Theories Of Populism

Media has always been a fundamental instrument in the works and mechanisms of politics. As such, it has been the channel through which people become more informed, thus politically engaged with the different issues in the society. However, over the years, we have witnessed media’s drastic evolution.

Through the advent of technology, media has transformed itself to be more and more independent. We have witnessed this particular platform’s shift of trend from News Media (TV, radio, Newspaper, etc.) to Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc.). The difference between the two is fundamental in the sense that if we take the factor of time, for example, in terms of delivering information, the gap displays a large discrepancy. Moreover, the latter

It is young especially in the field of comparative politics. Populism’s pioneer wave have only begun in 1969 (Sartori, 1970). During this time, scholars of populism gathered together in London to challenge themselves in searching out the concept’s underlying unity (Sartori, 1970). However, they failed to do so. As a consequences, the conceptual ambiguoism to populism will be brought all throughout (Sartori, 1970). Nevertheless, it can still be understood through four main approaches namely: 1. As an ideology; 2. As a political strategy; 3. As a discourse; and 4. As a political style. According to Cas Mudde (2004), populism is a “thin centered ideology” that divides the people in the society into camps: First, the moral people and second, the amoral elite. It is said that it is a “thin” cenetered ideology because it still can cater other types of ideology, or in other words permeable. It is not strong enough to stand alone as an ideology (Mudde, 2004). In fact, it misses any bearing of what an ideology really is. It loses an account of the status quo, of an ideal society, and of concrete ways on how to get from the status quo to the ideal society (Heywood,

It is too thin to be considered as such. Rather, populism is a political strategy. As a strategy, it was mainly developed during the second (Classical Populism) to third (Neopopulism) wave. In the former, it draws its inspiration from two influences: 1. Modernization and 2. Dependency. In modernization, the take here is that because there is urbanization and industrialization, therefore there is mass education. As people become educated and modernized, there is a declince of traditional political authority (Weyland, 2001). Moreover, the working class who felt excluded to this modernization saw populism as something that would cater their demands and therefore appealing (Weyland, 2001). Dependency, on the other hand, refers to the condition when peripheral states united against the core. This anger was mainly fueled by the very role of the periphereal states which is to supply raw materials to the core. Populism in this influence is appealing to the multi-class alliances (Weyland,