Faculty of Political Science and International Studies

University of Warsaw

Faculty of Political Science and International Studies

Course: Self-management, Social Participation and Politics

Riccardo Baioni

Populism: A Challenge to the Model of Representative Democracy and a Cultural Counter-Revolution

Summary:Nowadays populism is one of the most widespread words in political debates. It reflects a deep dissatisfaction between rulers and governed, representing many challenges for the political system of western countries: in particular,a challenge to the model of representative democracy and to the spread of universalistic values.

Key words: populism, representative democracy, lack of confidence, social participation, cultural counter-revolution.

INTRODUCTION

During the last years the word “populism” has become part of the political mainstream vocabulary of the western countries, leading to a widespread debate about the meaning of the term, the causes of its developing and the consequences that it could have over the political system of countries. The main ideas behind this work are the fact that populism reflects a lack of confidence between rulers and governed,urging the need for a new “social contract” and that populist leaders, appealing to the myth of “the people”, aspire to develop a cultural counter-revolution. For these reasons, this phenomenon is a serious challenge to western political system and to the model of representative democracy.

My essay is structured in three parts. First, I am going to provide a definition of the term “populism” and its relationship with the concept of democracy, in particular of the representative democracy. In the second part I am going to reflect about the importance of social participation in the phenomenon of populism, referring to the neologism of the “post truth”. In the third and last part I am going to analyse some concrete cases of populism in western countriesby quoting some speeches of populist leaders, trying to underline the rhetoric used in their way of communication and the most important ideas of their programmes.

1. Concept of populism

Many parties, movements, leaders and governments were labeled, during the history and nowadays, as populist. From Juan Domingo Perón, Hugo Chavez, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Latin America, to Marine Le Pen, Beppe Grillo or JarosławKaczyński in Europe. Many different experiences, areas of the world, periods and ideologies,united by the same label: populism. For this reason, is really difficult to extrapolate some general common features that explain this phenomenon.

I am going to start from the meaning of the word. Reflecting on theterm “populism”, appears clear that the main reference is “the people”, a concept that it’s the core of democracy (démos and krátos), a form of government that means, literally, “the power of the people”. For this reason, “the populists’ claim to embody the will of the people is hardly new or original” (Panizza, 2005, 5). Indeed, no party and no government have ever tried to legitimate itself in a different way than the reference to the people. So, “why populism is now perceived so negatively, given his proximity to, and affinity with, the democratic principle?” (Yves Mény, Yves Surel, 2002, 6).

First of all, this question leads us to focus on the fact that the original meaning of populism is nowadays disappeared and this word is always used to label, and also to put under bad light, a certain category of parties or leaders that are trying to undermine the stability of western democracies. This is because populism, like many other concepts, is became “an empty shell which can be filled and made meaningful by whatever is poured into it” (Yves Mény, Yves Surel, 2002, 6).

Moreover, the phenomenon of populism stresses an unresolved contradiction of representative democracy, that lead Panizza to talk about populism as a “mirror of democracy” (Panizza, 2005): it is the constitutive tension between, on one side, the pure democratic principle, the power of the people, and on the other side the concrete functioning of the system, that is the representative principle. The system can work only under a fundamental assumption: a pact of confidence between the people and the representatives.

Nowadays this pact of confidence is clearly under pressure and we can see many signals of this: the growing abstentionism; the decline of electoral support for political incumbents; the charm emanated by those who describe themselves as coming outside of the system; the increasing fragmentation of party system. In this situation, the populists try to ride this wave focusing only on the first part of the definition of democracy, the importance of the role of the people.

Highlighting the fact that this populistic wave has its roots in the lack of confidence of the people towards its representatives, stressing the intrinsic contradiction of the model of representative democracy, leads us to ask ourselves this question: “Do they really constitute a challenge to democratic institutions or is it merely a transitory and recurrent problem of adaptation or adjustment?” (Yves Mény, Yves Surel, 2002, 1).Answer this question today is very difficult, if not impossible. What is certain is that this phenomenon represents a deep dissatisfaction towards the most widespread form of government of western countries: the model of representative democracy.

This dissatisfaction is reflected in the growing lack of social participation: citizens feel that social commitment is useless and that they can’t make their voice heard. How deep is it the problem of social participation nowadays and how is it connected with the phenomenon of populism?

2. Populism and social participation

What does it mean social participation? The term is clearly related to the engagement of people towards collective actions, that leads to a strengthen of social capital. In this paragraph, I would like to deal with a specific category of social participation, the political one. How can we say whether citizens in a particular country are socially involved, from the political point of view? One indicator can be surely the electoral participation during elections or referendum.Delwit Pascal, in his work “The End of Voters in Europe? Electoral turnout in Europe since WWII” analysed the electoral participation of 402 elections held in thirty-five European states from 1944 until December 2009. This is what he has discovered:

On analyzing the average turnout evolution, several lessons can be learnt […] From the forties to the seventies, the average turnout was both high and stable: between 82% and 84.5% of European voters took part in national elections. However, since the late seventies, the movement is clearly marked: electoral abstention is growing. […] In the 1990s, abstainers average percentage reached much below 80%. And in the 2000s, it went below 70% on the basis of all analyzed States. From this point of view, the reality of a slump in voter turnout today is clearly corroborated. (Pascal Delwit, 2013, 46-47)

The trend is clear: the political participation of people is steadily decreasing. But why social participation, and in this specific case the electoral participation, is not taken for granted? As underlined by Mancur Olson in his work “The Logic of Collective Action: Public goods and the Theory of Groups” be active from a political point of view has a cost.Reading newspapers, watching TV news, participate in debates and conferences, go to vote during election period, take part in demonstrations: all these actions have a cost. When, for example, you read a newspaper, you participate in a debate or you go to vote, you are devoting time and energy towards a social action: being an active and conscious citizen from the political point of view. Starting from this point Olson create a paradox: we don’t have to ask ourselves why people don’t go to vote, but rather why people goes to vote. This paradox has its roots in the pamphlet written by the English economist William Forster Lloyd “Two Lectures on the Checks to Population” where he introduced the concept of the overuse of a common by its commoners, a concept which was also developed by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in his famous “The Tragedy of the Commons”.

The key point of the pamphlet of Forster Lloyd, and of the concept, is the following:

If a person puts more cattle into his own field, the amount of the subsistence which they consume is all deducted from that which was at the command, of his original stock; and if, before,there was no more than a sufficiency of pasture, he reaps no benefit from the additional cattle,what is gained in one way being lost in another. But if he puts more cattle on a common, the food which they consume forms a deduction which is shared between all the cattle, as well that of others as his own, in proportion to their number, and only a small part of it is taken from his own cattle. In an inclosed pasture, there is a point of saturation, if I may so call it, (by which, I mean a barrier depending on considerations of interest) beyond which no prudent man will add to his stock. In a common, also, there is in like manner a point of saturation. But the position of the point in the two cases is obviously different. Were a number of adjoining pastures, already fully stocked, to be at once thrown open, and converted into one vast common, the position of the point of saturation would immediately be changed. (William Forster Lloyd, 1833, 30-31).

In this example made by the author, the common good is the field. Due to the fact that the field is a common good, every citizen is tempted to exploit it, leading to the impoverishment and to the depletion of the common good.If we translate this example to the political sphere, we can say that the common good is to have well-informed and conscious citizens, because under this assumption there is a high probability that this citizens elect good representatives. However, being well-informed citizens has a cost and every citizen could be tempted to act as a “free rider”, that means to avoid his direct commitment with the desire and the ambition to exploit the engagement of others.

Therefore, political participation it shouldn’t be taken for granted. So, recapturing the concept of Olson paradox, why people participate? The participation of people and their attachment to public affairs could be explained by the presence of a particular feeling that pushes you to be an active citizen, and we can call that feeling “civic consciousness”. This civic consciousness can eradicate and put the roots only under a key assumption: a great confidence of the citizens towards the representatives.As I showed in the first part of this work, this pact of confidence is nowadays under pressure and a new “social contract” between rulers and governed appears necessary.

How the constant decrease of political participation is linked to the phenomenon of populism? To explain this link, we have to introduce the “word of the year 2016” according to the Oxford English Dictionary: the “Post-truth”. Post-Truth is defined, by the Oxford English Dictionary, as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. The concept has been extending over the political sphere: the post-truth politics is a political culture in which the focus is not on the objective features of a policy but on the appeal to emotions that particularly charismatic leaders could evoque. It is clear that this phenomenon has the roots on the low political awareness of citizens and on the fact that the majority of people refuses deep analysis preferring to ride the widespread and mainstream common sense.

The rhetoric of the populist parties is deeply permeated by nuances of post-truth politics. In the last part of my essay I am going to extrapolate the main features of the programmes of these parties through the analysis of some speeches of populist leaders.

3. The rhetoric of populist leaders

The first speech that I am going to analyse is the one of Polish prime minister Beata Szydło, member of the party Law and Justice (PrawoiSprawiedliwość, PiS). It is a speech pronounced on 24 May 2017 in Polish parliament, after the Manchester terrorist bombing of the 22 May 2017, and we can find in her words some common features of populists’ rhetoric and ideas. She said:

We are not going to take part in the madness of Brussel elite, we want to help people, not the political elites. I have courage. I have courage to say and to ask all European political elites a question: where are you headed? Where are you headed Europe? Rise from your knees and from your lethargy, or you will be crying over your children every day. If you cannot see that today terrorist danger is a fact that can hurt every country of Europe and you think that Poland should not defend itself, you are going hand in hand with those who point this weapon against the Europe, against all of us. […] Why am I talking about that? Because all of us in this room have to answer this question, but also all people in Europe have to answer this question: do we want politicians that claim that we have to get used to attacks and who describe terrorists’ attacks as “incidents”, or do we want strong politicians that can see a danger and fight against it effectively? (Beata Szydło, 24/05/17, Polish parliament)

First of all, is important focusing on the style used by Polish prime minister: it is asimple, direct and quite strong way of communications. Two parts of the speech are clear examples of this rhetoric: “Rise from your knees and from your lethargy”, “you are going hand in hand with those who point this weapon against the Europe, against all of us”. It is clearly a rhetoric that rides and emphasizes feelings, a typical element of the post-truth politics, andin particular feelings such as fear and anger, normally widespread among citizens after tragedies like the one happened in Manchester.

Moreover, another important point of the speech of Polish prime minister is the appeal to the people in contrast to the political élite, a very common feature of populistic leaders. The rhetoric of the myth of the people is also present in the inaugural address of Donald Trump’s presidency, and in many of his speech, both during the electoral campaign and today. He said:

Today's ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another -- but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People. For too long, a small group in our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished -- but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered -- but the jobs left, and the factories closed.

The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. (Donald Trump, Inaugural address, 20/01/17)

A very interesting feature of the concept of the people, is that “tends to integrate only those who are considered to be the “true” people” (Yves Mény, Yves Surel, 2002, 12). This aspect goes hand in hand, on one side with the idea of the mythicization of the people, that means that people holds always the reason, and on the other side with the statement that people have been betrayed by the corrupted establishment, who wants only to preserve its egoistic interests. This is a very interesting point because it representsa new possible ground of clash: “Populist movements tend to deny horizontal cleavages (such as the Left/Right divide) and to promote the fundamental unity of the people, while introducing a new vertical dimension, which may exclude, for instance, elites at the top and foreigners at the bottom” (Yves Mény, Yves Surel, 2002, 12).

The last fundamental feature on which I want to reflect is the focus of populist parties on the strengthening of conservative values. It’s something deeper than the conservative vision of the world of traditional right wings parties. What these parties are trying to do is a cultural counter-revolution and, as wrote by James Davison Hunter in its “Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America”, referring in particular to America but valid for almost all western countries, we are in front of a “cultural war”. Hunter wrote that the most important divisive issues are: the status of moral values, the relations between the state and the church and the positions towards abortion, homosexuality and gun policies.

To clarify this concept, we can take as an example the words of the Polish foreign minister WitoldWaszczykowski, member of the ruling party Law and Justice, released to the German tabloid Bild:

Who says the world had to evolve according to a Marxist model in a single direction – towards a mixing of cultures and races; a world of cyclists and vegetarians who only use renewable energy and fight all forms of religion? None of this has anything to do with traditional Polish values. It goes against what the majority of Poles hold dear: tradition, a sense of their history, a love of their country, faith in God and normal family life, with a man and a woman. (WitoldWaszczykowski, Bild, January 2016)

Now it should be clear the meaning of Hunter’s cultural wars: it is the war between universalism and particularism. The cultural counter-revolution is, on one side, the opposition to all of the self-proclaimed universalistic values such as the myth of globalization, abortion, homosexuality and secularization and, on the other side, the statement of particularistic values such as the traditions and customs of countries, the religion, the importance of the family and the distrust towards whatever is different and far from our world.