ABSTRACT
The analysis presented in this chapter explores the logic of populist mobilization. On the basis of a brief study of five major cases, both historical and contemporary, I seek to ascertain what are the central mechanisms informing populist strategy and the conditions conducive to its success. The results suggest that successful populist mobilization depends on a combination of several crucial factors: first, on populist actors’ ability to invoke a morally grounded ideational repertoire of contestation, centered upon a strong sense of social justice; second, their ability to appeal to diffuse emotions, such as anger, indignation and resentment, and package them as a coherent narrative of victimization; and third, their ability to translate this narrative into a political discourse centered upon the establishment of an antagonistic “internal frontier” between “the people” and a discursively constructed unitary “enemy” (e.g., la oligarquía, la casta, la classe politique), indicted as corrupt and contemptuous of ordinary people, their aspirations and values.
