Avec l’arrivée de Rafael Correa, l’Équateur a tenté de consolider la démocratie par la voie du populisme, en tant que pratique politique. Le but de cette recherche est d’analyser le lien entre le populisme comme une pratique politique et la consolidation démocratique comme une aspiration des jeunes régimes. Le document est divisé en deux parties : la première étudie le populisme et la consolidation démocratique en tant que concepts. L’idée est de déterminer comment le populisme a été instrumentalisé afin de renforcer la démocratie durant les années 90. Dans la deuxième partie, la relation entre le populisme et la consolidation démocratique en Équateur est étudiée. Pour approfondir la notion de populisme en Équateur, nous l’avons analysé comme pratique politique pendant le XXe siècle, notamment dans le discours de José María Velasco Ibarra. Ensuite, les principales réformes entamées par Rafael Correa sont analysées. Cette recherche a pour but l’explication du lien complexe entre le populisme, (conçu comme une déviation de la démocratie pour les uns, et perçu comme un instrument légitime de consolidation démocratique pour les autres), et la consolidation démocratique. Cette relation devient un sujet inéluctable pour l’analyse de l’évolution complexe des démocraties andines. / With the advent of Rafael Correa, Ecuador tried to consolidate democracy by resorting to populism as a political practice. The purpose of this dissertation lies in link between populism as a political practice and democratic consolidation as young democracies´ main aspiration. With this in mind, this investigation is divided into two parts: the first explores populism and democratic consolidation as concepts. The idea being to determine how, during the 90's, populism was used as a tool to strengthen democracy. The latter, studies the relationship between populism and democratic consolidation in Ecuador. Populism has been a recurrent practice throughout the twentieth century (especially with, José María Velasco Ibarra, Ecuador's main figure of populism). Accordingly so, this investigation seeks to understand the complex link between the populism -that some see as a deviation from democracy, and others as a legitimate mechanism of defense and democratic consolidation- and democracy. This relationship is an inexorable subject to understand the complex political evolution of Andean democracies.

Thesis advisor: Rowell S. Melnick / In 1965, at the height of the Great Society, when there was also a consensus about the importance of the humanities to edify American life, Congress established a federal agency to support them: the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH). Shortly thereafter arose a sea change in scholarship and education in the humanities, which by the 1980s became an issue in the broader U.S. culture wars. Many scholars and intellectuals became sharply divided over such questions as the authors and books to prioritize and include in liberal arts curricula, modes of interpretation of texts, and perspectives on the goodness (or lack thereof) to be found in Western civilization and American history. This policy history examines how, in this changing context, the NEH has managed to endure and how it has interpreted and carried out its mandate to support the humanities. It is divided into two parts. Part I tells the story of how the NEH has maintained itself; how it has survived attempts at termination, achieved budget increases and sustained losses, and how it has set its budgetary priorities. This analysis of organizational maintenance traces the evolution of the national debate over federal funding for culture, looking at how the major political parties have changed position on this issue over time. It examines how the NEH built a clientele, the state humanities councils, to bolster its support in Congress. And it looks at how changes in party positioning and related developments in the culture war effectively empowered that clientele—with the effect of helping save the agency when threatened with abolishment, but also giving that clientele greater influence over the NEH’s policies and budgetary priorities. Part II explains how the NEH’s internal bureaucratic structure has operated during the culture wars. When the agency was founded, Congress established a structure with the goal of empowering the NEH to make decisions on the basis of nonpolitical expertise in the humanities, assuming that the agency would need to be able to resist pressures to award grants to favored constituencies at the expense of merit. Part II analyzes how that structure has operated in a different and wholly unanticipated context, one in which many of those who could claim the mantle of expertise have become polarized on issues such as multiculturalism and the importance of “great books.” It compares the bureaucratic structure at the NEH with the structures and practices that have evolved at other federal grant-making agencies: the National Endowment for the Arts and National Science Foundation. The analysis shows how the structure at NEH has enabled Democratic and Republican appointed chairmen to push the substance of grant-making in progressive and traditional directions, respectively, despite continuity of formal rules, procedures, and professional staff. This dissertation concludes with an assessment of what can be expected from the NEH in regard to its durability, budgetary priorities, and grant-making under Republican and Democratic administrations. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

This dissertation examines the limits of the figure of democracy as a critical category in contemporary political philosophy. I frame the analysis around a structural tension in the work of several authors who rely on democracy as a theoretical foundation, which I call “the elitist-populist ambivalence.” This theoretical tendency regards democracy as a categorical imperative—a foundational normative principle and an end in itself—but simultaneously delimits the composition of the demos by disqualifying certain political actors from the status of the political, thereby violating the parameters of a categorical imperative by specifying conditions. In other words, the democratic turn appeals to formal concepts but decides the political content in advance. It advocates democracy on its own terms, democracy in spite of the demos. But if democracy has normative purchase only under certain conditions, then our critical political theory must be based on these conditions rather than the figure of democracy. The project focuses on three main bodies of literature: the work of Hannah Arendt, the tradition of radical democracy (exemplified by Jacques Rancière, Chantal Mouffe, and Ernesto Laclau), and early Frankfurt School critical theory (Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse). Though Arendt betrays no particular attachment to the term “democracy,” her work is of interest to this project because it represents a stark expression of the elitist-populist ambivalence: a political ontology based on democratic iconography and a simultaneous delimitation of who should count as the demos. The discussion of Rancière, Mouffe, and Laclau explores the ways in which these figures reproduce not only Arendt’s democratic motifs but also her constitutive exclusion. Albeit with divergent political commitments, they both appeal to democracy in spite of the demos. Finally, Adorno and Marcuse provide an alternative to the categorical imperative of democracy. By critically confronting the social mediations of pervasive popular ignorance and irrationality, the early Frankfurt School displaces the normative force of the figure of democracy by a critique of the actually existing demos. This critique, I argue, allows us to steer a theoretical course between the perils of elitism and the equivocations of populism.

We can observe a well-documented decline of trust levels in Western societies: from the reputation of political representatives as being "not trustworthy" to the rise of anti-system-oriented populist parties. Yet the implications of different forms of distrust for a society and democratic institutions have been theorized in conflicting ways so far. In order to illuminate existing inconsistencies in social and democratic theory, this article addresses two research questions: What are the implications of different manifestations of distrust for the acceptance of democracy and democratic institutions? How do different forms of distrust affect the motivation to become engaged in democratic decision-making and in civil society institutions? Taking empirical evidence from 25 focus groups in Germany, our findings show that growing social divisions affect the role distrust plays for political interest representation of social groups and for the acceptance of liberal representative democracy.

This dissertation examines the emotional life of populism among supporters of Argentina’s Kirchnerist Movement. In 2005, the late political philosopher Ernesto Laclau, himself, a Kirchnerist, argued that populism held the promise of radically democratic representation and governance, arguing that the identification of a common enemy had the power to unite disparate political forces across traditional social division. This bold endorsement of populism was met with skepticism and rebuke, as many scholars went on to argue that populism is a corruption of liberal democracy whose demonizing obsession with an enemy is revelatory of authoritarian and even totalitarian tendencies. Yet, both scholars that are against populism or for it share the assumption that it mobilizes “the people” against a common, known, and easily recognizable enemy. In contrast, “Peronism Is a Sentiment” argues that in populist politics, affection is as least as important as antagonism; furthermore, populism’s intense valorization of comradeship produces a social environment in which populist comrades express more concern about the potential betrayal of their beloved comrades than they do about the machinations of a common enemy. Consequently, while antagonism towards an external enemy is certainly a central component of populist cosmologies, this antagonism is manifests itself most significantly internally, as formerly beloved comrades are denounced as traitors. I examine the social dynamics of populist comradeship through an ethnographic study of Kirchnerist activists known as “political militants” (militantes políticos). These individuals view themselves as carrying on the political tradition of Peronism—Argentina’s enduring brand of populism, which, through its complicated and contradictory history has always exalted the values of love and loyalty, while simultaneously warning of the threat of betrayal. Over six chapters, I trace the affective vicissitudes of Kirchnerist militancy, investigating interconnectedness of affection, trust, suspicion, and accusation in the Kirchnerist and Peronist cosmology. In chapter 1, entitled “Peronism is a Sentiment,” I explore the relationship between ideology and affect through a description of the mercurial ideological orientation of Peronism over its contradictory history. Chapter 2, “The Place of Solidarity and Fellowship” focuses on community service activities of militants, who attribute different meanings to these practices, exposing fissures in supposed ideological consistence and the unity of comradeship. Chapter 3, “Only the Organization Can Defeat Time,” examines the dynamics of class difference within the Movement. Chapter 4, “A Traitor to His Class,” analyzes how notions of loyalty and betrayal are tethered to Peronism’s valorization of “authenticity” (autenticidad) and the consolidation of a cult of personality around Kirchnerism’s leader, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Chapter 5, “A Peronist Works for the Movement,” focuses on the role of oratory and charisma in performances of loyalty. Chapter 6, “I Embrace You with the Affection and Loyalty of Always,” investigates the relationship between personalism and fictive kinship to underscore the vital importance of the tensions between allegiance and alliance in notions of political community. These chapters provide an intriguing and clarifying story of populist enchantment, the appeal of political brotherhood, and the accompanying preoccupation with internal enemies. “Peronism Is a Sentiment” makes a novel contribution to studies of populism that have been remiss in ignoring the centrality of affection in populist cosmologies, and the inevitability of sectarianism that comes along with it. This dissertation was written as populist movements and parties emerged across regions and ideologies, challenging and redefining paradigms of governance and remaking the rules of geopolitics. Consequently, it is a timely contribution to interdisciplinary dialogues that seek creative approaches to pressing contemporary problems, demonstrating the value of anthropological theory and ethnographic research methods in grappling with questions of politics and the political.

This dissertation examines Coxey’s Army of 1894 and the subsequent impact the organizers and march had on American politics. A handful of monographs have examined this march on Washington D.C. but all of them have focused specifically on the march itself, largely examining the few weeks in 1894 when the march occurred. By extending the period study to include the long life and activism of Jacob Coxey what historians can see is that although the march was an expression of anger and concern over general inequality in American society, Coxey’s Army was also protest for specific demands. These two demands were specifically a program of public works and a desire for fiat currency for the United States. By examining the life Jacob Coxey we see that both of these demands grew out of longer issues in American social politics and reflect Coxey’s background in the greenback labor movement.<br><div><br></div><div>The question over currency— whether the economy should rely on a gold, silver, or fiat standard— has largely been untouched by historians, yet reflects one of the most interesting aspects of the march, namely that it was an instance in a broader movement to drastically change the U.S. state and establish a socialistic commonwealth, or commonweal, for American society. Coxey fit into this broader project by arguing specifically that the U.S. should maintain a market-based economy but do so through a kind of socialistic currency backed by the state. By organizing various marches throughout his life, Coxey attempted to achieve this goal by direct organizing of the masses and in so doing contributed to the long history of American social reform movement’s various efforts to reshape and redefine the concept of “the people.”<br></div><div><br></div><div>This dissertation makes four major arguments. First that the concept and phenomena of American Populism is a broad based, elastic movement with no essential political character. Attempts to define Populism as either reactionary or radical miss the broader issue that Populism could take on various political flavors depending on how it positioned itself in opposition to various actors in the state, economy, and civil society. Second, Coxey’s Army shows how the first march on Washington D.C. was part of a longer legacy of direct political action, and that although this march did make a contribution to the overall political debate of the time, it was not as a communicative act that the march was most significant. Instead Coxey’s Army was significant in the way it led to a reconceptualization of “the people” and therefore reimagined what legitimate democratic action entailed. Third, the concept of the commonweal, although largely taken for granted in previous historiographies, was part of a much deeper and intellectually rich fight between various activists and thinkers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At stake in how a movement or party conceptualized something like the commonweal was what type of social, economic, and political order should be fought for and advanced by organizations of working class people. In this regard the currency question, far from being simply a side issue, was in fact central to how activists envisioned the role of the market and state in a more equitable society. Finally, this dissertation looks at the understudied career of Coxey after the march, specifically his short tenure as mayor of Massillon, Ohio. His failure as mayor raises further questions for historians to think about the promise and limitations of American Populism as both a protest movement and political force.<br></div>

This Thesis examines the ideology, politics and organization of the Australian Extreme Right 1975-1995. Its central interpretative theme is the response of the Extreme Right to the development of the Australian State from a conservative Imperial structure into an American "anti-communist" client state, and ultimately into a liberal-internationalist machine which integrated Australia into a globalized capitalist order. The Extreme Right after 1975 differed from the various paramilitaries of the 1930's and the conservative anti-communist auxiliary organizations of the 1945-75 period. Post 1975, it lost its preoccupation with fighting the Left, and progressively grew as a challenger to liberal-internationalism. The abandonment of "White Australia" and consequent non-European immigration were the formative catalysts of a more diverse and complex Extreme Right. The Thesis uses a working definition of generic fascism as "palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism", to measure the degree of ideological and political radicalization achieved by the Extreme Right. This family of political ideas, independent of the State and mobilized beyond the limits of the former-period auxiliary conservatives, expressed itself in an array of organizational forms. The complexity of the Extreme Right can be demonstrated by using four typologies: Radical Nationalism, Neo-Nazism, Populist-Monarchism and Radical-Populism, each with specific points to make about social clienteles, geographical distribution, particular ideological heritages, and varied strategies and tactics. The Extreme Right could mobilize from different points of opportunity if political space became available. Inevitably a mutual delegitimization process between State and Extreme Right led to public inquiries and the emplacement of agencies and legislation to restrict the new radicalism. This was understandable since some Extreme Right groups employed violence or appeared to perform actions preparatory thereto. It also led to show-trials and para-State crime targeted against particular groups especially in the period 1988-91. Thereafter, Extreme Right organizations pursued strategies which led to electoral breakthroughs, both rural and urban as a style of Right-wing populist politics unfolded in the 1990's. It was in this period that the Extreme Right encouraged the co-optation by the State of the residual Left in the anti-racist fight. This seemed natural, as the Extreme Right's vocal references to popular democracy, national independence and the nativist heritage, had permitted it to occupy the Old Left's traditional ground. In that way too, it was "The Other Radicalism".

Den här uppsatsen är en statistisk jämförelse mellan valresultat och arbetslöshet både över tid och mellan kommuner över två val i Östergötland och i Birkaland i Finland. Jag jämför Sverigedemokraternas väljarbas med Sannfinländarnas och vilka utgångspunkter de har för sin väljarbas. Sverigedemokraterna har massinvandringen som utgångspunkt och Sannfinländarna har småborgerlig världsbild som utgångspunkt. / This essay is a statistical correlation between electoral results and unemployment, both over time and between municipalities over two elections in Östergötland in Sweden and in Pirkanmaa, Finland. I compare the Sweden Democrats voters with the True Finns and the starting points they have for their tactic to atract voters. The Sweden Democrats have mass immigration as a starting point and the True Finns, the petty bourgeoisie as a starting point.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 1997. Graduate Programme in Political Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 397-423). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ27314.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 474-491). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.