Neoliberal Populism in Latin America and Eastern Europe

Thaksin the Populist?

“…A number of radical right populists in Europe, the United States, and even a few in Latin America defy the leftist categorization by seeming to employ familiar populist rhetoric while endorsing market reforms and pursuing the support of middle class voters and entrepreneurs. In fact, while left (economic) populists are the most common form in Latin America, a spate of market-friendly populists in this region during the 1990s encouraged scholars in this region to adopt the term neopopulism precisely to capture this tendency (Roberts 1995;Weyland 1999); it was not a term to describe the more recent wave of populists allied with Hugo Chávez and the resurgent left. In Western Europe and the United States, market-oriented populists appealing to the middle class have been a common variety, embodied in movements such as Ross Perot's United We Stand and the Tea Party in the United States (Lowndes 2017).…”

Exploring the Schelling conjecture in reverse

“…Since most public policy issues are multidimensional and can be judged along several criteria, leaders may seek to bury the most controversial aspects of international agreements (Hug and Konig, 2002;Koch, 1998) while simultaneously demonstrating how abstract (or controversial) policies will have a positive impact on people's daily lives (Powlick and Katz, 1998). Elites might also reframe external demands as 'organic,' domestic agendas, selling radical changes as necessary to avoid impending disaster, and in the process turning themselves into fearless saviors (Armijo and Faucher, 2002;Weyland, 1999). By putting a nationalist spin on the reform agenda, for example, Latin American leaders were able to increase costs for potential opponents (Mares, 1993).…”

“…For example, states through the World Bank and IMF frequently use multilateral aid packages to convince elites to implement socially painful structural reforms packages that seem all but certain to produce political instability (Armijo and Faucher, 2002;Biglaiser and Brow, 2005;Haggard, 1985). Perhaps thanks in part to such aid, unpopular policies were adopted -frequently with success (Weyland, 1999).…”

“…These cases are useful for several reasons. First, in each elites have indicated they prefer to pursue criminal prosecutions for members of the old regime, whether out of principle or to hurt former incumbents who continue to pose a political threat (Weyland, 1999). Second, these cases involve conflicting goods: publics in each state overwhelmingly oppose ICTY cooperation yet strongly support economic and political policies (especially EU accession) conditioned on this cooperation.…”

La tentación populista : una vía de acceso al poder en América Latina

“…El populismo se ha estudiado como un tipo de estrategia política (Weyland 1999). A los efectos del análisis, explica al populismo como una forma de ejercer el poder mediante el apoyo directo del pueblo sin mediación institucional.…”