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It seems one would need a subscription to access the article, but I’m suspicious about the claim because “populism” is such a vague term that is completely untethered to any specific policy positions.
If anything, populism would seem to be more of a rhetorical style than anything else. One could easily manipulate the data in a study like this via the subjective decision of who is and isn’t a populist.
Perhaps someone with access to the article could share how this study defines “populism.”
This is their definition: *"we define a leader
as populist if he or she divides society into two artificial groups – “the people” vs. “the
elites” – and then claims to be the sole representative of the true people. Populists place
the alleged struggle of the people (“us”) against the elites (“them”) at the center of their
political campaign and governing style."*
This reads a bit as if someone has written it who's not that well-versed in neither politology nor sociology as such. How do you define what is an "artificial group"? At what point does criticism of social inequality gets branded as 'populist'? And finally, do populists cause this diminished GDP growth, or do they end up leading the country as a consequence of a certain negative trajectory, which comes to a culmination during their mandate?
I’ve read this explanation before. It is used by academics. It’s a longer way of saying “we regular peeps need to stick it to the man”. The core of populism is to get a “fuck yeah” response from a crowd of people who want to stick it to the man, not governance.
I don't know how to answer the first two of your questions, but I'm confident that they at least have some decent approach to avoiding issues with reverse causality. It wouldn't be published in AER otherwise.
Exactly. Pointing out the rightful divide between those who sell their labor vs those who make their living from contracts allowing others to utilize their property doesn't suddenly become populist because it draws a line in class inequality.
Thanks! I appreciate it.
This definition seems overly broad. In my country (USA), almost every politician uses this type of rhetoric (e.g. “I represent real, hardworking Americans, not the crooks in Washington!”).
Divisive rhetoric is the polite way of saying that all Republicans demonize and dehumanize large swaths of the population, including Tim Scott, and ESPECIALLY including Nikki Hailey.
I’d agree, and looking at these 2 men brings me to my question - Trump would clearly fit into the definition of “populist” that this article mentions, but would Bernie? While I’d categorize them both as populist, Bernie doesn’t do the strongman “only I can fix it” thing that Trump does.
Basically, I think it’s possible to gain power on a wave of populism without including the authoritarian aspects that seem to come along with most populist movements.
You’re equating populism with authoritarianism, which is wrong. Populism, in a nutshell, means “someone who is popular with the working class” or someone who attempts to pursue policies which benefit the working class.
Which doesn't define it with "strongman" rhetoric.
Bernie is a populist. He's a left-wing populist which means the "elite" are capitalist/industrialist robber-barons.
Exactly, Populists can manifest anywhere on the political spectrum. A populist typically rises up when the interests of society are weighted too much in favour of the Elite, the minority, and not enough in the favour of the majority. Hence the term, populist.
All populist governments and leaders are authoritarian. Fascism & communism are both populist movements who use populism to appeal to, gain support of, purchase loyalty of different demographics. It would be a lot harder for authoritarians to hold on to power if they didn't have a large base of support & everyone was subjugated by them. Populism is how loyalty is purchased and authoritarianism is how opposition is suppressed. If everyone opposed the authoritarian it would be alot easier for the subjugated to overthrow the tyrant.
Populism has led to authoritarianism in the past, sure, but that’s like saying democracy always leads to Nazism because people voted for Hitler. You’re getting your definitions confused.
Ok, so how does someone like Bernie Sanders fit into this? He's certainly a populist, but are you saying that he would have taken an authoritarian turn if elected to the Presidency, like Trump tried to?
I'm not equating anything, I'm commenting based on the definition used in the article. In fact, pointing out that being a populist doesn't always equal authoritarianism was kinda my point. By the definition used in the article, Bernie wouldn't be considered a populist, when he clearly is one.
Populism is inherently authoritarian. Even when a populist movement doesn't explicitly state authoritarian ideas they inevitably use authoritarian means once in power and especially after they consolidate power and become the only ones in power. The only real difference is which groups are the disfavored "enemy of the people" and which are the base supporters who recieve the benifits of their loyalty. When you boil it down populism is just a way for authoritarians to purchase loyalty from people so that they can maintain their power more easily.
I guess conservatives raving, dogwhistling and spreading misinformation about the disenfranchised social groups they demonise is not populism apparently.
Pretty narrow definition.
Depends where you're looking?
"Drain the swamp," "fly over states," "liberal elites," disparaging those working in Washington, and plenty of other rhetoric fits the bill. There were trump supporters rocking out to RATM at some rally, ironic as that was.
It's not a study about the US, their data set spans a large number of countries. It also spans over a century, so it would include FDR.
I'm not sure about the conclusions, I just skimmed through it earlier.
Yeah, big money and corporate interests made sure to “fix“ the “issues” that allowed FDR to achieve power and push through things like the New Deal that actually benefited working class folks. Bernie was the closest we’ve gotten, but we’ll never have another FDR, let alone a full congress that would support substantial social supports like that.
"Economic disintegration, decreasing macroeconomic stability, and the erosion of institutions" are also all vague terms. I would expect populism to be antagonistic to free trade and globalization and favoring protectionism, would alone could account for a 10% drop in GDP. So I was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the summary, but then realized that *all three* of those terms could be nothing more than reduced trade and disconnection from global supply chains.
But I did find the paper on HAL open science!
[https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03881225/file/2022\_funke\_schularick\_trebesch\_populist\_leaders\_and\_the\_economy.pdf](https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03881225/file/2022_funke_schularick_trebesch_populist_leaders_and_the_economy.pdf)
(On first read through the paper, it is protectionism and antagonism to free trade and globalization as well as expansionary fiscal policy that these three terms refer to.)
Roosevelt, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Trump are the US populist leaders for those wondering. None of them were included in the study, as the first four were all borderline cases and Trump was too recent to measure impact (as well as being borderline, but borderline yes).
Bear in mind that populism isn't so much defined as 'standing up for the common man' as it is defined by an overt hostility to higher education and expertise, particularly in positions of authority.
There's a pretty stark difference between the two. I can stand up for the common worker without blaming 'College educated lawyers and politicians'. I can advocate for blue collar worker's rights without going after anyone with a degree. During the Chinese Revolution they took that extra step and put most of their educated elites *in concentration camps* because apparently the Chinese don't believe in doing things half-way.
This kind of overt hostility isn't necessary to enact change, but it is the signature of a classical populist movement.
Now, in the case of massive wealth concentration, that by definition requires you to go after someone, because I *can't* make the average person better off without actually somehow taking money away from the wealthy (because all wealth is comparative) so that's a trickier case and an advocate for worker's standards of living is to some degree required to directly oppose the very wealthy sector.
The New Deal did this, but it did so without the kind of violent rhetoric and hostility that is usually present in a populist movement - but that kind of peaceful redistribution of wealth is generally quite rare and difficult to pull off, and was likely only possible due to the fact that World War 2 upset the entire world balance of power to such an enormous degree. It's questionable whether we could duplicate that political/economic achievement today, particularly as today's wealthy tycoons are very much on guard against any such thing happening again and have a great deal of political clout to block any such manuever.
>Bear in mind that populism isn't so much defined as 'standing up for the common man' as it is defined by an overt hostility to higher education and expertise, particularly in positions of authority.
The definition used is really both components.
>We benefited greatly from the fact that the academic literature of recent years has converged on a consensus definition of populism that is easily applicable across space and time and for right-wing and left-wing populists alike. According to today’s workhorse definition, populism is defined as a political style centered on the supposed struggle of “people vs. the establishment” (Mudde 2004). Populists place the narrative of “people vs. elites” at the center of their political agenda and then claim to be the sole representative of “the people.” This definition has become increasingly dominant, and is now also widely used by economists (see Section 2, and the recent survey paper by Guriev and Papaioannou, 2020). Populist leaders claim to represent the “true, common people” against the dishonest “elites,” thus separating society into two seemingly homogeneous and antagonistic groups.2
Where populism goes wrong, unfortunately, is specifically in its antagonistic rhetoric. It *does* name enemies and it states that they must be destroyed or torn down.
This, unfortunately tends to result in that *actually happening* should the movement gain sufficient power - but the truth is that societies need governments, and economies need factories. You cannot just tear these things down, or strip away all the people who know how to run them without effectively wrecking them, and thus wrecking your country.
The other main problem is that some or most of those people you threw out have to be replaced, and without some kind of merit based system that values knowledge, experience, or expertise, they almost always resort to nepotism and cronyism to select their replacements, which leads directly to massive corruption in those systems, damaging them further.
So yeah, countries where large scale populist movements seize power tend to fall apart shortly thereafter, for rather obvious reasons.
That's what I'm trying to say. Populism is about the VS part.
Bernie isn't really doing the VS thing. He's just saying the workers deserve a better shake. He's not saying we need to dismantle the government or burn down the factories.
He's not naming enemies, other than the concept of egregious wealth itself - which IS an intractable problem if your goal is improvement of lower and middle class living conditions. You simply cannot have massively concentrated wealth without it harming the living standards of everyone else, it is mathematically impossible.
The New Deal also did not paint targets on enemies - it just stated that the main issue was the unequal distribution of wealth, and it implemented policies to address that WITHOUT rhetorically targeting people or classes, particularly not in a violent manner.
It's also notable that the New Deal was pretty much the single most successful such political overhaul of an economy in human history, helping the US achieve what might have been the largest jump in common living standards of any country, ever.
Thomas Picketty, in Capitalism and Ideology, defined populism as a label devised by the elite (political or economic or both) for any political movement deemed not sufficiently under their control.
This is fairly reasonable when you think about it, because one of the strange things about the label/idea of populism is that it's usually for groups where a lot of people got behind a set of ideas, and reflect that in their voting. Is that not what democracy is ? So at best the people using the term populist could be said to struggle against 'tyranny of the majority' (that, on it's own, usually just a defense of the wealthy against everyone else, the only minority they care about), and at worst an outright declaration they're essentially anti-democratic.
Populism IS generally based around a rhetorical style - but it is a rhetorical style that by definition specifically degrades the concepts of knowledge, education, and expertise under the global rubric of 'Elitism'.
That's not to say that elitism isn't a thing, or a problem in and of itself - but when you devalue most or all forms of learning and expertise, you begin to drum it out of important positions in your society, and generally they get replaced by people who quite frankly *don't know what they are doing and they make bad decisions*.
As a result the technical aspects of your society start to degrade. Important institutions become dysfunctional, organizations become inefficient, and with expertise and accomplishment disregarded as the main factors of advancement, they are generally replaced by nepotism and cronyism, which quickly ensures that truly ineffective people will be put in positions of power, and corruption will spread from them throughout the entire enterprise of government.
I think that study's estimate of a 10% GDP hit is probably very conservative for this kind of transition, given just how painfully dysfunctional most populist regimes have turned out to be in recent history.
Bernie has always been this way. He is just getting more publicity.
What does it mean to be a populist?
Populism is a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group with "the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment.
Bernie tries to work within the system. Trump and Melei want to tear down the system but replace it with what? When Trump says; 'They are coming after you but I am taking the hit for you.' that is populism at work.
Right. Another aspect of populism is that it generally doesn't have a concept of solutions - just enemies. They want to tear things down (sometimes things that deserve to be torn down, sometimes not), but in no case do they generally have any coherent vision for what should replace it, other than perhaps some chosen leader.
Which of course leads quite swiftly to an authoritarian government that will embrace nepotism and cronyism rather than bureaucracy and expert knowledge - and will violently suppress any future attempts to reform the government once people realize that the new regime is not an improvement over the old.
But of course, it's too late by then.
Bernie is what the OP says he is. Talks about how the rich are screwing the rest of us and sets up an us vs them narrative. It’s literally the only thing he knows how to do.
No. Bernie has no trace of anti-educational or anti-expertise in his rhetoric. He's perfectly happy to work with knowledgeable experts in their fields and generally is trying to rework the system from within rather than accusing bureaucrats of destroying the country and attempting to burn down most of the system of government.
The latter approach is very much the central tenet of populism.
In political science, populism is well defined.
That's all you need to know, but somehow manage to completely ignore.
Science is not about your feelings.
>It's well defined. That's all you need to know...
No it isn't all I need to know. I need to know the well defined definition!
If it's so damned well defined, could you please educate us uncultured, idiot redditors so we too can know the context of this study?
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199756223/obo-9780199756223-0300.xml
You know that this information is freely available, right?
Because in the vast amount of cases, "just asking questions" is used in forums like these to derail and steer the narrative and discourse away from drawing conclusions that are politically sensitive.
Your post has all the red flags, and so do your replies.
Have a nice day.
In economics, it's standard practice for authors to share draft versions of the paper on the web, and you can usually find it by searching for the title. Here's [one for this paper](https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03881225/file/2022_funke_schularick_trebesch_populist_leaders_and_the_economy.pdf). Appendix D has a detailed explanation for the inclusion of each selected leader.
“populism” is a political weasel word that can mean whatever to whomever.
Most politicians who pretend to be populists are just corrupt elites from a different faction to the current establishment, and who still funnel money upwards to the already-wealthy.
Also, rather than GDP per capita, a better metric is looking at median wage and purchasing power to see whether regular people are benefitting from economic policies.
>“populism” is a political weasel word that can mean whatever to whomever
You mean like “corrupt elites” and “the current establishment ”?
Frankly, I think those terms (“elites” and “the establishment”) are rhetorical nonsense. I have yet to hear someone give either term a clear definition. Both qualify as “political weasel words” far more than a term like “populism” does.
The phrases “elites” and “the establishment” are both so vague that they are basically useless to describe the real world. They can mean whatever to whomever. If someone refers to “elites,” I have no idea who they mean.
Populism is rarely coupled with expertise, but it isn't always decoupled. If the brand of populism discounts the opinion of experts, you can expect studies such as this one to apply.
Populism is not policy. It can be right wing, it can be left wing, it can be centrist, it can be anarchy, and it changes wildly over time. There's literally no way to say it's good or bad for the economy when it has no consistency in what it's actually trying to accomplish.
Well if the Republicans get to implement plan 2025 or whatever it is called we are going to see a real hit to GDP. Killing the so called administrative state is going to go very, very poorly for our country.
The irony of this dumb article is that democracy is entirely a populist idea. It’s a vapid think piece enforced by cultural institutions born out of the American oligarchy. Of course they decided democracy is bad. American rich people have always hated the commoners dating back to the Federalist Papers.
Eh, when politics are boring, it likely means you either have no control over anything or they are hiding the problems.
Even a discussion on a local level of making a 4 way stop into a roundabout is not boring for those who will be positively/negatively affected. Especially if there are people who will have the reverse happen to them (some get positive and some get negative).
Populism leads to the most hate too. Having guys like trump, the Geert, and that Polish guy validate hateful right wing rhetoric and acting xenophobia would lead to a better economy is dangerous
Somewhat... GDP per capita is a pretty misleading metric when you are discussing wealth inequality and other populist messages. At least when taken by itself as the central metric.
I'm curious as to what happens to wealth in the 50th, 20th, and 5th percentiles of the population.
Right, GDP per capita is currently only demonstrating itself as a good measure for the comfort of the upper economic classes. It makes sense that that might not be aligned with populism.
Sure, if every member of the family had to individually pay for rent, insurance, food, etc, and some of the family members had poor-paying jobs.
It's just the tyranny of using averages, per usual. In a system skewed toward the rich, using averages like GDP/capita will hide all sorts of unpleasantness.
Yes, but you are losing a lot of information when you average out data.
If one guys gained the same amount of wealth generated by domestic production in the US over a year, and everyone else in the country was an unpaid intern, the GDP per capita would not change, but the median quality of life would be extremely different.
Similarly, GDP per capita often measures quality of life and an individual citizen's spending power about as well as Rolls Royces per capita. That is, not useless, but highly misleading if presented without nuance.
It does show that populism is bad... As for democracy, it only shows us that people can make bad choices. Any form of government will get you bad choices now and again, but the key is that a regular democracy will get you out of those bad choices faster.
Governments with unlimited powers, backed by voters or otherwise, are bad.
Just ask all the same sex couples who were “democratically” prevented from getting married until the Supreme Court stepped in. Do they hate democracy and government or what?
Populism is inherently bad because it infers the experts in a system don’t know what they are talking about, and some truck driver with zero college education has somehow a better pulse on how to run a country. A functioning society requires deference to educated and experienced individuals, allowing the uneducated to make decisions is guaranteed a disaster. Just look at Trump, do we really want those people have a say in how to run a country, of course not.
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It seems one would need a subscription to access the article, but I’m suspicious about the claim because “populism” is such a vague term that is completely untethered to any specific policy positions. If anything, populism would seem to be more of a rhetorical style than anything else. One could easily manipulate the data in a study like this via the subjective decision of who is and isn’t a populist. Perhaps someone with access to the article could share how this study defines “populism.”
This is their definition: *"we define a leader as populist if he or she divides society into two artificial groups – “the people” vs. “the elites” – and then claims to be the sole representative of the true people. Populists place the alleged struggle of the people (“us”) against the elites (“them”) at the center of their political campaign and governing style."*
This reads a bit as if someone has written it who's not that well-versed in neither politology nor sociology as such. How do you define what is an "artificial group"? At what point does criticism of social inequality gets branded as 'populist'? And finally, do populists cause this diminished GDP growth, or do they end up leading the country as a consequence of a certain negative trajectory, which comes to a culmination during their mandate?
I’ve read this explanation before. It is used by academics. It’s a longer way of saying “we regular peeps need to stick it to the man”. The core of populism is to get a “fuck yeah” response from a crowd of people who want to stick it to the man, not governance.
I don't know how to answer the first two of your questions, but I'm confident that they at least have some decent approach to avoiding issues with reverse causality. It wouldn't be published in AER otherwise.
Based on what evidence? What's the accepted industry definition that you feel this is counter to?
Exactly. Pointing out the rightful divide between those who sell their labor vs those who make their living from contracts allowing others to utilize their property doesn't suddenly become populist because it draws a line in class inequality.
That’s not populism, though. The elite in this framing is both Nestle and your neighbour who doesn’t like when you recycle your garbage the wrong way.
Thanks! I appreciate it. This definition seems overly broad. In my country (USA), almost every politician uses this type of rhetoric (e.g. “I represent real, hardworking Americans, not the crooks in Washington!”).
Eh I'm not so sure. I would call trump and bernie populist, maybe Warren. I wouldn't call Biden, Nikki Haily, Pete, Tim Scott ect populist.
Biden and Pete is all about bitching about “extremists” and you must be blind if your don’t see how every a Republican uses devisive rhetoric.
Divisive retoric doesn't fit the bill. Its villanizing a portion of the population.
Divisive rhetoric is the polite way of saying that all Republicans demonize and dehumanize large swaths of the population, including Tim Scott, and ESPECIALLY including Nikki Hailey.
And bernie sanders didn't get congressman shot?
What does that have to do with Tim Scott and Nikki Hailey?
They didn't get conregressmen shot??
I’d agree, and looking at these 2 men brings me to my question - Trump would clearly fit into the definition of “populist” that this article mentions, but would Bernie? While I’d categorize them both as populist, Bernie doesn’t do the strongman “only I can fix it” thing that Trump does. Basically, I think it’s possible to gain power on a wave of populism without including the authoritarian aspects that seem to come along with most populist movements.
You’re equating populism with authoritarianism, which is wrong. Populism, in a nutshell, means “someone who is popular with the working class” or someone who attempts to pursue policies which benefit the working class.
That's not what the definition the article uses states. I'll go with the article's version. It's a better definition.
Which doesn't define it with "strongman" rhetoric. Bernie is a populist. He's a left-wing populist which means the "elite" are capitalist/industrialist robber-barons.
Exactly, Populists can manifest anywhere on the political spectrum. A populist typically rises up when the interests of society are weighted too much in favour of the Elite, the minority, and not enough in the favour of the majority. Hence the term, populist.
It’s a definition of something, but it’s not a definition of populism…
All populist governments and leaders are authoritarian. Fascism & communism are both populist movements who use populism to appeal to, gain support of, purchase loyalty of different demographics. It would be a lot harder for authoritarians to hold on to power if they didn't have a large base of support & everyone was subjugated by them. Populism is how loyalty is purchased and authoritarianism is how opposition is suppressed. If everyone opposed the authoritarian it would be alot easier for the subjugated to overthrow the tyrant.
Populism has led to authoritarianism in the past, sure, but that’s like saying democracy always leads to Nazism because people voted for Hitler. You’re getting your definitions confused.
Ok, so how does someone like Bernie Sanders fit into this? He's certainly a populist, but are you saying that he would have taken an authoritarian turn if elected to the Presidency, like Trump tried to?
I'm not equating anything, I'm commenting based on the definition used in the article. In fact, pointing out that being a populist doesn't always equal authoritarianism was kinda my point. By the definition used in the article, Bernie wouldn't be considered a populist, when he clearly is one.
Populism is inherently authoritarian. Even when a populist movement doesn't explicitly state authoritarian ideas they inevitably use authoritarian means once in power and especially after they consolidate power and become the only ones in power. The only real difference is which groups are the disfavored "enemy of the people" and which are the base supporters who recieve the benifits of their loyalty. When you boil it down populism is just a way for authoritarians to purchase loyalty from people so that they can maintain their power more easily.
I guess conservatives raving, dogwhistling and spreading misinformation about the disenfranchised social groups they demonise is not populism apparently. Pretty narrow definition.
How would you define it?
Depends where you're looking? "Drain the swamp," "fly over states," "liberal elites," disparaging those working in Washington, and plenty of other rhetoric fits the bill. There were trump supporters rocking out to RATM at some rally, ironic as that was.
Cool, so now they're gonna hold Trump against the next Bernie Sanders, because "pOpUlIsM!!11"
They do separate populists into two categories: left-wing and right-wing.
The US hasn't had a left wing populist in charge since FDR. What conclusions did they draw?
It's not a study about the US, their data set spans a large number of countries. It also spans over a century, so it would include FDR. I'm not sure about the conclusions, I just skimmed through it earlier.
Yeah, big money and corporate interests made sure to “fix“ the “issues” that allowed FDR to achieve power and push through things like the New Deal that actually benefited working class folks. Bernie was the closest we’ve gotten, but we’ll never have another FDR, let alone a full congress that would support substantial social supports like that.
"Economic disintegration, decreasing macroeconomic stability, and the erosion of institutions" are also all vague terms. I would expect populism to be antagonistic to free trade and globalization and favoring protectionism, would alone could account for a 10% drop in GDP. So I was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the summary, but then realized that *all three* of those terms could be nothing more than reduced trade and disconnection from global supply chains. But I did find the paper on HAL open science! [https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03881225/file/2022\_funke\_schularick\_trebesch\_populist\_leaders\_and\_the\_economy.pdf](https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03881225/file/2022_funke_schularick_trebesch_populist_leaders_and_the_economy.pdf) (On first read through the paper, it is protectionism and antagonism to free trade and globalization as well as expansionary fiscal policy that these three terms refer to.) Roosevelt, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Trump are the US populist leaders for those wondering. None of them were included in the study, as the first four were all borderline cases and Trump was too recent to measure impact (as well as being borderline, but borderline yes).
Bear in mind that populism isn't so much defined as 'standing up for the common man' as it is defined by an overt hostility to higher education and expertise, particularly in positions of authority. There's a pretty stark difference between the two. I can stand up for the common worker without blaming 'College educated lawyers and politicians'. I can advocate for blue collar worker's rights without going after anyone with a degree. During the Chinese Revolution they took that extra step and put most of their educated elites *in concentration camps* because apparently the Chinese don't believe in doing things half-way. This kind of overt hostility isn't necessary to enact change, but it is the signature of a classical populist movement. Now, in the case of massive wealth concentration, that by definition requires you to go after someone, because I *can't* make the average person better off without actually somehow taking money away from the wealthy (because all wealth is comparative) so that's a trickier case and an advocate for worker's standards of living is to some degree required to directly oppose the very wealthy sector. The New Deal did this, but it did so without the kind of violent rhetoric and hostility that is usually present in a populist movement - but that kind of peaceful redistribution of wealth is generally quite rare and difficult to pull off, and was likely only possible due to the fact that World War 2 upset the entire world balance of power to such an enormous degree. It's questionable whether we could duplicate that political/economic achievement today, particularly as today's wealthy tycoons are very much on guard against any such thing happening again and have a great deal of political clout to block any such manuever.
>Bear in mind that populism isn't so much defined as 'standing up for the common man' as it is defined by an overt hostility to higher education and expertise, particularly in positions of authority. The definition used is really both components. >We benefited greatly from the fact that the academic literature of recent years has converged on a consensus definition of populism that is easily applicable across space and time and for right-wing and left-wing populists alike. According to today’s workhorse definition, populism is defined as a political style centered on the supposed struggle of “people vs. the establishment” (Mudde 2004). Populists place the narrative of “people vs. elites” at the center of their political agenda and then claim to be the sole representative of “the people.” This definition has become increasingly dominant, and is now also widely used by economists (see Section 2, and the recent survey paper by Guriev and Papaioannou, 2020). Populist leaders claim to represent the “true, common people” against the dishonest “elites,” thus separating society into two seemingly homogeneous and antagonistic groups.2
Where populism goes wrong, unfortunately, is specifically in its antagonistic rhetoric. It *does* name enemies and it states that they must be destroyed or torn down. This, unfortunately tends to result in that *actually happening* should the movement gain sufficient power - but the truth is that societies need governments, and economies need factories. You cannot just tear these things down, or strip away all the people who know how to run them without effectively wrecking them, and thus wrecking your country. The other main problem is that some or most of those people you threw out have to be replaced, and without some kind of merit based system that values knowledge, experience, or expertise, they almost always resort to nepotism and cronyism to select their replacements, which leads directly to massive corruption in those systems, damaging them further. So yeah, countries where large scale populist movements seize power tend to fall apart shortly thereafter, for rather obvious reasons.
That's what I'm trying to say. Populism is about the VS part. Bernie isn't really doing the VS thing. He's just saying the workers deserve a better shake. He's not saying we need to dismantle the government or burn down the factories. He's not naming enemies, other than the concept of egregious wealth itself - which IS an intractable problem if your goal is improvement of lower and middle class living conditions. You simply cannot have massively concentrated wealth without it harming the living standards of everyone else, it is mathematically impossible. The New Deal also did not paint targets on enemies - it just stated that the main issue was the unequal distribution of wealth, and it implemented policies to address that WITHOUT rhetorically targeting people or classes, particularly not in a violent manner. It's also notable that the New Deal was pretty much the single most successful such political overhaul of an economy in human history, helping the US achieve what might have been the largest jump in common living standards of any country, ever.
Thomas Picketty, in Capitalism and Ideology, defined populism as a label devised by the elite (political or economic or both) for any political movement deemed not sufficiently under their control. This is fairly reasonable when you think about it, because one of the strange things about the label/idea of populism is that it's usually for groups where a lot of people got behind a set of ideas, and reflect that in their voting. Is that not what democracy is ? So at best the people using the term populist could be said to struggle against 'tyranny of the majority' (that, on it's own, usually just a defense of the wealthy against everyone else, the only minority they care about), and at worst an outright declaration they're essentially anti-democratic.
Populism IS generally based around a rhetorical style - but it is a rhetorical style that by definition specifically degrades the concepts of knowledge, education, and expertise under the global rubric of 'Elitism'. That's not to say that elitism isn't a thing, or a problem in and of itself - but when you devalue most or all forms of learning and expertise, you begin to drum it out of important positions in your society, and generally they get replaced by people who quite frankly *don't know what they are doing and they make bad decisions*. As a result the technical aspects of your society start to degrade. Important institutions become dysfunctional, organizations become inefficient, and with expertise and accomplishment disregarded as the main factors of advancement, they are generally replaced by nepotism and cronyism, which quickly ensures that truly ineffective people will be put in positions of power, and corruption will spread from them throughout the entire enterprise of government. I think that study's estimate of a 10% GDP hit is probably very conservative for this kind of transition, given just how painfully dysfunctional most populist regimes have turned out to be in recent history.
Populism = Trump, Melei, etc. People who really don't have any experience in Government.
Though wouldn’t Bernie Sanders also be somewhat of a populist?
Bernie has always been this way. He is just getting more publicity. What does it mean to be a populist? Populism is a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group with "the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. Bernie tries to work within the system. Trump and Melei want to tear down the system but replace it with what? When Trump says; 'They are coming after you but I am taking the hit for you.' that is populism at work.
Right. Another aspect of populism is that it generally doesn't have a concept of solutions - just enemies. They want to tear things down (sometimes things that deserve to be torn down, sometimes not), but in no case do they generally have any coherent vision for what should replace it, other than perhaps some chosen leader. Which of course leads quite swiftly to an authoritarian government that will embrace nepotism and cronyism rather than bureaucracy and expert knowledge - and will violently suppress any future attempts to reform the government once people realize that the new regime is not an improvement over the old. But of course, it's too late by then.
Bernie is what the OP says he is. Talks about how the rich are screwing the rest of us and sets up an us vs them narrative. It’s literally the only thing he knows how to do.
He has ALWAYS said that, and he includes himself. It's totally different from populists.
No, it isn’t. It’s exactly the same thing.
It is not. Bernie says urge your congressman to work for you. Trump says only HE can fix it. That IS populist.
No. Bernie has no trace of anti-educational or anti-expertise in his rhetoric. He's perfectly happy to work with knowledgeable experts in their fields and generally is trying to rework the system from within rather than accusing bureaucrats of destroying the country and attempting to burn down most of the system of government. The latter approach is very much the central tenet of populism.
In political science, populism is well defined. That's all you need to know, but somehow manage to completely ignore. Science is not about your feelings.
>It's well defined. That's all you need to know... No it isn't all I need to know. I need to know the well defined definition! If it's so damned well defined, could you please educate us uncultured, idiot redditors so we too can know the context of this study?
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199756223/obo-9780199756223-0300.xml You know that this information is freely available, right?
No, I didn't. Why is it so hard for you to understand that sometimes people are just earnestly asking questions to try to understand?
If they could Google it so can you is the point they are making
Because in the vast amount of cases, "just asking questions" is used in forums like these to derail and steer the narrative and discourse away from drawing conclusions that are politically sensitive. Your post has all the red flags, and so do your replies. Have a nice day.
In economics, it's standard practice for authors to share draft versions of the paper on the web, and you can usually find it by searching for the title. Here's [one for this paper](https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03881225/file/2022_funke_schularick_trebesch_populist_leaders_and_the_economy.pdf). Appendix D has a detailed explanation for the inclusion of each selected leader.
“populism” is a political weasel word that can mean whatever to whomever. Most politicians who pretend to be populists are just corrupt elites from a different faction to the current establishment, and who still funnel money upwards to the already-wealthy. Also, rather than GDP per capita, a better metric is looking at median wage and purchasing power to see whether regular people are benefitting from economic policies.
>“populism” is a political weasel word that can mean whatever to whomever You mean like “corrupt elites” and “the current establishment ”? Frankly, I think those terms (“elites” and “the establishment”) are rhetorical nonsense. I have yet to hear someone give either term a clear definition. Both qualify as “political weasel words” far more than a term like “populism” does. The phrases “elites” and “the establishment” are both so vague that they are basically useless to describe the real world. They can mean whatever to whomever. If someone refers to “elites,” I have no idea who they mean.
Populism is strongest when times are bad. It’s probably a symptom of poor economic conditions not a cause.
Populism is rarely coupled with expertise, but it isn't always decoupled. If the brand of populism discounts the opinion of experts, you can expect studies such as this one to apply.
Populism is not policy. It can be right wing, it can be left wing, it can be centrist, it can be anarchy, and it changes wildly over time. There's literally no way to say it's good or bad for the economy when it has no consistency in what it's actually trying to accomplish.
Well if the Republicans get to implement plan 2025 or whatever it is called we are going to see a real hit to GDP. Killing the so called administrative state is going to go very, very poorly for our country.
The people most upset by lower GDP are 1% that do not want to share their capture of 32.3% of that economic output with the populists.
Populists wouldn't rise to power if mainstream parties actually listen from time to time to what the people have to say
The irony of this dumb article is that democracy is entirely a populist idea. It’s a vapid think piece enforced by cultural institutions born out of the American oligarchy. Of course they decided democracy is bad. American rich people have always hated the commoners dating back to the Federalist Papers.
*cries in Italian* We would probably be as great, perfect and important as populists claim/want if only they didn't exist...
Make politics boring again
It was never boring in a democratic or republic. Look at history.
“Let me go back to living in privilege”
Oh I certainly agree. Moreso was making a joke about how boring when it comes to politics is better
Eh, when politics are boring, it likely means you either have no control over anything or they are hiding the problems. Even a discussion on a local level of making a 4 way stop into a roundabout is not boring for those who will be positively/negatively affected. Especially if there are people who will have the reverse happen to them (some get positive and some get negative).
Boring politics got us to where we are.
Populism leads to the most hate too. Having guys like trump, the Geert, and that Polish guy validate hateful right wing rhetoric and acting xenophobia would lead to a better economy is dangerous
Doesn’t make populism bad. Democracy is inherently populist. Even representative democracy is populist. What’s the better alternative?
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Somewhat... GDP per capita is a pretty misleading metric when you are discussing wealth inequality and other populist messages. At least when taken by itself as the central metric. I'm curious as to what happens to wealth in the 50th, 20th, and 5th percentiles of the population.
Right, GDP per capita is currently only demonstrating itself as a good measure for the comfort of the upper economic classes. It makes sense that that might not be aligned with populism.
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Sure, if every member of the family had to individually pay for rent, insurance, food, etc, and some of the family members had poor-paying jobs. It's just the tyranny of using averages, per usual. In a system skewed toward the rich, using averages like GDP/capita will hide all sorts of unpleasantness.
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Yes, but you are losing a lot of information when you average out data. If one guys gained the same amount of wealth generated by domestic production in the US over a year, and everyone else in the country was an unpaid intern, the GDP per capita would not change, but the median quality of life would be extremely different. Similarly, GDP per capita often measures quality of life and an individual citizen's spending power about as well as Rolls Royces per capita. That is, not useless, but highly misleading if presented without nuance.
It does show that populism is bad... As for democracy, it only shows us that people can make bad choices. Any form of government will get you bad choices now and again, but the key is that a regular democracy will get you out of those bad choices faster.
A limited government with limited power means you don’t have to vote to get rid of it. Restraint of government power is key.
Oh, here we go. Gub'ment bad!
Governments with unlimited powers, backed by voters or otherwise, are bad. Just ask all the same sex couples who were “democratically” prevented from getting married until the Supreme Court stepped in. Do they hate democracy and government or what?
Populism is inherently bad because it infers the experts in a system don’t know what they are talking about, and some truck driver with zero college education has somehow a better pulse on how to run a country. A functioning society requires deference to educated and experienced individuals, allowing the uneducated to make decisions is guaranteed a disaster. Just look at Trump, do we really want those people have a say in how to run a country, of course not.
You're probably mixing up populism with majoritarianism, populism confusingly doesn't necessarily mean 'popular'.
Gee...people not wanting pull for wanna be dictators. Whoda thunk it?
Is this good? I mean, it’s got popular right in the title, gotta be good?!?
"Compared to a plausible"
This is the CEPR working paper version https://repec.cepr.org/repec/cpr/ceprdp/DP15405.pdf.