We Looked at 46 Populist Leaders. Here’s What They Did to Democracy.

[Belsnickel]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/hard-data-populism-bolsonaro-trump/578878/

I was reading this article this morning and thought I would share. They talk a good bit about how populist governments stay in power longer, which seems like a "duh" type of thing. But the reasoning isn't necessarily popularity. It has to do with the way they change the political landscape.

Quote:Overall, 23 percent of populist governments initiate democratic backsliding, defined as at least a one-point drop in a country’s democracy score as defined by the Polity IV project. By comparison, only 6 percent of non-populist governments are responsible for this kind of deterioration. In all, a populist government is four times more likely than a non-populist one to damage democratic institutions. (And it is likely that we’re under-counting actual cases of democratic erosion because of status-quo bias in organizations that measure the robustness of democracies. Despite ample evidence of the erosion of rule of law and media freedoms in Hungary and Poland, for example, Polity IV had not yet registered democratic backsliding in these countries as of 2017.)

Essentially, populist governments try to reduce democracy to stay in power, likely banking on their initial popularity to claim a mandate for doing such things.

Then there is another part of the article which I found interesting.

Quote:But are all populists equally dangerous? According to thinkers like Mouffe, scholars need to draw a sharp distinction between left-wing and right-wing populists. While right-wing populists victimize unpopular minorities and weaponize public anger for illicit goals, left-wing populists are supposedly far more likely to correct elite failures on behalf of the poor and downtrodden. The best response to right-wing populists, according to this camp, is not a preference for parties and candidates that respect long-standing democratic rules and norms—but rather the election of left-wing populists.

The data do not bear out this argument. Since 1990, 13 right-wing populist governments have been elected; of these, five brought about significant democratic backsliding. Over the same time period, 15 left-wing populist governments were elected; of these, the same number, five, brought about significant democratic backsliding. This suggests that left-wing populists are not likely to be a cure for right-wing populism; they are, on the contrary, likely to accelerate the speed with which democracy burns out.

This is something with which I definitely agree. Let's be clear that the Soviet Union was born of left-wing populism. Populist movements tend to be extremist, no matter which side of the ideological spectrum they inhabit. As a social democrat, there are a lot of policies that left-wing populists promote that I find appealing, but I recognize a need to work within the system. I understand the reason for the bureaucracy and the role the elites play. In the end it seems to come down to the old adage that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Speaking of corruption:

Quote:Populists often get elected on a promise to root out corruption. In Brazil, Bolsonaro soared in popularity by riding public anger against the “Carwash” scandal, a giant scheme of kickbacks from construction contracts that implicated much of the country’s political class, including the ex-president Luiz Inácio da Silva. In Italy, the populist Northern League has long railed against corrupt politicians in “thieving Rome.” In the United States, President Trump famously vowed to “drain the swamp.”

But far from draining the swamp, most populists have, as the economist Barry Eichengreen put it, simply replaced the mainstream’s alligators with even more deadly ones of their own. In fact, we found that 40 percent of populist heads of government are ultimately indicted for corruption. Since many populists amass sufficient power to hamper independent investigations into their conduct, it is likely that this figure actually underestimates the full extent of their malfeasance.

This suspicion is corroborated by a second piece of information: Our data show that populist governments have led their countries to drop by an average of five places on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Some cases are far more extreme than that: Venezuela, for example, dropped by an astounding 83 places under the leadership of Hugo Chávez.

What it seems to me is that populist governments have had a tendency to replace already existing systems with those of their own that do the same thing, only not paying attention to the long established norms that hold up democratic institutions.

Anyway, thought I would share and bring it up for some discussion.

[Dill]

(12-26-2018, 12:09 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: This is something with which I definitely agree. Let's be clear that the Soviet Union was born of left-wing populism. Populist movements tend to be extremist, no matter which side of the ideological spectrum they inhabit. As a social democrat, there are a lot of policies that left-wing populists promote that I find appealing, but I recognize a need to work within the system. I understand the reason for the bureaucracy and the role the elites play. In the end it seems to come down to the old adage that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Does it matter what kind of state form and traditions are already in existence when populists take power?

The Soviet state was not really erected upon a liberal Democracy. The Duma which assumed control of the Russian state after the Tsar's abdication was only in power a few months and never had a mandate before it was overthrown.

You have posted an interesting article, though one point rubbed me the wrong way. I don't think Mouffe argues "The best response to right-wing populists, according to this camp, is not a preference for parties and candidates that respect long-standing democratic rules and norms—but rather the election of left-wing populists." I would say she (rightly) prefers a left-wing populism that continues to respect long-standing democratic rules and norms over right-wing, scapegoat driven populism. She has a rather Madisonian conception of how "agonistic" conflict checks power.  She would never like to see hegemonic power invested in a single party or leader for the long term, freed from the "check" of diverse groups/interests.