Populism: Still something of a Kafka trap

Abstract

Corrigan reviews Petar Stankov'sThe Political Economy of Populism: An Introduction (Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy) Taylor & Francis, 2021. While the book reviews populism and its meanings in other parts of the world, Corriga finds that its multi-disciplinary exploration of "the interplay between identity, the economy and inequality to explain the dynamics of populist votes since the beginning of the 20th century” has much to offer African scholars. Populism, argues Stankov, can be defined as "a quasi-ideology, or better still, a political strategy, which creates and nurtures radically conflicting identities for political gain". Corrigan finds that the book's correlations between voting and particular drivers of populist sentiment, and between various forms of populist incumbency and political rights, civil liberties and economic performance, explain much about the particular form that populism has taken in othe regions of the world. He concludes that the book's most valuable contribution is that it provides the interested reader with food for thought for further investigation, and asks whether it would make sense to speak of a distinctly African variant of populism, based on charismatic leadership.