Skip to main content

Populist Authoritariansim in Comparative and Historical Perspective

Date:
-
Location:
WT Young Library Auditorium
Speaker(s) / Presenter(s):
Dr. Kurt Weyland, Dr. Federico Finchelstein, Dr. Silvia Pedraza, Dr. Phillip Penix-Tadsen
Intended Audience:
Students
Faculty
Staff
Open to Public

The global rise of populism from Brexit to the election of Donald Trump has brought populism from the marginalized Global South to the cosmopolitan Global North. Populists are in power not only in unconsolidated and fragile democracies in Latin America, but in Hungary, Poland, Greece, and the U.S. As the world region where populists have come to power since the 1940s, Latin America offers lessons to activists, scholars, and politicians of how populists have undermined democracy from within. Promising to give power back to the people, populists in all regions have followed a playbook of concentration of power in the executive branch, war against the media, regulation of civil society, and the transformation of democratic adversaries into enemies. This symposium will contemplate how, in nations as diverse as Venezuela, Hungary, Ecuador, and Bolivia, populism has displaced democracy and created hybrid political regimes.