Among the intellectual legacies of Stanley Hoffmann are reflections on right-wing politics. Today they seem more than ever relevant to understanding a world of triumphant populism. 1 Hoffmann’s early publications include studies of groups with some
Populism
The Timeline of a Concept
Juan Francisco Fuentes
Populism and the “Cinderella Complex” The academic definitions of the concept of populism usually stress the pejorative sense of the term, the manipulating nature of the phenomenon, and its aversion to political and intellectual elites. This latter
Benjamin Moffitt
While the rise of populism in Western Europe over the past three decades has received a great deal of attention in the academic and popular literature, less attention has been paid to the rise of its opposite— anti-populism. This short article examines the discursive and stylistic dimensions of the construction and maintenance of the populism/anti-populism divide in Western Europe, paying particular attention to how anti-populists seek to discredit populist leaders, parties and followers. It argues that this divide is increasingly antagonistic, with both sides of the divide putting forward extremely different conceptions of how democracy should operate in the Western European political landscape: one radical and popular, the other liberal. It closes by suggesting that what is subsumed and feared under the label of the “populist threat” to democracy in Western Europe today is less about populism than nationalism and nativism.
Neither Shadow nor Spectre
Populism as the Ideological Embodiment of the Democratic Paradox
Anthony Lawrence Borja
) democracies. Ideological decontestation determines not only the ideological development of populist movements, but also the subsequent trajectory of populism's relationship with democratic politics. Therefore, this article exposes and dissects the triadic and
Right-Wing Populism and International Issues
A Case Study of the AfD
Christiane Lemke
, poses a challenge to international engagement. The current crisis in the international order is fueled by nationalism and populism. In this crisis several principles are called into question: liberalism, as well as pluralism in the domestic setting
Populist Rhetoric and Nativist Alarmism
The AfD in Comparative Perspective
Barbara Donovan
eastern German phenomenon. 5 This study acknowledges those important aspects, but examines the party in relation to other similar political forces in Europe. The article focuses on two particular features of the European party landscape—populism and
Migration, Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Knowledge
An Interview with Juliano Fiori
Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Juliano Fiori
Affairs , which focused on “humanitarianism and the end of liberal order” (see Fiori 2019 ), and you are also one of the editors of a forthcoming book on this theme, Amidst the Debris: Humanitarianism and the End of Liberal Order . New populisms of the
Adele Webb
Public ambivalence towards democracy has come under increasing scrutiny. It is a mood registered perhaps most clearly in the fact populist figures, from Trump to Orbàn to Duterte, appear to carry strong appeal despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, they pose a threat to democratic institutions and processes of governance. Are ambivalent citizens the grave threat to democracy they are often portrayed to be in media and academic discourse on populism? In this article, I contend that citizens’ ambivalence about democracy is a more complex, spirited and volitional idea than is acknowledged in the current discussion of populism. Drawing on psychoanalysis and critical social thought, I embrace a conception of citizens’ ambivalence in a democracy as both immanent and desirable. I argue ambivalence can be a form of participation in democracy that is crucial to safeguarding its future.
Populist Transparency
The Documentation of Reality in Rural Paraguay
Kregg Hetherington
This article is an ethnographic account of the politics of transparency in Paraguay that focuses on the circulation of a particular binder full of photocopies from the land registry during Paraguay’s embattled “transition to democracy.” The concept of transparency posits a representational relationship between documents and reality – i.e. governments are transparent to the extent that they generate faithful and accessible documentary representations of their activities. The article suggests that the difficulty of creating a critical analysis of transparency has less to do with representations than with contention over what counts as reality. The Paraguayan case suggests that we might benefit from rethinking transparency through the logic of populism, in which reality is itself created in the relationship between leaders and their followers.
After the Party
Trump, Le Pen, and the New Normal
Anne Sa’adah
line of incomprehension lies not between countries, but down the middle of each. An arguably common but imperfectly understood political phenomenon—“right-wing populism”—has left its uneasy observers, both inside and outside the academy, at a loss to