February 22, 2021 - 7:00am
There is a fascinating study that published by VoxEU this past week, which looks at the long-term economic and constitutional consequences of populist spells in government. They find that countries with a populist government ‘witness a substantial decline in real GDP per capita’ and an ‘erosion of democratic institutions’. What makes this finding even more worrying is that ‘populism is a persistent phenomenon’: one of the best predictors of a having a populist government is having had one in the past.
To some extent, the UK is insulated from populist forces by its electoral system. In 2015 UKIP gained 12.6% of the vote but won just one seat, while the DUP won just 0.6% of the vote (or one vote for every 21 UKIP won) but ended up with eight seats. But as PR has crept across the UK, relying on electoral systems to keep populists down isn’t a very satisfying solution.
Instead, we should stop talking about populist parties like they are some exotic ‘other’, alien to liberal democracy, and instead recognise what Cas Mudde argued in 2010 — that populist parties are just like any other party, in that they are responding to voter demands. People who hold more populist values are more likely to vote for a populist party, just like how people who have Left-wing values are more likely to vote for a Left-wing party.
So if populist parties are a normal part of electoral politics, what can other parties do to keep them out of power? Copying their rhetoric or trying to out-populist the populists will only serve to legitimise their approach and their policy. Moreover, the mainstream party will seem inauthentic and it could drive their own voters away (remember Ed Miliband’s infamous migration mug?).
The real challenge for mainstream parties is to identify and address the issues populist parties base their support on, and do so in an authentic, credible and realistic way. We might not have had UKIP, and Brexit, for instance, if New Labour had spent more time explaining why they thought inward migration was actually a good thing, or had listened to their white working class base as it slowly drifted away to other parties. Similarly, if pro-EU Conservatives had effectively explained the perceived benefits of the EU, rather than letting their party use it as a convenient scapegoat when it suited them, public opinion might have shifted.
There are, of course, some issues with the study in VoxEU. Populism is a thin-centred ideology, and it typically requires a host ideology to attach itself to. This means actors across the political spectrum can be classed as populist. For example, Mussolini, Berlusconi, and the Five Star Movement are all classed as populist in the study. Similarly, in the UK, UKIP/Brexit Party and RESPECT would all be classified under the same banner; in Spain, Vox on the Right and Podemos on the Left would be too.
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SubscribeSorry but I was hopeful there might be an intelligent, well argued – perhaps informative article. Instead this is an unbelievably weak article, sub GCSE standard.
People voting the ‘wrong’ way? Tell them they’re wrong!
The author talks about how Brexit could have be avoided, as if it should have been avoided. That if people only understood more, they’d vote ‘better’. Sorry but for every poorly informed and frankly bigoted Brexiteer, there’s 2 swivel eyed barely coherent snobbish, racist remainers.
I’ve rarely met a remainer with the slightest knowledge of the EU, as in its history, structure, bodies, aims, treaties etc. Informed people either decide it’s wrong, or that the complete lack of democracy is desirable.
Rather worrying that the author is a lecturer in British Politics at the University of Liverpool when he writes like one of his students.
Hi Rob, I suggest if you’re that worried you don’t take one of my classes – it really is that simple.
Why should Rob take one of your classes when, to judge by your article, he is almost certainly better informed and less prejudiced than you?
People signing up to a uni course don’t know what they are getting til they’re there.
If you are imposing your personal political dogmas in a public education system ( deemed secular, free of political and religious dogma) and indoctrinating a class of young students you are violating the the trust and basic requirements of your job and function you are being paid for .
This is clearly a very sensitive fellow.
Quite – it is just very poor. The source material (the VoxEU piece) is barely any better.)
The VOX paper doesn’t seem to take into account the state of the economies/societies that the incoming “populist” party inherited.
Ignoring this major factor calls into question the intelligence or motives of those assembling the final report – as well as those using it to support a position.
FWIW I voted leave in 2016 and I still think it was the right decision. But this article was a 400-word response to how mainstream parties can counter populist actors, which many parties have seemed incapable of doing, not a piece on the pros and cons of Brexit.
David
That’s literally exactly what I was going to say. You had x00 words (i.e. very few) to outline what mainstream parties can do about populist – often single-issue – parties. I thought it was a good piece and probably hard to edit down.
We heard nothing from Labour about why mass immigration was healthy or desirable; we just heard that it was to rub the right’s noses in diversity. We heard next to nothing about what was good about the EU (admittedly it’s much, much easier to think of things that are bad).
As you note, it’s not an effective strategy for parties to ignore the supporters of populist parties or insult them until they come to their senses.
I am surprised by your comment, as, from the Labour Party, we only heard about the benefits of immigration.
I will never take seriously any pro-immigration argument unless the proponent can also explain the negatives.
(I have no issue with immigration per se; many of my family are immigrants or first generation descendants. But I can also explain why an irresponsible approach to immigration a la UK Labour Party has done real damage.
I don’t recall hearing any arguments in favour of immigration. I only recall hearing that opponents of limitless immigration were racists and bigots and could thus be jeered at and ignored.
Racist parties always enjoy improved electoral fortunes under Labour governments: the National Front in the 70s, the BNP in the noughties. I think it’s because if you tell people they’re racists, some will decide to give you a dose of the real thing. When you get a government in that doesn’t say that, these parties subside.
I do think Cameron won the Brexit referendum for the other side when he called UKIP loonies and racists though. He was in fact describing 52% of the electorate, which is why he couldn’t do better than a 38% poll share.
There was the constant refrain that immigration is good for the economy. There wasn’t any coherent evidence or explanation as to why and how that was the case though. Cut price staff for NHS so you don’t have to pay nurses more to recruit perhaps? Cheap nannies for high earning families. Quick and cheap driveway or extension. In terms of the social and cultural benefits there was the expanded range of restaurants for those who can afford to eat out regularly.
Thanks for replying David, I mistakenly took your article as yet another ‘Brexit is so obviously wrong that I don’t even have to explain why’.
Is populism inherently bad? is the alternative merely the status quo, with a different face. Surely most new governments get elected by saying “The current system isn’t working for ‘the people’, we’ll fix that”.
Would you rate Johnson and Corbyn as populists? I’d say both could clearly be labelled as such.
That’s my issue with the whole debate – what the hell is a populist if not someone who appeals to the biggest number of people with a politicians’ often empty promises of a better future? Corbyn is no less a a populist in my eyes than Farage. Free broadband for everyone! Raise up the poor and lowly! Everything’s free! Socialism is brilliant! Tories are evil Nazis! Vote for us!
I think my issue is that it is still not clear exactly what is meant by ‘populist’ and why this is inherently ‘bad’. Anyone who wins an election could be called a ‘populist’ by appealing to the largest number of voters surely? Aren’t all politicians guilty of ‘populist’ promises and vote-winning election strategies showing WIIFM?
In that case, it might have been informative if you actually offered insightful theories as to why mainstream parties don’t seem to be able to “counter populist actors” – rather than just state the obvious.
I’m interested that, as an academic, you have just publicly admitted to voting Brexit. We are continually told that this is professional and social suicide in your milieu. Do you expect repercussions?
You always know what to expect from an article about “populists” – ie, in the opinion of the author, “people who aren’t as clever as me”. This one does not disappoint.
There’s the germ of an idea here, but without a solid and legitimate definition of “populism” (utterly absent above) the entire piece is nonsense.
Most of the time, “populist” means nothing more than “democratic but beneath those of us who believe we know better”.
[Update:
The Vox article referred to includes a definition, though a loose one (populism is a political strategy that focuses on the conflict between ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’ ). By this definition, the British Labour Party is a populist party. It is just not a useful definition.]
As you say, the Vox article defines populism, as does Mudde’s article I linked to. I also originally linked to the Popu-List which provides a definition and case studies.
And you’re wrong about the Labour Party, it’s not populist because the moral divide isn’t central to their world view.
“you’re wrong about the Labour Party, it’s not populist because the moral divide isn’t central to their world view.”
Really? Their slogan at the last election was “for the many not the few;” defining themselves in their manifesto as standing against the wealthy. Hard to see that as not fitting your chosen definition.
[And by the way – the Mudde article seems to be behind a password-protected barrier.]
That is the problem David. Who defines ‘populism’? My simplistic view would be that when governments stop listening to sections of their electorate that electorate will seek out alternatives. Is that not democracy in action? Everything I read in media and academia infers ‘polulism’ as a pejorative term. Even your chosen title “How to pacify the populists” doesn’t read as very democratic.
It’s an interesting point but it’s not impossibly hard to think of reasonable, workable definitions of populism. A populist party could be one that bases its key policy / agenda ambitions not on traditional left / right or libertarian / authoritarian cues, but on a view of some issue that cuts and is shared, perhaps widely, across party lines (i.e. endorsed by erstwhile supporters of all parties). A view that’s held by largish numbers but only at one end of the spectrum, such as the crypto-Marxist view that dissent should be “cancelled”, is factional, not populist.
On that basis Brexit, Remainerism, Joxit and capital punishment are all populist party issues, but being the Labour Party isn’t. The two in that list that never gained any traction are the two that never got popular enough either to take over or to spawn a political party.
Hmmm yes populist may be more defined by single issues. But they only exist if a. large numbers of the public agree b. the mainstream parties are ignoring them. So populism is a symptom of a lack of democratic engagement by the established broad-based parties and invites a re-balancing rather than a revolution. UKIP did its job by snapping at the Tory base and making it take action on something that, evidently, a lot of people felt was important and that was being ignored. If Labour and the Tories had taken it seriously from the start UKIP would have had no audience.
‘The real challenge for mainstream parties is to identify and address the issues populist parties base their support on, and do so in an authentic, credible and realistic way.’
And therein lies the problem, if indeed you think it’s a problem. For some decades now the mainstream parties have not been home to people who are ‘authentic, credible and realistic’. Instead, they have become home to frauds, liars and fantasists, and everything they touch turns to c**p. Thus is becomes very difficult for them to address the issues that so-called populist parties raise.
I have been thinking a lot about how the central defining axis of politics today is becoming not left/right but the degree to which the ideology in question is grounded in reality. This is not, I would be the first to admit, a well-formed political analysis; just the start of some thinking.
it’s as if those horrid, terrible populists are under the impression that govt is supposed to work for the citizenry, not the other way around.
Thumbs up.
Is this because people who have responsible jobs do not have the time? A general foreman in the construction/utilities industries often works away from home and does not have time to become involved.
Populism is just democracy it’s just they don’t vote for who you want so it must be suspect and wrong
First thing I did was stop reading at seeing the source and serch on it, I found enough to stop on the second page of results at ‘allsidesdotcom’ where it begins how VOX has a left bias. I virtually find any source used by Liberals have a Liberal bias, I suppose the same would be with the Right, as they days of impartiality, if they ever existed, are fully gone.
Internet sources are the great pick-and-choose source where all things to all people can be found to back any beliefs.
I believe the article is totally wrong though. I think the give me more and I will vote for you parties, say like Biden and Corbyn’s, are the ones which leave the most wreckage in the economy.
This subject warrants a far more nuanced and sophisticated analysis.
There’s an important time-lag issue in play here. For example, how do we account for the fact that Trump (who I do not support and did not vote for) had a terrible array of foreign policy and domestic economic issues to deal with? Making big but vital changes causes disruption, but this can be unavoidable. In this context, the “damage” associated with a populist leader could be attributed to the systemic problems that prompted their election – and thus the prior government(s).
Would the author see Farage as a populist? Surely he should be seen as a pro-democracy campaigner? The economic costs (whatever they turn out to be) of Brexit are just the cots of the disruption associated with the restoration of democracy.
How to account for the reasons for “populist” arguments breaking through? How do you take account of (for example) the utter awfulness of Trump’s opponent in 2016?
This article is rather thin compared to the standard normally found here.
I think it’s great that the author responds to comments. Wish we had more of that btl. Thank you, David!
Why are you against a political party being popular?
I would have thought, that in a democracy, that was essential.
It seems to me that to decry populism is mainly an attempt to tell voters that voting for somebody else – instead of my party – is wrong.
No.
Perhaps it’s a hot topic for chatter among the politically obsessed, but just remembering Ed Miliband is a stretch for most normal people.
Milliband had, as one of his ridiculous “etched in stone pledges”, the line “controls on immigration.” This was then repeated on souvenir mugs.
It was not popular (to put it mildly) among Labour types, most academics and those that set editorial policy at the BBC (Guardian types) – those for whom the idea that there could ever be too much immigration is just one step removed from the gas chambers.
Remember, for the leftist “anti-populists,” mass immigration is an unalloyed good (think of the vibrancy!), with no negative consequences to anyone, and all political messaging and news reporting must maintain this line (even at the cost of ignoring or hiding mass child abuse). Modern immigrants, we’re to understand, require no housing, no schools for their kids and no healthcare – therefore they cannot possibly be a factor in infrastructure pressures.
Honestly, my deepest regret is that I never bought one of those “Controls On Immigration” mugs. As well as the delicious absurdity that it bespeaks – only Labour would think of writing such a thing on a mug – it is also perhaps the best latter-day equivalent of the pamphlet Orwell discusses in The Prevention of Literature:
And that’s Ed Miliband’s Controls On Immigration mug, that is.
I wish the Edstone would come up for sale. I’d love to have it in my garden.
I wish I’d bought one too. There must be a cupboard full of them somewhere.
I most often hear the term populist used as a derogatory slur of an electorate that chose the alternate political rival over the left liberal progressive losers.The writer reveals his left prejudice , bias and tiresome reflexive ritualistic LeftSpeak by distinguishing between populist and left, and his self serving primitive assertion cliche left propaganda meme, populist victories bad, left good.Whats wrong with our world today is the number of people who peddle and swallow this primitive dysfunctional truthless nonsense.
According to their data, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela weren’t populist leaders…
“Inward migration” – once called immigration. The first sounds like the unstoppable natural flight of birds twice a year; the second sounds like conscious, intentional human action.
See how language change blurs the issues?
The author’s lack of a definition of ‘populism’ makes this article moot….
I will not repeat the many detailed criticisms of this piece but just add that it is, by a wide margin, the worst article that I have ever seen in Unherd.
No, there have been others. I think Unherd began strong, but in the face of social media sending the threats of de-platforming out to all who wish to take any stance out from center-left they had to begin toeing the line of middle path.
All these posts, indeed even the article itself, and not one mention of the SNP ??????? The SNP might decry populists when railing against all and sundry, particularly Brexiters, but to suggest that they aren’t themselves one and the same is just a bit rich, if not delusional. Hell, even the previous referendum, in 2014, was set against a backdrop of the battle of Bannockburn. Mel, would I’m sure, have been proud, in a Bravehearted way.
Well about time the SNP got a mention as ‘populists’ so thank you.What surprises me most though, is how Keir Starmer has failed to see that there could never be a resurgence of the Labour Party without Scottish votes.The labour voters of Caledonia were a commendably loyal support for the entire history of the party but once turned will take a great effort to win back, from what really is the only Nationalist party in Europe that has managed, thus far ,to convince the world that it is benign
So democracy bad then because largest party is the most popular. The Divine Right of Academics next then?
Oh no, how awful – those non-establishment parties might get power! Perhaps some wouldn’t mind being poorer if their quality of life was improved.
Assessment of the Trump years in office shows the opposite for the US economy.
By contrast the US is now in unemployment free -fall under Biden.
Very poor article – in what seems increasingly to be the new “Woke Times”
“We might not have had UKIP, and Brexit, for instance, if New Labour had spent more time explaining why they thought inward migration was actually a good thing, or had listened to their white working class base as it slowly drifted away to other parties.”
Respectfully, are these not mutually contradictory? One is following the voter-base, the other is standing up against it.
Populist: a pejorative used by politicians to describe politicians or parties whose growing popularity has been achieved at the expense of their own.
Populism is about national self determination. It is about diversifying access to resources and breaking up centralized power. No populist cares if the neoliberal’s stock portfolio is going up. GDP is a useless economic stat meant to justify the financialization of the economy and the overinflated salaries of the corporate leadership. Actually we should all hope for a sinking GDP. Hopefully it comes when we throw all the bankers and neoliberals into the ocean and start over again.
I take issue with the ahistorical misuse of the term Populism here. See Thomas Frank’s “The People, NO” for an actual history of the term and its roots in the US midwest in the latter part of the 19thC, along with the story of the smear campaign against them by the elites, culminating in Richard Hofstadter’s “The Age of Reform” which was comprehensively debunked by fellow scholars but has exercised a grip upon the popular American imagination nonetheless ever since.
I think you’re wrong, Fraser. The Guardian would publish it.
Didn’t bother to read the article. The use of the word pacify in the title gave it all away.
Interesting.
It would be similarly interesting for populists to better understand how their tenures as Government could be more successful.
What exactly IS populism in the eyes of the author? It sounds like “popular, but not to the current media and political elites”.
Am surprised to see the discussion skirting reflection on the actual definition of populism, and what makes it ultimately bad.
Populism asks the right questions, but provides the wrong answers. It is indeed a bad mistake to scorn the whole package, as the popular frustration that fosters populism is usually justified by a real problem – and in a better world politicians would start by acknowledging just that.
The hallmarks of populism are demagogy and opportunism – and these are its real damaging parts.
The demagogy is manifested by politicians that present overly simplistic answers to complex questions in a highly emotional manner, which tends to obfuscate analysis of implications.
The opportunism is manifested by politicians who seek to please voters without rational consideration as to the best course of action.
The whole thing is only possible when emotional responses become the norm, framed under the optics of “us against them” – as in this comments thread.
You make a good point Andre. But we need to be clear of the definition of the populist politician and what is deemed a ‘populist’ voter. I agree with your comments on the negative effects of the opportunistic politician but the ‘populist’ voter is only expressing their democratic right. I think the multiple issues repeated in the comments here highlight that commonly the two are arrogantly conflated by media and academia to indicate the electorate are stupid in acting this way. The answer is for leaders to listen and communicate the complexity of the issues better as you have said.
Martin, I’m afraid both are true.
Labeling the electorate as stupid is inexcusable, given that it is the politicians’ job to present logical justification for their choices – ultimately done to represent the electorate, or at least that should be the case in a functioning democracy.
But the electorate bears plenty of responsibility too, and bad electoral choices made over demagogic, appealing arguments damage both the country and the democratic system’s credibility.
Thank you for your reply Andre. I have to disagree on your ‘populist’ voter damaging democracy. At least a large minority of voters will (and always have) chosen candidates who promise to satisfy that voters self interest. One only has to look at the last few general election manifestos which were baldly ‘buying’ votes. It is a fundamental of democracy to appeal to the masses. But it is the least rotten system we have!
I’m sorry you’re terrified by my job, perhaps you should lie down in a dark room for a while and collect yourself?
Based on this response David I think it is you who needs to take a few deep breaths.
Thumbs up.
No need to respond that way David. Perhaps consider engaging with what is being said and not lower yourself to the level of insults, I’d expect better from someone teaching our kids! Although I also respect you are at least reading the comments 😉
Well, what was being said was that David had written a ‘pathetically smug and superficial article’ and that he only has his job as a lecturer because standards are so incredibly low. So, overall I think he engaged with the insulting tone in the thread pretty well.
I’m all in favour of having a civilised debate and don’t agree with the original article, but it’s fair to say that Fraser started his post in an insulting way. “A pathetically smug and superficial article. Not even the Guardian would publish this nonsense.”
-not much argument with the statement though…only the tone, right?