Populism as a political strategy

This chapter presents a case that the political approach to populism has empirical and analytical advantages. Among scholars using the approach to populism, there are obviously differences of opinion, including divergent views of the key or defining attributes of the populist strategy. For the dependency-based approaches, crises of peripheral countries' development strategies uprooted popular classes, making mass constituencies available for mobilization. The political approach can cut through contrasting national circumstances, varying economic positions and policies, and differences among social constituencies, and permit effective comparative analysis. Discussions of types of mobilization and the organizational characteristics that may accompany them lead some to conclude that the political approach is really about institutions. One advantage of the political approach is its connection with earlier understandings of populism. Another benefit of defining populism as a political strategy concerns its operationalization.