Home / Press review / Archive / Magazine / Politics / Populism / Article

The populist moment

Populist movements no longer question democracy as they did in the 1930's. In east central Europe in particular, populism has even become a by-product of democracy, says Ivan Krastev. Which challenges do Europe's democracies face?

"A spectre is haunting the world: populism. A decade ago, when the new nations were emerging into independence, the question asked was: how many will go Communist? Today, this question, so plausible then, sounds a little out of date. In as far as the rulers of the new states embrace an ideology, it tends more to have a populist character."[1]

Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico and his counterpart Jaroslaw Kaczyński of Poland
Photo: AP

This observation was made by Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Gellner forty years ago. A period of time long enough for "populism" first to disappear and then to re-emerge as the global phenomenon it is today. Now, like then, the significance of populism cannot be doubted, though now, like then, it is unclear just what populism is.

On the one hand, the concept of "populism" goes back to the American farmers' protest movement at the end of the nineteenth century; on the other, to Russia's narodniki around the same period. Later, the concept was used to describe the elusive nature of the political regimes in the Third World countries governed by charismatic leaders, applied above all to Latin American politics in the 1960s and 1970s. This transformation in the concept's use only re-enforced Isaiah Berlin's claim that it suffers from the Cinderella complex: there is a shoe in the shape of populism, but no foot to fit it.

What is striking about the current use of the term is the almost incalculable diversity of policies and actors it attempts to cover. Is it not an affront to common sense to lump together Hugo Chavez's leftist Bolivarian revolution and the ideology and politics of the current anti-communist government in Warsaw? What could be more confusing than to describe the politics both of Silvio Berlusconi and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as populist? But commentators and political theorists who insist on using "populism" as a generic name for such diverse political players have a point. Only a vague and ill-defined concept such as "populism" can enable one to grasp and the radical transformation of politics underway in many places around the world. More than any other concept currently circulating, "populism" captures the nature of the challenges that liberal democracy faces today. These emanate not from the rise of anti-democratic and authoritarian alternatives, but from dangerous mutations within liberal democracies themselves.

Clearly, populism has lost its original ideological meaning as the expression of agrarian radicalism. Populism is too eclectic to be an ideology in the way that liberalism, socialism, or conservatism are. But growing interest in populism has captured the major trend of the modern political world – the rise of democratic illiberalism.

Be it the proliferation of populist revolutions in Latin America, the political turmoil in central Europe, or the political logic behind the "no" vote in the referenda on the EU constitution in France and the Netherlands – it is the accompanying rise of democratic illiberalism that worries us. The new populism does not represent a challenge to democracy, understood as free elections or the rule of the majority. Unlike the extremist parties of the 1930s, the new populists do not plan to outlaw elections and introduce dictatorships. In fact, the new populists like elections and, unfortunately, often win them. What they oppose is the representative nature of modern democracies, the protection of the rights of minorities, and the constraints to the sovereignty of the people, a distinctive feature of globalization.

We try to account for the rise of populism today by the erosion of the liberal consensus that emerged after the end of the Cold War on one hand, and by the rising tensions between democratic majoritarianism and liberal constitutionalism – the two fundamental elements of liberal democratic regimes – on the other. The rise of populism indicates the decline of the attractiveness of liberal solutions in the fields of politics, economy, and culture, and the growing popularity of the politics of exclusion.

The populist condition

It would be a major mistake to view the rise of populist parties as a victory for anti-democratic attitudes. In fact, the rise is a by-product of the wave of democratization during the "long" 1990s. "Voice of the People 2006", a global opinion poll conducted by Gallup International, found that 79 per cent of people the world over agree that democracy is the best form of government available, but that only one third agree that the voice of the people is heard by the governments of their countries. It is precisely because current populists cannot be portrayed as anti-democratic that liberals are confused, and this makes them appear helpless in the face of the populist challenge.

In the current debate, "populism" is mostly associated with an emotional, simplistic, and manipulative discourse directed at the "gut feelings" of the people, or with opportunistic policies aimed at "buying" support. But is appealing to the passions of the people forbidden in democratic politics? And who decides which policies are "populist" and which are "sound"? As Ralf Dahrendorf has noted, "the one's populism is other's democracy and vice versa".[2] Unless we take Brecht's advice and dissolve the people in order to elect a new one, populism is and will remain part of the political landscape.

At the heart of the populist challenge is not the rise of political parties and movements that appeal to "the people" against the people's supposed representatives, thereby challenging established political parties, interests, and values. Populism is also not appropriate for describing the transformation of the democratic political system in Europe and the replacement of party democracy with media democracy. Populism as synonym of post-modern politics, as flight from class and interest politics towards a new centre, is old hat.

At heart, the defining feature of populism is the view that society falls into two homogenous and antagonistic groups: "the people as such" and "the corrupt elite". It proceeds to argue that politics is the expression of the general will of the people and that the social change is possible only via the radical change of the elite.

Two tendencies correspond to this: the implementation of populist majoritarianism and growing manipulation by the elite. The revolutionary regime in Venezuela – a textbook illustration of Tocqueville's notion of the tyranny of the majority – and the manipulation-based regime in Moscow are just two sides of the same populist coin. The goal of populist revolution in Latin America is to block the return to power of the corrupt minority; Putin's system of "sovereign democracy" prevents the dangerous majority being represented politically.

1 . 2 . next »

Further articles on the subject » History, » Europe, » Eastern Europe
More from the press review on the subject » History, » Europe, » Eastern Europe