Blaming the Victim? Conditions for Opposition Success Against Populism

Scholars have argued that forceful, contentious opposition moves against populist chief executives have backfired and inadvertently strengthened these incumbents and induced them to redouble their destruction of democracy. The proposed paper argues, however, that these claims fail to consider the political-institutional context in which opposition forces feel compelled to employ these contentious means – namely when the populist incumbent has taken over the official institutions and thus foreclosed any chances for opposition success via conventional institutional channels. To rectify this inferential problem, the paper undertakes a wide-ranging analysis of the political-institutional, structural, and conjunctural conditions of opposition success against populism. This analysis suggests that opposition forces can defeat populism under two sets of conditions, which prevail at opposite poles of institutional strength: On the one hand, when institutions retain significant independence and robustness, opponents can defeat populists through conventional participation in the electoral arena (e.g., Bolsonaro and Trump). On the other hand, where institutions are highly unstable, opponents can defeat populists through a combination of protests and institutional machinations (e.g., Bucaram, Gutiérrez, Castillo). By contrast, where populists have taken control of institutions, the opposition has great difficulty winning, either through institutional participation or through extra-institutional contention. The paper documents these patterns by investigating the last four decades of populist politics in Latin America.