Contenu du sommaire : Les populismes

Typologies of populisms, Paolo Pombeni. By basing his analysis on constitutional texts and on the turning points of political life in the major European Countries, Paolo Pombeni puts the question of European populisms at the heart of modem representative regimes and political democracies. Populism is less a marginal case of European policy than one aspect, an inherent given of the democratic process.

Populism and political science. From conceptual mirage to the real problems, Pierre-andré Taguieff. Populism, a word-suitcase, is an un-tried concept, a bastard outgrowth of an undecided "people". It can be reduced neither to a particular political régime nor to fixed ideological contents. From Russian populists of last century to today's omniprésent "telepopulists", political science has tried to delimit its devastating manifestations. Pierre-André Taguieff has drawn up the typology of this defensive system for fictional communities. Canovan, Gellner, Laclau, Weffort and others have been summoned to zero in on this rebellious entity.

Populism and nationalism, Guy Hermet. As of late 18th century, nation and people have been used synonymously by the founders of today's representative regimes. Populism and nationalism are the outgrowths of these two terms, and their marriage, that the French revolutionaries saw to during the founding period of political modernity, has remained valid throughout the 20th c. There were three different types of populism in Europe in the 1930s in which the expressions of ethnically-based national-populism cannot be reduced to the phenomenon of Nazism alone: the first was an additive of political discourse to foment the people's wrath ; the second, carried by in- tellectuals, proposed the political promotion of the humiliated masses by means they laid claim to; and the third one focussed on the real or imagined ethnic solidarity of an old-stock population. Added to these were the North and South-American populisms, whose study shows to what point the desire to control the political intervention of the masses was the unifying element of a generic national-populism.

French populisms, Michel Winock. In taking up again the distinction proposed by Pierre-Andre Taguieff between protestation populism and identity populism, Michel Winock retraces the history of French populisms. While the end-of-century Boulangism and anti-Semitism represented respectively the protestation side and the identity side of populism, their 2Oth century successors, the leagues of the between-world-wars and Pouja- dism, merged. Lepenism is the result of these crossbred populisms.

Public opinion: is it populism?, Jean-Jacques Becker. Has the manipulation of public opinion through the use of propaganda in totalitarian regimes been replaced in democratic regimes by its manipulation through public opinion polls? What if public opinion still existed but were a victim of its measuring instruments which have made it crazy ? It would be no more than a wild element, a permanent Poujadism, a worrisome populism at the heart of our societies' development. The authorities would govern then under the constant pressure of polls and media. This weight, particularly heavy in France, can be explained, according to Jean-Jacques Becker, by centralization and the fact that our country has more escaped the totalitarian strain than our German and Italian neighbours, vaccinated against brainwashing.

Populism and cultural policy, René Rizzardo. The return of populism in France challenges the role of cultural policies in the constitution of the link between individuals and the Nation. Obviously many television practices carry a cultural populism based on profitability. But it is within the framework of local cultural policies that the populism of "cultural taste" expresses the refusal of multiculturalism and the diversity of artistic expressions that characterize it the most clearly. The Populist choices being carried out in municipalities held by the National Front pose the question of the relative failure of Malraux's project of the democratization of culture. On the other hand, decentralization can open the way to cultural policies enrooted in the local fabric, open to artistic innovation and diversity, which would be the best antidote to the rise of populism.

Populismus, populstisch: the German variable, Pierre Ayçoberry. Probably Anglo-Saxon originally, the term Populismus appeared in German vocabulary in the early 1980s. But its genesis becomes clearer through the semantic evolution of the concept of Volk in the political vocabulary starting at the end of the Bismarckian era. Because of the crisis fueled by the rapid changes of German society, the term became weighted with a nationalist, anti-Semitic and anti-capitalist meaning. The First World War definitively promoted the people to the rank of "Supreme Being" and the term volkisch (racist) was fed on the crisis brought on by the defeat. If Nazism is first of all presented as a form of populism, its racist and artistocratic content could only lead to a betrayal of the people with which it claimed to identify. Rejected by a majority in both post-war Germanies, the populist theme and its racist connotations persisted, however, in far-right movements, and the CDU fed on its right the Bavarian populism of Franz Josef Strauss and the CSU. At the other end of the political fan, the "New social movements" that came out of 1968 carried an original populism in its desire to reconcile the Enlightenment and political romanticism, before the collapse of East German gave birth, with the PDS, to a left populism fed by the frustrations due to reunification.

Mussolini between fascism and populism, Pierre Milza. A man of the people, Mussolini remained a populist dictator. Ideologically, he went from a populism of protestation to a national populism. However, fascism is not a form of populism. Corning from the confusion of the middle classes in an industrialized country, fascism doesn't satisfy the criteria, for example, of Latin-American populism.

Populism on the left: the French and Italian cases, Marc Lazar. In France like in Italy, the left repeatedly is tempted by protestation and identity-type populisms. For Marc Lazar, it's more a question of observing a syndrome than a coherent doctrine: idealized representation of a united, just, good, all-powerful but exploited people; defiance towards representative institutions; demands for direct democracy; designation of a charismatic leader, of the dominating enemy and his plots - the corrupt elites. Finally, we're told, the left resists populism because of its acceptance of a traditional democratic framework, old structures and an ideological framework that is stronger than makeshift populisms. Nevertheless, traces of populism can be found in the discourse and behavior of Communist parties especially, in far-left groups but also in the socialists, especially in the periods of broad alliances when it's necessary, to gather "the people". This left-wing populism extends a revolutionary reading of Jacobinism that is distrustful of institutionalised representations by aspiring to the exclusion of all the "privileged".

The appeal to the "little people" according to Stalin, Nicolas Werth. The cause seemed to have been heard. Victorious Bolshevism ruined Russian populism and only the need to defend the old fatherland, in 1941, could give a populist color to the Red Army and its glo- rious Chief. However, Nicolas Werth tells us, at the worst moment of the Great Terror of collectivization, Stalin had already begun to count on the hatred of the «little people» for their new «little leaders» and to play with impunity at being the good Czar righting wrongs. Stalinism and populism: to continue the comparison is fruitful.

From Vargas to Collor: faces of Brazilian populism, Camille Goirand. Brazil is obvioulsy a land of favor for populism. But the term there is used for many regional and national experiences. And today it's losing its force. Is it the sign of the disappearance of an exhausted political form or the announcement of its metamorphosis?

Latin-American populism put to the test of European models, Diana Quattrocchi-Woisson. Sometimes challenged, the term of populism nevertheless seems to apply directly to Latin America. Sociologists and anthropologists accept this consensus today. But it has to be implemented. The thinking on the comparative uses of the term and its varied meanings lead to a reconsideration of the works of the great Latin-American precursors. Here is an inventory that is rather comforting for history.

Populist rhetoric in the United States, Pierre Melandri. In the last two centuries, used simultaneously or one after the other by Republicans and Democrats, the populist discourse, revelator of the mood of the country, is not the reflection of a precise school of thought in the United States. Nourished by resentment, frustrations and nostalgia of a former order in which social status and cultural identities were supposed to be stronger, American populism is fundamentally ambivalent. At the end of the 19th century, it claimed to defend the poor whites hit by the economic and social consequences of the Civil War; after the Second World War, it was against the recognition of the extension of the rights of minorities; after 1973, the Republicans exploited the fear of decline that haunted many Americans. Thus, each thrust of populism has its roots in an increase of troubles, whether economic or social.

Quasi-populisms of South-East Asia?, Jean-Louis Margolin. Only the regimes of President Sukarno has been able to be episodically but rightfully called populist. As for South-East Asia, it has other resources to impose moral order and to indoctrinate the people. Populisms have ebbed; a quasi-populism is vegetating: economic expansion is more profitable for a "neo-Bismackism". Here is the first overall study of a quasi-case.

Islamism and populism, Rémy Leveau. The irruption of Islamist movements on front and Middle-East stage coincide with the wearing out of political slogans developed during decolonization. It is contemporary with the adoption of a free-market development model in which economic globalization has increased the social cost. By turning against the leaders who had supported them for a long time because they considered them as a useful counterweight to the Marxist opposition, the Islamicists recuperated the discontent of the young populations, frustrated in their hopes for prosperity. They proposed a just model founded on religion and community and offered an outlet for the despair of societies that felt like humiliated victims of foreign powers. This maximalist discourse doesn't exclude compromise with the powers in place, as shown by the example of Turkey or Algeria before the explosion of the present conflict. A political and cultural movement Islamism is also a "populist" response to economic policies of structural adjustment imposed from the exterior that the political and economic elites have used at the price of the exclusion of major parts of the society.

Populism? Maurice Agulhon, Bertrand Badie, Alain Bergougnioux, Alain Besançon, Odile Rudelle, Jean Stengers, Benjamin Stora, Paul Thibaud et Alain Touraine. «What do you think and what should one think, according to you, of the concept of populism and its scientific and civic uses, to understand a contemporary society, from yesterday to today?» This was the question that Vingtième siècle posed (well before the French elections of June 1, 1997) to historians, political scientists, sociologists, researchers and intellectuals. Here is a selection of their answers, all very free, and that point out the convergences around which this issue was constructed.