Category Archives: Populism

Tamil Nadu assembly election manifestos always attract national attention with the two main Dravidian parties promising generous freebies like mixers, grinders, television sets, cellphones and largely delivering them. Rapid industrialisation from the 1990s has allowed TN some cushion to finance the lavish electoral promises. The battle of manifestos is no different this time too; both AIADMK and DMK have gone overboard. With free consumer goods, cash transfers, nativist appeals, and outreach to specific groups like youth and women, their manifestos span the entire spectrum of electoral populism.

DMKs sops include reserving 75% industrial jobs for locals, one-year maternity leave for women government employees, banning the NEET medical entrance exam, subsidised food, fuel, milk and transport. AIADMK has promised free houses, washing machines and cable TV service, Rs 1,500 monthly for housewives, government jobs and prohibition in stages. The offerings clearly leave voters spoilt for choice but the fiscal calculations shouldnt be going awry either: TNs outstanding liabilities have grown from Rs 1.85 lakh crore in 2015 to Rs 4.05 lakh crore in 2020. A promise like prohibition, ostensibly targeting women, shrinks revenues which are otherwise needed to finance the freebies on offer.

With each election, the freebie basket gets more expensive: washing machines and free cable TV services are replacing cellphones and set top boxes from 2016. The washing machine, like the mixer-grinder, speaks to women voters and their productive hours lost to domestic labour. Yet, by specifically targeting women with such sops, politics also reinforces gendered roles in households. Monthly allowances to housewives risk feeding into the low women workforce participation rate.

Ultimately, politics must focus on improving education outcomes for greater qualitative outreach to women and youth. Promises like reserving jobs for locals and banning NEET militate against national interest and may not weather judicial scrutiny. Since 1991, TN has made giant strides in creating industrial corridors and liberalising professional education. Neither policy can be termed populist in the sense of finding a pride of place in election manifestos. But its precisely such policies which have had huge spillover effects in fostering employment, trained manpower and TNs prosperity. Both Dravidian parties, which have admirably pursued continuity of industrial and education policies, must avoid the rising nativist tendencies in Indian politics and stay on top of the game of wooing global industrial majors to their state.

This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.

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Beyond populism: Freebies have worked for Dravidian parties. But their real success was pulling TN out of the - The Times of India Blog

Populist leaders portray themselves as capable of jolting the failed status quo and dynastic politics by invoking the rhetoric of the aam admi, asserting to bring in an egalitarian society to attract the lower rungs of society. However, once in power, populists largely end up with some variation polarizing society, threatening democratic institutions and norms, and eroding individual rights and freedom. Pakistans democratic institutions and norms, civil society and liberties and governance are under the threat of Khans populism.

Cas Mudde, a political scientist, argues that populism is a thin-centered ideology that divides society into two homogeneous and antagonist groups of pure people (led by a populist) and corrupt elites (generally led by traditional politicians). Populists construct an enemy through rhetoric and slogans that is not an outsider but their fellow countryfolk that generates polarisation within the society.

For instance, Trump used the Save America rhetoric to paint the news media, big tech organizations, political opposition and the Supreme Court as an enemy of peoples freedom of speech and thought. Modis Hindutva ideology clearly differentiates Hindus as the pure people of India and has portrayed the corrupt elite of the Indian National Congress as secularists that do not represent Hindus the pure people.

In their attempt to construct an enemy and implement their agenda of change, populists start hurting individual and minority rights. Trumps hostile policies against Blacks, Muslims and Hispanics, and Bolsonaros rhetoric of anti-migration are cases in point. Moving towards South Asian populism, Khan claimed to stand for minority rights but had to reverse his decision of appointing economist Atif Mian in his Economic Advisory Council. His recent reaction to the Hazara communitys protest over the murdered Hazara miners showed his wavering commitment towards his claim to support minority rights. In India, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is a glaring manifestation of Modis anti-pluralistic populism. Furthermore, Modis slogan of Sabka saath sabka vikas contradicts his actions of infringing minority rights.

Slogans are important for populists as they help them connect with the people and portray them as the only hope to change the system. To assert and implement those slogans, populists require an authoritarian style of leadership that damages democratic institutions and norms. Political scientists call populists tenure democratic backsliding. Populists ascendancy to power relies upon using their rights and free press to express their frustrations with the government and to mobilise support under democratic pluralistic governments. Once in power, they turn out to be the real menace to those institutions.

The populist rhetoric of all leaders is based on extensive use of the personal pronoun to portray themselves as the only agent/leader who can change and enhanced emphasis on creating a deep divide between corrupt elites and people of the country. For example, Modis I am new India was used to bring himself and his party in equilibrium with the nation. Comparatively, Khan constructed his image as the Kaptaan who is the one capable of driving forward. Such populist authoritarian leadership comes in direct confrontation with civil society, that is responsible to defend liberal democracy, and adversely affects civil society and civil liberties.

Trumps claim of drain the swamp was to overthrow the existing political setup and then, being an agent of change, revive the system. To fulfil his claim, authoritative Trump blamed the judiciary, lawyers, political opposition, bureaucracy and journalists supported by the establishment for all the ills existing in the system. By the same token, Khan built his rhetoric of Naya Pakistan on the discourse of removing the evil of political corruption and bringing in transparent governance.

His slogan Naya Pakistan met a different fate, though. He promised to bring new faces to govern Pakistan but landed in government with the same old technocrats and electables that have been part of every government and who are supported by powerful quarters. Khans larger-than-life claim that his fight is against the corrupt political elite of Pakistan suffers when he is seen surrounded by friends like Zulfi Bokhari and Pervez Khattak (under pending NAB investigation), Jahangir Tareen and Khusro Bakhtiar (top beneficiaries of the sugar crisis), Abdul Razzaq Dawood (conflict of interest contrary to Khans claim of conflict of interest before coming to power). Khan himself had to pay a meagre fine to regularise his illegal encroachment to construct his Bani Gala palace.

Evidently, the basic assumptions about populist leaders are that they tend to stay in power for long and threaten democratic institutions through their authoritarian style of leadership. Nonetheless, examples of South Korea and South Africa are important reminders where populist leaders remained under pressure from the electorate to follow their reform agenda. Hence, citizens have a critical role in defending democracy and fundamental rights from being manipulated or undermined by populism.

Furthermore, Trumps defeat is an important reminder for populist leaders who, once in power, tend to undermine democratic institutions and norms. Americans rise against Trumps populism is an encouraging sign for countries with populist leaders. Nonetheless, to restore the damage done to democracy and address the deep polarization carried out under the period of populist rule is a daunting challenge for the counter-populist leader coming to power after a populist rule. The next elections in Brazil (2022), Philippines (2022) and Pakistan (2023) could prove critical for such efforts in maintaining and/or restoring democratic institutions and norms in those countries. Among these, Philippines has an advantage because presidents there are limited to one six-year term in office thus there is a hope that after Dutertes illiberal rule ending in 2022, Philippines could get an opportunity to restore the damage done by Duterte to institutions if he is not succeeded by another populist leader.

In Pakistan too, there is hope. Progressively developing as it seems to be, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) emerged as a counter-populist movement that is questioning Naya Pakistan and Khans claim to be a peoples leader to eliminate the common citizens economic miseries. The PDM has also challenged Khans reliance on the establishment. Khans recent attack on the Election Commission of Pakistan is also a glaring example of his populist tendencies.

Claiming to be a proponent of free press and the right to dissent before, suddenly the PMs thinking seemed to have changed completely; under his government the media has faced severe restrictions on its independence, including the finances of media houses being curtailed, journalists censored and even arrest of a media house owner. This is done to curb any criticism on poor governance and squeezing the space for the PDM to organize and mobilise public grievances effectively.

And, yet, the PDM is moving forward. Importantly, within the PDM the PPP has an instrumental role in defending democratic institutions and norms from being damaged further as the party has continued its emphasis to bring the PDMs fight within the remit of constitutional and parliamentary practices such as contesting by-elections, Senate elections, and in the process constraining space for populism to inflict lasting damage to Pakistans nascent democracy and prevent democracy backsliding in country.

The writer is a London-based writer and teaches at Kings College London.

Email: [emailprotected] com

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Populism and counter-populism - The News International

Even before it was illegal to be poured a pint, our pubs were closing. One in five shut this millennium, with fewer than 50,000 pubs left pre-pandemic.

This isnt a huge surprise for a nation thats drinking less over time at least it was before home schooling kicked in.

Now, new research finds that pub closures pre-crisis didnt just reflect our drinking habits, they swayed political opinions too. Looking at closures of pubs from 2013 to 2016, the author finds that people in areas that saw an additional community pub close were more than four percentage points more likely to support Ukip.

This fits the argument that support for rightwing populists is fuelled by a sense of local decline and greater isolation.

The author isnt, however, making a binary distinction between economic/social drivers of populism. In fact, she finds that the impact of pub closures on voting is particularly large in economically deprived areas of the country.

Maybe this also helps us understand the collapse of Ukip as well as its rise. Brexit happening was obviously quite bad for the single-issue party. But the final nail in the coffin? The number of pubs increased by 320 in the year to March 2019. So if you want to beat the populist right, its time to save your local pub.

Its not a total coincidence the chancellor used the recent budget to announce 150m to help communities takeover their local boozers. Pubs, it turns out, are political.

Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Read more at resolutionfoundation.org

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Save your local pub and help defeat populism - The Guardian

Supporters of populist parties are often assumed to have low levels of political engagement. Drawing on a new study of voters in nine European countries, Andrea L. P. Pirro and Martn Portos argue that this perception is largely misguided. When non-electoral forms of political participation are considered, those who vote for populist parties exhibit higher levels of engagement than supporters of non-populist parties.

Populism is all the rage. Few European countries remain immune from populist parties (we now count Malta and Ireland) and in at least a handful of countries (e.g. Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland) populist parties hold the majority of seats in national parliaments. The recent performances of Vox in the 2019 Spanish general election and Chega in the 2021 Portuguese presidential election have also put an end to Iberian exceptionalism.

While largely associated with radical-right politics (short for ultranationalist and socio-cultural exclusionary positions on immigration and with regard to ethnic minorities), Europe has also seen a surge of left-wing variants of populism, as illustrated by the once-radical Syriza in Greece and the progressively more institutionalised Podemos in Spain. For the sake of clarity, we consider populism as a set of ideas emphasising the people as the linchpin of any rightful political goal and decision; criticising the elite; and capitalising on a sense of (real or perceived) crisis. Populist parties and movements ultimately seek to mend the degrading of popular sovereignty the latter allegedly corrupted by treacherous and self-serving elites. From this perspective, populism resembles an empty shell that can be filled with ideologies as disparate as socialism or nationalism.

Overall, we have become familiar with the ideology of populist parties as well as the drivers of their vote, but a significant gap persists regarding our understanding of what populist supporters do besides the simple act of voting. Populism is generally linked to mistrust and apathy, and common wisdom suggests that populist supporters do not engage in politics or are, at best, reluctantly political. In a recent study, we were interested to know whether populist voters engage in forms of non-electoral participation, such as protest activities, digital activism, or boycotts. At the same time, we sought to answer questions related to the role played by social values in populist supporters participation as well as the influence exerted by attitudes on economic redistribution and immigration.

We analysed the level of non-electoral participation of left-wing and right-wing populist voters drawing on a survey conducted in nine European countries (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), with a representative sample of roughly 2,000 individuals per country. Looking at the range of non-electoral participation activities (which included contacting politicians, signing petitions, demonstrating, striking, damaging public goods, clashing with the police, and using social media for political purposes, among other activities), we came to five main conclusions.

First, populist party voters tend to engage politically more than non-populist party voters. Populist parties therefore foster anti-establishment but not apolitical views. Their unpolitics leads to full engagement in politics since they also prompt grassroots mobilisation. This finding echoes the burgeoning literature on movement parties as hybrid organisations operating in both the electoral and protest arenas. This observation calls attention to the investments in grassroots politics by populist left and populist right parties and the broader prospects they might offer in terms of political socialisation.

Second, left-wing populist party voters generally participate more than right-wing voters. However, right-wing voters are not an entirely demobilised set. Indeed, as Figure 1 below indicates, populist right voters engage more in non-electoral activities than non-populist right voters, and generally as much as left-wing voters. The populist right has thus come to rely on a reserve of all-round activists, prompting us to reconsider the long-standing notion that grassroots activism is the sole preserve of left-wing politics.

Figure 1: Predicted values of non-electoral participation as a function of populist vote

Third, in our attempt to unearth the social values underlying the levels of political engagement, we found that left-wing voters holding libertarian views and populist right voters holding authoritarian views are those that mobilise the most at the non-electoral level. While confirming progressive values as an important driver of participation for the left, our findings show that populist right-wing authoritarians do not necessarily subscribe to forms of orderly or conventional participation. Populist right-wing voters sharing authoritarian views value casting ballots in elections as much as other forms of political participation.

Fourth, when it comes to the issue of immigration, populist right party voters holding negative views on migrants tend to mobilise more than non-populist right party voters. At the same time, positive views on migration tend to feed into the non-electoral participation of populist left voters. This finding resonates with the ideological profiles of populist parties and confirms the prominence of a populist/non-populist divide for engagement beyond the ballot box.

Finally, when it comes to economic redistribution, it is interesting to see that populist right voters embracing redistributive views tend to mobilise as much as left-wing voters whether populist or not. We see this result in line with the progressive though not univocal shift of the populist right from champion of neoliberalism to torchbearer of economic paternalism.

These conclusions have a number of implications for our understanding of populism. In a context of declining party membership, populist parties have supplanted traditional parties, investing in their presence on the ground and constant campaigning. The alternative prospects for political participation offered by these parties are consistent with the images of large-scale anti-austerity mobilisations in Greece and Spain, but also the increasing relevance of grassroots politics in the populist rights playbook as exemplified by the storming of the US Capitol by Donald Trump supporters earlier this year.

So, while populist supporters may be disenchanted with mainstream parties and politics, they are far from disengaged. We thus suggest there should be more focus in future research on developments outside electoral and institutional arenas, and that political participation should return to the centre of our attention. Allegiances and forms of engagement are changing and this holds particularly true for populist right parties that can now rely on a reserve of highly-engaged activists mobilising beyond the voting booth.

For more information, see the authors accompanying paper in West European Politics

Note: This article gives the views of theauthors, not the position of EUROPP European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: News Oresund (CC BY 2.0)

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Supporters of populist parties exhibit higher levels of political engagement than non-populist voters - EUROPP - European Politics and Policy

Canada doesnt have its own version of a presidents club, as the U.S. does for its former leaders.

But its highly unlikely that we would ever see former prime ministers getting together in TV ads to promote the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, as all living former U.S. presidents (minus Donald Trump) did this week.

The two spots, released on Thursday, feature Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter making the case for COVID-19 immunization. Obama talks about how he wants to hug his mother-in-law and Bush says he dreams of attending a Texas Rangers game.

Here in Canada, current and former politicians would not be the first choice for a get-vaccinated ad campaign. Curiously, on matters of COVID-19 at least, this is a far more populist nation, more likely to put the politicians at the back of the vaccination line.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said repeatedly that hell get his shot when the turn comes for men in his age group and demographic. Will he make a big deal of it when he does? Its risky.

While President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris turned their vaccinations into high-profile photo ops earlier this year, thats a bigger public-relations peril for a Canadian prime minister, highly likely to set off a wave of outrage about political privilege.

Premier Doug Ford pushed those buttons himself on Thursday when he accused a New Democrat MPP, Sol Mamakwa, of kind of jumping the line when he received a vaccination in a Northern Ontario community.

In my attempts on Thursday to find already-vaccinated politicians in Canada, I only turned up three prominent ones: Yukon Premier Sandy Silver, Nunavuts Joe Savikataaq and Northwest Territories Premier Caroline Cochrane. All are already twice vaccinated, in fact, but they got their shots in the regular lineups, along with the rest of their populations.

All treated the moment with very Canadian humility. Silvers Twitter post described a profound feeling of gratitude and Cochrane talked of how she booked her own shot online.

There may be more elected people in Canada who have received their shots as part of one or another priority groups. But politician is not one of those groups and I couldnt find any elected representative who had made a big deal of it.

Nor does it appear that any of the parties in Ottawa are keeping track right now of which MPs may have received shots. (That may change when parties need to know whos been vaccinated and who hasnt for purposes of restarting travel and larger meetings.)

Its not just on vaccinations either, though, that the Canadian political class is keeping things very low key and decidedly non-personal on all things COVID-19.

Conservative Leader Erin OToole mentioned only glancingly on Thursday his own brush with a positive COVID-19 test last fall. Many people might have forgotten OToole was COVID-19 positive once. The same is true of Bloc Qubcois Leader Yves Franois Blanchet.

Trudeau, similarly, didnt talk a lot about his wife Sophies early bout with COVID-19, which put the family in isolation a year ago this week. The prime minister did mention in a radio interview this week that his 72-year-old mother, Margaret, had recently received the vaccine in Montreal.

I talked to a thoughtful Liberal MP on Thursday about why Canadian politicians arent keen to speak publicly about how COVID-19 is affecting their own lives. Fittingly, he didnt want to talk on the record, for fear he would sound like a politician boasting about how humble they all are.

But he said that COVID-19 in particular has made politicians very wary of any perception that their lives mattered more than anyone going through real hardship during the pandemic. COVID has touched everyone, he said, and in that way, is a great equalizer. We can always get another prime minister; we cant get another grandma.

He added that this was a Canadian thing, not something that splits along partisan lines. It would be the same if the Conservatives were in power And I like that about Canadians.

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The former U.S. presidents did their TV ads to combat vaccine hesitancy, which is also a slightly bigger problem in that country than here, though recent polls show that Canadians and Americans are increasingly likely to get shots the more they see others getting them.

Who they see getting them is a point of contrast, though. In the U.S., seeing a former president with his sleeves rolled up might just convince someone to do the same. In Canada, wed be asking who the elder statesman shoved out of the way to get that shot. Pandemic populism, on this score, is larger in Canada than it is in the U.S.

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Opinion | Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford are showing America who the real populists are - Toronto Star

A great deal of composure and prudence will be required in the coming weeks. Citizens are very tense after a year of financial and mental suffering due to the pandemic. They do not believe anything or anyone as far as when the day of liberation from the restrictions will come is concerned.

At the same time, society and the media are experiencing a schizophrenic situation concerning the governments measures to prevent the spread of the virus. Sometimes we complain that the measures are too relaxed, other times that they are absurdly strict. Endurance and acceptance are close to zero.

The Hellenic Police has a mission that is testing everyones nerves both citizens and officers. Considering that we are all ready for a fight, officers are often faced with tricky situations which they do not know how to handle.

Is this an excuse for the excessive use of violence by police officers, as appears to have been the case on Sunday in the Athenian suburb of Nea Smyrni? Or for the rude behavior of others? Of course not. This incident must be thoroughly investigated until a credible conclusion is reached. Any rotten apples in the police force need to be dealt with severely.

It is wrong for young police officers to be thrown into these situations without special training and without the direct supervision of older, more experienced officers. Maybe its time to ask for the help of other European countries that have a history in this area, by acting without hysteria, in a technocratic manner and with a system in place.

At the moment, however, it is obvious that some people want to mix the existing anger with cultivated hatred and cause a social explosion. They have done it before. It would be tragic if they succeeded, just as we are reaching the end of the pandemic. Greek society has so far shown incredible patience and maturity compared to those elsewhere in Europe. We still have to travel the last, unbearably painful, mile in the pandemic.

The government has shown that it can balance between the law and order dogma and a liberal approach to human rights. It is not an easy balance and the pressure is huge. But this balance is the one that provides it with political dominance and should not be lost.

Nobody else can do it because the main opposition is stuck in an old repertoire which it does not seem to be able to let go of. Citizens want the pendulum to swing back to its original position in the middle for the first time in 47 years. They hate extremes and exaggerations and ignore the sirens of rampant populism despite their personal anger. Only mistakes caused by fatigue or haste can push them into their arms.

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Steering clear of the sirens of extreme populism - http://www.ekathimerini.com

Populism has been on the rise in Europe for some time. Numerous studies are seeking to explain this trend, and the role of emotion has received more attention, only recently. Researchers from the University of Amsterdam have for the first time identified the relative importance of socio-economic, socio-cultural and emotional factors in a single comprehensive study among a total of 8,059 respondents from 15 European countries. They conclude that negative emotions are the best predictors of populist attitudes.

In their study, the researchers looked at three types of explanatory factors that are usually associated with populist preferences, the first of these being socio-economic factors. Earlier studies suggested that economic insecurity or adversity (e.g., due to unemployment or low income) is strongly associated with distrust of government and elites as well as support for right-wing populist parties.

Another type of explanation for developing populist mindsets that was examined in the study revolves around peoples social identity and the attachment they feel to a particular group or country. Once people feel that their cultural identity and values are being threatened by alien values, belief systems or ideologies, this could increase their support for populist parties and policies.

Finally, the study looked at negative emotions anger, contempt and anxiety as explanations for support for populism: anger about not achieving goals or about certain behaviour or events caused by others, contempt for others who are seen as guilty and inferior and anxiety due to feelings of threat.

After thorough analysis of these various factors that could potentially explain populist preferences, the researchers concluded that negative emotions are better predictors than socio-economic and socio-cultural factors. In general, they find no significant correlation between socio-economic factors and populist attitudes, apart from a very negligible relationship with education. They also found no significant connection between socio-cultural factors and populist views. However, the link between populist attitudes and anger, contempt and anxiety appears to be relatively strong.

The research design was based on a structural equation model (SEM), while a novel machine learning algorithm, Random Forest (RF), reaffirmed the importance of emotions across the collected international survey dataset.

We provide empirical evidence that all three negative emotions play an important role in explaining populist attitudes. These emotions likely reflect peoples negative feelings about their current socio-economic or socio-cultural status, according to the researchers.

David Abadi, Pere-Lluis Huguet Cabot, Jan Willem Duyvendak & Agneta Fischer (2021), Socio-Economic or Emotional Predictors of Populist Attitudes across Europe. The results of this study are currently available on PsyArXiv Preprints.

This research was funded by the European Unions H2020 project Democratic Efficacy and the Varieties of Populism in Europe (DEMOS) under H2020-EU.3.6.1.1. and H2020-EU.3.6.1.2. (grant agreement ID: 822590).

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Negative emotions are better predictors of populist attitudes - Mirage News

Even though the Senate just acquitted President TrumpDonald TrumpRomney: 'Pretty sure' Trump would win 2024 GOP nomination if he ran for president Pence huddles with senior members of Republican Study Committee Trump says 'no doubt' Tiger Woods will be back after accident MORE again, Democrats likely will not quit trying him because they cannot he unites them, while dividing everyone else. More importantly, tying conservative populism to Trump is Democrats best chance of stopping a potent political force.

The Senate acquitted Trump for a second time, but not before a strange reversal.

First, the Senate unexpectedly voted for a Democratic motion to allow witnesses to be called. This looked to extend the impeachment trial indefinitely then, in a twist as surprising as the first, an agreement was reached to forego witnesses and vote. What promised to be a lengthy presidential impeachment trial actually became historys shortest.

The trials strangeness was a perfect microcosm of the lefts four-year impeachment pursuit. There was never any chance of Trump's Senate conviction. Never. Not four years ago, when the left first called for it, not when Democrats new majority first allowed it in 2019 and not now in 2021 when Trump was out of office.

This begs the question: Why were Democrats so determined to pursue what could not succeed?

First, Trump is hard to relinquish because he has solved Democrats problems for four years.

Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonCruz: Wife 'pretty pissed' about leaked Cancun texts CBC would back Young for OMB if Tanden falls Hillary Clinton to co-write political thriller MORE and Trump dangerously divided Democrats in 2016. Clinton and Sanders were bitter nomination rivals and surrogates for a deep party split between their establishment and their left. Trump then split off seemingly safe, blue Midwestern states to win a huge upset. Once Democrats recovered from their shock, they came together against Trump to repair their divisions.

Trump became Democrats gift that kept on giving. He gave them the House in 2018, then he gave them the nomination contest in 2020.

As hard as 2016 was with the two Democrats candidates, 2020 was easy with a big pool of contenders. Democrats miraculously united around the only prominent establishment Democrat amidst a sea of left candidates. Yet, the twice-beaten Joe BidenJoe BidenHoyer: House will vote on COVID-19 relief bill Friday Pence huddles with senior members of Republican Study Committee Powell pushes back on GOP inflation fears MORE was their best shot at beating Trump Democrats got him thanks to his ability to unite them.

Second, while Trump united Democrats, he divided others. Though Republicans were more united behind Trump in 2020 than in 2016, their split and enough other voters tipped 2020 to Biden.

This division was crucial for Democrats. In the elections tumultuous aftermath, many forget its closeness. Yes, Biden won a big popular vote majority; so did Clinton. If Trump had gained an additional 160,000 votes in five states he would have won an additional 63 electoral votes and a 295 to 243 electoral vote victory.

Self-unity and opponent division are not lightly discarded under any circumstance. Parties invest great effort seeking either. Getting both is rare and worth great effort even if it appears nominally ineffective.

These two political assets are particularly vital for Democrats now. With Trump gone from office, their old establishment-left division can resurface without Trumps binding glue.

Yet Democrats biggest reason for willingly pursuing the unwinnable is not the past, or even the present, but the future specifically their future. There is no greater threat to it than conservative populism.

Democrats must have conservative populism end with Trump; the best way to ensure it does is discredit it by linking it exclusively to him. To understand the threat, look again at the last two presidential contests.

In 2016, Trump pried key states out of Democrats Midwestern blue wall, allowing him to overcome a significant popular vote deficit. In 2020, Trump came close to doing so again despite impeachment, a pandemic, an economic crash worthy of the Depression and being seen by many as unacceptably divisive. Even facing those obstacles, Trump increased his vote percentage (from 45.9 to 46.9) and his vote total by over 11 million (from 63 million to 74.2 million) the second highest on record.

If this admittedly flawed messenger accomplished this with a conservative populist message in 2020s terrible political environment, what could a better messenger do under better political circumstances? Understandably, Democrats do not want to find out. They know that 2020s circumstances can only deteriorate.

For this reason, they must try to hold the messenger constant at least figuratively discredit Trump as much as possible and try to tie conservative populism to him in the future. This is why Democrats took such lengths to impeach Trump twice, despite an obvious inability to succeed. Their real goal is future success. Rather than seeking to remove Trump from office in the present, they were seeking to bar conservative populism from office in the future.

J.T. Young served under President George W. Bush as the director of communications in the Office of Management and Budget and as deputy assistant secretary in legislative affairs for tax and budget at the Treasury Department. He served as a congressional staffer from 1987 through 2000.

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Democrats sought to impeach conservative populism instead of Trump | TheHill - The Hill

In 2018, Italy appeared set to embark on a new era of populist government led by the Five Star Movement and the League. Yet less than three years since the 2018 election, the country now finds itself with a technocratic Prime Minister in the shape of Mario Draghi. Marino De Luca writes on what this turn of events tells us about the fate of populism in Italian politics.

In the past week, Italy has seen the establishment of a new technocrat-led government. This follows on the heels of a relatively popular government that included the populist Five Star Movement in coalition with the centre-left. The fall of this government was engineered by Matteo Renzi, whose actions have brought Mario Draghi into the centre of Italian politics and produced a new and wide-ranging government encompassing left, right, populist, and technocratic actors. Italy now appears to be beginning a new phase in its relationship with populism.

How we got here

Since the political earthquake of the 2013 national elections, the Italian party system has undergone profound changes. A new political force, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), succeeded in a short space of time in becoming the leading political party in Italy. In the 2018 elections, with the support of Matteo Salvinis League, the M5S formed a government, choosing as Prime Minister a political novice, Giuseppe Conte: a defence attorney for all Italians who seemingly set the course for the two main Italian populist parties to form a new type of government.

By 2019, the tensions between these different populist parties resulted in Salvini withdrawing his party from the coalition in the hope of creating conditions for a League-led government. But he was to be frustrated. Conte managed to maintain his position as Prime Minister, and even achieved high popularity levels during the Covid-19 crisis, securing strong credibility in the rest of the EU.

However, in recent months, Italia Viva, an offshoot of the Democratic Party led by Matteo Renzi, the former flag bearer of the centre-left and Prime Minister between February 2014 and December 2016, left Contes cabinet, forcing a dramatic shift in fortunes for the Italian government. Although the idea of a new government led by Conte himself seemed possible, this gave way in the face of gruelling negotiations. In a matter of a few days, which were intended as a period to try to recompose the old majority, including Renzi, harsh disagreements emerged between the potential government parties. This forced the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, to rule out early elections and call back perhaps the most acclaimed man in Italy in recent years, Mario Draghi, to give him the power to form a new government.

Draghis government

Although Draghi represents the spectre of technocracy and its relationship with populism he has formed a government in which only 8 out of the 23 ministers are technocrats, and obtained in a few days a large parliamentary majority with the support of all parties except the far-right Brothers of Italy (FdI) and a small leftist party, the Italian Left (SI) (see Table 1).

Table 1: Investiture vote for Draghi government (1718 February 2021)

Of the 15 ministers in the new government that have been appointed from political parties, the M5S accounts for four ministers, with the League, the centre-right Forza Italia (FI) and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) being assigned three each. Italia Viva (IV) and Free and Equal (LEU) each have one minister. Table 2 below shows the full distribution of ministers in the government. Draghi has ultimately established a very broad-based government, with only a light sprinkling of technocrats and a heavy dose of populists.

Table 2: Party breakdown and composition of Draghis government

Furthermore, Mattarella outlined an emergency programme with three urgent aims that Draghi will have to realise within a few months. First, to attack the Covid-19 virus with an efficient vaccination campaign in close coordination with the state and the regions. Second, by the end of March, to counter unemployment effects with social protection measures. Third, by April, to present to the European Commission a plan for the substantial EU funds assigned to Italy.

Italys populist parties

While the Brothers of Italy will remain in opposition in the hope of transforming into a new reference point for national interests and anti-Europeanism, the League and M5S have followed different paths. Salvini had to surrender to the large companies of the north that form the foundation of the Leagues main support base and which have been damaged by the economic crisis. He was convinced both by Giancarlo Giorgetti, the new Minister of Economic Development, who is the closest politician in the party to the establishment and a great admirer of Draghi, and by Luca Zaia, the President of Veneto, who is a key rival to Salvini for the party leadership. The League ultimately came to support a strongly pro-EU government led by a technocrat a decidedly long journey from where they began.

The M5S has faced a tough internal battle over the Draghi government. Contes success in smoothing relations with the EU means that the pro-EU nature of the new government is no longer a problem for most of the party. But Draghis background as a banker and man of the elite has proven to be a far greater sticking point. An internal vote on the direct democracy platform used by the M5S resulted in 60% of the 70,000 votes cast backing the new Prime Minister. Nevertheless, Alessandro Di Battista, one of the leading figures within the Five Star Movement, left the party as a result of its support for Draghi. The M5S focused most of their efforts during the negotiations on projecting themselves as a green party, a strategy that has never achieved significant electoral success in Italy.

For the moment, then, Italian populism appears to have gone into hibernation. The League has moved away from its anti-establishment roots to join a broad-based, technocrat-led, pro-EU government, while the M5S has carved out a new ecological identity and joined the government. Only the Brothers of Italy now remain on the outside, but thus far as a relatively marginal force.

This summer, a so called white semester will begin: the last six months of the Italian Presidents term in office, during which Parliament cannot be dissolved. By August, Mattarella will therefore have to decide whether to call new elections or proceed further with Draghi until the end of the legislatures term. Draghis government has already forged a relationship of mutual dependence with the two most important populist forces in the country. The fates of both the League and the Five Star Movement are now inextricably tied up with that of a pro-EU technocrat. And equally, the fate of that technocrat appears to lie in the hands of the populists.

Note: This article gives the views of theauthor, not the position of EUROPP European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. This project has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skodowska-Curie grant agreement No 838418. The Research Executive Agency (REA) is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained in this article. Featured image credit: Presidenza della Repubblica (Public Domain)

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The new Draghi government and the fate of populism in Italy - EUROPP - European Politics and Policy

A new study in the journal Research & Politics provides evidence that populist attitudes are correlated with conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 in the United States. The findings indicate that populism which pits the people against the elites plays an even greater role than political partisanship.

From the early days of the pandemic, political scientists and social scientists in general were trying to understand the dynamics of COVID-related attitudes and behaviors. A lot of that work has focused on partisanship, which is understandable, given the importance of partisanship as a social identity in the United States these days, said study author Dominik A. Stecula (@decustecu), an assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University.

But at the same time, Mark Pickup (my co-author) and I were thinking that there is something else that is important, beyond the traditional left-right/Democrat-Republican divide. There has been a growing body of work on the importance of anti-intellectualism in shaping a lot of attitudes among Americans (notably the works of Matt Motta as well as Eric Merkley), and broader appeal of populist leaders across the world, in places like Hungary, Poland, Brazil, but also the United States with Donald Trump.

We thought that the populism, as a concept, is important because it is directly relevant to something like COVID-19, because it involves attitudes about science and elites. Populism is essentially a broad worldview that tends to pit the people against the elites,' Stecula explained.

For their study, Stecula and Pickup used the research agency Lucid to survey 1,009 adult Americans during the early stages of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the United States. They found that nearly half of the participants somewhat or strongly agreed with the statement The Chinese government developed the coronavirus as a bioweapon and 38% somewhat or strongly agreed with the statement There is a vaccine for the coronavirus that national governments and pharmaceutical companies wont release.

We collected our data in late March of 2020, and these were two of the dominant conspiracies at the time, Stecula said.

After controlling for partisan affiliation, race, education, gender, household income and other factors, the researchers found that populist attitudes were strong predictors of believing in the two COVID-19 conspiracy theories. The researchers also found that these populist attitudes were distributed fairly evenly among Republicans and Democrats.

Populism is found on the left and on the right, among Democrats and Republicans. When you read popular media accounts of populism in the US, it tends to center around Donald Trump on the political right. But there very much are populists on the left as well, Stecula told PsyPost.

In our paper, we identify two key dimensions of populism: the anti-elite dimension, and the anti-intellectual dimension. Republicans tend to score higher on the distrust of experts dimension of populism, while Democrats score higher on the anti-elite dimension.

Conservative media consumption was also linked to COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, particularly among those high in populism. The researchers found that this was not limited to Republicans.

We find that populist Democrats tend to consume conservative political news from outlets like Fox News, Breitbart, etc. We know from other research that these outlets disseminated a lot of COVID related misinformation, especially in the early days of the pandemic. This means that the influence of the conservative media is not limited to only Republicans who consume that content, but also populist Democrats, Stecula said.

Moreover, those who believed that a COVID-19 vaccine was already in existence were less likely to engage in recommended behaviors to prevent the spread of the virus.

We found that these conspiratorial beliefs are not harmless and have real-world consequences: those who believe the conspiracy theories about COVID-19 adapt less behaviors recommended by public health officials, such as social distancing or mask wearing, Stecula remarked.

Believing that COVID-19 was a Chinese bioweapon, however, was unrelated to engagement in public health behaviors, which could be a result of the fact that the two conspiracy theories are very different in nature and likely trigger different considerations about the danger posed by the virus, the researchers said.

The findings of the study are in line with concepts in political science that conceive of populism as a thin-centered ideology. In other words, it attaches itself to other ideologies, because populism, in general, does not come with a set of comprehensive answers to political questions, Stecula explained. As such, you can have populists on the political left and on the political right, as is indeed the case based on our research.

The findings are also in line with a study published in the European Journal of Public Health, which found a link between the percentage of people in a country who voted for populist parties and the belief that vaccines are not important and not effective.

But the study like all research includes some limitations.

This is science, so we can always do better, especially surrounding a topic that has been so dynamic, such as COVID-19. This paper is based on the data collected in the early days of the pandemic. The amount of conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19 has exploded after weve done our research, so we certainly could do more better mapping the determinants of these different conspiracy beliefs, Stecula said.

Another question is to what extent these relationships are universal. Given the global appeal of populist leaders, there are reasons to expect that populism might be an important factors shaping these attitudes and behaviors. We are collecting survey data in several countries right now trying to answer these questions. In terms of caveats, its worth acknowledging that this is survey work, and the news media measures we collect are self-reported. That is, of course, the norm in this line of research, we rarely have access to behavior data, but its certainly worth acknowledging as a potential limitation.

The study, How populism and conservative media fuel conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 and what it means for COVID-19 behaviors, was published online on February 15, 2021.

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Populism and conservative media linked to COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs among both Republicans and Democrats - PsyPost