The past few years have seen the steady rise, across much of the western world, of “populism,” which could be understood, broadly speaking, as a style of politics whose leaders, instead of simply criticising the policies of political adversaries, align themselves with the interests of the “real people” against an allegedly corrupt, arrogant and out-of-touch political establishment.
Populist leaders, whether Trump, Milei, Farage, Le Pen, Orban or Meloni, claim a new kind of moral “high ground”: whereas traditional politicians promise better policy outcomes, using rhetorical strategies that seem to assume something like “politics as usual”, populists, tapping into a growing wave of voter discontent, rail against the “system” and its cronies and are not afraid to paint themselves as political saviours.
One generally encounters two rival perspectives on the significance of populism for western democracy: first, that of populists themselves, who view populism as a “shock treatment” designed to oust arrogant political elites and bring politics back in touch with “the people”; and second, that of critics of populism, who view populist movements as menacing the values of liberal democracy, undermining rule of law, and peddling exclusionary and simplistic narratives of national identity.
Both of these viewpoints are partially correct, but neither grasps the true depth of the political crisis now confronting most western democracies.
Critics of populism are right to condemn certain elements of populism, such as its tendency to advance exclusionary narratives of national identity, which artificially screen out the fact that many Western nations, like it or not, are now constituted by an amalgam of cultural influences. However, in condemning populism as a looming threat to liberal democracy, anti-populists seem to insinuate that what is under threat – our democratic institutions – are otherwise more or less in good shape, that is, more or less participatory, inclusive and responsive to the public interest.
It is hard to deny that the European Union suffers from a deep-seated democratic deficit, and that “party discipline” in many Western democracies is a euphemism for the blind subservience of career politicians to party bosses. And it is painfully obvious that a lot of mainstream parties are losing touch with their voter base, as evidenced by increasing defection by Western voters from party-endorsed candidates, and the steady consolidation of support for anti-establishment parties across Europe.
Indeed, representative democracy in most parts of the world today would be more accurately described as a centralised oligarchy – the rule of a few, ruling on many matters in the interests of a few – rubber-stamped by periodic elections. For most western democracies delegate power to highly centralised institutions, where it is easily captured and manipulated by elite actors, be they government ministers, legislators, corporate lobbyists or party bosses.
This situation is not remedied by periodic elections of representatives, which give most citizens very little say over the content of legislation, public spending and government priorities. Not to mention the fact that government policy is often executed through large-scale bureaucracies with limited legislative oversight and almost no democratic accountability to speak of.
Even if political elites wished to address citizens’ problems, their hands would frequently be tied, for at least two reasons.
First, highly centralised governments, insofar as they rely on generalised rules and policies, cannot effectively adapt themselves to the intricate needs of large-scale, complex and rapidly evolving societies and economies. For example, centralised governance of healthcare seems unable to tackle the challenges of ageing populations and the conspicuous dysfunctions of national healthcare systems.
Second, national governments are not their own masters. On the contrary, they are deeply dependent on international sources of public finance and monetary regulation, such as the Federal Reserve in the United States and the European Central Bank in Europe. In Europe, national sovereignty is subordinated on many issues to European laws and regulatory frameworks.
Until such pathologies are addressed, we can expect the cycle of voter frustration and popular discontent to continue, whether it takes the form of populist politics, strikes, protests or other disruptive behaviour.
The problem is, even if populists rise to power, as we have seen them do in places like the USA under Trump and Italy under Meloni, this is no guarantee of sustainable institutional reform. In the short term, a populist victory might limit some of the damages of unaccountable centralised governance. But it also risks replacing the pathology of centralised technocracy with damaging forms of demagoguery, with their quasi-messianic promises of political redemption and the unrealistic notion that a charismatic leader will cut through all the red tape, and fix our problems with the wave of a magic wand.
Even if populism suffers political setbacks, as some commentators have predicted, the appetite for anti-system or anti-establishment politics is unlikely to subside anytime soon. For the basic problem we confront is not a handful of troublesome politicians, but a political system that is no longer fit for purpose.
Quite possibly, the type of reform our political system requires is more radical than anything either populists or their critics are willing to contemplate. For what is required is far-reaching decentralising reforms that anchor political and economic power not in a hyper-centralised national state, but in a federal pact among municipal and regional governments and grassroots institutions such as local citizen assemblies, professional associations and worker co-operatives. Under such reforms, the old national political establishment would lost much of its power. But so would national populist leaders and movements.
An interesting take but I think no more than that. I think that it is more a clash between nationalists who believe putting the rights of the citizens first versus ideologues who believe in a particular ideology. In Ireland what we have had over the last 20 years is a situation where ideology is the prime factor influencing government policy. Thus we have gender ideology, climate ideology, globalist ideology etc. In those cases we have a government pursuing policies to the detriment of the local citizenry in order to follow the tenets of the ideologues. Thus what most people would consider as common sense and rationality goes out the window once you slavishly follow these ideologies.
What we now have is a pushback where people want to see the country governed in the interests of it’s citizens and where the sovereignty of the state is sacrosanct. Which, of course, is how any normal self-respecting country should be run. Believing in this does not make you “populist”. It makes you rational.
Well observed Peter!
Rational decision making isn’t a quality you’d associate with politics for some time now.
The moment a genuine alternative to the retard kabuki that has been substituted for democratic politics appears.
It will be beaten down by whatever means necessary.
Take that as a given.
I truly wish I could be more optimistic.
But sorry!
All national identities are exclusionary, they are not “narratives”
Utter guff
That’s literally the point of national identity, “you are not us”.
It’s like Sadiq khan, he’s simultaneously a Pakistani Englishman who’s also European. Can’t make that nonsense up.
There is a need for more articles like this which even if you don’t agree with much that is said at least get the conversation going. The MSM are not doing it.
Liberal democracy has long been considered the freest and most civilised way to run a country, but it is weaker now than it has been for decades. The 2023 edition of Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report finds that, “Global freedom declined for the 17th consecutive year.” This ominous sentence is underscored by the 2023 Democracy Index, which finds that “democracy is unfortunately on a worldwide decline.”
Traditional parties in western countries have been in decline for decades. Peter Mair talked about the hollowing out of democracy a decade ago and predicted much of what is now occurring.
Grass roots organisations such as the FF cumainn can no longer count on volunteers to run them. They were the ears of the party but parties now rely on “advisers” many of them journalists to tell them what people are thinking. This has not worked, party loyalty has died away and FF and FG cannot now together make up 40% of the vote. People feel powerless, disenfranchised not knowing which way to turn. Civil society organisations which used to give people a voice are not there either; trade unions are in decline, community groups are less active, what Robert Putnam called social capital is absent.
It is no wonder that populism is growing.
Good comment, David.
As for journalists telling the political parties what people are thinking, I suspect it’s more a case of these journalists telling the parties what these journalists themselves are thinking.
From time to time I’ve written letters to a journalist who is the main opinion-piece writer for my local newspaper (the Meath Chronicle, which I gave up buying at the beginning of this year after having bought it practically every week for the past 20 years or more). My letters have been in response to some of his articles. However, I’ve seen no sign, judging by what he says in his articles, that what I’ve said in these letters has caused him to modify his obviously liberal-leftist-feminist views to any noticeable degree.
As the above very interesting article indicates, it’s clear that, for several reasons, our system of representative democracy is simply not working properly in the interests of ordinary citizens.
This being the case, a step in the right direction (while not a cure-all for our present political malaise) would be the introduction of a Swiss-style citizens’ initiative referendum system whereby ordinary citizens have the right to initiate referendums on laws passed by the national parliament, with – and this is the key factor in the Swiss system – the results of such referendums being binding on the government. This kind of system is advocated by the Direct Democracy Ireland party (hence that party’s name) of which I’m not a member but for which I voted in the 2016 General Election when one of their candidates stood for election in my constituency.
As a matter of interest, the Irish Free State Constitution of 1922 included a provision for citizens’ initiative referendums, but this provision was never put into effect – and, of course, was not included in our present Constitution.
Of course, it’s certain the the introduction of a Swiss-style citizens’ initiative referendum system would be fiercely opposed by our current political establishment and most of our mainstream media, with all sorts of dire warnings from them about the (supposed) dangers of “populism” – and, of course, that all-purpose bogeyman, the “far right”. However, this system has worked satisfactorily in Switzerland since it was introduced there in 1891 and hasn’t led to the rise of political extremism of either the extreme right or the extreme left variety there.
The Swiss political system is one which is almost never written about though it has some interesting initiatives which others might learn from. It seems to accord to the citizen some
democratic powers which are not seen elsewhere. Perhaps someone would write more about it.
Subsidiarity.
Devolving power down to the citizen level.
Just looked up Direct Democracy Ireland, looks like they’ve renamed themselves Liberty Republic. Ireland-first.ie came up in the same search results. Both look interesting.
All I have seen is pretenders coming across as right wing and are not right wing at all. The only one im unsure about in that list is le penn. All the rest of them are not right wing and a classic example of of why people need to do their research on what these people actually do in the back ground v what they say. These countries position has not changed in any way since they were elected. All the countries that have so called populist right wing parties are in a worse state today than they ever were. We nearly fell into the trap ourselves with sinn fein. Populism only works and bares fruit if the parties are actually right wing but in practice, none of them are. Even the dude in the netherlands has folded already.
Please don’t use the word ‘populism’, it is used to denigrate the ‘popular’ will of the people, i.e. – their democratic wishes.
Using it – and this is how our politicians always use it and how they think when doing so – implies that the electorate are an emotional morass, a herd on a level beneath ‘enlightened’ leaders; who must be directed and contained according to the wishes of the latter.
It reduces individual understanding and general electoral sovereignties to nil, democracy to a fob to keep the people sated, and mandate to an inside joke to be sniggered at.
” Critics of populism are right to condemn certain elements of populism, such as its tendency to advance exclusionary narratives of national identity, which artificially screen out the fact that many Western nations, like it or not, are now constituted by an amalgam of cultural influences. ”
In other words, ‘we’re multi-cultural and multi-racial now dontcha know and tough titty you’re going have to get used to it.’
The likes of you are going to have to get used to fact we’ve had enough of this experiment. We’ve seen the lack of gratitude that many who’ve been allowed to come show, and how they turn on us when their numbers increase sufficiently. That’s without going into all the other stuff like what ‘enrichment’ really means i.e. increased crime, breakdown in social bonds & harmony, feeling like an alien within your country from being so outnumbered, suppressed wages, increase pressure on rents and housing etc..
Re “democracy” or “democracies”
Any alleged expert or layperson who talks about “democracies” AS IF a real democracy ACTUALLY EXISTS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD (or has existed at any time in ‘human civilization’) is evidently either a fool who’s repeating mindlessly and blindly the propaganda fed to them since they were a kid and/or is a member of the corrupt establishment minions whose job is to disseminate this total lie because any “democracy” of ‘human civilization’ has always been a covert structure of the rule of a few over the many operating behind the pretense name and facade of a “democracy”: https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
“There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. […]. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies […]. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable laws of business. The world is a business […].” — from the 1976 movie “Network”
“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” — Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice
Does anyone still not see how the deadly game on the foolish public is played … or still does not WANT to see it?
In terms of “experts” or “awake” folks who sell you the fake program of democracies…
“All experts serve the state and the media and only in that way do they achieve their status. Every expert follows his master, for all former possibilities for independence have been gradually reduced to nil by present society’s mode of organization. The most useful expert, of course, is the one who can lie. With their different motives, those who need experts are falsifiers and fools. Whenever individuals lose the capacity to see things for themselves, the expert is there to offer an absolute reassurance.” —Guy Debord
Isn’t it about time for anyone to wake up to the ULTIMATE DEPTH of the human rabbit hole — rather than remain blissfully willfully ignorant in a narcissistic fantasy land and play victim like a little child?
“We’ll know our Disinformation Program is complete when everything the American public [and global public] believes is false.” —William Casey, a former CIA director=a leading psychopathic criminal of the genocidal US regime
“Separate what you know from what you THINK you know.” — Unknown
“Repeating what others say and think is not being awake. Humans have been sold many lies…God, Jesus, Democracy, Money, Education, etc. If you haven’t explored your beliefs about life, then you are not awake.” — E.J. Doyle, songwriter
If you have been injected with Covid jabs/bioweapons and are concerned, then verify what batch number you were injected with at https://howbadismybatch.com