Populizmus Latin-Amerikában gazdasági válságok, új fejlesztési koalíciók
I. Introductory Remarks
Populism as an analytical concept has been applied to such a wide variety of political phenomena that its usefulness has often been questioned. In one of the more remarkable attempts to deal with this elusive concept to date, it appears that more than one contributor was haunted by the suspicion that he was dealing with a catch-all term which lumped together aspects belonging in very different contexts Considering that such diverse phenomena as radicalized farmers fighting for equity prices (in the USA), urban middle-class parties organizing and mobilizing trade unions and peasant leagues (as in some Latin American countries), romantic urban intellectuals seeking social redemption in and with the peasantry (Russia), peasant parties (as in Eastern Europe), right wing movements with the backing of small shop owners (Poujadism in France), and reformist military dictatorships as in Egypt and Peru have been called „populist”, one would like to know what all these things have in common to justify a single term. It almost looks as if the term „populism” is used as a residual classification for everything which cannot be labelled either liberal-democratic or socialist and is not openly fascist.
Moreover, not only do we find a bewildering variety of „populist” movements and ideologies, but we also find them at rather different moments in history: Populism apparently is not even a product of a distinguishable historical period. It has been declared dead so often that one suspects that it is a particularly resistant species which pops up at the most unexpected moments. However, if there is anything predictable about populism, then it may be its association with processes of rapid transition.
In this paper, I cannot even attempt to answer the questions raised above. I shall have to restrict myself to the populism (or versions thereof) in the region I am somewhat familiar with, that is in Latin America, and even with this limited geographical scope, my conclusions will be rather tentative. Latin America comprises newly industrializing countries as well as countries which have just barely crossed the line from least developed to less developed. We find populist movements and governments in both types of countries; in some countries like Mexico and Bolivia, the question of the political integration of sizeable groups of the indigenous population is an important aspect of populist politics, in a country like Argentina, this does not even play a role; in Bolivia and Mexico, the question of land reform was a central issue, in Argentina, the populist movement was almost exclusively urban. Therefore, even in one historically and culturally well-defined region generalizations about the populism in Latin America are a risky business.
Ford practical purposes, I shall follow the definition of Latin American populism offered by Torcuato S. di Tella which describes populism as „a political movement which enjoys the support of the mass of the urban working class and/or the peasantry but which does not result from the autonomous organizational power of either of these sectors. It is also supported by non-working-class sectors upholding an anti-status quo ideology” (Di Tella).
Unlike di Tella, I am not so much interested in the classification of different types of populism. I shall analyze the populist movements and governments in the context of various economic crises, turning first to the economic crisis which began 1930. The economic cries simultaneously were unresolved cries of political hegemony in the respective societies (Part II). These combined economic and political crises gave rise to new power contenders with a different approach to development who formed new development coalitions, and who redefined the role of the state in the process of development (Part III). In spite of considerable variations in style and content, the new movements and governments displayed a certain similarity with respect to their ideologies and techniques of political mobilization, integration an control (Part IV). The relative success and the crisis of the populist government and movements depended very much on whether or not the distributive policies could be sustained economically and politically (Part V). In spite of the fact that populist movements and governments are generally considered as short-lived phenomena, they in fact did have lasting effects on Latin American societies and their development patterns. They certainly produced more than just inflated rhetoric. Therefore, it will be worthwhile to evaluate their achievements (and failures) in the process of the economic, social and political modernization of their countries (Part VI). In a final section, it will be asked if there are any parallels between the Latin American experiences with populism and its demise on the one hand and the post-socialist transitions in Central and Eastern Europe on the other (Part VII). It goes without saying that in a short paper such a range of topics can be dealt with only in a very sketchy fashion.