Erdoğan and the Paradox of Populism

Britain s Populist Fantasies

Voters often sense cheap populism.

Such populist measures are vote winners.

But the problem with populism is that it is rarely benign.

For example, Germany fares better than other European countries in its resistance to populism, not only because its economy is strong and its history constitutes a form of vaccination.

Throughout the periphery, populist parties of the left and right are gaining ground.

In the US, the far right shares many of the characteristics of its populist European counterparts.

The authority of conventional politicians and traditional media is slipping away fast.

In the 1930 s, it resulted in violent movements led by dangerous men in uniform.

Neither of these responses to populism is likely to boost democracy.

Yet the role of leadership in populism is vastly overestimated.

Populist political movements in many countries were still thinking about national revival and assertion.

Indeed, given populism s importance as a political phenomenon, that view, along with two others that populism is somehow a call for direct democracy, and that populists can only protest, but never govern needs to be challenged.

The best response to today s unholy alliance of populist racist parties is courage, determination, and clarity of position.

Populism cannot be understood at the level of policies rather, it is a particular way of imagining politics.

Voters who support populist movements do so because they believe that current elites fail truly to represent them.

New populist parties in Italy, Greece, and Germany reflect the direction in which politics is moving, not the final destination.

In short, it is neither populism nor shortsightedness that has led citizens to reject the policies that have been imposed on them.

Populism, unlike, say, liberalism or Marxism, is not a coherent body of distinct political ideas.

It is this feature of populism the idea that the people want only one thing, and that only true representatives can give it to them that explains a symmetry (often evoked, but seldom spelled out) between populism and technocratic government.

For these Westernized Turks, acceptance by the EU represents a lifeline against the currents of Islamic populism that Erdoğan represents.

Elsewhere, populist anti European parties of the right have been gaining ground with campaigns directed against immigrants and minorities, especially Muslims.

What has produced the populist backlash is the spectacle of political authorities devising technically complicated solutions that lack credibility.

In the Anglo Saxon media world, Rupert Murdoch, owner of far too many newspapers, TV stations, and movie studios, is a typical populist tycoon.

The most wounding criticism of the ALP government until now has been that no one has really known what it stands for. It has initiated visionary national policies in areas like broadband access, disability support, and education, but it has struggled to maintain a coherent and consistent overall story line.

There can be too little freedom of action (populism) or too little accountability (autocracy).

In the years after the BJP s loss, with a few notable exceptions, India s political class decided that traditional populism was a surer route to re election.

This has fueled concern that the populist bloc will be the largest in the European Parliament after next year s EU wide election.

For many observers, populism is unthinkable without a strong, direct bond between an anti establishment leader and citizens who feel neglected by mainstream political parties.

Populism can be a necessary corrective when political parties grow sclerotic, mass media become too complacent (or too close to power), and bureaucracies are unresponsive to popular needs.

In Europe, Greece has been able so far to maintain a parliamentary majority in support of the coalition government, but there, and elsewhere, hyper populist parties are gaining ground.

If profound change is possible at the national level in the face of toxic populism, it should come more easily at the international level, where cooperation produces mostly winners.

Where direct democracy is very much a part of normal politics in Switzerland, for example populist parties have been doing better, not worse, than elsewhere.

Meanwhile, in the European Union, an election has come to a close. But it was an election for nothing the outcome merely reinforced the growing divide between pro Europeans and Euro skeptic populist parties.

In hindsight, the 2012 French Presidential election could well be remembered not so much for Hollande s victory and the triumph of normalcy, but as the decisive step in populist parties long march to power.

Will the endgame be renewed class warfare, with populist governments coming to power, stretching the limits of income redistribution, and asserting greater state control over economic life?

The return of populism in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela in the past decade has reinvigorated a Manichean view of the press news organizations are seen as either loyal or subversive.

Populist policies that transfer scarce budget funds to hundreds of millions of rural men and women end up encouraging them to withdraw their labor services, driving up wages and undermining international competitiveness.

In short, it is neither populism nor shortsightedness that has led citizens to reject the policies that have been imposed on them. It is an understanding that these policies are deeply misguided.

There will be a falling out between the new populist government and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (and the ECB), creating high uncertainty about what comes next.

However a post Second World War recession and popular unrest led to a return to populist politics and domestic military interventions in the 1960s, while foreign companies developed oil resources in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

This explains why populist governments clientelism and corruption do not erode their leaders core support among the electorate. Such practices are perceived as serving a moral us at the expense of the immoral or foreign them.

This makes populist pressure to abandon the euro correspondingly less severe the key questions, of course, being how much less severe, and whether the political center can hold.

What has produced the populist backlash is the spectacle of political authorities devising technically complicated solutions that lack credibility. Simply put, the experts need to stop treating Europe s citizens as if they were stupid.