Part 1 of this series:

WHAT’S POPULISM?

by Francis Fukuyama

American Interest

November 28-2017

Viktor Orban (Sean Gallup/Getty Images).

The term “populism” has been used very loosely in recent times. We need to define it better.

Recent years have seen the rise of new forms of populist nationalism, which today constitute the chief threat to the liberal international order that has been the foundation for global peace and prosperity since 1945. Liberal democracy had been continuously threatened by authoritarian regimes over the past century, with the exception of the period from 1991-2008 when American power was largely hegemonic. Today, a different kind of threat has emerged, with established democracies themselves succumbing to illiberal political forces driven by popular passions. The term “populism” has been used very loosely, however, to describe a wide range of phenomena that don’t necessarily go together. We need, therefore, to put some boundaries around the term.

There is no firm consensus among political scientists as to the definition of populism, but there are at least three characteristics that in my view have been typically associated with it. The first is a regime that pursues policies that are popular in the short run but unsustainable in the long run, usually in the realm of social policies. Examples would be price subsidies, generous pension benefits, or free medical clinics.

A second has to do with the definition of the “people” that are the basis for legitimacy: many populist regimes do not include the whole population, but rather a certain ethnic or racial group that are said to be the “true” people. Thus Viktor Orban in Hungary has defined Hungarian national identity as based on Hungarian ethnicity, something that would exclude non-Hungarians living in Hungary, and include the many Hungarians living in surrounding countries like Slovakia or Romania. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India has similarly been trying to shift the definition of Indian national identity from the inclusive liberal one established by Gandhi and Nehru to one based on Hinduism. The Polish Law and Justice Party has emphasized traditional Polish values and Catholicism, and has stimulated the rise of more overtly racist groups, like the one calling for a “white Europe” in November 2017.

A third definition of populism has to do with the style of leadership. Populist leaders tend to develop a cult of personality around themselves, claiming the mantle of charismatic authority that exists independently of institutions like political parties. They try to develop a direct and unmediated relationship with the “people” they claim to represent, channeling the latter’s hopes and fears into immediate action. It is typically coupled with a denunciation of the entire existing elite, the latter of which is of course invested in existing institutions.

This personalistic approach to leadership is what makes populists such a threat to democratic institutions. Modern liberal democracies are built around power-sharing institutions like courts, federalism, legislatures, and a free media that serve as checks on executive power. All of these institutions are potential roadblocks to the populist leader’s ability to achieve his or her goals, and therefore become direct targets of attack. The personalistic nature of populism thus makes it a threat to liberal institutions.

These three definitions then allow us to distinguish between the different movements that have been given the label “populist” in the past. Latin American populists like Hugo Chavez or Nestor and Cristina Kirchner emphasized popular but unsustainable social programs, and tried to create personality cults around themselves. The Argentine pair portrayed themselves as re-embodiments of the classic populist power couple, Juan and Eva Peron. They did not, on the other hand, entertain a restrictive definition of national identity. The same could be said of Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck, the former Prime Minister, in Thailand: they promoted redistribution programs for poorer rural Thais but did not have the same restrictive view of Thai identity as their yellow shirt opponents.

Leaders of the Brexit movement, by contrast, did not stress an expansive economic program, nor did they have a single charismatic leader. But they did appeal to anti-immigrant cultural fears and traditional British identity, as well as to unhappiness about economic dislocation. Viktor Orban fits all three definitions: he has tried to protect Hungarian savers from “predatory” European banks; he has a restrictive definition of “the people”; and he would certainly like to be considered a charismatic leader. It is not clear whether Vladimir Putin fits any but the last of the three definitions: he has been cautious on expansive social programs; while he has stressed Russian identity and traditions, that tradition is not necessarily restrictive in ethnic terms. Putin has certainly built a cult of personality around himself, though it is hard to argue that he is an outsider seeking to overthrow the entire elite, having come up through the ranks of the KGB and then the Russian FSB. The same can be said about India’s Narendra Modi and even China’s Xi Jingping: they have both become popular by attacking the existing elite, though they themselves are very much part of that elite.

It should be noted that Donald Trump fits all three definitions. During his campaign, he stressed economic populism, withdrawing from the Trans Pacific Partnership and threatening to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement once in office. He promised to protect entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security—though since becoming President, he has governed more like a traditional conservative Republican, seeking for example to cut social benefits by repealing Obama’s Affordable Care Act. And while Trump has never explicitly endorsed white nationalism, he has been happy to accept support from those who do, and went out of his way to not single out neo-Nazis and overt racists during their rally in Charlottesville. He has had a very problematic relationship with African-Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities; black sports stars and performers have been frequent targets of his Twitter posts. And he has acted like a classic charismatic at rallies with his core supporters: when accepting the Republican nomination in 2016, he said that “I alone understand your problems,” and that “I alone know how to fix them.”

Thus, within the realm of movements labeled populist, we can distinguish between at least two broad categories. In Latin America and in Southern Europe, populists have tended to be on the Left, having a constituency among the poor and advocating redistributionist social programs that seek to remedy economic inequality. They do not however emphasize ethnic identity or take a strong stance against immigration. This group would include Chavez’s Bolarivarian movement and Kircherismo in Argentina, as well as Spain’s Podemos and Greece’s Syriza.

In northern Europe, however, populists are based less on the poor than on a declining middle or working class, and takes a more right-wing ethnic and anti-immigrant turn. They want to protect existing welfare states but do not emphasize rapid expansion of social services or subsidies. Groups in this category would include Brexiteers, France’s National Front, Holland’s Party of Freedom, the Danish Peoples’ Party, and in the United States, many of Donald Trump’s hardcore working class supporters.

Then there are groups or movements that don’t really fit either category. Italy’s Five Star movement like other populist movements is resolutely anti-establishment and denounces the Italian elite as a whole. But it differs from both its Northern and Southern European counterparts by being both urban and middle- or even upper middle-class, rather than being based in a declining working class.

Francis Fukuyama

American Interest

Part 2 of this series: The populist surge

Why Populist Nationalism Now?

by Francis Fukuyama

Published on: November 30, 2017

The economic, political, and cultural sources of the rise of populist nationalism around the globe.

There are three reasons why we are seeing the rise of populist nationalism in the second half of the 2010s: economic, political, and cultural.

The economic sources of populism have been widely noted and discussed. The same trade theory that tells you that all countries participating in a free trade regime will be better off in the aggregate also tells you that not every individual in every country will be better off: Low-skill workers in rich countries are likely to lose out to similarly-skilled but lower-paid workers in poor ones. That is in fact what has been happening in many industrialized countries with the rise of China, Mexico, and the like. According to a recent IMF study, some 50 percent of Americans are no better off in terms of real income than they were in 2000; many more of those in the middle of the income distribution have lost ground than have moved up the economic ladder. In the United States, this relative economic decline of the middle or working class has been associated with a number of social ills, like increasing rates of family breakdown and an opioid epidemic that in 2015 claimed about 60,000 lives. At the same time, globalization’s gains have been heavily concentrated among the well-educated cognitive elite, who tend to set broader cultural trends.

The second source of populism is political. The traditional complaint against many liberal democracies, with their numerous checks and balances, is that they tend to produce weak government. When such political systems combine with polarized or otherwise severely divided electorates, the result is often political paralysis which makes ordinary governing very difficult. India under the previous Congress Party government was a striking example of this, where infrastructure projects and needed economic reforms seemed beyond the government’s ability to deliver. Something similar occurred in Japan and Italy, which often faced gridlock in the face of long-term economic stagnation. One of the most prominent cases is the United States, whose extensive set of constitutionally mandated checks and balances produce something that I elsewhere have labeled “vetocracy”: that is, the ability of small groups to veto action on the part of majorities. This is what has produced a yearly crisis in Congress over passing a budget, something that has not been accomplished under so-called “regular order” for at least a generation, and has blocked sensible reforms of health care, immigration, and financial regulation.

This perceived weakness in the ability of democratic governments to make decisions and get things done is one of the factors that set the stage for the rise of would-be strong men who can break through the miasma of normal politics and achieve results. This was one of the reasons that India elected Narendra Modi, and why Shinzo Abe has become one of Japan’s longest-serving Prime Ministers. Putin’s rise as a strong man came against the background of the chaotic Yeltsin years. And finally, one of Donald Trump’s selling points was that, as a successful businessman, he would be able to make the U.S. government functional again.

Moreover, there have been major policy failures by elites in both America and Europe. The United States embarked on two unsuccessful wars in the Middle East in the 2000s, and then experienced the biggest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Both of these were rooted in elite decisions that had terrible consequences for ordinary citizens.  The European Union created a monetary union around the euro without a corresponding way to unify fiscal policy, leading to the Greek debt crisis. And it created the Schengen Zone and a host of other rules liberalizing the movement of people within Europe without establishing a credible mechanism for controlling the European Union’s outer borders. While laudable from an economic and moral standpoint, internal freedom of movement became problematic in the absence of such controls. This turned into a legitimacy crisis in the wake of the mass migration triggered by the Syrian civil war in 2014.

The final driver of populist nationalism is cultural and has to do with identity. Many years ago, Samuel Huntington pointed out that the most dangerous socio-economic class was not the poor and marginalized, who often lacked the time and resources to mobilize, but rather middle classes who felt they had lost ground economically and were not being adequately recognized by the political system. Such people can make economic demands, but they tend to interpret their loss of status culturally as well: they used to constitute the group that defined national identity, but were now being displaced by newcomers who were being given unfair advantages over them. They are driven by a politics of resentment against elites who benefit from the system, and they tend to scapegoat immigrants and foreigners as agents of this loss of status. In this respect, economic motivation overlaps substantially with cultural concerns, and in many ways cannot be distinguished from them. It also distinguishes northern European or American populism from that of southern Europe or Latin America. The social basis of Brexit, Trump, and Le Pen voters lies in declining middle or working classes, whereas Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, Chavez in Venezuela, or the Kirchners in Argentina are more traditional left-wing parties representing the poor.

This has what has made immigration such a powerful issue in driving populist nationalism in northern and eastern Europe and the United States. Rates of immigration and refugees have in fact become very high in Europe and the United States, and concerns over rapid cultural change have motivated many voters to support populist parties and leaders even if they have felt under direct economic threat. This is reflected in the oft-stated goal of populist parties to “take back our country.”  In many ways, questions of identity—language, ethnicity, religion, and historical tradition—have come to displace economic class as the defining characteristic of contemporary politics. This may explain the decline of traditional center-left and center-right parties in Europe, which have lost ground steadily to new parties and movements built around identity issues.

Francis Fukuyama

American Interest

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