Populisms
Quick immersions
"Populisms explains and expands upon the definition of populism. Few books touch a contemporary nerve quite like this one." -- Benjamin Welton, Foreword Reviews.
“Carlos de la Torre offers the reader a masterly overview of populism as a political set of disruptive and mobilizing events, as well as a subject of sustained and diversified academic debate. The book integrates Latin America into the mainstream of populism studies and identifies its proper place in the complex web of overlapping and competing populist ideologies and strategies.”-- Michael Freeden, editor of the Journal of Political Ideologies.
Carlos de la Torre's explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofVriud6w0o
Populisms a Quick Immersion analyzes populism globally and through the lens of Latin America, where populists have governed since the 1930s and 1940s up to the present. When populism is analyzed globally, the novelty is not its presence in most regions of the world. After all, populists have challenged the power of political and economic elites since the nineteenth century, and the first self-described Populist Party was formed in the U.S. in 1891. What is new is that populists are in office not only in Venezuela, Bolivia, the Philippines and Turkey but also in the U.S. as well as other consolidated Western liberal democracies like Italy. By learning from the experiences of populism in the global south, citizens, activists, journalists and politicians in the global north might avoid making the same mistakes when dealing with populists in power.
Carlos de la Torre is a professor of sociology at the University of Kentucky. He received his doctorate from the New School for Social Research. He has been a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. He has published twelve books and more than a hundred articles and chapters in academic publications. Between his books they emphasize The Promises and Perils of Populism: Global Perspectives (The University Press of Kentucky, 2015), Latin American Populism of the Twenty First Century, coedited with Cynthia Arnson (The Johns Hopkins University Press and The Woodrowd Wilson Center Press, 2013 ) and Populist Seduction in Latin America, (Ohio University Press, 2010), second edition.