Populism as democratic illiberalism (and how it fits political systems theory)

The following is the text of a keynote address I gave at the 7^th Prague Populism Conference on May 16, 2022, in Prague, Czech Republic. To my knowledge, this is the first attempt to locate populism within a parsimonious general theory of political systems across time and space. The analysis is based on years of conceptual, theoretical, and comparative empirical research, originally encapsulated in this infographic.

I am happy to be once again in this Prague conference on populism, which by the years has become one of the most important in Europe on the subject. As this is not my first time to participate in this event, I recall some extraordinary thinkers who in previous years shared important ideas about populism in this room. I am humbled. For my more modest part, what I am going to try today to say something that is original, since I have never presented it before, and which I hope, will also appeal to your own interests on the subject of populism. So, the title of my presentation today is “Populism as democratic illiberalism” and my more particular focus will be on how this populism fits a general political systems theory. Ultimately, I am going to present a typology of the universe of political systems in which populism will take its own specific place. Let us then begin from the source of all contention, which is the concept of “populism.”

Granted first of all the fact that, by saying “populism,” we understand a large number of things—or, better, elements—including ideas, ideologies, programmatic appeals, social attitudes, psychological or mental predispositions, political strategies, specific verbal discourses, symbolic representations, personal styles—even sartorial ones; related to styles of dress—and much more, all of which things, or elements, we associate with some generic notion of populism. Granted also the fact that, by saying “populism,” we refer to a various number of subjects—or, if you wish, units of analysis—ranging from individual leaders (e.g., “Perón is a populist”) to political parties or movements (e.g., “Perón’s party is a populist one”) to entire political systems (e.g., “Peronism is a classic example of populism”) to individual countries (e.g., “Argentina under Peronism was populist”).

Now, “populism” may well signify all those things already mentioned, and more, and point to all subjects mentioned, and more. But above everything else, at the highest level of analysis, modern-day populism constitutes a novel political system with specific geographical and sociopolitical coordinates, and which combines two, and only two, core characteristics: It is a system that is at once democratic and illiberal. Populism, therefore, as I have claimed in my own work over the last ten years or so, is minimally defined and sufficiently well understood as a system of democratic illiberalism. As such, and as I will try to show in the remaining of my time, populism can be placed in a full-blown typology of political systems with which it can be contrasted and compared.

Which raises two initial questions: Why exactly do we need a typology of political systems? And what after all is a typology? To the first question, the answer is quite simple: In the globalized and fast-changing world of ours, we need to have in mind a logical ordering of political systems worldwide in order to make sense of politics. Unfortunately, we do not have so far good typologies. The best we have is simple classifications of political systems based on one single criterion, namely, how much democratic (or undemocratic) they are. The most well-known of those classifications are those of V-Dem and the one by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Both are pretty intelligent classifications, but they also have significant problems. The three most important ones, at least in my opinion, are the following:

• First, those are not typologies; they are classifications based on one single criterion: the quality of democracy.
• Second, “democracy” and the other terms used in them are hardly defined: What exactly is a “hybrid regime”? And which democracies are not “electoral? And why should we always need adjectives to define what may defined simply by nouns?
• Thirdly, where is populism in those classifications? But isn’t it our purpose to locate populism among other political systems?

Now, on to my second initial question: What is a typology? It is an ordering of things resulting from more than one criterion. Typologies are logical systems of dividing things into types based on commonly shared properties. Constructing a typology involves a hierarchical systematization which begins from the all-inclusive category at the top (the genus), moves down to more specific level categories (the species), and ends with the lowest categories at its base level (the subspecies). To give an example, a typology of the genus “animals” includes two broad species, the vertebrates and the invertebrates. Each species is then divided into subspecies. Thus, “invertebrates” includes such subspecies of animals as snails, spiders, crabs or sponges.  And the species “vertebrates” comprises of fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. Moving further down, each species is divided into subspecies. For instance, “mammals” (commonly defined as animals that make milk for their young and grow hair) are distinguished into carnivorous and herbivorous. And so on and so forth with animals.

But also: like animals, like political systems. So now, moving from the animal world to the universe of political systems, the question is: How can we devise a typology which includes all major political systems? This requires two things: Firstly, it requires that we think in terms of a hierarchy that proceeds from the overall genus to different types of species and subspecies, also showing their locations within the genus. And, secondly, it also requires a proper vocabulary of the terms that are necessary for such an exercize.

Here’s the good news. As I am going to show, in order to begin producing a typology of political systems, also comprising populism, we only need two terms (and their opposites) which will be used either individually or in their various combinations. Those terms are democracy (and non-democracy), liberalism (and illiberalism). Defined in a most concise way, our terms are given the following meanings:

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Now, with this basic vocabulary in mind, we are ready to produce the typology proceeding from top to bottom in a way that differentiates the overall genus of political systems into more and more specific types and subtypes which, while exclusive to each other, they collectively comprise the original genus. Moving this way, we come up with the following typology, which I am going to present as it builds in a series of sequential steps.

First, we begin with the overall genus: All types of political systems. Then, we go one level down and distinguish between the two broad species of political systems: Democracies and nondemocracies. Democracies, as already said, feature adequately free and fair elections; once defeated, incumbents leave office peacefully. Nondemocracies, by contrast, oppose parliamentary democracy even if they allow (typically rigged) elections; incumbents hold power by force and intimidation. We already have genus and first-level species.

Now, we can proceed for more detail onto the subspecies levels. If we first turn to the nondemocratic lump, we get at least five subspecies:

Let us now see what is underneath the species “democracy”. Here, we find two major subspecies: Liberal democracies and illiberal democracies. I define them in the following ways:

• Liberal democracies: They are both democratic and abiding by the rule of law while also protecting the rights of lawful minorities. Examples: Most EU states, Canada, Australia.
• Illiberal democracies: Democratic but rejecting the principles of political liberalism.

There’s a snag! For not all illiberal democracies are the same, and therefore readily comparable. Illiberal democracies are distinguished into two subtypes, or sub-subspecies: The first subtype includes illiberal democracies that have never in the past experienced political liberalism. The second subtype includes formerly liberal democracies which have subsequently rejected their political liberalism in favor of illiberalism. This is one hell of a difference between the two types of illiberal democratic systems!

Pre-liberal democratic systems are those that you can find in the pages of a famous article titled “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy” by Fareed Zakaria published in Foreign Affairs in 1997 (that was 25 years ago). That article focuses explicitly on such country cases as Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Iran, the Palestinian Authority, Haiti, and, indeed, post-Soviet Russia. What Zakaria recognized as common in all those cases was that, despite their customary illiberalism, those states had acquired at the time of his writing some façade of electoral democratic politics. After all, Yeltsin was elected as president in Russia and so was Yasser Arafat in the Palestinian general election of 1996 (incidentally, he received 90% of the vote). Now, if you look at the countries examined by Zakaria 25 years ago, let us call it Zakarialand, you see a vast geographical territory covered with states afflicted with civil strife, systemic corruption, economic underdevelopment, and democratic breakdowns. Their occasional use of the ballot box cannot obscure the fact that those states remain socially traditional, politically oligarchic, most often theocratic, inescapably illiberal. Most of those states are based on strong religious and nationalist ideologies, and although some of them still retain the trappings of democracy, they operate as de facto autocracies. A good example is Fareed Zakaria’s own country of origin, India.

Pre-liberal illiberal democracies must be distinguished from post-liberal illiberal democracies. Here we are in the domain of modern populism seen as democratic illiberalism. Modern-day populism, therefore, points to political parties and their leaders who arise in established liberal and secular democracies by attacking liberal institutions and the rule of law. And when they win elections, populist parties lead their countries to illiberalism without abandoning democracy. This is what has happened in places like Argentina, which I have already mentioned, in neighboring Hungary, my native Greece, or indeed the United States under Donald Trump. As populism is not likely to altogether disappear in any of those countries, you should stay tuned until the next episodes. At least now you have a concise but complete typology of well-defined political systems, including populism, to guide your thinking.