¡EN TIERRA DE CACIQUES! LIDERAZGOS POPULISTAS Y DEMOCRACIA EN ECUADOR.

The objective of this paper is to explore the characteristics of populism from the experience of Ecuador, one of the countries in Latin America that has had more processes of this type. The idea is to identify similarities in the way that the populist style of leadership is exercised from four cases despite the existing differences between these political leaders: Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, Abdala Bucaram Ortiz, Alvaro Noboa Ponton, and Rafael Correa. The argument is that, unlike the prevailing approaches in Ecuadorian literature, populism must be understood as a style of leadership that occurs between leader and follower, which has a series of characteristics that are maintained throughout time, regardless of the contextual and systematic differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]