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    A Study Guide for Political Theories for Students: POPULISM
    A Study Guide for Political Theories for Students: POPULISM
    A Study Guide for Political Theories for Students: POPULISM
    Ebook50 pages39 minutes

    A Study Guide for Political Theories for Students: POPULISM

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    Designed with busy students in mind, this concise study guide examines major political theories and is organized into the following easily digestible sections: overview, history, theory in depth, theory in action, analysis and critical response, topics for further study, and bibliography.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJan 27, 2015
    ISBN9781535831178
    A Study Guide for Political Theories for Students: POPULISM

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      A Study Guide for Political Theories for Students - Gale

      centuries.

      HISTORY

      It is not unusual to hear candidates, platforms, and even political parties described as populist by pundits and analysts. The word seems to mean different things to different people, or everything to everyone. Populism in its varied forms has appeared across the world, but perhaps no nation has provided a better illustration of the varieties and patterns of the political theory than the United States.

      WHO CONTROLS GOVERNMENT? Elected officials

      HOW IS GOVERNMENT PUT INTO POWER? Elected by popular vote

      WHAT ROLES DO THE PEOPLE HAVE? Pressure big business if unfair or unethical

      WHO CONTROLS PRODUCTION OF GOODS? The people

      WHO CONTROLS DISTRIBUTION OF GOODS? The people

      MAJOR FIGURES William Jennings Bryan; George Wallace

      HISTORICAL EXAMPLE OF GOVERNMENT People's Party in U.S South in the 1890s

      CHRONOLOGY

      1829: Andrew Jackson becomes president of the United States.

      1857: In England, Aleksandr Herzen begins the newspaper Kolokol and with it the first free Russian press abroad.

      1869: The Knights of Labor are founded in the United States.

      1881: Members of the People's Will terrorist society assassinate Tsar Alexander II.

      1891: Delegates representing voter alliances, farm organizations, and reform groups meet in Cincinnati and discuss the formation of a Populist Party, also called the People's Party.

      1896: William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech and is nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic and Populist parties.

      1946: Juan Perón is elected president of Argentina.

      1950: Senator Joseph McCarthy starts the Red Scare by announcing that communists have infiltrated the U.S. State Department.

      1968: George Wallace runs for U.S. president as the candidate of the American Independent Party.

      1979: Jerry Falwell founds the Moral Majority.

      1992: Ross Perot runs for U.S. president as an independent candidate.

      The seed of populist thought began with the War of Independence and its promise that the people could liberate their government from the hands of elites far away and take control of it themselves. The egalitarian spirit of the Declaration of Independence—all men are created equal—and the empowerment of the U.S. Constitution—We the people—reinforced this promise. Two visions informed this impulse. First, the experience of the Protestant Reformation in Europe and the subsequent Great Awakenings in North America fostered belief in a personal God who could be reached by individuals without the mediation of a religious hierarchy. This religious change also socialized people to expect breaks with old churches and the establishment of new ones, emotional rhetoric, vivid oratory, and communal meetings. In other words, people learned to question authority, break with tradition, and gather to enjoy intense community building.

      Another building block of what became populism was the message of the Great Enlightenment, the idea that individuals could be reasonable and rational—and that the past and the people in it often were not. The permission to think for one's self, and to criticize the traditions that came before, including the systems of government and privilege, fed into the populist mentality. Many revolutionary writers such as Thomas Paine, who supported the War of Independence, drew from the rationalist religion of the Enlightenment when appealing to the masses to rise up against England.

      Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President from 1801 to 1809, served as a kind of proto–populist figure. Though not a true democrat in the sense that he didn't support direct

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