael (1996). The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism. New

Haven, CT, Yale University Press • Taggart, Paul (2000). Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press • de la Torre, Carlos (2000). Populist Seduction in Latin America. Athens, Ohio

University Press • Laclau, Ernesto (2007). On Populist Reason. London: Verso • Postel, Charles (2009). The Populist Vision. Oxford: Oxford University Press Course outline (Readings are in alphabetical order; * means required reading; all the rest is optional) 1. How have we studied populism so far? Timeline and the semantic field

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 people” in populism?

Readings:

Betz, Hans-Georg. 2013. "A Distant Mirror: Nineteenth-Century Populism, Nativism, and Contemporary Right-Wing Radical Politics." Democracy and Security 9(3):200-20.

* Canovan, Margaret. 2004. "Populism for Political Theorists?". Journal of Political Ideologies 9(3):241-52.

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Conniff, Michael L., ed. 1999 Populism in Latin America. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Dahl, Hans F. 1984. "Those Equal Folk." Daedalus 113(1):93-107. * Jansen, Robert S. 2011. "Populist Mobilization: A New Theoretical Approach to

Populism." Sociological Theory 29(2):75-96. Moffitt, Benjamin and Simon Tormey. 2013. "Rethinking Populism: Politics,

Mediatisation and Political Style." Political Studies:n/a-n/a. Mouzelis, Nicos. 1985. "On the Concept of Populism: Populist and Clientelist Modes of

Incorporation in Semiperipheral Polities." Politics and Society 14(3):329-48. * Mudde, Cas. 2004. "The Populist Zeitgeist." Government and Opposition 39(4):542-63. * Puhle, Hans-Jürgen. 2012. "Old and New Populisms in the 21th Century: Continuities

and Change." Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main. Stanley, Ben. 2008. "The Thin Ideology of Populism." Journal of Political Ideologies

13(1):95-110. van Kessel, Stijn. 2014. "The Populist Cat-Dog: Applying the Concept of Populism to

Contemporary European Party Systems." Journal of Political Ideologies 19(1):99-118.

2. Re-conceptualizing populism: Democratic illiberalism vs. liberal democracy

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.

Conniff, Michael L. 1982. "Toward a Comparative Definition of Populism." in Latin American Populism in Comparative Perspective, edited by M. Conniff. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Deegan-Krause, Kevin and Tim Houghton. 2009. "Toward a More Useful Conceptualization of Populism: Types and Degrees of Populist Appeals in the Case of Slovakia." Politics and Policy 37(4):821-41.

* Mény, Yves and Yves Surel. 2002. "The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism." Pp. 1-21 in Democracies and the Populist Challenge, edited by Y. Mény and Y. Surel. Houndmills: Palgrave.

* Rooduijn, Matthijs. 2014. "The Nucleus of Populism: In Search of the Lowest Common Denominator." Government and Opposition 49(4):572-98.

* Taguieff, Pierre-André. 1995. "Political Science Confronts Populism: From a Conceptual Mirage to a Real Problem." Telos 103:9-43.

Urbinati, Nadia. 2013. "The Populist Phenomenon." Raisons Politiques 51(3):137-54.

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3. The geography and varieties of the populist phenomenon

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:

* Betz, Hans-Georg. 1993. "The New Politics of Resentment: Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe." Comparative Politics 25(4):413-27.

Di Tella, Torcuato S. 1990. Latin American Politics. A Theoretical Approach. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Germani, Gino. 1978. Authoritarianism, Fascism, and National Populism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.

* Greskovits, Bela. 1995. "Demagogic Populism in Eastern Europe." Telos 102:91-106. * 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.

Mansilla, H. C. F. 2011. "Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Contemporary Populism in Latin America." Revista De Estudios Politicos (152):11-47.

March, Luke. 2007. "From Vanguard of the Proletariat to Vox Populi: Left-Populism as a 'Shadow' of Contemporary Socialism." SAIS Review 27(1):63-77.

* Mudde, Cas and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2012b. "Exclusionary Vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America." Government and Opposition 48(02):147-74.

Roberts, Kenneth M. 2007. "Latin America's Populist Revival." SAIS Review 27(1):3-15. Sikk, Allan. 2009. “Parties and Populism.” UCL School of Slavonic and East European

Studies, London. Unpublished Working Paper.

4. Populist emergence: Is there a common causal pattern?

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.

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* Enyedi, Zsolt. 2005. "The Role of Agency in Cleavage Formation." European Journal of Political Research 44(5):697-720.

Hawkins, Kirk A. 2003. "Populism in Venezuela: The Rise of Chavismo." Third World Quarterly 24(6):1137-60.

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.

Ware, Alan. 2002. "The United States: Populism as a Political Strategy." Pp. 101-19 in Democracies and the Populist Challenge, edited by Y. Mėny and Y. Surel. Houndmills: Palgrave.

* Weyland, Kurt. 2001. "Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin American Politics." Comparative Politics 34(1):1-22.

Williamson, Vanessa, Theda Skocpol and John Coggin. 2011. "The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism." Perspectives on Politics 9(01):25-43.

5. Contrasting cases: Why there is populism in Greece but, to date, not in Spain?

After their almost simultaneous transition to pluralist politics (Greece in July 1974 and Spain in November 1975), these two 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. Pappas, Takis S. 2010. "Macroeconomic Policy, Strategic Leadership, and Voter

Behaviour: The Disparate Tales of Socialist Reformism in Greece and Spain During the 1980s." West European Politics 33(6):1241-60.

* Pappas, Takis S. 2014b. Populism and Crisis Politics in Greece. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

* Royo, S. 2014. "Institutional Degeneration and the Economic Crisis in Spain." American Behavioral Scientist 58(12):1568-91.

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6. Populist leadership: 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:

Eatwell, Roger. 2006. "The Concept and Theory of Charismatic Leadership." Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 7(2):141-56.

* 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. 2008. "Political Leadership and the Emergence of Radical Mass Movements in Democracy." Comparative Political Studies 41(8):1117-40.

Tismaneanu, Vladimir. 2000. "Hypotheses on Populism: The Politics of Charismatic Protest." East European Politics and Societies 15(1):10-17.

* van der Brug, Wouter and Anthony Mughan. 2007. "Charisma, Leader Effects and Support for Right-Wing Populist Parties." Party Politics 13(1):29-51.

Weyland, Kurt. 2003. "Economic Voting Reconsidered: Crisis and Charisma in the Election of Hugo Chávez." Comparative Political Studies 36(7):822-48.

7. The populist discourse: Forging ‘the people’, and producing electoral majorities

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.

Miller, Sebastian J. (2011). Why Do Populist- Outsiders Get Elected? A Model of Strategic Populists. Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department

Pappas, Takis S. and Paris Aslanidis. 2015 forthcoming. "Greek Populism: A Political Drama in Five Acts." in European Polulism in the Shadow of the Great Recession, edited by H. Kriesi and T. S. Pappas. Colchester: ECPR Press.

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* Rajacic, Agnes. 2007. "Populist Construction of the Past and Future: Emotional Campaigning in Hungary between 2002 and 2006." East European Politics and Societies 21(4):639-60.

* Snow, David A., E. Burke Rochford, Steven K. Worden Jr. and Robert D. Benford. 1986. "Frame Alignment Processes, Mictromobilization, and Movement Participation." American Sociological Review 51(4):464-81.

Zuquete, J. P. 2008. "The Missionary Politics of Hugo Chavez." Latin American Politics and Society 50(1):91-121.

8. The populist voter: Biased beliefs and populist voter rationality

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.

Bornschier, Simon. 2010. Cleavage Politics and the Populist Right : The New Cultural Conflict in Western Europe. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Demertzis, Nikolas. 2006. "Emotions and Populism." Pp. 103-22 in Emotion, Politics and Society, edited by S. Clarke, P. Hoggett and S. Thompson. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ivarsflaten, E. 2007. "What Unites Right-Wing Populists in Western Europe?: Re-Examining Grievance Mobilization Models in Seven Successful Cases." Comparative Political Studies 41(1):3-23.

* 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.

Schumacher, Gijs and Matthijs Rooduijn. 2013. "Sympathy for the ‘Devil’? Voting for Populists in the 2006 and 2010 Dutch General Elections." Electoral Studies 32(1):124-33.

9. Populism in office: Contagious effects and the rise of 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

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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.

Corrales, Javier and Michael Penford. 2011. Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chávez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

Kalyvas, Stathis N. 1997. "Polarization in Greek Politics: Pasok's First Four Years, 1981-1985." Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 23(1):83-104.

Luther, K. R. 2011. "Of Goals and Own Goals: A Case Study of Right-Wing Populist Party Strategy for and During Incumbency." Party Politics 17(4):453-70.

* Mair, Peter. 2009. "Representative Versus Responsible Government." Working Paper 8. * Pappas, Takis S. 2014. "Populist Democracies: Post-Authoritarian Greece and Post-

Communist Hungary." Government and Opposition 49(1):1-23.

10. Populism and economic crisis. Cause, consequence, or both?

Is there a significant correlation between types and degrees of crisis on the one hand and populist manifestations on the other? Can we discern specific causalities? We review contemporary European politics during the recent (and still ongoing) Great Recession, and ask whether the multiple crises – both economic and political – it has produced have benefitted populism. As the empirical data show, the relationship between populism and economic crisis is a rather fuzzy one.

Readings:

Bale, Tim. 2012. "Supplying the Insatiable Demand: Europe's Populist Radical Right." Government and Opposition 47(2):256-74.

Betz, Hans-Georg. 2002. "Conditions Favoring the Success and Failure of Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Contemporary Democracies." Pp. 197-213 in Democracies and the Populist Challenge, edited by Y. Mény and Y. Surel. Houndmills: Palgrave.

Kitschelt, Herbert. 2002. "Popular Dissatisfaction with Democracy: Populism and Party Systems." Pp. 179-96 in Democracies and the Populist Challenge, edited by Y. Mény and Y. Surel. Houndmills: Palgrave.

* Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2014. "The Populist Challenge." West European Politics 37(2):361-78.

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* Mair, Peter. 2006. "Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy." New Left Review (42):25-51.

* Moffitt, Benjamin. 2014. "How to Perform Crisis: A Model for Understanding the Key Role of Crisis in Contemporary Populism." Government and Opposition:1-29.

* Pappas, Takis S. and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2015 forthcoming,. "Populism and Crisis: A Fuzzy Relationship." in European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession, edited by H. Kriesi and T. S. Pappas. Colchester: ECPR Press.

11. Populism’s authoritarian impulse: Hungary as best case study

Having understood populism as ‘democratic illiberalism’, it is now time to examine it in relation to the system that is known as “competitive authoritarianism” and think about its potential non-democratic impulses. How, and under which conditions, may populism’s uneasy balance between democratic-ness and illiberalism go wrong? Contemporary Hungary offers a first-class case for examining this phenomenon from very close distance.

Readings:

Ágh, Attila. 2010. "The Crisis of Party System and Populism in Hungary." Paper presented at the Internationale Konferenz in Kooperation mit der Evangelischen Academie Tutzing, 17-18 May 2010, Evangelischen Academie Tutzing.

Bozóki, András. 2011. "Configurations of Populism in Hungary." Paper presented at the Liberal Democracy, Authoritarian Pasts and the Legacy of 1989, May 20-22, 2011, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague.

* Bozóki, András. 2012. "The Transition from Liberal Democracy: The Political Crisis in Hungary."

Dix, Robert H. 1985. "Populism: Authoritarian and Democratic." Latin American Research Review 20(2):29-52.

* Levitsky, Steven and James Loxton. 2013. "Populism and Competitive Authoritarianism in the Andes." Democratization 20(1):107-36.

Müller, Jan-Werner. 2011. "The Hungarian Tragedy." Dissent (Spring):5-10. * Palonen, E. 2012. "Transition to Crisis in Hungary: Whistle-Blowing on the Naked

Emperor." Politics & Policy 40(5):930-57. Papadopoulos, Yannis. 2002. "Populism, the Democratic Question, and Contemporary

Governance." Pp. 45-61 in Democracies and the Populist Challenge, edited by Y. Mény and Y. Surel. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Schedler, Andreas (2010). Authoritarianism's Last Line of Defense. Journal of Democracy 21(1): 69-80

* Slater, Dan. 2013. "Democratic Careening." World Politics 65(04):729-63.

12. Normative implications: Is populism a corrective or a threat to democracy?

Turning to contemporary political developments (such as the concurrent elections for the European Parliament], this class asks: Is populism a pathological phenomenon or a

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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 Latin America? And how does this discussion relate to ‘electoral authoritarianism’?

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.

Hermet, Guy. 1997. "Populisme Et Nationalisme." ingtieme Siecle 56(October-December):34-47.

* Krastev, Ivan. 2007. "The Strange Death of the Liberal Consensus." Journal of Democracy 18(4):56-63.

* Mounk, Yascha. 2014. "Pitchfork Politics: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy." Foreign Affairs (5 (September/October)):27-36.

* Plattner, Marc F. (2009). Populism, Pluralism, and Liberal Democracy. Journal of Democracy, 21(1), 81–92

* Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2012). The Ambivalence of Populism: Threat and Corrective for Democracy. Democratization 19(2): 1-25

Urbinati, Nadia (1998). Democracy and Populism. Constellations, 5(1), 110–124