The Standard Populist Playbook.

• Author: Lemieux, Pierre

Carlos de la Torre's Populisms: A Quick Immersion reviews the theories and practices of populism over the last century, with a particular focus on Latin American's versions and the lessons for the current American and European varieties.

Populism accentuates one trend of democracy emphasized by 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the sacralization of "the will of the people." Populists have conceived of '"the people' as an organic and homogenous whole that shared one interest and identity," writes de la Torre. In this perspective, the people, as a group, have a will just like an individual.

Populism adds a second element to democracy: the idealization and glorification of the elected leader. "Populists," writes de la Torre, "construct the people with one will and interest that is only that of the leader." "Such leaders claim that they represent and even embody the interests, will and aspirations of a homogeneous people." As Michael Sata, a Zambian populist leader and onetime president, declared, "Zambia needs a redeemer; Zambians want Moses to redeem them, and I am the redeemer of Zambia! " On the 10th anniversary of his election as president of Venezuela, populist Hugo Chavez said, "Ten years ago, Bolivar--embodied in the will of the people--came back to life," referring to the 19th-century liberator of the country. As we will see, contemporary European and American populism shares the fundamentals of this approach.

Who is "the people" supposed to be? De la Torre quotes political scientist Nadia Urbinati who notes that "populism entails a pars pro toto [part in lieu of the whole] logic that constructs a part of the population as the authentic people who stand for the sovereign whole." It follows that populism polarizes society into two enemy camps, fueling confrontation and hatred. Those who challenge the populist leader will thus be branded "enemies of the people" or "enemies of the nation."

De la Torre shows that both components--the will of the people and its incarnation in a great leader--were present in the populism of the left that emerged in the 1940s and the populism of the right that emerged in the 1980s, although he also suggests that left-wing populism is not quite as bad as right-wing populism. The two sorts of populisms do not "construct the people" in the same way, he writes, borrowing from postmodernist jargon. This means, in reality, that left-wing populists are inclusive of the right people and exclusive of the wrong ones--the latter including consumers as well as individuals with libertarian or classical-liberal values.

In Latin America, right-wing populists are more difficult to find than leftist ones. Among the former, de la Torre mentions Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Juan Peron, president of Argentina from 1946 to 1955 and again from 1973 until his death in 1974. However, the book overlooks an important point: populists always want to increase the power of the state and reduce economic freedom. Populism is a matter of collective rights, not individual liberties. Populists such as Marine Le Pen in France, Mateo Salvini in Italy, and Donald Trump in the United States can be called right-wingers only in the sense that they want to impose (generally) right-wing values, instead of leftwing values, on everybody. De la Torre...