Clarifying a contested concept: Populism in the study of Latin American politics
Clarifying a contested concept: Populism in the study of Latin American politics
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DOI：
10.2307/422412
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发表时间：
2001
影响因子：
2.3
通讯作者：
Kurt Weyland
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Kurt Weyland
社会科学家通常会遇到不清楚和有争议的概念。受竞争理论的启发，作者强调了一系列复杂的定义特征中的不同属性。这些内涵上的差异导致了外延上的差异，因为学者们将同一术语应用于不同的案例。因此，不清楚一位作者的结论如何适用于另一位作者的不同定义所界定的案件。因此，概念上的分歧阻碍了知识的积累。事实上，学者们可以通过将不一致的结果归因于定义的差异来保护他们的论点免受批评。由于缺乏概念上的一致性，作者们“各执一词”，避免讨论反驳。由此产生的分裂阻碍了辩论和批评，这是学术进步的引擎。“一个特别令人困惑的概念是民粹主义。学者们不仅在其具体属性上存在分歧，而且在其主要领域上也存在分歧。民粹主义应该用政治、社会、经济和/或话语的术语来定义吗？由于这些概念上的分歧，各种各样的政府、政党、运动、领导人和政策都被贴上了民粹主义的标签，学者们发现民粹主义具有截然不同的特征。相反，在过去的十年里，民粹主义的研究蓬勃发展。[4]显然，许多作者继续认为民粹主义是一个有用的，甚至是不可或缺的，在阐明拉丁美洲政治的概念。因此，本文采用了一种不同的方法，受到Sartori的“概念分析指南”的启发。“5它试图澄清民粹主义的含义，并提出一个新的定义。为了将辩论置于系统的背景下，它首先区分了不同类型的概念化。然后，它评估了澄清民粹主义最有用的类型。最后，通过确定民粹主义的域和属，明确其具体特征，区分两种亚型，对民粹主义进行了系统的重新界定。
Social scientists commonly encounter concepts that are unclear and contested. Authors inspired by competing theories emphasize different attributes from a complex set of defining characteristics. These differences in intension produce differences in extension as scholars apply the same term to divergent sets of cases. Therefore, it is unclear how one author's findings apply to the cases delimited by another's different definition. Conceptual disagreements thus hinder the cumulation of knowledge. Indeed, scholars can shield their arguments from criticism by attributing discordant results to definitional differences. Due to the lack of conceptual agreement, authors "talk past each other" and avoid addressing counterarguments. The resulting fragmentation obstructs debate and criticism, the engines of scholarly progress.' A particularly confusing concept is populism. Scholars have diverged not only over its specific attributes, but also over its primary domain. Should populism be defined in political, social, economic, and/or discursive terms? Due to these conceptual disagreements, a wide variety of governments, parties, movements, leaders, and policies has been labeled populist, and scholars have found populism to have radically divergent characteristics.2 To flee from this confusion, some authors have advocated abandoning the concept.3 But the scholarly community has refused to follow these calls. Instead, in the last decade studies of populism have thrived.4 Evidently, many authors continue to regard populism as a useful, even indispensable, concept in elucidating Latin American politics. This article therefore applies a different approach, inspired by Sartori's "guidelines for concept analysis."5 It seeks to clarify the meaning of populism and to propose a new definition. To place the debate in a systematic context, it first distinguishes different types of conceptualization. It then assesses the most useful type in clarifying populism. Finally, populism is systematically redefined by determining its domain and genus, clarifying its specific characteristics, and distinguishing two subtypes.