ABSTRACT
Populism is a recurrent feature of Latin America’s political experience. In the Andes, a sub-region that includes Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, it seems to be a particularly ingrained form of political representation. As Carlos Franco has put it for the Peruvian case, while the loyalty of the urban poor to specific populist leaders has been sporadic, the poor have shown a “continuing loyalty to populism” itself (Franco 1991, 100). In this chapter I seek to provide a working definition of populism, examine its resurgence in the last twenty years, and analyze the ways in which it has morphed recently in reaction to a changing political environment. It is clear that for a number of reasons recently discussed by scholars (Mainwaring, Bejarano, and Pizarro Leongómez 2006, 1-46), there is a crisis of democratic representation-and thus a growing demand for new political alternatives-in the Andes. A significant proportion of citizens, mostly indigenous and poor, re-embrace populism in hopes of improving their prospects or in rejection of traditional politicians. The emerging and, in some countries, growing middle class searches for modern and largely democratic representation. Although this chapter focuses on the persistent attraction of populism and its risks, we should not forget that there are also emerging efforts to provide modernizing and democratizing representation in the Andes (Kornblith et al. 2004; Roncagliolo and Meléndez 2007). These movements, unfortunately, remain weak and inchoate as they have trouble reaching out to the poor and the indigenous.
