I, the People

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 7, 2020April 12, 2020

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.

Continue reading “How to defeat populism – III”

November 28, 2019December 3, 2019

The causes of populism

A detailed analysis of how the model of populist causality works is in my Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis (Oxford University Press 2019), pp. 123-130

A TIP-OFF: The present model does not apply to nativist parties, which are often, unfortunately, and erroneously (mis)classified as “populist.” It only applies to populist parties that have emerged strong, and ruled, in the “lands of populism.”

The image featured above represents the causal model of populism qua democratic illiberalism. It is the outcome of an intricate interplay of structural conditions, quasi-rational extraordinary leaders, and political mechanisms. No factor is independent from the rest, and each factor must be examined in sequential causal logic.

November 23, 2019September 4, 2020

The lands of populism

In the hype surrounding the global interest in populism, have you ever thought of, or wondered about, where exactly in the postwar liberal world have populists won office and been able to keep it for good periods of time?

The mapping above puts the lands of populism on display. In top and medium rows are the countries in which populist parties have won at least two (most often consecutive) elections. Bottom row includes the three most recent cases of populist rule.

Save the cases of Poland and Mexico, all other cases are examined in historical depth, compared and analyzed systematically in Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis. Do have a look!