`Populism': A Brief Biography

In: Sociology: the journal of the British Sociological Association, Volume 5, Issue 3, p. 371-387

Abstract

Within the past ten years the vocabulary of political sociology has been augmented by the addition of the word `populism'. Its general acceptance has yet to be achieved; but in the past five years its use has spread enormously. The purpose of the paper is to provide a brief `biography' of the concept of `populism', examining the changing way in which the word has come to be used in its lifetime. It is argued that the confusion which has attended the growth in its use is not merely a semantic problem, arising from the inability of various writers to define their terms, but an important indicator of the nature of the phenomenon. The major difficulty is seen as lying in the lack of an acceptable general theoretical framework within which to handle the political development of peasant societies. The notion of such societies as `part-societies', widespread in current anthropology, is examined as a possible starting point for such a general framework.