The Study Of Populism In The Modernization Process Of Latin America

Since both the Narodniki and the peopled party movement occurred in the late of 19th century the same time,populism has begun to climb the world's politieal stage.In particular,populism has quickly become a worldwide political trend since entering the 21st century.As one of the typical sites where populism occurres,the influence,scope and duration of Latin American populism is unmatched by other countries and regions all over the world.The 20th century of Latin America almost can be seen as"the century of populism".From the point of development course,populism rises and falls throughout the South American modernization.In addition,its emergence,development,prosperity,decline and revival is closely related to regime change and political interests fight which reflects the change of values and the diversity of value judgment in the process of modernization of Latin America.Whatever source is,good or bad,populism is always the important political power of the Latin American countries.To some extent,as a kind of social and political phenomenon,the recurrent populism is so intertwined with modernization.From the point of modernization,as the first independent developing countries in the third world,Latin American countries are also the first to begin to explore modernization.So,Latin America is,as it were,the "lab" of modernization.The centennial arduous exploration of Latin America becomes the important part of great practice of the contemporary developing countries to modernize.As developing countries,the modernization of Latin American countries has experienced three kinds of modernization strategies(classical liberalism,developmentalism and new liberalism),three kinds of economic models(primary products export,import substitution industrialization and new export-led model),and three kinds of political models(oligarchs authoritarian,bureaucratic authoritarianism,modern representative democracy).Today,the Latin American countries are still transforming to modern societies and Latin American populism is walking in the rough.Therefore,this study has sought to explore the root and influence of Latin American populism under the background of modernization of Latin American.We will use multidisciplinary theories(such as politics and sociology)to investigate the process of emergence and development of Latin American populism in the modernization in Latin America,to summarize the general characteristics and objective law of world populism and Latin American populism,to clarify the deep causes of populism,to comprehensively present the influence of populism on modernization in Latin America,and to think about the future development trend of Latin American populism.This article is organized as follows:The Introduction,reflecting the "problem consciousness" in the field of social science research,put forward this research topic——Latin America populism in modernization of Latin American,and illustrated the significance of this topic from the perspectives of theory and reality.Based on previous studies,this article was expected to make a certain progress on many issues(such as the definition,characteristics,roots,and influence of populism,the challenges and trends of new populism).The first chapter vertically combed Latin American populism from the perspective of history.Latin American populism can be divided into three stages:the budding stage from the early 20th century into the 1930s,the stage from the 1930s into the late 1980s,the new evolutionary stage since the 1980s.In the different stages of Latin America populism,this article took for example several typical countries and representative figures to introduce the background and policy orientation,which would form a preliminary judgment on Latin American populism.The second chapter,using the method of comparative analysis,respectively summarized the common characteristics of the world populism and unique characteristics of Latin American populism.World populism was characterized by the grassroots,non-rationality,and criticalness.But Latin American populism was characterized by:taking cities as the main positions,personality cult with the carlisma leadership,and taking the way of reform instead of revolution.The third chapter mainly analyzed from four aspects the roots of populism in the modernization of Latin American.Firstly,from the point of economic roots,as late-development countries,Latin American countries experienced growing poverty and failed to change the weak economic foundation,due to the dependent economy,the lack of market economy and the halfway land reform.Secondly,from the point of political roots,as America's "backyard",Latin American countries are characterized by authoritarian politics,insufficient democracy,and endless "The political pendulum",due to the strong influence of America,the defects of the political system,the lack of strong political support for populism,and the strong and active army.Thirdly,from the ideological and cultural roots,although as the earliest colonial countries strongly influenced by Spain and Portugal,Latin American countries were always in lack of a scientific and democratic culture and national identity.What is more,populism is not hard to exist for a long time in the Latin American mainland due to foreign culture shock.Finally,from the social roots,With the development of modernization and urbanization,Latin American society was suffering from increasing social inequality and the growing spread of populism,due to vertical social stratification,lateral flow of social structure,and frequent social conflict.The fourth chapter mainly analyzed the influence of populism on the modernization of Latin American.Firstly,from a political perspective,on one hand,populism played an indelible role in caring the public,protect the interest of social vulnerable groups,promote equal political participation,and revolting against authoritarian rule,on the other hand,tyranny and political crisis were intensified and democratic transition was struck by populism.Secondly,from a economic perspective,on one hand,populism had a great influence on the strategic transferring of Latin America's economy and readjustment of economic structure,on the other hand,accepted economic measures,to a certain extent,also deepened the plight of unbalanced economic development and restricted the development of market economy.Thirdly,from a social perspective,on one hand,populist policies maintained the interests of some people and improve the public quality of life,on the other hand,it ran counter to populist political slogans,due to middle-income trap and unfair distribution.The fifth chapter was focused on analysising the current issues,challenges and future trends of Latin American populism.Latin American neo-populism was faced with some challenges,such as the deteriorating political ecology,salient economic development problems,intensified social conflicts and escalating social violence.To solve the problems,Latin American populism must improve itself from several aspects,such as guiding theory,political elections,and the party construction.What is more,Latin American populism should promote the reform depending on the actual situation,which was the inevitable course to regain control of the area and further promote the development of modernization of Latin America.The conclusion part of this article made a retrospective summary and reflection,drew a basic conclusion,and discussed the future research areas.