IDI Presentation: Notes on Populism
by Coline Covington
Vienna, 8th December 2017
I want to focus on the principal factors that are influencing the rise of populism, not only in the West, but across the world. I view globalization as giving rise to the three key political issues of inequality, immigration and identity.
- Globalization
Populist movements are nothing new, neither is “fake” news, or terrorism, or inequality.
What is new is our increasingly globalized economy and our ability to communicate globally through new media. What is also new is the increasing globalization of corporations and their effect on national and global economies.
Many of the events of 1989 (the fall of the Berlin Wall, Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution, free elections in Poland, Tiananmen Square) fueled hope for a new future of freedom and equality. Despite bringing vast new opportunities, globalization has also brought us huge economic changes in some ways similar to the industrialization of the 19th century, affecting local economies and migration of populations. Some previously poor parts of the world have benefitted enormously with increased production and employment, while other areas have suffered dramatically. Economic changes have also altered local and national boundaries in many parts of the world. As boundaries shift and erode, containing local conflicts becomes much more difficult. With the anxiety created by globalization, our optimism for the future has soured and we are beginning to feel its widespread effects.
- Inequality
In 2014 Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the 21st Century, was published and quickly rose to no. 1 on Amazon’s best seller list. Its success was attributed to the fact that it constructs a well-documented frontal challenge to the inequality debate in economics and politics. For a long time, leading politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have extolled inequality, free trade policies and tax benefits for corporations and inheritance. In 2000, the CEO of Louis Vuitton, boasted: “Businesses, especially international ones, have ever greater resources, and in Europe they have acquired the ability to compete with states…Politicians’ real impact on the economic life of a country is more and more limited. Fortunately.”
According to Robert Wade, a leading UK economist, most economists either don’t think about inequality or believe in the self-adjusting market system – a view that has fundamentally supported political policies for decades. Poverty and wealth tend to be viewed as part of the natural order.
Obama, during his presidency, declared inequality “to be the defining challenge of our time.” Pope Francis has also echoed this. Both have been accused by the wealthy of persecuting the rich.
As predicted by Obama, rage against the rich (and the elites) has taken hold since 2008.
Wade points out, “In the period 2009-2012, 93 % of the increase in the US national income accrued to the top 1% – and this in a stable democracy rather than a kleptocracy such as Equatorial Guinea.” Wade, R., “The Piketty Phenomenon”, in International Affairs, Vol.90, No.5, September 2014, p, 1076)
IMF researchers have recently challenged the idea of a self-adjusting market system. In a report published in 1914, they have found that “countries with a higher inequality tend to experience lower and more volatile growth; countries with lower inequality tend to experience higher and less volatile growth….in short, inequality is a drag on growth and fosters financial instability.” Wolfgang Munchau of the FT reported, “The most likely trajectory is a long period of slow growth, low inflation, and a constant threat of insolvency and political insurrection.”
- Not just the poor
Carol Graham, a US economist who studies inequality, has demonstrated that it is not simply the poor in the US who are being affected by economic changes, it is also the middle classes. She describes a “black box of no hope” that now characterizes much of middle class experience in the US. Graham makes the point that inequality is tolerable as long as people are optimistic about their opportunities to be upwardly mobile. When these opportunities disappear, inequality can no longer be accepted. (Graham, C., 2017. Happiness for All? Unequal Hopes and Lives in Pursuit of the American Dream. Princeton: Princeton University Press.)
On the other end of the scale, amongst the rich, there is increasing resistance to government regulation. In the US and UK libertarian views that support the idea of a self-regulating market system and individual sovereignty are gaining strength and encouraging the dissembling of government institutions.
- Immigration
Inequality, stagnant growth, and downward mobility fuel anti-immigration and xenophobia. Immigrants are perceived either as leeches, bleeding limited local resources or, on the other hand, as representing a new wave of upwardly mobile foreigners that are being given opportunities and help that are not available to the indigenous population. If immigrants do well, they evoke envy, if they remain dependent and poor, they evoke resentment. Either way they are represent a threat.
Immigrants are also seen to threaten local identities and culture. Timothy Garton Ash, writing about Germany, ironically points out, “There is a striking inverse correlation between the number of immigrants (or people of migrant origin) in an area and the populist vote: East Germany has the fewest immigrants and the most AfD voters. As one participant in a demonstration organized by the far right, xenophobic movement Pegida (the initials stand for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) told a reporter: ‘In Saxony today there are hardly any immigrants, but there is a danger of the Islamization of Germany in fifty or a hundred years.’ An urgent matter, then.”
Ash cites that “95 percent of AfD voters said that they were worried that ‘we are experiencing a loss of German culture and language,’ 94 percent that ‘our life in Germany will change too much,’ and 92 percent that ‘the influence of Islam in Germany will become too strong.’ Feeding this politics of cultural despair – to recall a famous phrase of the historian Fritz Stern – is a milieu of writers, media, and books whose arguments and vocabulary connect back to themes of an earlier German right-wing culture in the first half of the twentieth century. This is a new German right with distinct echoes of the old.” Ash also emphasizes that the AfD “is not a party of the economically ‘left behind’. This strong presence of the educated upper middle class distinguishes populism from many other populisms.”(Ash, T.G., “It’s the Klutur, Stupid,” New York Review of Books, December 7, 2017) I would add that this phenomenon may not only be evident in Germany but can also be seen in Poland and in parts of the UK and undoubtedly elsewhere.
- Autocracy
As Prof. Vamik Volkan has demonstrated throughout his work, when large group identity is threatened there is a tendency for the group to search for a powerful, charismatic leader who will strengthen group cohesion through tactics such as demonization of the “other” and providing an illusion of omnipotence and “greatness” within the group. Under these conditions, autocratic leadership is favored over democratic systems of government. The group derives security from a strong leader who will tell members what to do.
Despite polls that show the Z generation as largely supporting liberal elites, amongst millenials in Western countries there is greater support for autocratic leadership.
Sasha Polakow-Suransky writes, “Those who believe millennials are immune to authoritarian ideas are mistaken. Using data from the World Values Survey, the political scientists Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk have painted a worrying picture. As the French election demonstrated, belief in core tenets of liberal democracy is in decline, especially among those born after 1980. Their findings challenge the idea that after achieving a certain level of prosperity and political liberty, countries that have become democratic do not turn back.
In America, 72 percent of respondents born before World War II deemed it absolutely essential to live in a democracy; only 30 percent of millennials agreed. The figures were similar in Holland. The number of Americans favoring a strong leader unrestrained by elections or parliaments has increased from 24 to 32 percent since 1995. More alarmingly, the number of Americans who believe that military rule would be good or very good has risen from 6 to 17 percent over the same period. The young and wealthy were most hostile to democratic norms, with fully 35 percent of young people with a high income regarding army rule as a good thing.” (Polakow-Suransky, S. “Is Democracy in Europe Doomed?”, New York Review of Books Daily, 16 October 2017)
- Identity and the Ego Ideal
Identity politics are inextricably linked with economic conditions. Inequality fosters a belief system based on power and wealth (each man for himself) vs we’re in this together mentality. What we are seeing in large countries across the world is a loss of ideological meaning. In the case of Russia, this is vividly described in Svetlana Alexievich’s book, Second Hand Time, and Masha Gessen’s Channel 4 interview about Putin and in her book, The Future is History. The old ego ideals of the culture no longer apply and have left a vacuum in terms of social identity. The ideal of being rich and powerful, as represented by both Putin and Trump and Xi, for example, is only achievable for a minority and leaves little for others to aspire to.
Populist movements can be understood as an attempt to restore former nationalist ego ideals and re-establish group identity.
On the subject of the current crisis of identity politics, Zheng Wang, Director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Seton Hall, writes,
“Behind the slogan of ‘make my country great again’ what is actually being said is that a group of countries are not satisfied with their current status and condition and want to change the situation. …each country has a different agenda, priorities, and methods for its idea of revision. This is a huge problem for the future of international relations. Moreover, there are major debates inside each of these powers. While people are unhappy with their country’s current situation, they also disagree on the issues for change. As Senator Marco Rubio has said, the 2016 election is an election about American identity. From Donald Trump’s campaign to Bernie Sanders’ campaign, we can actually see there is a major internal debate and disagreement in the United States about the basic question of identity—what is the United States? There are also very contentious debates inside China, Japan, India, and Russia regarding their country’s future orientation. For example in China people are discussing whether the ‘China Dream’ is just about wealth and power, or if it should also include constitutional democracy. In the United States people are also debating whether Washington should follow an ‘America first’ policy concentrated on domestic issues, or if the U.S. should be a globally oriented world leader.” (Wang, Z. “The New Nationalism: ‘Make my Country Great Again.’” The Diplomat, 11 May 2016.)
- Political Emotional Illiteracy
Within what is in effect an ideological vacuum, it is easy to understand nostalgic fantasies of a return to greatness. In Europe, only Merkel and Macron, with his mantra “En Marche!”, have tried to combat this with some vision of a future politic.
There is an apparent failure of liberal politicians to create a vision that is not retrogressive and to address in political terms the fundamental, underlying fear of loss of social identity. What we’ve seen instead, most notably with the Clinton presidential rhetoric and the Tories anti-Brexit campaign in the UK, is fact-based arguments that no one cares about because they do not touch any of the emotional issues at the heart of identity politics. For many voters “Facts” have lied in the past and are unreliable, what matters is what is really going to happen and what will make people feel better (e.g., lowering taxes in the US). The dispossessed and disaffected voter wants to be assured of a brighter future and to feel safe. At the other end, many rich and powerful voters, including powerful corporate interests, do not want their power curtailed, especially as globalization changes world economies.
As Sasha Polakow-Suransky asserts,
“The first step in any coherent political project to counter right-wing populists is to reject the fear that fuels their popularity and resist the temptation to adopt their policies. Very few leaders have done this. In Holland and Denmark, the center right and the social-democratic left have largely caved and adopted planks from the populists’ platform. The left has lost much of its old base by appearing to care only about free trade, technological progress, and limitless diversity. This scares many people who used to vote for the Democratic Party, British Labour, or European Social Democrats….
The challenge for today’s left is to acknowledge these voters’ fears and offer policies that help address their grievances without making the sort of moral concessions that lead toward reactionary illiberal policies.” (Ibid.)
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