How would life have been without Mozart? Here’s an answer:
Mozart
Alexis Tsipras as leftist populist leader: A photoblog
This photoblog is based on a PowerPoint sequence of visuals with short captions, put together while I was writing a little op-ed, in Greek, on Tsipras’s leftist populist leadership during Greece’s decade of crisis. The op-ed was published in Kathimerini.
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Continue reading “Alexis Tsipras as leftist populist leader: A photoblog”
The swift extinction of Europe’s ruling nativist parties.
Whether because of the conceptual confusion between populist and nativist parties, (which are often but erroneously lumped together in the ill-defined categories of “far right” or “nationalist populist,”) or whether because of the spectacular lack of knowledge about the country cases out there, most people, including serious journalists, policy makers, and politicians, fail to make sense of the — no so subtle — distinctions among contemporary democracy’s main challengers. Take, for instance, the nativist parties.
First the news: Earlier today, Norway’s Progress Party (party logo pictured above), a long-term junior coalition partner in Norway’s broadly conservative government, quit office. This is small global news, perhaps, but reveals something really big, at least for Europe. For, as of now, January 2020, no nativist party enjoys governmental power in any European country (bar Switzerland). Second, the irritant: Who are now going to cry wolf when no wolf does really exist? Now, the facts:
Fact #1: Before 2000, there were no nativist parties in Europe to have enjoyed governmental responsibilities. Continue reading “The swift extinction of Europe’s ruling nativist parties.”
The family album of the most important postwar populist rulers in Europe and the Americas
Who are the significant illiberal leaders who have ruled, and in several cases still rule, in the lands of populism? Here’s the complete postwar populist family album in Europe and the Americas. With the exception of the recent cases of Poland, Mexico and (arguably) Bolsonaro’s Brazil, all other populist leader cases are examined in depth and compared to each other in my book on Populism and Liberal Democracy. Enjoy the show!
ARGENTINA
Bad concepts
This is the third in a series of posts about concepts and the (good and bad) ways in which we use them to conceptualize real-world politics. The first post was about concepts in general and how they work. The second post was about “good” concepts while this third post is about “bad” concepts.
WHEN A CONCEPT IS BAD?
Unlike good concepts, which feature a simple term, unambiguous meaning, and clearly identifiable referents, a concept is said to be bad when (1) it is based on a confusing term, (2) its meaning-to-word is ambiguous, which results in definitional disasters, and (3) its meaning-to-referents is vague, which makes operationalization, and eventually the classification of the units to be analyzed, impossible. Bad concepts lead to a bad understanding of the world.
Several good examples of bad concepts are in Cas Mudde’s new book The Far Right Today (a research area that is close to my own research interests and about which I claim some knowledge myself). The book is full of terms meant to signify a host of “ideologies,” which merge and combine with each other only to produce more confusion. The main definitions (as presented at the book’s end in glossary form) are below. This terminological maze is the result of two major errors: |A| poor conceptualization, which creates definitional disasters, and |B| false synonymies, which derail concept operationalization and frustrate the classification of empirical cases. Let me clarify. Continue reading “Bad concepts”
When a concept is good?
This is a second post on concepts and how to use them in both our everyday lives and in academic analysis. The first post was about concepts in general, the present one is about “good” concepts. A third post follows about “bad” concepts, and a fourth one about more bad concepts in the form of “cat-dogs.” All posts owe to the work of the great Giovanni Sartori on concepts and methodology in social and political sciences.
How do we conceptualize, AND what is a ‘good’ concept?
To conceptualize is far from easy. It requires three moves at once: (a) decide on a simple term with (b) unambiguous meaning that (c) points clearly to specific comparable referent units. We have a good concept when it expresses clear meaning and helps to seize the object.
A concept is good when it expresses clear meaning and helps to seize the object. Only good concepts may establish boundaries that separate the object that we want explained from other objects that may look similar but are not the same.
Continue reading “When a concept is good?”About concepts
This is the first in a series of posts about concepts and the (good and bad) ways we conceptualize the real world of politics. The second post explains when a concept is “good” while the third post is about “bad” concepts. These posts are inspired by the work and follow the tradition of the late great theorist Giovanni Sartori.
What is a concept?
To the extent that we try to understand the world out there, a concept is the basic unit of our thinking.
As shown in the graph (featured image above), concepts have a triangular structure.
How to defeat populism – IV
This is the fourth and last in a mini-series of posts about how to beat populism at the polls. The first post emphasized the availability of a liberal leader, the second post stressed the need of establishing the leader’s authority over a party, and the third post was about the requirement of a credible and realistic policy agenda that would benefit the broader middle classes. This post suggests that the liberal leader utilizes a moderate discourse, aims at achieving political compromise, and defends institutional legality. As with the previous posts, the empirical case analyzed is contemporary Greece, and especially the more recent defeat of left populist SYRIZA by the liberal right-of-center party of New Democracy (ND) led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis. It bears repetition, Greece’s lessons are perfectly portable! So, if you’re interested in the forthcoming presidential elections in the US, please take note.
4/4 RHETORIC, CONSENSUS-BUILDING, INSTITUTIONAL LEGALITY
Throughout the opposition years, Mitsotakis was consistent in using a moderate political discourse which, on the one hand, emphasized the need to reinvigorate Greece’s damaged liberal institutions while, on the other hand, worked toward consensus-building and political compromise. To those ends, and in sharp contrast to the populists’ polarizing motto of “either Them or Us,” Mitsotakis offered a vision of national unity in which the government should not work for “the many [hoi polloi] but for all Greeks [holloi].” Above all, he sought to create an electoral majority consisting largely of entrepreneurial middle-class ordinary people to whom he proposed a sensible policy agenda centered on four issues of general concern: economic growth, public security, state functionality, and halting Greece’s human drain that continued unabated for over a decade.
How to defeat populism – III
This is the third in a mini-series of posts about how to beat populism at the polls. In the first post we emphasized the availability of a liberal leader while the second post we stressed the need of establishing the leader’s authority over a party. This post is about the third requirement for beating populism, namely, a coherent and realistic policy agenda that will serve the interests of the middle classes in society without damaging the liberal institutions. As before, the empirical case study from which we draw theoretical lessons comes from the recent trouncing of Greece’s left populist SYRIZA by the liberal right-of-center party of New Democracy (ND) led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Let me however repeat: Greece’s lessons are perfectly portable! So, if you’re interested in the forthcoming presidential elections in the US, please take note.
3/4 THE POLICY AGENDA
Given that populism in power is an illiberal, socially divisive, and politically polarizing project, which also depends heavily on the selective distribution of state-related resources to friends and the penalization of foes, liberalism in opposition should aim at the exact opposite – namely, put forward a political project that would benefit the middle classes, who also constitute the vast majority of the national electorate.
How to defeat populism – II
This is the second in a mini-series of posts about how to beat populism at the polls. In the first post we emphasized the availability of a liberal leader who, as we have already seen in a third post, must credibly propose a realistic policy agenda. Unfortunately, not that many such cases from the real world of modern and contemporary politics exist. Perhaps the most significant of them are the defeat of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi by a coalition of liberal forces in 2013 and the electoral defeat of Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner by Mauricio Macri in 2015. Yet, more recently, Greece’s left/right populist government was trounced in repeated elections during 2019 by the liberal right-of-center party of New Democracy (ND) led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis. This series of posts learns from, and is primarily based on, Greece’s recent experience. But such lessons are perfectly portable! So, if you’re interested in the forthcoming presidential elections in the US, please take note.
2/4 LEADER ESTABLISHES AUTHORITY OVER PARTY
By late 2015, having already suffered bitter defeats by the populist forces, opposition center-right ND had to make a hard choice: either compromise with illiberal politics or completely break with it and adopt a fully liberal stance. This was settled unequivocally in January 2016, when the party chose as its new leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a 47-year old reformist technocrat and scion of one of Greece’s most significant political families, over Vangelis Meïmarakis, a stalwart supporter of traditional politics.
