Books in Review: The Problem and the Promise of The People
| DOI | 10.1177/0090591717743967 |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Author | Joseph Lowndes |
| Subject Matter | Review Essays |
book-review2017
Review Essay
Political Theory
2018, Vol. 46(4) 643 –649
Books in Review
© The Author(s) 2017
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The Problem and the Promise of The People
What Is Populism? by Jan-Werner Müller. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2016.
Populism’s Power: Radical Grassroots Democracy in America, by Laura Grattan. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016.
Reviewed by: Joseph Lowndes, University of Oregon, Oregon, US
DOI: 10.1177/0090591717743967
The term populism has been pressed into service in the last few years as never
before, employed as either epithet and accolade, meant to describe anything
from personal style to social movements to political regimes. The ubiquity of
this inexact concept among scholars and journalists alike points to its ability
to capture some category of phenomenon that nevertheless defies precise
definition. This imprecision itself tells us that we are in a rapidly changing
political world, the defining contours of which are by no means easily limned.
In the United States populism has been the term within easiest reach to
describe Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency, and for all
political appeals to his electoral base since then: a way to describe the churn-
ing urn of anti-elitism, hostility toward the political system, economic anxi-
ety, and perhaps above all white racial grievance. It was also how Bernie
Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic social democratic presidential nomi-
nation was repeatedly described.
Across Europe, populism is the term used to capture a wide swath of par-
ties, movements, and figures. On the right it includes Eastern European right-
wing parties ranging from anti-immigrant to fully neo-fascist—Hungary’s
Fidesz and Jobbik parties being two respectively representative examples. In
Central and Western Europe populism tends also to describe right-wing xeno-
phobic and traditionalist parties, from Austria’s Freedom Party and Germany’s
relatively new and surprisingly successful Alternative for Deutschland to
well-known counterparts in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, France, Italy, and
644
Political Theory 46(4)
the UK. Left anti-austerity parties and movements such as Syriza in Greece,
Podemos in Spain, and the Corbynite faction of the UK Labour Party are also
often tagged with—or self-consciously embrace—the populist label.
Heading southward, we find the term in continual use to describe left-wing
regimes in the Perónist tradition centered on strong executives, such as that of
the Kirchners in Argentina, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, or
Chavismo in Venezuela. Increasingly, populism is used to portray parties and
leaders in regions and countries where the term had previously little purchase,
including Narendra Modi in India and Jacob Zuma in South Africa.
What are we to make of a political label that strides so confidently over the
global landscape characterizing parties, movements, and individuals? There
is indeed wide variance among scholars of populism as to what it is in form
as well as content. To political scientists Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira
Kaltwasser it is a “thin ideology.” For historian Michael Kazin, it is a “flexi-
ble mode of persuasion.” For the late social theorist Ernesto Laclau, mean-
while, populism defined the very horizon of politics itself.
Two recent books, Jan-Werner Müller’s What Is Populism? and Laura
Grattan’s Populism’s Power, exemplify not only the difficulty of arriving at a
clear sense of what is meant by the term populism, but also how to under-
stand it normatively.
Müller’s concise book seeks to do two things: first, provide the reader
with a clear definition of...
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