İki farklı dünya ama aynı popülizm: Hugo Chávez ve Recep Tayyip Erdoğan karşılaştırması

In political science literature, there is a lively debate on how to identify and define populism. Yet, there are limited numbers of scholarly works on the relationship between leadership and populism in juxtaposition with democracy. This study aims to analyze how political leaders rise as the populists and how populist leadership transforms political structures. Following a theoretical debate on definitions of populism with a particular focus on populism as a political strategy, the analysis of the socio-economic and political policy preferences of two different and ideologically contrasting populist leaders, Hugo Chávez and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, demonstrates that once the leaders attain power through the populist strategy, consecutive electoral successes thanks to populism bestows them with the opportunity of personalizing and consolidating their power. Building on their power enables them to restructure the political system along with their political vision which is at times in contradiction with traits of liberal democracy such as contestation, opposition and pluralism. As the analysis of these two cases shows, populism can emerge in very different contexts since the two countries differ in their institutions, democratic legacy, demographics, history and economy. The analysis also reveals the necessary but insufficient conditions of populism shared by the two countries such as the breakdown of the traditional party system, high social inequality, and peculiar traits of political culture, with an emphasis on support for a strong executive and a democratic system. Key Words: Populism, leadership, socioeconomic policies, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,Hugo Chávez