Populism, Then and Now

 

Possibly better known for her books on Arendt and Chesterton, Margaret Canovan was surely one of the most important British theorists of the early 21st Century in the now burgeoning field of political science sometimes called "populist theory." Canovan wrote her final book, The People, in 2005 and died in 2018. 

I have only now gotten around to reviewing one of her books, although her 1991 Populism was one of the works that first got me interested in earlier and later versions of the American "Progressivism" of the late 19th and early 20th Century. And it had been the advocates of that sort of "populism," folks like Oregon's W.S. U'ren, who struggled (only occasionally with success) to bring reforms like Recall, Referendum, proportional and vote ranking systems, the "short ballot," and the Single Tax, to various states or municipalities around the country. I can't deny that it was learning about those movements that first nudged me into democratic theory. In fact, it was an old Single Taxer from central Massachusetts who told me that his father had also been a Georgist and his grandfather an abolishonist, who got me to read Progress and Poverty when I wasn't yet 30. (For good or ill, that isn't the sort of book one is introduced to in graduate programs in analytic philosophy.) 

Canovan spent much of her career explaining both the foundations and importance of those types of populist movements. And her discussions of what "popular sovereignty" is and who "We, the People" might be referring to on the various occasions of its use remain of great importance.

Anyhow, my new review of Canovan's last book is now in 3:16 AM Magazine and can be found here.