This blog post is more of a ‘note’ on some technical points which I plan to refer to in the future in upcoming posts.
I am interested in defining the underlying issues concerning populism.
To my mind, originally, the word “populism” radiated a protean murky journalistic-type of opprobrium. The sort of politics calculated to whip up popular support rather quickly with vague promises. In this sense, populism is opposed to rational debate and sensible discussions in favour of feel-good soundbites and charisma.
As for definitions, the word “democracy” – etymology: Greek words “demos”, denoting “people”; and “kratos”, denoting “power” – entails a form of government which is, literally, rule by the people. If that’s the case, then what exactly separates it from populism (as regards populism’s corresponding appeal “to the people” à propos legitimacy).
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The four features of populism (by Cas Mudde)
In The Oxford Handbook of Populism (OUP, 2017), Cas Mudde outlines a useful framework for defining populism. For the purposes of concision, I have edited the academese from relevant passages. The critical elements are:
- “Thin” Ideology
- “The people”
- “The elite”
- The general will
I shall briefly quote the essence of each element identified by Mudde with emphasis added by me.
As regards ideology:
Populism is a “thin” or “thin-centered” ideology.
Thin or thin-centered ideologies do not possess the same level of intellectual refinement and consistency as “thick” or “full” ideologies, such as socialism or liberalism. Thin ideologies have a more limited ambition and scope than thick ideologies; they do not formulate “a broad menu of solutions to major socio-political issues”. For example, while populism speaks to the main division in society (between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite”), and offers general advice for the best way to conduct politics (i.e. in line with “the general will of the people”), it offers few specific views on political institutional or socio-economic issues.
As regards “the people”:
The key core concept of populism is “the people.” Even the other core concepts, “the elite” and the “general will,” take their meaning from it.
Laclau’s influential work on populism refers to the concept of the people (and therefore also the elite) as “empty signifiers”. But while the signifier is certainly very flexible, it is not completely empty: first of all, as populism is essentially based on a moral divide, the people are “pure”; and while purity is a fairly vague term, and the specific understanding is undoubtedly culturally determined, it does provide some content to the signifier. The essence of the people is their purity, in the sense that they are “authentic,” while the elite are corrupt, because they are not authentic.
With regards to “the elite”:
The elite is the anti-thesis of the people (ex negative) ... Theoretically, populism distinguishes the people and the elite on the basis of just one dimension, i.e. morality. This pits the pure people against the corrupt elite — or, in Manichean terms, the good people versus the evil elite. In practice, populists combine populism with other ideologies and apply different meanings to the people. Populists using class or commonness in their definition of the people will normally also use these criteria for the elite. For example, American conservative populists pit the common people against the “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, Hollywood-loving” liberal elite.
As regards the general will:
Based on a kind of vulgar Rousseauian argument, populists argue that politics should follow the general will of the people. After all, as the people are pure and homogeneous, and all internal divisions are rejected as artificial or irrelevant, they have the same interests and preferences. The belief in a general will of the people is linked to two important concepts in the populist ideology: common sense and special interests.
Populists often claim to base their policies on common sense, i.e. the result of the honest and logical priorities of the (common) people. Anyone who opposes common sense is, by definition, devious and part of the corrupt elite. By arguing to propose “common sense solutions” to complex problems, populists often implicitly also argue that the elite creates problems and is out of touch with the people. Moreover, they can present themselves as the voice of the people (vox populi), expressing its general will, and as non- or reluctantly political. After all, common sense solutions are neither ideological nor partisan, they follow “logically” from the general will.
Whereas the populist’s common sense solutions follow the general will of (all) the people, the elite’s proposed solutions are representations of “special interests”. Calls for policies that benefit specific groups, even if it is to remove existing inequalities, is denounced as “special interest politics.” More broadly, the elite is painted as the voice of special interests, in opposition to the populists, who are the genuine voice of the people.
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A further note on “elitism” (and it’s threat to liberal democracy)
Speaking for myself, I have always had something of a bias against democracy. In the words of E. B. White, “democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time”. I have always preferred some system of elite rule by an educated assembly – against the mob. I think it emerged from reading about the Founding Fathers of the United States who often spoke of democracy pejoratively. They preferred a Roman “republic” to “democracy” (à la Ancient Greece). Their scepticism of majority rule involved the creation of mechanisms to avoid it, such as a representation system to filter out the rabble (see Madison’s Federalist Paper No. 10 vis-à-vis the emergence of sectarian factionalism and majoritarian tyranny).
I have to admit the below excerpt gave me pause to consider my thoughts on elitism vis-à-vis the politics of compromise.
According to Cas Mudde:
“Elitism” is the true mirror-image of populism. Most notably, it shares with populism the Manichean division between the two antagonistic and homogeneous groups, the people and the elite. Consequently, both elitism and populism reject essential aspects of liberal democracy, particularly the politics of compromise. After all, compromise can only lead to the corruption of the pure. But in contrast to populism, elitism considers the elite to be pure and virtuous, and the people to be impure and corrupt. Hence, much elitism is anti-democratic, while democratic elitists only want a minimal role for the people in the political system. Though elitism has lost most of its popularity among the masses, and even among the political elites, in the twentieth century, it had informed most major political ideologies and philosophers until then (from Plato to José Ortega y Gasset).
Even more fundamentally, pluralism is a direct opposite of populism. Where populism sees the people as essentially homogeneous, pluralism believes them to be internally divided in different groups. And, whereas pluralism appreciates societal divisions and sees politics as “the art of compromise,” populism (and elitism) discards societal divisions, denounces social groups as “special interests,” and rejects compromise as defeat. By considering the main struggle of politics in moral terms, any compromise with the elite will corrupt the people, making them less or even impure. Unlike elitism, which finds few relevant proponents in contemporary democracies, pluralism is a key feature of liberal democracy and is an essential ideological feature of most political ideologies (including Christian democracy, social democracy, liberalism).
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Populist ideals and conspiracy theories
The realm of the conspiracy theory is a fascinating aperçu into the postmodern human condition. It’s far more ubiquitous in mainstream political thinking than, I think, we presently realise – even in fairly innocuous terms (e.g., “there’s no smoke without fire”).
On more theoretical terms, it’s worth noting the consequential philosophical backdrop. In our world today, the camera lens of postmodernism elicits a profound sense of distrust and suspicion. The attendant suspicion of power and structures, suspicion of motives and truth claims is a fertile terra for theories that sustain that latent perception of humanity.
Similarly, in David Aaronovitch’s book Voodoo Histories, if I remember correctly, he argues that conspiracy theories tend to postulate a sense of “order” to world events in the face of its unsettling randomness. Of recent times, the foreboding precedent was probably set on the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. This cataclysm – despite two official government investigations in its aftermath – ignited a culture of conspiracy theory into mainstream film, books, and radio – probably like no other among its antecedents. The incident speaks to a psychological anxiety in the need to attribute an ulterior and calculating, if shrouded, agency to random traumatic political events in the world. It’s viscerally quite incongruous for people to accept the mundane reality that a US President – the most protected person on Earth – can be shot by a mere random lunatic. A similar phenomenon expresses itself in the gambler’s fallacy. The innate human perception of chance and probability lends itself effortlessly towards a willingness to attribute a superior agency or pattern or logic to the flips of a coin.
On a more prosaic footing, and more relevantly to populism, the appeal of a conspiracy theory is its elementary simplicity, often glib and near-accessible apparent answers to complex and difficult problems. It has a way of simplifying our incredibly complex world. Furthermore, these theories countenance the framing of everything amiss by affixing moral blame onto a single shadowy group. Instead of reckoning the inherent challenges of our society – that nobody engineered, and nobody is in ‘control’ of – they seek to uncover the individuals doing the ‘bad things’ and stopping them, warding off corruption and iniquity. The world is thus binary; paths are bifurcated, and systems are bicephalous. As such, this sense of moral superiority decorated by a deeper ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ – which informs the conspiracy theory architecture – is apt to coalesce with populism (for the above reasons).
Indeed, research published in Political Psychology (Wiley.com) has recently revealed that populist attitudes are associated with conspiracy mentality. According to the abstract:
The present research examines the relationship between populist attitudes—that construe society as a struggle between the “corrupt elites” versus the “noble people”—and beliefs in unsubstantiated epistemic claims. We specifically sought to assess the often assumed link between conspiracy beliefs and populist attitudes; moreover, we examined if populist attitudes predict conspiracy beliefs in particular, or rather, credulity of unsubstantiated epistemic claims in general. Study 1 revealed that populist attitudes are robustly associated with conspiracy mentality in a large multination study, drawing samples from 13 European Union (EU) countries. Studies 2 and 3 revealed that besides conspiracy beliefs, populist attitudes also predict increased credulity of obscure and politically neutral news items (regardless of whether they were broadcasted by mainstream or alternative news sources), receptivity to bullshit statements, and supernatural beliefs. Furthermore, Study 3 revealed that these findings were mediated by increased faith in intuition. These studies support the notion of populist gullibility: An increased tendency of people who score high on populist attitudes to accept obscure or unsubstantiated epistemic claims as true, including nonpolitical ones.
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