Conclusion

In this paper I have presented a technique for measuring populism in terms of discourse. After explaining and critiquing the discursive definition in the context of other approaches to populism, I take the argument a step further by measuring populist discourse quantitatively across a broad sample of leaders from different countries and across time. I do this through a thematic analysis of actual speeches by these chief executives. This technique produces meaningful results with reasonable face validity and moderate or high reliability, even with small sample sizes. It shows a small percentage of highly populist leaders today (including Chavez) and finds that their discourses are very similar to well-known populists from the past. The implication is that populism defined as discourse is a reasonably coherent and consistent phenomenon that we cannot brush aside for methodological reasons. On the contrary, the burden is now on critics to clarify their definitions and apply them to similar empirical tests.

This technique is fairly efficient in comparison with other standard techniques of textual analysis. Although initial runs of the exercise took 30-45 minutes per speech, the later version of the analysis using a random sample of speeches required only 10-15 minutes. These are respectable times for human-coded content analysis. When we consider that the exercise naturally incorporated the interpretation of the text into the measurement process itself, these times even begin to compare favorably with some of the newer computer-coded content analyses, which leave most of the interpretation for afterwards and incorporate fewer checks of reliability into this part of the process.

This analysis has implications not only for the study of populism, but for the broader study of culture in comparative politics. Political scientists have long used methods such as surveys and content analyses to gauge the presence of certain kinds of meanings in the minds of politicians and voters, but we have yet to face more challenging concepts such as political discourse that reflect intersubjective views of culture. The method I have used here—the analysis of whole texts using overtly interpretive techniques—is one that tries to be faithful to the theoretical insights and ontological assumptions of the interpretivist approach while still maintaining positivist standards of measurement. Traditional discourse analysts may or may not be happy with these results. After all, this is still an attempt to quantify what some may see as unquantifiable, and it glosses over important qualitative distinctions that we can only see by closely analyzing particular speeches. My point in this analysis is not to discredit qualitative techniques, but to complement them with quantitative ones that can enhance our understanding while still respecting culturalist insights.

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