Critically Reinterpreting Populism in Africa

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Over the last decade, a growing political science literature on populism has documented the rise of political challengers across the globe in countries like the United States, the Philippines, Brazil, and Uganda, who have deployed anti-establishment rhetoric to secure impressive electoral showings in defiance of expert predictions. In this panel, we comparatively analyze the emergence and variation of contemporary political movements in Africa that have been labelled as “populist” by scholars and journalists alike, asking whether populism provides an appropriate theoretical framework to understand these political challengers to the status quo. If so, what do we mean by populism? Is this concept best understood as a strategy, a discourse, an ideology, a style, or a combination of some or all these elements? Furthermore, is populism simply a cloak for autocratic ambition or can it be used to support radical political alternatives in African politics, or to re-imagine democracy beyond its liberal variations? Drawing on a range of methods, including social media mapping, survey experiments, interviews, and archival research, the papers on this panel investigate whether expressions of populism in cases such as Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa support or challenge pre-existing theoretical assumptions about its democratic possibilities, limitations, and consequences. In doing so, they illustrate what the study of these movements in Africa can offer to our broader understanding of populism globally.

Sub Unit

• Division 53: African Politics

Chair

• Luke Melchiorre Universidad de los Andes

Discussant

• Peter M. Lewis Johns Hopkins University

Individual Presentations

• Populist Partisans and Public Confidence in the 2022 Kenyan Elections - Udoi Rateng, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; M. Anne Pitcher, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Rod Alence, University of the Witwatersrand

• The Generational Populism of Bobi Wine and Uganda's Neoliberal Consensus - Luke Melchiorre, Universidad de los Andes

• Do Existing Populist Definitions Travel to South Africa? - Robert E Nyenhuis, University of Northumbria

• Populist Challenges to South Africa’s Energy Transition - Nicole Beardsworth, University of Pretoria; Ruth Bookbinder; Alexander Beresford