What Is Populism?

Jan-Werner Müller is German and teaches politics at Princeton. Muller discusses populism and many of the leaders who have been described as populist in recent years. The list includes Trump, Erdogan, Wilders, Orban, Le Pen, Farage, and Chavez. Populism is defined in the Oxford dictionary as: "A political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups." Muller uses the term pejoratively. Ultimately, his book asks the question, whether the political elite should carry out the will of the people; or impose its own "superior" views on society. Muller seems to favor the latter and for some reason views this as the democratic option. Muller is a master of Orwellian doublethink. I have lived in the U.S. and Europe. I disagreed with most of his argument and his version of European istory. Instead, I would recommend National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy by two British academics, Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin.Populists are already in government in some way in six EU member states: The list includes Austria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, and Poland. Across the EU there are 11 populist parties with popular support above 20%, implying that the number of populist governments could roughly double.Muller believes that we should fear populism, but he conflates the term with totalitarianism, which is a mistake. He believes that the end game for populists is a country that looks like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Both countries elected leaders who became dictators. Lenin in 1917 and Hitler in 1933. Muller describes the playbook used by both men. They used lies and violence to take power and then crushed their opponents after they won control.Muller ignores the reasons why populism has recently reemerged in the West. Free market policies have increased inequality and the working class is being left behind. Most people want immigration controls and they expected their governments to deliver. Instead, people have been told to get used to immigration and to focus on its benefits. The liberal elite seems to fear being accused of racism and they can see the benefits of cheap imported labor. My mother is retired and lives in Britain. She has employed Polish gardeners, plumbers, and decorators to remodel her house. She tells me they do a great job and are cheap. She wasn't too bothered about the local people she deprived of the work.Muller is worried about Trump and Brexit and sees totalitarians everywhere. There are fears in the mainstream media about Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic going over to the dark side. I worked in Eastern Europe after the Soviet Union collapsed. These countries were occupied by the Nazis and then the Soviets and have fought to preserve their culture. The EU does not believe in national identity. Muller has unusual views about how democracy works. He seems to believe that the people should accept the policies handed down by technocratic elites because these people are experts and they are better qualified to make decisions. If the people reject their policies he regards them as populists and therefore anti-democratic. The European media has often labeled opponents of immigration as "far-right" or "neo-Nazi."To summarize, Muller argues that populism threatens the very basis of democracy. It does so by undermining the idea of pluralism. He believes that populists claim to represent the people but they create their own elites once they obtain power, like the Nazis and Communists. He believes that populist parties are authoritarian and often have a supreme leader (e.g., Hitler, Lenin or Mao). Once ensconced in power, populist leaders find scapegoats to blame for problems that emerge: corrupt elites, saboteurs, the media, foreign meddlers and so on. They prepare the people for some kind of showdown with the alleged enemies of the people. Once in power, populist leaders destroy democratic norms to consolidate power and crush their critics, just as Hitler and Lenin did.None of this seems applicable to the U.S. and UK. This is something Muller fails to grasp. Both countries rejected extremism during the Great Depression. The U.S. elected FDR while the Germans elected Adolf Hitler. Britain picked two moderates before ending up with Neville Chamberlain, a Conservative, who declared war on Hitler. Brexit is unlikely to lead to another Third Reich. Ironically, some Brexit supporters feared that the EU was turning into a Fourth Reich ruled by Germany. Müller has an obsession with Britain’s Nigel Farage and implies that he is a dictator in waiting, this is nonsense. Farage is a vocal and effective critic of the EU and a former commodities trader. Farage has made eight failed attempts to become a British member of parliament. Mature democracies should be able to handle robust debate and cope with people like Farage who use their right of free speech to question the political establishment.Britain's political parties often started out as populist movements. The British Labour Party was created in 1893 because many in the working class did not believe their grievances were being properly addressed. It initially grew out of the trade union movement and the church. Its first leader was a lay preacher. New parties often emerge as society evolves. The Labour Party, despite its populist roots, has not produced any demagogic leaders and has not tried to overthrow democracy.Muller is a true believer in the EU. The EU has a population of 510 million people and there are 28 member countries. Its long-term aim is to create a United States of Europe. It lacks America's homogenous culture and a common language. It increasingly suffers from a democratic deficit between Brussels and outlying regions. Its evangelists aim to create an ideal society ruled by technocrats. In Europe, the technocrats are increasingly seen as distant, unaccountable, and arrogant. The EU is also plagued with groupthink and ignores views it does not like. European history tells us that when elites ignore the people bad things can happen.The EU's current economic problems were triggered by the 2008 financial crises and the euro. How it reacted made things worse and helps explain the rise in populism. Austerity economics in the eurozone has resulted in slow growth and high unemployment since 2008. The EU replaced “populist” leaders in Greece and Italy. Greece then lost 30% of its GDP and its unemployment is still above 20%. A large section of the Italian public is increasingly hostile to the euro. The country has had virtually no economic growth since 1999. Many Italians believe they need a change of direction, and an anti-EU government has just taken power in Italy. According to Tim Geithner, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary, the EU asked the U.S. to approve the removal of Silvio Berlusconi, a previous Italian president who would not do as he was told.Europe's populist leaders have become a thorn in the side of the EU. Hungary's leader, Viktor Orban, is accused of being anti-democratic, however, he was recently elected with a two-thirds majority in a national election. Many of his nationalistic policies are not acceptable to the EU, however, they are popular with a majority of Hungarians, especially those who want to limit immigration. The implication is that Orban is misleading the Hungarian people and they are too stupid or racist to notice. The question is whether Hungarians need the approval of the EU to run their country the way they want to.Muller argues that in Europe and the United States it is less educated white males that are attracted to populism. For some reason, their views don't seem to count. The reviews on the dust jacket agree that Muller has brilliant insights, but he does not seem to understand that populism grows when elites are out of touch. The EU's problem is that it is not willing to listen to its people's concerns. The EU wants a federal Europe but many of its citizens don't. Muller fears the return of totalitarianism, but what seems more likely is the break-up of the EU.

This is an important book. The year 2016 has seen the election of Donald Trump in the US, the Brexit vote in the UK, post-coup consolidation of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and the near-election of Norbert Hofer in Austria. The year that follows will see bids for power by Marine Le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in The Netherlands. These people are widely dismissed as “populists”. But what does that even mean?In his short new book What is Populism?, Jan-Werner Müller, Professor of Politics at Princetown University, suggests we don’t have an answer to that question. He then supplies one. A populist, he states, is someone who claims to identify with “the people”. S/he rejects everyone else. How “the people” are defined is left conveniently vague, but it is made clear that everyone not fitting that description is an outlier, a deviant, or, worse of all, part of an unresponsive “elite” against which s/he is leading a popular rebellion. Thus their views need not be taken into account. The populist, says Müller, is therefore inherently anti-pluralist – they cannot be a democrat. Yet they can present themselves as exactly that, through their claim to represent the popular base.The first part of this definition – identification with something called “the people” – is not new, but Müller presumably wouldn’t claim it was. What may break new ground is his suggestion that this identification makes the populist inherently anti-pluralist, because any definition of “the people” must exclude stakeholders in the polity that don’t meet it. Given the diversity of modern societies, it’s fair to guess that a big percentage of the people won’t be “the people”.A quick glance at Trump and Britain’s Brexit advocate Nigel Farage suggests this is so. Trump actually didn’t win the popular vote in 2016, even though he won the electoral college; so his definition of “the people” may be missing a few “people”. As for Farage, the Brexit referendum was won 52-48%. Yet both men insist that “the people” have spoken. (After the November election, we were treated to the sight of these men celebrating their victory over “the elites” in a gold-plated lift at Trump Tower.)Should we worry about populists? After all, a leader whose politics make no sense will be called out in the end. The trouble is that they can do a lot of damage first. One reason is that, as Müller says, the populists can present themselves as democrats, although to him they are inherently not. “The danger is ...that [populism] promises to make good on democracy’s highest ideals (Let the people rule!). ...That the end result is a form of politics that is blatantly antidemocractic should trouble us all.” He supports this last point with a discussion of the way populist governments of the left and right have behaved in Hungary, Venezuela and Poland.Müller has less to say about the way we must react to populism. He does talk about the safeguards that have been built into European constitutions since the war, but says little about the ways in which democracy has been defined, and then protected from populist capture. He could for example have raised the “tyranny of the majority” arguments set out by the Founding Fathers and by John Stuart Mill, and set out the case for representative government. It may be that Müller wished the book to be concise, with a precise focus; it explains and defines populism, and that is all it sought to do. But I believe that, having explained why populists can’t be pluralists, he could also have set out the ways one preserves pluralism.What Müller does do, is to demand that we confront, but also engage with, populism. “I reject the paternalistic liberal attitude [of] therapy for citizens ‘whose fears and anger have to be taken seriously’,” he says. But he also rejects exclusion of populists from debate, pointing out that this will simply support their contention that the “popular will” is excluded from the “system”. I think he is right on both counts.I would prefer to have read more in this book about the constitutional pluralist structures that can protect us from populism. I would also have liked to see more analysis of why voters respond to populist leaders who clearly don’t have their best interests at heart. But Müller has written widely on politics and government elsewhere, and perhaps these discussions would have blunted this concise, readable little book. Müller’s main purpose was simply to define populism – and he has certainly done that.Moreover his definition of populism as inherently anti-pluralist is a well-argued and elegant warning. As Trump apparently said in May 2016, “The only important thing is the unification of the people, because the other people don’t mean anything.” If you’re not sure you’re one of Trump’s “the people” (or Farage’s, or Wilders’s, or Erdoğan’s), the populist vision of democracy does not include you.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand what is happening politically at present. Compared with Eatwell and Goodwin’s “National Populism” which I also read, it does less to explain the genuine reasons why people are attracted to populist movements and who those people are. However it gives a clearer analysis of what populism is, what ideas motivate populists, and why it usually leads to suppression of excluded groups, individuals and democratic institutions.

An excellent place to start for the intermediate reader who has an interest but little knowledge beyond broadsheet newspapers. Müller is a professor of Political Science, but this is perfectly accessible. It would be a good buy for a student in their teens who is interested in politics, or for any general reader who has a growing interest in the subject. Müller cites a wide range of canonical thinkers and contemporary scholars, and so this serves as a gateway to the rest of the subject.

This brief volume was super-timely in the latter part of the 2010s - and will remain so for time to come. Professor Müller gives a brief, sober - and magisterial - overview of the definition, history and to an extent, implications of a movement in politics that impacts us all. Also a great entry point for his wider authorship (books and articles).

I prefer to buy 2nd books when I can. This book is as good as new and I’m happy to give it as a present

This book is a must-read for anyone looking to understand the current rise of populism in the world.It neatly and concisely cuts to the heart of the matter, provides a clear distinction between real populism and legitimate criticism, and provides strong examples and evidence for the assertions made.