What Is populism?

133 Pages·2016·0.924 MB·English

by  Jan-Werner Müller

What Is Populism?

What Is Populism?
Jan- Werner Müller
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2016 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review
or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by
any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104- 4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
Printed in the United States of America
A Cataloging- in- Publication record is available from the Library of
Congress
Cover design by Bradford Foltz
ISBN 978- 0- 8122- 4898- 2 hardcover
ISBN 978- 0- 8122- 9378- 4 e- book
The only meaning I can see in the word “people” is “mixture”; if you
substitute for the word “people” the words “number” and “mixture,”
you will get some very odd terms . . . “the sovereign mixture,” “the
will of the mixture,” etc.
— Paul Valéry
All power comes from the people. But where does it go?
— Bertolt Brecht

C o n t e n t s
Introduction: Is Everyone a Populist? 1
1. What Populists Say 7
2. What Populists Do, or Populism in Power 41
3. How to Deal with Populists 75
Conclusion: Seven Theses on Populism 101
Notes 105
Acknowledgments 121

In t r o d u c t i o n
Is Everyone a Populist?
No US election campaign in living memory has seen as many
invocations of “populism” as the one unfolding in 2015– 16.
Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have been labelled
“populists.” The term is regularly used as a synonym for
“antiestablishment,” irrespective, it seems, of any particular
political ideas; content, as opposed to attitude, simply doesn’t
seem to matter. The term is thus also primarily associated
with particular moods and emotions: populists are “angry”;
their voters are “frustrated” or suffer from “resentment.”
Similar claims are made about political leaders in Europe
and their followers: Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, for
instance, are commonly referred to as populists. Both these
politicians are clearly on the right. But, as with the Sanders
phenomenon, left- wing insurgents are also labeled populists:
there is Syriza in Greece, a left-w ing alliance that came to
power in January 2015, and Podemos in Spain, which shares
with Syriza a fundamental opposition to Angela Merkel’s
austerity policies in response to the Eurocrisis. Both—
especially Podemos— make a point of feeling inspired by
what is commonly referred to as the “pink tide” in Latin
America: the success of populist leaders such as Rafael Cor-
rea, Evo Morales, and, above all, Hugo Chávez. Yet what do
all these political actors actually have in common? If we hold
with Hannah Arendt that political judgment is the capacity
1