Everyone is warning about the dangers of populism. From Human Rights Watch to former British prime minister Tony Blair’s new Institute for Global Change, the million-dollar question everyone is asking — but few are answering — is, how can we defeat populism?
A recent report by the World Forum for Democracy, which organised a conference last November titled ‘Is Populism a Problem?’, attended by more than 2,000 people from 80 countries, present many interesting recommendations. However, while the report is promising, there is still some way to go before this is turned into effective policies.
As a scholar of populism, here are my thoughts of their recommendations, as a scholar of populism:
n 1. Political parties (established and emerging) should seek to propose inclusive visions and programmes that deliver benefits for all citizens, not only for a part of the voters.
While this sounds ideal, it is utopian. In fact, it falls into the populist trap by suggesting there are visions and programmes that benefit all people. Sure, there are certain very big developments that would benefit everyone, such as clean air and world peace, but they hardly constitute a full political programme.
Most concrete policies benefit, at the very best, some people more than others. This applies as much to free higher education as to food stamps. The reason is simple: “The people” are a loose, heterogeneous collection of individuals with different attitudes, interests and priorities.
Rather than pretending to offer benefits for all and legitimising the populist utopia of a “general will”, parties should present clear visions and programmes, but also be open and honest about the pros and cons for various groups of the population. Moreover, they should explain why they believe these choices benefit the broader society — while accepting that this, inevitably, depends on their own ideological assumptions.
n 2. Participatory and deliberative platforms and initiatives (citizens’ assemblies, juries, forums) should be embedded into the decision-making processes to balance the oligarchic tendencies of electoral democracy.
Just as scholars and students tend to want to solve problems through education, activists and politicians almost always call for more participation and politics. The problem is that many people don’t want to devote more time to politics, and this is particularly true for supporters of (radical right) populist parties. What they really want is to be properly represented.
Sure, populist parties always call for the introduction of direct democracy, from recall to referendums, but that is mostly to “break the party cartel”, in the words of the Dutch right wing party Forum for Democracy (FvD).
In essence, it is a temporary measure, to break or circumvent the out-of-touch elite. Once a proper elite — ie one that is representative of their views — has been (re-) established, direct democracy is no longer necessary.
n 3. Social media should be regulated and held accountable for damaging a pluralistic, fact-based and hate-free political debate, in the same way as traditional media.
If there is one belief that populist parties and their supporters do share, it is that today’s political debate is being stifled. Populists present themselves as “taboo breakers”, the heroes who attack “political correctness”. They have thrown themselves on to social media because it is the most democratic and free medium, with almost no gatekeepers and unlimited readers.
Making social media more like “legacy media”, as the report calls it, would make populist supporters less visible, but it won’t change their opinions. This policy didn’t work in the late 20th century, when a fairly tightly controlled media landscape was fiercely protected by gatekeepers and self-censorship, so why would it work in the anarchic world of social media?
This is not to say that all the issues and visions of populists are positive or even realistic, but they are real. And if we really want to limit the potential of populist actors, we must at least try to address some of these issues — either by integrating them into our own liberal democratic programme, or by explaining to populist supporters why these visions are either amoral or unrealistic.
This can only be done if people — all people — feel free to speak their mind.
n 4. Civil society organisations defending human rights and equality against populism should agree on a common agenda and strategy across identity politics divides.
There is no doubt that division in the face of an organised populist threat is problematic. This is most painfully clear in Hungary, where liberal democratic voters are divided between three nominally social democratic parties and various other centrist parties in the face of a strong, populist, radical-right government (Fidesz) and a strong populist radical right opposition (Jobbik). When populists are in power, as they are in Hungary or Greece, it is crucial that all liberal democrats work together in defence of their institutions and values.
In most countries, though, populists are in opposition, often the third-biggest political force in the country. By making them the focal point of your own campaign, you grant them centre stage, which means they set the political agenda.
It is crucial that both liberals and populists recognise that politics is about more than just the populist agenda. This is why civil society organisations should advance their own agendas and coordinate with each other when they have common ground — not for the sake of fighting populism, but for the sake of defending human rights and equality.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Cas Mudde is associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia in the US and researcher at the Centre for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo.
