Binio S. Binev – Post-neoliberal Populism in Latin America and Eastern Europe: Recognizing Family Resemblance

Abstract

This article offers a novel conceptualization and dataset of post-neoliberal populism in contemporary Latin America and Eastern Europe. By drawing insights from structuralist theories, which understood populism as historically grounded in political economy developments, I critique dominant minimal definitions and propose a synthetic conceptual alternative for the analysis of multidimensional and dynamic challengers of the watershed neoliberal revolutions that both regions have undergone since the late twentieth century. To this end, I disaggregate populism’s key dimensions of anti-establishment discourse, illiberal ideology, and strategic organization into functionally interactive attributes; justify post-neoliberal populism as a family resemblance category; and develop a roadmap for case selection and measurement. I then illustrate the empirical validity and theoretical relevance of my approach by assessing the magnitude of post-neoliberal populism in 198 national-level elections in 33 Latin American and Eastern European democracies and by identifying the decline of the traditional Left as its correlate in both regions. By focusing on conceptual unity and cross-regional parallels, the article demonstrates that, contrary to conventional misconceptions, a family resemblance categorization of contemporary populism not only facilitates empirically rigorous research, but also stimulates mid-range theorizing at the intersection of intra-regional specificity and more general historicity.