It's also odd to me that they only look at the post-WWII period. Populism was widespread in Europe during the 1800s
If you look at China, most of the rest of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, etc., those things are no-brainers. What requires a label is the new thing. The new idea that embraces freedom of movement of capital, goods, and labor, across national borders. “Populism” is nothing more than the opposition to this new, unlabeled thing.
Also its not like populism is a new term or idea. It goes back to Roman times at least.
It also avoids clashing with populist movements of the past, which dealt with issues other than those that you're describing.
If "traditional mindsets" are pursued by means of populism, it's a populist campaign. If not, it isn't. There is nothing intrinsically populist about anti-globalism, but, like many political agendas, it's easy to create a populist lozenge for it to get it down the polity's throat easily.
The elites vs the people distinction is usually the key characteristic of populism in most definitions. Populist movements also tend to be very anti-establishment. Many vectors for influencing politics don't involve viewing society as this battle between the people and the elites. For example, while it's true that left-wing populists exist in the US I wouldn't describe the current Democratic party as a populist party. It is more of an institutionalist party and they don't tend to attack elites, because most groups traditionally considered part of the elite support the party. This is in contrast to the current Republican party which very much casts itself as being opposed to the elite. All the rhetoric about battling the deep state and draining the swamp is very much populist.
It's funny how this starts to sound more and more like just Marxism.
"According to this religious text, this is how we should be living"
"This will be good for the economy and put more money in your pockets"
"If we don't do this, the terrorists win"
"Think of the children"
While it is easy to get people to support doing what they already want to do, people's opinions can also be swayed.
Further, while populist movements try to present their positions as widely held by the majority, oftentimes that's a bluff. It's usually the case that populists are really just a vocal minority.
A lot of people have lost trust in those experts and people who claim to know what's good for other people. They also don't appreciate being talked down to.
Which is exactly what's happening lately.
As Manchin said: "The bottom line is — will the middle speak up? Does the middle have a voice?"
You didn't hear that Sinema left the party? And Manchin is considering leaving it?
That's what I was referring to when I said they were (or at least felt) excluded from the party.
It was more obvious in 2020 (with a less complicated, more policy-driven primary) that tons of Democratic primary voters don't want Medicare For All, and that the story as Bernie had told it didn't match the reality on the ground of differing policy goals even within the party's constituents.
I disagree that populism is merely a “vector for influencing politics.” That makes it sound like a choice or tactic. But oftentimes, particular issues just happen to break down along lines where people who can be described as “elite” converge on a view, while non-elites tend to adopt a different view.
For example in India, secularism is an idea championed mainly by elites, and largely opposed by the masses. Thats what makes opposition to secularism a populist viewpoint, not Modi’s choice to point that out.
In such a case, what would you call a political movement that embraced the position of the non-elites, not as a political tactic, but because actual support of the "masses" is core to the movement?
Whatever word you would use for that, I think you'd understand Rayiner's post better if you replace populist with the word you prefer.
If (and I'm not sure this is true) the "masses" do oppose globalism (worldwide) and secularism (in India), then there is something inherently ______ about those positions.
This side discussion about the true meaning of the word "populist" only distracts from the more important question of whether the people's desires are actually being suppressed by an elite who control the levers of power and the channels of communication.
To capture the core "popularist" stuff we all agree about, you have to be willing to compromise on that 20%. Populism is defined by not doing that.
Except, in practice, secularism is a policy originating with and being championed mainly by western-educated elites like Nehru.
The fact that some of the proles might agree or disagree with the elites for various reasons (e.g. Indian Muslims) is irrelevant. Indian Muslims don’t believe in secularism either, the elite view on secularism just happens to be beneficial to their situation as a religious minority in the country. That doesn’t change the fact that secularism originates in and is advanced by the elite.
But remember, my point is that “populist” isn’t a good description of this. It’s common in politics to assign lower moral weight to the views of various groups—in India or Bangladesh, ideas of western origin are viewed as suspect. In America, anything supported by “Wall Street” or “the Harvard faculty lounge” is automatically questionable. Playing to that was a staple of ordinary liberal and conservative rhetoric throughout the 20th century. Thats not “populist.”
Occupy Wall Street was certainly a populist movement! Its slogan was a capsule summary of the whole concept of populism. They were the 99%! That they didn't in reality speak for all or even a majority of the 99% was just a detail.
Leaving aside the fact that Indian secularism as practiced by Congress has more in common with the Roman Empire than with western secularism.
Isn't that "new, unlabeled thing" called liberalism?
Populists usually know that their points are fallacies, they're just telling people what they want to hear. But they're doing nothing to solve the problems because really they're not caused by the things they claim.
And of course actually solving problems is not in their interest because they thrive on the anger of people with those problems.
For reference this is what the paper says. Seems like they are taking a broad approach.
> The most conventional approach in the literature identifies populism as a ‘thin-centred ideol- ogy’ that frames the fundamental political cleavage between the elite and the pure people (Mudde 2007). The strengths of this approach are that it is agnostic about the causes and the specific pol- icy content of populism; is broad enough to capture a wide range of the phenomenon, such as left- and right-wing; inclusionary or exclusionary populism; and specific enough to exclude non- populism. Despite the ubiquity of this definition, empirical researchers often include parties influenced by the notion of anti-establishment politics, a term closely related to populism (Barr 2009; Mudde 2007).1 Our aim is not to clarify the concept of populism or decide between different approaches but to capture a wide variety of populist outcomes to reflect the heterogeneity of the literature. Thus, our definition includes the radical left, the radical right, and historical pre- cedents of populism, such as fascism in Europe or Latin-American import-substitution populism, such as Peronism (Guriev and Papaioannou 2022, 11–13).
"Populism is a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group with "the elite".[1] It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment.[2] The term developed in the late 19th century and has been applied to various politicians, parties and movements since that time, often as a pejorative. Within political science and other social sciences, several different definitions of populism have been employed, with some scholars proposing that the term be rejected altogether.[1][3]"
In the context of WWII-era history, that would fit quite well with both Russian (Stalinist-Leninist) communism ("the people" = "workers" and "the elite" = "nobility & capitalists", roughly) and with German (Nazi) fascism ("the people" = "Aryans" and "the elite" is a mish-mash of socialists, communists, foreigners, Jews, etc.). I don't know about Spain or Italy...but compared to Hitler and Stalin, Franco and Mussolini were rather small fish.
Or against lower class people with non-US-left-wing leanings
I consider left-wing to mean the same here in the US and abroad. But the presence of actual “leftists” in the US dialogue has decreased dramatically since the bad old Rockefeller/Carnegie days when the working class made some nominal but real progress.
These days in the US, people associate the “left” with identity politics and some vague, ever-decreasing lip service to the oppression of the working class voter. The Democrat Party establishment is staunchly neoliberal, in practice, nearly indistinguishable from the Reagan-era Republican except for some theatrics around gender and race, but they are not leftist by any reasonable measure.
Is that the distinction you are referring to here, or is this another classification of leftism that doesn’t apply to either US contingency?
Not saying Democrats are good or bad, I’m not American. But their brand of leftism is quite different from what I knew as a young person.
I think I remember some on the left calling when Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama "populists", but in a good way. Or maybe the word was "grassroots." Nowadays the word populist has a negative, right-wing connotation for many in that group.
Prior to that, his populist designation was generally framed as a positive: a man who represents and embodies the will of the working class voters.
The establishment Dems and their media allies found him useful to engage their base, but never intended for him to be considered for the actual nomination (as was made clear from the guccifer leak). Very interesting case study and a blueprint for weaponizing a term like “populism” in public discourse.
Not passing judgement to US politics because I am not even there, but this is what I mean.
The US left is traditionally different from other places, though. Today it is completely different from the traditional left. The gap is narrowing due to US influence, though.
It just comes at it from a racial angle, and focusing more on reforming society rather than politics.