Populism can be very hard to define because it varies from national context to national context.
The one thing that parties, movements, politicians who are described as populists tend to share
is this insistence that
So there’s a very “us versus them” quality to populism.
They’re really a consequence
of other parties and institutions failures, rather than the cause of them.
Billionaires in this country
With left wing populists, the enemy tends
to be a sort of financial or business type of elite.
When Mexico sends it's people, they're not sending their best.
In a lot of other countries, the enemy may be immigrants, people who look different than
us, people who think different than us.
The social and economic problems that Europe is currently grappling with started decades
ago and have sort of gradually increased over time.
So what we really had was this kind of conflation of economic and social problems that really
I think, push a lot of voters to embrace radical change.
The upcoming French elections provide us with a great prism through which to understand
the meaning and the rise of populism.
Marine Le Pen who represents the national front has turned herself into an incredibly
powerful, and I think interesting figure.
Should Macron win and not manage to convince voters afterwards that his program can actually
solve their problems; we should expect her to come back in the next presidential election
even stronger.
Germany, along with France remains the main player, the main power in Europe so what happens
there really has a huge impact outside of the country’s borders.
The populist right, the Alternative for Germany, was a few months ago predicted to do
quite well at the national elections.
Now it seems to have declined, somewhat partially due to infighting.
Historically of course, because of Germany’s past, there’s been a real barrier to the
rise of far right populism in Germany.
So the fact that we’re even seeing seeds of it, is really a reflection of how deeply
the structural shifts in European political life go.
The Netherlands, the populist there was predicted to come out on top.
Even though Wilders did not win, he did manage to increase his vote.
So, I wouldn’t take the election result as a sign of absolute defeat but a sign that
we have to continue to worry about the underlying trends that fed these parties.
It’s much more dangerous in a way in places like Poland and Hungary because the institutions
and the norms of democracy are much weaker and therefore much easier to maneuver around
or even overthrow.
We’ve seen that happen in Hungary, we’ve seen that happen in Turkey.
It also of course happened in Venezuela.
And people are very worried about something like that happening in a place like Poland.
But if we think about populism as a consequence of rising dissatisfaction and the inability
of elites and institutions to deal with it; then there could potentially be a silver lining
in populism.
Populists tend to raise issues that a lot of people are concerned about.
They tend to focus on problems that are not being addressed.
If traditional elites and institutions can look and say hey we better figure out better
ways of dealing with these issues and concerns, then populists will have performed oddly enough
a kind of backhanded service.
If not, then we can expect the populists to continue to grow in support, and probably the problems
not to be absolutely addressed.
Politics is about getting your message across.
So populists tend to be very good at this
because they tend to present pretty simple
and often problematic solutions
to contemporary problems.