Populism as a Political Strategy: An Approach’s Enduring — and Increasing — Advantages
| Author | Kurt Weyland |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00323217211002669 |
| Subject Matter | Response |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217211002669
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(2) 185 –189
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00323217211002669
journals.sagepub.com/home/psx
Populism as a Political
Strategy: An Approach’s
Enduring — and Increasing —
Advantages
Kurt Weyland
Abstract
Responding to Rueda’s questions, this essay explains the political-strategic approach (PSA) to
populism and highlights its analytical strengths, which have become even more important with
the emergence of populist governments across the world. PSA identifies populism’s core by
emphasizing the central role of personalistic leaders who tend to operate in opportunistic ways,
rather than consistently pursuing programmatic or ideological orientations. PSA is especially useful
nowadays, when scholars’ most urgent task is to elucidate the political strategies of populist chief
executives and their problematic repercussions, especially populism’s threat to democracy.
Keywords
populism, political-strategic approach, rationalism, leader-centrism, normative bias
This brief note responds to Rueda’s article Is Populism a Political Strategy? A Critique of
an Enduring Approach, answers the main questions about the political-strategic approach
(PSA) to populism, demonstrates its analytical strengths, and highlights its special bene-
fits during the contemporary global wave of populism.
Populists as Opportunists?
As Rueda emphasizes, PSA, which draws inspiration from Max Weber’s classical analy-
sis of charisma and Mouzelis’ (1985) organizational approach to populism (Kenny, in
press), depicts populists essentially as power-seeking opportunists with weak, fickle—
but not non-existent—ideological commitments who use policies primarily for instru-
mental purposes. This reasoning embodies the loose rationalism that has long pervaded
Political Science. It is not simplistic or “primitive” (Rueda), however, but rests on dis-
tinctly bounded rationality (Weyland, 2014).
Rueda criticizes the opportunism argument as un-verifiable because of the difficulty of
ascertaining leaders’ goals. But scholars have long designed a solution for this general
Department of Government, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
Corresponding author:
Kurt Weyland, Department of Government, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78731, USA.
Email: kweyland@austin.utexas.edu
1002669PCX0010.1177/00323217211002669Political StudiesWeyland
research-article2021
Response
To continue reading
Request your trial