21st century Populisms, a new phase after the national popular turn at the beginning of the century?

Abstract

The aim of this dossier's introduction is to situate the debate on the status of the category of populism to think about current political processes in Latin America. It proposes different critical uses of the theory of populism to which key notions of political theory and political science ‒such as State, hegemony, national-popular, radical right-wing‒ are added, in order to interrogate the ongoing political phenomenon framed in a new wave of progressive governments in Latin America, after the first one that emerged at the beginning of the 21st century. The text argues that the theory of populism deployed in three dimensions can operate as a resource to understand the evolution of these governments: as a historical process, as a producer of subjects and identities, and as a type of government that manages the social order. Based on this conceptualization, the dossier addresses the new national-popular turn, distinguishing two blocks of countries: the first, composed of those such as Colombia and Mexico that were not part of the so-called "pink tide", and the second, formed by those characterized by a "populist return", such as Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil, which present marked differences with respect to the experiences of the beginning of the century.