Varieties of populism in 21st-century Latin America and their manifestations in regional integration

“Populism” is a contested term, receiving multiple qualifications in the historical record. From classic to radical populism, the scholarship on Latin America’s experience is no exception. While such efforts to grasp the phenomenon underscore its inherent plurality, they fail to recognize its limited diversity, leading to questions about their analytical validity. To address this situation, we analyze a sample of speeches of six presidents in 21st-century Latin America related, to different extents, to regional integration. This topic is particularly relevant given the growing attention to specific issues in the literature, where foreign policy stands out, and the contested nature of regionalism itself. We employ sociocultural viability theory’s typology, which depicts four ideal-typical ways of perceiving, ordering, and justifying social arrangements: individualism, hierarchy, egalitarianism (which are all active), and fatalism (which is passive). The results show that the three active worldviews account for all varieties of populism. By so doing, this framework brings a degree of order to the debate and points to promising avenues for further research.