BENJAMIN MOFFITT, THE GLOBAL RISE OF POPULISM.

PERFORMANCE, POLITICAL STYLE, AND REPRESENTATION,

Agustin Cosovschi

During recent years, several countries have utility of the concept of populism today?
witnessed the rise of political movements In other words, what does one say when
and parties which question to some extent one talks of “populism”?
many of the conventional values and rules Drawing from the existing literature in
of liberal democracy. Frequently referred social sciences, Benjamin Moffitt’s book
to as “populist” by the media, public in- The Global Rise of Populism addresses this
tellectuals and by other, more traditional and other key questions, going beyond the
politicians, political forces such as MoV- purely nominal discussion and trying to
imento 5 Estelle in Italy and Podemos in reach an updated, complex and compre-
Spain have been identified by many as a hensive definition of contemporary pop-
symptom of a deeper and more general cri- ulism. The main hypothesis of the book
sis in contemporary democratic politics. is that populism today has been changed
And yet, despite the use of the same con- by the developments in new media tech-
cept to describe them, differences among nologies and by shifting modes of politi-
these so-called “populists” are sometimes cal representation and identification. As
remarkable: for instance, one could hard- a result, the author claims, it is more pro-
ly put Evo Morales’ left-wing government ductive to analyze the phenomenon not as
in Bolivia, prone to economic redistribu- a fixed entity, but rather as a political style
tion and to the reinforcement of social and that is performed, embodied and enacted
cultural rights, in the same group as Vik- across different contexts. This definition,
tor Orbán’s right-wing and authoritarian he sustains, not only unifies the aesthetic,
administration in Hungary, fervently op- discursive and ideological dimension of
posed to immigration and always keen to politics, but it also allows for populism to
undermine minority rights. And the same be thought of as a truly global phenome-
goes for Cristina Kirchner’s government in non, beyond regional variations.
Argentina, Marine Le Pen’s Front National The study has both a strong theoretical
in France and Andrés Manuel López Obra- ambition as well as an aspiration to set a
dor’s party in Mexico. So, if the actors and number of operational criteria on which
forces that fall under this common domi- a comparative approach to contemporary
nator of “populism” are indeed so different populism could be built. With that aim, the
and diverse, why use the same concept to author deploys a two-phase analysis, start-
name them? What is the content and the ing with a conceptual and terminological
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definition of the object and subsequently Moreover, if the leader is the main
developing an inquiry of the main features character of the theatrical representation
of contemporary populism. of populism, claims the author, the media
Firstly, Moffitt resorts to developments should be considered its central stage, and
in the field of political theory and political a very wide one indeed. Moffitt holds that
sociology to develop a notion of populism the use of the media and communication
capable of overcoming the biases and short- strategies by populist leaders should be in
comings of the existing literature. In the the center of our reflection on contempo-
first chapters of the book, Moffitt builds rary populism, especially due to the emer-
on the thoughts of authors such as Cas gence of new decentralized media that
Mudde, Kirk Hawkings, Ernesto Laclau, allow for leaders to reach their audiences
Pierre Taguieff, Robert Hariman, Frank (“the people”) in a low-cost and efficient
Ankermit and Dick Pels to finally advance manner. What is more, the author claims,
a concept of populism as a political style the importance of the media in contem-
that is performed by different actors in porary politics not only explains the in-
different contexts. The advantage of such tensive use and concern for the media by
a focus, the author claims, is that it does populist leaders, but also the tendency of
not only overcome the limitations of pre- many traditional and non-populist poli-
vious notions that conceived it as either an ticians to imitate or emulate features of
ideology, a discourse or a political logic, populists in order compete with populist
but that it also recognizes the constructed leaders and try to increase their own pop-
character of political performance, some- ularity. At the same time, according to the
thing that the author considers of key im- author, the analysis of the media should
portance due to the ever more mediatized go beyond the mere study of how leaders
character of today’s politics”. Secondly, after use and abuse political communication,
having established his theoretical premis- and should in exchange scrutinize what
es, the author draws from an examination he called “the process of mediation”: in
of twenty-eight cases of political leaders other words, the countless ways through
coming from North America, Europe, Latin which “the people” is rendered present in
America, Africa and Asia that have com- a never-ending process of representation
monly been identified as “populists” by the that involves leaders, constituencies, au-
specialized literature in English language diences and media, and in which populists
in order to establish the main features of leaders and other political actors struggle
contemporary populism. over who “the people” actually are and
To begin with, the author focuses on what are their true aspirations.
one of the most salient characteristics of Furthermore, Moffitt’s study focuses
populist politics: the supremacy of one on a key dimension of contemporary pol-
central character, the political leader. Ac- itics: the meaning and the role of crises in
cording to Moffitt, these mediatized times the political process. The author advances
make the leader the dominant character here an interesting and challenging notion:
of populist politics and it is through him that crisis is thus not external, but internal
or her that one can determine some of the to populism. According to Moffitt, a key
main characteristics of populism. Among component of contemporary populism is
others, the author underlines the con- the ability of populist leaders to interpret
stant tension that populist leaders have certain political and economic failures
to deal with: having to show him or her- as a “crisis” that demands their interven-
self as ordinary and as part of “the peo- tion, them being the spokesmen of the
ple”, for example through the use of “bad true “people” and the only ones capable of
manners”, and at the same time having to confronting “the elite” and any other ac-
present himself as extraordinary, for in- tor that poses a threat to society. In other
stance through the exaltation of strength, words, contrary to authors who view the
power and virility. emergence of populism as a result of a
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preexistent crisis, the author proposes to extended phenomenon through the lens
analyze populism not as a consequence of of only one language will inevitably lead
crisis, but as its main performer. to some degree of bias; on the other hand,
Finally, the author also addresses one aspiring to overcome the problems of the
of the main debates surrounding populism: existing literature on the basis of a theo-
its unclear and controversial relation to retical framework that builds exclusively
democracy. As most of the literature has on that same literature also seems meth-
claimed, by underlining majoritarianism odologically unconvincing.
and the sovereignty of “the people”, pop- Secondly, another objection should
ulism can endanger the rights of the indi- be directed at one of the book’s funda-
vidual and thus democracy itself. At the mental hypothesis. The study is built on
same time, as other authors have noted, the notion that, since the media are much
populism can be not only a threat, but also more developed now than ever before, and
a corrective to democracy, since it encour- politics are to a large extent channeled
ages the participation of the masses in the through those media, politics have thus
political process. According to Moffitt, in- become more “stylized” and therefore
terpreting populism as a political style al- the aesthetic and performance dimension
lows us to a certain extent to deconstruct of political representation has become
these dilemmas and it allows us to see it more important than in the past. Howev-
as a phenomenon that is torn between two er, bearing in mind the works of histori-
competing directions: it can both render ans such as Louis Marin or George Mosse,
politics more understandable for everyday one could claim that aesthetics has been a
citizens and offer effective critiques of the key dimension of political representation
shortcomings of democratic systems, as it all throughout modernity, in contexts as
can also lead to a radical personalization diverse as XVIII century France or 1930s
of politics and deny the complexity of Germany. Therefore, if current populism
problems and offer simplistic solutions. is essentially different from what it used
The populist character of a political proj- to be, and it is partially as a result of the
ect, claims the author, actually tells us role of the media, the rising importance
very little about its democratic content, of aesthetics is not the key feature of this
and populism as a political style is thus novelty. Analyzing the media’s influence
able to endanger democracy as it is capa- on contemporary politics should thus go
ble of making it richer and more inclusive. beyond the simple confirmation that “aes-
The book The Global Rise of Popu- thetics matter”.
lism certainly presents interesting and The aforesaid objections, however, do
challenging debates regarding one of the not question the great value of The Global
mostly discussed political phenomena of Rise of Populism as an original and stimu-
our times. Nevertheless, in spite of the lating contribution to contemporary po-
many virtues of Moffitt’s work, a number litical theory. Benjamin Moffitt’s book
of problems arising from his treatment of constitutes an excellent and challenging
populism should be underlined. work: through its clarity and its drive to
Firstly, one cannot but question the lim- challenge old and dates notions of how
ited nature of his sources, which are com- politics work, the book pushes us not only
posed exclusively of secondary sources in to renew our thoughts on populism, but
English. This poses at least two problems: also to challenge traditional approaches
one the one hand, analyzing a globally to politics in the global age.