Venezuela : reenactment of the "radical" populism?

Abstract

For about a few years populism has became a popular issue for debates within the academic field. This term has had a broad use during the sixties and seventies, under the leadership of Latin American scholars and during the Import-Substitution phase. Booth of them helped understand Latin American socio-economic reality. Today, this concept has been resuscitated for intellectuals after the reemergence of such distinct populist leaders. The purpose of this paper is to characterize President Chavez and his political ideals as being a form of radical populism. First, we move from Latin American populism to focus on Ernesto Laclau, who considers populism, principally, as a way to create such populist actors during highly critical phase of the hegemony. Second, we characterize (grosso modo) populism incarnating within the Bolivarian Movement as one responding to the various forms of the classical populism in the region, as well as unique to Venezuela political spectrum. Finally, we revise and evaluate, based on available information, some gubernatorial policies, which we think are important to understand this issue. We conclude with a final comment.