Editor Michael Conniff opens this volume of collected works with an essay delineating five characteristics of Latin American populism: urban, multiclass, electoral and representative, consensual and mass culture-oriented, and charismatic in leadership (pp. 13–22). Six of the ten chapters are devoted to Latin America: two to Argentina, and one each to Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. Chile receives brief attention in the concluding chapter. The additional inclusion of case studies on the United States and Russia is designed to offer a comparative perspective of populism. As a comparative history methodology, the volume falls short of breaking new ground; as an anthology on Latin American populism—its real intent—this is a solid contribution, perhaps one of the best in years.
In his essay, Ferenc Szasz sees the rise of United States populism as not only decidedly rural but also antiurban; Allison Blakely sees in Russia a revolutionary movement that allied the rural peasantry and urban intellectuals. In both countries, however, populism failed to flourish, whereas in Latin America it thrived. David Tamarin’s fluid argument that Argentine populism bridged the preindustrial and industrial eras nicely complements Marysa Navarro’s fine piece on the charismatic Eva Perón, who manipulated both her husband and the urban masses and forged an enduring political culture. Steve Stein’s enlightening essay on the development of Peru’s Aprismo, combining urban leadership and rural support, balances well with Steven Ellner’s chapter on the early years of Acción Democrática in Venezuela. Jorge Basurto’s analysis of the failure of Luis Echeverría to become a latter-day Lázaro Cárdenas contrasts starkly with Conniff’s own chapter on the success of Brazilian populism under, first, Pedro Ernesto and, later, Getúlio Vargas. Paul Drake presents an insightful, but at times diffusely argued, concluding chapter that is both suggestive and broadly gauged. Drake also argues that populism and corporatism at times overlapped in Latin America (pp. 233-234) and that the former could in fact be institutionalized into a bureaucratic and at times inclusionary regime with a mind of its own. This did not occur everywhere, however. Thus, Drake’s view is at odds with those of others.
The diverging views presented here make this book inviting because they demonstrate the importance of the unique historical circumstances in each country that nonetheless gave rise to the same world phenomenon. Blakely’s Stalin and Szasz’s Huey Long are depicted as populists (pp. 184, 207-208), as are Yrigoyen, Juan Domingo and Evita Perón, Vargas, Betancourt, Haya de la Torre, and Echeverría elsewhere. It is not totally clear, however, how the emergence of rightist and leftist populist statesmen and dictators occurred in a given period of world history, or what this means in a comparative historical framework. The emphasis on the biographical rather than state apparatuses and official ideologies weakens the ultimate objective to achieve “the best framework for a comparative definition” of world populism (p. 23). The populist regime’s tendency to control economic resources and organized labor, and sometimes to give birth to a state-dominated economy (populist capitalism?), deserves some analysis since the liberal state system populists replaced lacked such direct economic power. Perhaps the contributors will move on to these themes in their future research.
