The shared logic of populism Populism tends to be a vertical politics of the bottom and middle positioned against the top, often taking the form of a reaction or revolt against established structures of power and associated elites. It is not bound to ideological boundaries or party politics, with recent examples of the ‘noble’ people vs the ‘self-serving elite’ coming from both the right and left of the political spectrum. However, right-wing variants of political populism tend to also look downward upon an outgroup and thus often champion the people
Introduction Community development can be described as a process in which communities take collective action to gain control over their resources and futures. It aspires to establish processes and structures which are ‘democratic, participatory, empowering and inclusive’ (Meade et al, 2016 : 3). The ways in which community development practitioners work to empower communities are framed by social, economic and political contexts. This chapter discusses the contextual landscape of populism. It offers some introductory thoughts on the problematic intersections
111 SEVEN Diversity, radicalization and populism One of the more important developments over the last few decades has been the immigration of people from all over the world to European countries. In many European countries, 10–20% of the population entered the country in which they live in recent years, or their parents did. This has had a tremendous effect on city life, political development, crime and fear of crime, and social tensions among people and their communities. The cultural anthropologist Steven Vertovec (2007) introduced the concept of
Using international perspectives and case studies, this book discusses the relationships between community development and populism in the context of today’s widespread crisis of democracy.
It investigates the development, meanings and manifestations of contemporary forms of populism and explores the synergies and contradictions between the values and practices of populism and community development.
Contributors examine the ways that the ascendancy of right-wing populist politics is influencing the landscapes within which community development is located and they offer new insights on how the field can understand and respond to the challenges of populism.
POLICY Forget populism! Frank A. Stengel, stengel@ips.uni-kiel.de Research Fellow on International Political Sociology, Kiel University, Germany Key words populism • democracy • liberal international order • conceptual stretching • the West • Europe To cite this article: Stengel, F.A. (2019) Forget populism!, Global Discourse, vol 9, no 2, 439-45, DOI: 10.1332/204378919X15628418445603 Introduction Populism, it seems, is the talk of the town these days. Although hardly a new topic in the social sciences (see Ionescu and Gellner, 1969; n.a. 1968), general
PART 2 Populism and community development in different contexts
A new wave of populism has been simmering in many spots since the 1990s. Only in the last decade or so did it circulate widely and escalate sharply. It is this strain, and especially the recent boom, that concerns this book. For easy reference, we can call this surge “New Populism,” with the caveat that ‘it’ is always plural. Technically, we should say New Populism s , since we are grappling with a thing that is multiple and multiplying. Like its predecessor, New Populism shows up in regional and ideological variety. Unlike its predecessor, it evolves and
169 8 Authoritarian Populism Introduction Since the 2010s we have seen a rise in authoritarian populism, a style of political leadership and political force that has generated new challenges for democracy (Norris and Inglehart, 2019). Previous chapters explained how the perception of rising levels of corruption, unemployment, inequality and migration have caused citizens in democracies to be concerned that the world is in crisis. This is where populist authoritarianism comes in. The rhetoric of populist authoritarian leadership claims that democratic
Introduction This chapter explores the potential responses of community development practice to the proliferation of populist practices in Hong Kong. Populism is an under-researched area in the community development field in Hong Kong, despite the increasing prominence of populism globally and the rising popularity of populist practice in Hong Kong since its return to China in 1997. Studies of populism, particularly right-wing populism, have developed the ‘globalisation loser’ hypothesis (Kriesi et al, 2008 ; Ramiro and Gomez, 2017 ). According to this
