Understanding Contemporary Populism Through the Latin American Experience

Abstract

This paper discusses how the Latin American experience can help us understand contemporary  populism and its management. This topic starts from  the assumption that structural change and social  contexts help us explain the evolution of populism in  the same way they helped explain the evolution of  violence and management. To do so, we look at the  state of the literature on populism, its relation to the  Latin American experience, the evolution of the  approach to populism, and the conclusions we can  draw from these different perspectives. We conclude  that contemporary populism is also limited in the  same way the contextual approach to Latin American  populism was limited. This also helps us understand  why we still do not have a shared definition of  populism. Overall, we lack the balance between  generalisable and local definitions to help leaders  manage the contemporary violence of populism.