Alan Knight - Populismo y Neopopulismo en América Latina PDF

Populism and Neo-Populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico
Author(s): Alan Knight

Source: Journal of Latin American Studies , May, 1998, Vol. 30, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp.
223-248
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 30, 223-248. Printed in the United Kingdom ? I998 Cambridge University Press 223
Populism and Neo-populism in Latin

America, especially Mexico1
ALAN KNIGHT
'In all matters of importance, stle and not content is the importa
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.
Abstract. Populism is a concept which, despite repeated c

disappear from Latin American studies. This article rev
literature, suggesting that populism is best defined in te
political style, characteristically involving a proclaimed rappo
a 'them-and-us' mentality, and (often, though not necessarily
and mobilisation; none of which makes it exceptional, abnor
or irrational. Mexican - among other - examples are in
questions some received opinions: that populism is typically
particular historical stages of development, or distinctively d
multi-class alliances or elite manipulation. It also queries the
of 'economic populism'. Finally, the article notes the rec
'neo-populism', embodied by Salinas, Menem, Fujimori, etc.,
loose ('stylistic') definition can usefully accommodate, t
continued, if limited, utility of the concept.
Like Charles II, populism seems to be an 'unconscionably

Or, if another cliche may be permitted, reports of its
not hard to find- seem exaggerated.2 Pronounced
lamented, with a stake through the heart, populism retu
dead of Latin American politics, to haunt the sentient w
by the bright dawn of democracy and neo-liberalis
Alan Knight is Professor of the History of Latin America and Fel
College, Oxford.
1 This article is partly based on an earlier paper, given at a confere
and subsequently published as 'El abrigo de Arturo Alessandri:
sociedad en America Latina, siglo XX', in Maria Luisa Tarre
formaciones socialesy acciones colectivas, America Latina en el contexto inte
(Mexico, 1994), pp. 49-76. I would like to thank Michael Connif
for comments on an earlier draft.
2 John D. Wirth, 'Foreward', and Paul Drake, 'Conclusion: Requiem for Populism?',
in Michael L. Conniff, (ed.), Latin American Populism in Comparative Perspective
(Albuquerque, i982), pp. ix-xiii, 217; Jeremy Adelman, 'Post-Populist Argentina',
New Left Review, no. 203 (Jan.-Feb. I994), p. 89, discerns the 'funeral of populism'.
As I shall later suggest, responsibility for the death of populism is laid at different
doors: the passing of the cycle of import-substitution industrialisation; the bitter
learning experience provided by 'economic populism'; the acculturation of migrants
who shed their 'traditional' ways in favour of a more 'modern' - ergo anti-populist -
political culture. None of these explanations is entirely convincing.

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224 Alan Knight
perdurability is evident not only in the real world of politics, but also in
the rarefied atmosphere of academic debate. Not for the first time,
academics distrust the concept- maybe also the phenomenon - of
populism, but they seem reluctant to ditch it.3 At a stimulating I995
session of the Conference on Latin American History, which gathered
several of the leading analysts of populism, there was, it seemed to me, a
pervasive unease - and certainly no theoretical consensus - concerning
the concept of populism; yet there was also a residual reluctance to boot
it unceremoniously out the back door.4 Experts cling to the concept, even
if they cannot agree what it means. Maybe the experts are wrong: there
is, in the world of social science, no surefire system of natural selection
guaranteeing the survival of fittest concept/theory/paradigm. Plenty of
conceptual dodos have flourished (some, indeed, have been born) in
defiance of rigorous natural selection. Nevertheless, the fact that populism
lives on, in both theory and practice, gives pause for thought.5 Maybe its
staying power suggests some inherent qualities, some affinity with the
Latin American reality, some genetic material which would repay further
analysis.
All of this begs the question of what Latin American populism is, or
was. If, for some, it is an empty concept,6 for others it retains an elusive
utility. Laclau, departing momentarily from his usual stance of Cartesian
rationality, proclaims his 'intuitive' grasp of what populism means.7 He
also resorts to an equally uncharacteristic empiricism, attempting a
headcount of definitions and meanings culled from a variety of scholars.8
On this basis it is possible to collect perceived common characteristics:
these would include (a) an inner core of' consensual' attributes, and (b) an
outer ring of 'contested' attributes- those imputed by some scholars,
ignored or rejected by others. (Such a procedure would produce, as I
understand it, a 'radial' category of analysis).9 A round-up of the usual
3 On intellectual and academic distrust and dislike of populism, see Margaret Canovan,
Populism (London, 1 981), p. i.
4 Panel chaired by Jeremy Adelman, American Historical Association conference,
Chicago, January I995. John D. Martz, 'The Regionalist Expression of Populism.
Guayaquil and the CFP, I948-60', Journalof Interamerican and World Affairs, 22/3 (Aug.
1980), p. 289, notes the concept's 'stubborn resilience in refusing to disappear'.
5 As Peter Worsley observed, given the recurrent use of the term, 'the existence of the
verbal smoke might well indicate a fire somewhere': 'The Concept of Populism', in
Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Gellner, (eds.), Populism (London, I970), p. 219. Emilio de
Ipola, 'Populismo e ideologfa', Revista mexicana de sociologia, 4I/3 (julio-set., I979),
p. 928, makes a similar point.
6 Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London, 1977), pp. 145-6.
7 Laclau, Politics and Ideology, p. I43. 8 Laclau, Politics and Ideology, p. I64.
9 Kenneth M. Roberts, 'Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin
America. The Peruvian Case', World Politics, 48 (Oct. 1995), p. 88, n. 21, citing David
Collier and James E. Mahon Jr.

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Populism and neo-populism in Latin America 225
suspects would include: (a) an appeal to 'the people'; popular

mobilisation; dynamic (charismatic?) leadership; and (b) a reformist
rather than revolutionary programme; a multiclass constituency; an urban
base.10
This, of course, is a crudely empiricist approach. As Laclau rightly
points out, populism has not been the subject of rigorous theoretical
analysis. (Compare others '-isms' like feudalism, capitalism, even
liberalism and conservatism).'l Faced with this trackless waste, social
scientists - including historians - might try to return to first principles:
i.e., they might try to evaluate the utility of the concept, juggling its
meaning according to the theoretical/comparative demands placed upon
it, in order to see whether it proves genuinely enlightening or simply
obfuscatory. My own position, indeed, would be ruthlessly instrumental
and nominalist: 'populism', as a concept, is useful inasmuch as it helps us
order, compare, and understand the vast complexity of history. Its
justification is therefore instrumental ('what has it done for me lately?');
it possesses no inherent and enduring essence. There is no Platonic
'populism' against which to evaluate a messy Aristotelian reality. (Plato,
the least populist of philosophers, would no doubt approve). This does
not quite mean taking a head count of scholars, however. Scholars,
especially when they hunt in packs, can be highly fallible. I would
therefore prefer to build my potentially useful 'populism' on the basis of
historical processes rather than historiographical convergences. Indeed, some of
these convergences seem to me to be mistaken - in the sense not of being
'wrong' (since I am not clear what a 'wrong' definition might be), but
rather of being misleading (i.e., tending to obfuscate rather than clarify).
Of course, any individual's command of historical processes will be partial
and even contentious, hence the conceptual apparatus that seems to work
for one individual may not work for another. Hopefully, however, the
dialectic of public debate can nudge the discussion ahead, enabling us to
trade, test, and improve the ideas developed in the privacy of our own
studies.
If nominalism prevails and instrumentality - 'use-value' -is the cri-

terion of a 'good' concept, the precise term we use for a given concept
may not matter much. We could denote 'populism' (or class, feudalism,
modernity, nationalism, the state) by a number, an abbreviation, a symbol,
10 Wirth, 'Foreward', p. ix; Alistair Hennessy, 'Latin America', in Ionescu and Gellner,
Populism, pp. 28-6i; Torcuato di Tella, 'Populism and Reform in Latin America', in
Claudio Veliz, (ed.), Obstacles to Change in Latin America (Oxford, 1969), pp. 47-74;
Sagrario Torres Ballesteros, 'El populismo: un concepto escurridizo', in Jose Alvarez
Junco, (ed.), Populismo, caudillajey discurso demagogico (Madrid, 1987), pp. I59-80.
n Canovan, Populism, p. 5.

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226 Alan Knight
a nod and a wink. (Indeed, such an approach would have the advantage of
stripping the concept of connotations which impair its constructive use:
for many, populism retains strongly negative connotations, hence it is
often more readily used in a pejorative than a positive sense).12 However,
that would be excessively cute. The one relatively clear conclusion which
emerges from the scholarly headcount - and, though it is not much, it is
something - is the etymological derivation of 'populism' from populus,
hence the connotation of a movement, regime, leader, or style which
claims some affinity with 'the people'.13 That is not much, since the claim
may be unwarranted; 'affinity' can mean many things'; and 'the people'
is another notoriously vague term. (Engels reacted brusquely to a
reference to 'the people in general' in the I891 Erfurt Programme,
asking: 'who is that?').14 However, it is something to go on; it possesses
an elementary etymological logic; and, if pursued, it does, I think offer a
way to make sense of 'populism' such that the concept retains some
utility, without losing all specificity.15
Populism therefore connotates a political style, what Weffort refers to as
its external features.16 It does not- I shall argue- relate to a specific
ideology, period, or class alliance; although, I shall also argue, the style
becomes more politically effective and historically relevant in some times,
places, and periods than others. The style may also be gimcrack: failed,
phony populisms are a good deal more common than successful,
'genuine' variants. Hence Paul Cammack rightly stresses the need to link
discourse- often the easiest thing to research - to structures and
institutions.17 The populist style implies a close bond between political
leaders and led (I am not keen on 'elites' and 'masses'). 'This people
whose slave I was will no longer be slave to anyone', as Vargas declared
12 Michael L. Conniff, Urban Politics in Brazil: The Rise of Populism, 192f-4y (Pittsburgh,
1981), p. 25; Canovan, Populism, p. ii; Di Tella, 'Populism and Reform', p. 47.
I discuss the pejorative notion of 'economic populism', now much in vogue, below.
13 De Ipola, 'Populismo e ideologfa', p. 934; Paul Cammack, 'What Populism Was, What
Neo-populism Is', paper presented at the conference on 'Old and New Populism in
Latin America', Institute of Latin American Studies, London, Nov. I995, p. i.
14 Adam Przeworski and John Sprague, Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism
(Chicago, 1986), p. 49. On the polysemic quality of 'pueblo' in Spanish: Norberto
Rodriguez Bustamante, 'Sociologia del populismo', in Jos6 Isaacson, (coord.), El
populismo en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, I974), pp. I23-4.
15 Etymological logic can be a false guide; it would not help much, for example, in
divining the significance of 'fascism'; and those who preface analyses of modern
revolutions with erudite references to wheels-in-motion do not necessarily advance our
knowledge. In this case, however, the etymology is sufficiently clear, recent, and
compelling for us to take it seriously.
16 Francisco Corr6a Weffort, 0 populismo na politica brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1980), p. 25.
17 Cammack, 'What Populism Was', p. 2.

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in his suicidal valedictory; 'yo no soy un hombre, soy un pueblo', as

Gaitan modestly put it.18 Although such a bond may develop in the
absence of populism, populism offers a particularly intense form of
'bonding', usually associated with periods of rapid mobilisation and
crisis. This seems to be the case not only of 'classic' populism (e.g.,
Peronismo, Cardenismo), but also of neo-populism, which Panizza
associates with 'times of unsettlement and dealignment'.l9 Such times
may reflect economic upheaval (depression in the 1930s, structural
adjustment and neo-liberal reform in the I99os); and/or they may involve
political crisis - party collapse and realignment, executive aggrandise-
ment, ultimately regime transformation.20 Even more than 'populism',
however,' crisis', is a vague, promiscuously used, under-theorised concept
which defies measurement and lacks explanatory power.21 To attribute
'populism' to 'crisis' may often be historically valid, but it does not afford
a robust etiology; and trying to explain one vague concept in terms of
another is hardly a promising line of inquiry.
Furthermore, this association is at best a rough tendency or correlation,
not a definitional requirement or essential criterion. Populism, in short,
can exist in 'normal', 'non-critical' times.22 I would go further in de-
linking populism from the critical, the extreme, or the outre. While
18 John W. F. Dulles, Vargas ofBrazil, A PoliticalBiography (Austin, 1967), p. Io; Herbert
Braun, The Assassination of Gaitdn. Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia (Madison,
985 ), pp. 101-3. The 5 o,ooo or so Gaitanistas who gathered for a mass rally in Bogota's
Circo de Santamaria on 23 September 1945 went further in presuming an intimacy
between leader and led: 'guste o no le guste...,' was the cry', Gaitan sera tu padre':
Carlos de la Torre, 'The Ambiguous Meanings of Latin American Populisms', Social
Research, 59/2 (summer I992), p. 406. A recurrent rhetorical quirk of populism is to
emphasise the militant, confrontational, even class-conscious significance of the
(otherwise) bland term 'people', which is done by adopting pejorative (elitist,
snobbish) labels and wearing them with pride: hence, Per6n's descamisados, Gaitan's
gleba gloriosa, Velasco Ibarra's querida chusma (which he borrowed from Arturo
Alessandri): Daniel James, Resistance and Integration, Peronism and the Argentine Working
Class, 1946-76 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 22-3; Braun, Assassination of Gaitan, p. 0o2;
Osvaldo Hurtado, 'Populismo y carisma', in Felipe Burbano de Lara y Carlos de la
Torre Espinosa, Elpopulismo en Ecuador (Quito, i989), pp. I8o-i.
19 Quoted in Cammack, 'What Populism Was', p. i.
20 Bruce H. Kay, '"Fuji-populism" and the Liberal State in Peru, 1990-5', Journal of
Inter-American Studies and World Affairs, 38/4 (winter, I996), p. 57.
21 I discuss the notion of 'crisis' more fully in Alan Knight, 'Crisis and Regime Change:
Historical Considerations', paper given at the Coloquio Internacional 'Elite Change
and Political Crises', Santa Maria de El Paular, Spain, 30 May-i June I996.
22 'Crisis' being a vague term, it is easily coined and devalued. Thus it is not difficult to
associate 'populism' (or almost anything else) with 'crisis'. There is also a tautological
tendency to impute populism (or anything else) to 'crisis', as if 'crisis' were a
discernible cause, when, in fact, it is often a loose description of a bundle of phenomena
which need to be disaggregated. Disaggregation sometimes reveals that it was not
'crisis' which generated populism (or mobilisation, rebellion, etc.), but rather
populism (or mobilisation, rebellion, etc.) which generated crisis.

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228 Alan Knight
populism is associated with mobilisation, it does not follow that that

mobilisation is any more 'irrational', 'emotive', or deserving of peculiar
psychological explanations than non-populist mobilisations.23 It is
amenable to rational choice theory (if that is your methodological calling);
and, even when it appears to espouse 'affective' rather than 'instrumental',
'psychological' rather than 'material' goals, this does not, in my view, set
it apart from mainstream politics, which are also shot through with
affective and psychological appeals. The delight of the Peronist descamisados
who, in October 1945, invaded the public spaces of downtown Buenos
Aires, cooling their feet in the fountains, seems to me no more irrational
than the disgust they provoked on the part of the porteno elite.24 I would
also query the notion of 'unmediated' mobilisation, which seems to be
historically difficult to envisage.25 All political movements of any scale or
duration have involved some kind of functional network, if not hierarchy,
which necessarily transcends a simple leader/mass dichotomy: Cardenas
depended on a clutch of caciques scattered throughout Mexico; Peron
recruited established labour leaders; Assad Bucaram built his Guayaquil
machine on 'intermediaries' and 'pre-existing social and political
networks at community level'.26 At best, we might hypothesise that some
populist movements - particularly in their infancy - are 'under-
23 Here I tend to agree with Canovan, Populism pp. I60-71. On rational and irrational
interpretations of populism, see de la Torre, 'The Ambiguous Meanings of Latin
American Populisms', pp. 408-9.
24 Daniel James, 'October seventeenth and eighteenth, 1945: Mass Protest, Peronism,
and the Argentine Working Class', Journal of Social History, 21 (1988), pp. 441-61; and
the same author's Resistance and Integration, ch. i, especially p. 33.
25 Cf. Cammack, 'What Populism Was', pp. i, 8; Roberts, 'Neoliberalism and the
transformation of populism', p. 90, which sees contemporary Peruvian populism as
characterised by 'the direct, unmediated mobilisation of atomised masses by personalist
leaders'. (I should add that this is my only qualified point of dispute with Roberts'
perceptive analysis, with which I am otherwise in full agreement). My objection to the
notion of 'unmediated' mobilisation or appeal is that it reinforces the old idea of
lumpen masses, lacking political bearings, swayed by a single spellbinding orator. In
doing so, it both follows an old tradition, tracing back to Le Bon, and tends to traduce
history - since we know that many adherents of populism (e.g., of Cardenismo or
Peronism) were not political neophytes, members of a rudderless masa disponible, but
people with pre-existing loyalties- to peasant community or urban sindicato, for
example. Cf. Gino Germani, Politicay sociedad en una epoca de transicion (Buenos Aires,
I965) and the critique of Miguel Murmis and Juan Carlos Portantiero, Estudios sobre los
origenes delperonismo (Buenos Aires, I97I). A comparable debate surrounds Ecuadorean
populism: cf. Hurtado, 'Populismo y carisma', pp. I76-9, and the critique of Rafael
Quintero, El mito delpopulismo en Ecuador (Quito, I980), pp. 26-7, 29-33ff.
26 Alan Knight, 'Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy?', Journal of Latin American Studies,
26 (I994), pp. 96-8; David Tamarin, The Argentine Labor Movement, I930-194f. A Study
in the Origins of Peronism (Albuquerque, I985), pp. 190-2; Amparo Menendez-Carri6n,
'Estructura y dinamica de la articulaci6n electoral en las barriadas de Guayaquil,
1948-78: el nivel local', in Burbano de Lara and de la Torre, Elpopulismo en Ecuador,
p. 441.

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mediated'; but then we face another challenge of tricky, if not impossible,

calibration.27 Furthermore, as I shall suggest, growth and longevity tend
to encourage ' mediation', i.e., the thickening of channels of command
and representation within populist movements.
If populist movements, like other political movements, have their own
cadres, command structures, and informal rules, their leaders, too, are
subject to the same failings as 'mainstream' political leaders - they can be
corrupt, nepotistic and hypocritical, without necessarily forfeiting their
populist legitimacy. Some such leaders have vaunted their superior
morality (Don Buca 'no se casa con nadie, ni se les canta todas'); some
- Cardenas, Vargas -were a cut above the (low) norm in terms of
personal ethics.28 But populists do not have to be plaster saints in order
to succeed. Some made a virtue of their wordly ways. Adhemar de Barros,
elected Governor of Sao Paulo in I947, ran on the slogan: 'he steals but
he get things done'.29 In short, populist movements -not to mention
regimes -are thoroughly mundane, even conventional; they do not
belong to an extraneous political universe, requiring exceptional analysis
or categorisation.3
Although the populist emphasis on 'the people' is a bland lower
common denominator - so low that it is not confined to populism31 - it
does carry some further connotations. Invocation of 'the people' is
regularly and logically associated with a dichotomisation of 'people' and
- the permutations are endless - the 'non-people', 'anti-people', 'the
other', 'the oligarchy', the 'elite', foreigners, Jews and traitors. These
target groups may be domestic class or sectoral groups (e.g., the Bolivian
Rosca; the 'gran prensa' of Ecuador; the 'Jockey Club crowd' of Buenos
27 Like many of the criteria used by analysts of populism, 'mediation' (like 'crisis',
'mobilisation', 'charisma') is not amenable to measurement; hence analysts trade
comparisons without, it seems to me, sharing an agreed methodology which would
help advance the debate; and the debate therefore assumes a distinctly circular and
assertive character (my contribution included).
28 Menendez-Carri6n, 'Estructura y dinimica de la articulaci6n electoral en las barriadas
de Guayaquil', p. 433; Knight, 'Cardenismo', p. 80; Dulles, Vargas, pp. 318, 346;
Robert M. Levine, The Vargas Regime: The Critical Years, 1934-38 (New York, 1970),
p. 37 quotes Oswaldo Aranha on Vargas: 'a Christ among thieves'.
29 Michael L. Conniff, 'Populism in Brazil, 1925-45', in Conniff, (ed.), Latin American
Populism p. 85.
30 By the same token, I would hesitate to equate populism with 'exceptionalism', as in the
familiar formula, 'the exceptional capitalist state' (e.g., the fascist, Bonapartist, or
Peronist state: e.g., Laclau, Politics and Ideology, pp. 57, 197-8). The chief problem with
this formula is the assumption of a 'normal', 'unexceptional' capitalist state
(presumably, a liberal-democratic bourgeois-capitalist state). But late-Victorian Britain
is hardly a yardstick of historical normality. On Bonapartism, see n. 8i below.
31 ' Since the advent of mass political mobilisation, virtually any modern regime, however,
repressive, needs to have some populist elements, even if these do not go beyond
rhetoric': Canovan, Populism, p. 148.

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230 Alan Knight
Aires) ;32 political vested interests (a common pattern seems to pit populist
executives against vested interests in the legislature); the pals politico - the
political establishment - as against the pais nacional (the real country);33
'pointy-headed intellectuals' (or variants on this populist theme: recall the
slogans of Per6n's descamisados: 'alpargatas si, libros no!'; 'menos
cultura y mas trabajo !'); foreign powers, foreign representatives ('Braden
or Per6n'), and/or 'foreign' groups resident within the borders of the
nation-state, against whom the interests of the ('real') people can be set
- be they multinational corporations, like the oil companies expropriated
by Toro in 1937 and Cardenas in 1938, or immigrant communities, like
the Chinese run out of Mexico by the Sonorans in early '30s.34
Accordingly, populism - proclaiming the worth of the common man (it
rarely champions the common woman)35 -easily spills over into
xenophobia and chauvinism; although again, of course, it is not alone in
this. It also readily adopts both an anti-intellectual and anti-institutional
cast: the populist leader/movement represents a repudiation of both
entrenched vested interests (e.g., meritocratic bureaucracies or long-
serving legislatures) and also effete intellectuals (Cardenas had no love for
intellectuals, or vice versa). Hence the relationship of intellectuals to populist
movements tends to be unusually problematic: some populist movements
spurn intellectuals; critics of populism often point to its crass lack of
culture; but some intellectuals, espousing populism, over-compensate,
becoming more populist than the populace.36
32 Menendez-Carri6n, 'Estructura y dinamica de la articulaci6n electoral en las barriadas
de Guayaquil', p. 433; George I. Blanksten, Peron's Argentina (Chicago, 1974, first
pubd., I953), pp. 272-3.
33 Braun, The Assassination of Gaitdn, pp. 1oo-1oI; John Green, "'Vibrations of the
Collective": The Popular Ideology of Gaitanismo on Colombia's Atlantic Coast,
1944-48', Hispanic American Historical Review, 76/2 (I996), p. 305.
34 In fact, there may be considerable differences between these phenomena - roughly,
'economic nationalism' on the one hand and popular 'xenophobia' on the other: Alan
Knight, 'Peasants into Patriots: Thoughts on the Making of the Mexican Nation',
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, Io/ (winter 1994), pp. 5 I-3. Both, however, are
consonant with populist mobilisation. On Peronist anti-intellectualism, see James,
'October seventeenth and eighteenth', p. 452, and the same author's Resistance and
Integration, p. 27, which, noting the tangoesque discourse of (early) Peronism, quotes
Discepolo's 'great tango', Cambalache: 'It's better to be a jackass than a great
professor'.
35 The role of patriarchy and gender relations within populism would no doubt repay
further consideration, although I doubt that I am the person to do it. With the obvious
exception of Eva Per6n, the Latin American populist pantheon is notably lacking in
women; but then so, too, is the Latin American political pantheon in general. In this,
as in other respects, populism may not be particularly exceptional.
36 Blanksten, Peron's Argentina, pp. 274-5, on populist (i.e., Peronist) ignorance, typified
by a cabinet minister's statement that I950 was the year of the three S's: el afio Santo,
the anniversary of the death of San Martin and the number Sincuenta. Intellectual
populism appears to have been rarer in Latin America than, say, Russia: cf. Canovan,

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This working definition, relating to political style, is, of course, vague

and imprecise, capable of application in very diverse situations. Drake
(sensibly) urges us to break down the Protean bulk of populism into
manageable chunks: populist movements, leaders, regimes.37 Canovan
offers further distinctions, e.g., between 'urban' and 'rural' populism
(roughly, Latin American on the one hand, Russian and North American
on the other).38 In particular, I would suggest that - viewed historically
- populist movements/leaders/regimes should be seen in dynamic terms.
Box-like categories should give way to fluid tendencies. For, like the
related concept of 'charisma', populism - similarly defined in 'relational'
terms39 - tends to be the product of crisis and confrontation; hence it has
a limited shelflife; and, over time, tends either to lose momentum and fail
or, in a few cases, to undergo 'routinisation', whereby the initial populist
surge is eventually diverted into more durable, institutional (and
'mediated') channels. Early Peronism - radical, spontaneous and populist
- gave way to late Peronism: more conservative, controlled, and elitist.
Cardenista populism laid the groundwork for the 'institutional' revolution
of the 1940S and after. Batista, the slippery populist of the I93os, became
Batista, the unabashed conservative of the 1950S. Somocista populism
lasted no more than a decade.40 These mutations make any precise theory
of Latin American populism difficult to sustain: 'Peronism' - to take a
key case - is a political catch-all in terms not only of its complex make-up,
but also of its chequered career over time.
However, there may be a rough pattern in this routinisation of
populism. Leaving aside populisms which unequivocally fail (e.g. Alan
Garcia's APRA), or which are cut off in their prime (e.g. Gaitanismo), it
could be argued that the more durable variants, as they experience the
'routinisation of populism', shift from being confrontational experiences,
Populism, pp. 104-5. Some Latin American intellectuals - e.g., Mexican and Andean
indigenistas - exalted popular, Indian, folkloric values and traditions; but they did so
'from above', paternalistically, aiming to integrate Indians into a mestizo nation state
(forjando patria, as Gamio put it); they did not envisage Indianising the nation, or
transposing popular ways and customs to the elite. No more did porteno populist/
nationalists start dressing like gauchos or eating raw beef.
37 Paul Drake, Socialism and Populism in Chile, 1932-j2 (Urbana, I978), pp. 2, 7.
38 Canovan, Populism, pp. 3, I 38. Thus, the Mexican and Argentine variants of populism
tend to get separated; a point to which I will return.
39 That is, 'charisma' does not reside, an innate quality, in the bosom of the 'charismatic'
leader; it denotes a relationship between leader and followers. Similarly, populism must
be understood as a reciprocal relationship, not a top-down imposition.
40 Samuel Farber, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 1933-I960 (Middletown, 1976), pp. 20-i;
Jeffrey L. Gould, To Lead As Equals, Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in
Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912-1979 (Chapel Hill, I990), ch's 2, 3, especially p. 8i.

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232 Alan Knight
often the product of crisis, embodying strong, affective appeals to

dissident groups, and move in the direction of a machine politics,
premised on government patronage and a lingering - but less red-blooded
- populist style. Indeed, Bresser Pereira proposes an explicit continuum
ranging from populism through clientelism ('fisiologismo') to 'sheer
corruption'.41 The early appeal of Peronism, which blended material
promises with a kind of psychological empowerment,42 gave way to a
grandiose and corrupt clientelism, richer in rhetoric than genuine reform.
Nevertheless, the earlier benefits - material and psychological - were not
entirely stripped away. A similar trajectory characterised Cardenismo. The
reforms of the I930s - especially the agrarian reform - coupled material
benefits and important psychological rewards;43 they also stimulated
vigorous criticism and opposition - Cardenismo, like Peronism or even
Varguismo, was no bland 'populist' placebo.44 Even after the substantial
right-turn of the 1940s, elements of populism - weakened and travestied,
it is true - lived on in the Mexican body politic. Cirdenas remained a key
figure; the ejido survived; subsequent administrations - down to the
I98os at least - continued to indulge in populist rhetoric and occasional
bursts of'populist' reform, Echeverria being the classic case.45 A kind of
bland institutional populism replaced the more dynamic personalised
variety of the I93os.46 But it still served to maintain a (weak) legitimacy
for the Mexican regime, ensuring against a descent into outright
bureaucratic authoritarianism. At a regional level too, the unusual
strength and stamina of Ecuadorean populism, based on Guayaquil,
implied a degree of routinisation. During the I96os, as the port city grew,
and with it the populist Concentraci6n de Fuerzas Populares (CFP), so its
41 Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, 'Populism and Economic Policy in Brazil', Journal of
Interamerican and World Affairs, 33 / 2 (summer, 99 ), p. 7.
42 James, Resistance and Integration, ch. i.
43 For example, the extension of rural schooling, which could have a decisive (but often
non-quantifiable) effect on local communities: Eyler Simpson, The Ejido: Mexico's Way
Out (Chapel Hill, 1937), p. 108; Mary Kay Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution.
Teachers, Peasants and Schools in Mexico, 1930-I940 (Tucson, I997), pp. I93-8.
44 Knight, 'Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy?', develops this argument. John French,
The Brazilian Workers ABC. Class Conflicts and Alliances in Modern Sao Paulo (Chapel Hill,
1992), argues for the relative autonomy of the greater Sao Paulo working class during
the process of supposed 'populist incorporation'. Joel Wolfe, Working Women, Working
Men, Sdo Paulo and the Rise of Brazil's Industrial Working Class, I9oo-igf9 (Durham,
1993), dissents from (some of) French's analysis (see pp. 262-3, n. I3), but Wolfe also
depicts the Sao Paulo working class as rationally aware of the benefits, opportunities
- and costs - of Varguismo: see pp. 10- 114.
45 Jorge Basurto, 'The Late Populism of Luis Echeverria, in Conniff, (ed.), Latin
American Populism, pp. 10 3-III .
46 Roger Bartra, Agrarian Structure and Political Power in Mexico (Baltimore, I993),
pp. ii8-I26, offer an interesting analysis.

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leader, Assad Bucaram, 'came to rely increasingly on the role of

intermediaries in order to maintain his active presence' among the urban
poor.47 (He relied, too, on a measure of informal coercion, as did other
durable populist movements).48
Defining populism in terms of style has the virtue of flexibility and -
perhaps most important- historical fidelity. That is, it seems to
correspond to the historical record in a way that other - often more
precise theories/models - fail to do. And it is surely preferable to have a
rough rule-of-thumb which works than a high-falutin theory which defies
reality. However, sceptics may require some persuading that style - and
its associated features mentioned above: crisis, confrontation, person-
alism, mobilisation - offers a useful criterion for distinguishing between
types of movement, leader or regime. Since precise measurement is (to my
knowledge) impossible, we can only judge the 'usefulness' of such a
criterion intuitively.49 By way of illustration, therefore, I have listed pairs
of leaders, each of which, I think, offers a contrast between populist and
non-populist styles. I have deliberately drawn these from a wide political
universe, scattered in time and place, and not confined to Latin America.50
The use of individuals indicates, not some antiquated attachment to a
Great Man theory of history, but rather the convenience of denoting
complex political conjunctures and relationships by means of brief
biographical references. 'Leaders' are surrogates for movements/parties/
regimes. I should add, finally, that like many political attributions, these
are not strict either/or pairings; rather than occupying discrete boxes, the
contrasting cases should be seen as falling at different ends of a wide
spectrum - the populist first, the (roughly) contemporary non-populist

de Guayaquil', p. 44I.
de Guayaquil', p. 445, n. 143, quotes an ex-CFP militant to the effect that the party did
not practice terrorism (as critics alleged) but rather resorted to 'la instigaci6n del miedo
en alguna gente'. Cardenistas and Peronistas were, of course, familiar with political
violence - as perpetrators and victims alike.
49 This, of course, is the normal state of affairs in history, and much of the social sciences.
By 'intutively' I mean simply that the value of a particular criterion - or 'organising
concept'-has to be evaluated, justified and debated using 'impressionistic' non-
quantifiable data and arguments. While we might agree that some are non-starters (e.g.,
populism as a movement determined by the genetic make-up of inferior peoples), there
is no definitive way of proving the superiority (i.e., the superior usefulness) of other
competing criteria/concepts which appear more promising; we are likely to conclude,
lamely that there is 'some sense', hence 'some use', in several of them; and, even if we
arrive at a preference for one, it may prove difficult or impossible to persuade dissenters
to that effect. Hence the occasional feeling of circularity and deja vu which can creep up
when we reprise these old debates....
50 The list is political; I have resisted the temptation to encompass 'populist' art,
literature, music or film.

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234 Alan Knight
second. Readers may disagree with some of the pairings; they may note
striking omissions.51 The key question, however, is not the membership
of the two clubs, but the supposed criterion by which membership is
established. Does it make sense?
Juan Alvarez/52Lucas Alaman; Alvaro Obreg6n/Pascual Ortiz Rubi

Lazaro Cardenas/Abelardo Rodriguez; Luis Echeverria/Gustavo Dia
Ordaz; Carlos Salinas/Miguel de la Madrid; Jose Artigas/Bernardin
Rivadavia; Juan Per6n/Raul Alfonsin; Carlos Saul Menem/Doming
Cavallo; Getulio Vargas/Eurico Dutra; Arturo Alessandri (1920-4)/
Arturo Alessandri (1932-8); Fidel Castro/Fulgencia Batista (1952-8
Adolf Hitler/Franz Von Papen; Mahatma Gandhi/Muhammad A
Jinnah; Margaret Thatcher/Edward Heath; Aneurin Bevan/Sidney
Webb; Huey Long/Henry Cabot Lodge; FDR/Calvin Coolidge.
If the distinguishing feature of the first of these pairs is populist sty
- which, I repeat, cannot be turned on and off at will, and, if it is to
succeed, must reflect deeper sociopolitical relationships and perception
- it might help to offer a few illustrative examples, drawn chiefly from the
case I know best, modern Mexico. One crucial feature of the 1910
Revolution was its destruction of the Porfirian political system and its
replacement - slowly and painfully - by a new system which was more
open, fluid, populist and egalitarian.53 This was reflected in political sty
- the way of doing politics - in the 1920S and 1930s. New men came to
power and they governed in new ways. The result was not formall
democratic, nor was it necessarily peaceful, but it was more representativ
51 Or they may wish to strike some names from the list. Two additional points bea
mention: first, we again note the tendency for some leaders to progress (?) over tim
from populism to non-populism (usually conservatism): e.g., Alessandri and Batista
Movements in the other direction appear to be rarer, at least in Latin America. It
easier - or, at least, more tempting - to foreswear a populist past than to build a belate
populist following (though Vargas may be an example of the latter: Wolfe, Workin
Women, Working Men, pp. 119-24). Secondly, emblematic populists spring to min
more readily than non-populists; the latter, in fact, tend to be less celebrated - or le
notorious - than their populist counterparts (note the discrepancy in stature between
say, Obreg6n and Ortiz Rubio, Cardenas and Rodriguez, Vargas and Dutra). Maybe
this tells us something about 'mass politics' in general and Latin American politics
particular ?
52 On the notion of nineteenth-century populist caudillos (Alvarez, Artigas, Carrera), see
John Lynch, Caudillos in Spanish America, I8oo-i8/o (Oxford, I992), pp. 38, 41-4, 87,
128-9, 217-24, 364-40I; and cf. pp. 201-5, 431-3.
53 I am not trying to resuscitate the moribund myth of the Mexican Revolution (although
I do think that myth has more to it than some recent revisionist critiques allow). The
Revolution did not usher in an era of benign social-democratic - still less socialist -
reform. It did, however, change Mexican politics and society in profound ways -
sometimes less by virtue of planned legislation than of defacto, unplanned, haphazard
events/processes (migration, inflation, demographic shifts, class and communal
mobilisation). Hence the move towards populist politics referred to here.

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- and much more populist - than the Porfiriato had ever been.54 This was
evident at the grassroots, where new elites - like the 'peasant borgeoisie'
of the Huasteca Hidalguense described by Frans Schryer - squabbled for
power, capitalising on their supposedly humble backgrounds, rustic
appearance, and rapport with the local peasantry.55 Close by, the Huasteca
Potosina fell under the sway of a classic populist ranchero cacique, Gonzalo
N. Santos, who was equally at home managing the Federal Congress in
Mexico City or engaging in the crude, violent, demagogic politica cochina
of the Huasteca.56 Old-style politicos had to learn new ways; intellectuals
- like Vasconcelos - had to 'go to the people': an experience which, like
the Narodniki of nineteenth-century Russia, they sometimes found trying.
When Vasconcelos ran for the Governorship of Oaxaca in 1924 he
confronted the 'uncultured serrano', Onofre Jimenez, who - Vasconcelos
complained - guaranteed his election with a populist one-liner: 'the
Licenciado is too big a candidate for Oaxaca; the Licenciado drinks
champagne; I drink mezcal; I ought to be Governor'.57 Sure enough,
Jimenez won.
So, too, at national level. Alvaro Obreg6n, the first great post-
revolutionary president, cut his political teeth in Sonoran municipal
politics (where his command of Mayo - the language of the local Indian
communities - had helped). He mobilised the Yaquis for the Revolution
and the nascent labour unions for his 1920 presidential bid. Throughout,
he displayed a bluff, gregarious, wisecracking manner,58 and a talent for
54 Diaz began his political career as a local caudillo with populist leanings, and these did
not instantly disappear when he assumed the presidency. Over time, however, he went
the way of many later populists, shifting to the right, spurning his popular
constituency, cutting deals with Church, oligarchs and businessmen. The contrast
between the populist Revolution and the oligarchic Porfiriato is therefore stronger if we
compare the late Porfiriato (c. I890-I910) with the early Revolution (190I-40). The
early Porfiriato was a different matter; so, too, was (is?) the 'late Revolution' (since
1940), which many commentators now see as an increasingly 'neo-Porfirian' regime.
55 Frans J. Schryer, The Rancheros of Pisaflores. The History of a Peasant Bourgeoisie in
Twentieth-Century Mexico (Toronto, 1980), pp. 7-9 and ch. 4.
56 Pending the publication of Wil Pansters' study of Santos, the best source is Santos' own
remarkable autobiography, Memorias (Mexico, 1986).
57 Ross Parmenter, Lawrence in Oaxaca (G. M. Smith, 1984), p. xxx, quoting Vasconcelos.
58 Linda B. Hall, Alvaro Obregdn. Power and Revolution in Mexico, 1911-I20 (College
Station, 198 ), pp. 19-26 on Obreg6n's character and origins. One of many Obreg6n
jokes captures something of his 'populist' manner: in I926 the retired President,
dressed 'in peasant garb' (i.e., loose pyjama-style cotton shirt and drawers), welcomed
the Japanese ambassador to his Sonoran hacienda: 'surprised, the Japanese
commented: "I had difficulty in recognising you, General, in your peasant disguise",
to which Obreg6n replied: 'No, your excellency, this is my real self (verdaderaforma de
ser). The one in disguise was the Obreg6n you met in the National Palace"': Jorge
Mejia Prieto, Ah, que risa me dan los politicos (Mexico, 1992), p. 44. Vargas, too, 'never
put on airs as president; frequently he met visitors to his Petr6polis summer residence

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236 Alan Knight
populist gestures. Occupying a hungry Mexico City in I914-15, he

ransomed the clergy, distributing the proceeds to the poor; and he forced
rich merchants - enemies of the revolution, exploiters of the people - to
sweep the streets of the city.59 Twenty years later, Lazaro Cardenas -
another parvenu of provincial, petty-bourgeois background - barn-
stormed the country, descending on remote regions and obscure pueblos,
meeting peasant delegations, fixing local problems, inscribing his
personality in the collective memory of communities which had never
before seen a state governor, let alone a president. When he came to
Pisaflores, oral tradition recalls, Cardenas 'refused to eat at an open air
banquet prepared in his honour... instead, he walked over to a corner of
the plaza where an old woman was selling soft drinks, took a chocolate
bar from his pocket and ordered a glass of water'.60 As President,
Cardenas kept up this peripatetic, populist style, leaving a legacy - in
certain places, among certain groups - that verged on the reverential.61
Since the I94os, it is true, Mexican populism has wilted, experienced brief
revivals, and proliferated in different directions - the likely outcome of a
process of 'routinisation'. But it has survived, and thus played an
important part in the maintenance of Latin America's most durable
political system.
Elsewhere in Latin America, there has been no lack of populist style,
but populist success - and institutionalisation - have been rare.62 The
Cuban Revolution achieved a successful institutionalisation of (char-
ismatic and populist?) authority, albeit under very different auspices; but
Bolivia's MNR, potentially the closest parallel to the PNR/PRM/PRI,
lasted only twelve years in power, leaving a tarnished 'legacy of
populism'.63 More generally, of course, a claimed rapport with 'the
people' has been a staple of political rhetoric: with the early Alessandri,
in his pajamas, an old rural Brazilian custom': Levine, The Vargas Regime, pp. 37-8.
I am not, however, proposing a new pyjama-populism paradigm.
59 Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution (2 vols., Cambridge, 1986), II, pp. 314-I6.
60 Schryer, Rancheros of Pisaflores, p. 92.
61 For example, Luis Gonzalez, San Jose de Gracia, Mexican Village in Transition (Austin,
1983), pp. 204-5. Echoes of the cult of Tata Lazaro are to be found, fifty years on, in
Adolfo Gilly, Cartas a Cuauhtemoc Cardenas (Mexico, 1989). Such peripatetic populism
is quite common: consider Lula's 'Caravan of Citizenship', which covered 45,000 km
in 1994: Celi Regina Jardim Pinto, 'Neo-populism in Brazilian Politics: The Rapid
Exhaustion of a Model', paper presented at the LASA conference, Guadalajara, April
1997, p. 14.
62 Coastal Ecuador is a good example: Martz, 'The Regionalist Expression' and
Men6ndez-Carri6n, 'Estructura y dinamica de la articulaci6n electoral en las barriadas
de Guayaquil'.
63 Christopher Mitchell, The Legacy of Populism in Bolivia, From the MNR to Military Rule
(New York, I977).

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Vargas, Gaitan, Per6n, Haya, Chibas, Ibfniez, Velasco Ibarra. What is

more, the rapport was, in some cases, genuine, and paralleled by a tellingly
hostile reaction on the part of elites. Hence the conflagration of the
Bogota.o, or the long, slow brushfire of Peronism. In this respect,
populism was not a bland, superficial multiclass melange, as sometimes
claimed; it involved sharp political polarisation and laid down deep
political loyalties. Methods reminiscent of the Mexican model have also
been evident: nationalist rabble-rousing; moralistic denunciations of
corrupt vested interests; barnstorming tours and rallies; the incipient use
of radio.64 Populist rapport does not, however, require tub-thumping
demagoguy: Cardenas was no more a flamboyant speaker than was
Vargas; both acquired support by virtue of their policies, image, and
career - and despite (or because of?) their dour personalities.65 Effective
populism, in other words, derived from lived experience rather than
rhetorical extravagance.
In contrast to the above 'model' (if we can dignify it with such a name)
we find alternative definitions and theories which, as I said, gain in
precision and sophistication, but fail on the crucial criterion of historical
fidelity. They are neat but wrong. Or, to put it more accurately, the neater
they are the wronger they are. Thus, while they do not entirely lack
insight or explanatory power, they cannot form the basis of a generic
model. The most common posits a populist era, roughly spanning the
period c. I930-c. 1970. (Drake offers a more sophisticated periodisation,
oddly reminiscent of Mesoamerican archaeology: 'early' populism, pre-
1930; 'classic', c. 1930-c. 70; and 'late', post-I970).66 Populism becomes,
roughly, the political counterpart of import substitution industrialisation;
it involves a repudiation of the old exporting oligarchy, the mobilisation
of new social groups, particularly the urban working class and the
national bourgeoisie, and a greater commitment to state intervention in
the economy.67 It is therefore a multiclass political movement, charac-
terised by personalist, charismatic leadership, ad hoc reformist policies, and
a repudiation of revolution (indeed, it may offer itself as an antidote to real
64 E.g., Braun, The Assassination ofGaitdn, pp. 83-I03, 121-2; Green, 'Gaitanismo on the
Atlantic Coast', pp. 298-309; Steve Stein, 'Populism in Peru: APRA, the Formative
Years', in Conniff (ed.), Latin American Populism, pp. 113-34; and the same author's
Populism in Peru (Madison, I980), ch. 5, on Sanchezcerrismo.
65 Dulles, Vargas, pp. 9 ('cold, reserved, cautious, impersonal'), 18 ('no extrovert... and
apparently unemotional'). Osvald Bayer, 'Un movimiento popular en un gobierno
populista', in Isaacson, Elpopulismo en la Argentina, p. 17, notes that Hip6lito Irigoyen
- 'el ejemplo mas puro de un gobernante populista' - 'llega a ser un caudillo popular
sin saber hablar, sin tener balc6n'.
66 Paul Drake, 'Comment', in Rudiger Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards, The
Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America (Chicago, 199I), pp. 38-9.
67 Adelman, 'Post-Populist Argentina', pp. 66-7.

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238 Alan Knight
revolution: 'we make the revolution before the people do', as Antonio
Carlos de Andrada put it).68 While this composite picture, culled from
several well-known sources, clearly embodies elements of the populist
political style which I have described, its attempts to connect (and
subordinate) style to social structure, class relations, and economic project
seem to me to be well-intentioned but unsuccessful. There are several
objections. The emphasis on ISI immediately removes several cases whi

might deserve inclusion: the Peruvian populism of Haya, Sanchez Cerr
and Odria; Ecuadorean populism from Velasco Ibarra to Assad Bucaram
and the putative populisms of Batista in the 193os and Somoza in t
1930S and after.69 It also leads to the inescapable conclusion that populis
was buried along with ISI0 - a conclusion which I will question lat
While it could well be argued that the crisis of the 1930S create
conditions particularly propitious for populism - above all, perhaps, in
the larger industrialising countries where the rise of the estado recto
afforded populist regimes ample sources of patronage - it would be rath
crudely reductionist to tie populism to a single economic period a
project. At most, that period and projectfavoured populist politics, whi
is not to say that the latter was conceived, nurtured, brought to matur
and finally killed off by the inexorable economic cycle of ISI.
A second problem concerns the class nature of populist coalitions an
regimes. The common argument is that these are 'multiclass'; they do n
conform to the (European?) model of single-class parties; hence they a
(in characteristic Latin American fashion?) fickle, shifting, ad ho
dependent on the arbitrary will of the caudillo. This argument (
prejudice) is a familiar variant of a broader tendency, whereby Lat
American phenomena - parties, regimes, unions, revolutions - suffer
comparison with a mythical European standard.71 Yet most Europe
parties - and one might add all successful European parties - have been
class coalitions. Even the British Labour party - the implicit or explic
model against which Peronism is sometimes judged - required a sizeab
68 Weffort, O populismo, p. 15. Compare Per6n's wheedling of the Buenos Aires Bolsa
1944: Paul H. Lewis, The Crisis of Argentine Capitalism (Chapel Hill, 1990), p. 146.
69 On Somocista populism: Gould, To Lead as Equals, ch's 4, 5. Farber, Revolution a
Reaction in Cuba, p. 20, denotes (the early) Batista a 'Bonapartist Conservativ
Hennessy, 'Latin America', p. 48, refers to Batista's 'urban populism'; but a case co
also be made for a rural dimension, e.g., in light of Batista's protection of Cuba's colo
class. In general, Batista's 193os/4os populism remains a neglected topic.
70 Hence, Drake's 'requiem', Adelman's 'funeral' (both n. 2) and Gibson's 'last flexin
of [Peronism's] populist muscle' in I989: Edward L. Gibson, 'The Populist Road
Market Reform: Policy and Electoral Coalitions in Mexico and Argentina', Wo
Politics, 49/3 (April 997), p. 354.
71 Cf. Alan Knight, 'Viewpoint, Revisionism and Revolution: Mexico Compared
England and France', Past and Present, 34 (Feb. I992), pp. I76-7.

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middle class vote to get elected, e.g., in 1945. German and Swedish social
democracy have similarly mobilised multiclass support. As early as I91 5,
Michels generalised, 'for motives predominantly electoral, the party of the
workers seeks support from the petty bourgeois elements of society....
The Labour Party becomes a party of the 'people'.72 Conversely,
Disraeli's 'angels in marble' - working class Tories - were a constant
reminder of class deviation in the other direction.73 Furthermore, the
'classness' of a political party does not depend solely on its class make-up
(consider, for example the enormous ideological range of parties-
conservative, Catholic, fascist, socialist, Communist - which have elicited
peasant support). 'Classness' also depends also on policies, programmes,
symbols and rhetoric; 'reform' and 'revolution' - those two imposters
who have bedeviled Latin American subaltern history - are often in the
eye of the beholder.
A good historical guide, as I have already suggested, might be the
reaction of 'bourgeois', propertied, conservative groups to the rise of a
'class' party - however vague, ad hoc, reformist and populist that party
might be. According to these criteria, 940s Peronism was - irrespective
of the mathematical percentage of working class votes which it attracted
-a party of the working class, vigorously opposed by 'bourgeois',
propertied, conservative groups. Gaitanismo, too, evoked strenuous
C/conservative opposition.74 In the case of Cardenismo there are no
reliable voting figures to serve as a guide; but ample 'impressionistic'
evidence indicates both the support Cardenas received from working class
and peasant groups and the odium which he and his government enjoyed
among the landed elite and the urban bourgeoisie.75 Recent labour history
also points to the genuine - i.e., autonomous - working class support
which accrued to Getulio Vargas; and Conniff, stressing the 'populist/
authoritarian' counterpoint which runs through Brazilian history since
the 1930s, similarly credits populism with the capacity to rally subaltern
support, while alarming elite interests.76 The contrast drawn between
72 Przeworski and Sprague, Paper Stones, pp. 41, 50-1, 6i-z.
73 R. McKenzie and A. Silver, Angels in Marble (London, 1968).
74 Braun, The Assassination of Gaitdn, pp. z12-4, 128-9; Green, 'Gaitanismo on the
Atlantic Coast', pp. 293, 298. 75 Knight, 'Cardenismo', pp. 80-4.
76 French, The ABC of Brazilian Workers; Michael L. Conniff, 'The National Elite', in
Michael L. Conniff and Frank D. McCann, Modern Brazil, Elites and Masses in Historical
Perspective (Lincoln, I989), p. 41. If 'populism' is, to a degree, a useful and discernible
phenomenon, it is logical to look for its elitist counterpart, 'anti-populism', that is, a
discourse/ideology/style which deplores the coarse, degenerate and feckless character
of 'the people': see, for example, Barbara Weinstein, For Social Peace in Brazil,
Industrialists and the Remaking of the Workiing Class in So Paulo, 20-64 (Chapel Hill,
1996), pp. 220-1, 227-8, 294-5; and Robert M. Levine, 'Elite Perceptions of the Povo',
in Conniff and McCann, Modern Brazil, Elites and Masses in Historical Perspective,
pp. 209-224.

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240 Alan Knight
European (socialist) parties of 'high classness', and Latin American

(populist) parties of 'low classness' is therefore both overdrawn and
unhelpful.
In addition, the specific class make-up of populist coalitions varies,
even if we confine analysis to the 'classic' period of the I93os and after.
Peronismo - and Varguismo - were strong in the major cities; neither
posed a serious threat to the landed elite.77 Hence some analysts consider
'urban' to be a diagnostic feature of Latin American - as opposed to, say,
Russian or United States - populism.78 Yet Cardenismo had a strong rural
base; it targeted - and in some cases eliminated - the landlord class; and it
built a durable clientele in the country's ejidos.79 The short-lived populism
of Somoza and Batista also put down rural roots; the MNR promoted -
but could not retain - a campesino clientele in rural Bolivia.80
In short, the theory/model of 'classic' populism has just enough right
to offer a degree of plausibility; but viewed more closely it can be seen to
encompass contrasting cases, some of which clearly depart from the
supposed criteria of the model. A looser 'model', based on the notion of
political style, fits rather better, precisely because it is looser. The 'classic'
period should, therefore, be seen not as the sole breeding ground of
populism, but simply a time when events -depression, economic
introversion, urbanisation, delegitimisation of 'oligarchic' regimes -
particularly favoured populist methods. But the latter could assume varied
forms: urban and rural; civilian, military and para-military; narrowly
individual or more broadly institutional; linked to - or distinct from - a
project of import substitution. Socioeconomic circumstances set certain
limiting preconditions, to be sure (I am not arguing for the absolute
autonomy of the political); but these circumstances varied across the
Continent and populism enjoyed at least a degree of relative political
autonomy vis-a-vis dominant classes. It was more than a political reflex of
economic structures; it depended, often enough, on distinctive national
77 Conniff, Urban Politics, pp. 19, 125-30.
78 Canovan, Populism, p. 138; Hennessy, 'Latin America', p. 28. Jose Alvarez Junco, El
emperador del paralelo. LerrouxOy la demagogia populista (Madrid, 1990), p. io n. 3, defines
(generic) populism as 'fundamentally urban' in terms of its mass constituency.
79 The rural clientelism of the PRI is such a commonplace in analyses of Mexican politics
(Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, Democracy in Mexico [New York, 1970] is the locus
classicus) that it is surprising to find Gibson, 'The Populist Road to Market Reform',
p. 341, stating that 'Peronism and the PRI have been largely analysed as labour-based
movements whose political and electoral clout resided in the most urbanised and
modern regions of the country' (though the statement is then somewhat confusingly
qualified: p. 34I, n. 3).
80 Mitchell, Legacy of Populism. Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political
Arena (Princeton, 1991), p. I65, make a useful distinction between 'labour populism'
(e.g., Peronism) and 'radical populism' (revolutionary Mexico), which has the
advantage of preserving the common 'populist' label.

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experiences (e.g., the Mexican Revolution, the Chaco War); perhaps,

given its recurrent association with crisis and upheaval, it tended to
flourish precisely in periods when dominant classes came under attack.81
If, over time, the reassertion of class domination - in Mexico in the 1940s,
Argentina in the 95 os, Bolivia and Brazil in the I96os - attested to the
opportunism and malleability of populism (failings much rehearsed in the
standard literature), we should not overlook the preceding phase of
populist mobilisation, advance and challenge - a phase which historians,
particularly labour historians, have recently researched to good effect.82
Economic interpretations of populism have recently taken a new twist.
Dornbusch and Edwards (et al.) have advanced the notion of economic
populism, charting an economic Calvary which passes through disernible
stages: an initial -'populist' - commitment to growth and redistri-
bution; an irresponsible dash for growth, powered by state spending; the
experience of inflation, even hyper-inflation; ensuing economic and,
perhaps, political crisis; and finally collapse, austerity, and imposed
structural adjustment.83 I have no quarrel with this economic narrative,
which is both depressingly familiar and, it would seem, endorsed by
economists of varied political persuasions.84 The problem again arises,
however, from the presumed fit between economic policies and political
forms. Despite what some have asserted, the 'classic' populisms of the
past did not necessarily engage in this spendthrift irresponsibility. The
Cardenas government incurred a deficit during the last period of the
sexenio - though this was the result of external pressures as well as
domestic spending. But the deficit was modest, inflation remained
relatively low (compared to the subsequent I94os), and no political or
economic crisis ensued.85 Vargas, too, managed governmental finances
with a degree of prudence; the real take-off of the 'cartorial state' came
81 This might be the moment to mention - if only to dismiss - the notion of Bonapartism,
which often rubs shoulders with populism (see, for example, Farber, Revolution and
Reaction in Cuba, pp. 16-27; Maximilien Rubel, et al., Criticas de la economia politica, Los
Bonapartismos [Mexico, 1985]). Scholars have laboured long and hard to convert some
of Marx and Engels' more confused and casual writings into the capstone of a general
theory; but the deficiency of the material, in my view, jeopardises the theory; and, in
this case, etymological logic is less help then hindrance.
82 James, Resistance and Integration; French, The ABC of Brazilian Workers; Wolfe, Working
Women, Working Men; Jonathan Brown, (ed.), Workers' Control in Latin America,
1930-I979 (Chapel Hill, I997).
83 Dornbusch and Edwards, The Macroeconomics of Populism.
84 Bresser Pereira, 'Populism and Economic Policy in Brazil'; Eliana Cardoso and Ann
Helwege, Latin America's Economy (Cambridge, I992), ch. 8.
85 Enrique Cardenas, La industriali.acidn mexicana durante la gran depresion (Mexico, 1987),
pp. 88-95; and the same author's 'La politica econ6mica en la epoca de Cardenas', in
Marcos Tonatiuh Aguila M. y Alberto Enriquez Perea, (coords.), Perspectivas sobre el
Cardenismo (Mexico, 1996), pp. 33-6I.

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242 Alan Knight
after his fall, under military as well as civilian auspices.86 Per6n

conformed more closely to the economic-populist model; but his fall from
power came at a time when the Argentine economy had recovered from
the structural adjustment of the early 195os, and it obeyed political rather
than economic causes.87 If inflation serves as a rough proxy of'economic
populism', Peron's sins were venial, especially compared to what would
come later.88 In passing, we might also note that Odria - the supposed
protagonist of Peruvian 'military populism' - was, in terms of economic
policy, a neo-liberal avant la lettre.89 And, during the I95os and '6os, it was
the 'populistic' PRI which displayed the greatest commitment to a stable
currency and cautious government finance in Latin America: a
recognition, perhaps, that durable 'institutional' populism precisely
depends on averting major crashes and hyper-inflation.
Conversely, we should note that the aggravated 'stop-go' policies
characteristic of 'economic populism' are not confined to populist
governments, as I have roughly defined them. Alfonsin and Sarney -
neither particularly populist in political style - presided over hyper-
inflation. While successful populism may involve redistribution, public
works, patronage, and thus budgetary irresponsibility, governments of all
stripes and styles are tempted to take this course, especially as election
time approaches. (Britain still lives with the legacy of the 'Lawson boom',
engineered by an administration supposedly dedicated to monetarist
rigour). It may, indeed, be a reflection of the fact that - in a sense - 'we
86 Philippe C. Schmitter, Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil (Stanford, 197),
p. 33, graphically depicts 'cartorialism' ('employment in the federal government'),
showing an upward move with the Estado N6vo, but then a levelling-off through the
1940S and early 95 os; the real take-off starts c. 1955, accelerating dramatically through
the I96os. On Vargas' fiscal prudence see also Dulles, Vargas, pp. 88, 246, 297, 306-7,
3Io: a story which starts with Vargas 'entering office with the conservative financial
ideas of one who had studied budgets and been Washington Luis's Finance Minister'
and ends with the deflationary measures of 9 5 2 which, Vargas boasted, 'freed [Brazil]
from the chronic evil of continuous deficits'.
87 Lewis, Crisis of Argentine Capitalism, ch's 9, o; Gary W. Wynia, Argentina in the Postwar
Era (Albuquerque, 1978), pp. 68-73.
88 Average annual inflation for the (boom) years 1945-5 0 was 20 %. Thereafter, pressured
by the IMF, Peronist policy was deflationary: I950-2 saw wage cuts, very modest
increases in public expenditure, and a switch from non-economic to economic public
investment (Per6n now 'spent the public revenues more intelligently', a critic
concedes). Indeed, the 'conventional wisdom' that Per6n 'wrecked the economy by
forcing or allowing a marked increase in wages, pensions, and welfare services at the
expense of capital accumulation and investment' is, the same critic points out, largely
mistaken: H. S. Ferns, The Argentine Republic (Newton Abbot, i973), pp. 150, i6o.
89 Collier and Collier, Shaping the Political Arena, pp. 47I-3; Stein, Populism in Peru,
pp. 212-5; Roberts, 'Neoliberalism and the transformation of populism', p. 107;
Rosemary Thorp and Geoffrey Bertram, Peru 89o-Ig77. Growth and Policy in an Open
Economy (London, 1978), pp. 201, 257.

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are all populists now'90 that governments around the world indulge in
such stop-go policies. Economic populism, in Dornbusch and Edwards'
analysis, is an extreme form of stop-go; but it does not appear to be a
monopoly of populist governments (politically defined), thus it does not
deserve to lay particular claim - rather late in the day, and on the basis of
an economically reductionist premise - to the 'populist' label. It seems
even more misleading - and again reductionist - to equate populism with
generic packages which combine Keynesian policies of macro-economic
fine-tuning with measures to reform and regulate labour relations; for this
would give us a swathe of post-war European populisms, stretching from
Britain to Austria, France to Sweden.91
The importance of theories and concepts may often reside less in their
inherent analytical power than in their appeal to conjunctural fashion. The
old dictum -'nothing has the force of an idea whose time has come' -
may have some truth in it; but both force and timing may have little to
do with intellectual cogency. So, too, with Dornbusch and Edwards'
notion of'economic populism' which, in my view, carries some heavy
normative baggage, bolstering the idea that populism is a Bad Thing. For
the notion of 'economic populism' implies a defence of Gladstonian
financial rectitude; it tends to tar redistributionist policies with the ugly
brush of 'populism'; and it implies that populism is probably dead -
killed off not by the inexorable decline of ISI, but by the painful learning
process of recent 'populist' administrations. Populism is dead because
governments and electorate have seen the folly of their populist ways.
But is this not another premature demise? In conclusion, I will question
the 'economic populism' thesis and - recalling that 'classically' populist
governments were not necessarily financial profligates - suggest scenarios
which readmit populism to the contemporary political agenda, even under
a neo-liberal dispensation.92 In doing so, I retain the distinction between
90 Cammack, 'What Populism Was', p. 2; Canovan, Populism, pp. I48, 150, z6off.
91 Gibson, 'The Populist Road to Market Reform', p. 358, refers to 'decades-long
populist commitments to maintain employment and wage levels and to use state power
to bolster labour's bargaining position in the labour market and political arena': a
notion of 'populism' which, from a British perspective, would make Edward Heath
much more of a populist than Margaret Thatcher (compare my pairing above). It could
be objected, of course, that what goes for Europe does not go for Latin America:
'commitments to maintain employment and wage levels' are sound Keynesian policies
in Europe (at least, they were for a generation), but irresponsible economic 'populism'
in Latin America. This seems a dangerously partial argument; similarly partial
arguments have been made concerning representative democracy.
92 Kurt Weyland, 'Neo-populism and Neo-liberalism in Latin America: Unexpected
Affinities', paper presented at the panel on 'Neopopulism and Neoliberalism in Latin
America', nineteenth annual meeting of the American Political Science Association,
New York, September I994, was (to my knowledge) one of the first to question the
supposed 'basic divergence between populism and economic liberalism' and to note

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244 Alan Knight
political and (supposed) economic populism; that is to say, I concede

populist politics substantial 'relative autonomy' vis-a-vis economics.93 I
therefore dissent from Cammack's dichotomisation of (neo-)populism and
neo-liberalism, since I do not necessarily see the former as a 'challenge' to
the latter;94 however, I suspect that this difference arises less from any
substantial empirical disagreement than from contrasting definitions of
what 'neo-populism' entails - i.e., my definition, like my definition of
populism in general, is broad and loose.
First, neo-liberals who polemicise against populism protest too much.
Take the case of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and his switchback sexenio. The
story has now been much rehearsed. Salinas accelerated and deepened De
la Madrid's neoliberal economic project. The state sector was shrunk;
subsidies were slashed; Mexico cut tariffs and entered NAFTA; the ejido
- for years the victim of malign neglect -was offered the option of
euthanasia. 'Populism' became a dirty word, a criticism - implicit or
explicit - of Cardenismo and neo-Cardenismo.95 Yet Salinas - like other
neoliberal presidents - had his populist side. Like Menem, he broke with
the traditions of a nationalist, 'populist' party; but, like Menem (and
Fujimori), he elevated the power of the executive, rode roughshod over
political and economic vested interests, and adopted an arbitrary,
personalist and populist style of government.96 Fujimori staged his own
' unexpected affinities'; the latter have been further explored by Roberts, 'Neoliberalism
and the transformation of populism'; Kay, '"Fuji-populism"'; Catherine M.
Conaghan, James M. Malloy and Luis A. Abugattas, 'Business and the "Boys": The
Politics of Neoliberalism in the Central Andes', Latin American Research Review (25/2),
I990, pp. 3-30.
93 This argument is reinforced by considerations of, say, contemporary Russian, Eastern
European, and United States populism, since in each case the economic correlates of
populist - including nationalist, xenophobic and 'fundamentalist' - attitudes are
hugely divergent. Populism may sometimes have an economic rationale - e.g., the free
silver movement of the I89os in the US - but, equally, it may not; an indeterminacy
which is the logical consequence of a broad 'politico-stylistic' definition.
94 Cammack, 'What Was Populism', p. 6.
95 Rolando Cordera, 'Solidaridad y su problematica', in Solidaridad a debate (Mexico,
1991), p. 142.
96 Guillermo O'Donnell, 'Hacia la democracia delegativa? Una entrevista a Guillermo
O'Donnell por Jorge Heine', LASA Forum, 23/2 (summer 1992), pp. 7-9, and
O'Donnell, 'Delegative Democracy?', Kellogg Institute Working Paper no. 172
(1992). Compare Conniff, 'The National Elite', p. 41, on the populist tendency to
'vault ahead in politics without following the usual paths ... ignoring the rules of the
game'; or Seymour Martin Lipset, Political lan (London, I963), on the 'dangers to
"due process" inherent in populist ideology' (dangers which, of course, will be
differently perceived by those for whom 'due process' remains a legal fiction; as a
Peronist worker responded to a (middle-class) questioner in I945: 'freedom of speech
is to do with you people. We have never had it': James, Resistance and Integration, p. 17).

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presidential coup; Salinas gaoled La Quina, decided state gubernatorial

elections by presidential fiat, and ran PRONASOL out of Los Pinos. The
PRI, shaken by the schism of 1987 and the election of 1988, made an
electoral comeback, but largely on Carlos Salinas' coat-tails. Presiden-
tialism flourished as never before; a veritable cult of Salinas, justified by
the faith of gobiernista intellectuals and the good works of PRONASOL,
sprang up in Mexico and, before long, began to win converts abroad.
Foreign converts were usually drawn by Salinas' economic mastery (and
deft cultivation of foreign opinion);97 the turnaround in domestic
opinion, however, owed more to PRONASOL - and the administration's
(conjunctural) conquest of inflation.98
All this involved a hefty dose of populism-though none in the
administration dare speak its name. Populism was evident in both the
systematic distribution of patronage and public works and in the personal
style of Salinas: institutional and individual populism therefore dovetailed.
Despite its claims to novelty, PRONASOL followed old Mexican
traditions, suitably updated and blended with the new neoliberal project.99
Thus, in a nice touch, the proceeds from the sale of Mexicana de Aviaci6n
were earmarked for the Solidarity showpiece of Chalco. (Compare
Fujimori's allocation of Peru's telecommunications windfall to the
government's 'war on poverty').100 Meantime, Salinas toured the country
like some latter-day Cardenas, distributing government largesse, glad-
handing the people, marching down dusty streets in casual shirtsleeves or
leather jacket, communing with an admiring people. Of course, much of
this was stage-managed (the administration's incestuous relationship with
Televisa became notorious); but there was also a kernel of populist reality.
Salinas was popular in many quarters. Solidarity was a political success (as
'even its critics conceded). As a result, it was said, having lost his own
On the 'democratic deficit' of Menem's Argentina - which, the author points out, is
common to many Latin American democracies - see Atilio A. Bor6n, 'El experimento
neoliberal de Carlos Saul Menem', in Bor6n et al., Peronismoy menemismo. Avatares del
populismo en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1995), p. I7ff.
97 Jesds Velasco, 'Selling Ideas, Buying Influence: Mexico and American Think Tanks in
the Promotion of NAFTA', in Rodolfo 0. de la Garza and Jests Velasco, Bridging the
Border. Transforming Mexico-U.S. Relations (Lanham, i997), pp. 125-48 (especially
pp. 34-9) is a revealing analysis of orchestrated research-cum-lobbying.
98 Juan Molinar Horcasitas and Jeffrey A. Welcon, 'Electoral Determinants and
Consequences of National Solidarity', in Wayne A. Cornelius, Ann L. Craig and
Jonathan Fox, (eds.), Transforming State-Society Relations in Mexico (San Diego, Center
for US-Mexican Studies, 1994), pp. 123-42.
99 Alan Knight, 'Solidarity: Historical Continuities and Contemporary Implications', in
Cornelius, Craig and Fox, (eds.), Transforming State-Society Relations, pp. 29-46.
100 Roberts, 'Neoliberalism and the transformation of populism', p. 104.

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246 Alan Knight
election in 1988, Salinas managed to win Zedillo's in I994.101 Paradoxi-

cally, the administration held up as the model of neo-liberal rectitude, run
by apolitical technocrats, engineered a successful political recovery, but
got its macroeconomics disastrously wrong.102
Salinas showed, therefore, that a controlled economic populism was
compatible with neoliberal economics. Solidarity, as Dresser put it,
offered 'neopopulist solutions to neoliberal problems'.103 Furthermore,
Salinas' final debacle was not the result of this bold balancing act. These
were not populist chickens coming home to roost in December I994.
Mexico's economic crisis, which coincided with Zedillo's inauguration
but which obeyed more distant causes, derived from macroeconomic
miscalculations: specifically, the maintenance of an overvalued peso and
a burgeoning balance of trade deficit, which in turn was covered by an
excessive inflow of skittish foreign money. It was not PRONASOL,
economic populism, or government deficit spending which caused the
crisis; however, the crisis - and the chaotic change of administration -
seems to have put an end to PRONASOL.04 Not surprisingly, Salinista
populism died along with it, and Zedillo appears personally and politically
incapable of reviving the populist offensive. Mexico now experiences the
ravages of continued neo-liberalism and renewed austerity without the
healing balm of presidential populism. Indeed, it is the opposition which,
capitalising on the PRI's discomfiture, now trails its populism, promising
honest, down-to-earth government, conducted by dynamic leaders who
claim a close rapport with the people: Alberto Cardenas, the mayor of
Guadalara; Vicente Fox, the governor of Guanajuato, and a likely
presidential candidate in 2,000; and, most recently, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas,
heir of an old populist tradition, whose gestion as mayor of Mexico City
101 The 1988 election was highly contentious; probably Salinas won; but his formal
' victory' did not confer an unqualified legitimacy. In 1994, in contrast, levels of fraud
were certainly lower; hence Zedillo's victory was less disputed, more legitimate. It
does not appear to have helped him much.
102 Of course, politics and economics cannot be neatly separated. The Chiapas revolt -
a political problem which had deep economic roots - heightened the regime's
vulnerability to financial crisis. So did the political assassinations of 1994. However,
these political vicissitudes appeared to have been weathered by the autumn of I994,
hence the (PRIista) euphoria which surrounded Zedillo's inauguration in December.
The subsequent crash, it would seem, was an economic rather than political verdict.
103 Denise Dresser, Neopopulist Solutions to Neoliberal Problems: Mexico's National Solidarity
Program (San Diego, 1991).
104 At least in its centalised, presidential-populist form. Now decentralised and reduced
in scope, the programme has acquired a range of institutional personae, depending on
local (state) political alignments: see the perceptive analysis of Robert R. Kaufman
and Guillermo Trejo, 'Regionalism, Regime Transformation and PRONASOL: The
Politics of the National Solidarity Programme in Four Mexican States', Journal of Latin
American Studies, 29/3 (Oct. I997), pp. 717-46.

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will show whether that tradition can also reconfigure itself within the
constraints of the neoliberal model.'05
As I mentioned at the outset, this article embodies arguments previously
deployed in a 1992 paper.106 Since both focus chiefly, though not solely,
on Mexico, and since Mexico's political rollercoaster has upset plenty of
political predictions (and reputations?) in the last two years, it is of
interest to compare then and now, thus to test, with benefit of hindsight,
the generalisations advanced in I992. Then I pointed to Salinas' successful
combination of neoliberalism and neo-populism: an example which, I
think, retains its significance despite Salinas' fall from grace. I did not get
too carried away: 'it is too early to say whether [Salinas'] popularity will
endure; it will no doubt depend on major imponderables - economic
performance, NAFTA, the presidential succession [sc. of I994]'.107 But I
concluded that a combination of neoliberalism and neo-populism was
possible and that, while it might result in a 'marriage fraught with
tension' - not least, tension between neoliberal fiscal restraint and
'populist' profligacy, this was a recurrent problem in modern polities
(witness Chirac) and it did not doom the experiment to inevitable failure.
Nor, as I have suggested, did Salinas' own debacle prove the inevitability
of failure; rather, it proved that Salinas, Aspe, and Serra Puche, heedless
of hubris, got their macroeconomic sums wrong. Salinas emerged a better
politico than tecnico.
Salinas' downfall does not therefore discredit neo-populism; it may
even nudge it forward. The PAN is now flirting with a more populist
style, seeking to capitalise on the PRI's perceived betrayal of'the people'.
(And we should recall that Christian-Democratic populism has chalked
up victories elsewhere in Latin America).'08 Elsewhere, too, in these
'times of unsettlement and dealignment', we see the phenomenon of
'delegative democracy' - of elected heads of the executive wielding
ample, arbitrary, even personalist power, cultivating a populist style, and
challenging supposedly anti-popular vested interests.109 In Peru, Fujimori
showed how rapidly traditional parties could be routed by a ('bait-and-
105 The potential of PANista populism may be inhibited by two factors: first, the lack of
material resources enjoyed by PANista state or municipal governments, especially in
times of austerity (a constraint now shared by regente Cardenas in Mexico City); and,
secondly, the reactionary, moralistic tone of some (conservative Catholic) PANistas
who, though they may appeal to a particular constituency, are unlikely to broaden the
party's regionally limited base. Banning mini-skirts for public employees does not
strike me as good populist politics.
106 Knight, 'El abrigo de Arturo Alessandri'.
107 Knight, 'El abrigo de Arturo Alessandri', p. 71.
108 Jean Grugel, 'Populism and the Political System in Chile - Ibanismo (I952-1958)',
Bulletin of Latin American Research, II/2 (May I992), p. 183.
109 O'Donnell, 'Hacia la democracia delegativa?' and 'Delegative Democracy?'

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248 Alan Knight
switch') populist practising neoliberal economics; like Salinas, he

organised a raft of new social policies ostensibly designed to target the
needy and avoid profligate ('populist') hand-outs (FONCODES,
PRONAA, FONAVI); like Salinas, too, he was to be found in remote
Andean pueblos, sporting poncho and woolly cap, winning the plaudits of
the campesinos ('Chino, Chino, el pueblo esta contigo'), all under the
watchful eye of network television.110 In Argentina, Menem has played
the populist while promoting a risky - but thus far successful-
macroeconomic strategy.1l' Meanwhile, more traditional - i.e., more
genuinely radical - populisms survive:112 Lula and the PT have run close
in two successive presidential elections in Brazil; Mexico's PRD, counted
out after the 1994 election, has bounced back. Of course, there are
exceptions: Chile, where economic buoyancy and strong parties negate
the appeal of populism; and Colombia, where the old Liberal/
Conservative dyarchy has traditionally resisted populist advance.113 But
the notion that populism - political or economic, traditional or neo-liberal
- is dead and buried seems very questionable.
This conclusion is, of course, dictated partly by my broad - 'politico-
stylistic' - definition of the phenomenon. By admitting more members to
the club, I see more candidates for present and future promotion,
compared to those whose criteria for entry are stricter. And, of course,
looser criteria, even if they are historically and etymologically more
appropriate, are less 'informative': I do not claim that my (large)
population of populists are all of a kind; indeed, they are often more
dissimilar than similar. But even loose labels can sometimes prove useful.
As a rough guide - a boton de muestra - perhaps even a 'radial' category
- 'populism' retains some analytical utility, not only for the past, but also
for the present and, perhaps, the future.
10 Drake, 'Comment', p. 36, coined the 'bait-and-switch' term; Roberts, 'Neoliberalism
and the transformation of populism', pp. Io4-5; Kay, '"Fuji-populism"', pp. 78-80.
1 Gibson, 'Populist Road to Market Reform', pp. 357-9, 363-6. The success of the
opposition in the November 1997 elections casts some doubt on the longer term
electoral viability of the Menemista 'project'; but the opposition itself involves some
odd bedfellows and contradictory policies.
112 These 'traditional populisms' are what, I think, Cammack refers to as 'neo-
populism' - whence our semantic disagreement.
113 And where economic populism has also been historically weak: Miguel Urrutia, 'On
the Absence of Economic Populism in Colombia', in Dornbusch and Edwards, The
Macroeconomics of Populism, pp. 369-387.

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Populism and Neo-Populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico

Author(s): Alan Knight

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Populism and Neo-populism in Latin

Abstract. Populism is a concept which, despite repeated c

Like Charles II, populism seems to be an 'unconscionably

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suspects would include: (a) an appeal to 'the people'; popular

If nominalism prevails and instrumentality - 'use-value' -is the cri-

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in his suicidal valedictory; 'yo no soy un hombre, soy un pueblo', as

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populism is associated with mobilisation, it does not follow that that

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mediated'; but then we face another challenge of tricky, if not impossible,

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This working definition, relating to political style, is, of course, vague

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often the product of crisis, embodying strong, affective appeals to

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leader, Assad Bucaram, 'came to rely increasingly on the role of

47 Menendez-Carri6n, 'Estructura y dinamica de la articulaci6n electoral en las barriadas

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Juan Alvarez/52Lucas Alaman; Alvaro Obreg6n/Pascual Ortiz Rubi

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populist gestures. Occupying a hungry Mexico City in I914-15, he

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Vargas, Gaitan, Per6n, Haya, Chibas, Ibfniez, Velasco Ibarra. What is

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objections. The emphasis on ISI immediately removes several cases whi

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European (socialist) parties of 'high classness', and Latin American

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experiences (e.g., the Mexican Revolution, the Chaco War); perhaps,

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after his fall, under military as well as civilian auspices.86 Per6n

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political and (supposed) economic populism; that is to say, I concede

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presidential coup; Salinas gaoled La Quina, decided state gubernatorial

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election in 1988, Salinas managed to win Zedillo's in I994.101 Paradoxi-

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switch') populist practising neoliberal economics; like Salinas, he

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