Populism in Latin America

In this paper a review of the academic research done on democracy and populism in Latin America is undertaken. As a precedent for the study of populism, the characterization and development of democratic political systems are established. It is pointed out that some authors do not distinguish between different types of populism, while others differentiate between national-populism and neopopulism, and between classical populism and contemporary populism. These differences are quite clear in the economic and political contexts which point to specific peculiarities in both right-wing conservative and left-wing populist leaderships. We conclude by characterizing Venezuelan presidents Perez, Caldera and Chavez using the features that Cammack attributes to Latin-American populist leaderships.