The Other Democracy. On the Political Rationality of Latin American Populism

The relationship between populism and democracy is a highly topical issue in political science. However, very few works have taken up the contributions of Latin American sociology. This is in spite of their founding character: functionalist and marxist sociologists have taken up this issue since the 1950s, insisting on the democratic singularity of populism in Latin America, while analyzing it from the Western frame of liberal democracy. This first generation of sociologists was criticized in the 1970s, when a new generation, marked by the reading of Gramsci, took up the issue. Having become aware of the need to avoid interpreting Latin American politics from foreign historical references, these scholars started exploring popular relationships to populism. Using the case of Argentinean peronism as a reference point, they reveal the democratic ambivalence of populism: on the one hand, it opens up a dynamic of recognition of the underdog, by granting them a right to representation and deepening social equality; on the other hand, it closes this dynamic within an increasingly corporatist and authoritarian State, which is supposed to embody an organic people.