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Professor Francisco Panizza

This course is available on the BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in History and Politics, BSc in International Social and Public Policy with Politics, BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (with a Year Abroad), BSc in Politics, BSc in Politics and Data Science, BSc in Politics and Economics, BSc in Politics and History, BSc in Politics and International Relations, BSc in Politics and Philosophy and BSc in Social Anthropology. This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

This course is capped at one group.

The course studies populism from a conceptual and comparative perspective. Given the highly contested nature of populism, the first weeks will look in depth to different theories of populism, including ideational, strategic, and performative understandings of populism. It will then move to explore the conditions of emergence of populism, the relation between populism and democracy, varieties of populism and grassroots populist movements. The last three lectures will seek to apply the conceptual tools presented in the first part of the course to regional and country case studies.

This course provides a combination of classes and lectures totalling 25 hours in the Winter term. There will be a reading week in Week 6 of the WT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the WT.

One short essay (approx. 500-700 words) to be submitted in Week 8 of the WT. The formative essay will consist of a draft outline of the summative essay. It will require the choice of an essay topic and title, the justification of why it is relevant, a short literature review, the formulation of the essay question and a summary of how the question will be addressed (for instance, using comparative cases). The essay will not receive a grade, instead feedback will be provided to promote critical thinking and guide students through the real-life process of academic writing. Students will not be allowed to submit the summative essay without previously submitting the formative essay.

Essential Readings

• Ben Moffit. Populism. Cambridge: Polity, 2020.
• Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul Taggat, Pierre Ostiguy and Paulina Ochoa- Espejo (eds). Oxford Handbook on Populism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Additional Readings

• M. Canovan,. “Trust the People”. Populism and the two faces of democracy. Political Studies 47 (11) 1999.
• Jan-Werner Müller. What is Populism?  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.
• P. Ostiguy, F. Panizza and B. Moffitt. Populism in Global Perspective. A Performative and Discursive Approach. New York: Routledge, 2021.
• C. de la Torre (ed) Routledge Handbook of Global Populism. London: Routledge, 2019.

Presentation (20%) in the WT.
Essay (80%, 3500 words) in the ST.

The essay will be marked in line with departmental guidance on assessed essays. This will allow for a scale of outcomes in line with different levels of academic outputs. It will be marked for command of the literature, theories and empirical findings, analytical sophistication, use of evidence, critical judgement and originality. The individual class presentations will take the form of a 15-minute presentation followed by 30 minutes of questioning from both the class and the teacher. Particular value will be placed on the ability to present contending arguments in a clear and balanced way, the use of empirical evidence to support arguments and the capacity to raise relevant questions for class discussion.