Christian Fleck: In Hirschman's footsteps: Is there a specific rhetoric of populism?

Albert O. Hirschman analyzed in his seminal The Rhetoric of Reaction three modes of reactionary modes of arguing (and added three counter-parts from progressivism). After a presentation of Hirschman’s view I will investigate the role of present day populism and argue that there is no specific rhetoric of it for a simple reason: Populism is no ism at all.

Christian Fleck is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology at University of Graz, Austria. Professor Fleck was president of the Austrian Sociological Association and the ISA’s Research Committee History of Sociology. He gives lectures at the universities in Paris, Berkeley, Minnesota, New York, Moscow and at Harvard University. 

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