The study of populism has been prolific in recent decades, and much has been elaborated and discussed about its characteristics and consequences. Neither populism nor its empirical manifestations, which have been present in the Latin American region since the 20th century and are currently expanding globally, is a new subject for academia or for public debate. Far from considering that everything has been said and consensus has been reached, the debate remains wide open. This book, however, is not (only) about populism. The focus is fundamentally on the voice of the people in contemporary democracies, which forces us to talk about populism, the most powerful and radical response that has been put on the table supposedly to resolve the challenges of including the will of the citizenry.
InThe Will of the People: Democracy and political participation in Latin America I argue that citizens’ diminished role in decision-making is to a good extent responsible for the global decline in support for democracy, but also has consequences on the quality and accuracy of public policies. In presenting the argument, I analyse ideas and historical experiences around the role of citizens in different political regimes, with a particular focus on past and recent Latin American cases. The topic is critical, considering that contemporary new and old democracies – and even non-democratic regimes – challenged by growing citizen dissatisfaction are experiencing a shift towards the inclusion of citizen participation (effective or not), while at the same time populism is growing, fuelling a tension between different views of democracy.
The study of populism was for decades concentrated in the countries of South America.1 In the mid-twentieth century, research and essays focused on the figures of presidents Juan Domingo Perón (1946 – 1955 and 1973 – 1974) in Argentina and Getulio Vargas (1930 – 1945, 1951 – 1954) in Brazil, as central references. Later, with the emergence of combined agendas such as populism with a right-wing agenda or the shrinking of the state, the focus expanded to include Carlos Saúl Menem (1989 – 1999), again in Argentina, and Alberto Fujimori (1990 – 2000) in Peru. By the 1990s, Hugo Chávez (1999 – 2013) inaugurated a new era in Venezuela whose wake was followed by other countries, especially Ecuador with Rafael Correa (2007 – 2017). But entry into the 21st century has considerably expanded the area of influence of populist leaderships, although it has also contributed to blurring the limits of the concept, quite often in public debates without a clear definition, referring to any leader with authoritarian features. But more productive than to restrain the discussion to what fits and what does not could be to analyse the conditions for democracy to work well. A broader understanding of what democracy means and how it is built is an ambitious goal of this book.
At the beginning of 2021, populisms became more common and more diverse in their features, with the emergence of right-wing populist leaders. One example of this is the National Front in France, founded in 1972 by Jean Marie Le Pen and now led by his daughter, Marine Le Pen. Marine Le Pen modernised the style and rhetoric of the party but without losing its anti-immigration and Eurosceptic goal
