Ernesto Laclau’s Oblivion of Political Economy: Capitalism and Institutions in Post-Marxist Discourse Theory

Crisis Eruptions: A Comparative Analysis of Right-wing Populism in El Salvador and Guatemala

“…A popular approach on the left is to use Laclau where populism is any delineation between "the people" and "the elite" (Jacobs, 2018;Laclau, 2005). However, Laclau's definition of populism has been criticized by others on the left as being too general and thus unable to study populism as a specific political phenomenon (Aytac, 2020;Rey-Araújo, 2020;Hart, 2012). On the other hand, liberal versions of the ideational model conceptualize populism as "a style of political mobilization based on strong rhetorical appeals to the people and crowd action" (de la Torre, 2010, p. 3).…”

“…While insights raised by these ideational models bear consideration in describing the rise of right-wing populism, I argue that an ideational model is insufficient. Ideational models can correctly diagnose a dimension of organic crises, namely the crisis of legitimacy of certain political institutions, they fall short in failing to connect crises of legitimacy with political economy or class dynamics and in failing to address the specifically capitalist nature of the institutions they describe (Rey-Araújo, 2020;Hart, 2012). On the other hand, many analyses of the political economy of populism can be overly rigid in their explanations for populism's rise, leading to a gap between reductive economic explanations and the actual discourse of right-wing populism (Kiely, 2020;Ausserladscheider, 2019).…”

“…"A time of monsters" or more aptly translated, a period where "a variety of morbid symptoms" (Gramsci, 2018, p.276) appear. How organic crises resolve is dependent on the "balance of class forces" (Gramsci, 2018) and how these contending forces press their demands on institutions (Rey-Araújo, 2020;. To describe and interpret the changing balance of class forces in Central America and its manifestation in the realms of politics, economy, and ideology, I draw from the work of Stuart Hall (1988) and from Social Structure of Accumulation theory (Rey-Araújo; 2020;2019) for my analysis, and situate current developments using a comparative historical review.…”

“…This framing, however, neglects some important considerations. Laclau and Mouffe's framework does not go far enough in their own goal of repoliticization, because it does not address the specifically capitalist character of the institutions which populists and 'the people' make demands upon (Rey-Araújo, 2020;. While Laclau argues that the populist moment occurs when accumulations of unsatisfied demands move from being made within institutions to demands being made against institutions, the specific form of these institutions remains unspecified.…”

“…Hall's concept of authoritarian populism has been applied to the context of Guatemala by Copeland (2007), but like other perspectives discussed here would benefit from a greater engagement with political economy. Social Structure of Accumulation theory serves to help 'ground' the practice and ideology of authoritarian populism in political economy (Rey-Araújo, 2020;.…”