UNITED STATES – Takis S Pappas

October 30, 2022October 30, 2022

Η δημοκρατική φιλελεύθερη Δύση και οι ΗΠΑ

Δημοσιεύτηκε στην Καθημερινή της Κυριακής, 30 Οκτωβρίου 2022

Υπήρξε μια εποχή, όχι πολύ παλιά, που, έστω στιγμιαία, πιστέψαμε στον ιστορικό θρίαμβο της φιλελεύθερης δημοκρατικής Δύσης απέναντι σε έναν άλλο κόσμο που τον αποτελούσαν μη δημοκρατικές, μη φιλελεύθερες και μη δυτικές κοινωνίες. Λάθος! Πλέον διαπιστώνουμε, όχι δίχως μια γερή δόση φόβου, την αύξηση του αριθμού των χωρών που κυβερνώνται από αυταρχικά καθεστώτα, την αποδυνάμωση των αρχών του φιλελευθερισμού ακόμη και σε χώρες με σημαντική παράδοση σε αυτόν, καθώς και την ολοένα και πιο φανερή τάση ισχυρών μη δυτικών χωρών να συμμαχούν μεταξύ τους με διάφορους τρόπους ενάντια στον δυτικό κόσμο.

February 5, 2022March 11, 2022

I, the People

When I was still a full-time academic, I wrote an article titled “Populists in Power,” which was published in the Journal of Democracy in April 2019. At around the same time, my book entitled Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis also came out by Oxford UP. In both works, I painstakingly analyzed in comparative perspective the most important cases of populist parties/leaders that have enjoyed power in their respective countries. Those countries are, in order of chronological appearance of the populist forces, Argentina, Italy, Venezuela, Hungary, Greece, and the United States. Based on that academic analysis, and aided by a fantastic cartoonist, I decided to condense everything in a very short comic story, combining fictional and real characters. As you will notice (but also see References below), most of the dialogues are direct quotations from speeches or other public utterances by well-known populist leaders. If you enjoyed this blog, you may also want to browse through this slide show.

February 5, 2022February 6, 2022

What happens when populism wins power?

Many people think that, when in power, populism is a “corrective” to democracy. This view is theoretically naive at best and empirically fictitious at worst. Just look at the most important real-life cases of ruling populism and you have a most clear answer to this blog’s title question: When populists win power, liberal democracies turn into illiberal ones; some even turn into real autocracies. Here below are six cartoons depicting, in chronological and historical order, the important cases of populist rule in Argentina, Italy, Venezuela, Hungary, Greece, and the United States under Donald Trump. All six cases have been analyzed and explained in separate chapters in my book Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis (OUP, 2019). As of the cartoons below, these are part of a little comic story I wrote in collaboration with cartoonist Alecos Papadatos, which you can find—and probably enjoy—here and, as a slide show, here.

January 15, 2021January 19, 2021

Η ιδιαίτερη περίπτωση του λαϊκιστή Τραμπ

Δημοσιεύτηκε στην Καθημερινή στις 8 Ιανουαρίου 2021, δηλαδή την επαύριο της εισβολής των οπαδών του Τραμπ στο Καπιτώλιο.

Αν σκεφτείτε για λίγο πόσες χώρες της Ευρώπης και της αμερικανικής ηπείρου έχουν κυβερνηθεί τα τελευταία εβδομήντα χρόνια από λαϊκιστές θα διαπιστώσετε, ασφαλώς με κάποια ανακούφιση, ότι αυτές δεν είναι πολλές. Στη δική μου καταμέτρηση (κατά χρονολογική σειρά εμφάνισης), πρόκειται για τις εξής εννέα χώρες: Αργεντινή, Ελλάδα, Περού, Ιταλία, Βενεζουέλα, Ισημερινός, Ουγγαρία, Πολωνία και Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες. Λόγω της δουλειάς μου, τις έχω μελετήσει μία προς μία. Να σας πω περιληπτικά τι έχω μάθει μέχρι τώρα και πώς η περίπτωση του Τραμπ προσθέτει νέα στοιχεία στην κατανόηση του λαϊκιστικού φαινομένου.

November 16, 2020November 16, 2020

Trump’s very narrow defeat bodes ill for liberal America

On November 3, 2020, the American voters fired Donald Trump, as shown in the graph below. The graph, to be sure, tells the truth. But this particular truth is deceptive. Biden’s win was an exceptionally narrow one, and this outcome does not bode well for America and the well-functioning of her liberal institutions. This blog post explains.

Joe Biden won the election, and Donald Trump lost it (to this moment, he hasn’t clearly conceded defeat yet). But it was a narrow victory for the Democrats. The voters did not issue the broad rejection of Trump that Biden’s camp had hoped for. The “blue wave” that the pollsters had expected to sweep across the country never happened. (In fact, almost nothing of what pollsters had expected ever happened). Instead, Trump picked 5m votes more than in 2016 despite four years of scandals, impeachment, and his terrible mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak that had killed more than 230,000 Americans until election time. The Republicans increased their ranks in the House of Representatives (although control of the chamber still belongs to the Democrats) and appear poised to hold onto the Senate if they win in January 2021 the two runoff elections in Georgia.