The Making of the Populist Movement

Adam Slez is a historical sociologist interested in the phenomenon of populism. Framing his study of South Dakota populism through the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016 and the rise of populist political movements in American history, he has added to the scholarship. Historians should take his work seriously. Arguing that “the rise of electoral Populism in the American West was an outgrowth of the transformation of physical space resulting from the simultaneous expansion of both state and market” and framing the development of white settlement, Slez's geographical framework takes a familiar story and retells it in a useful way (p. 21). Historians know that the railroad created both wealth and resentment, yet Slez adds a deeply grained discussion of the choices made by both railroads and regional elites as to where rail lines would run and how those choices framed how farmers responded through politics. For Slez, the growth of electoral populism from the 1890 through the 1896 election years was less of an ideological opposition to the railroads themselves, as they were a necessary way for farmers to insert themselves in the political arena since the states and the nation lacked a regulatory bureaucracy for them to fight for justice

Bureaucracy · Framing (construction · Frontier · Ideology · Opposition (politics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Populism · Resentment · Scholarship · Sociology · History · Law