Populism is characterized by its condemnation of established institutions and its appeals to the common people. Populists believe that society is fundamentally divided into two contradicting groups: the pure people and the corrupt elites. They hold the view that politics ought to be the expression of common people's wishes. Therefore, populism is comprised of three core concepts: the people, the elites and the common wish.

The absence of core values renders the populism a chameleonic quality that is catering to different political stances, be it left-wing or right-wing, progressive or conservative, democratic or autocratic. In the 21st century, European populism often attaches itself to nationalism, while Latin American populism tends to associate itself with socialism.

In fact, a considerable part of the world's population has some kind of populist mentality. Many believe that the power-controlling elites are dishonest, self-serving, engaged in closed-door deals and indifferent to the interests and opinions of the majority. So, it is the view of many that the people, not politicians, shall make the most important decisions and sovereignty shall be given to the people. This dormant mentality could be activated in certain conditions.

What kind of factors can contribute to the rise of latent populist sentiments? In 21st century Lain America, several factors are more prominent than others.

First, traditional political forces or parties tend to draw close to the middle, choose to maintain the status quo and try to avoid electorates' major social concerns, in Latin America's case, wealth inequality and poverty issues.

It leaves room for the rise of new-type political parties and politicians who come up with radical solutions to the issues intentionally neglected by traditional parties. For example, due to serious social inequality, populists won huge support in elections with their proposition of improving income distribution.

Once they are in power, they tend to implement expansionary fiscal policy to hold onto power by enlarging distribution. Even though this kind of policy may lead to severe fiscal deficits, inflation and economic difficulty, they will not hold back.

Second, people's growing discontent with the social hierarchy and economic situation contributes to the surge of populists. That's why populism often occurs with economic difficulties.

In Latin America, debt crisis since the 1980s has triggered a readjustment of neoliberalism. One consequence of the reform is an expanded informal economy, laid-off state employees and weakened workers' unions. The economic structural transformation poses new challenges to established political parties, and impairs the link between traditional parties and voters.

Against this backdrop, populist ideology becomes an output of complaints and hatred and serves a tool of mobilizing the public to run against the existing system. In the case of Venezuela, the two oil-dependent parties alternated in power until early 1990s when then president Carlos Andres Perez took economic austerity measures due to declined oil prices. Public discontent with the austerity gave rise to frequent social violence and even military coup led by Hugo Chavez. And Chavez’s later ascent to power made him a typical left-wing populist representative in 21st century Latin America.

Third, there is a “demonstration effect”, in that populism is also considered a contagious phenomenon. Seen from popular psychology, one country can acquire certain sentiments or guides to action from the experience of other countries, their neighbors in particular. Chinese academic circles believe there have been two waves of populism in Latin America since the 1990s: the neopopulism of that decade and the radical leftist populism in the 21st century. We call them “waves” because the phenomenon is not confined to one single country, but takes place simultaneously in many locations. This phenomenon can explain the interactional demonstration effect.

Rapid development of mass media has boosted this demonstration effect. Western scholars have proposed the concept of cognitive mobilization, which means that mass media has made it possible for the public to get access to more information, think more independently and gain more self-awareness. In this way, they will no longer accept the fate of being controlled by the elites, and become more critical of the faults committed by the ruling party.

Last, the rise of populism is affected by people's anti-globalization sentiments. Populists always tend to construct the concept of people from the perspective of nation state, in other words, to build a political community of people with shared history and confined boundaries. People are often described as a whole, meaning designated people living in a designated region. In this sense, internationalism and cosmopolitanism are sworn enemies to populism.

Populists are timid towards the people who are excluded from their designated "we" group. That's why populism is often hand in hand with ethnic nationalism and isolationism in diplomacy.

When making the contradiction of "we" and "they", populists often put global institutions and foreign forces into the "they" basket. To some degree, blaming foreign forces can be seen as a simplification of realistic issues. In fact, there are multiple reasons behind the economic recession and social instability, but populists tend to blame all the fault on foreign forces and fall back on chauvinistic sentiments.

One feature of 21st century Latin American populism is its attack on neoliberalism, and in particular the IMF, the World Bank and the American government. They are depicted as evil external forces, who impose their economic policies on Latin Americans against their will, and expand capitalism across the globe at the expense of poor people. Therefore, Latin American populism rises in synchronization with the fall of the Washington Consensus, and tries to depict a new kind of post-neoliberalism political parties and politicians.

Dong Jingsheng is professor of Department of History, Peking University. This article was jointly published by China Watch Institute and Institute of Area Studies of Peking University. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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