"For anyone wishing a succinct and theoretically sophisticated concept-building analysis of populist rhetoric and leadership style...this book should be one your shelf."---Latin American Research Review --

"Analyzes populist movements in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela from a gender perspective. Considers the role of masculinity and femininity in populist leadership, the impact of populism on democracy and feminism, and women's critical roles as followers of these leaders"--Provided by publisher.

Latin American Development from Populism to Neopopulism: A Multidisciplinary Perspective explores the socioeconomic development of Latin America through the periods of populism, military dictatorships, neoliberalism and neopopulism by utilizing a multidisciplinary approach. By analyzing the trends and main socioeconomic structures in each period, von der Heydt-Coca explains the interactions of economic, social, and political spheres. Paradigmatic case studies complement the picture of each period and draw on extensive literature covering economics, history, sociology, and anthropology. Special emphasis is placed on how the world economy constrains the socioeconomic development in the region by examining the influence of international financial organizations and hegemonic countries. Von der Heydt-Coca answers the complex question of why Latin American countries, blessed with a bounty of natural resources and capable of industrialization, could not escape their role as producers and exporters of primary goods.

Explaining Support for Populism in Contemporary Latin America investigates the stronghold that populism exerts on citizens in the developing world. More specifically, relying on regional surveys, this book explores why many citizens consistently supported eight populist presidents who were elected in contemporary Latin America. It examines the determinants of support for the populist presidents who governed Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua between 1999 and 2019, and the variables that explain support for the most recent populist presidents in Mexico, Brazil and El Salvador between 2018 and 2023. Unique to this approach is a strong emphasis on the demand-side of populism and the use of country-specific survey data across the years. This book explores the determinants of support for populist presidents in four dimensions: demographic variables, ideological and policy-preference variables, performance variables, and variables related to representative democracy. Understanding what drives people to support populist leaders is critical for revitalizing representative democracy in Latin America. Furthermore, insights about the factors that lead citizens to support populism in Latin America can also inform the analysis of support for populism in other parts of the world.

The New Ethnic Studies in Latin America aims at going beyond and against much of Jewish Latin American historiography, situating Jewish-Latin Americans in the larger multi-ethnic context of their countries. Senior and junior scholars from various countries joined together to challenge commonly held assumptions, accepted ideas, and stable categories about ethnicity in Latin America in general and Jewish experiences on this continent in particular. This volume brings to the discussions on Jewish life in Latin America less heard voices of women, non-affiliated Jews, and intellectuals. Community institutions are not at center stage, conflicts and tensions are brought to the fore, and a multitude of voices pushes aside images of homogeneity. Authors in this tome look at Jews’ multiple homelands: their country of birth, their country of residence, and their imagined homeland of Zion. "This volume brings together an important series of chapters that pushes ethnic studies to greater complexity; therefore, this work is critical in laying the foundation for what Jeffrey Lesser has called the new architecture of ethnic studies in Latin America." - Joel Horowitz, St. Bonaventure University, in: E.I.A.L. 28.2 (2017) "Overall, this collection serves as a stimulating invitation to scholars of Latin American ethnic studies. It offers multiple models of scholarship that go beyond and against traditional narratives of Jewish Latin America." -Lily Pearl Balloffet, University of California Santa Cruz, in: J.Lat Amer. Stud. 50 (2018) "These essays manage to bring to the fore stories of Jews whose journeys have been sidelined until now. Their stories demonstrate that identities are always a work in progress, a continuous dance between ancestry, history, and culture." - Ariana Huberman, Haverford College, in: American Jewish History 103.2 (2019)

From the protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square to the Tea Party in the United States to the campaign to elect indigenous leader Evo Morales in Bolivia, modern populist movements command international attention and compel political and social change. When citizens demand "power to the people," they evoke corrupt politicians, imperialists, or oligarchies that have appropriated power from its legitimate owners. These stereotypical narratives belie the vague and often contradictory definitions of the concept of "the people" and the many motives of those who use populism as a political tool. In The Promise and Perils of Populism, Carlos de la Torre assembles a group of international scholars to explore the ambiguous meanings and profound implications of grassroots movements across the globe. These trenchant essays explore how fragile political institutions allow populists to achieve power, while strong institutions confine them to the margins of political systems. Their comparative case studies illuminate how Latin American, African, and Thai populists have sought to empower marginalized groups of people, while similar groups in Australia, Europe, and the United States often exclude people whom they consider to possess different cultural values. While analyzing insurrections in Latin America, advocacy groups in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and populist parties in Asia and Africa, the contributors also pose questions and agendas for further research. This volume on contemporary populism from a comparative perspective could not be more timely, and scholars from a variety of disciplines will find it an invaluable contribution to the literature.

The recent resurgence of populist movements and parties has led to a revival of scholarly interest in populism. This volume brings together well-established and new scholars to reassess the subject and combine historical and theoretical perspectives to shed new light on the history of the subject, as well as enriching contemporary discussions. In three parts, the contributors explore the history of populism in different regions, theories of populism and recent populist movements. Taken together, the contributions included in this book represent the most comprehensive and wide-ranging study of the topic to date. Questions addressed include: - What are the 'essential' characteristics of populism? - Is it important to distinguish between left- and right-wing populism? - How can the transformation of populist movements be explained? This is the most thorough and up to date comparative historical study of populism available. As such it will be of great value to anyone researching or studying the topic.

By emphasizing Latin American reformers’ decades-long struggle to defeat authoritarianism, this transnational history challenges the timeworn Cold War paradigm and recasts the region’s political evolution Scholars persist in framing the Cold War as a battle between left and right, one in which the Global South is cast as either witting or unwitting proxies of Washington and Moscow. What if the era is told from the perspective of the many who preferred reform to revolution? Scholars have routinely neglected, dismissed, or caricatured moderate politicians. In this book, Allen Wells argues that until the Cuban Revolution, the struggle was not between capitalism and communism—that was Washington’s abiding preoccupation—but between democracy and dictatorship. Beginning in the 1920s, the fight against authoritarianism was contested on multiple fronts—political, ideological, and cultural—taking on the dimensions of a political crusade. Convinced that despots represented an existential threat, reformers declared that no civilian government was safe until the cancer of dictatorship was excised from the hemisphere. Dictators retaliated, often with deadly results, exporting strategies that had been honed at home to guarantee their political survival. Grafted onto this war without borders was a belated Cold War, with all its political convulsions, the aftershocks of which are still felt today.

This volume illustrates the diversity of populism globally. When seeking power, populists politicize issues, and point to problems that need to be addressed such as inequalities, the loss of national sovereignty to globalization, or the rule of unresponsive political elites. Yet their solutions tend to be problematic, simplistic, and in most instances, instead of leading to better forms of democracy, their outcomes are authoritarian. Populists use a playbook of concentrating power in the hands of the president, using the legal system instrumentally to punish critics, and attacking the media and civil society. Despite promising to empower the people, populists lead to processes of democratic erosion and even transform malfunctioning democracies into hybrid regimes. The Routledge Handbook of Global Populism provides instructors, students, and researchers with a thorough and systematic overview of the history and development of populism and analyzes the main debates. It is divided into sections on the theories of populism, on political and social theory and populism, on how populists politicize inequalities and differences, on the media and populism, on its ambiguous relationships with democratization and authoritarianism, and on the distinct regional manifestations of populism. Leading international academics from history, political science, media studies, and sociology map innovative ideas and areas of theoretical and empirical research to understand the phenomenon of global populism.

The first cross-regional study to show that populism can have both positive and negative effects on democracy.