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Using the conceptual framework of populism as discourse, Ritchie Savage provides a comparative analysis of U.S. and Latin American speeches and articles covering Betancourt´s Acción Democrática, Chávez, McCarthyism, and the Tea Party. In so doing, he reveals an essential structure to populist discourse: reference to the "opposition" as a representation of the persistence of social conflict, posed against a collective memory of the origins of democracy and struggle for equality, is present in all cases. This discursive formation of populism is carried out in comparisons of political discourse in the United States and Venezuela, two countries that are typically classified as empirically specific in their economic and political development and ideological orientation. Populist Discourse in Venezuela and the United States explores how instances of populism, once exceptional phenomena within modern forms of political rule, are becoming increasingly integrated with the structure of democratic politics.

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1. Introduction

2. The Negative Proof of the Discursive Model: Populism as a Conceptual and Empirical Problem

3. From Betancourt to Chávez: Interpreting Venezuelan Populism in Two Revolutionary Governments

4. From McCarthyism to the Tea Party: Interpreting Anti-Leftist Forms of U.S. Populism in Comparative Perspective

5. A Comparison of New Institutionalized Populism in Venezuela and the United States

6. Everything in History Happens: Further Problems with Populism as a Comparative-Historical Phenomenon

7. Conclusion

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Ritchie Savage is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Sociology at Baruch College (CUNY), John Jay College (CUNY), and Pratt Institute in New York City, USA. He researches populism and political discourse and specializes in social and political theory, language, culture, movements, and psychoanalysis.

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