OutlineIn the URQ, populism appeals to people through specific
class interests, if not boundaries. Populist identity can be
based on a common economic cause, as in the case of late
nineteenth-century US agrarian populism, or on shared
traditional values, as in the village-based narodnik revolutionary
movement in Russia. In most of these cases, populist
ideology tends towards a violent, revolutionary
upheaval. In the LRQ we move to populism as a cultural
phenomenon, where communities are identified by their
ethnic and/or territorial dimension (nation, language,
race). Here the main populist target consists of alien cultural
groups, perceived as a physical or economic threat
and calling for outright political mobilization to restore
law and order. The LLQ refers to populist governments led
by strong leaders, a phenomenon first developed in Latin
American countries and now spreading into several newly
established democracies, especially in the post-Soviet bloc.
The quadrant stresses the individualist aspects of the populist
regime: the personal power of the president, with his
main mission consisting of protecting citizens’ safety
through discretionary decisions. The ULQ shows the rise
of media populism, also called telepopulism (Taguieff
2003), which brings together ideology and propaganda
through intensive use of all sorts of media. People are, to a
large extent, a substitute for - and transformed into - public
opinion. Deep-rooted and complex cultural values are
replaced by sudden changes in opinion moods concerning
over-simplified issues, conveyed through highly emotional
- and partisan - TV shows. People thus become a function
of popularity, and democracy - government by the people
is turned into videocracy (Sartori 1989). [Annarita Criscitiello]
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