Populism is one of today’s political catchphrases. To most of us it probably signifies crudity in politics: the sort of thing symbolised by a demagogue standing on the back of a bakkie, using a discordant sound system to denounce opponents in colourful language, while promising an adoring if unruly crowd all they might desire.
Whether this understanding is accurate is a more complex and intriguing question. And so last week I sat down (spurred by a 50-hour power cut which deadened the online world) to read In the Name of the People: How Populism is Rewiring the World, published last year under the aegis of the Brenthurst Foundation. It was well worth it.
A collection of the analyses of a formidable consortium of thinkers, it presents the reader with case studies focusing on the politics of a particular country or region – across Latin America from Argentina and Chile, through Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia and El Salvador, into the United States (in passing) and across the Atlantic to Europe, in particular to Hungary, down through Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, and even making an excursion to the Philippines. Thirteen chapters in all, aside from the book’s introduction and its conclusion.
Temptation
Resist any temptation to skip the introduction; it is crucial for understanding what follows. In it, the authors delve into populism as an idea, trying in other words to provide a contextual description of that demagogue and his following. Many readers will I suspect find this the most useful part of the work.
Contrary to what some might assume, populism should not be interpreted as a derivative of the word ‘popular’, as in beloved, but in terms of its etymology, with popular denoting the broad mass of a population. ‘The people’, in other words.
Defining populism has been a notoriously contested matter among political scientists. For the authors of this collection, it is largely a matter of political praxis. ‘As recent developments in Latin America and elsewhere demonstrate, populism, as distinct from a traditional left, right or centrist political agenda, is a political style that develops within democracies, where a strong, charismatic leader amasses support by juxtaposing the righteous “people” with an out-of-touch, or worse, self-enriching “elite”.’
Note the use of quotation marks. These denote the operative concepts and emphasise that they come with particular meanings that not everyone may accept.
‘The people’. Ordinary folk, the masses, the deserving, those who constitute the real, authentic soul of the nation. They are the excluded, the overlooked, the marginalised, their interests and wellbeing as citizens ignored, their contributions to society minimised or scorned. Across the world, they may take a bewildering variety of forms: slum dwellers on the fringes of a burgeoning South American city, former factory workers made redundant in America’s ‘fly-over country’, socially conservative Hungarians sceptical of the influence of multinational bureaucracies.
‘The elite’, by contrast, are those who control and manipulate the strings of power. They may occupy this position by virtue of birth and inheritance, as in vast land barons created by the European conquest and settlement of Latin America; or they may hold it through the legitimation of nominally meritocratic institutions, such as career politicians, unaccountable civil servants in national or transnational bodies, business magnates obsessed with their bottom lines, celebrities condescendingly pontificating about matters that have no bearing on their own lives or behaviour.
Irreconcilable clash
It is the sense of an irreconcilable clash between these two forces that constitutes the fundamental populist postulate. Correctly, this book – in common with other studies – notes that it is not a phenomenon exclusively of the left or the right; though I would suggest that this functions as something more than practice, but rather as a worldview, or what the Dutch scholar Cas Mudde has termed ‘a thin-centred ideology.’
In the Name of the People goes on to discuss how this plays out. Here it relies on a considerable body of experience and analysis over may years. Populist politics tends to be seeded in severe discontent. Economic stresses are magnified by the failure of established political institutions to manage them. Populist politics typically requires a charismatic figure – that chap on the bakkie – or at least some sort of political vehicle: a party, or something more nebulous, such as a ‘movement’. The programme enunciated, such as it is, will tend to be undetailed, relying on recriminations against perceived enemies – the elites of course, plus outsiders such as foreign interlopers, immigrants, or competing ethnic groups – and promising the core constituency all manner of benefits.
Populists will typically set their sights on power. ‘The precondition for the rise of a populist,’ the authors write, ‘as distinct for example, from a military coup or the seizure of power through extra-parliamentary protest – is an existing electoral democracy that tolerates free speech, allowing the leader to mobilise a constituency using strongly confrontational language that may offend but that is nonetheless permitted.’
Populists do not generally reject democracy; rather, they would argue that they are restoring what the ‘elites’ have degraded. The claim to power of a populist movement is that it represents a profoundly democratic impulse; they are democratic innovators. It reclaims democracy in its true, etymological sense – the power of the people. ‘The people’, meanwhile, are ordained to power by virtue of the numbers they can muster, and theirs is a sort of authentic spirit of the nation.
Their opponents, meanwhile, are not merely fellow citizens with differing views, or opponents who might at times be confronted, at times cooperated with. They are enemies. Politics becomes a zero-sum game. Depending on the specific context, this can manifest itself in rancorous name-calling or in outright violence.
Vulnerable
From here, institutions become vulnerable. Populists have a majoritarian view of democracy and public life. The limits imposed by constitutions and courts or oversight agencies are a hindrance – central to the idea of liberal democracy – and are often associated with the machinations of the elite and sundry enemies. These are to be neutered and bypassed, whether by rule through presidential decree, or by marching the army in to clear out a cantankerous legislature, or by being stocked with loyalists committed to the populist agenda.
Similarly, populists will seek fast-paced socio-economic solutions – unorthodox policies, as the book puts it – to the problems facing their supporters. Populism with a leftist inclination will tend to favour large-scale redistributive measures. Just as the political programme moves against the elite hold on the institutions, so the economic programme seeks to take influence from the more affluent (invariably via the state). In a sense, it seeks to give economic content to the democracy it is creating. This opens the way to nationalisation, to confiscation of assets, to running the printing presses to create cheap money, and to thumbing noses at creditors.
This may seem effective at first. But as these measures bite into the investment climate and alienate entrepreneurs and creditors – not to mention the enabling of corruption – the flaws rapidly become apparent. Inflation is one obvious symptom, but overall retardation soon becomes apparent.
Faced with problems compounding one another – effectively, reinforcing some of the problems that populist movements pledged to solve – the search for scapegoats is on. Institutions, the opposition, foreign powers are all denounced, undermining the democratic environment further.
The book shows these processes in their national permutations across the case studies. These are divided into three broad sections: Old-Style Populists, Liberation-Movement Populism, and New-Order Populists. This is an intelligent and revealing ordering, since the phenomenon is not only a long-standing one, but has shown itself to be a mutable one.
The early populists, in the account given here, responded to crises of a rapidly changing world and the backdrop of ingrained grievances at the operation of individual societies and their relationship to the outside world. Latin America features strongly here – particular the figure of Juan Perón – although an interesting chapter examines the Philippines and another (to my mind, not quite as compelling) looks at the ‘military populists’ that arose in post-independence Africa.
‘Classical populists,’ the book tells us, ‘emerged from the crisis of the social order, power disparities, exclusionary politics and economic discrimination that came with industrialisation and urbanisation. Leaders like Perón changed the rules of the game, abandoning conventional political practices and accepted behaviour. This style of populism was characterised by mobilisation and mass action, where such demagogic leaders, for the first time, became more familiar figures, living their personal lives in public. These populists were true nationalists. Their policies were geared towards social redistribution, they were sceptical of foreign capital and critical of traditional economic elites and multilateral bodies. They oversaw a period of import substitution industrialisation, which led to the development of some of Latin America’s largest corporations, most of them state-run. Protectionism was strongly promoted.’
The second section, Liberation-Movement Populism, identifies populism in the operation of the bodies that encouraged liberation struggles, both against colonial domination, and then to rid their countries of sclerotic and underperforming (or deadly) post-colonial incumbents. This I found particularly interesting, although also conceptually challenging.
Certainly, liberation movements would seem hardwired into a populist mindset: they claim less to represent their constituencies than to embody them, and identify themselves with their countries. As the chapter on Zimbabwe demonstrates, this was the playbook of ZANU-PF, which matched and exceeded some of the worst excesses of populism elsewhere. (This chapter is entitled ‘Zimbabwe: Democracy with Brutal Characteristics.’)’
South Africa
The discussion of South Africa focuses on Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema and the destructive, extractive and institution-corroding brand of politics that they practised. A mobilised civil society and some resilient institutions managed to hold parts of the line. But I would argue that any populist tendencies need to be traced back much further. The concept of ‘the people’ was regularly invoked during the struggle era, drawing an uncomfortable line between who was so recognised and who was not. And even during the presidency of Nelson Mandela, a discourse was clearly evident that posited opposition to the government as treason. Mandela’s address to the ANC’s Mafeking Conference in 1997 was a chilling example of this. ‘The people’ gradually gave way to ‘our people’, cementing the sense of us and them.
Moreover, while South Africa has eschewed some of the more reckless policy options undertaken elsewhere (thanks in no small measure to a competent Treasury and independent Reserve Bank), it was the ANC’s Mandela-era resolution to illegally staff institutions with its loyalists – cadre deployment – that accounts for a great deal of the country’s current institutional failure. Meanwhile, the rollout of social assistance was at once a necessary palliative and a dreadful fiscal gamble, since it was never clear just how sustainable this would be in the long run. Indeed, Brian Pottinger wrote in the run-up to the Zuma presidency that it wasn’t obvious just how much more populist he might be.
And it also deserves to be recorded that the appetite for repairing the constitutional and institutional vandalism and changing policy track was meagre under the nominally reformist President Cyril Ramaphosa: cadre deployment remains an openly stated commitment (despite the damning findings of the Zondo Commission), while the investment-destroying drive for expropriation without compensation was a signature policy. The latter was accompanied by a good measure of race-baiting and intemperate attacks on farmers. Rather populist in behaviour.
Venezuela
The third section looks at New-Order Populists. The experience of Venezuela looms large here; in a very real sense, this is the epitome of left-wing populism, both in its execution and lamentable consequences. The late Hugo Chavez capitalised brilliantly on his personal charisma, disenchantment with the political establishment, resentment at inequalities and the availability of ready oil money. He inspired some very real affection and admiration, and presided over some real (though unsustainable) improvements in living standards for his constituency. In office Chavez was a constant campaigner, his use of media – such as television shows where he would field questions and concerns directly – gave him a direct link with ‘the people’. (It should never be forgotten just how much modern technology is enabling populist appeals, with instant, unmediated communication possible as it was not in the past.)
The early years of Hugo Chavez’s incumbency (buoyed by high oil prices) saw real-time improvement to the living standards of Venezuela’s poor, something viewed with admiration by leftists elsewhere. Indeed, a contemporaneous documentary was titled Another World is Possible… In Venezuela.
But Chavez presided over an agenda that moved increasingly beyond the restraints of the country’s institutions. These were sidelined or suborned. As the economic consequences of its policies became more manifest – and even in a time of high oil revenues, the government had lived beyond its means – it turned to overt repression. Today, there is little to celebrate.
If Venezuela served as a totem for admirers on the political left, Hungarian populism has filled that role for some on the right. The chapter on the latter country, written by veteran journalist Ray Hartley, sets this out accessibly for a lay reader. Hungary’s background is of course very different from that of Venezuela, not least because of its membership of the European Union, which more than any other regional institution has built adherence to political values into the criteria for membership.
Hungary, together with a number of other former communist states, has taken a firm stand on the protection of national identity. This places it somewhat at odds with the stance taken by many of its peers (indeed, the ‘European Project’ as a whole), which have accepted some degree of continental homogenisation. This came into sharp relief during the 2015 migrant crisis, when it refused to accept refugees, while such EU partners as Germany and Sweden were very receptive to doing so. For the government of Victor Orbán and the Fidesz party, this was an existential matter.
Hartley writes: ‘To Fidesz, the refugees threatened the Hungarian way of life. They threatened to dilute Hungary’s Christian state by introducing a new religion, which the conservatives see as aggressive and unaccommodating of others. They bring new languages and new ways of seeing the world, which threaten to dilute what Fidesz sees as a uniquely Hungarian way of life. To Fidesz, all those who seek to open Hungary up to liberal democratic values are not to be seen as normal “opposition” politicians in a democratic system but rather as enemies who must be defeated.’
Illiberal democracy
Equally importantly, Hungary enacted measures that pushed against norms prevalent in the West. The licence of a university funded by George Soros was revoked. Legislation (since abolished) was introduced to tighten state oversight of non-profit groups. Allegations of interference with the judiciary have been made. And while Hungary provides legal protection for homosexual people, full marriage equality has not been attained, and the government has taken a dim view of transgenderism.
Orbán has used the term ‘illiberal democracy’ to describe his government’s position.
Hungary’s official position is that it remains part of Europe, and a committed member of the European Union. It benefits significantly from this relationship, but wants it on its own terms – a conundrum reflecting a disjuncture between economic and politico-cultural interests that large-minded EU expansionists will need to deal with. (Because EU measures against a member state require unanimous support, Hungary is protected by a close alliance with Poland, where the government has faced similar criticisms.)
For some, Hungary’s position has suggested populism and small-minded nationalism – but for others, a brave and sometimes lonely defence of its borders and the culture within them.
The Hungarian government, incidentally, rejects the descriptor of populism. Minister of State for Communication, Tamás Menczer, had this to say: ‘Populism is because the government or leader says something just because the people want to hear it. They said we are populists because we said illegal migration is dangerous. In the last three to four years, there have been more than 30 terror attacks that have killed more than 300 people. Hungarian people said they don’t want illegal migration. If government has the same opinion as the people, it is not populism.’
Useful tool
I found that remark intriguing, and it brings the discussion full circle: What is populism, and is it a useful tool for analysis?
Indeed, if I could identify one weakness in In the Name of the People, it’s that across its various chapters, there are disjunctures as to what populism is. This is despite the very rich discussion in the introduction, and is perhaps an inevitable consequence of having multiple authors. There is at times a tendency to see populism as a term encompassing any approach that fosters and feeds off division. There is, for example, a reference to ‘fascist populism’. My own take on this is that it risks turning populism into an idea so broad that it loses any analytical utility. Fascism (and for that matter communism) thrives on division, no doubt; but there is no reason that this would necessarily make such an approach populist. Division can surely be a useful tool for politicians from diverse traditions.
Perhaps it makes sense to talk about populist impulses – political behaviour that may be bolted on to other ideological traditions – as a relative of (but not coterminous with) populism itself.
It’s important to understand this, for as the book describes, populism is a force in the world – ‘rewiring the world – which is doing more than simply challenging liberal democratic ideals; it is straining the toleration and the institutional resilience on which societies depend.
Populist surge
The question that shadows any discussion of the contemporary populist surge is why it has an evidently growing appeal. One obvious answer is that it references real issues. The failure of economic systems to deliver ever-rising standards of living, and of the established political office-holders to address real concerns, and the sometimes-cavalier dismissal of the legitimacy of both sets of concerns by intellectual and cultural elites, all open up space for the messianic figure and the intuitive demands to assert themselves.
Richard Nixon once wrote that while the Soviet bloc spoke about the problems, the West often failed its own interests by speaking only about the Soviets. Just so in confronting populism. Those of us concerned about populist possibilities need to do more than warn of the dangers they pose. This is right and necessary, but insufficient. Populism needs to be answered by reason, by commitment and above all by better ideas.
Above all, I’d counsel against easy, supercilious moral superiority. Back in 2016, I recall watching the Brexit referendum in the UK and thinking to myself that the Remainers must have been very confident they had it in the bag. The pitch – admittedly, more from individual Remainers than any official campaign message – was that ‘you’re stupid, racist and xenophobic, and when you lose, we’re going to rub your noses in it.’ Today the UK is no longer in the EU. (I put this to some very dear progressives of my acquaintance in the UK, and they ruefully conceded. With the blessings of hindsight.)
I saw something similar a year later when the US elected Donald Trump. This was going to be the election that put Deplorables in their place, formally confirming them to be as superfluous as the blue-collar jobs that they’d once held before they were outsourced abroad. Ironically, it was the awful Michael Moore who called it correctly, having some insight into the decaying industrial towns of his younger days. Trump got four years in the White House and might well be back for another try.
I can’t help thinking that some empathy and empathetic policy posturing – and some long-term honesty by those holding the reins of power – might have seen things turning out differently.
I have, however, no easy answers. Certainly not for a society like South Africa which provides such potentially rich pickings for a populist message.
But I am certainly concerned about that demagogue on the back of his bakkie, and not for the crude words or scatological images he might expound. I am concerned that a desperate and disillusioned crowd might have lost faith in what democracy offers now. And I am concerned for what that will mean for South Africa’s future.
In the Name of the People: How Populism is Rewiring the World, by Tendai Biti, Nic Cheeseman, Christopher Clapham, Ray Hartley, Greg Mills, and Lyal White.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend
Image: Dilma Rousseff, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons