Syllabus: LDST 390 “Leaders or demagogues? The Construction of Populist Leaders
in South America, the US and Europe in the new Century”
Spring 2017
Instructor: Visiting Professor María Esperanza Casullo.
Course Time and Location: Monday-Wednesday 1:30-2:45 PM. Room 106 - Room 118
for classes shared with Ernesto Seman’s course.
Email: [email protected]
Office: Jepson 239
Telephone: 804-287-6528
Office Hours: By appointment. Office 239.
Course Description:
Populist movements and leaders are on the rise not only in remote parts of the world but in
the US and Europe as well. Even as the “pink tide” which brought to power a record
number left-wing populist governments in Latin America is receding, populism is rising
elsewhere. A leader of the populist party UKIP, Nigel Farage, was instrumental in moving
the British public opinion towards leaving the European Union; a populist millionare and
TV personality, Donald Trump, was elected president of USA in 2016; the right wing
populist politician Marine Le Pen is waging a competitive race for the French presidency.
This is a shocking state of affairs when compared with the political landscape as it
presented itself after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Then, an era of democratic
optimism was ushered in and the “end of history” was proclaimed. It was believed by many
analysts that the whole world would march as one towards a future equalized by liberal
democracy, globalization and free-market capitalism. Populism thus was regarded as a
political atavism, something that belonged in the dustbin of history, a momentary detour in
a global march toward political modernity.
An yet, almost twenty years after that, populism seems to be stronger than ever. Today,
many of those same analysts struggle to gain a sense of why it is so, and what can liberal
democracy do in response to the ascendance of populist leaders, both left-leaning and rightwing.
Populist politics is inseparable from leadership, since the very term is synonym for the
mobilization of a people behind a charismatic leader. In fact, populism can be defined as a
certain style of political leadership However, there is nothing magical or mystical in this
kind of leadership. As we shall see, populist leadership is strategized and performed
through a careful use of self-presentation, narratives, discourses, and the media.
This course examines the main conceptual definitions of political populism, discusses the
ways in which populist leaders construct their political personas, analyses the historical
differences between left wing and right wing populisms, and performs in-depth analysis of
contemporary cases from South America, the US and Western and Eastern Europe.
The course will perform three tasks. As the first one, we will analyse the basic theoretical
tenets of populism, going back to its very roots in the writings of Aristotle and Machiavelli.
As the second one, we will discuss the historical realization of populism in during the
nineteenth and twentieth century. As the last one, we will analyse the current style of
populist leadership and the way in which populist charismatic authority is created through
the use of discourse, self-presentation, and the media.
Requirements and Grades:
1. Class Participation: 20%
I expect that you will participate actively throughout the entire course. Class attendance is
absolutely necessary. I also expect that you come to class having read the texts and
prepared to engage with debates and discussions pertinent to the class. Specific and incisive
discussions of the readings are particularly welcome; general statements that do not relate
to the authors' arguments or the other students' points are not.
2. Midterm Exam. 30 %
It will consist of questions (short answers or mini essay-like) about the readings assigned
up to this point (including those that were not discussed in class.) The midterm exam will
take place on March 1st.
3. Role Playing. 20%
Students will work in groups of two or three. Each group will develop a populist discourse
during the semester. This discourse will not be general or abstract, but it will be located in
an specific time and space, and will be written and performed with an specific audience and
adversary in mind. The discourse will be either read aloud in class, or filmed beforehand
and presented to the class. Students will be graded according to their participation in the
role playing based on: the academic foundations of your intervention through reading and
research, the originality of your contribution, your contribution to the group, and the
effectiveness of the discourse.
3. Final Project. 30%
Students will prepare a final project about any dimension related to the study of populism.
By mid-semester, students will present a proposal that will have to be approved by me. The
range of options for this project is vast and it will depend entirely on the students'
preferences, skills and affinities: They include (but are not limited to) the writing of a book
review, a movie review, a paper about any specific dimension of populism. The deadline
for the proposal is April 7th. The deadline for the final research project is April 25th.
General expectations:
Class attendance is absolutely necessary. Each unexcused absence will lead to 2 percent
taken off your final grade.
You should arrive at class on time, no exceptions. You should not leave class before it
ends, no exceptions. Late arrivals (more than 3 minutes) or early departures (more than 3
minutes) will affect the percentage of your grade corresponding to class participation. 3
You should make sure to go to the restrooms before class, or either wait until the class
ends.
No food in the classroom. Water, coffee or tea and a light snack (cereal bar, pastry) are
allowed.
The use of laptops, ipads or phones during class is prohibited. If you cannot take notes
without an electronic device, you need to contact me as soon as possible with a Disability
Accommodation Notice (DAN) provided the university (see below.)
I will respond to all emails within 24 hours of receiving them, but I will not respond to
emails sent to me after 5pm until the following day. I can also give you feedback about
your projects, but I will not read rough drafts once the outline for the final paper is
approved.
Plagiarism: Any plagiarism is grounds for failure for the assignment in question, for the
course, and for the school as well. When the ideas or writings of others are presented in
assignments, these ideas or writing should be attributed to that source. Special care should
be taken to cite sources correctly and to use quotation marks. Resources such as the library
and the Writing Center are available on campus to assist you. You are encouraged to take
advantage of these resources.
Important note:
This class was developed in close collaboration with Dr. Ernesto Semán class on
Caudillismo. We will share some of our class meetings with his class, and some discussions
will be led by him.
This syllabus is a map and a guide for the months of work ahead of us. It is not an ironclad
contract. Depending on the pace of the work in the classroom, the feedback from the
students, and any other contingent factor, changes might be made. They will be duly
announced on Blackboard and in class.
Class Schedule
Week one. Introduction to the course The (very brief) end of history.
January 9th.
- Francis Fukuyama. 1989. “The end of history?” The National Interest. Summer.
(Digital)
January 11th.
- Francisco Panizza. 2005. “Populism and the Mirror of Democracy”. Francisco
Panizza (ed.) Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. London, Verso. Introduction.
(Digital.)
Week 2: Caudillos and followers in Latin America
January 16th. No class. MLK DAY.
January 18th. CLASS MERGES. INSTRUCTOR: SEMAN.
-
John Charles Chasteen, Heroes on Horseback. A Life and Times of the Last Gaucho
Caudillos. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1995. pp. 1-19.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the
Tyrants; or, Civilization and Barbarism. First American from the third Spanish
Edition, New York, 1868, Hafner Press, 1960, pp. 32-55. (selection), (This is
available as an ebook at the Boatwright Library website. If you need help to find
something there, please contact Lucrecia McCulley.)
Week 3. What is a people? Populism as the “ghost of democracy.” Aristotle's analytic
of the city and the part of those who have no part.
January 23rd.
- Aristotle, Politics, Book I. (Digital.)
- (Snippets from the classic Costa Gavras’ The Battle of Algiers will be discussed in
class.)
January 25th.
- Aristotle, Politics, Book IV, selections. (Digital.)
- (Snippets from the classic Costa Gavras’ The Battle of Algiers will be discussed in
class.)
Week 4. The Florentine republic and the rebirth of populism. Early modern
populism: the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution.
January 30th. CLASS MERGES. INSTRUCTOR: CASULLO.
- Nicolo Machiavelli. The Prince. (Selections.) (Digital.)
- James Madison, “Federalist nr. 10.” (Available in Boatwright Library Website.)
(Snippets from Zhang Yimou’s movie Hero will be discussed in class.)
February 1st.
- John McCormick. 2001 ‘Machiavellian Democracy: Controlling Elites with
Ferocious Populism’, American Political Science Review, 95(2), pp. 297–313.
(Digital.)
- Margaret Canovan. 2005. The People. London: Polity. Pp. 10 to 33. (Digital.)
Week 5: National Sovereignty, Fragmentation and Strongmen.
February 6th. CLASS MERGES. INSTRUCTOR, SEMAN.
- (Students have to watch AT HOME the movie The Liberator, movie. part I.
Available at Boatwright Library Film Collection.)
- John Lynch, Simon Bolivar. A Life. Yale University Press, Yale, 2007. Part IV, War
to the Death, pp. 65-90. (Ebook, available at Boatwright Library.)
Simon Bolivar, The Jamaican Letters.
February 8th. CLASS MERGES. INSTRUCTOR:SEMAN.
-
(Students have to watch AT HOME the movie The Liberator, movie. part II.)
John Lynch, Simon Bolivar. A Life. Yale University Press, Yale, 2007. Part. V,
Touchstone of the Revolution, pp. 91-113. (Ebook/Boatwright library.)
Charles E. Chapman, "The Age of the Caudillos: A Chapter in Hispanic American
History." The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 12, No 3 (Aug., 1932),
pp. 281-300. (Boatwright Library online)
Week 6. How is populist leadership created: discourse.
February 13th. A discursive theory of populist mobilization.
- Readings: Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason. Introduction.
(Discourses by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Juan Domingo Perón and Evo Morales will be
watched and discussed in class.)
February 15th.
- María Esperanza Casullo. (2012) “Tales of Betrayal and Redemption in Bolivia,
Venezuela and Argentina. New Latin-American Populist Discourses in Comparative
Perspective.” Paper prepared for “Sarmiento Fellowship”, Center for LatinAmerican de Brown University. Providence, Rhode Island. (Digital.)
Week 7. The Lonely Crowd. Modern Science and the individual
February 20th. CLASS MERGES. INSTRUCTOR: SEMAN AND CASULLO.
- Mario Vargas Llosa, The Feast of the Goat. (Ebook - Boatwright Library.)
- S. M. Lipset, Political Man, New York, Garden City, 1969, pp. 147-172.
February 22nd
- D. Filc. 2015. “Latin American inclusive and European exclusionary populism:
colonialism as an explanation”. Journal Of Political Ideologies Vol. 20 , Iss. 3. pp.
263-283.
Week 8: Revision and Exam
Feb 27th. Revision. Mock Exam discussion.
March 1st. Mid Term Exam.
Week 9. Spring Break, no class.
March 6th. Spring break, no class.
March 8th, Spring Break, no class.
Week 10. The Two Zones of Populist Governance. Latin America vs the Rest of the
World.
March 13th, CLASS MERGES. INSTRUCTOR: CASULLO.
Readings:
- Kurt Weyland. (2001) “Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of
Latin American Politics” in Comparative Politics , Vol. 34, No. 1 pp. 1-22.
(Digital.)
- Maria Esperanza Casullo. (2016) “Looking forward, looking back: making sense of
the differences between Latin American and European populisms.” Paper presented
at the American Political Science Association Conference. (Digital.)
March 15th, CLASS MERGES. INSTRUCTOR: SEMAN AND CASULLO.
Readings:
- Alan Knight, “Populism and Neo-Populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico.”
Journal of Latin American studies, Vol, 30. No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 223- 248.
Cambridge University Press. (Boatwright Library online)
- Raúl Madrid. (2008) The Rise of Ethnopopulism in Latin America”. World
Politics, Vol. 60, nr. 3. (Digital.)
Week 11. Populism, the Leader and the Media
March 20th.
- Benjamin Moffitt. 2015. The Global Rise of Populism. Chapters 4, “Populism and
the Leader” and Chapter 5 “Populism and the Media”. (Digital.)
March 22nd.
- Gianpietro Mazzoleni. 2011. “Berlusconi? A communication wizard” Zeitschrift für
Politikberatung (ZPB) / Policy Advice and Political Consulting, Vol.
- 4, No. 1 36-38. (Digital.)
Week 12. Week 12: The New Deal Revisited
March 27th TOGETHER MARK HEALEY INVITED TALK ON POPULISM
March 29. Malcolm O. Sillars: "Warren's All the King's Men: A Study on Populism" In
American Quarterly, Vol. 9, No 3 (Autumn, 1957), pp. 345-353. (Digital.)
Week 13: Populism in the US in the Twentieth and Twentieth First
April 3rd. Reading. ClASS MERGES. INSTRUCTOR: SEMAN AND CASULLO.
- Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men, (Noel Polk, editor), Mariner Books,
(2002). (Students should buy and read the book.)
- Lee, Michael J. “The Populist Chameleon: The People’s Party, Huey Long, George
Wallace, an the Populist Argumentative Frame” in Quarterly Journal of Speech,
2006. (Digital.)
April 5th.
- V. Williamson, Skocpol, and J. Coggin. (2011) ‘The Tea Party and the Remaking of
Republican Conservatism’. Perspectives on Politics, 9(1), pp. 25–43. (Digital.)
- Michael Kasin, The Populist Persuasion, Introduction.
Week 14. Populism and Democracy
- Pierre Ostiguy and Kenneth Roberts. 2016. “Putting Trump in Comparative
Perspective”. Brown Journal of World Affairs. (Forthcoming.) (Digital.)
April 10th. CLASS MERGES WITH ERNESTO SEMAN’S
April 12th. No class - I will be away for a conference on Populism in Glasgow.
Week 15th.
April 17th. Final presentations.
April 19th Final presentations.
Awarding of Credit
To be successful in this course, a student should expect to devote 10-14 hours each week,
including class time and time spent on course-related activities.
http://registrar.richmond.edu/services/policies/academic-credit.html
Disability Accommodations
Students with a Disability Accommodation Notice should contact their instructors as
early in the semester as possible to discuss arrangements for completing course
assignments and exams.
http://studentdevelopment.richmond.edu/disability-services/policies.html
Honor System
The Jepson School supports the provisions of the Honor System. The shortened version
of the honor pledge is: “I pledge that I have neither received nor given unauthorized
assistance during the completion of this work.”
http://studentdevelopment.richmond.edu/honor/
Religious Observance
Students should notify their instructors within the first two weeks of classes if they will
need accommodations for religious observance.
http://registrar.richmond.edu/planning/religiousobs.html
Staff members from these resources are available to students for consultation regarding the
points delineated below.