Category Archives: Populism

To overcome populism, generational change must be accelerated by empowering the youth, particularly regarding political participation, Portuguese President Rebelo de Sousa told MEPs in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

Time is pressing, and Europe cannot afford to waste any more time in fulfilling the EUs aims, Rebelo de Sousa told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg.

Commenting on the European Parliament, he said it cannot remain just an abstract idea, one or another working group, revelling in debates on institutional details that have nothing to do with the day-to-day lives of Europeans.

It is only by looking at the medium and long term that the future can be won, he added.

The European Union must thus accelerate the generational change of political actors, increase the participation of young people, the rejuvenation of the political, economic and social systems of member states.

Otherwise, there is a risk of creating voids that will be filled by populism and anti-systemic movements, the president added.

According to the Portuguese president, the European Union must advance in the political, economic-financial and social reforms it advocates to present itself as a global power: National egoisms must give way before the EU [], the world deserves a stronger Europe.

Speaking of the blocs response to Russiasillegal, unjust and immoral invasion of Ukraine, Rebelo de Sousa said the Union has responded with principles, firmness and unity.

Still, the president warned that the EU-27 must continue to show the world that the war in Ukraine is not just a European problem but also a global one.

(Andr Campos Ferro; edited by Cristina Cardoso Lusa.pt, Daniel Eck)

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Portuguese president: empowering youth will be the death of populism - EURACTIV

Ever since the 1987 publication of philosopher Harold Blooms seminal The Closing of the American Mind, theres been a steady stream of books critical of higher education, many with comparable descriptors of the American mind in their title. By 2019, 59 percent of Republicans thought universities were bad for America (Pew Research Center). This is but one measure of the increasingly positive correlation between conservative ideology, populism, and anti-intellectualism.

As a form of anti-establishment politics, populism pits presumably virtuous, united, ordinary folk whose concerns are constantly disregarded against purportedly corrupt, condescending, self-serving elites whose privilege constantly prevails. Populism thereby presents itself as a product of class struggles. Furthermore, it proposes simplistic and divisive solutions to problems that require complex thinking and increased cooperation.

In his 1964 Pulitzer-Prize winning Anti-intellectualism in American Life, historian Richard Hofstadter described anti-intellectualism as the view that intellectualsare pretentious, conceited and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous, and subversive The plain sense of the common [person] is an altogether adequate substitute for, if not actually much superior to, formal knowledge and expertise.

Hofstadter argued that anti-intellectualism was a product of the historical democratization of knowledge. Or as scientist Isaac Asimov put it more curtly, democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge, insinuating that all states of mind are equally helpful. Ironically, and problematically, anti-intellectualism then easily reverses into anti-democratic, authoritarian leadership that appeals to emotions instead of knowledge.

In sum, anti-intellectualism is a generalized mistrust of experts and intellectuals, a social attitude that systematically denigrates science-based facts, ivory tower academics, and the pursuit of theory and knowledge, whether it be of the character and consequences of capitalism, climate change, or COVID-19. It clings to fervently held beliefs, despite little or no supporting evidence. Remarkably, social scientific research shows that subjects with high levels of anti-intellectualism actually increase their opposition to expertise when presented with it.

Sociologist Daniel Rigney identified three types of anti-intellectualism. First, unreflective instrumentalism is the belief that pursuing knowledge is unnecessary unless it can be wielded for practical means such as a lucrative career. Second, religious anti-rationalism is the rejection of reason, logic, and scientific facts in favor of experiences, emotions, morals, and religious absolutes, as documented in Christian historian Mark Nolls award-winning The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. And third, populist anti-elitism is the rejection of authoritative institutions as well as those persons categorized as the social and/or intellectual elite.

Curiously, populists typically view K-12 public education as good and necessary, but post-secondary education as bad and even dangerous, unless it is the commodified credentialling of the professions or business skills provided by universities. They characteristically regard everything else, especially in the humanities and social sciences, as woke ideology while being oblivious to their own unawakened ideology. Hence, they think for themselves and do their own research regardless of how limited or selective it is, or how relatively (un)able they are to evaluate in an informed way what they find online or in print. Their classic exemplar is Benjamin Franklin, the archetypal self-made man who did not need higher education to succeed.

Further survey research conducted by Pew in pre-COVID 2019 revealed that 74 percent of Canadians on the political left trusted scientists to do what was best for the public, compared to 35 percent of Canadians on the right. In America, only 20 percent on the political right trusted science. Moreover, American intellectuals were disproportionately Democratic, whereas anti-intellectuals were disproportionately Republican.

Though some have never trusted science, there has by now been a well-documented decades-long loss of trust in all social institutions, from education to politics, media, religion, family, medicine, and more. This loss of trust combined with the expression of unwarranted factual certitude epistemic hubris is a major contributor to the intemperance and intransigence that plague our society.

Intellectual humility is imperative for both anti-intellectuals and intellectuals. Indeed, while the uneducated can be duped, the educated can be seduced. But by the very nature of their systematic, publicly accountable pursuit of true knowledge, intellectuals are more likely to be willing and able to turn answers into questions, and acknowledge what they do not know. Sadly, the emergence of our post-truth society is some solid evidence that anti-intellectualism has now morphed into anti-rationalism.

Of course, everything Ive written here can be readily dismissed, because, after all, Im just another one of those academic elites yes, a university professor of the social sciences which apparently for populists can alone discredit me.

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: The anti-intellectualism of conservative ... - Winnipeg Free Press

This is the authentic voice of populism. It is a swingeing attack on what its author, the academic Matthew Goodwin, casts as a small, liberal, university-educated elite who treat everyone else with contempt. And that contempt is clearly reciprocated by Goodwin. He criticises them for, among other things, promoting identity politics (despite this book doing basically the same thing). He sees white, working-class men as the ultimate victims because they are not allowed to express their identity and beliefs when every other group can. Voting Brexit was their reaction to this culture war against them.

Goodwin is right that white, working-class men have had a tough time, but the book is almost entirely about culture wars and lacks any serious account of economic pressures. Manufacturing has shrunk from 25 per cent of GDP in the 1970s to 10 per cent today. Pay has stagnated. There is no way around the pain and anger that those economic changes have created. But what was the cause?

Goodwins answer seems to be the graduate elite, who, apparently, did not care about these sorts of people doing those sorts of jobs. Instead, we embraced hyper globalisationwhat used to be called free trade. That meant the incorporation in the global market of other players, notably India and China, which prompted manufacturing decline. But the UK could not have stopped this on its own. And it is not clear what an attempt to keep those rising economic powers out of an exclusively western trading system would have meant for our peace and prosperity, if we had tried.

These out-of-touch policymakers, who supposedly didnt care about the effects of this change in the global economy, actually put a lot of effort into promoting key manufacturing sectors such as aerospace and automotive, which are, incidentally, heavily located outside the south east of England. Any success was closely related to the single market, which made us the preferred location for reaching the European market. That model has been destroyed by Brexit and there has been a shocking decline in car output partly as a result. So it is not yet clear that Brexit has been in the economic interests of the white working classwhich rather weakens Goodwins claim that the old elite didnt care about these types of jobs, while the new Brexit coalition does.

The book is almost entirely about culture wars and lacks any serious account of economic pressures

This decline in predominantly male manufacturing jobs has occurred alongside the rise of services, which often provide many more opportunities for women. It has undermined the sense of self-worth of some men. It has also weakened families based on the idea of the male breadwinner.

So, again, Goodwin is on to a real cultural phenomenon. Indeed, one of the distinctive beliefs of Brexit voters was that opportunities for women in the jobs market had gone too far. But, also again, it is hard to see how the move of more women into education and then employment could have been stoppedand, of course, whether doing so would have possibly been right.

This was a widespread western trend. It wasnt a plot by an out-of-touch elite. It was accompanied by an intense culture war about the role of men and women. That included wrongheaded attacks on the value of the stable family, but there were also attempts to support families through tax reliefs and other financial measures. There had been rules reinforcing the traditional modelfor example, requiring women to leave professional jobs if they marriedbut sweeping those away was surely right and irreversible. It is hard to see how we could turn back the clock, even if anyone wanted to.

Goodwins alternative, which he sees as the opportunity for the Conservative party, is to be left in economics and right on culture. It is a bracing counterpoint to that clich of dry in economics and wet in social policy, with which I was always slightly uncomfortablenot least because, on its own, it neglects the deep sources of human satisfaction that come from belonging to families and communities. And, very crudely, family breakdown is expensive as the state takes on some of the old financial roles of the male breadwinner.

However, Goodwins specific approach sounds a lot like the 1970s or earlier: it is a reversion to pre-EU Britain. Ironically, in both the UK and US, the traditional cultural values that he espouses are most powerfully expressed by some immigrant groups. That cuts across the hostility to immigration that forms another part of his agenda.

Opposition to immigration is another key tenet of the Brexit coalition, and Goodwin expresses their anger that it is running at such a high level now. He has a telling critique of what is conventionally called the Australian points-based system, by which points are accorded to immigrants labour skills. Calling it Australian brings with it a subtext suggesting that it favours immigration from the white Commonwealth, but the reality, Goodwin points out, is very different: it looks to be leading a surge in migration from Nigeria and the Indian subcontinent. Brexit and the shift to the new system mean that there is no longer any recognition of our close links to our own European neighbourhood. All that matters is levels of skill. Maybe there was a Brexit elite who wanted us to be entirely cosmopolitan and global in our migration priorities, but that may not be what their supporters wanted.

Goodwins specific approach sounds a lot like the 1970s or earlier: it is a reversion to pre-EU Britain

Goodwins new Brexit coalition has other tensions, too. Older people are an important part of it, and Goodwin is explicit about both that and their voting power, but they are heavy recipients of benefits and users of the NHS. Prioritising them pushes up public spending.

To some extent, spending on them can be funded by cutting spending on otherssince 2010, benefits for pensioners have gone up by 666 on top of inflation, whereas benefits for everyone else have been cut by 816 below inflationbut surely there are limits to such intergenerational transfers from young to old. Conservatives could get away with borrowing the money when there were clear crises, such as Covid or energy price rises, but now the long-term cost of a big state for Tory voters has to be confronted. It directly challenges the belief of many Conservatives that they are the party of tax cuts.

Goodwin seems to think that younger people are a lost cause, especially since so many of them now go to university. He believes that there is a widely held, snobbish assumption that graduates are somehow better people than non-graduates; which would certainly be an indefensible viewpoint, though there is no evidence that it is as pervasive as he claims. Besides, it is equally repellent to assume that young, white, working-class men should know their place and not go to university. Indeed, half the time, Goodwins grievance does indeed appear to be that they are not gaining access to this powerful opportunity for social mobility.

If these men do go to university, will they be corrupted by the wilder doctrines of critical race theory and end up voting Labour? That seems to be the fear of many Tories now. Graduates are indeed more likely to be socially tolerant and politically engaged. They are more likely to have voted Remain and are also more sceptical of the state.

Graduates are also, incidentally, more likely to believe fewer people should go to universitya classic example of pulling up the ladder after you. It is non-graduates, the ones who miss out, who are more likely to believe in expanding higher education. And these young non-graduates are not voting Conservative either. The Conservative partys real problem is with young people, whether they went to university or not.

Goodwin is angry on behalf of the white working class. He wants a political programme that offers them more protection from the gales of international economic competition and from the erosion of their socially conservative values.

There is a respectable centre-right tradition that gets all this: it is European Christian Democracy. That is not just what we see now in Italy or Poland, it is also the Catholic strand of European conservatism personified by great figures such as Konrad Adenauer. It is enjoying a revival in Europe and, as an economic policy, could be viable across the EU, with its internal competition but external protections. It is particularly potent if environmentalism is added to the mix.

Perhaps one of the many ironies of Brexit is that it has cut us off from what is probably the best single political and economic opportunity to practise the beliefs that Goodwin himself expounds.

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The populism of Matthew Goodwinand its many problems - Prospect Magazine

If one considers the extraordinary backlash that has hit Anheuser-Busch and its Bud Light beer brand over a marketing campaign with a transgender influencer, imagine the perils if a corporation puts its head above the parapet to express opinions of geopolitical importance. How business leaders should engage with politics is a vexed question, especially in these febrile times.

Do you quietly try to influence the government via your public affairs experts and lobbyists? Or do you make a splash by going public with political opinions?

Democracy and capitalism are supposed to go hand in hand. In theory, they are both about freedom to choose and develop both our personal and mutual societal interests. The rise of populism is testing this relationship.

Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, argues in his recent book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism that the two work best for business when each complements and constrains the other. The strengths of democracy are representation and legitimacy, while its weaknesses are ignorance and irresponsibility, he writes. The strengths of capitalism are dynamism and flexibility, while its weaknesses are insecurity and inequality.

Businesses require eyes and ears to inform the mouth. (And advise it when to open.) Lobbyists traditionally perform this role. But while the E.S.G. movement shorthand for prioritizing environmental and social factors is stimulating (and reflecting) a more enlightened approach, acknowledging many responsibilities besides the bottom line and shareholder return, politics has grown coarser. As the argument over woke capitalism rages, how do business leaders approach politics and government?

Gabriel Wildau is a New York-based specialist on political risk in China at Teneo, the advisory and communications firm. He advises caution when it comes to policy issues, especially with China at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing. You have to do your best not to offend either side.

That leaves companies in a particular bind because many have strong commercial interests in both China and the United States.

Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the hedge fund, has spent decades successfully navigating between the two countries. But after two recent trips to China, he concluded: The United States and China are on the brink of war and are beyond the ability to talk.

Anyone who watched the bipartisan grilling of Shou Chew, the chief executive of TikTok, by a congressional committee last month, could see that there was little space for nuance for anyone trying to keep a foot in both markets.

Beijing, meanwhile, has intensified a crackdown on foreign firms that veer into areas it deems a potential threat to national security despite telling the world that it is open for business. And worries persist about Chinas threat to invade Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory.

But while Mr. Wildau acknowledges that the sentiment in Washington is anti-China, U.S. business has so much skin in the globalized trade game that business leaders are uneasy about drawing attention to political issues. I could scare the heck out of clients and attract more business with dire predictions about Taiwan, he says. I dont.

The reputational consequences of getting it wrong on China can be hugely embarrassing. For example, the country is Volkswagens largest market and it has 100,000 employees there. In 2019, when Herbert Diess, the chief executive of Volkswagen at the time, told a BBC reporter that he did not know about re-education camps where millions of Uyghurs have been interned in Xinjiang, the video clip went viral. At the companys annual meeting on Wednesday, activists and some shareholders were still lashing out at Volkswagens continued presence in the region and called for an independent audit of its operations there.

My advice would be: Be prepared, Mr. Wildau says. Have properly worked through codes of conduct and principles. No corporate should be caught out by events.

Britain has experienced severe ructions that were demonstrably bad for global businesses, including a referendum over Scottish independence in 2014 and Brexit two years later. It is a useful case study of the tightrope executives are trying to walk.

Its easy for business to be fed up with politics, said Toby Pellew, the head of public affairs at Headland, a London-based consultancy. But if youre operating in a highly regulated environment, there are many necessary touch points. And I cannot think of a time when its been of more importance for business to have visibility and insight into government policy.

Howard Davies is the chairman at NatWest, one of Britains biggest banks, and was formerly a director at Morgan Stanley and a deputy governor of the Bank of England. He advises that business leaders be cautious and make sure that any public intervention is closely aligned with their companys commercial interests. My advice is be very careful, he warns. Choose and publicize your battles only if they are strictly relevant to your business interest. It can appear attractive to be a policy trailblazer with your name up in lights but politicians are more often cynical than rational and will use you given half a chance. Likewise, becoming hostage to a pressure group is a bad place to be.

The temptation to wade in can be strong, particularly for business leaders who feel they know how to run things. The Edelman Trust Barometer suggests that business is held in higher regard than politicians.

Ian Cheshire is the former boss of Kingfisher, a multinational retailer, and a member of the board overseeing the Cabinet Office, a government department that supports the British prime minister.

When David Cameron, the former prime minister, called on businesspeople to publicly come out against Scottish independence Mr. Cheshire obliged. He also spoke out against Brexit.

Its pointless to chip into a debate where you have no genuine insight, Mr. Cheshire said. But business can lead and it has the ability to move faster than governments are sometimes able. You have to be practical and have to know what good looks like.

Mr. Cheshire spoke out against Brexit because it directly threatened the interests of his company, whose biggest operations were in Britain and France.

On Brexit, I felt strongly that it was bad for my business and my country, he said. This was a sufficiently weighty topic and my opinion was entirely authentic in its concern.

But if you do express political opinions, dont expect to be popular, he added. You will be clobbered.

Anheuser-Busch has been well and truly clobbered. Even before the influencer incident, Bud Lights U.S. volume sales had fallen 6.4 percent in the year to March 24, according to Nielsen data. One of the marketing executives who was put on a leave of absence after the backlash said earlier this year that her mandate meant shifting the tone, it means having a campaign thats truly inclusive.

The episode shows just how tricky and potentially commercially destructive well-meaning efforts can be. Brendan Whitworth, the companys North American chief executive, eventually made an attempt to keep both sides happy. In a statement under the heading Our Responsibility to America, he said, We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.

Henceforth, Mr. Whitworth may choose to share his opinions only among close friends at the bar.

Matthew Gwyther is a business journalist and a former editor of the magazine Management Today.

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The Business Nightmare of Dealing with Government - The New York Times

The current focus on food prices seems to be more about populism than real concern about long-term trends, while Irish agricultures move forward on lower carbon output does not seem to be recognised.

There has been a lot of heat but very little light generated in political and media circles around food prices in recent weeks.

Despite all of the noise, over the last three years in particular, around the new paradigm imperative of sustainable food productionand carbon budgets, the reality ofthe stunt that is dominant retailer pricing (masquerading as everyday low pricing), trumps everything still.

The point here is that the continuing ability to get suppliers to fund price falls and the body politic to fall over itself in calling for more, through loss leading by retailers, is still the core issue.Consumer Price COICOP Division Indices March 2023. Source: CSO Ireland

The chart above from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows the rate of price inflation across all sectors of the Irish economy on a 12-month basis, compared to base years of 2016 and 2011 capturing both long- and short-term impacts.

So all these calls for the government to do something now about food prices is moot.

The reality over the longer term is thatfresh food in grocery retail saw almost no price increasebetween 2011 and 2021 and only in 2022/2023 has there been some price inflation.

Clearly, governments must be attuned to the availability of affordable food butgovernments must also be on top of ensuring continuity of sustainable food supply (particularly ones involving Green Parties).

In that sense, even before the onslaught of food woke-ism by our environment friends, the fundamental understanding of the dynamics offood production supply and demand had unfortunately been very much dumbed down over last 20 years.

In essence, the farmer and the food processor were offered up to the food retailer / discounter as part of a Faustian pact that promised everydaylow food prices and was totally agnostic about either the economic or environmental sustainability of local food production and supply.Agri-food economist and former chair of Meat Industry Ireland, Ciaran Fitzgerald

This agnosticism ignored the reality whereby increased production costsand regulatory constraints are completely at odds witheveryday low pricing of fresh produce or Known Value Items (KVIs), and inevitably means a long-term fall-off in local supply capability.

This disconnect has meant that local production of fruit and fresh vegetables in particular,has diminished because of the cost price squeeze, to be replaced by imports from lower costregions.

The Irish meat and dairy sectors only dodged abullet firstly because the industries have world-class marketing capability.

They dodged anotherbullet when the DOHA Development Round of the World Trade Organization, which would have given up large segments of the EU beef and dairy markets, collapsed in 2008.

The sectors are also being sustained byincreasing global demand for low carbongrass-based meat and dairy.

Nevertheless, the continuing systemic absence of joined-up thinking means a long-term disconnect between aspirations for sustainable food demand and the sustainability of local food production.

The current circus around food prices will move on and unfortunately the chance of a deeper dive into the reality of retail food pricing with it.

Meanwhile, the concern following the recent interview by Agriland with the head of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is thatnot only is the old dominant buyer trope still in place, but the current realities of Irish agricultureshowingsignificant changes in introducing emissions-loweringproduction methods are not recognised.

The view expressed by the EPA seems to be stuck in a 2019 time warp.

It doesnt reflect the adoption of the Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC) emissions-reducing practices, the 20% reduction in fertiliser usage in 2022, the stabilising and reduction in the national herd (CSO data, Dec 2022) and the reality that the expansion phase in dairy has plateaued.

Real progress in adopting emissions-reducing practices in Irish agriculture has been made and more is needed and will follow.

By the way, Irish agriculture is way ahead of most other sectors of the Irish economy where the low carbon journey has not even started.

This real progress is verified on a daily basis by global customers and consumers who want more and more of Irelands low carbon output.

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Ciarn Fitzgerald: Focus on food prices is mere populism - Agriland

Populism in the United States reaches back to the Presidency of Andrew Jackson in the 1830s and to the People's Party in the 1890s. It has made a resurgence in modern-day politics in not only the United States but also democracies around the world.[1][2] Populism is an approach to politics which views "the people" as being opposed to "the elite" and is often used as a synonym of anti-establishment; as an ideology, it transcends the typical divisions of left and right and has become more prevalent in the US with the rise of disenfranchisement and apathy toward the establishment.[3] The definition of populism is a complex one as due to its mercurial nature; it has been defined by many different scholars with different focuses, including political, economic, social, and discursive features.[4] Populism is often split into two variants in the US, one with a focus on culture and the other that focuses on economics.[5]

A division of American populism into two strains has been suggested: one being an economic form of populism opposed to financial elites, and the other being a cultural populism opposed to intellectual elitism.[6] The economic strain is claimed to have a longer history, including the likes of Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan, while cultural populism is recognized as starting in the 1960s with George Wallace.[6] However, the modern-day rise of populism on both sides of the political spectrum has been said to have stemmed from voter apathy with the current governmental system and those running it, and, subsequently, populist politics are said to play a constitutive role in political realignments, in which moral boundaries between groups are redrawn and categories of "us" and "them" emerge.[7][8]

Populism has risen in recent years; however, the focus is no longer on the general population protesting against the masses, which was historically the case with populism,[9] but rather on more political polarization, whereby a simple majority is the goal of politicians and thus leads to the "tyranny of the majority" in which they do not focus on appeasing opposing politics but reinforcing their own base.[10][11] Moffitt argues that modern-day populists, such as Donald Trump, garner support by radically simplifying the terms of the crises and discussing them in terms of emergency politics, whilst offering a short-term responseappealing to the general public and setting such populists apart from the establishment.[12]

Andrew Jackson was the president from 1829 to 1837 and at the time was called the "People's President".[13] His time in office was characterized by an opposition to institutions, disestablishing the Second Bank of the United States (a central bank), and disobeying the Supreme Court of the United States.[14] Jackson argued that "It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes."[6]

The People's Party, also known as the Populist Party or simply the Populists, was a left-wing agrarian populist political party in the United States in the late 19th century.[15][16] The Populist Party emerged in the early 1890s as an important force in the Southern and Western United States, but collapsed after it nominated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 United States presidential election. A small faction of the party continued to operate into the first decade of the 20th century, but never matched the popularity of the party in the early 1890s.

The Populist Party's roots lay in the Farmers' Alliance, an agrarian movement that promoted economic action during the Gilded Age, as well as the Greenback Party, an earlier third party that had advocated fiat money. The success of Farmers' Alliance candidates in the 1890 elections, along with the conservatism of both major parties, encouraged Farmers' Alliance leaders to establish a full-fledged third party before the 1892 elections. The Ocala Demands laid out the Populist platform: collective bargaining, federal regulation of railroad rates, an expansionary monetary policy, and a Sub-Treasury Plan that required the establishment of federally controlled warehouses to aid farmers. Other Populist-endorsed measures included bimetallism, a graduated income tax, direct election of Senators, a shorter workweek, and the establishment of a postal savings system. These measures were collectively designed to curb the influence of monopolistic corporate and financial interests and empower small businesses, farmers and laborers.

In the 1892 presidential election, the Populist ticket of James B. Weaver and James G. Field won 8.5% of the popular vote and carried four small Western states. Despite the support of labor organizers like Eugene V. Debs and Terence V. Powderly, the party largely failed to win the vote of urban laborers in the Midwest and the Northeast. Over the next four years, the party continued to run state and federal candidates, building up powerful organizations in several Southern and Western states. Before the 1896 presidential election, the Populists became increasingly polarized between "fusionists", who wanted to nominate a joint presidential ticket with the Democratic Party, and "mid-roaders", like Mary Elizabeth Lease, who favored the continuation of the Populists as an independent third party. After the 1896 Democratic National Convention nominated William Jennings Bryan, a prominent bimetallist, the Populists also nominated Bryan but rejected the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in favor of party leader Thomas E. Watson. In the 1896 election, Bryan swept the South and West but lost to Republican William McKinley by a decisive margin.

After the 1896 presidential election, the Populist Party suffered a nationwide collapse. The party nominated presidential candidates in the three presidential elections after 1896, but none came close to matching Weaver's performance in 1892. Former Populists became inactive or joined other parties. Debs became a socialist leader. Bryan dropped any connection to the rump Populist Party.

Historians see the Populists as a reaction to the power of corporate interests in the Gilded Age, but they debate the degree to which the Populists were anti-modern and nativist. Scholars also continue to debate the magnitude of influence the Populists exerted on later organizations and movements, such as the progressives of the early 20th century. Most of the Progressives, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, and Woodrow Wilson, were bitter enemies of the Populists. In American political rhetoric, "populist" was originally associated with the Populist Party and related left-wing movements, but beginning in the 1950s it began to take on a more generic meaning, describing any anti-establishment movement regardless of its position on the leftright political spectrum.[17]

According to Gene Clanton's study of Kansas from 1880s to 1910s, populism and progressivism in Kansas had similarities but different policies and distinct bases of support. Both opposed corruption and trusts. Populism emerged earlier and came out of the farm community. It was radically egalitarian in favor of the disadvantaged classes; it was weak in the towns and cities except in labor unions. Progressivism, on the other hand, was a later movement. It emerged after the 1890s from the urban business and professional communities. Most of its activists had opposed populism. It was elitist, and emphasized education and expertise. Its goals were to enhance efficiency, reduce waste, and enlarge the opportunities for upward social mobility. However, some former Populists changed their emphasis after 1900 and supported progressive reforms.[18]

Huey Long was the governor of Louisiana (19281932) and a US senator (19321935).[19] He has been referred to as a demagogue and a populist, with his slogan being "every man a king".[20] He advocated for wealth redistribution through the Share Our Wealth initiative.[21] After announcing a bid to run in the 1936 United States presidential election, he was assassinated.[22]

George Wallace was a governor of Alabama who ran for president four times, seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 1964, 1972, and 1976, as well as being the candidate for the American Independent Party in the 1968 United States presidential election.[23] In 1972, he was shot five times while campaigning and left paralyzed from the waist down.[23] His main political ambition was to protect segregation, proclaiming, "say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."[24] He also singled out "pointy-headed intellectuals" and "briefcase-toting bureaucrats", leading to his being labeled a populist.[25]

Ross Perot has also been associated with American populism and has been called a "billionaire populist".[26][27][28] He ran as a third party candidate in the 1992 United States presidential election, gaining 19 million votes.[27][29] Among his policy proposals was the instalment of e-democracy for direct democratic decision-making.[30] Donald Trump later considered running for Perot's Reform party in the 2000 United States presidential election.[31]

Sarah Palin was the governor of Alaska from 2006 to 2009 and the vice presidential candidate for the 2008 United States presidential election. She has been referred to as a cultural populist in the vein of Wallace.[32]

Donald Trump, president from 2017 to 2021, has also been referred to as a populist.[33] His rhetoric presented him as a leader who "alone can fix" the problems of American politics and represent the "forgotten men and women of our country", with echoes of the populism of Jackson's presidency.[34] Donald Trump's modern populism is argued to show the symbiotic relationship between nationalism and populism.[35] Moreover, the rise of Trump's election was argued by some scholars to represent the "tyranny of the majority", whereby Trump's attacks on liberal and progressive politics allowed him to gain enough voters to win, so he did not need to appease the majority of voters or be a president for "every American".[10]

Bernie Sanders has been called a populist from the opposite side of the political spectrum to Trump.[36][37] However, differences have also been seen between the two.[38] Sanders' populism is opposed to political, corporate, and media elites, especially the US financial industry epitomized by Wall Street, as well as the wealthiest one percent.[39][37] When he did not win the Democratic nomination for president in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, he was re-elected as an independent senator for his home state Vermont in 2018.[36] Other populist Democratic politicians in Sanders' vein include Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.[40]

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Populism in the United States - Wikipedia

Abstract

Anti-elitism is a necessary, but not a sufficient criterion for understanding politicians, parties, or movements as populist. These actors also need to be anti-pluralist, and they need to frame politics predominantly in moral terms. When in opposition, populist actors claim to be the only genuine representative of a non-institutionalized, homogeneous, authentic, and, most importantly, moral people. This claim to exclusive representation is what I call the populist core claim. It is a necessary feature of populism.

Populists can govern and there can be distinctly populist regimes. The view that populist parties are always protest parties and that, by definition, protest cannot govern, is erroneous. Populist regimes are characterized by mass clientelism and discriminatory legalism; moreover, they construe their policies as if the people as whole had given them an imperative mandate. Other regimes can exhibit such features, too; what is distinctive about populist regimes is that they practice clientelism and discriminatory legalism with a clean conscience, so to speak: only those who properly belong to the people as defined by populists should benefit from the regime. Finally, populist regimes attempt to bring into existence the homogeneous people in whose name they had been speaking all along (that is to say, when populist actors were in opposition or just ascending to power): this explains the tendency of these regimes to crack down on civil society and restrict media freedom.

Populism, then, is neither a well-defined doctrine nor a unique institutional configuration. But it does have an inner logic, which takes distinctive forms in the logic of how populist claims are articulated and in the inner logic of actual populist rule.

Biography

Jan-Werner Mueller's research interests include the history of modern political thought, liberalism and its critics, constitutionalism, religion and politics, and the normative dimensions of European integration.

He is the author of Constitutional Patriotism (Princeton UP, 2007; German, Chinese, Turkish, Korean, Japanese, and Serbian translations), A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (Yale University Press, 2003; German, French, Japanese, Greek, Serbian, and Chinese translations) and Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity (Yale University Press, 2000; Chinese translation). In addition, he has edited German Ideologies since 1945: Studies in the Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic (Palgrave, 2003) and Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (Cambridge UP, 2002).

In 2011 Yale University Press published Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth Century Europe. (German, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Polish, and Serbian translations).

Professor Mueller has been a fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study, the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, the Remarque Institute, NYU, and the European University Institute, Florence; he has also been a Member of the Institute of Advanced Study Princeton. He has taught as a visiting professor at the EHESS, Paris, and Sciences Po, Paris. In 2011 he delivered the Carlyle Lectures in the History of Political Thought at Oxford University. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

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What is Populism? | Political Science - Stanford University

Readers relax, I'm not going to talk politics. I would however, like to discuss an old political phenomenon that is making headlines the rise of populism around the world. Far from a one-off occurrence, it is an alarming trend that requires drastic action. We should not ignore populism, since it is highly contagious, shapes political systems and induces other politicians to adopt its methods and means.

Every continent has its share of populist movements, both right-wing and left-wing, but only some reach a critical mass of power, while others remain on the sidelines. The term "populist" is frequently used as a political weapon to show disdain for a policy, even when it does not quite fit the definition. This is because populism is not just a movement: it's a strategy that nearly all political parties wind up using, either out of a sense of conviction or out of pure necessity.

What is populism?

There is disagreement on this point, but we can define it in broad terms. At the root of populist movements is a delineation between "normal folk" and "the elite." For example, "We" are the people and "they" are the ones who cheat, control and subjugate us, along with their supporters. These concepts are impossible to define in clearer terms because they don't reflect objective realities. More than anything else, the divide is grounded on identity and emotion that stem from making a sharp distinction between friend and enemy.

Other key characteristics include:

Politics are based on emotion to generate a feeling of affective identification.

Intellectuals and experts are viewed with suspicion because of their ties with the elite. Their words are perceived as skewed and biased.

The idea that the general will should prevail. Since representative democracies use intermediate structures, such as representatives and political parties, the will of the people should be abided. Liberal institutions (the separation of powers, the neutrality of state institutions, the defense of political and media pluralism) are no longer useful.

Anyone who disagrees with the body politic should be spurned and, if necessary, intimidated. Those who try to stabilize political institutions will hinder the advancement of populism.

Actions are channeled through provocation and protest. It is argued that dialogue no longer makes sense since it is controlled by the elite.

Conflict reigns in populist strategies. The liberal democratic system has always tried to conceal conflict (either because of lack of interest, because they don't know how to tackle it or because it is not considered media-worthy). In populist movements, the reverse is true: now it is important to accentuate every conflict and wrap it up tightly in an emotionally charged bundle.

Populism is normally, though not always, triggered by a charismatic leader who articulates the collective anxieties of the people.

It is also important to note that while problems relating to ethnic minorities or immigrants are sometimes (but not always) relevant to populist movements, populism is not necessarily xenophobic.

What is behind its rise?

Economic downturns and the perception of crisis. Economic crises are characterized by inequality and unemployment rates, but also encompass other phenomena like globalization (the perception that foreigners are stealing our jobs), technology (which favors the wealthy and better educated pockets of population) and social welfare cuts, among others.

Collective frustration and anxiety. This angst may be summed up as follows: We did everything right, we went to school, worked hard and now we're unemployed. We won't be able to collect retirement benefits and our kids won't come close to doing as well as our generation.

Increased inequality: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The sentiment is that the super wealthy rig the system to make sure their children stay rich, which ruins any chance of upward mobility for the rest of us. This might not be entirely true, but it does not stop people believing it.

There are also deeper factors at play:

Complexity in social constructs has increased and citizens feel unsettled.

Public spending has become technocratic.

Corruption, an overall lack of transparency, and the machinations used by political parties have caused government institutions to lose credibility and legitimacy.

Campaign promises often bear little resemblance with the work that's done post-election. This might be because important decisions are made at higher levels (e.g. Brussels or Washington) or the result of a silent consensus among the controlling parties.

What can we do?

To the extent that it donates a breakdown in the liberal democratic model, populism is not likely to disappear any time soon. It could lose steam, however, if the underlying problems highlighted above are resolved. The following recommendations (although voiced without much enthusiasm) are ways to try to tackle its spread:

It is time to revise our macroeconomic, taxation, industrial and commercial policies. This is true for both countries and companies. It's not a question of rising salaries or being more generous with unemployment benefits, it's about exploring how we can develop strategies that don't cause unnecessary damage.

It is important to acknowledge that globalization, technological progress and tax reductions elevate the quality of life of society as a whole; but in the short term, they deliver a direct blow to certain pockets of the population, especially in rigid labor markets that hinder the unemployed from quickly finding a new job. Someone needs to break the news that not everyone's standard of living will continually rise and that some peoples net income will remain stagnant for years on end. Otherwise we have this situation where, say, a business owner tries to multiply sales year after year, or a management guru or economist in search of media attention claims GDP growth should be the ultimate aim of government policy without ever stopping to think the negative ripple effects that this measure could unleash.

By Antonio Argandoa, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Business Ethics at IESE Business School

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Why Populism Is Rising And How To Combat It - Forbes

When Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador took office four years ago, he promised to deliver what he branded a Fourth Transformation, the next in a series of defining junctures in Mexican history: the War of Independence in the early 1800s, the liberal movement of President Benito Jurez later that century, and the Revolution of 1910. To make Mexico great again, he said he would fight deeply ingrained corruption and eradicate persistent poverty. But in the name of his agenda, Lpez Obrador has removed checks and balances, weakened autonomous institutions, and seized discretionary control of the budget. Arguing that police forces cannot stop the countrys mounting insecurity, he has supplanted them with the Mexican military and endowed it with unprecedented economic and political power. Today, the armed forces carry out his bidding on multiple fronts and have become a pillar of support for the government. Lpez Obrador, or AMLO as he is known, seems intent on restoring something akin to the dominant-party rule that characterized Mexican politics from 1929 to 2000, but with a militarized twist.

Despite these questionable moves, the president and his party, Morena, remain popular. His supporters applaud the return of a strong and unencumbered leader, capable of enacting change in a country that is clamoring for more social justice for the many and less entitlement for the few. But his presidency, and the countrys trajectory, worry scholars, activists, opposition parties, and members of civil society who fought to dismantle the hegemony of the former Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which was in power for 71 years, and now seek to defend Mexicos transition to multiparty democracy. These critics contend that Lpez Obrador is polarizing the populace and jeopardizing the countrys fledgling democracy with his routine attacks on civil society organizations, his stated desire to take apart key institutions, and his use of the bully pulpit to lambaste the media and members of the opposition.

His playbook is like those of strongmen in other countries, who argue that they have too many constraints on their power to effect foundational change, promote participatory politics, and rid the country of immoral and rapacious elites. Yet as Western scholars have lamented the rise of autocrats in Hungary, Nicaragua, Poland, Turkey, Venezuela, and even the United States, they have often overlooked Mexicos prominence in the growing list of countries where democracy is being subverted by elected leaders.

Lpez Obradors personalistic style of governing is a form of democratic backsliding. His rhetoric and policy decisions have put democratic norms and institutions at risk. He has reshaped the Mexican political ecosystem so quickly and fluidly that defending democracy has become extremely difficult, for civil society groups as well as opposition parties. Lpez Obrador is eroding, in word and in deed, the democratic norms and rules that Mexico has developed since the PRI lost its grip on the political system. He denies the legitimacy of his opponents by deeming them traitors to the country. He tolerates criminality and violence to justify the militarization of the country. And he has displayed a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of critics, including those in the media. Reports of Mexican democracys death may be exaggerated; it is not dead. But it is grievously ill. And Lpez Obradors leadership is affecting U.S.-Mexican relations in a way that could turn back the clock on three decades of economic integration, revive the previous mistrust between the two countries, and halt collaboration on issues of binational concern, including security, immigration, and climate change. The Biden administration does not seem to fully understand the dangers that loom ahead as Mexico becomes a more insecure, more militarized, and less democratic country.

According to a saying popular in Mexico in the 1970s, Not a leaf moves without the president knowing about it. That is how the country worked until Mexicos transition to electoral democracy in the 1990s. Then, power became more dispersed, incipient checks and balances were put in place, and autonomous institutions, independent from the presidency, were created. A highly imperfect, and in many ways dysfunctional, political system emerged. Over the past four years, however, Lpez Obrador has sought to re-create many of the political and institutional arrangements that characterized dominant-party rule. He is putting in place a strong presidency with ample discretionary powers, capable of dominating Congress, influencing the judiciary, determining economic policy, remaking the apparatus of the state according to the presidents personal preferences, and exercising metaconstitutional powers, such as issuing decrees that enable the armed forces to be in charge of public security or allow them to carry out public works without fulfilling legal requirements.

Lpez Obrador argues that he is cleaning house and combating corruption. He says he can do so only by being in full command of all levers of government. The fight against the model of economic liberalization and political competition that emerged in the 1990swhich the president derides as neoliberalhas led to bypassing Congress and the constitution, ignoring regulatory procedures, and channeling a growing number of government activities to his cronies and the military. Dismissing the state as a rheumatic elephant, Lpez Obrador has proceeded to undermine Mexicos civil service, regulatory bodies, and administrative institutions, either by breaking them up or by filling them with his own loyalists. The Human Rights Commission is led by Rosario Piedra, a militant member of Morena, who kowtows to the president while remaining silent on human rights violations committed by the military. The Energy Regulation Commission, an oversight body, has been staffed by men with personal and political ties to Roco Nahle, the minister of energy. Lpez Obrador has also let months go by without naming new members to the Competition Commission, a regulatory institution responsible for investigating and sanctioning monopolistic practices, which is currently understaffed and without a president. In decree after decree, Lpez Obrador has eviscerated the Mexican state, often in the name of fiscal austerity, while giving many plutocrats free rein and refusing to carry out fiscal reform that would tax his rich allies. He may disparage neoliberalism, but Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan would approve of his behavior.

In recent years, political movements across the ideological spectrum in many liberal democracies have called for bringing the state back inthat is, shoring up the capacity of the state to address inequality, regulate markets, combat climate change, and respond to global health emergencies. The reverse is taking place in Mexico, with significant social and political ramifications. The governments reluctance to design a fiscal rescue package or social welfare spending policies to soften the blow from the COVID-19 pandemic had devastating effects. As a result of what Lpez Obrador described as republican austerity, Mexico has suffered one of the worlds highest excess mortality rates during the pandemic, with over 600,000 Mexicans dying of COVID-19. The ranks of the poor have swelled by almost four million people since 2019, according to the National Council for Evaluation of Social Development Policy. During the first year of the pandemic, vaccines were scarce, hospitals were beyond capacity, over one million businesses collapsed, and immigration to the United States rose sharply. Today, fewer Mexicans have public health-care coverage than at any point over the last 20 years, and the education system lies in shambles as a result of government disinvestment and mismanagement. A study carried out by the School of Governance at the Monterrey Institute of Technology reports that since the pandemic began in 2020, over one million children abandoned school, and there was a historic reduction of enrollment for all grades.

These consequences all flow from Lpez Obradors style of governing. He has formulated ineffective policies using questionable assumptions, such as his belief that the most indebted state oil company in the worldPemexcan recover past levels of production and help the economy grow, instead of dragging it down. He has developed a personalistic method of carrying out policies, one that is prone to clientelism, including the distribution of cash to the poor, and based on an unreliable, politically motivated census developed by his party. And he has terminated initiatives in a haphazard and seemingly arbitrary way, for example, eliminating government-run trusts for science, technology, and educational evaluation. Arguing that a slew of government-run programs were corrupt, including childcare facilities, womens shelters, and environmental institutes, he proceeded to shut them down by decree and without evidence of malfeasance.

Lpez Obradors government claims to embody progressive values, but it contradicts them at every turn. It refuses to tax the rich, to prioritize the fight against climate change, and to support activists who decry the countrys growing number of femicides. An average of 11 women are killed every day in Mexico, in what the UN calls a femicide pandemic, but the government has cut funding for public shelters for the victims of gender-related violence. Lpez Obrador promises to put the poor first, but his governments budgetary allocations belie that assertion. He has done away with a broad swath of social safety nets, leaving the dispossessed in a more dire situation than when he assumed office. The 2021 National Poll on Health and Nutrition shows that as a result of cuts to the public health systemand the dismantling of prior national health coverage such as Seguro Popular, or Popular Insurancethe poorest segments of the population spend a greater percentage of their income on health care than they did under previous governments, and 66 percent of the uninsured have been forced to seek private care.

Lpez Obrador champions direct cash transfers to the poor, but new social programs have been plagued by financial irregularities, charges of corruption, and wasted resources. The Federal Auditing Commission has documented these failings in two of the most touted government initiatives: Planting Life, in which beneficiaries burned down trees in order to receive public funds to plant new ones, and Young Building the Future, in which funds were disbursed to nonexistent companies that hired nonexistent workers.

Meanwhile, federal budget cuts are starving institutions that have been fundamental to the construction of level-playing-field capitalism, such as the Competition Commission and the Federal Telecommunications Institute. Funding has also been slashed for independent bodies that have been particularly important to Mexicos path to democracy, including the National Electoral Institute, the Federal Transparency Institute, and the National Human Rights Commission. By flooding these institutions with partisan loyalists and delegitimizing their work by calling them instruments of the conservative, hypocritical elite, Lpez Obrador is harming their ability to carry out their roles as checks and balances on the government. Positioning himself as the sole representative of the will of the people, Lpez Obrador is rigorously adhering to the authoritarian populist playbook.

His actions have damaged not only Mexicos democracy but also its economy. Domestic and foreign investment have dwindled as the government botched its response to the pandemic; rolled back reforms that had helped boost growth, such as investment in renewable energy; and created regulatory uncertainty, thanks to the presidents adversarial attitude toward the parts of the private sector that do not comply with his clientelistic system. Between 2019 and 2021, when bad economic conditions worsened with the COVID-19 crisis, Mexicos GDP shrank more than that of any other Latin American country. And the prospects for a recovery are dim, given global inflation and investor distrust in Lpez Obradors economic leadership.

For years, Lpez Obrador decried what he called the mafia in power and railed against greedy oligarchs and their accomplices operating within the structure of the state. But instead of tackling social inequality at its source by strengthening the states capacity to promote growth and more fairly redistribute its gains, Lpez Obrador has simply reproduced the crony-capitalist model that defined the Mexican economy since the PRI seized control in 1929. His government has maintained and developed strategic alliances with some of the wealthiest members of Mexicos business community, earning the praise and support of influential figures such as the telecommunication magnates Carlos Slim and Ricardo Salinas Pliego. Both have been the beneficiaries of discretionary government contracts in the banking, telecommunications, and construction sectors. By revising the Mexican tradition of mixing state capitalism and oligarchy, Lpez Obrador and his party are emulating the PRIs vision of governance as a system for distributing the spoils.

First as an opposition leader and later in his 2018 presidential campaign, Lpez Obrador decried the governments growing use of the Mexican military to combat drug trafficking and cartel-related violence, a practice that began in the 1990s and escalated under Lpez Obradors two immediate predecessors, Felipe Caldern and Enrique Pea Nieto. One of Lpez Obradors most popular campaign slogans was abrazos, no balazos (hugs, not bullets), and he promised to return the armed forces to the barracks. He garnered significant support among left-wing and progressive voters precisely because he vowed to redesign the failed security strategy that Caldern and Pea Nieto pursued. Both previous presidents had given the armed forces expansive powers, which led to an explosion in human rights violations but no significant reduction in homicides or other types of crime. Lpez Obrador vowed to address the root causes of violence by channeling more public resources to the poor and keeping the military off the streets.

But in a surprising about-face, shortly after assuming office, Lpez Obrador started to backtrack on his vow to demilitarize the country. Pressured by prominent generals who viewed his stance as unrealistic, Lpez Obrador argued that because the police force was corrupt and inefficient, the army would have to maintain and even broaden its role. He pushed through a constitutional reform in 2019 that established a new militarized force called the National Guard that was to take over public security for five years. But from the start, Lpez Obrador undermined what was supposed to be civilian control and oversight by naming Luis Rodrguez Bucio, a recently retired general, as head of the new body and staffing it largely with active members of the armed forces.

Instead of reining in Mexicos army, Lpez Obrador has unleashed it. Over the past three years, the armed forces have taken on unparalleled political and economic roles. The military is now operating outside civilian control, in open defiance of the Mexican constitution, which states that the military cannot be in charge of public security. As a result of presidential decrees, the military has become omnipresent: building airports, running the countrys ports, controlling customs, distributing money to the poor, implementing social programs, and detaining immigrants. According to the National Militarization Index created by the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics, a research institute based in Mexico City, during the past decade, the military has gradually taken over 246 activities that used to be in the hands of civilians. The armed forces have been allocated larger and larger amounts of federal money, and many projects under their control have been reclassified as matters of public security, thus removing them from public scrutiny under Mexicos National Transparency Law. Admittedly, Lpez Obrador inherited armed forces that were increasingly given roles traditionally carried out by the police. But he has made things far worse by eliminating any semblance of civilian oversight or accountability. He has placed the National Guard under the direct control of the defense ministry, doing away with even the pretense of civilian control.

As he tries to win the loyalty of the military, Lpez Obrador has ignored its history of acting with impunity and violating human rights. He parades with generals at his side and invites them to his morning press conference. At most public events, he surrounds himself with top brass, referring to them as el pueblo bueno (the good people) and claiming that they are incorruptible. But the history of the Mexican military is stained by its complicity with drug traffickers and criminals, beginning with the 1997 arrest of General Gutirrez Rebollo, who was convicted of working with one of Mexicos top drug lords. The Zetas, one of the most savage criminal groups in Mexico, was originally made up of members of the military who moved into the drug trade and conducted lucrative criminal operations. And in 2020, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Los Angeles detained General Salvador Cienfuegos, Mexicos former minister of defense, and the U.S. government charged him with drug trafficking. In a reversal that remains unexplained, Washington later returned him to Mexico after negotiations between the Mexican government and the Trump administrations attorney general, William Barr. Upon his arrival, Cienfuegos was rapidly exonerated by Mexican authorities, and two of his top collaborators remain in key military positions, including Luis Crescencio Sandoval, head of the ministry of defense.

Lpez Obrador in Mexico City, February 2021

The armed forces were also involved in the disappearance of 43 students in the town of Ayotzinapa in 2014, when the young men were kidnapped by local police and their allies in the drug trafficking trade in the region. Criminal gangs who pursued and ultimately killed the students were aided by members of the armys 27th Battalion, including a general who was indicted in September 2022.

Lpez Obrador is unwilling to limit the armed forces because he is governing with them, out of distrust for the civilian institutions of the state. He doesnt believe that the countrys civil bureaucracy will be unconditionally loyal to him; the military, on the other hand, he says, is fundamental and strategic to his transformative project, and that may assure its longevity beyond his six years in office. He is also trying to carry out massive public works projects to cement his legacy, and the military provides an attractive option for getting things done quickly. Lpez Obrador frequently refers to a supposed coup dtat that right-wing conspirators are allegedly preparing against him. He has clearly decided that a way of preventing that outcome is to have some of his most powerful potential enemiesincluding those in the militaryinside the tent pissing out, instead of outside the tent pissing in.

The militarization of Mexican politics will be Lpez Obradors most enduring and consequential policy decision. Future governments will be forced to either respect the enlarged power of the military or risk confronting it. Meanwhile, militarization is not producing the results Lpez Obrador promised. According to the U.S. military, drug cartels have expanded their territory and now control a third of Mexico. Violence continues in many parts of the country, with over 100,000 people becoming the victims of forced disappearances since 2007, when the military was assigned to wage the war on drugs. Organized crime has access to increasingly lethal weaponry such as rocket-propelled grenades, and attacks on civilians in cities are now everyday occurrences. Lpez Obradors term in office is on track to become the most violent in Mexicos recent history.

Since Mexicos democratic transition in 2000, the emphasis among reformers has been on building institutions that would assure accountability, transparency, and autonomy from the president and the ruling party. It was also important that opposition candidates have an equal chance in elections. Lpez Obrador seems intent on undermining these objectives and erasing the countrys hard-won (albeit incomplete) democratic gains.

Despite its many flaws, Mexicos electoral democracy had established basic rules for electoral competition that were largely respected. Fundamental to this system was the National Electoral Institute (INE), which is in charge of guaranteeing free and fair elections. For more than three decades, political scientists have viewed the INE, and its predecessor, the Federal Electoral Institute, as the jewel in the crown of Mexicos democratic transition. Yet since arriving in office, Lpez Obrador has taken aim at it. He associates it with the contentious election of 2006, in which he believes fraud prevented what should have been a victory for him, and the electoral authorities carried out only a partial recount of the vote. His stated goal is to replace the INE with a new entity overseen by his party, thus propelling the political system back to the era of PRI rule, when the party in power controlled every aspect of the electoral process.

Lpez Obradors constant verbal attacks on the INE and substantial cuts to its budget have been accompanied by his frequent use of referendums and consultas populares (popular consultations) intended to establish what he calls a true democracy. Whenever the president feels that his agenda is being stalled by constitutional limitations, he establishes a mechanism for obtaining popular support for decisions that would otherwise be stopped by the courts. In 2019 he promoted a popular consultation to see whether the people supported the construction of the new Maya train line, the Dos Bocas oil refinery, and other large-scale public works, but his party did not install enough voting booths countrywide to assure the level of participation required by constitutional rules for the consultation process. Nonetheless, Lpez Obrador used the yes vote to validate the advancement of his projects, even though they failed to comply with legal requirements such as conducting environmental impact studies. In addition, states governed by Morena had more voting booths than others did, thus skewing the result in favor of the president.

The implications are worrisome: if a badly organized instrument of direct democracy supports Lpez Obradors views, he embraces it, even if that entails bending the law to his bidding. He publicly pressures and threatens judges and ministers of the Supreme Court when they attempt to place legal obstacles in his path, including their refusal to support his punitive policy of automatic prison without bail for petty crimes. Alejandro Gertz Manero, the pliant attorney general, has also come to Lpez Obradors aid when the president wants his opponents jailed or indicted, as was the case with Jorge Luis Lavalle, a congressman who was put behind bars, without evidence, for allegedly taking bribes from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company.

This bullying and manipulation of the legal system makes it nearly impossible for opposition parties to sap support for Lpez Obrador. Plus, they are burdened by a history of bad governance and corruption while in office and remain weak, divided, and leaderless. Although the opposition was able to wrest voter support away from Morena in Mexico City during elections in 2021, the party made significant electoral inroads at the state level and now controls 21 out of 32 governorships. According to the most recent public opinion polls, it is poised to win the presidency again in 2024. Because Lpez Obrador is constitutionally limited to only one term in office, he will use the resources of the state to assure victory for a candidate he selects himself. Just like the PRI presidents of the past, Lpez Obrador will choose a successor who will remain true to his vision, even if it means abandoning basic democratic principles.

The only true thorn in Lpez Obradors side are Mexicos feminists, a singular political movement that he does not seem to understand, cannot control, and has not been able to suppress. Women in Mexico are angry, and rightly so, given the tide of femicide sweeping the country. Womens long-standing frustration with the governments lack of response to the murders has been intensified by a president who seems impervious to and disdainful of their demands. Despite keeping his promise to establish gender parity in his cabinet, Lpez Obrador has instituted policies and economic austerity that have been harmful to women. His government has closed publicly subsidized daycare centers, eliminated shelters for victims of domestic violence, defunded the National Womens Institute, and cut many national programs that protect women, especially those in indigenous communities. Today, Mexican feminists are more energized and more combative than ever, while they seek to reframe the public debate in favor of their rights and against increased militarization. Throughout his term, womens marches and public protests have been constant and have drawn enormous crowds. When they occur, Lpez Obrador erects steel barriers around the presidential palace, a defensive measure no past president has ever resorted to. In the polls, support for the president among women has been falling because of his budget cuts, his repeated public attacks on feminism, and his tendency to tear-gas the protesters when they march.

As part of his strategy to govern through fear and division, Lpez Obrador has chosen to pursue an openly anti-American stance. In contrast with the conciliatory, even friendly posture that he assumed toward U.S. President Donald Trump, Lpez Obrador has picked public fights with President Joe Biden on many issues, the most important being energy policy. Lpez Obrador has pushed through a series of laws that discriminate against energy production by foreign companies and U.S.-generated energy in favor of state-owned oil and gas companies, such as Pemex and Mexicos Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). U.S. and Canadian enterprises have assumed increasingly critical public stances, arguing that Mexico is violating commitments it made in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2020.

To resolve the spat, the Biden administration pursued quiet diplomacy. John Kerry, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, has visited Mexico several times over the last two years, while other senior U.S. officials expressed concern, hoping that behind-the-scenes pressure might lead Lpez Obrador to reconsider his position and strike down measures that give electricity produced by the CFE an unfair edge over energy from private companies and cleaner sources such as wind and solar. The usual tools of diplomacy, however, proved of little use, as Lpez Obrador dug in and began to escalate his attacks on the United States, frequently asserting that Mexico is not a colony, decrying American interventionism in his countrys internal affairs, calling Mexican defenders of free trade treasonous, and proclaiming that the USMCA violated Mexicos sovereignty. To fire up his base, Lpez Obrador has turned a trade dispute into a political battle.

Bidens patience finally wore out, and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced in July that the administration would begin a process of dispute settlement consultations, a first step in what could lead to tariffs on a wide range of Mexican products. The Canadian government soon followed suit, challenging Lpez Obradors effort to establish government control over the countrys oil and electricity sector and backtrack on the liberalization of the energy sector that the trade agreement established. If Mexico refuses to relent, and if the arbitration panel finds it to be in violation of the USMCA, the country could face severe financial penalties and compensatory tariffs. Even though Biden still depends on Mexicos assistance with immigration and security issues, he seems to have decided it is time to stop an emboldened Lpez Obrador. Although Lpez Obrador has not openly threatened to exit the USMCA, his confrontational rhetoric and his unwillingness to reverse his nationalistic energy policies has generated concern in Washington and Ottawa.

For Mexico, leaving the agreement would be economic and political suicide. Mexicos inclusion in a free-trade zone with its richer neighbors to the north has turned the country into a manufacturing powerhouse and has functioned as a guarantor of stability by reassuring international investors that the Mexican government would play by the rules. As a result of NAFTA and later the USMCA, investors came to see Mexico not as an unstable Latin American basket case but as a North American player that, in the event of a crisis, had a lender of last resort. When Mexicos economy collapsed in 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton bypassed Congress to provide a $20 billion loan to help the country recover. Had Mexico not been a NAFTA partner, it would not have received that assistance. And if Mexico withdraws from the USMCA, Washington would be unlikely to rescue Mexico from a similar crisis.

By rejecting the political and economic tenets of the North American neighborhood, Lpez Obrador is reviving views of Mexico as a country subject to pendular macroeconomic policy shifts and presidential whims, which produced crisis after crisis in the 1970s and 1980s. Even if he chooses not to withdraw from the USMCA, his erratic policymaking could lead to further disinvestment, capital flight, and a return to cyclical bouts of economic instability. In 2021, Mexico suffered record capital outflows of over $10 billion, caused by increased risk aversion among investors.

But Lpez Obrador knows that playing the anti-Yankee card can yield political benefits, despite polls showing that a majority of the country supports free trade. With the 2024 presidential elections not far off, he believes that his popularity with an energized political base matters more than the maintenance of a trilateral trade accord. Scoring political points and amassing political capital matters more to him than avoiding a return to what the Mexican poet Octavio Paz once called the countrys labyrinth of solitude, where Mexico would once again waste away, brought down by protectionism, nationalism, corruption, crime, and poverty.

More than a government, Lpez Obradors administration is a daily act of political theater. His is a performative presidency that spins a tale of a heroic fight against privileged elites, perverted feminists, and corrupt experts, all conspiring against the public. He claims that he alone represents the will of the pure, true people. His rhetoric is simple: he seeks a seismic shift, not a mere course correction. He isnt interested in renovating; he wants to burn down the house. Lpez Obrador believes that he embodies a moral revolution, unconstrained by the imperatives of democracy or the niceties of constitutional rule.

The core goal of Lpez Obradors presidency is the maintenance of personal popularity to assure that his party remains in power. His government is therefore uninterested in the material consequences of its policies and actions. It doesnt matter whether the critics think the performance is any good; all that matters is that the audience keeps applauding. As a political strategy, it has worked so far: recent polls show that over 60 percent of Mexicans approve of Lpez Obrador personally, regardless of the well-documented and easily observable adverse effects his rule has had on the economy, on crime, and on democratic consolidation.

His continued popularity does not bode well for Mexicos future. Stepped-up military involvement in domestic affairs is a threat to democracy and human rights. Lpez Obradors assault on the state will destroy or degrade the democratic institutions that Mexican reformers had managed to build over the last 30 years. His inward-looking policies will inhibit economic recovery and Mexicos entrance into competitive post-pandemic global markets. Crony capitalism will perpetuate a system based on favors, concessions, and collusion that will favor the powerful and hurt consumers and citizens.

Democracy relies on rules, procedures, and institutionsnot a leader endowed with mythical qualities. The cult of personality that the Mexican president has promoted and the polarizing ideas that he has injected into the public sphere have created an us against them environment. Mexican politics is increasingly fueled by fear and resentment instead of by debate, deliberation, and fact-based arguments, and public discourse has become unmoored from any sense of what is best for the country. Mexico has a long history of placing its destiny in the hands of an authoritarian president as it lurches from crisis to crisis. Now, Lpez Obrador is taking the country down a familiar path, not to a strong, healthy democracy but to a lawless, corrupt kleptocracy, supported by people who should know better.

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Mexicos Dying Democracy: AMLO and the Toll of Authoritarian Populism

Abstract

Rising support for populist parties has disrupted the politics of many Western societies. What explains this phenomenon? Two theories are examined here. Perhaps the most widely-held view of mass support for populism -- the economic insecurity perspective--emphasizes the consequences of profound changes transforming the workforce and society in post-industrial economies. Alternatively, the cultural backlash thesis suggests that support can be explained as a reaction against cultural changes that threaten the worldview of once-predominant sectors of the population. To consider these arguments, Part I develops the conceptual and theoretical framework. Part II of the study uses the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) to identify the ideological location of 268 political parties in 31 European countries. Part III compares the pattern of European party competition at national-level. Part IV uses the pooled European Social Survey 1-6 (2002-2014) to examine the cross-national evidence at individual level for the impact of the economic insecurity and cultural values as predictors of voting for populist parties. Part V summarizes the key findings and considers their implications. Overall, we find consistent evidence supporting the cultural backlash thesis.

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