Populism Around the World: A Comparative Perspective 9783319967578, 3319967576

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Daniel Stockemer Editor

Populism Around the World A Comparative Perspective

Populism Around the World

Daniel Stockemer Editor

Populism Around the World A Comparative Perspective

Editor Daniel Stockemer School of Political Studies University of Ottawa Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

ISBN 978-3-319-96757-8 ISBN 978-3-319-96758-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96758-5

(eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018955711 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel Stockemer

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Populism in Argentina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wolfgang Muno

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Populism in France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gilles Ivaldi

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Populism in the Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adele Webb and Nicole Curato

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Populism in Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ben Stanley and Mikołaj Cześnik

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Populism in Turkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. Erdem Aytaç and Ezgi Elçi

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Populism in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Matthew Green and John Kenneth White Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Daniel Stockemer

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Introduction Daniel Stockemer

I don’t think there is a way politically to beat the “Insurgent Movement Of Populism” (Tony Blair 2016)

Populism is on the rise. In the twenty-first century, we have been experiencing a populist tide. Populist leaders are ubiquitous. They are in power in the world’s most powerful country, the United States; they form governments in regional hubs such as Poland, the Philippines, as well as Venezuela, and they threaten some of the most established Western democracies including France and Italy. As a very serious challenge to modern liberal democracy, populism is also one of the most researched topics in modern political science. Among others, researchers try to tackle the following research questions: What is populism? Is it a rhetorical strategy, tactic, or ideology? How can we measure populism? Why are we experiencing a populist zeitgeist now? Who are the supporters of populist movements? What do populists do to appeal to the masses? Integrating itself within this growing research, this edited volume aims at comparing populism in various national contexts. Does populism manifest itself differently or alike in countries as diverse as the Philippines, Turkey, and the United States? Answering this question, this book compares populism in Argentina, France, the Philippines, Poland, Turkey, and the United States across four dimensions: (1) What is the history and development of populist parties and movements in the respective country? (2) Who are the type of contemporary populist actors and movements in our sample countries? (3) What are the (rhetorical) strategies and tactics they use? (4) Who are the voters and supporters of these populist parties and movements? This introduction will situate the book within the broader populist literature. It will shortly retrace the main definitional debates and provide a short history of populism in some of the world’s regions. D. Stockemer (*) University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Stockemer (ed.), Populism Around the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96758-5_1

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1 Defining Populism Populism is one of the most edgy terms in the social sciences. In the words of Mudde (2017, 1), it is an “essentially contested concept” where the “proper use of which involves endless disputes about their proper uses.” For Weyland (2017, 1), “it threatens to escape any analytical grasp. As soon as scholars are confident that they have encircled it with their definitional snares, it resurfaces in a different form in another corner of the impenetrable jungle of politics.” The main definitional controversy is between populism as a discourse or strategy and populism as a (thin) ideology. Following the discursive tradition, Kasin (2016, 18) treats populism as “a creed, a style, a political strategy, a marketing ploy, or some combination of the above.” Through such a lens, populist discourse is a frame of analysis through which meaning is constructed based around the familiar precepts of anti-elitism and peoplecentrism (Aslanidis 2016, 93). For others, such as Mudde (2004, 543), populism is “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus the corrupt elite, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the general will of the people.” Three essential concepts exist within this definition: the people, the elite, and the general will (Mudde 2017, 4). The people are imagined as pure and authentic and reflect an idealized self-perception, i.e., America as Christian (Mudde 2017, 6–7). The elite is registered as the corrupt and evil remainder, which frustrates the people because of favoring special interests or foreign/immoral ideals (Mudde 2017, 3–7). The general will is drawn from the desire for a congruence between the pure and homogenous peoples’ common sense and government policy (Mudde 2004, 546–547). All institutions, rules, and procedures that stand in the way of such direct expression of the general will are conceived as liabilities (Rooduijn 2016). In such a world view, the political system is viewed as inherently opposed to the will of the people; it is inherently tied to the whims of the elites and must be challenged to once again work in service to the common man (Canovan 1999, 3). Through such a thin ideological definition, populism is illiberal and anti-pluralist as it claims “exclusive moral representation.” It represents a form of identity politics insofar as it defines an exclusive people that dismiss an immoral or spurious remainder to be excluded (Müller 2017, 1–6, 101–103). Two additional features characterize this ideational definition: (1) the populist leader becomes the bridge between the unsatisfied demands and the process of representation which coalesces the demands (Valdivielso 2017, 299–300) and (2) the “people” who become a political subject as framing uncovers their exploitation and/or antagonism with the corrupt elite.1

1 Similarly, Ostiguy (2017, 1–5) advances the idea of script populism: the script reads as follows: “There is a majority of ‘the people’ (the pueblo), in the majority ‘Typically from here,’ whose authentic voice is not heard, and whose true interests are not safeguarded. They face a three-way coalition, comprised of a nefarious, resented minority (the object of greatest hatred), at odds with

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2 A Short History of Populism Any study of political history will show that populism has always been there (Mudde 2004, 548). According to Hawkins et al. (2017), the history of populism dates back to the late Roman Republic with its political polarization between the Populares, who favored the people, and the Optimates, who favored the aristocrats. The cradle of modern populism lies in three separate movements: the US People’s Party, Russia’s Narodniki, and French’s Boulangism. The US People’s Parties in the 1890s was a third-party force attempting to pry apart US politics by castigating the Democratic and Republican parties as too close to each other and too tied to special interests (Kaltwasser et al. 2017, 3). In particular, the farmers in the American West and South, who were in dire economic straits, were responsive to the message that the political establishment was not looking after their interests because it had its own agenda. To populists, the answer was plain. “Get rid of ‘the plutocrats, the aristocrats, and all the other rats’ install the people in power, and all would be well” (Canovan 1999, 3–4). In the 1860s, the Russian Narodniki movement emphasized “going to the people” to foment the overturning of the establishment and an antitsarist revolution (Kaltwasser et al. 2017, 4). French Boulangism during the 1890s championed the workers and the nation. It was hostile of the parliamentary regime and campaigned for the installation of a radical plebiscitary republicanism. What unites these “historic” examples is the celebration of and legitimation of the “true common people”: a direct appeal to the virtuous people to oppose an entrenched establishment and a belief that democratic politics needed to be conducted differently and closer to the people (Kaltwasser et al. 2017, 5). Building on these earlier movements, modern populism remerged after World War II in different parts of the world at different points in time. In Western Europe, populism emerged in its right-wing form with neo-fascist elements in the afterwar period. For example, in France, Pierre Poujade’s anti-tax, pro-business owner, antistate, and pro-French Algerian movement emerged as a successful political contender in the 1950s [e.g., in the 1956 first round of the French presidential election Pierre Poujade gained 11.5% of the popular vote (Kitschelt 1995; Stockemer 2017, 7–8)]. In Italy, the National Social Movement, stressing nationalism, law, and order, as well as hostility against minorities, emerged in the 1950s, establishing itself as the fourth largest party in the 1960s. By the 1980s, most European countries had some right-wing gadfly party, all of which exposed strong populist elements such as the rejection of the mainstream elite, hostility toward foreigners and the European Union, as well as some form of nativism. While the precise causes of their ubiquity are disputed, plausible explanations for their rise include the degrading economic conditions on the European continent, the “silent revolution” of values favoring multiculturalism, and the erosion of national sovereignty triggered by European integration, thus provoking economic and cultural fear, as well as insecurity ‘the people’; hostile (and very powerful) global/international forces; and a government in line with that minority. This situation is a source of moral indignation” (Ostiguy 2017, 5).

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(Kaltwasser et al. 2017, 8). In the twenty-first century, the radical populist right has become a major player in political life in Western Europe, garnering upward of 20% of the vote in countries as diverse as Austria, France, and Switzerland. The 1970s and 1980s saw another type of populism emerging in Western Europe, left-wing populism. Focusing on economic parity, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) not only represented the debut of socialist populism but also the first time in European post-World War II history that a left-wing populist force became majoritarian in a Western European country. In fact, the charismatic leadership of Andreas Papandreou dominated politics in Athens in the 1970s and 1980s, for two decades after the dictatorship. In other Western European countries, the political landscape saw an explosion of new green and new politics parties in the early 1980s. These parties “despised politics and the political elite and claimed to represent the people as a whole” and their “common sense and decent values” (Mudde 2004, 548). Yet, in the 1990s and 2000s, these green and progressive parties became politically mainstream, embracing political and sometimes economic liberalism and entering coalition governments with traditional center-left and center-right governments. This, in turn, provided an opportunity for the creation and breakthrough of a second generation of leftist populist movements, leftist grassroots movements pushed by the younger generations. In fact, in countries suffering from economic and social hardship such as Spain and Italy, parties such as Podemos or the Five Star Movement emerged as strong forces in the second decade of the twenty-first century, winning upward of 20% of the vote in elections. In other countries, such as France, this renewed left-wing populism, while also supported by young people, manifested itself more in its traditional form pushed by traditional elites (i.e., Jean Luc Melanchon in France). In Eastern Europe, populist forces only emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The rise of these forces strongly aligned with general dissatisfaction with the political elite and anti-corruption in the aftermath of democratization in the early 1990s. In particular, in the 1990s and 2000, in a context of rampant corruption, populist forces positioned themselves as defenders of the revolution. They argued that the revolution had been stolen from the people by a corrupt political class. As such, these populist forces have argued that “against the political class stand the people who in the tradition of both political populism and antipolitics have a higher moral stature than the amoral politicians” (Mudde 2000, 47). Over the years, populist parties in Eastern Europe added nationalism, an anti-immigration platform, and (soft) Euroscepticism to their agenda, thus creating a winning formula: a formula that the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS) and Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party embraced to gain and consolidate power. Classical populism in Latin America stems from the onset of the Great Depression period (and abrupt modernization) with significant economic decline sparking a legitimacy crisis and demands for political incorporation (Knight 1998). From the 1940s to the 1960s, this led to the emergence of charismatic and quasi-authoritarian populist leaders who, through “claims for equality of political rights and universal participation for the common people,” “articulated a ‘radical discourse,’ constructed a heterogeneous class alliances and mobilized excluded sectors of society”

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(Kaltwasser et al. 2017, 5). Leaders like Peron in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil stressed nationalist developmentalism; the incorporation of the working class into the economic, social, and political fabric; and the suppression of democratic opposition (Kaltwasser 2012, 198). As the continent transitioned out of military rule in the 1980s, populists like Menem in Argentina and Fujimori in Peru adapted to neoliberalism to attack the economic mismanagement of the state (Kaltwasser 2014). At least in part as a response to this neoliberal turn of some populist parties on the continent, radical leftist populism reemerged in the twenty-first century to oppose free-market policies and international capitalist exploitation (Morales, Chavez, Correa) (Stavrakakis et al. 2016). This form of state-centered, pro-peasant nationalist, authoritarian, and anti-American populism has become majoritarian in a number of countries, including Venezuela and Peru. In North America populism has mainly followed its left-wing inclusionary form in Mexico (it was coupled there with strong indigenous mobilization). In the United States, populism has rather manifested itself in its exclusionary right-wing version, mimicking radical right-wing parties in Europe. And in Canada, populism has largely been absent from the political scene. In Central Asia populism is present in many hybrid and autocratic countries. The two most famous examples of populist (semi)authoritarian governments are Putin’s Russia and Erdogan’s Turkey. In Russia, in the 2000s, Putin adopted a populist frame that delegitimizes actions other than those taken by the state. Pushing conservative traditional values, Putin propagates the unity of the people against Western aggression, multiculturalism, and the pro-Western domestic economic and intellectual elites, who according to official discourse are corrupted. In Turkey, Erdogan pushes his Islamic and autocratic revolution with the help of a populist frame that glorifies the Turkish people and nation. This form of populism is strongly linked to the appeal of the (rural) masses. Finally in the Asia and Pacific region, populism has been less pronounced than in Europe and Latin America but still comes up in many forms. Most existing cases either take the form of the nativist right-wing populism seen in Europe or the form of the more inclusive Latin American populism (Moffitt and Torney 2014). Yet, they can also take the form of some religiously inspired populism, where the community of believers substitutes Islamic followers for the concept of the “people.” Various Islamist parties have pushed this version of populism in Indonesia since the 1950s. A prominent example of a more left-wing inclusive populism is Thaksin Shinawatra’s rule in Thailand. Presenting himself as a persona of the common people, canvassing rural voters, and opposing the traditional elites proved successful for this populist leader (i.e., in 2005, he won 58.7 of the popular vote). In contrast, populist parties in Australia and New Zealand resemble more the contemporary radical right-wing parties found in Western Europe. For example, the charismatic leader of the Australian One Nation party, Pauline Hanson, enjoyed some electoral success in the 1990s and again in 2016 embracing a platform decrying multiculturalism, indigenous rights, and Asian immigration (Moffitt 2017, 124). This short history of populism has shown that populism is ubiquitous, it exists in all continents, and it is malleable to all political ideologies. It can exist alongside

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fascism, nativism, socialism, and even neoliberalism. Yet, if we believe the dominant ideological definition, there should always be a pure people, who are oppressed by a corrupted elite, and an expression of the volonté générale. Beyond these core commonalities, this book is interested in a broader comparison of populism in diverse contexts. How is the history and manifestation of populism different in various contexts? Who are the current political populists in important countries? Are the strategies these populist actors use different or comparable? Are the voters and supporters different or the same? Through six case studies featuring Argentina, France, Poland, the Philippines, Turkey, and the United States, this collection of essays tries to answer these questions. To do so, each country contribution follows the same structure; that is, it retraces the history of populism in the respective country and discusses contemporary populist actors, the (rhetorical) strategies they use, and the voters and supporters who support these populist parties. The concluding contribution then compares populism across these six countries illustrating what is similar and what is different across national contexts.

References Aslanidis, P. (2016). Is populism an ideology? A refutation and a new perspective. Political Studies, 64(1), 88–104. Blair, T. (2016). I do not think there is a way to politically beat the “Insurgent Movement of Populism”. Real Clear Politics. Accessed July 31, from https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ video/2016/06/28/tony_blair_i_dont_think_there_is_a_way_politically_to_beat_insurgent_ movement_of_populism.html Canovan, M. (1999). Trust the people! Populism and the two faces of democracy. Political Studies, 47(1), 2–16. Hawkins, K., Read, M., & Pauwels, T. (2017). Populism and its causes. In C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of populism (pp. 267–286). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kazin, M. (2016). Trump and American populism. Foreign Affairs, 95(6), 17–24. Kitschelt, H. (1995). The radical right in Western Europe: A comparative analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Knight, A. (1998). Populism and neo-populism in Latin America, especially Mexico. Journal of Latin American Studies, 30(2), 223–248. Moffitt, B. (2017). Populism in Australia and New Zealand. In C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of populism (pp. 121–139). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moffitt, B., & Tormey, S. (2014). Rethinking populism: Politics, mediatisation and political style. Political Studies, 62(2), 381–397. Mudde, C. (2000). In the name of the peasantry, the proletariat, and the people: Populisms in Eastern Europe. East European Politics and Societies, 15(1), 33–53. Mudde, C. (2004). The populist Zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563. Mudde, C. (2017). Populism: An ideational approach. In C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of populism (pp. 27–47). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Müller, J. W. (2017). What is populism? Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Ostiguy, P. (2017). Populism: A socio-cultural approach. In C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of populism (pp. 73–100). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rooduijn, M. (2016). Simply studying populism is no longer enough. Nature News, 540(7633), 317. Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2012). The ambivalence of populism: Threat and corrective for democracy. Democratization, 19(2), 184–208. Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2014). Latin American populism: Some conceptual and normative lessons. Constellations, 21(4), 494–504. Rovira Kaltwasser, C., Taggart, P., Espego, P. O., & Ostiguy, P. (2017). Populism: An overview of the concept and the state of the art. In C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of populism (pp. 1–24). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stavrakakis, Y., Kioupkiolis, A., Katsambekis, G., Nikisianis, N., & Siomos, T. (2016). Contemporary left-wing populism in Latin America: Leadership, horizontalism, and postdemocracy in Chávez’s Venezuela. Latin American Politics and Society, 58(3), 51–76. Stockemer, D. (2017). The Front National in France: Continuity and change under Jean-Marie Le Pen and Marine Le Pen. Cham: Springer. Valdivielso, J. (2017). The outraged people: Laclau, Mouffe, and the Podemos hypothesis. Constellations, 24(2), 296–309. Weyland, K. (2017). Populism: A political-strategic approach. In C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of populism (pp. 48–72). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Populism in Argentina Wolfgang Muno

1 Introduction “Populism” has been defined and used in many ways. There seems to be no consensus on what populism is or which characteristics define populism. In an early social science contribution, Ionescu and Gellner discussed many approaches in their edited volume in 1969, but did not settle on a definition. Almost 50 years later, Mudde and Kaltwasser still see populism as an essentially contested concept in social sciences (Ionescu and Gellner 1969; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017; see also Weyland 2001). Taggart (2000: 5) describes populism as “chameleonic,” and in his recent essay, Müller (2016: 2, emphasis in the original) states, “we simply do not have anything like a theory of populism, and we seem to lack coherent criteria.” On the other hand, Panizza (2005: 1) criticizes the “cliché to start writing on populism by lamenting the lack of clarity about the concept.” Although he confirms the contestation of populism, he claims that it is possible “to identify an analytical core around which there is a significant degree of academic consensus” (ibid. 1). This is especially true for Latin America, where populism is seen as a recurrent characteristic of politics and has been studied for decades (see, e.g., Germani 1978; Di Tella 1985; Freidenberg 2007). Historians link the phenomenon of populism to caudillismo in colonial and postcolonial times, where local bosses or regional warlords, more or less charismatic, exercised political power in usually remote areas (see Chapman 1932; Wolf and Hansen 1967). In the twentieth century, politicians like Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, José Maria Velasco Ibarra in Ecuador, Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico, and Juan Domingo Perón have been called populists. These politicians shaped the era of “classical” populism in the first half of the

W. Muno (*) Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Rostock, Institute of Administrative and Political Sciences, Rostock, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Stockemer (ed.), Populism Around the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96758-5_2

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twentieth century, dominating their countries as presidents. In the late twentieth century, a new wave of populists, so-called neo-populists, appeared on the political stage. The presidents Fernando Collor de Mello in Brazil, Alberto Fijimori in Peru, and Carlos Menem in Argentina are examples of neo-populists, combining populism with neoliberal policies. Lately, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, a third wave of populism surged over Latin America. Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina, all presidents in their countries, represent a new left-wing populist wave. As this short and inconclusive list shows, Argentina, in particular, can be seen as an example par excellence for populism. Juan Domingo Perón, probably the most important Argentine politician and a leading political figure between the 1940s and the 1970s, was president from 1946 to 1955 and 1973 to 1974. He founded the Peronist movement and the Peronist party Partido Justicialista (PJ), both influencing and at times dominating politics in Argentina until today. Later on, Peronist politician Carlos Menem, president in Argentina from 1989 to 1999, became the most prominent neo-populist in Latin America. Recently, Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner assumed presidencies from 2003 to 2007 (Néstor) and 2007 to 2015 (Cristina), representing a more left-wing populist Peronism. This chapter will analyze populist actors, agendas, and strategies, as well as the linkage mechanisms which connect populists to the population. First, I will show the history of Peronist populism in Argentina; second, I will analyze the Peronist party as the main populist actor; third, policies and strategies of Peronism are under scrutiny; and last, I will discuss popular support and the linkage mechanisms.

2 The History of Populism in Argentina The founder and first leader of Peronism was Juan Domingo Perón. His political rise started with a military coup on June 4, 1943. Perón was part of the rebels’ inner circle and became secretary of work and social affairs (Secretaría de Trabajo y Previsión Social) in November 1943 and then vice-president in 1944. The military dictatorship followed a nationalistic economic policy, and Perón implemented some improvements for workers like higher wages, social security, and a minimum wage within the frame of a military dictatorship. Additionally, he started legalizing unions. He personally supervised this process and created a personal relationship with loyal officials while at the same time banning opposing unions. After running for the presidency in 1946 and being elected with 52% of the votes, Juan Perón established the Peronist movement, which has polarized and dominated Argentine politics since then. Perón was supported by parts of the military, the church, and some local strongmen, but the backbone of Peronism was formed by organized workers and unions. The Argentine historian Tulio Halperin Donghi called his regime a pure “model” of populism (Halperin Donghi 1993, on the era of Perón, see Luna 1993).

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During Perón’s reign, the PJ won parliamentary elections in 1948, 1951, and 1954, with more than 60% of the votes and had majorities in both chambers of the parliament, the chamber of deputies and the senate, which represents the provinces. However, even all the electoral victories and the popular support did not allow Perón to stay in office. After economic troubles and dissonances with the military and the church, he was ousted in 1955 and went into exile. In the following decades, the PJ was either banned or severely restricted. This constraint rendered politics in Argentina an “impossible game” (O’Donnell 1973); Peronists always won in elections; thus anti-Peronists chose repression and coups d’état, which led to political instability (see Cavarozzi 1986). After 18 years, Perón came back and won the presidency again but died after 1 year in office, leaving behind economic turmoil and political chaos. Perón left a political movement which was powerful but divided into separate factions. In 1983, Argentina returned to democracy after decades of political instability and 7 years of the most brutal military dictatorship in South America. The Peronist unions, still the backbone of Peronism, had lost political weight under the last dictatorship [e.g., around one-third of all the estimated 30,000 deaths during the military regime consisted of unionists; see López Levy (2017: 13)]. Under these circumstances, the PJ lost the first presidential elections after democratization. Yet the new president, liberal Raúl Alfonsín of Unión Civíca Radical (UCR), was under great pressure. The military opposed efforts of transitional justice, the unions, still representing the Peronist opposition, initiated several general strikes, and the economy was marked by crisis and hyperinflation. Additionally, the PJ still represented a majority in the senate, and many governors of the provinces were Peronists. After a heavy intraparty fighting, Carlos Menem, governor of the poor and remote province La Rioja, became the Peronist candidate for the following presidential election. The elections of 1989 signified the comeback of Peronism: Menem won the presidential election with almost 50%; the PJ had the absolute majority in the senate and was the strongest faction in the chamber of deputies. Once in office, Menem surprised everyone with a neoliberal turn. He privatized state companies and liberalized and deregulated the economy—which was a complete turnaround vis-a-vis to traditional Peronist politics and his promises in the electoral campaign (see Muno 2005; Weyland 1996)—illustrating the programmatic flexibility or ideological “thinness” of populism. Menem’s second term was marked by increased intraparty rivalries. In 1999, Peronist candidate Eduardo Duhalde, former vice-president of Menem and governor of the province of Buenos Aires, lost out to an alliance of liberals from UCR and Peronist dissidents, but the new government struggled with the aftermath of Menem’s economic stabilization policy, which led to the severe financial crisis in 2000/2001. Menem’s successor, liberal president Fernando De la Rúa, could not manage the financial crisis, and economic problems led to massive protests, street fighting with the police, looting, and political unrest (see Corrales 2000; Schamis 2002). De la Rúa resigned, and after four interim Peronist presidents (among them Duhalde), Néstor Kirchner became president in 2003, and during the following 12 years, Peronism ruled again (see Levitsky and Murillo 2003).

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3 Populist Actors and Parties Peronism means populism, although not every populist in Argentina has to be a Peronist. Peronism versus anti-Peronism constitutes the most important cleavage in Argentine politics and society (see Torre and De Riz 1991). The most important populist actor is the Peronist party. Perón founded the Worker’s Party (Partido Laborista) in 1946, renaming it the “Peronist party” (Partido Peronista) in 1947 and “Justice Party” (Partido Justicialista, PJ) in 1950, the latter still being one of the most important parties in Argentina today, despite several party splits and factionalism. Peronism has changed over time and so has the party, which has always been aligned with several other social groups, forming a populist Peronist coalition. As mentioned above, the backbone of Peronism were the unions and organized workers. Peronism initially meant the inclusion of new social groups such as the new industrial workers, into the political system under Perón’s personal leadership. Perón was not part of the traditional political elite, and he cultivated what Barr (2009) called “antiestablishment politics,” i.e., rhetorical appeals in opposition to the established elite. An important role in this effort was played by his wife, Eva Duarte de Perón, called “Evita.” Of very humble origin, she became an actress and radio starlet, supporting Perón’s political ambitions with media appearances. Later, she organized the women’s organization within the Peronist party and helped in establishing voting rights for women in Argentina. Parts of the movement wanted her to run as vice-president, but she died of cancer in 1952 at the age of 33. As first lady, she initiated the foundation “Eva Perón,” a charity organization for the poor and used public appearances to cultivate her image as an “angel of the poor,” giving money and presents, visiting ill people, and kissing and hugging children and lepers (on Evita see Dujovne Ortiz 1995). Eva Perón’s early death fostered a quasireligious mystification of “Evita,” which is enduring until today. Every day, fresh flowers are placed on her grave, and pictures of her (and Perón) are sold on every corner in Buenos Aires. The cleavage of Peronism/anti-Peronism has dominated Argentine politics. Perón (and Peronism) cultivated this cleavage by spreading the image of a down-to-earth leader, the Caudillo, using the language of the ordinary people, and having nothing in common with the sophisticated, vain babblers of a Europeanized elite. He staged himself as the leader of the “real” people, representing the true will of Argentineans. A special Argentine term, “descamisado” (meaning shirt-sleeved), is very important for the understanding of Peronism. “Descamisados” were poor people who could not afford jackets, so they wore plain shirts at work with rolled-up sleeves. Joining the Peronist unions, these impoverished and underprivileged workers were Perón’s chief supporters. At public events, Perón and Peronist officials took off their jackets and rolled up their sleeves, showing that they too were “descamisados.” Yet, the Peronist coalition changed under Menem. Menem’s neoliberal turn was accompanied by an alliance with pro-neoliberal groups, the conservative liberal party Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD), and representatives of big companies

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who served in the cabinet. The neoliberal neo-populism led to intraparty fissures, in which the traditional unionist party wing particularly opposed the new economic policies. Menem strategically and intentionally weakened the union wing by supporting alternative candidates and politicians who were loyal to him and in favor of reforming the social system, thus taking control away from the unions. These efforts resulted in a change of the party structure from a labor-based party to a clientelist, urban machine-based party (see Gibson 1997; Levitsky 1998, 2001a, b). Clientelism now worked through the party rather than through unions. In line with the party tradition of clientelist distribution, Menem succeeded in keeping the poor in his new Peronist coalition. Peronism under the Kirchners changed again. In 2003, when Néstor Kirchner had been elected, the party was in open disarray, illustrated by three separate candidates, representing different factions. Several independent candidates ran as well. Kirchner, aligned with the official party leader and former interim president Duhalde, created his own electoral platform, the victory front (Frente Para la Victoria, FPV), a common way for Peronist candidates. Néstor Kirchner was provincial governor of the remote southern province Santa Cruz and a defender of left-wing Peronism. In the first round of elections, Menem received 24.5% of votes and Kirchner 22.4%. Peronist candidates altogether got more than 60%, which reveals the strength and relevance of Peronism but also its fractionalization. The Argentine public considered Kirchner a weak president with limited legitimization, since he was not elected by a majority in runoff elections but only won because of the withdrawal of his competitor. The Peronist party was in disarray, and the Argentine economy still suffered from years of crisis. Despite all these initial problems, Néstor Kirchner managed to consolidate his power, and a new era of Peronism, Kirchnerismo, had started. To overcome resistance and the fractionalization of Peronism, Néstor Kirchner at first reached out to politicians from different political parties like the so-called Radicales K, a group of politicians from UCR supporting Néstor, a move called “transversalism” (Romero 2013a). Later, Kirchnerismo established control over the party and abandoned transversalism, but this initial trans-party line approach boosted Néstor’s popularity. Additionally, Kirchnerismo forged alliances with new social movements like the unemployed workers (piqueteros) and human rights groups. He also renewed the ties with the unions again. Some of these groups became “staunch allies” of the government (Kaese and Wolff 2016: 53, see also Retamozo and Bastiano 2017). Néstor Kirchner increased his legitimacy and support and established a left-wing populist Peronist government for 12 years. In 2007, Néstor Kirchner decided not to run again; instead his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was elected as president with 45% of votes, alternating power with her husband (Levitsky and Murillo 2008). A crucial moment was reached in 2010 during the preparations for the following presidential elections: the Kirchners were still undecided on whether Cristina or Néstor should run for reelection, when Néstor surprisingly died of a heart attack. Kirchnerismo used his death politically. Schamis (2013: 173), for example, speaks of a “political canonization” and a

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“liturgy,” turning Néstor into a political martyr in line with the Peronist tradition of Perón and Evita. In October 2011, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was reelected in a landslide with 54% of the votes. Her second term was coined by economic decline: the GDP fell by 1% in 2012, increased by 2.4% in 2013, but fell again by 2.5% in 2014; inflation rose up to 38% in the same year, and the fiscal deficit grew. Consequently, public support dropped—from 80% approval at high times to two-thirds of disapproval (Murillo 2015). Even worse, the situation aggravated due to new intraparty disputes about the succession of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, which ultimately led again to a party split. In the presidential election 2015, Daniel Scioli, former vice-president under Néstor Kirchner and governor of the Buenos Aires province, was the candidate for Kirchnerismo’s FPV, whereas Sergio Massa, mayor of Tigre, ran on a right-wing Peronist platform. And third, Adolfo Rodriguez Sáa, former governor of San Luis, former interim president, and already presidential candidate in 2003, ran as a third Peronist candidate. In the end, conservative candidate Mauricio Macri won the runoff elections against Scioli, because Massa refused to close Peronist ranks in the second round, and many of Massa’s conservative voters opted for Macri (see Lupu 2016). Macri, former mayor of Buenos Aires and president of the famous football club Boca Juniors, the first conservative president elected ever since universal suffrage had been introduced in 1916 in Argentina, ended the Kirchner era. Although Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is currently under heavy pressure and accused of corruption, this may not be the end of Kirchnerismo, and certainly not the end of Peronism. First, Kirchnerismo was and is a family project. Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner were compared (and used this comparison as a political image) with Peròn and Evita. Néstor Kirchner was president from 2003 until 2007, and his wife and political partner Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became president between 2007 and 2015. She had already been deputy in Santa Cruz and senator for the province, as well as for the province of Buenos Aires in the senate, before becoming president. Néstor’s sister Alicia was Minister of Social Development, a position she held throughout the three terms of the Kirchner presidencies. Since 2015, she has been governor of the Province Santa Cruz, the Kirchner’s old stronghold. Néstor and Cristina’s son Máximo founded the influential Peronist youth movement La Cámpora in 2009, supporting his mother’s presidency, and has been national deputy of Santa Cruz since 2015. Electoral studies find a solid support of Kirchnerismo among the less educated and residents of the poor suburbs of Buenos Aires, “thanks to the social policies of redistribution” (Murillo 2015). Furthermore, links to social movements still exist, as do the renewed links of Peronism to the unions. Although Peronism has lost the presidency and its majorities in the senate and the chamber of deputies, it is still a major party, governing 13 out of 23 provinces. Notable is its political fragmentation: on one side there is the left-wing Kirchnerismo, on the other side is the conservative group around Massa, which was able to incorporate most of the Menemists, and then finally the third group around Sáa, representing a rural, traditional sector of Peronism. It is very probable,

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as Murillo (2015: 57) states, “that if another Peronist is elected as president, a new Peronist coalition is likely to be formed.”

4 Populist Agendas and Strategies As Peronism and the Peronist coalition changed over time, so did the policies and strategies. Despite some policy changes, populist elements prevailed throughout the Peronist governments. Under Perón, leadership was extremely strong. He presented himself and was seen by his followers as “father of the nation,” a natural born leader whose words were unchallengeable, and whose authority was sacrosanct (see Waldmann 1993). Oppositional politicians were threatened, the press was controlled (the oppositional journal La Prensa was shut down), and the whole of political life was organized according to the leadership principle, centralizing decision-making power in the hands of Perón. This authoritarian leadership principle implied another populist element: anti-institutionalism. Formal institutions like the constitution were of limited importance, while the parliament and the judiciary became an appendix of the presidency. A very good example of this policy is how Perón brought the Supreme Court into line. This court was a stronghold of conservative opposition and worked against him. Perón argued no power should act independently of the people’s will (which he, of course, embodied); therefore, the courts should subordinate to the people’s sense of justice, de facto to his authority. In order to get rid of unruly judges, Perón organized their impeachment by the Peronist-dominated and compliant Parliament and appointed new, loyal judges (see Waldmann 1981). Perón embarked on a nationalistic, state-centered economic policy, a “statecentered matrix” which is characterized economically by state interventions and a corporatist model of governing, with the state being the main coordinator (Cavarozzi 1997). The incorporation of the working class into the Peronist movement and the Peronist party and social reforms aimed at improving the life of workers were essential for the legitimization and support of the regime. An improved social security system and higher wages assured the support of the working class. As mentioned above, Perón started social reforms as secretary of labor and continued as president. He extended the pension system to encompass workers, introduced paid holidays, reduced the work schedule, and improved healthcare for workers. In 1951, more than 70% of the labor force were included in the social security system. Structurally, a conservative welfare state was established with both employers and employees contributing (see Faust et al. 2004). Many of the new benefits were administered by the unions, and only loyal members could get access, creating a closed shop and stewardship system which strengthened the position of the officials and paved the way for clientelism. Perón as the highest patron installed loyal officials in the controlled unions. These officials controlled and distributed the public services, hence becoming patrons on a lower level (or rather brokers) in the name of Peronism. A clientelist linkage mechanism

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constituted a crucial element for the establishment and stability of Peronist populism. Additionally, Perón decreed wage increases. Some studies estimate a rise by more than 60% during Perón’s presidency (see Muno 2005). All these distributions of benefits, together with the aforementioned emotional bonds, made Perón the most popular politician in Argentina and probably until today. Menem, however, surprised everyone with a neoliberal turn. He privatized, liberalized, and deregulated the economy, which was a complete turnaround compared to traditional Peronist politics and his promises made in the campaign (see Muno 2005; Weyland 1996). This fickleness reveals the programmatic flexibility or ideological “thinness” of populism. Drastic measures succeeded in stabilizing the economy. The pegging of the peso to the dollar immediately ended hyperinflation and spurred economic growth, which rendered Menem popular among the public. He used this popularity to legitimize his overriding the parliament and the judiciary, which shows the anti-institutionalist stand of populists. One indicator of this anti-institutionalism is provided by the presidential decrees (see Ferreira Rubio and Goretti 1998). Menem used decrees of emergency (decretos de necesidad y urgencia) excessively. He issued 261 emergency decrees and 22,537 ordinary decrees in his 10-year presidential term—more than all previous Argentine presidents had issued together. In the same time, the parliament only passed 1536 laws. In addition, like Perón, Menem manipulated the judiciary (see Larkins 1998; Helmke 2002). Immediately after assuming his office, he forced the general prosecutor to resign and proposed to increase the number of Supreme Court justices from five to nine. The senate had to agree. Its meeting was very turbulent: accompanied by threats and irregularities (until today, it is not clear whether only the senators or also some assistants participated in the vote), but the final decision only took 8 seconds (McGuire 1997: 257). Two justices of the Supreme Court resigned in protest after the decision, giving Menem the possibility to nominate a total of six friends and followers. Throughout his term, Menem influenced and weakened the independence of judiciary by nominating and promoting loyal judges and removing critical ones. Additionally, Menem tried to cultivate his image as a charismatic leader in the public. Historian Luis Alberto Romero wrote: “Menem knew how to communicate effectively with people in general, regardless of their political affiliations and without the need to orchestrate the complex machinery of street protest. Instead of speaking in the Plaza de Mayo, he had only to give interviews on the radio or visit the most popular television programs, opine on the most diverse topics, and here and there make a presence. In that respect, under Menem, the country fully entered the era of mass media politics.” (Romero 2013b: 300). The economic stabilization and the clientelist linkage made Menem popular. In 1994, he managed to change the constitution and was reelected in May 1995 with 49.9% of votes. The PJ had an absolute majority of seats in both chambers of parliament, and Peronism controlled most of the provincial governments (see Muno 2005). Menem ruled for 10 years. Néstor Kirchner started as a weak president and had to consolidate his power. Several factors were crucial. First, after the severe economic crisis, the economy and the social situation recovered. Measures already taken by President Duhalde

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revitalized economic growth, and the currency had been stabilized. Néstor Kirchner chose Duhalde’s minister of economy, Roberto Lavagna, as his own minister to continue recovery and uphold the image of stability. Later, Kirchnerismo pursued the “neodesarrolista” economic policy of a developmental state, relying on a commodity boom, renationalization of former privatized state companies, price controls, subsidies, and trade regulations (Wylde 2011). An expansionary social policy and rising minimum wages led to considerable social improvements. The minimum wage rose from US$70 in 2003 to almost US$600 in 2015, the minimum pension from 150 pesos in 2003 to 2165 pesos in 2013, the average annual economic growth surpassed 6% between 2003 and 2013, and the poverty rate dropped significantly from more than 50% in 2003 to a roughly estimated 20% by the end of Kirchnerismo (López Levy 2017). A considerable part of these social expenditures were again channeled through clientelist distribution, either via the party machine, like in Menem’s time, or through the social movements and the unions, which were again incorporated as in Perón’s time. Second, Néstor Kirchner presented himself as an antiestablishment politician, coming from a remote province, as did Menem at first, but unlike Menem, Néstor claimed to be honest, determined, and serious (Petras and Veltmeyer 2016: 72). In his inaugural speech, he emphasized this image and promised the change toward a “normal” and “serious” Argentina as a “national project” (quotes after Wolff 2007). Kirchnerismo thus created a dualism of “the people” (el pueblo) against the enemy (“los enemigos del pueblo argentino”). The ordinary Argentine people favored the national project of change and recovery, whereas the “enemies”—the military dictators, the private sector that profited from privatization and neoliberalism in the 1990s, and the IMF and international financial investors—sabotaged this mission (Biglieri 2010). A third factor was the incorporation of human rights issues as a central part of the national agenda. Decades after the end of the military dictatorship, the most brutal human rights violations had not been punished. Rather, amnesty laws created impunidad for the perpetrators. One of Néstor Kirchner’s first political actions was the annulment of these amnesty laws, and the day after coming to power, he met with the legendary and emblematic human rights group Madres de Plaza de Mayo. The Madres had started to protest against the military dictatorship immediately after the coup and continue to do so until today, demanding justice and an end to impunity but especially clarification about the fate of their disappeared and mostly killed children and grandchildren. They endorsed Kirchner’s human rights policy and became loyal allies of Kirchnerismo. The results of this human rights policy were impressive: the Supreme Court supported Kirchner’s annulment, and 755 accused have been sentenced until March 2017 (Torras et al. 2016). With this policy record, Néstor Kirchner’s popularity was boosted, and he managed to overcome his initially weak position. Kirchnerismo achieved majorities in the following elections and got tight control over the PJ. Schamis (2013: 173) critically summarizes the events: “Kirchner sought to cut ties with Duhalde, and the opportunity to do so was the October 2005 midterm elections. After emerging victorious from this contest, Kirchner sacked all independent-minded members of

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his Cabinet (including Roberto Lavagna, who had been responsible for the economic recovery), exploited his weakened opposition by co-opting leaders from other parties, played on regional and factional divisions, and blatantly employed the government’s fiscal resources to grease the wheels of Peronist party politics.” Additionally, anti-institutionalism gained momentum. Power was concentrated in the executive, and the judiciary and the parliament were treated as appendices of the executive, as was typical in Peronism. Shortly after his election, Néstor Kirchner forced six judges of the Supreme Court to resign since they were loyal Menemists, and Kirchner wanted to get rid of them. Initially installing independent and wellrespected judges, this looked at first sight like an improvement compared to the Menem style, but Kirchnerismo soon misused the Judicial Council which is responsible for recruiting judges. In 2006, the size of the council was reduced, thus increasing governmental influence. Government supporters could block any nomination since then. In 2013, 25% of federal judgeships were left blank because Kirchner refused to act (Manzetti 2014: 182). “Similar to Menem,” Manzetti (2014: 181f.) wrote, “the Kirchners manipulated the rules of the game to subordinate the judiciary to their own agenda.” The Congress was simply bypassed. After the elections of 2005, Peronism had an absolute majority in both chambers of parliament, and loyal deputies accepted all moves made by the president, abdicating their rights to control. Just like Menem, Kirchner governed via emergency decrees. During his 4½ years in office, Néstor Kirchner issued 249 emergency decrees, almost as many as Menem did within 10 years (Manzetti 2014: 180). Congress also delegated special emergency powers to the president, thus completely giving up budgetary control. The Peronist deputies just decided to follow their new, powerful, and very popular president without any scruples—a traditional behavior in Peronism (see Cherny et al. 2010). Cristina Fernández de Kirchner continued populist redistributive policies. Notable programs were “Futbol para Todos” and “Milanesa para Todos” (López Levy 2017). The first initiative deprived private television companies from broadcasting Argentine football according to a pay-per-view system in 2009. The state television presented football for free, which was widely cheered for in Argentina. The government promoted it as a gesture for the people, but in fact, it was about a profound conflict with independent, critical media (see Kitzberger 2012). “Milanesa para Todos” subsidized meat so that Argentinians could afford to eat cheap escalope. The program was accompanied by a massive public campaign—in every supermarket signs showed the program, and the government was praised for it. Additionally, as part of a progressive, left-wing agenda, and against resistance of the Catholic Church, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner bolstered women’s and LGBT rights (López Levy 2017). Contraceptives were now freely available, sex education was improved, and in 2010, gay marriage was introduced. In addition, a very progressive gender identity law was adopted in 2012.

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5 The Popular Appeal of Populism in the Population Peronism is probably the most important political movement in Argentine history. Since its foundation in 1945 by Juan Perón, Peronists governed 35 out of 73 years as presidents, almost half of the whole period. Under Perón, Peronism achieved more than 60% of the votes in presidential and parliamentary elections. After his time, whenever free elections were taking place, Peronists got between 30% and 59% in national elections and regularly governed many of the provinces and cities throughout the country. This data shows the importance of and documents popular support for Peronism. Popular support has been secured through the mobilization and inclusion of subaltern sectors of society: Perón mobilized the poor workers, the “descamisados,” organized in loyal and controlled unions, which became the backbone of Peronism. Menem aligned with neoliberal economic groups and weakened union influence but achieved popular support by the poor through the clientelist party machine. The Kirchners initially aligned with social movements and parts of the unions but later, after gaining control over the party, also used the clientelist party machine for clientelist redistribution. This mobilization and inclusion of subaltern sectors of society seems to be a special feature of Latin American populism. Mudde and Kaltwasser (and many others) distinguish an exclusionary European from an inclusionary Latin American style of populism (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2012). According to surveys, the Peronist voter is poorer and less educated than the average Argentinean (Di Tella and Dubra 2018). In their historical analysis of the social bases of political parties in Argentina, based on ecological data, Lupu and Stokes (2009), for example, identify Peronism as the “party of the descamisados (shirtless) and the poor.” They identify two key factors explaining this solid support. One refers to clientelism—Peronists distributed “clientelistic benefits to key segments of the electorate,” and the other explanation refers to identity politics—“the mystique of Juan and Eva Perón was woven into working-class political culture” (ibid: 82). Clientelism initially worked through the aligned unions; later, the party machine was in the center of distribution. The organizational structure of the PJ is dominated by a network, with the so-called Unidades Basicas (UBs) at the center. Formally, the UBs are simply local party offices, but in reality, the local representatives are brokers in the clientelist network. Levitsky counted around one UB per 2000 inhabitants in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, two per square kilometer (Levitsky 2001a: 40). The UBs organize party meetings and cooperate with sports clubs, neighborhood associations, and other social organizations. During Levitsky’s research, 96% of the UBs were engaged in social activities—more than two-thirds distributed food and medicine (69.6%), 56.3% organized child care, 52.7% social and cultural activities, 45.4% elderly care, and 25% helped finding jobs.

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In his study on Peronist networks in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, the Argentine sociologist Javier Auyero (2001) analyzed the functioning of this system in detail. The head of the UB was a militant of the party or a representative, a “broker” (or punter) or “gatekeeper” between a local boss and the people. The local boss could be the mayor or a deputy in the local, regional, or national parliament, having access to or controlling state funds. These funds were not distributed via the official bureaucracy but through the UBs. This organization resulted in “the increasing overlapping of party and state networks” (Auyero 2001: 118). In a recent study, Calvo and Murillo (2013) gathered data about these networks. According to a survey, the PJ has the largest network of activists in Argentina with 291,000 supporters (0.766% of the population), twice as much as has the second most important party, the UCR, with only 160,000 or 0.42%. Other parties hardly have any relevant number of activists. In this survey, 0.48% of the whole population reported to receive gifts from the PJ, which is more than two and a half times more than those reporting gifts from the UCR (0.19% of the population). Other surveys report that between 1.7 and 7% of Argentineans receive gifts (Stokes et al. 2013). Especially in rural provinces, another strategy to securing popular support, next to providing gifts, is public employment, organized through these party networks and denoting patronage. In some rural provinces, more than half of the work force is publicly employed, de facto by the governor and his party machine. The last time Peronism governed Buenos Aires, the number of public employees quintupled. Clientelist redistribution through the Peronist party networks thus creates a central linkage, which binds the people, especially in rural, poor provinces and in the poorer suburbs of Buenos Aires, to Peronism. The second factor is identity politics, respectively, the political culture of Peronism, which creates a second linkage between Peronism and supporters. Peronist politicians constantly use “we” rhetoric to create a sense of togetherness among the Peronists and reiterate emotional bonds. The speeches of Evita and Perón from the balcony of the presidential palace with masses of people at Plaza de Mayo (the place in front of the presidential palace) listening and cheering (aired by radio) as well as their public appearances and media presence started with a Peronist identity formation and reproduction which the Argentine sociologist Javier Auyero (2001: 133) called inclusive interpellation. Peronist politicians continue a political style in the tradition of Perón and Evita, a “Peronist public performance” (Auyero 2001: 121). Female politicians and brokers in the networks invoke the memories of Evita and images of her as the “bridge of love between Perón and the people,” imitating Evita in appearance, speech, and look (like dyed hair); Auyero (2001: 40) called this reification of the Evita myth “performing Evita” (see also Navarro 1982). The quasi-religious mystification of “Evita” has been complemented by a mystification of Perón and, to some part, by the “political canonization” and “liturgy” after Néstor Kirchner’s death, making Néstor a political martyr in line with the Peronist tradition (Schamis 2013: 173). All of this creates an “affectual narrative” of Peronism (Ostiguy 2017: 75); Levitsky (1998: 459) speaks of a “deeply rooted Peronist identity and subculture.” Ostiguy (1997: 31) quotes a Peronist militant: “Peronism is a feeling. It is something

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you fall in love with.” Ostiguy approaches this “affectual narrative” of Peronism with the concept of “high” and “low,” including social, cultural, political, and symbolic elements: “high” is elitist and means formal, rule-oriented, educated, and civilized, while “low” refers to the ordinary people, meaning raw, informal, and humble (Ostiguy 2017). Thus, the “affectual narrative” reiterates the dichotomous populist differentiation between “the elite” and “the people,” enriched with personalist and quasi-religious elements. This “affectual narrative” induces a “we”-group feeling and a sense of togetherness among Peronists, which complements the clientelist networks. Both of these images evoke long-enduring and stable ties between Peronism and people.

6 Conclusion Peronism clearly exhibits the characteristics of populism in Latin America as mentioned by Roberts (1995), including personalism, popular support, political mobilization, anti-institutionalism, anti-elitism or antiestablishment, clientelist redistribution, and an amorphous, eclectic ideology. Yet over the 70-year period of Peronism, there has been a considerable degree of variation (Table 1). Perón, Menem, and the Kirchners all exhibited a highly personalistic, more or less charismatic pattern of leadership. They were undisputed leaders of the party and the movement (Néstor Kirchner at least after his successful policies and electoral victories in the midterm elections). Additionally, a personalist cult emerged around Evita, Perón, and Néstor Kirchner after their deaths. Personalism is a deeply entrenched element of political culture in Latin America and especially in Argentina, linked to pronounced forms of so-called hyper-presidentialism, and an extremely powerful institutional setting of the Argentine president. Formally, presidential power is exerted through decree power, informally, through the compliant subordination of the legislative and judiciary (see, among others, on hyper-presidentialism Nino 1996). Deputies, judges, and the public tend to follow “their” president without hesitation. Leaders are legitimized through the election by the people; thus, the leader represents the true will of the people, the “volonté générale,” and can be regarded as a kind of “législateur” in the Rousseauian sense (on Rousseau and populism see Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017: 16ff.). The political agenda is hence a “national mission,” loyal support is mobilized top-down, and opposition is seen as illegitimate or even treasonous: opposition politicians (or the elite, the military, the IMF, or whoever) are considered as “enemies.” This “Manichaean distinction” (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017: 7) has coined all three variants of populism in Argentina, creating a highly polarized political atmosphere. Anti-institutionalism and antiestablishment are additional characteristics of populism which we clearly identify in all three variants of Argentine populism. All candidates presented themselves as “outsiders” from ordinary origins or remote provinces, and therefore not linked to the Europeanized (and hence corrupt and/or

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Table 1 Populist strategies in Argentina: Perón, Menem, Kirchnerism Characteristics Personalism

Popular support and mobilization

Antiinstitutionalism

Antiestablishment

Social policy

Economic policy

Perón Pronounced leadership principle with Perón as undisputed leader of the movement and party; leadership cult, especially after Perón’s and Evita’s death, combined with hyperpresidentialism Poor (“descamisados”) and workers as mass supporters mobilized in the party and organized in unions; top-down control of unions as backbone of the movement Very high; subordination of judiciary, parliament, and media

Menem Pronounced leadership principle, Menem as undisputed leader of the party combined with hyper-presidentialism

Self-stylization of Perón as an ordinary man of humble origin and especially of Evita as a girl of very poor origin Social reforms; development of a conservative welfare state; clientelist redistribution

Self-stylization as man from a remote province—the real, rural Argentina

Developmentalist, nationalist

Coalition with neoliberal economic groups, and the poor through clientelist party machine

High; subordination of judiciary and parliament; rule by decree

Dismantling of welfare state through neoliberal reforms; clientelist redistribution through party machine Neoliberal

Kirchnerism Initially weak; later Kirchners as undisputed leaders of the party combined with hyperpresidentialism; after Néstor Kirchner’s death: personalistic cult Social movements (piqueteros, human rights groups), and unions as mass supporters, later the poor through clientelist party machine Initially weak, later very high; subordination of judiciary and parliament; efforts to control the media Self-stylization as ordinary people from a remote province

Social reforms; clientelist redistribution

Developmentalist, nationalist

Own compilation

decadent) elite in Buenos Aires (see, as already mentioned, Barro 2009). All leaders neglected or bypassed institutions of accountability (such as an independent judiciary and the parliament) and manipulated rules of procedure or like Menem and the Kirchners, ruled by decree. Perón, however, had complete control over a compliant parliament that was willing to push through his agenda and thus he did not have to rely on decrees. Additionally, both Perón and the Kirchners were especially hostile toward the independent press. The “amorphous or eclectic ideology” (Roberts 1995) or the “thin-centered ideology” (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017: 6) became particularly visible with the different economic turns. Peronism was developmentalist and nationalist under

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Perón, who established a conservative welfare state, neoliberal under Menem, and developmentalist and nationalist again under the Kirchners. Under Perón, Peronism was generally rather conservative with affinities to fascism (see Germani 1978) while liberal in economic terms and conservative in social issues under Menem and definitely left-wing progressive under the Kirchners, as seen, e.g., regarding LGBT rights. As Casullo and Freidenberg (2017: 297, emphasis in the original) wrote about Peronism, “Rather than having no ideology, it can be said to have had serial ideologies.” Clearly, the social base of Peronism is formed by the poor as shown by numerous studies. There are two central linkage mechanisms binding the poor to Peronism: first, clientelist redistribution to supporters and, second, identity politics via an “affectual narrative” of a Peronist “we”-group and sense of togetherness. “We”-rhetorics and ritualized public performances, as well as the mystification of Perón and Evita, foster a special Peronist working-class political culture. Both factors enabled long-enduring and relatively stable ties between Peronism and subaltern sectors of the Argentine society. Therefore, Peronism constitutes a stable populist force in Argentina, and, although currently in opposition, it is not unlikely that it will return to power again. Populism has been an essential element of Argentine politics and a constitutive part of Latin American politics. It is very probable that populism will keep this status due to the historical, social, political, economic, and institutional setting in Argentina and Latin America and due to the amorphous and chameleonic character of populism.

References Auyero, J. (2001). Poor people’s politics. Peronist survival networks and the legacy of Evita. Durham: Duke University Press. Barr, R. (2009). Populists, outsiders and anti-establishment politics. Party Politica, 15(1), 29–48. Biglieri, P. (2010). El retomo del pueblo argentino: entre la autorización y la asamblea. La emergencia de la era kirchnerista. Studia Politica, 20, 133–159. Calvo, E., & Murillo, V. (2013). When parties meet voters: Assessing political linkages through partisan networks and distributive expectations in Argentina and Chile. Comparative Political Studies, 46(7), 851–882. Casullo, M., & Freidenberg, F. (2017). Populist parties of Latin America: The cases of Argentina and Ecuador. In R. Heinisch, C. Holtz-Bacha, & O. Mazzoleni (Eds.), Political populism: A handbook (pp. 293–306). Baden-Baden: Nomos. Cavarozzi, M. (1986). Political cycles in Argentina since 1955. In G. O’Donnell, P. Schmitter, & L. Whitehead (Eds.), Transition from authoritarian rules: Prospects for democracy (pp. 19–48). Baltimore: JHU Press. Cavarozzi, M. (1997). Autoritarismo y Democracia (1955–1996). La transición del estado al mercado en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Ariel. Chapman, C. (1932). The age of the Caudillos: A chapter in Hispanic American history. The Hispanic American Historical Review, 12(3), 281–300. Cherny, N., Feierherd, G., & Novaro, M. (2010). El Presidencialismo Argentino: De la Crisis a la Recomposición del Poder (2003–2007). América Latina Hoy, 54, 15–41. Corrales, J. (2000). Presidents, ruling parties, and party rules. A theory on the politics of economic reform in Latin America. Comparative Politics, 32(2), 127–149.

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Di Tella, R., & Dubra, J. (2018). Some elements of Peronist beliefs and tastes. Latin American Economic Review, 27(6), 1–34. Di Tella, T. (1985). Sociología de los procesos politicos: una perspectiva latinoamericana. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Latinoamericana. Dujovne Ortiz, A. (1995). Eva Perón: la biografia. Buenos Aires: Aguilar. Faust, J., Lauth, H., & Muno, W. (2004). Demokratisierung und Wohlfahrtsstaat in Lateinamerika: Querschnittsvergleich und Fallstudien. In A. Croissant, G. Erdmann, & F. Rüb (Eds.), Wohlfahrtsstaatliche Politik in jungen Demokratien (pp. 189–222). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Ferreira Rubio, D., & Goretti, M. (1998). When the President governs alone: The Decretazo in Argentina, 1989–93. In J. Carey & M. Shugart (Eds.), Executive decree authority (pp. 33–61). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Freidenberg, F. (2007). La tentación populista. Una vía al poder en América Latina. Madrid: Editorial Síntesis. Germani, G. (1978). Authoritarianism, fascism, and national populism. New Brunswick: Transaction. Gibson, E. (1997). The populist road to market reform. Policy and electoral coalitions in Mexico and Argentina. World Politics, 49, 339–370. Halperin Donghi, T. (1993). The contemporary history of Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press. Helmke, G. (2002). The logic of strategic defection: Court-executive relations in Argentina under dictatorship and democracy. American Political Science Review, 96(2), 291–304. Ionescu, G., & Gellner, E. (Eds.). (1969). Populism. Its meanings and national characteristics. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Kaese, F., & Wolff, J. (2016). Piqueteros after the hype: Unemployed movement in Argentina, 2008–2015. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 102, 47–68. Kitzberger, P. (2012). The media politics of Latin America’s leftist governments. Journal of Politics in Latin America, 4(3), 123–139. Larkins, C. (1998). The judiciary and delegative democracy in Argentina. Comparative Politics, 30 (4), 423–442. Levitsky, S. (1998). Crisis, party adaptation and regime stability in Argentina: The case of Peronism, 1989–1995. Party Politics, 4(4), 445–470. Levitsky, S. (2001a). An ‘organised disorganisation’: Informal organisation and the persistence of local party structures in Argentine Peronism. Journal of Latin American Studies, 33, 29–65. Levitsky, S. (2001b). Organization and labor-based party adaption. The transformation of Argentine Peronism in comparative perspective. World Politics, 54, 27–56. Levitsky, S., & Murillo, M. V. (2003). Argentina weathers the storm. Journal of Democracy, 14(4), 152–166. Levitsky, S., & Murillo, M. (2008). Argentina: From Kirchner to Kirchner. Journal of Democracy, 19(2), 16–30. López Levy, M. (2017). Argentina under the Kirchners. The legacy of left populism. Rugby: Practical Action Publishing. Luna, F. (1993). Perón y su tiempo. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. Lupu, N. (2016). The end of the Kirchner era. Journal of Democracy, 27(2), 35–49. Lupu, N., & Stokes, S. (2009). The social bases of political parties in Argentina, 1912–2003. Latin American Research Review, 44(1), 58–87. Manzetti, L. (2014). Accountability and corruption in Argentina during the Kirchners’ era. Latin American Research Review, 49(2), 173–195. McGuire, J. (1997). Peronism without Peron. Unions, parties, and democracy in Argentina. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Mudde, C., & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2012). Exclusionary vs. inclusionary populism: Comparing contemporary Europe and Latin America. Government and Opposition, 48(2), 147–174. Mudde, C., & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2017). Populism. A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Populism in France Gilles Ivaldi

1 Introduction The rise of populism is one of the most significant phenomena in today’s political world. In the last decade, populist parties have gained significance across Europe and America. In the European context, populist parties manifest themselves in both radical left actors such as Podemos in Spain and SYRIZA in Greece and radical right variants such as the French Front National (FN), the Austrian FPÖ, and the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV). France is no exception to the current populist wave. Populist parties have made significant gains in the 2017 elections. To the left, populism is found in Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (Rebellious France, LFI), while right-wing populism manifests itself predominantly in Marine Le Pen’s Front National (National Front, FN). Mélenchon won 19.6% of the 2017 first round presidential vote, taking the fourth place. To the right, Marine Le Pen won 21.3%, progressing into the runoff where she received 33.9% against the centrist and pro-EU candidate Emmanuel Macron. Overall, including other minor organizations, populist parties captured over 45% of the 2017 presidential vote. France provides therefore a relevant case study for the analysis of the resemblances and dissimilarities of various manifestations of the populist phenomenon. This chapter examines the political supply of and demand for populism both left and right in France. The first section provides a definition of populism and identifies the main populist actors in French politics. The chapter then turns to the analysis of the current supply of populism and variety of populist actors and strategies in French politics. The third section examines the electoral basis and dynamics of support for

G. Ivaldi (*) URMIS, CNRS-University of Nice, Nice, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Stockemer (ed.), Populism Around the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96758-5_3

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populist parties. Finally, the chapter discusses the implications of the current rise of populism in French politics and society.

2 Populism in France Mudde (2004) defines populism as a “thin-centred ideology” which “considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (p. 543). Populist parties vilipend the political elite as an oligarchy and separate “caste,” while simultaneously claiming to represent the “ordinary people” (Stanley 2008). Populist agendas and strategies vary considerably across parties and contexts, however. In the literature, this variance has been primarily associated with the thicker ideologies to which populism is anchored. As a thin-centered ideology, populism must attach itself to other more substantial sets of ideas which give it a full meaning (Mudde 2004). In the West European context, populism is predominantly found in the radical left and radical right (Rooduijn and Akkerman 2017). In the radical right, populism is combined with nativism and authoritarianism, and it is culturally exclusionist (Mudde 2007). The radical left presents on the other hand a universalistic profile, embracing a more socially inclusive notion of the people which is essentially pit against an economic elite (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2013; Gómez-Reino and Llamazares 2016). Existing research on the ideological profile of populist voters suggests variability in the issues and attitudes that motivate support for the populist radical right and left, respectively (Ivaldi 2017; Rooduijn et al. 2017). Supporters of the populist radical right show higher levels of cultural exclusionism, and they distinguish themselves from other electorates by their opposition to immigration and a multicultural society, while economic equality and support for redistribution are the most distinctive features of left-wing populists (Van Hauwaert and Van Kessel 2018). Historically, both the left and right variants of populism have been found in France since the Second World War, and they have manifested themselves across a variety of movements and parties. In the mid-1950s, the Poujade movement was the first instance of a right-wing anti-tax populist organization, mobilizing small-town rural shopkeepers and small farmers who felt threatened by economic modernization and the rapid process of industrialization (Birnbaum 2012a: 96/98). During the 1990s, a growing opposition to European integration within the ranks of the French right created a favorable context for populist mobilization (Ivaldi 2006). This resulted in the formation of a number of “sovereignist” and Eurosceptic groups with a strong populist appeal such as Philippe de Villiers’ right-wing conservative Mouvement pour la France (Movement for France, MPF) and the smaller Chasse, Pêche, Nature et Traditions (Hunting, Fishing, Nature and Traditions party, CPNT) which emerged as a single-issue shooters’ rights group in the 1980s, before turning into a more distinctly populist agrarian party.

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Turning to the left of the political spectrum, populism was found in the Parti Communiste Français (French Communist Party, PCF). The PCF emerged from the Second World War as the dominant party of the French left, and it was a significant vehicle for protest politics until the 1980s, polling between 20 and 25% of the vote across legislative elections. While a Marxist party, the PCF showed some elements of populism, notably formulating a Manichean opposition between the ruling “caste” and all the “hardworking people” (Birnbaum 2012a: 122). During the 1990s, Communist dominance was challenged by new anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movements such as ATTAC and José Bové’s Confédération Paysanne, which adopted a strong radical left profile and a populist orientation. Other challenges included populist entrepreneurs such as former businessman and TV host Bernard Tapie. The latter ran a populist campaign during the 1994 European elections, winning 12% of the vote, vilipending the political “elite both left and right,” the “technocrats” and the “little aristocracy” which, he said, “confiscate power at the expenses of the people” (Birnbaum 2012a: 270). In the late 2000s, the PCF was challenged further by the rise of far-left parties such as the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anticapitalist party, NPA). Two parties currently dominate the populist scene in France, namely, the FN and LFI. Other more marginal populist actors include the NPA to the left and Debout la France (DLF) to the right of the political spectrum. The FN exemplifies the typical radical right-wing variant of populism (Mudde 2007). The FN was born in 1972 from small nationalist organizations. Since the mid-1980s, the FN has established itself as a significant force in French politics. In 2011, Marine Le Pen replaced her father as party leader. As Ivaldi (2016) suggests, the current FN operates on the core defining anti-elitist and people-centered features of populism. A central populist claim of the FN is that it authentically represents the will of the people against the political elite embodied by the so-called UMPS caste. Le Pen’s 2017 manifesto claimed to “give France its freedom back and give the people a voice.” The FN’s idealized people is constructed as the “silent majority” (majorité silencieuse), referring to all the “left behind” the “invisible” and the “forgotten ones who have been abandoned by political elites” and who, according to the FN, embody a “generous and hard-working France.”1 The FN accuses news media, journalists, and intellectuals of being complicit with the political elite and financial powers.2 To the left, the main populist party is Mélenchon’s LFI. The party was founded in February 2016 from the previous Parti de Gauche (PG), which had emerged from anti-globalization social movements during the campaign against the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. Together with the Communists, the PG had participated in the Front de Gauche (FG). LFI takes its inspiration from Podemos in Spain. It embraces the

1

Marine Le Pen, Speech in Brachay, 3 September 2016, http://www.frontnational.com/videos/ discours-de-rentree-politique-de-marine-le-pen-a-brachay-2/ (last accessed: 8 April 2017). 2 Marine Le Pen, Speech in Nantes, 26 February 2017, http://www.frontnational.com/videos/ discours-de-marine-le-pen-a-nantes-26022017/ (last accessed: 10 April 2017).

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political philosophy of post-Marxist theorists Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, whereby left-wing populism refers to a new form of political organization where the unity of progressive people is achieved by the determination of an adversary which is represented by neoliberal forces (Mouffe 2016). LFI shows strong antiestablishment features. The party’s discourse and ideology illustrate radical left populist mobilization which seeks to offer an alternative to the neoliberal hegemony. During the 2017 elections, Mélenchon called upon the “era of the people” (L’ère du peuple), politicizing the concept of dégagisme (to clear out politicians), which reiterated its 2012 populist rhetoric. Five years earlier, Mélenchon had run a strong populist campaign against the “financial oligarchy” and the “political elite,” claiming that “all politicians should go away!” (qu’ils s’en aillent tous!) (Birnbaum 2012b). In 2017, Mélenchon pledged that he would “sweep away the oligarchy and abolish the privileges of the political caste,” notably denouncing political corruption and the collusion with financial powers.3 According to Mélenchon, the elite consist of a homogeneous economic, political, and financial oligarchy. LFI’s notion of the people is conceived on the other hand as a variety of social groups at the bottom of society, which are collectively defined as the plural “people” (les gens). Finally, other populist parties include DLF and the NPA. DLF is a small rightwing Eurosceptic (souverainiste) neo-Gaullist organization led by Nicolas DupontAignan. It originated as a minority faction of the right in the late 1990s before launching itself as an autonomous Eurosceptic party in 2008. During the 2017 elections, Dupont-Aignan repeatedly attacked the “political caste that no longer wish to talk to the French and does not listen to them anymore.”4 He won 4.7% of the vote in the first round of the 2017 presidential election, and he endorsed Marine Le Pen in the runoff. To the left, a populist appeal is found in the NPA, a small far-left party with a Trotskyite background. According to March (2012), the NPA fits the model of the “populist socialist” party which combines a democratic socialist ideology with a strong anti-elite appeal and the claim to be the defenders of the “ordinary people.” In the 2017 elections, the NPA candidate, Philippe Poutou, won 1% of the vote.

3 Populist Agendas and Strategies Contemporary French populism is distributed along the structural left-right conflict, and populist parties are embedded in the existing party subsystems of the left and the right. LFI presents a radical left profile, and its populism operates primarily along socioeconomic lines. LFI’s economic populism embraces socialism against the

3

https://laec.fr/section/2/balayer-l-oligarchie-abolir-les-privileges-de-la-caste http://video.lefigaro.fr/figaro/video/nicolas-dupont-aignan-denonce-une-caste-politique-qui-necoute-plus-les-francais/5394117468001/

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neoliberal establishment. Since 2012, Mélenchon’s policy package has been inspired by “alternative” economists such as Jacques Généreux. During the 2017 campaign, Mélenchon’s populist profile was mired in controversy over his promise to take French Guiana into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), set up by Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in 2004.5 LFI strongly opposes austerity, and it advocates economic redistribution, public spending, and state intervention in the economy. In 2017, Mélenchon’s platform “L’avenir en commun” pledged to reduce socioeconomic inequalities, promising to “eradicate poverty and unemployment,” to raise the highest tax rate at 90% and to put forward a 100 billion euros state investment plan. LFI’s economic policies included higher taxes on capital, the expansion of public services, nationalizing the banking sector to fight speculation, raising lower wages, and reducing the retirement age to 60. LFI advocates increased workers’ rights, and it strongly opposed the 2016 labor law for labor market flexibility. Additionally, the 2017 platform emphasized environmental issues, attesting to the more general “greening” of left-wing politics in France. Mélenchon moved toward an “ecological transition,” advocating a wide range of green policies while embracing ecological sustainability and a complete phaseout of nuclear power by 2050, one of the issues that had opposed Mélenchon to his former Communist allies. Finally, LFI shows a predominantly libertarian-universalistic profile of social inclusion, defending the rights of immigrants and minorities in French society, although this profile has been toned down recently in response to growing immigration fears among voters. In 2017, LFI promised nevertheless to repel the more stringent national security laws passed by the dominant parties of both the right and left since 2007. On the other hand, the FN exemplifies the typical populist radical right agenda which is dominated by nativism and authoritarianism (Ivaldi 2016). Le Pen’s campaign of 2017 emphasized old FN nativist policies calling for “national priority” to the French in jobs, housing, and welfare and pledging that the principle of “national priority” should be enshrined in the Constitution (FN 2017). Le Pen advocated a drastic reduction in immigration, as well as a range of measures to combat the so-called identitarian closure (communautarisme) of French Muslims. In the final stage of the campaign, she called for “an immediate moratorium to stop all legal immigration,” arguing that “mass immigration is not a chance for France, but an oppression and a tragedy.”6 Le Pen pledged also that she would close all “extremist” mosques and that anyone associated with the Jihadist movement would be stripped of their French citizenship and deported. In the context of the economic crisis, the FN has moved toward the left on the economy (Ivaldi 2015). Its current program shares some similarities with the left—e.g., lowering the retirement age to 60, increasing social spending minima, and repealing the

5 http://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2017/article/2017/04/14/qu-est-ce-que-l-alliancebolivarienne-pour-les-ameriques_5111256_4854003.html 6 http://www.frontnational.com/videos/grand-meeting-de-marine-le-pen-au-zenith-de-paris/

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2016 labor law. Under the leadership of Marine Le Pen, the party has embraced economic populism, claiming to defend all the “little” and “hardworking” people. The FN has adopted a Keynesian platform of redistribution and state regulation, and it advocates bolstering public services. In 2017, Le Pen ran on a heterogeneous economic platform, mixing social redistribution and state intervention with more market liberal measures for small entrepreneurs, thus seeking to address the needs of both her working class and petty-bourgeois electorates (Evans and Ivaldi 2018).

3.1

Populists Against the EU

Populist parties both left and right increasingly converge on a common protectionist agenda. They oppose European integration and economic globalization, while operating on patriotism and the defense of national interests (Ivaldi et al. 2017). In the French context, both LFI and the FN show strong opposition to economic globalization and neoliberal capitalism. Both parties target free trade, large businesses, capitalist elites, and financial international institutions. They manipulate Eurosceptic frames for voter mobilization, although the arguments they use against the EU and the intensity of their opposition to European integration vary. The FN has espoused Euroscepticism since the mid-1990s (Hainsworth et al. 2004). FN’s opposition to European integration taps into a wide range of institutional, economic and cultural issues (Ivaldi 2018). The EU is castigated by the FN as an elite-driven project and a ‘totalitarian jail’ for the people. It is also blamed for its agenda of free circulation and immigration, which according to the FN, is leading to a ‘Europeist and multicultural magma’. Finally, the EU is vilified as the incarnation of neoliberalism and it is depicted as ‘the first step towards savage globalization’ (Ivaldi 2018). In 2017, Le Pen’s presidential campaign claimed that France should restore national sovereignty over laws, borders and currency, while also opposing free trade agreements such as TAFTA and CETA (FN 2017). The campaign reiterated the party’s previous claim to hold a French referendum on EU membership within 6 months in the presidency, so that the French could “emerge from this nightmare and become free again.”7 In LFI, Euroscepticim is primarily motivated by economic arguments. Since 2009, the PG has been a significant driver behind the contestation of globalization, international free-trade agreements and the EU, arguing that European integration is too market liberal. Its critique focuses on the EU’s austerity policies and agenda of fiscal orthodoxy, strongly objecting to labor market liberalization and privatization of public services. In the lead-up to the 2017 elections, Mélenchon shifted to a harder Eurosceptic stance, promising to renegotiate European treaties and threatening to

7 Marine Le Pen, Speech in Lyon, 5 February 2017, http://www.frontnational.com/videos/assisespresidentielles-de-lyon-discours-de-marine-le-pen/ (last accessed: 9 April 2017).

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take France out of the EU if negotiations failed.8 The 2017 platform opposed what was deemed the ‘tyranny’ of the EU, suggesting that France should ‘disobey’ the European treaties to ‘preserve the national sovereignty of the French people’.9 The 2017 platform strongly objected to international trade agreements such as TAFTA and CETA, calling for ‘equitable protectionism’ in order to relocate production and jobs in France. Mélenchon’s B-plan included the suspension of France’s contribution to the EU’s budget, transforming the Euro into a common currency and re-establishing controls over the free movement of capital and goods. Additionally, the party claimed that the European Central Bank should no longer be independent, and it called for a moratorium on national debts within the Eurozone.

3.2

National Interests

In both LFI and the FN, Euroscepticism is associated with patriotic claims and the defense of national interests (e.g., De Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017). Nationalism is typically found in the radical right’s nativist ideology (Mudde 2007), but it is increasingly relevant to other populist manifestations located to the left of the political spectrum, such as the M5S in Italy and Podemos in Spain (Gerbaudo and Screti 2017; Ivaldi et al. 2017). In France, Mélenchon has recently adopted a patriotic tone, advocating for the defense of national interests. LFI’s patriotism defends the “homeland” against foreign forces of globalization. During the 2017 presidential election, Mélenchon regularly resorted to patriotic values and claims. The traditional iconography of the French radical left, such as red flags and singing the Internationale, almost disappeared from LFI’s meetings, and they were replaced with tricolor flags and the national anthem. References to the “homeland” were paramount during the campaign. According to Mélenchon, “now is the time to show what the sovereign people are worth. The ballot papers must be used for a sweep that makes all of them [politicians] go away, without exception (. . .) They must all go away so that we can abolish the privileges of finance, those of the insolent caste that occupies all the powers, those of the presidential monarchy and of all the luxurious suites of the capital. We must think big for the French people, for our homeland.”10 This was illustrated also in Mélenchon’s first-round concession speech in which he made a

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http://melenchon.fr/2016/06/24/lunion-europeenne-on-change-on-quitte-lheure-plan-b-sonne2017/ 9 https://laec.fr/section/49/prendre-les-mesures-immediates-et-unilaterales-de-sauvegarde-desinterets-de-la-nation-et-d-application-de-notre-projet 10 https://melenchon.fr/2017/03/18/defile-6e-republique-18-mars-a-paris/

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vibrant call to his “beautiful country and homeland,” while simultaneously vilipending the “mediacrats and oligarchs.”11 LFI’s 2017 presidential platform showed some departure from the universalist tradition of French socialism. In particular, LFI de-emphasized its previous pro-immigration policies such as its 2012 claim to regularize all undocumented migrants. In 2012, Mélenchon celebrated ethnic diversity and multiculturalism, portraying immigration as an “opportunity” for the country while denouncing the “morbid and paranoid idea of a choc of civilizations.”12 The 2012 platform stated that “immigration was not a problem,” denouncing “the myth of zero immigration, which weakens and divides our country.”13 In contrast, the 2017 campaign clearly acknowledged growing immigration fears among lower- and middle-class voters which form the core electoral support of LFI. Mélenchon claimed in particular that France should immediately opt out from the EU directive on posted workers. Already during the 2015 refugee crisis, Mélenchon had taken a more ambiguous stance, criticizing Germany’s decision to accept large numbers of refugees and arguing that “this was not the solution to the problem.”14 In a controversial speech in the European Parliament in July 2016, Mélenchon had denounced a Europe of “social violence where posted workers come and steal the bread from local workers.”15 Patriotism and national sovereignty claims are central to FN mobilization strategies, and they are attached to the party’s nativism. The elite is stigmatized by the FN for its allegiance to the so-called globalist and multiculturalist ideology against which the FN pits itself as the only authentic “patriotic” force. As explained by Le Pen in her 2017 manifesto, “this presidential election features two opposite projects—the ‘globalist’ choice represented by all my opponents—(. . .) and the ‘patriotic’ choice which I personify” (FN 2017).

3.3

Populist Strategies

Both the FN and LFI rely on anti-political-establishment mobilization, and both parties have made significant electoral gains recently by mobilizing voter discontent with mainstream politics. In both parties, the supply of populism is part of a broader strategy which seeks to overcome their minority status and replace the established

11 http://www.ouest-france.fr/elections/presidentielle/presidentielle-jean-luc-melenchon-chacunsait-quel-est-son-devoir-4945769 12 http://www.jean-luc-melenchon.fr/2012/04/14/discours-sur-les-plages-du-prado-a-marseille/ 13 https://melenchon.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/humain_dabord.pdf 14 http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/2015/09/11/25001-20150911ARTFIG 00089-pourmelenchon-accueillir-les-refugies-n-est-pas-la-reponse-au-probleme.php 15 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef¼-//EP//TEXT+CRE+20160705 +ITEM-005-01+DOC+XML+V0//FR&language¼fr&query¼INTERV&detail¼2-192-000

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party within their respective party subsystem. While LFI operates primarily to the left of the French party system, the FN has a broader appeal that crosscuts the political boundaries, getting its support from voters across both sides of the spectrum (Perrineau 2017). During the 2017 elections, LFI pursued a predominantly adversarial strategy against the proximal socialists, which contrasted with the more conciliatory approach that Mélenchon had adopted 5 years earlier, when he had endorsed the socialist candidate François Hollande in the presidential runoff. Soon after Hollande’s election in 2012 however, cooperation with the PS became a major divisive issue between Mélenchon and his communist partners, creating infighting within the FG coalition. In 2016, the founding of LFI marked a significant turn in Mélenchon’s strategic orientation. Despite repeated calls from Hamon during the campaign, Mélenchon decisively turned his back on an alliance with the PS. Between the two rounds of the presidential election, Mélenchon refused to endorse either of the two finalists, which provoked turmoil within LFI’s ranks as well as among his communist allies. This strategy was reiterated in the legislative elections where LFI ran independently across the vast majority of constituencies, competing against both the PS and the Communists. Turning to the radical right, antiestablishment populism has been a typical feature of the FN since its electoral breakthrough in the mid-1980s. Following Marine Le Pen’s accession to party leadership in 2011, the FN has pushed a strategy of “dedemonization” which aims primarily to detoxify the party’s extremist reputation and enhance its credibility to increase its appeal to moderate voters. An important aspect of steering away from the “old” party was the decision by Marine Le Pen in August 2015 to expel Jean-Marie Le Pen from the FN, after he had reiterated his controversial views that Nazi gas chambers were a “detail of the Second World War.”16 However despite the moderation of its rhetoric and policies, the current FN retains its previous radical right-wing populist profile (Ivaldi 2016). The FN portrays itself as a third competitive bloc in French politics, violently opposing both the left and the right—the so-called UMPS caste—and refusing to cooperate with other actors in the party system. Because of its reputation as an extreme right party, the FN represents the archetypal “political pariah” secluded behind a cordon sanitaire, and it has virtually no coalition potential at the national level. The political isolation of the FN was recently confirmed by the 2015 local and regional elections. Despite consolidated electoral returns, the FN failed to take local and regional executives, confronting a Front Républicain locally that is the alliance of all major parties against the FN in decisive runoffs. The Front Républicain was reiterated in the 2017 presidential runoff where nearly all French parties called for a vote against Le Pen (Evans and Ivaldi 2018).

16

French National Front expels founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, BBC, 20 August 2015 (http://www.bbc. com/news/world-europe-34009901)

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FN’s populist strategies emphasize strong leadership and direct democracy by means of popular referendum. The FN exemplifies the populist illiberal democracy, showing distrust of pluralism and institutional mediations. The party criticizes established representative democratic institutions, international laws, intermediary bodies, and constitutional courts (Ivaldi 2016). In contrast, the populist democracy of LFI is one of grassroots participation and direct involvement, relying heavily however on Mélenchon’s charismatic leadership. Since 2012, Mélenchon has been advocating a radical transformation of the political system, emphasizing a move toward a “Sixth Republic,” whereby the current “presidential monarchy” would be abolished. During the 2017 campaign, Mélenchon pushed a strong anti-corruption agenda, advocating also for proportional representation and the right for citizens to recall elected representatives.

3.4

The Populist Agency: Organizational Basis

Finally, the FN and LFI diverge in their models of party organization. Reflecting its emergence from the anti-globalization social movement, LFI has adopted grassrootsoriented participatory democracy, which takes its inspiration from Podemos in Spain. The organization of LFI relies primarily on local participatory assemblies (Groupes d’appui), bottom-up decision-making, and free online membership. LFI’s platform L’avenir en commun was adopted at the party convention in Lille in October 2016 by an Internet vote by 77,000 party sympathizers. The party’s presence on the Internet is achieved through various websites and social media venues, most notably the Discord online discussion forum which, according to the figures released during the 2017 campaign, has about 270,000 supporters. The platform was used for the Internet vote by 243,000 supporters of LFI before the presidential runoff, to decide on the party’s endorsement strategy.17 While emphasizing grassroots participation, LFI operates on more traditional top-down mechanisms associated with Mélenchon’s personalistic, plebiscitarian style of political leadership. This was exemplified by Mélenchon’s decision to run in the presidential election, for which no membership vote was taken. The personalization of LFI’s leadership was illustrated further during the campaign when Mélenchon used holograms to appear in presidential campaign rallies held in different cities simultaneously. The FN exhibits an authoritarian style of leadership and a highly centralized hierarchical party organization. The current FN illustrates continuity in its organization despite the change in party leader, which occurred in 2011. The party relies on a small grassroots base of about 50,000 members. In addition, the FN has been undergoing a process of “marinization” whereby Marine Le Pen has successfully

17 A total of 36.1% favored a blank ballot; 29.1% were in favor of abstaining, while another third (34.8%) would officially endorse Macron.

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replaced her father as charismatic leader, both inside and outside the party (Ivaldi and Lanzone 2016). Externally, the founding in 2012 of the Marine Blue Rally (Rassemblement Bleu Marine, RBM) attested to the persistence of the FN’s model of personalistic leadership dominated by Le Pen herself. Internally, “mariniste” elites occupy virtually all top-level positions within the national party, while rival factions have been marginalized. Factionalism has increased recently following Le Pen’s disappointing performance in the 2017 election. In September 2017, Florian Philippot, a prominent leader of the mariniste faction, left the FN over disagreement about the party’s strategy and EU policies.

4 Electoral Support for Populism Populist parties have made significant gains in the 2017 elections, capitalizing on the wave of discontent with mainstream parties among French voters. Mélenchon won 19.6% of the first round vote in the 2017 presidential election, taking the fourth place. LFI’s candidates received 11% of the vote in the following legislative elections, resulting in 17 seats in the National Assembly. Marine Le Pen won 21.3% in the first round of the 2017 presidential election. In the runoff against Emmanuel Macron, she received 33.9%, which marked an unprecedented level of support for the radical right in France. In the legislatives, FN candidates totaled 13.2% of the vote, winning eight seats in parliament, a first since the mid-1980s when the FN had formed a group of 35 deputies, after the socialist government had changed the electoral system to proportional representation.

4.1

The Context of the 2017 Elections

Over the past decade, the rise of populist parties has been primarily fuelled by economic instability and voter discontent with mainstream politics. First, the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis has been strongly felt in France, leading the country into its worst economic recession since the end of the Second World War. Both the right and left in government have confronted rising unemployment, and they have adopted deeply unpopular austerity packages to reduce the state’s deficit. Since 2015, the unfolding of the EU refugee crisis has become a catalyst for immigration fears and anxieties caused by Islamic terrorism. More generally, voter discontent with the EU’s management of the crises has created favorable opportunities for populist mobilization against the political establishment and the European Union (Ivaldi 2018). Distrust of mainstream politics and voter aspiration to political change were paramount in the 2017 elections. Hollande faced record political discontent, with approval ratings below 20% throughout the second half of his presidency, down to only 14% of positive ratings on the eve of the 2017 elections. To the right, the

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Republicans clearly failed to rebuild a credible opposition to the socialists, suffering the damage caused by political scandals, presidential rivalries, and increased party factionalism since 2012 (Evans and Ivaldi 2018). Looking across both Sarkozy and Hollande’s presidencies, an average 60% of voters said they “trust neither the left nor the right to govern the country,” while an overwhelming 85% would agree that “politicians do not really care about what people think.” Voters showed high levels of pessimism about the future both for themselves and the country. Dissatisfaction with the way democracy works in France remained exceptionally high at about 60% on average throughout both Sarkozy and Hollande’s presidencies, culminating at 70% on the eve of the 2017 elections.18 To the left, LFI mobilized primarily economic grievances among disgruntled socialist voters. Immediately after the 2012 elections, the PS had taken a clear socialliberal U-turn causing political discontent with the government in the early stage of the presidency. Austerity measures, an unpopular pension reform, and higher taxes seemed to contradict Hollande’s campaign pledges of redistribution and equality, which alienated vast numbers of left-wing voters. Hollande’s promise to curb unemployment also failed to materialize, and unemployment remained at its highest throughout the presidency. Social unrest and political discontent among low- and middle-class voters culminated in 2016, after the passing by Manuel Valls’ government of the highly unpopular El Khomri labor law.19 The latter was strongly criticized by all of the PS’s allies such as the Greens and the PRG, creating also enormous turmoil inside the socialist party. Turning to the FN, economic grievances and issues have been important factors of the electoral revitalization of the radical right in France since the early 2010s. During the last election cycle, support for the FN has been fuelled by feelings of economic alienation. The party has further widened its electoral base among working- and middle-class voters, who are traditionally associated with the left in France, and it has attracted in particular a significant share of former socialist voters of 2012 (Perrineau 2017). Addressing the needs of those voters, the FN has adopted a more Keynesian approach, embracing state intervention and redistribution, which places the party to the left of the economic axis (Ivaldi 2015). The EU refugee crisis and the wave of Islamic terrorism have dramatically increased the salience of immigration issues. This has produced a propitious context for the FN, giving the party a substantial electoral boost in the 2015 regional elections at 27.7% of the vote.

18

http://www.cevipof.com/fr/le-barometre-de-la-confiance-politique-du-cevipof/resultats-1/ vague8/ 19 The main objective of the 2016 labor reform bill was to loosen France’s strict labor regulations and increase flexibility in the job market.

Populism in France

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39

Populist Voting in France

The current literature on populism suggests that there is variation in the sociodemographic makeup of the populist constituency according to left and right location in the party system and that the attitudes and issues that motivate populist voters vary also (Ivaldi 2017; Rooduijn et al. 2017; Van Hauwaert and Van Kessel 2018). This section examines the demand side of populist mobilization, looking at commonalities and differences in the sociodemographic and attitudinal profile of populist voters in the 2017 French presidential election. This data is taken from a large representative national sample of 19,454 French presidential voters in a survey, conducted by BVA on behalf of the University of Nice and as part of the European project SCoRE between 11 May and 25 June 2017.20 The dependent variable is the recalled vote in the first round of the 2017 presidential election. The analysis provides two separate sets of models for Le Pen and Mélenchon’s voters, which first include standard sociodemographics (gender, age, education, occupation, religion, religiosity, and patrimony) and then add a “root” political affiliation (left right ideology) and a set of economic and cultural attitudes that are relevant to the study of left- and right-wing populism (e.g., economic redistribution, welfare chauvinism, authoritarianism, support for the EU, and for economic globalization). The models also include the populism scale designed by Akkerman et al. (2014), which has been used extensively in recent research on the effect of populist attitudes on populist party support.21 The details of all variables and their descriptive statistics are summarized in Table 1. Nonvoters and non-responses are excluded from the models, resulting in a final analytical sample of 10,511 French voters. Table 2 shows the results of the models of voting for Le Pen in the first round of the 2017 presidential election. The sociodemographic model (1a) suggests only a marginal gender gap among Le Pen voters, which confirms that the FN has expanded its appeal to women, recently (Mayer 2013). Reflecting also the increase in support for the FN among younger voters, the model indicates that the probability to vote Le Pen decreases with age. The effect of age is partially visible in religion: religiosity negatively correlates with FN voting, and religious voters—who tend to be older—are less inclined to support Le Pen. This finding is also consistent with the fact that the FN under Marine Le Pen has moderated its conservative views regarding adoption and same-sex marriage for instance (Crépon 2015).

20

Subnational context and radical right support in Europe (https://www.score.uni-mainz.de). This project is funded by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) as part of a 3-year Open Research Area (ORA) for the Social Sciences project. 21 The summation scale constructed from the six populism items shows consistency with an alpha of 0.78.

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Table 1 Summary of attitudinal indicators and descriptive statistics Dimension Populism Left-right

Item Scale Akkerman et al. (2014) Left-right self-placement

State intervention

The less that government intervenes in the economy, the better it is for France [INV] The government should take measures to reduce differences in income levels When should immigrants receive benefits European unification should go further It’s a good thing that same-sex marriage is equal to oppositesex marriage in the eyes of the law Globalization is an opportunity for economic growth in France What our country really needs instead of more “civil rights” is a good stiff dose of law and order

Redistribution

Welfare chauvinism EU integration Same sex marriage

Globalization

Authoritarianism

Mean 4.1 6.4

Std. dev. 0.7 2.8

Min 1 1

4.3

1.8

1

7

Low values ¼ disagree

5.7

1.5

1

7

Low values ¼ earlier Low values ¼ disagree Low values ¼ disagree

3.2

1.0

1

5

4.6

2.0

1

7

5.1

2.1

1

7

Low values ¼ disagree

4.6

1.7

1

7

Low values ¼ disagree

4.8

2.0

1

7

Measurement Scale Low values ¼ left Low values ¼ disagree

Max 5 11

N ¼ 10,511 French voters

The data confirms that FN populism is predominantly found among the lower socioeconomic strata. Lower levels of education are strongly associated with voting for Le Pen, while people with a high school or a university degree are much less likely to support the FN. These divergences are reflected in the social class makeup of the 2017 Le Pen vote. Working-class and lower-middle class voters—notably female employees in the so-called service proletariat (Mayer 2013)—are overrepresented among FN voters, a finding which is consistent with the recent literature on radical right voting in France (Stockemer 2017; Gougou 2015). These are also voters with fewer economic assets—as revealed in the negative correlation between FN voting and patrimony. The results in Table 2 corroborate that FN voting is strongly influenced by general ideological orientations. The AIC is significantly lower in model 1b which introduces attitudinal predictors. Let us note that most of the sociodemographic variables retain their effect when controlling for attitudes and left-right ideology. Support for Le Pen is primarily motivated by immigration, law and order, and internationalization issues. The FN typically attracts voters with welfare chauvinist preferences, who are opposed to the EU, who show fears of globalization, and who hold authoritarian attitudes—measured here from the claim that what French society “really needs,

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Table 2 Logistic regressions of Le Pen voting in the 2017 French presidential elections Le Pen Vote Predictors Constant Male(ref) Female Age continuous Education none (ref) Education lower sec. Education BAC Education university Manag. Prof. (ref) Independent Technician Employee Worker Retired Inactive Patrimony (0–5 assets) Religion none (ref) Religion Catholic Religion other religion Religiosity regular (ref) Religiosity occasional Religiosity never Populism Left right

Model 1a – 0.63*** (0.22)

Model 1b – 4.70*** (0.44)

– 0.06 (0.06) – 0.02*** (0.003)

0.02 (0.07) – 0.04*** (0.003)

0.03 (0.10) – 0.49*** (0.10) – 1.20*** (0.10)

– 0.03 (0.12) – 0.39*** (0.12) – 1.00*** (0.13)

0.75*** (0.16) 0.54*** (0.12) 0.83*** (0.10) 1.00*** (0.14) 0.40*** (0.12) 0.39*** (0.13) – 0.20*** (0.03)

0.36* (0.20) 0.43*** (0.14) 0.62*** (0.13) 0.76*** (0.17) 0.21 (0.14) 0.32** (0.15) – 0.17*** (0.04)

0.41*** (0.06) – 0.45*** (0.14)

– 0.08 (0.08) – 0.57*** (0.18)

0.32*** (0.12) 0.33*** (0.13)

0.54*** (0.15) 0.64*** (0.15) 0.42*** (0.06) 0.30*** (0.01) (continued)

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Table 2 (continued) Le Pen Vote Predictors State intervention

Model 1a

Economic redistribution Welfare chauvinism European integration Same sex Globalization opportunity Authoritarianism N Log likelihood Akaike Inf. Crit.

10,511 – 4502.00 9038.00

Model 1b – 0.03 (0.02) 0.08*** (0.02) 0.40*** (0.04) – 0.27*** (0.02) – 0.06*** (0.02) – 0.23*** (0.02) 0.28*** (0.02) 10,511 – 3060.00 6172.00

Notes: ***Significant at the 1% level; **Significant at the 5% level; *Significant at the 10% level

instead of more ‘civil rights’, is a good stiff dose of law and order.” Economic attitudes play a lesser role in explaining support for right-wing populism, on the other hand. Because of their working-class profile, FN voters are more likely to support economic redistribution, but the correlation is relatively weak. Overall, the 2017 data provides evidence that the FN draws most of its support from the so-called losers of globalization among voters in the lower social categories, who are affected the most by modernization, economic competition, and feelings of cultural insecurity. Finally, populism significantly increases the probability to vote for Le Pen, and this holds true when controlling for key sociodemographic characteristics and political attitudes. Turning to Mélenchon, model 2a in Table 3 suggests that support for left-wing populism in France is more male and that it is found predominantly among the youngest cohorts, thus corroborating that populism both in its left and right variants was an attractive choice to younger voters in the 2017 elections. LFI predominantly draws its support from secularized voters, which reflects the traditional antagonism between the left and Catholicism in France. Other religious affiliations are also more prone to LFI voting, which reflects Mélenchon’s appeal to voters with an immigrant background, most particularly French Muslims.22 LFI supporters show higher educational attainments compared with their FN counterparts, and Mélenchon achieves a higher support among voters with a high 22

http://www.pelerin.com/A-la-une/Sondage-exclusif-Vote-et-religions

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Table 3 Logistic regressions of Mélenchon voting in the 2017 French presidential elections Mélenchon Vote Predictors Constant Male(ref) Female Age continuous Education none (ref) Education lower sec. Education BAC Education university Manag. Prof. (ref) Independent Technician Employee Worker Retired Inactive Patrimony (0–5 assets) Religion none (ref) Religion Catholic Religion other religion Religiosity regular (ref) Religiosity occasional Religiosity never Populism

Model 2a – 1.00*** (0.21)

Model 2b 0.63 (0.39)

– 0.12** (0.05) – 0.01*** (0.002)

– 0.17*** (0.06) – 0.02*** (0.003)

0.09 (0.11) 0.15 (0.11) 0.02 (0.11)

0.20 (0.13) 0.16 (0.13) 0.06 (0.13)

– 0.20 (0.17) 0.33*** (0.09) 0.27*** (0.08) 0.26* (0.13) 0.09 (0.10) 0.23** (0.10) – 0.19*** (0.03)

0.10 (0.20) 0.22** (0.11) 0.23** (0.10) 0.18 (0.16) 0.18 (0.11) 0.13 (0.12) – 0.07** (0.03)

– 0.71*** (0.06) 0.23** (0.11)

– 0.27*** (0.07) 0.21 (0.13)

0.21* (0.12) 0.48*** (0.13)

0.005 (0.14) – 0.01 (0.15) 0.45*** (0.05) (continued)

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Table 3 (continued) Mélenchon Vote Predictors Left right

Model 2a

State intervention Economic redistribution Welfare chauvinism European integration Same sex Globalization Opportunity Authoritarianism N Log likelihood Akaike Inf. Crit.

10,511 – 4975.00 9984.00

Model 2b – 0.41*** (0.01) – 0.03 (0.02) 0.22*** (0.03) – 0.08*** (0.03) – 0.12*** (0.02) 0.04** (0.02) – 0.13*** (0.02) – 0.14*** (0.02) 10,511 – 3766.00 7585.00

Notes: ***Significant at the 1% level; **Significant at the 5% level; *Significant at the 10% level

school diploma. LFI voters do not fulfill the “globalization loser” profile. There is no evidence of a strong social class electoral basis of left-wing populism: LFI draws its support from a broader coalition of voters across all social strata, and the party is relatively more successful among middle-class voters with fewer economic assets, as revealed in the negative effect of patrimony on voting for Mélenchon. This corroborates the current literature which suggests that left-wing populist parties are increasingly tapping into wider sectors of the electorate, attracting significant shares of the middle- and upper-class electorate (e.g., Ramiro 2016) and voters with higher education (Rooduijn et al. 2017). The ideological profile of LFI voters in model 2b confirms that political and economic attitudes are crucial determinants of left-wing populist voting in France. There is a significant decrease in the AIC’s value in model 2b. Mélenchon’s supporters are unambiguously located to the left of the party system, and left-right affiliation is a strong predictor of LFI voting. As would be expected, a higher support for economic redistribution is typically found among LFI voters who are also significantly less authoritarian, rejecting in particular law-and-order claims. Mélenchon voters converge on the opposition to European integration and economic globalization. LFI voters show a higher level of Euroscepticism, and support for the EU typically decreases the likelihood to vote for Mélenchon. Similarly, the effect of seeing economic globalization as an opportunity for growth is statistically significant, and support for LFI is less pronounced among voters with

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positive views about globalization. Cultural protectionism is not entirely absent from the attitudinal drivers of left-wing populism in France. Welfare chauvinism shows a weak negative correlation with LFI voting, which suggests that these voters may have more ambivalent views of immigration. This may be partly accounted for by Mélenchon’s stance on immigration during the 2017 campaign. Finally, as was the case in the FN, populism is a significant factor of populist left voting, which confirms that both FN and LFI voters are more populist than supporters of the mainstream.

5 Conclusion This chapter has examined the supply of populism and demand for populist alternatives in the 2017 presidential elections in France. Populist parties have become prevalent on both the right and left of French politics. The FN illustrates the typical radical right-wing variant of populism. Immigration and national identity are key issues for FN mobilization. LFI shows a clear left-wing egalitarian and socially inclusive profile resembling that of other left-wing populist organizations in Europe such as Podemos in Spain. While they diverge in terms of their attaching ideologies, both parties exhibit the core generic anti-elite and people-centered features of populism, and they increasingly converge on a common protectionist platform. Both LFI and the FN oppose European integration, although they vary in the justification frames they employ and in the intensity of their opposition to the EU. Both parties embrace a strong antiglobalization agenda, rejecting free trade, international corporations, and neoliberal capitalism. The current economic manifesto of the FN also shares similarities with that of the left, which increases populist convergence. The electoral vitality of populism in France has been primarily fuelled by economic instability and profound voter disaffection with mainstream politics and with the EU. Populist entrepreneurs such as Le Pen and Mélenchon have successfully politicized economic, cultural, and political grievances, mobilizing voters who feel increasingly estranged from mainstream politics and discouraged about their future. Political discontent culminated in the 2017 elections, paving the way for a profound reshaping of the French party system (Evans and Ivaldi 2018). What does the future hold for populism in France? The issues and grievances that drive support for populist parties, such as immigration, unemployment, and social inequality, are unlikely to disappear, and they should ensure the future relevance of the populist phenomenon in French politics. Moreover, both the governing PS and the Republicans have become weaker in the 2017 elections, which clearly produces opportunities for populists to try and occupy the political space left vacant by the “old” dominant parties of the left and right. There are nevertheless a number of obstacles that may prove extremely difficult for populist parties to overcome. First, both LFI and the FN rely on relatively weak party organizations and a limited base of power locally, which impedes their ability to overcome their minority status in the party system. Second, both parties lack

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governmental credibility and valence. Their radical platforms veer toward the ideological periphery, attracting more extreme voters, which alienates moderates at the center of French politics. As was recently illustrated by the split of the Philippot faction, the FN is also divided over policies and strategies internally. Most importantly, populist parties face important institutional hurdles. The majoritarian electoral framework in French politics poses serious challenges to outsider parties such as LFI and the FN. Political parties must build electoral cartels in order to achieve a majority in French elections. Because they operate primarily on adversarial antiestablishment strategies, populist organizations such as LFI and the FN fail to cooperate with mainstream parties. They play mostly a nuisance role in the party system, altering the balance between established parties and affecting the final results of elections. This power of nuisance was illustrated in the 2017 elections, where the rise in support for populist parties was sufficient to exclude both the PS and the Republicans from the presidential runoff. Macron’s victory and the building of a new centrist pole in French politics may pose additional competitive challenges to populist parties in the future. Macron’s party currently occupies a winning strategic location at the vote-rich center ground of the political spectrum. LREM operates on a crosscutting appeal to moderate voters from both the left and right, which gives the party a decisive advantage against radical alternatives. The future direction of the more polarized French party system that has emerged from the 2017 elections hangs in the balance between the ability of populist organizations to transform themselves into more credible party alternatives and the capacity of mainstream parties to offer responses to the issues and concerns of voters, who feel left behind in current globalization.

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Hainsworth, P., O’Brien, C., & Mitchell, P. (2004). Defending the nation: The politics of Euroscepticism on the French Right. In R. Harmsen & M. Spiering (Eds.), Euroscepticism: Party politics, national identity and European integration. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Ivaldi, G. (2006). Beyond France’s 2005 referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty : Second-order model, anti-establishment attitudes and the end of the alternative European Utopia. West European Politics, 29(1), 47–69. Ivaldi, G. (2015). Towards the median economic crisis voter? The new leftist economic agenda of the Front National in France. French Politics, 13(4), 346–369. Ivaldi, G. (2016). A new course for the French radical-Right? The Front National and ‘dedemonization’. In T. Akkerman, S. de Lange, & M. Rooduijn (Eds.), Radical right-wing populist parties in Western Europe. Into the mainstream? (pp. 231–253). Abingdon: Routledge. Ivaldi, G. (2017). Electoral basis of populist parties. In R. Heinisch, C. Holtz-Bacha, & O. Mazzoleni (Eds.), Political populism. A handbook (pp. 157–168). Baden-Baden: Nomos. Ivaldi, G. (2018). Contesting the EU in times of crises: The Front National and politics of Euroscepticism in France. Politics. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395718766787. Ivaldi, G., & Lanzone, M. E. (2016). From Jean-Marie to Marine Le Pen: Organizational change and adaptation in the French Front National. In R. Heinisch & O. Mazzoleni (Eds.), Understanding populist party organization: A comparative analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Ivaldi, G., Lanzone, M. E., & Woods, D. (2017). Varieties of populism across a left-right spectrum: The case of the Front National, the Northern League, Podemos and Five Star Movement. Swiss Political Science Review, 23(4), 354–376. March, L. (2012). Radical left parties in Europe. Abingdon: Routledge. Mayer, N. (2013). From Jean-Marie to Marine Le Pen: Electoral change on the far right. Parliamentary Affairs, 66(1), 160–178. Mouffe, C. (2016). In defence of left-wing populism. http://theconversation.com/in-defence-of-leftwing-populism-55869 Mudde, C. (2004). The populist Zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 542–563. Mudde, C. (2007). Populist radical Right parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mudde, C., & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2013). Exclusionary vs. inclusionary populism: Comparing contemporary Europe and Latin America. Government and Opposition, 48(2), 147–174. Perrineau, P. (2017). Cette France de gauche qui vote FN. Paris: Le Seuil. Ramiro, L. (2016). Support for radical left parties in Western Europe: Social background, ideology and political orientations. European Political Science Review, 8(1), 1–23. Rooduijn, M., & Akkerman, T. (2017). Flank attacks populism and left-right radicalism in Western Europe. Party Politics, 23(3), 193–204. Rooduijn, M., Burgoon, B., van Elsas, E. J., & van de Werfhorst, H. G. (2017). Radical distinction: Support for radical left and radical right parties in Europe. European Union Politics, 18(4), 536–559. Stanley, B. (2008). The thin ideology of populism. Journal of Political Ideologies, 13(1), 95–110. Stockemer, D. (2017). The Front National in France. Continuity and change under Jean-Marie Le Pen and Marine Le Pen. Cham: Springer. Van Hauwaert, S. M., & Van Kessel, S. (2018). Beyond protest and discontent: A cross-national analysis of the effect of populist attitudes and issue positions on populist party support. European Journal of Political Research, 57(1), 68–92.

Populism in the Philippines Adele Webb and Nicole Curato

1 Introduction In his first year of office, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has proven there are no sacred cows in global politics. He cursed the Pope and called Barack Obama the son of a whore. He literally gave the finger to the European Union. He called the UN rapporteur on summary executions “a fool” for saying “that kind of shit” about human rights. He threatened to declare a war against oligarchs. He had a spat with mainstream media and declared a “no press conference policy” for weeks. Most controversially, he launched a bloody war against drugs which led to thousands of deaths. For many, Duterte fits the category of a typical Asian strongman. He is a tough talking leader with little regard for liberal rights. He disdains foreign intervention and considers criticisms against his regime as a personal attack. Thirty years after the bloodless revolution that ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippines is once again headed toward the return of the “national boss rule.” Despite widespread condemnation overseas, Duterte remains popular at home. He registered more than 80% popularity rating nearly 2 years into his presidency (Pulse Asia 2018). Scandals on police brutality, accusations of smuggling links to his son, the collapse of peace talks with communist rebels, and the 5-month-long armed conflict against ISIS fighters in Marawi City did not dent his ratings. Duterte continues to receive the warmest greetings from adoring crowds, from call center agents snapping selfies with their “idol” to overseas Filipino workers in Vientiane

A. Webb University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] N. Curato (*) University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Stockemer (ed.), Populism Around the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96758-5_4

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cheering Duterte’s name as the President enters the convention hall. Dutertards—a contraction of “Duterte’s retards”—is the pejorative term for these supporters. Our goal in this chapter is to make sense of Duterte’s rise to power using the historicized, contextualized, and critical lens of populism. The combination of these analytical components is necessary in providing an empirically grounded account of Duterte’s populism. Through this, we can examine the broader social forces that lend legitimacy to his regime, emphasize the continuities and disruptions in Philippines politics as Duterte entered the national stage, and provide a critical take on where he has taken his populist regime. We structure our discussion in four parts. We begin by discussing what we mean by a historicized, contextualized, and critical account of populism. The second section provides a historical account of Duterte’s rise, where we take a long view of the populist and nationalist rhetoric in Philippine politics and situate contemporary conditions in relation to these social transformations. The third section takes a closer look at Duterte’s regime and contextualizes his appeal in relation to other populist leaders in the country, as well as the social bases of his “bandit legitimacy.” The fourth section critically evaluates the regime drawing on debates in normative theory.

2 A Historicized, Contextualized, and Critical Take There cannot be a piece about populism without making a caveat that populism is a nebulous concept. The Philippines’ Duterte fits the definition whether we view populism as a thin ideology (Mudde 2004), a political logic (Laclau 2005), or a performance style (Moffitt 2016). He expresses a thin ideology hinged on a particular articulation of nationalism. He deploys the political logic of dividing the “virtuous people” versus the “dangerous other.” He performs a political style responsive to the demands of a mediatized public sphere. In this chapter we argue that to understand Duterte, we need a historicized, contextualized, and critical approach.

2.1

Historicized

A historicized take on populism situates contemporary analysis in the continuities and transformations of the nation under study. The historicized account that we advocate for is one that is sensitive to both the particularities and the interconnectedness of national struggles that arise in response to global transformations. By doing so, we can critically examine the extent to which the “populist moment” is a disruption, a continuation, or a logical next step in a nation’s political life.

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Contextualized

We are unconvinced by accounts of populism that reduce it to false consciousness or manipulation, without grappling with the justifications and contestations in the public sphere. The contextualized account of populism listens to the political claims that give currency to populist demands, and it grounds the analysis in the cultural, discursive, and political conditions that legitimize the power of populist leaders. We take a constructivist view of populism, in which political meanings and subjectivities, including the key signifier of the “people,” are contingent rather than fixed.

2.3

Critical

To historicize and contextualize populism, however, does not mean withdrawing from making normative judgments. We consider transparency and reflexivity as important components of research, which in practice, means to lay out the normative commitment by which one judges social reality. As committed democrats who consider the humbling of power as an essential component to political life, we consider it important to call out abuses of power when we see them. For this reason, we conclude our chapter with critical judgments on where the Duterte regime is headed.

3 Nationalism and Populism in the Philippines: A Historicized Take There has been a tendency in recent discussions on populism to conflate it with nationalism. While some of the most prominent cases of populism involve nationalist content, not all co-occurrences of populism and nationalism are the same (Laclau 2005; De Cleen 2017). A distinction is necessary to disentangle the history of populism in the Philippines, from the occurrences of populism in other contexts, especially the recent upsurge of populisms in the United States and Europe. Benjamin De Cleen identifies two types of populist articulations of nationalist demands. Nationalist Populism This type of populism is structured around the in/out axis of nationalism. Such nationalist demands center on the exclusion of certain groups from the definition of the nation. Given the prominence of radical right parties of Europe, this type of populist articulation has garnered the most recent attention by scholars and commentators. “The people” becomes a signifier of exclusive nationalism, in which the antagonism is between “ordinary people” (in) against migrants or other ethnic-cultural minorities (out). The “people as underdog” signifies an

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ethnically defined subgroup of the nation, which includes no people of foreign descent (De Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017: 313–314). Populist Nationalism Rather than tapping into issues of ethno-cultural identity, this type of populism mobilizes incendiary ideas of power, status, and hierarchy and takes the form of demands for national self-determination and struggles for national autonomy. The populist down/up antagonism (rather than in/out) structures political demands. The nation in its entirety becomes the underdog (down), pitted against an “elite” (up) who may be national or international and who are deemed illegitimate for being opposed to the nation’s interests. It comes oftentimes in the form of a demand “for autonomy, independence and sovereignty of nations over their territory” (De Cleen 2017: 355), against supranational or colonial forces. We find the second type of populism as the one that makes sense for the relationship between populism and nationalism in the Philippines. The down/up antagonism is not only framed as a large powerless group, “the people” against a small and powerful “elite,” but the Filipino nation itself has also been framed as an underdog, which is then the subject of elite abuse, whether by colonial authorities, interfering foreign powers, or the local oligarchy. Populist claims have often been framed as attempts to subvert this old hierarchy and establish a new set of power relations.

3.1

Colonial Roots (1892–1946)

Given the centuries of Spanish then American colonization that only formally ended in 1946, it is not difficult to imagine why populist-nationalist demands, based on the sovereignty and dignity of the “nation” and “people,” have played an influential role in the twentieth-century politics in the Philippines. Dominant political actors often construct the “enemy” as those who subjugate the nation’s interests and autonomy. The imperative of radical transformation has kept alive the task of the “unfinished revolution” and the need to “exorcise the ghost of colonialism” (Hau 2000: 280–281). Interpellations of the Filipino “nation” and “people,” especially in regard to the nation’s position and identity vis-à-vis the rest of the world, have provided fertile terrain for populist frames claiming to resolve the ambiguities of the past. We trace such populist-nationalist appeals at least as far back as the Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (Association of the Sons of the People). This movement developed and operated in and around Manila on the eve of the Philippine Revolution from 1892 to 1897. The movement’s leaders exhorted the nation to unite against the subjugation of the Spanish autocrats and Catholic friars. While its anti-colonial message was not entirely new, the infusion of this nationalist discourse with a populist impulse signaled a turn in Philippine political history and one that closely mirrored the nineteenth-century radical populist democratic movements waging struggles in the Spanish colonies of Latin America, as well as in England and France.

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The revolutionary politics of the late nineteenth century cultivated the idealization of the “true” Filipino who was fighting a “true” revolution. In contrast were the nation’s “enemies,” who were not only the Spanish, then American colonial authorities, but also a Filipino ilustrado elite—Europe-educated, suit-wearing, reformist intellectuals—who actively collaborated with foreign powers. There are similar articulations of this in Duterte’s Philippines, as we will describe in the next section. Such populist articulations of nationalist demands for sovereignty and independence continued throughout the American colonial period from 1901. During the years of American control, anti-imperial resistance came from radical left political movements, including a socialist party and communist movement that eventually coalesced in the Hukbalahap Rebellion, the largest left-wing peasant uprising in the nation’s history. Leaders employed a populist-nationalist discourse, which pitted the rights and dignity of the masses against the domination and chicanery of the Filipino elite and their American sponsors. Though limited to the Central Luzon region, the electoral success of political figures from these movements became a threat to the political establishment. The 1941 Japanese invasion of the American Philippines in World War II, however, put a break on this momentum (see Kerkvliet 1977).

3.2

The “Resurrected People” (1946–1986)

Electoral contestations in the Philippines are rarely defined in ideological terms because of the absence of political parties that carry these ideologies. In the absence of political parties, populist expressions manifest in the rhetoric of individual political candidates seeking to legitimize their authority. Soon after the United States granted independence to the Philippines in July 1946, the political elite whose hold on power had been nurtured under American colonialism took to using the nationalist demands to appeal for power. In adopting the demands of the anti-imperialist movement (for “true” sovereignty and a resurrected “people”), they were staking claim to a resonant national imaginary in order to claim the authority to lead. In the early 1960s, President Diosdado Macapagal was the first to bring the language of the “unfinished revolution” into state discourse, referring to the way in which the 1896 Katipunan revolution had been “thwarted” by American colonization. He claimed it was time for the Filipino people to have the dignity they deserve (Macapagal 1963). Macapagal’s successor would become the master of articulating nationalist demands in a populist style; Ferdinand Marcos began his term in 1965. In his first inauguration speech, Marcos claimed that not only had the Filipino subject, a brave hero of history, been left without dignity by colonial oppressors, but in the present time, he said, the sovereignty of the Filipino people was being derided by the extravagant lifestyles of the political class and the lawlessness of syndicated crime (Marcos 1965). In claiming to represent the interests of the “people” and the Filipino nation, Marcos was not only fighting against his fellow oligarchs and a regional autocratic

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political class, but he was also battling an anti-imperialist radical political movement on the left. Though denied access to formal electoral politics, the far-left movement continued to pose a threat to elite power through a resonant counter populistnationalist narrative. In this fractured and unstable context, Marcos declared he could resolve the social and political crises brought about by the country’s colonial history. He would do so by uniting people under a new “Filipino” regime—Isang Bansa, Isang Diwa (One Nation, One Spirit)1—and by building consensus around a “true Filipino ideology.” Alongside the militarization and the authoritarian practices he adopted once in power, Marcos’s populist articulation of nationalist demands persisted. Historical experience, no less than our forebears, is quite clear: no one can help us. Only we can help ourselves. And this truth applies to all that is foreign to us, whether it be ideologies or institutions. Our destiny is rooted in our soil, our future determined by our particular time and circumstance; our ideology is thus our self-definition. (Marcos 1982)

Marcos-era populism bears strong resemblance to that of the Latin American populisms in the first half of the twentieth century, including Vargas in Brazil, Peronism in Argentina, and Bolivia’s Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario. The “people,” as constituted by these populist leaders, had a strong statist component (Laclau 2005: 193). They were “essentially state populisms, trying to reinforce the role of the central state against landowning oligarchies” (Laclau 2005: 192). It was from the rising urban middle and popular classes that such figures drew the most appeal. With a state project titled “Revolution from the Center” (Marcos 1978), Marcos claimed to be implementing redistributive policies and democratic reforms under a regime that was clearly anti-liberal and which became overtly dictatorial after declaration of martial law in 1972.2 Backed by highly educated technocrats from the middle classes, Marcos took advantage of the fact the oligarchic political state in the Philippines had become impenetrable and unable to absorb the democratic demands of its citizens. The accumulation of unfulfilled aspirations meant that the only hope for democratic reform, as Marcos claimed, was through drastic change. Paradoxically, it was the abuse of power under the Marcos regime that would eventually facilitate a critical juncture, building a broad popular resonance and mobilization power of the opposing populist-nationalist narrative. During years of martial law from 1972 to 1981, the organized left had grown to be the largest revolutionary movement in the world (Hedman 2001). The assassination of Marcos’s main opponent, Senator Benigno Aquino, catalyzed a temporary period of class solidarity and ideological convergence between groups critical of the President. It

1 On Independence Day in 1978, Marcos issued a presidential decree (No.1413) declaring “Isang Bansa, Isang Diwa” be adopted as the official national motto of the Philippines. The decree included an instruction that “this motto be made known to every Filipino so that he may take pride in this new symbol of nationhood” (see Republic of the Philippines 1978). 2 At the end of his second term in office in September 1972, Marcos declared martial law which lasted until 1981, during which time his administration operated as a militarized dictatorship which actively quelled dissent by imprisoning and killing activists and by denying freedom of expression.

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was the articulation of a populist-nationalist frame of national dignity and sovereignty that provided this common ground. On 21st of September 1983, triggered by Aquino’s death, an estimated half a million people took to the streets of Manila to rally against the President. Even in the financial district of Makati, streets were lit up with smoke and confetti as people called for an end to Marcos’ 18-year rule. Clad in black, the widowed Corazon Aquino addressed the protestors, reading the Manifesto of Freedom, Democracy, and Sovereignty, a joint statement issued by the National Democrats, Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, and Liberal Democrats. It declared: THE TIME has come to speak with one voice and act with one will [. . .] THE FILIPINO PEOPLE will no longer tolerate the loss of their liberties, the exploitation of their labor, the plunder of their natural resources, the shameless looting of public funds, the arbitrary arrests, brutal torture and ruthless murders of their children and their leaders, the arrogant presence of alien military bases on their land, the mockery of elections, and the denigration of their sovereignty—all perpetuated by a government that has forcibly imposed itself upon them with the support of the US government [. . .] WE SHALL NOT CEASE our struggle until our people are truly free and sovereign, and our country is truly democratic and independent. (Aquino 1983)

Less than 3 years later, hundreds of thousands of “ordinary people” arrived at EDSA, the main arterial road of Metro Manila. They formed a human shield, protecting defecting members of the army, who were held up in the barracks, from the regime’s military tanks. The EDSA “People Power Revolution” was not only a critical historical juncture in Philippine politics that brought about the end of a dictatorship—it became a pinnacle event in the contemporary national mythology—but it signified the redemption and deliverance of the Filipino people from the suffering and subjugation under martial rule (see Claudio 2013). Thirty years on, it is precisely this reified, populist, triumphalist People Power narrative that the rise of Duterte contests.

3.3

Contemporary Populists (1986–2016)

Immediately following EDSA, Corazon Aquino, widow of the assassinated opposition leader, together with her allies based their claims for power on the narrative of EDSA revolution as a miracle and a consequence of Divine intervention (Wurfel 1990). This storyline was successful as it served as a bridge between the national struggles of the past and the political purposes of a contemporary political elite. It was a failure, however, as far as redistributing power to the people. Post-1986 politics marks the restoration of elite democracy in which oligarchs have “considerable autonomy” to “manipulate formal democratic procedures to their liking” (Kerkvliet 1995: 405). Benedict Anderson (1988) described Philippine politics as a “cacique democracy”—the marriage of American electoralism with Spanish caciquism (see Tadem and Tadem 2016; Mendoza 2012; Simbulan 2005). Corazon Aquino was a clear beneficiary of this system, hailing from political clans and landed

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elites, but she managed to obscure this inequality by governing based on her “saintly” charisma (Thompson 2002). After surviving six coup attempts, writing a new constitution, and accepting the burden of paying for Marcos’s foreign debt, the Aquino regime successfully held an election and transferred power over to her Defense Secretary and another “EDSA hero,” Fidel V. Ramos. The subsequent regimes following Corazon Aquino’s administration witnessed a consistent swing from reformism to populism (Thompson 2010). The populist regimes of Corazon Aquino (1986–1992) and Joseph Estrada (1998–2001) and the contested loss of action star Fernando Poe Jr. (2004) are alternated by the reformist regimes of Fidel Ramos (1992–1998), Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (2001–2010), and Benigno S. Aquino (2010–2016), the son of democracy icons Benigno and the former President Corazon. Thompson defines reformist leaders as those who promote a political narrative of good governance, whereas populist leaders emphasize popular sovereignty and an anti-elite rhetoric, although the “rich-versus-poor theme is intentionally kept vague” (Thompson 2010: 158). Populists are very much part of the elites, but they cultivate the persona of being an “outsider,” who can relate to the urban poor and rural populations. Elected President in 1998, movie star Joseph Estrada represents the most striking occurrence of populism in the Philippines’ post-authoritarian period until Rodrigo Duterte. Estrada began his political career in the late 1960s, when he became the mayor of San Juan City. He moved to national politics by winning a Senate seat in the landmark elections of 1987, before his presidential bid 11 years later attracted an unprecedented number of votes (Hedman 2001: 40). There are several ways to make sense of Estrada’s populism. One can focus on his star power in capturing the social imaginary. Estrada was a former actor who had starred in blockbuster films from the 1960s, representing the intertwining of celebrity and politics in Philippine democracy. As Anna Cristina Pertierra (2017) observes, celebrities—from noontime show hosts, to singers, to the world’s greatest poundfor-pound boxer of all time—are often the only candidates that can break the rules of political clans. Estrada’s populist style in the late 1990s paved the way for Duterte today in two ways. The first is the appropriation of an outlaw character, which frames appeal around a counter-discourse to the vocabulary of liberalism. Unlike Corazon Aquino who traded on saintly charisma, Estrada extended his cinematic portrayals of a compassionate gangster into the public sphere. Wataru Kusaka (2017) describes this as bandit-like morality, where compassion and violence coexist under a patriarchal boss. Estrada’s iconic role of Asiong Salonga—the Robin Hood of the slums of Manila—laid bare, in vivid and emotionally resonant terms, the injustice and indignity endured at the hands of the rich and powerful, by “ordinary” Filipinos. The appropriation of the misbehaving yet benevolent outsider reflects the lingering ghosts of a colonial history and the resonance of staking claim to the subaltern, subjugated, and shamed Filipino subject of history. Second, Estrada exposed the impenetrable social hierarchies that characterize everyday life in the Philippines. Ethnographer Frederic Schaeffer (2002) refers to

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this as the class politics of dignity. In his research among slum communities of Manila, Schaeffer finds that the poor prefer to vote for candidates who are caring, compassionate, and kind. While this is often dismissed as another articulation of patronage politics or personality politics, Schaeffer argues that giving consideration, paying attention, and offering a helping hand are forms of recognition that give esteem, unlike the elitist politics of callousness and insult. This explains why Estrada’s populist performance of sharing a meal with the poor and embracing the elderly are crucial to his counter-narrative of solidarity and politics of dignity. In doing so, Estrada “appears as if he knows, or could know, the real people who lived, labored, and suffered nearby, around the corner” (Hedman 2001: 42). Estrada’s Presidency ended abruptly. Less than 3 years into his term, the House of Representatives impeached Estrada. Another mass mobilization—dubbed as EDSA Dos (EDSA People Power II)—demanded his ouster. The Philippines’ dominant elite including the Roman Catholic Church, the business community, and civil society groups used the language of morality to stigmatize Estrada’s corruption, drinking, womanizing, and even his poor English. Yet Estrada has remained a political force, even after being convicted of plunder and serving under house arrest. When Fernando Poe, Estrada’s best friend, ran for President in 2004, it was deemed by some to be a test of Estrada’s continuing political power, by fielding his friend as proxy. Poe too was an action star who played the role of gangster turned hero. “Da King,” as he is popularly called, a man with zero political experience, narrowly lost to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in an election marred with allegations of voter fraud. As if viewing from a plotline of a political drama, Estrada himself ran and won as Manila Mayor and placed (a distant) second in the 2010 presidential race against Benigno S. Aquino. Later in 2016, Estrada asked the nation to support Duterte’s anti-drug campaign.

4 Current Populist Actors: Contextualizing Duterte’s Rise 2016 was an important year for the nation, the 30th anniversary of the People Power Revolution. Corazon’s son, Benigno (Noynoy) Aquino III, was about to step down from Presidency with a glowing record of transforming the Philippines from the “Sick Man of Asia” to “Asia’s bright spot.” GDP growth was the highest in four decades. The conditional cash transfer program was expanded and benefitted indigent populations. Major legislative victories had been won like the imposition of the sin tax amidst strong tobacco lobby and a reproductive health law, despite the Catholic Church’s disapproval. Aquino’s popularity rating remained high as he left office. But 2016, as Thompson rightly predicts, is a time for a populist to take power. The campaign started as a tight three-way race between Secretary of Interior Manuel Roxas, neophyte senator Grace Poe, and Vice President Jejomar Binay. Of the three, it was only Roxas who took a reformist route. All work, no drama was his campaign message, a swipe at his competitors Poe and Binay whose personal narratives were

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arched on the storyline of oppression. And, of the three, it was only Roxas who never led the polls.

4.1 4.1.1

Populist Agendas and Strategies “Old School” Populism

Both Poe and Binay performed a populist political style. Binay embraced his identity as a dark-skinned Filipino from humble roots, dismissing corruption allegations as a ploy by the ruling elite to stop a self-made man from clinching power. His campaign was backed by strong political machinery, a product of years of cultivating personal loyalty with local mayors and village leaders. While Estrada is the gangster, Binay is the “godfather” who pays the bills, attends funerals, funds feeding programs, hugs the elderly, and cares for the poor. His populism operates on the logic of equivalence. “Only the man who has suffered himself understands what suffering is. Only the man who has felt poverty can finally end poverty” (Evangelista and Curato 2016a). Binay was the front-runner a year into the race until Grace Poe snatched the lead. Poe is a neophyte senator whose star power is borrowed from her late father Fernando Poe Jr. Grace Poe entered politics after her father’s death. She returned from the United States to the Philippines, chaired a minor government agency, and then topped the senate race in 2010. Her populist narrative “arcs perfectly in the classic hero myth, far more than her father’s cinematic legacy” (Evangelista and Curato 2016b). She is the adoptive daughter of the royalty of Philippine cinema (“Da King”)—the foundling found at the steps of Jaro Cathedral—who came home to give care to a nation abandoned by the callous regime of Benigno S. Aquino. She, like Binay, promised feeding programs to help poor schoolkids, embraced grandmothers, and commiserated with widows of a botched police operation. Unlike Binay’s populism which was built on vertical relationships with the poor, Poe relied on her celebrity through television advertisements, professionally made posters, and of course, Estrada’s endorsement. But 2016, as Maureen Dowd (2017) puts it, was the year of voting dangerously. When polls closed in May, almost 40% of voters had pinned their hopes on the Mayor of Davao City, Rodrigo Duterte.

4.1.2

Spectacular Politics

“Mercifully, he doesn’t tweet” is our usual response whenever we are asked to draw comparisons between Duterte and US President Donald Trump. Duterte’s crass political style is indeed intriguing. Like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Duterte can deliver a televised address for hours, his speech peppered with cuss words and confrontational language. While Trump has called Mexicans rapists, Duterte has made jokes about raping women. He accused Catholic priests of

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molestation and does not hold back in making references to genocide. Duterte appears to have disrupted the language of national politics, as far as norms of respectability are concerned. Even Estrada who performed his gangster image embraced the limits of presidential performance. Duterte may have crossed the line of what is possible in presidential politics, but as Pertierra (2017) argues, Duterte’s political style is a continuation, rather than a disruption of politics as everyday Filipinos know it to be. Like Estrada, Duterte embraces the elements of melodrama—from the storyline of hero and villain to creating spectacles to generate attention. Like contemporary populists, Duterte is an expert at attention hacking. Duterte fits rather than disrupts the character of political discourse in the age of communicative decadence. Yet recognizing Duterte’s performance style is only one part of the populist story. As we have written elsewhere, such strategies only work when they resonate with the intended audience, especially when they tap into historical narratives and questions of national identity, around which linger incendiary emotions such as anxiety, fear, or shame (Webb 2017a). There is more to Duterte than his controversial political style.

4.2

Populist Publics

A survey found that “matapang/astig/brusko/palaban” (brave/tough/rude/aggressive) are the top terms that come to mind when citizens are asked to describe the president (Pulse Asia 2016). Meanwhile, phrases like “he keeps his promises” and “principled” register far fewer responses. The prized virtue of bravery presupposes an enemy. And it raises the question: To whom must Duterte be brave? The obvious answer to that question is the criminal syndicates and the addicts who are the targets of his anti-drug campaign. In an earlier publication, we referred to this as penal populism, which is a political style that builds on demands for punitive politics (Curato 2016). We offered ethnographic evidence that demonstrates how “virtuous citizens” who claim to have done everything to earn a decent living feel disdain for “addicts on street corners”—“the dangerous other.” The anxiety deepens when Filipinos who invested time and resources to “virtuous projects,” like volunteering in local livelihood programs or the church, feel that the future of their children are put in jeopardy if they make friends or enemies with these addicts. For the longest time, these anxieties were latent. They are “present but not central, mundane but still worrisome, publicized but not politicized” (Curato 2016: 99). Duterte masterfully built upon this narrative of virtuous citizens getting the short end of the stick from the failures of the justice system. The enemy in this narrative is within the nation—the dangerous drug pushers, as well as the greedy and tone-deaf elites of Imperial Manila, including the corrupt justice system and those who turn a blind eye to the drug scourge. While there are clear reasons to examine the bloody war on drugs as the center of Duterte’s narrative, it is equally as important to contextualize how a nation that just celebrated its 30th anniversary of the revolution that ousted the dictator Marcos can

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Table 1 Performance rating of President Rodrigo Duterte, December 2017 Per region Philippines 80 Per class ABC 77

National Capital Region 79 D 79

Luzon 72

Visayas 86

Mindanao 93

E 85

support a narrative of tough-handed governance, retribution, and vigilante justice. Thirty years since the EDSA promises, it is also a time when liberal democracy seems to have failed. We argue that the drug war is the crystallization of a bigger war the brave, tough, rude, and aggressive President is waging—a fight to save the nation from liberalism. The reason we give for the success of Duterte’s populist narrative is the existence of a latent ambivalence among broad sections of the public, about the promises and prospects for liberal democracy. Benigno S. Aquino’s narrative of reformism from 2010 had been tied to the promise that prosperity is compatible with democratic values. Yet 30 years of such promises nurtured skepticism over who exactly benefits from the People Power narrative. Aquino’s reformist government may have produced a glowing economic scorecard, but poverty rates remained unchanged at 25%. Unemployment still hovered at the 6–7% range and the rate of inequality remained among the highest in the region at .46 in the Gini index. On top of this were the growing frustrations of a middle class who demanded better services from a booming economy, only to suffer from the daily miseries of traffic congestion, rickety trains, and dilapidated airports, while paying high taxes. Liberal democracy’s failure to match the idealized narrative with everyday realities reinforces ambivalence about liberal democracy’s transformative power. Rather than simply being evidence of an anti-democratic pathology, the political resonance of Duterte’s anti-liberal rhetoric affirms the presence of such ambivalence with democracy (Webb 2017b). Duterte, who enjoys popularity across all social classes, dispels the impression that only “desperate” citizens find his populism appealing (see Table 1). Rather, we find that this ambivalence is a shared view, albeit differently experienced across socioeconomic classes. Duterte framed his attack by building on the antagonism between, on one hand, weak liberal institutions, the oligarchs that benefit from the system, and liberal signifiers such as human rights and, on the other hand, the interests of the nation and the popular sovereignty of the “people.” His rhetoric emphasizes the chasm between liberalism and democracy and gives voice to anxieties about a corrupt justice system that the regime of liberal rights only seems to protect. It is no surprise then that within the vitriolic discourse on social media, the “yellows”—the color associated to Aquino’s Liberal Party—or the “bleeding heart liberals” defending

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human rights have been the subjects of criticism, for these personalities get in the way of Duterte’s agenda to deliver his “people” out of the post-EDSA wilderness. Like Marcos, Duterte’s constitution of the “people” is strongly centered on the power of the man himself and his track record as mayor of Davao City. Within his 20-year reign, he made the former murder capital of the Philippines into a paradise of peace and order where virtuous citizens could live. It is no surprise then that he registers the highest support in Mindanao, the island on which Davao is located (see Table 1). Duterte’s appeal lies in the promise of a counter-narrative of a kind of governance that delivers because not despite of cutting corners. Duterte’s mobilization of a populist-nationalist narrative also demonstrates that the legacy of colonialism continues to haunt contemporary politics. The desire to overcome the collective national experience of indignity and fractured sovereignty has historically provided fertile terrain for populist political actors. Like both Marcos and Estrada before him, Duterte offers redemption to a nation, which he describes to be on “the brink of fragmentation.” Duterte claims his leadership is not only capable of rescuing the nation but that he can restore its dignity since he will not tolerate its belittling or the infringement of its sovereignty. Asked during a press conference in September 2016, about the prospect of being confronted with human rights concerns by then US President Barack Obama, Duterte responded: I am a president of a sovereign state. And we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master but the Filipino people. (Duterte 2016)

The enemy in Duterte’s narrative is not simply the United States, as his subsequent embrace of the Trump administration has demonstrated. It is the interference of the United States and any other foreign actors in the autonomy of the Philippine state. And this is all the more the case when the interference comes in the form of liberal rhetoric concerning human and civil rights. Being himself from a migrantsettler family who relocated from Cebu to the ethnolinguistically and religiously diverse “Mindanao South” and given his advocacy for cultural minority groups such as the Lumad (Altez and Caday 2017), statements such as “I am Rodrigo Duterte. I am a Filipino. I love the Philippines because it is the home of my people” (Rappler. com 2015) are all the more powerful and seemingly authentic in the process of restoring the nation.

5 Duterte and the Return to National Boss Rule: A Critical Take In the book Life and Death of Democracy, John Keane (2009) describes populism as democracy’s autoimmune disease. It is not just a symptom of failed democratic institutions: it also attacks every cell that makes democratic life possible. Populism has the potential to destroy democracy’s logic of sharing and humbling power in the name of an imagined people.

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We hesitate to take an immediately disparaging view of populism. Before we declare populism as the disease that kills democratic life, we first need to accurately diagnose the pathologies a nation has experienced. Populism is not evenly experienced. To say that people who support populists are manipulated by a charismatic demagogue is to obscure the complex historical underpinnings of the populist moment, the latent anxieties that the populist has laid bare, and the energy populist leaders bring to invigorate marginalized political actors that lay claim to the public sphere. Populism restores the esteem of many who have felt beaten up for decades. It is only populism that dares to declare that the emperor has no clothes and that the triumph of liberal democracy is hollow in a nation that has prided itself to be Asia’s first democracy. The analytical challenge in studying populism lies in unraveling the longer-term processes and dynamics that give rise to its power and in giving visibility to embedded political logics that cause citizens to respond to the populists’ frame. Rather than immediately declaring populism as a bane for democracy, we think it is more productive to see its ambivalent character. Populism, like nationalism, is not a fixed ideology or phenomenon. It is constantly negotiated, critiqued, affirmed, and rebuffed in everyday life. The challenge is to find the space where populist politics can promote virtues of democratic voice and dignity and defend the institutions that humble populist leaders. When populism is viewed in a historicized and contextualized manner, its immediate dismissal as pathological is conceptually unappealing. The system of meanings underpinning the populist impulse is a critical moment for ambivalent citizens to take action. After all, ambivalence affirms the presence of unmet political aspiration and of how an alternative vision for arrangements of power could be reconstituted in order to better reflect democratic values. But clearly, there are limits. Walden Bello describes Duterte as populist in style but fascist in substance. Duterte’s fascism, for Bello, is sui generis. Duterte’s distinctive contribution “begins with his ‘maximum program’ of massive extrajudicial killings, after which the curtailment of civil liberties and the formal establishment of a dictatorship will be in the nature of ‘mopping-up’ operations” (Bello 2017: 42). For Nathan Quimpo, Duterte’s regime signals the return of the national boss rule (Quimpo 2017). Drawing on the work of John Sidel (1999) and Peter Kreuzer (2016), Quimpo argues that Duterte has strengthened the already strong tradition of death squad killings in the Philippines. Practices of police vigilantism have long been a local phenomenon, as have warlordism and maintenance of private armies. Duterte is not lighting a bonfire to democratic institutions. There are no institutions to burn down. What Duterte can be faulted for is his refusal to harness the political energies he enlivened among his grassroot supporters, to build social arrangements that consistently give voice to the marginalized.

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6 Conclusion In this chapter, we have shown that the extraordinary popularity of Rodrigo Duterte cannot be adequately understood by studying his populist performance or policies alone. When it comes to Duterte’s claims to power, the appeal has deep roots in the Philippines’ colonial history and in a national subjectivity that carries a lingering anxiety about freedom and sovereignty. This historicizing of the populist appeal unsettles simplistic explanations of demagoguery, manipulation, and false consciousness. It also serves as a reminder that the legacies of the past cannot be papered over by a contemporary rhetoric of universal liberal rights. In explaining the popularity of Duterte and the lack of outrage in the Philippines to his rule, we have stressed the need to recognize that citizens who are ambivalent about the status quo make negotiated responses. We consider the most recent “electoral insurgency” not as a pathological form of democratic practice but as an enlivening of political esteem and efficacy among citizens frustrated with liberal democracy. It signals a demand to reclaim the public sphere away from the overly stylized, spin doctor-driven electoral carnival, which fails to give voice to unspeakable miseries. And it responds to the fact that “democracy” in the Philippines has long been a legitimating discourse for anti-democratic practices of power. Like Marcos before him, Duterte claimed a radical mandate to dislocate power from the oligarchy’s stronghold and that of the international syndicates of crime. Yet instead of opening the space for democratic contest and making way for those voices previously marginalized to participate in the public sphere, he has appropriated that power for himself. He has failed to harness the grassroots momentum of his supporters for democratic renewal.

References Altez, A., & Caday, K. (2017). The Mindanaoan President. In N. Curato (Ed.), A Duterte reader: Critical essays on Rodrigo Duterte’s early presidency (pp. 111–126). Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Anderson, B. (1988). Cacique democracy and the Philippines: Origins and dreams. New Left Review, 169, 3–33. Aquino, C. (1983, September 21). Manifesto of freedom, democracy, and sovereignty [Public Statement]. Filipiniana Collection, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City. Bello, W. (2017). The spider spins his web: Rodrigo Duterte’s ascent to power. Philippine Sociological Review, 65(S1), 19–47. Claudio, L. E. (2013). Taming people’s power: The EDSA revolutions and their contradictions. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Curato, N. (2016). Politics of anxiety, politics of hope: Penal populism and Duterte’s rise to power. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 35(3), 91–109. De Cleen, B. (2017). Populism and nationalism. In C. R. Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. O. Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook on populism (pp. 342–362). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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De Cleen, B., & Stavrakakis, Y. (2017). Distinctions and articulations: A discourse theoretical framework for the study of populism and nationalism. Javnost: The Public, 24(4), 301–319. Dowd, M. (2017). The year of voting dangerously: The derangement of American politics. New York: Twelve. Duterte, R. (2016, September 6). Duterte on Obama. Speech, ASEAN Summit, Laos. Rappler. Accessed January 9, 2016, from http://www.rappler.com/nation/145337-transcript-duterteobama-human-rights Evangelista, P., & Curato, N. (2016a). The once and future king. Imagined President Series. Accessed January 8, 2018, from https://www.rappler.com/nation/politics/elections/2016/ 121538-imagined-president-grace-poe Evangelista, P., & Curato, N. (2016b). Cinderella man. Imagined President Series. Accessed January 8, 2018, from https://www.rappler.com/nation/politics/elections/2016/121526-imag ined-president-jojo-binay Hau, C. S. (2000). Necessary fictions: Philippine literature and the nation, 1946–1980. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Hedman, E.-L. (2001). The specter of populism in Philippine politics and society: Artista, Masa, Eraption! Southeast Asia Research, 9(1), 5–44. Keane, J. (2009). The life and death of democracy. London: Simon and Schuster. Kerkvliet, B. (1977). The Huk rebellion: A study of peasant revolt in the Philippines. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kerkvliet, B. (1995). Toward a more comprehensive analysis of Philippine politics: Beyond the patron-client, factional framework. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 26(2), 401–419. Kreuzer, P. (2016). ‘If they resist, kill them all’: Police vigilantism in the Philippines. Peace Research Institute Frankfurt Report No. 142. Accessed January 8, 2018, from https://www. hsfk.de/fileadmin/HSFK/hsfk_publikationen/prif142.pdf Kusaka, W. (2017). Bandit grabbed the state: Duterte’s moral politics. Philippine Sociological Review, 65(S1), 49–75. Laclau, E. (2005). On populist reason. London: Verso. Macapagal, D. (1963, November 30). Speech of President Macapagal at the Bonifacio Centenary Ceremonies [Government publication]. Accessed January 9, 2018, from http://www.officialgazette. gov.ph/1963/11/30/speech-of-president-macapagal-at-the-bonfaciocetenary-ceremonies/ Marcos, F. (1965, December 30). Inauguration Address, President Marcos [Government publication]. Accessed January 9, 2018, from http://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1965/12/30/inauguraladdress-of-president-marcos-december-30-1965/ Marcos, F. (1978). Revolution from the center: How the Philippines is using martial law to build a new society. Hong Kong: Raya. Marcos, F. (1982, May 12). Essay by His Excellency Ferdinand E. Marcos President of the Philippines entitled ‘The True Filipino Ideology’ [Government publication]. Accessed January 9, 2018, from http://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1982/05/12/essay-by-president-marcos-enti tled-the-true-filipino-ideology/ Mendoza, R. U. (2012, March 12). Dynasties in democracies: The political side of inequality. Asian Institute of Management Policy Blog. Accessed January 8, 2018, from http://policy.aim.edu/ blog/2012/03/dynasties-in-democracies-the-political-side-of-inequality Moffitt, B. (2016). The global rise of populism: Performance, political style, and representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 542–563. Pertierra, A. C. (2017). Celebrity politics and televisual melodrama in the age of Duterte. In N. Curato (Ed.), A Duterte reader: Critical essays on Rodrigo Duterte’s early presidency (pp. 219–230). Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Pulse Asia. (2016). Pulse Asia Research’s September 2016 nationwide survey on the word that best describes President Rodrigo Duterte. Pulse Asia. (2018). Pulse Asia Research’s December 2017 nationwide survey on the performance and trust ratings of the top Philippine government officials and key government institutions.

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Quimpo, N. G. (2017). Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’: The securitization of illegal drugs and the return of the national boss rule. In N. Curato (Ed.), A Duterte reader: Critical essays on Rodrigo Duterte’s early presidency (pp. 145–166). Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Rappler.com. (2015, October 29). #TheLeaderIWant: Leadership, Duterte Style [Transcript]. Accessed January 9, 2018, from http://www.rappler.com/nation/politics/elections/2016/ 110679-duterte-contradictions-dictatorship Republic of the Philippines. (1978, June 9). Presidential Decree No. 1413 – Declaring the Theme ‘Isang Bansa, Isang Diwa’ as the national motto in the Republic of the Philippines, and incorporating it in the national seal [Government publication]. Accessed January 9, 2018, from http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/presdecs/pd1978/pd_1413_1978.html Schaffer, F. C. (2002, August 26–27). Disciplinary reactions: Alienation and the reform of vote buying in the Philippines. Paper presented at Trading Political Rights: The Comparative Politics of Vote Buying. Cambridge. Accessed January 8, 2018, from http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/ po15.pdf Sidel, J. T. (1999). Capital coercion and crime: Bossism in the Philippines. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Simbulan, D. C. (2005). The modern principalia: The historical evolution of the Philippine ruling oligarchy. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Tadem, T. E., & Tadem, E. C. (2016). Political dynasties in the Philippines: Persistent patterns, perennial problems. Southeast Asia Research, 24(3), 328–340. Thompson, M. R. (2002). Female leadership of democratic transitions in Asia. Pacific Affairs, 75 (4), 535–555. Thompson, M. R. (2010). Reformism vs. populism in the Philippines. Journal of Democracy, 21(4), 154–168. Webb, A. (2017a). Hide the looking glass: Duterte and the legacy of American imperialism. In N. Curato (Ed.), A Duterte reader: Critical essays on Rodrigo Duterte’s early presidency (pp. 127–144). Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Webb, A. (2017b). Why are the middle-class misbehaving? Exploring democratic ambivalence and authoritarian nostalgia. Philippine Sociological Review, 65(S1), 77–102. Wurfel, D. (1990). Transition to political democracy in the Philippines: 1978–88. In D. Ethier (Ed.), Democratic transition and consolidation in Southern Europe, Latin American and Southeast Asia (pp. 110–135). London: Palgrave.

Populism in Poland Ben Stanley and Mikołaj Cześnik

1 Introduction This chapter offers a synthetic description of populism in contemporary Poland. While this is the only post-communist country discussed in this monograph, aspects of our discussions will be of relevance to other post-communist countries. However, the Polish case is also characterised by some distinctly idiosyncratic elements, which we will discuss in the course of the chapter. Populism has been defined variously as a movement of grassroots democrats (Goodwyn 1991), a political tendency characterised by irresponsibly high levels of government spending and extensive redistribution (Dornbusch and Edwards 1990), a radical emancipatory project for restoring democracy to the marginalised and excluded (Laclau 2007), a political strategy based on direct, personalised appeals by leaders to the people (Weyland 2001) and as a ‘political style’ that involves appealing to the people in a coarse, unrefined fashion (Moffitt and Tormey 2014). While each of these definitions captures something of populism’s numerous manifestations both in the Polish case and elsewhere, none satisfy as an identification of populism’s essence. Instead, we use the ‘thin-ideological’ concept of populism developed by Stanley (2008) and based on the earlier work of Canovan (1999) and Mudde (2004). This definition comprises four key elements. Firstly, it assumes the existence of two homogeneous units of analysis: the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’. Secondly, it posits an antagonistic relationship between these two entities. Thirdly, it gives normative priority to the popular will on the basis of the idea of popular sovereignty. Fourthly, it adds a moral dimension to the political relationships identified above, valorising

B. Stanley · M. Cześnik (*) SWPS University, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Stockemer (ed.), Populism Around the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96758-5_5

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‘the people’ as the genuine, authentic subject of politics while denigrating ‘the elite’ as corrupt, inauthentic and self-interested. In accordance with the structure of chapters in this volume, the first section presents the history of populism in Poland; the second part focuses on the most important contemporary populist politicians, parties and social movements; the third part describes the strategies, tactics and actions of contemporary populist actors; and the fourth part describes the response of the Polish public to populist actors.

2 The History of Populism in Poland While the term ‘populism’ has not been in use for very long in Polish political science, entering into the lexicon only during the last two decades, elements of populism have been present in Polish politics for much longer, at least since Poland regained its independence in 1918. Those aspects of populism that existed during the interwar period (1918–1939) and during the period of communism (1946–1989) are relevant to the varieties of populism that developed after Poland’s transition to democracy in 1989.

2.1

Before 1989: Populism in the Interwar and Communist Eras

The symbolic cleavage of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ is an enduring element of Polish political culture. Prior to the regaining of independence in 1918, Poland was partitioned and dominated by occupying powers. In large parts, Polish national identity developed not through identification with the state but in defiance of its imposed nature (Roszkowski 2006). Although American agrarian populism had some influence on peasant movements which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century (above all, in the Austro-Hungarian partition), the experience of participation kept Poland in a condition of arrested modernity with respect to the process of state-building and the institutions of contemporary politics, such as parties and party systems. The Second Republic, which came into being in 1918, was in many respects underdeveloped in relation to that of Western European countries. Polish society was profoundly divided. Despite the formal abolition of estate or class differences and the introduction of equality of citizens in law, there was a significant conflict between a narrow, wealthy elite (the aristocracy, the landed gentry, a small bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia) and the popular classes. The basis of this divide was not only economic in character but also rested on significant cultural and axiological differences, which found their expression in mutual resentment and contempt. While there was no party that could unambiguously be described as populist, elements of populist discourse—in particular, anti-elitism—were present in the propaganda, programmes

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and political practices of the various socialists, communist and peasant parties and in the movements that sought to represent the popular classes during the interwar era. The Second World War and the period of communist takeover in its aftermath had a profound impact on the structure of Polish society. In regard to populism, the most consequential developments were the advancement of representatives of social groups hitherto disfavoured and the emergence of a new communist elite. These processes had an important influence on the nature of the political context, in which contemporary Polish populism arose. In the first few years of the Polish People’s Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL), the Polish United Workers’ Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR) employed propaganda that sometimes had a very populist character, making positive reference to the people (the working class and the peasantry) as legitimate and sovereign, in contrast to the remnants of the interwar elite (the landed gentry, the bourgeoisie), who were dismissed as illegitimate and usurping. The conflict between these two social groups was defined—in a manner characteristic of communism—in terms of a clash between the old and the new and became a key leitmotif of economic, social and political life. In a process typical of communist states, the nomenklatura of the PZPR swiftly became an elite in its own right. By replacing one elite with another, this process perpetuated the ‘us versus them’ divide between those who exercised power and those over whom power was exercised. Other social processes also exacerbated popular alienation from the holders of political power and helped shape the binary moral discourse characteristic of populist ideology. The absurdities and inconveniences of life under communism drove citizens of the PRL to ‘escape into privacy’, a defensive reaction against the politicisation of all spheres of life and the efforts of the authorities to assume control over them. This process gave rise to a sharp distinction between a private sphere which was the repository of moral virtue, personal dignity and collective pride and a public sphere characterised by corruption and venality. These tensions ultimately manifested in the form of the Solidarity movement, established in 1980, which openly contested the power monopoly enjoyed by the PZPR. While Solidarity did not seek to abolish the communist regime, the fight to be recognised as an independent, self-governing trade union empowered workers of communist enterprises against their supervisors, managerial staff and the party nomenklatura, striking a blow for ordinary working people against the ruling elite. Rather than particularistic interests, Solidarity as a mass movement and an embodiment of the principle of an ‘ethical civil society’ promoted unity and consent, rather than conflicts between social groups. It emphasised the opposition between the people as the genuine expression of the legitimate Polish nation and the elite as an illegitimate expression of an imposed, alien and inauthentic state structure. Although the Solidarity movement was successfully repressed by the regime, it would never again return to the form it had taken in 1980–1981. Its concern for the dignity of the ordinary man, its appreciation of traditional Polish values and identities and its Manichean vision of the political world provided a new iteration of the ‘us versus them’ discourse, in ways which were accessible to Polish populists after

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the end of communism. Its charismatic figurehead, Lech Wałęsa, also embodied a particular archetype of the ‘popular tribune’: a simple, plain-spoken leader with the ability to bypass institutions and elite discourses and implement solutions in the popular interest. While Wałęsa’s own political career stalled after one term as president, the manner of thinking and modes of action he embodied—characterised by a distrust in elites and professionals and their institutions, a propensity to communicate using simple, blunt language, an appreciation for the wisdom of ‘ordinary people’ and the conviction that difficult and complicated matters can easily be resolved by decisive unilateral action—was echoed in the rhetoric and strategies of the populists who followed him.

2.2

After 1989: The Rise of Populists from the Margins to the Mainstream

While the role of the Solidarity movement in weakening the legitimacy of the communist regime is undeniable, the populist elements of the movement were sidelined during the democratisation process, which took the form of a pacted transition rather than a grassroots revolution (cf. Linz and Stepan 1996). The agreement between the communist and opposition elites shaped the character of the political blocs, agenda and discourse of Polish politics in the 1990s. This ‘post-communist divide’ (Grabowska 2004) was dominated by conflicting attitudes towards the communist regime, leaving little room for populist critics of the controversial and painful reforms in the post-1989 transition period. As well as shaping the agenda of politics, the post-communist divide was also the clearest heuristic for disoriented voters in the emerging party system, which made it more difficult for populist parties to gain support and consolidate their positions in the nascent party system. The first prominent example of the populist ‘flash’ parties that flitted across the Polish political landscape in the 1990s was Party X, founded in 1990 by Stanisław Tymiński, one of the presidential candidates in the first free presidential election in 1990. Positioning himself as an outsider to the post-communist divide, Tymiński rooted his appeal in a populist critique of the entire political class—both postcommunist and post-Solidarity—on behalf of those experiencing economic, political and social hardships resulting from the transition to democracy. However, while Tymiński came an unexpected second in the presidential election, Party X failed to translate its leader’s prominence into electoral breakthroughs in 1991 and 1993. Throughout the 1990s, the dominance of the post-communist divide prevented populists from achieving any conspicuous success: they were either marginal parties of the Party X type or were minor players in large umbrella coalitions. However, the context of the party system began to change towards the end of the 1990s. Parties associated with the post-communist divide began to suffer the effects of ‘hyperaccountability’ (Roberts 2008), with incumbents being punished at each election and in a constant rotation of power. At the same time, there was a broad

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consensus over the nature, direction and goals of democratic transition and consolidation. This was particularly the case over questions of economic policy, where no alternatives to the dominant neo-liberal paradigm were articulated. This situation was increasingly propitious for populists. The rotation of parties in and out of power made it easier for newcomers to appeal to the electorate on the basis of their ‘newness’ (Sikk 2012), while the general consensus over policy made it easier for newcomers to exploit a new political agenda that referred to the ‘anxieties of transition’ (Millard 2006). Populists were well placed to take advantage of this situation: the pacted nature of transition, the elite-led technocratic nature of its implementation, the lack of clear alternatives and the growing impatience and discontent among a society whose members were ‘richer, but unhappy’ (Otto 2006). This created an ideological opportunity structure for parties willing to break with the policy consensus and mount uncompromising attacks on the elite of Poland’s Third Republic. Populist parties duly achieved an electoral breakthrough in the ‘unexpected earthquake’ (Szczerbiak 2002) election of 2001, with two entering parliament. The first of these, Self-Defence (Samoobrona Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej, SRP), had unsuccessfully participated in elections throughout the 1990s, keeping itself in the public eye, thanks to an eye-catching repertoire of direct action and the controversial statements of its charismatic leader Andrzej Lepper. SRP emerged from a social movement and trade union set up in the early 1990s to defend the interests of farmers struggling to adapt to the new market realities. Of all the parties discussed in this chapter, the SRP is the closest to a ‘pure’ form of populism. In Lepper’s own words, SRP appealed to an age-old divide in Polish social and political culture between ‘gentlemen and boors’ (Lepper 2002, 8), of which the clash between the incompetent, corrupt, collusive elites of the Third Republic and the victims of transition was simply the latest iteration. While SRP’s populism was itself the most salient feature of the party’s appeal, in terms of policy, the party focused on the opposition to the neo-liberal economic model, blaming a conspiracy of domestic elites and foreign capital for the failure of successive governments to realise the promise of positive economic rights, and aimed at recovering economic sovereignty in the service of the popular interest, through deliberalising and nationalising strategic sectors and embarking on an expansionist fiscal policy. While SRP was not Eurosceptic in principle, it was unenthusiastic about accession and highly critical of the terms negotiated for Poland’s accession, raising fears over the decline of Polish agriculture in the face of foreign competition, loss of sovereignty over monetary policy and the possibility of German claims for restitution of land and property. The second populist party, the League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin, LPR), was a radical right-wing party created through the amalgamation of several minor nationalist and clerical parties, some of which revived authoritarian political currents from the interwar era (Zuba 2017a). It combined a fundamentalist Catholic approach to social values with a nationalist appeal, rooted in a ‘Pole-Catholic’ (Polak-katolik) conception of identity (Zubrzycki 2006, 56). Its programme called for hard Euroscepticism, the protection of traditional values and economic selfsufficiency, with restrictions on foreign competition and capital (Liga Polskich

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Rodzin 2006, 5–6). These goals echoed those of its patron: the media empire centred around the Radio Maryja radio station and its proprietor, Father Tadeusz Rydzyk. While LPR’s leadership coterie lacked the popular appeal and charisma of someone like Andrzej Lepper, the Radio Maryja organisation, which had expanded during the 1990s to create a nationwide network of media and educational institutions and a grassroots organisation of ’Radio Maryja families’ embedded in local parishes (Burdziej 2008, 28; Zuba 2017b, 90), provided LPR with access to a powerfully institutionalised expression of ‘populist Catholicism’, which pitted the spiritual commonality and traditional values of ‘ordinary Poles’ against the threatening currents of atheistic modernism (see Stanley (2016, 112–116) for a more detailed discussion of this phenomenon). The breakthrough of populism in 2001 had a profound impact on the nature of the Polish political system in three ways: it disrupted the dominant line of conflict in the party system, pitting populist parties versus establishment parties; it gave party leaders gained greater prominence as populist personalisation, setting the tone of political communication; and it shifted political discourse from the historical concerns of the post-communist divide to the present-day concerns of liberal constitutional settlements, the perceived gap between the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of transition and the extent of corruption and other abuses of privilege. These issues were highly conducive to the expansion of populist appeals.

3 Current Populist Actors and Parties The impact of the populist breakthrough took some time to exert its full effect on the Polish party system. During the 2001–2005 parliamentary term, the themes of economic turbulence and corruption and the uncertainties surrounding Poland’s accession to the European Union became increasingly central to political discourse. While SRP and LPR benefited from the prominence of these issues, the antiestablishment mood was also conducive to the success of another party which entered parliament in 2001: the conservative and anti-communist Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS).

3.1

Law and Justice (PiS)

Initially, PiS kept well within the ideological framework of the post-communist divide. It was characterised by a relatively moderate conservatism and a particular emphasis on decommunisation. However, elements of the party’s ideological appeal were compatible with the rising anti-establishment sentiment. PiS emerged from a dissident element of Solidarity, which felt itself to have been sidelined by a liberal establishment. This group, centred around former Solidarity activist and head of President Wałęsa’s chancellery Jarosław Kaczyński, played a brief but important

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role in the early years of transition as the Centre Agreement party (Porozumienie Centrum, PC). Yet they failed to return to parliament in the 1993 elections, spending the rest of the first decade of transition in a position of marginal influence. By mid-2001, this group reconvened to set up PiS in advance of the 2001 elections. They benefited from the prominence and popularity of Lech Kaczyński, Jarosław’s twin brother, who as Justice Minister from 2000 to 2001 was one of the few postSolidarity figures to emerge from the 1997–2001 parliamentary term with his reputation not only intact but enhanced. At the beginning of the 2001–2005 parliamentary term, PiS eschewed the radicalism of SRP and PiS and largely refrained from joining them in their attacks on the economic and cultural politics of transition. Instead, it concentrated on the key objectives of tackling corruption and decommunising the state. However, with these themes becoming increasingly prominent in political discourse as incidences of high-level corruption were brought to public attention (Millard 2006, 1011), support for PiS rose, as did the credibility of its ‘deep story’ (Hochschild 2016) of a ‘stolen transition’. In essence, PiS argued that Poland’s pacted transition was simply a compact between the communist-era nomenklatura and liberal Solidarity, with the former yielding power to the latter, in exchange for impunity for past crimes and opportunities for enrichment under the new regime. This agreement created an elite network (układ) whose influence stretched across the political, administrative, business and media sectors and which worked to delegitimise political actors who might pose a threat to its interests. Although PiS had not originally set out to offer a radical platform comparable to that of SRP and LPR, the radicalisation of Polish politics during the 2001–2005 term—and the precipitous decline of the post-communist left—created an opportunity structure that PiS was best placed to exploit. The dynamic of the dual parliamentary and presidential elections of September to October 2005 overturned common assumptions that the post-communist divide would continue to exert a decisive influence. While PiS and the liberal-conservative Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska; PO)—another post-Solidarity formation that entered parliament in 2001—were expected to form the new government, the decline of the left created a situation in which these two parties were competitors. Over the course of two election campaigns, PiS reframed the basic choice as the ‘solidaristic’ vision they embodied or the ‘liberal’ vision of Poland offered by PO (Szczerbiak 2007, 204). This gambit proved successful, with Lech Kaczyński elected president and PiS gaining the largest share of votes in the parliamentary elections. PO came a close second, while LPR and SRP maintained their status as important minor parties, but did not make significant gains. The acrimonious nature of the election campaigns poisoned relationships between the leaders of PiS and PO, leading to the collapse of coalition talks between the two parties. For several months, PiS attempted to govern as a minority but, when confronted with the prospect of new elections, signed a ‘stabilisation pact’ with SRP and LPR and subsequently a formal coalition agreement. While contingent events had brought together parties which would not have considered each other allies—much less prospective coalition partners—the short and turbulent period in office for this ‘populist coalition’ would demonstrate that its

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members had much in common. If the PiS minority administration was relatively restrained in its approach, the formation of the coalition and achievement of a parliamentary majority saw a change to this approach. In a set-piece parliamentary speech prior to the vote of confidence in the coalition government, Jarosław Kaczyński declared that it would target the ‘mendacious elites’ (łże-elity) of the Third Republic in the interests of ‘ordinary people, ordinary Poles’ (Jarosław Kaczyński, cited in Sejm Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 2007, session 10, day 3, 12 May 2006), through an ambitious legislative programme that aimed at reforming state institutions, abandoning neo-liberal economic orthodoxy, protecting traditional values and patriotic identity and conducting a more assertive foreign policy. PiS began to associate itself more closely with the prosocial economic priorities of SRP and the cultural traditionalism of LPR, although it still affected to be the reluctant partner to dangerous radicals. The coalition rapidly descended into chaos. Attempts to implement the more radical elements of its agenda ran into staunch opposition from Poland’s liberaldemocratic institutions, in particular the Constitutional Tribunal, and SRP and LPR were awkward and unpredictable junior partners, whose volatility led to five changes in the composition of government during its brief time in power. Ultimately, the political impact of the coalition was far more important than its legislative impact. This manifested itself in two ways. First, PiS saw an opportunity to expand their appeal at the expense of their junior coalition partners, by adopting their policies and rhetoric, which led them in a more radical direction. Second, the logic of populism compounded the radicalisation of political life in ways that PiS did not entirely control. The coalition’s invocation of crisis, emotionalisation of differences and rhetorical and legislative assault on the elite forced the opposition to define itself in relation to the populists. In circumstances of elevated political tension, attempts to repel the coalition’s agenda only served to confirm that ‘the network is defending itself’ (układ się broni) and to demonstrate the unity and hostility of an elite towards the representatives of the people. This was compounded by significant international support for the ‘pro-democratic opposition’. The volatile nature of the coalition and PiS’s mounting frustration towards the legislative ‘impossibilism’ of liberal democracy brought the parliamentary term to a premature end, with elections held in October 2007. These elections were comfortably won by PO, who formed a coalition government with the agrarian Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, PSL). Both SRP and LPR failed to return to parliament and played no further significant role in Polish politics. For PiS, the election was a defeat but also an endorsement of its strategy: it gained votes and seats and was confirmed as one of the two major parties. The new alignment of the party system was confirmed by the result of the subsequent election in 2011, with little change in PiS and PO’s vote shares. For the first few years of the PO-PSL government, PiS lacked a clear line of attack against an administration that pursued the objectives of moderate, calm and uncontroversial governance. The death of Lech Kaczyński in the Smoleńsk air crash of April 2010 also gave PiS a renewed sense of purpose. After the defeat of Jarosław Kaczyński in the ensuing presidential election, PiS began to intensify links

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with social movements that protested at the government’s handling in the aftermath of the disaster. Together, they developed a narrative of betrayal which insinuated collusion between the PO-PSL government and the Russian authorities in concealing the ‘truth about Smoleńsk’ and even at times implied that both sides had conspired in Lech Kaczyński’s assassination. This narrative of elite collusion and institutional incompetence gave new life to PiS’s ‘deep story’ and became an essential element of the political appeal, devised to lead the party to victory in the 2015 elections. After the 2011 elections, Jarosław Kaczyński remarked that while Poles currently seemed to be content with the status quo, he could foresee a time when a ‘Budapest-on-the-Wisła’ would emerge (Anonymous 2011). Kaczyński was referring to the spectacular return to power of the Fidesz party in the Hungarian elections of 2010, where its landslide victory enabled it to embark on a radical set of reforms that departed significantly from liberal-democratic norms. In 2015, Kaczyński’s conviction was duly rewarded, with PiS enjoying decisive victories in the presidential and parliamentary elections. The extent of PiS’s victories owed much to contingent circumstances, with incumbent President Bronisław Komorowski’s complacency leading to a fatal underestimation of relative novice Andrzej Duda and the failure of the left-wing coalition United Left (Zjednoczona Lewica, ZL) to surmount the 8% threshold for coalitions. This lead to a high proportion of wasted votes and gave PiS an overall majority from only 37.5% of the vote (Markowski 2016, 1315). Yet the fact of these victories owed much to the ‘disillusionment with the country’s ruling elite together with a strong prevailing mood that it was time for change’ (Szczerbiak 2016, 421). If PO’s victories in 2007 and 2011 were victories for their politics of ‘warm water in the taps’, PiS’s victory in 2015 was a victory for those who wanted to shake the country out of its complacent lethargy.

3.2

Kukiz’15

While PiS absorbed the political appeal—and a significant portion of the electorate—of the populist parties that emerged in 2001, it did not wholly eliminate the scope for new anti-establishment parties to emerge. In 2011, the liberal Palikot Movement (Ruch Palikota, RP) came from nowhere during the campaign to gain 10% of the vote. Although the inexperience of its deputies and the mercurial nature of its leadership led RP to squander the opportunity to establish itself in the party system, the success of the party in mobilising constituencies whose views and values were inadequately represented by established parties (Stanley and Czesnik 2016, 716), testified to the fact that the Polish party system remained only semi-consolidated. At the 2015 elections, the Kukiz’15 movement took advantage of the receptivity of Polish voters to new political forces. Kukiz’15 emerged from a campaign for electoral reform pursued by its leader, rock singer Paweł Kukiz. On the basis of this campaign, Kukiz ran for president in the elections of May 2015, coming an unexpected third with over 3 million votes. Kukiz’s result convinced him that there was

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significant support to be gained by appealing to voters disenchanted with the established political parties. Over the summer of 2015, Kukiz set up a citizens’ movement which registered electoral lists for the 2015 parliamentary elections. These lists were ideological heterogeneous, but the most competently organised group of candidates consisted of members of radical-right nationalist movements. In the 2015 election, the Kukiz’15 electoral list gained 8.81% of the vote, giving it 42 of 460 seats in parliament and making it the third force behind PiS and PO. Kukiz’15’s anti-establishment populism is the most salient aspect of its political appeal. Rather than focusing on the liberal elites of transition, Kukiz’15 attacks the ‘partiocracy’ as a whole, arguing that the PiS-PO divide is a spurious cover for an entrenched cartel of professional politicians. Underlining its rejection of the formal structures of the party system, Kukiz’15 refuses to register itself as a political party, to take subventions from the state budget or to enforce party discipline in the legislature. Despite this, it functions as a distinct parliamentary club and is no more prone to factionalism and defection than other minor parties. Kukiz’15 has refused to publish a manifesto, arguing that one of the major problems with Polish democracy is ideological dogmatism and the making of unfulfilled—or unfulfillable—promises (Osiecki 2015). However, it does have several key programmatic postulates. The introduction of a single-member majoritarian electoral system to promote individual accountability to the electorate remains a core priority. Kukiz’15 also places significant emphasis on the goal of replacing the liberal-democratic political system with a system based on a more extensive use of direct democracy (Kukiz’15 2015, 7). While Kukiz’15 purports to be nonideological, the priorities and preferences of the movement are broadly consistent with the typical profile of populist radical right parties. A significant proportion of the Kukiz’15 electoral list was drawn from the ranks of radical right social movements, in particular the National Movement (Ruch Narodowy, RN). The nativist, exclusionist agenda of the RN was a major part of Kukiz’15’s electoral appeal, which emphasised the threats to Poland’s Catholic identity and the elevated risk of terrorism posed by the European Union’s quota system for the relocation of Syrian refugees. The economic priorities of the movement are eclectic in character: while the party’s ‘Strategy For Change’ calls for the liquidation of personal income tax and the dramatic lowering of corporate income tax, it also proposes ‘solidarity levies’ on bank transactions, property taxes on large supermarkets and value added tax exemptions for ‘primary needs goods’. As Mudde (2007, 137) observes, the apparently incoherent quality of the economic policies of the populist radical right result from the fact that they are subordinate to the ‘primary ideological agenda’ of nativism, authoritarianism and populism. In the case of Kukiz’15, the overall purpose of its economic policies is to free Poland from its current status as the ‘neo-colony of foreign governments and international corporations’ (Kukiz’15 2015, 17).

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Populist Social Movements

Aside from political parties, there are several social movements and civil society organisations which play an important role in disseminating populist narratives. The most prominent organisations are chiefly, although not exclusively linked with PiS, with whom they exist in a symbiotic relationship. They benefit financially from access to state resources over which PiS, as the ruling party, currently has control, and in turn they provide PiS with organisational resources for extra-parliamentary activities, such as street protests and media campaigns. Chief among these organisations is the aforementioned Radio Maryja, which is a large media concern controlled by the Lux Veritatis Foundation, consisting of a radio station (Radio Maryja), a television station (Telewizja Trwam) and a press title (Nasz Dziennik; formally not linked with the concern, but informally closely connected). Several other press titles and other media (i.e. Gość Niedzielny, KAI, TV Republika) present perspectives and views close to Radio Maryja and support them in media conflicts and confrontations. Radio Maryja has been very active as a propagator of PiS’s ideological narrative, particularly during the time when the party was in opposition and lacked the dominance over public media that it currently enjoys. At the grassroots level, the ‘Radio Maryja circles’ also transmit and perpetuate this narrative. Another organisation which is closely linked with PiS and which is particularly important for the shaping of PiS’s populist narrative in recent years is the Solidarni 2010 Association. This organisation was founded in 2011, constituting the formalisation of a dissident movement of protesters, which emerged in the aftermath of the Smoleńsk disaster and began elaborating conspiracy theories about the reasons for the disaster. While PiS initially distanced itself from these theories, it began to cooperate more closely with the organisation and participate in its activities, as the political potential from the conspiracy theory narrative became more evident. Since May 2010, organisers associated with Solidarni 2010 and PiS have held cyclical monthly gatherings outside the presidential palace to commemorate the disaster. At first, these gatherings had a predominantly religious character, but with time the event has become increasingly political, particularly after the publication of the official report into the Smoleńsk crash and the subsequent decision by PiS—which considered the official report to be a whitewash—to pursue an independent investigation into the disaster. PiS is also informally aligned with the ‘Gazeta Polska Clubs’: a network of local meeting clubs set up by readers of the Gazeta Polska weekly in Poland and among the Polish diaspora. These clubs, which number an estimated 10,000 members, serve as focal points for the presentation and discussion of ideas associated with the conservative right. Gazeta Polska is aligned with PiS and a current beneficiary of its state advertising resources, and the clubs serve as a means to propagate ideas emanating from intellectual circles connected with PiS, organising demonstrations and protest actions. The aforementioned National Movement (Ruch Narodowy, RN) also plays an important role as a social movement that articulates the populist radical right

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narrative. RN was set up in 2012 with the explicit intention to bring together and re-energise a set of radical-right movements, which had fallen into abeyance in the preceding years. Using the resources of its component organisations, RN spread radical right ideas through engagement with right-wing think-tanks and academics, organised meetings, rallies and marches of local sympathisers in towns and cities across Poland and exploited social media to cultivate support among young people. The latter skill made it a particularly useful partner for Kukiz’15 in the 2015 election, at which five RM members gained seats on the Kukiz’15 electoral list. The RM manifesto had much in common with the populist Catholic-nationalist discourse of LPR and incorporated new issues, in particular immigration and the threat of terrorism (Ruch Narodowy 2016).

4 Agendas and Strategies of Populist Actors The agendas of PiS and Kukiz’15 are substantially different in character, as are the circumstances in which they are attempting to realise them. In 2015, PiS became the first party in post-communist Poland to be able to govern without a coalition partner.1 Its dominance in parliament and in both parts of the executive has given it significant capacity to implement its agenda of elite replacement and system change. Kukiz’15 currently has very little scope to pursue the more substantive aspects of its agenda, such as electoral reform. However, its status as the third-largest party in parliament gives it the opportunity to pursue its crusade against the party system establishment, without incurring the costs of governing experienced by SRP and LPR in 2006–2007.

4.1

PiS

After its victory in 2015, PiS began consolidating its power by attacking key institutions and implementing flagship election promises. During its previous term in office, it had learned two lessons that were to be crucial in informing its priorities on returning to power: the importance of neutralising independent institutions that might prove a stumbling block to the realisation of its legislative priorities and the need to draw the sting of potentially controversial reforms by implementing attractive and crowd-pleasing policies.

1 Technically, PiS does not have a single-party majority, as it shared its electoral list with the minor United Poland (Solidarna Polska, SP) and Poland Together (Polska Razem, PR; now called Porozumienie). However, both parties are ideologically aligned with PiS and act in complete accordance with PiS’s agenda.

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The agenda pursued by PiS during its first 2 years in power devolved into three essential categories. The first aspect of this agenda was ‘elite replacement’: the purging of the individuals and networks associated with Poland’s Third Republic and their replacement with an alternative, more authentic and legitimate elite, whose actions can be influenced and steered and can be trusted to serve PiS’s agenda. The second aspect was a fundamental system change. PiS regarded it as insufficient to simply replace the current elite; it would also be necessary to break away from the dysfunctional system of liberal ‘impossibilism’: a set of institutional arrangements which make it impossible for elected governments to govern freely by constraining the scope of achievable policy within narrow bounds. The third element of this agenda was to entrench popular support for the party in ways that ensure the maintenance of social peace during a period of significant institutional upheaval. The first 2 years of PiS’s rule were characterised by an unusual blend of crisis and stability. In keeping with a common strategy employed by populist parties, PiS embarked upon the ‘performance of crisis’ (Moffitt 2014): a set of discursive actions that produce and perpetuate the experience of crisis, the deepening of which can then be used to justify further actions. As philologist Michał Głowiński (2006) noted during PiS’s first spell in power, that PiS rhetoric was carefully tailored to portray the party as the loser of political battles rather than the winner. This stance helped to legitimise the government’s actions by generating the perception that hard-won gains were constantly under the threat of being overturned. A similar logic can be observed in PiS’s actions and rhetoric since regaining office. The first three steps of Moffitt’s (2014, 198) model of the performance of crisis are (1) to identify failure, (2) to elevate that failure to the level of a crisis by connecting it with a broader set of problems experienced over a period of time and (3) to counterpose ‘the people’ with those responsible for the crisis. PiS’s populist appeal is founded on its identification of three distinct types of failure: political failure (the existence of corruption and state capture), economic failure (the exclusion of certain social groups from the benefits of growth) and cultural failure (the unwillingness or incapacity of the state to protect ‘authentic’ Polish identity and values from the amoral and ahistorical nebulousness of cosmopolitanism). These discrete symptoms of failure were worked into a narrative of systemic pathology—of ‘democratisation gone wrong’—and the blame was attributed to the post-communist and liberal elites who presided over Poland’s post-communist transition. The narrative of crisis having been created, the next steps are to implant it in the public imagination through a series of communicative acts and by using the media to propagate the performance of crisis. Upon taking office, PiS moved immediately to purge and politicise state media to an unprecedented extent, enabling it to control the presentation of its narrative and discredit the actions of the parliamentary and extraparliamentary opposition. This was vital to the success of the legislative ‘shock and awe’ programme PiS embarked upon from the beginning of its term in office. Recognising that the Constitutional Tribunal represented the most significant institutional obstacle to the realisation of the government’s broader legislative agenda, PiS moved to block the appointment of three legitimately elected judges to the Tribunal and appoint in their

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place judges who it expected to be more open to political influence. By the end of 2016, the political capture of the Tribunal was complete and the government used its majority to replace the outgoing Tribunal president with one of its loyal appointees. Over the following year, PiS turned its attentions to establishing control over the judiciary, passing laws enabling it to purge and politicise the Supreme Court and the National Council of the Judiciary and to exert greater control over the work of the ordinary courts. These actions—as well as amendments restricting freedom of assembly and the politicisation of public media—brought the PiS government into conflict with the European Commission, which opened an investigation into the condition of the rule of law in Poland and eventually issued a proposal for unprecedented EU action against Poland. By using the legislature to paralyse the institutions controlling the executive and abusing parliamentary procedure to push through legislation without adequate scrutiny (in things like defiance to parliamentary opposition, extra-parliamentary protest and international criticism), PiS not only managed to achieve goals crucial to their agenda for system change but also gave the impression of strong leadership and the application of simple solutions to complex problems—the next stage in the crisis playbook. PiS’s dominance of the executive and legislative branches of power gave it the instruments needed to solve the problem of the judicial branch; instead of unpicking liberalism’s Gordian knot of checks and balances, PiS slashed straight through it. A crucial aspect of PiS’s continued appeal during this period was its apparent willingness to think the unthinkable, say the unsayable, and achieve the unachievable, a quality which starkly contrasted with PO’s cautious ‘can’t do’ incrementalism. In projecting this image, it was assisted by the persistent weakness of the opposition, the ease with which street protests could be contained and the ineffectuality of European institutions, which were all hampered by a lack of adequate tools to counter democratic backsliding and a lack of political will to deal with this problem (Kelemen 2017, 230–231). The final step in the performance of crisis is to continue its propagation. The replacement of Prime Minister Beata Szydło with Mateusz Morawiecki, and a subsequent reshuffle which removed several of the more controversial government ministers, was broadly interpreted as a shift in a more moderate direction, with the government engaging in more constructive discussions with the European Commission about the rule of law issue. However, PiS swiftly reverted to its previous modus operandi, passing a controversial set of amendments criminalising the attribution of responsibility to the Polish state or nation for crimes of the Holocaust ‘in defiance of the truth’, escalating the ensuing diplomatic conflict with inflammatory rhetoric and only then indicating a willingness to negotiate with interested parties. These actions were consistent with an approach to politics that placed the performance of crisis in the service of a broader strategy of ‘overbidding and partial withdrawal’. PiS worked by establishing new facts on the ground before those changes could be prevented and then backed down on points of detail, resulting not in reversion to the status quo ante but in the establishment of a new equilibrium. The passage of popular policies, in particular a generous child benefit programme and the lowering of the retirement age, helped PiS insulate itself from the possibility

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of a public backlash to controversial reforms. The implementation of popular policies such as the 500+ child benefit programme and the lowering of the retirement age meant that PiS fulfilled key election promises but also buttressed its narrative of restoring popular justice in the teeth of elite opposition. Public media served to reinforce PiS’s message and delegitimise opposition criticism, reinforcing the image of calm and competent governance beneath the surface froth of politics. Broad trends in public opinion during this period betrayed no widespread concern at PiS’s institutional revolution.

4.2

Kukiz’15

Since entering parliament, Kukiz’15 has pursued a strategy in keeping with its rejection of the ‘partiocracy’, presenting itself as a party of opposition (but not of opposition to the PiS government) and predicated its support or rejection of government bills solely on the extent of its agreement or disagreement with the policy in question. Analyses of the voting behaviour of the Kukiz’15’s parliamentary club lend some support to this claim. For example, on one of the most controversial and polarising issues of the parliamentary term—amendments to the Law on the Constitutional Tribunal—Kukiz’15 voted once in support of the government, once against and abstained once (Szczęśniak 2016). Given the absence of parliamentary discipline in the Kukiz’15 parliamentary club, it is unclear to what extent the behaviour of the movement in the legislature reflects its members’ ethos of principled opposition and to what extent it constitutes a coordinated strategy of ‘triangulation’ in the context of a party system, currently otherwise characterised by an insuperable divide between a single-party government and a ‘total opposition’. Regardless of the extent to which principle or expedience best explains the actions of Kukiz’15, the effect is to distinguish the movement from the rest of the opposition, helping it preserve its anti-system credentials in parliament, and to reinforce its claims as a party motivated by responsible governance rather than ideological competition. As PiS is able to govern without a coalition partner, the question of how Kukiz’15 would respond to the possibility of sharing power, and whether it would experience the same fate as SRP and LPR in doing so, is likely to remain unresolved.

5 The Popular Appeal of Populists in the Population A common stereotype concerning support for PiS is that it is concentrated in the more economically and socially more vulnerable socio-demographic groups of ‘Poland B’: older voters, those with lower levels of education, those in blue-collar jobs, those living in the countryside or in small towns and provincial cities and those who are religiously more devout. PO, on the other hand, is regarded as the party of

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‘Poland A’: younger voters, those with higher levels of education, those in whitecollar and managerial jobs, those living in large towns and major cities and those who are less religiously devout. This socio-demographic breakdown might lead us to believe that PiS supporters are more likely to be receptive to populism, given that ‘Poland B’ consists of those who have, relatively speaking, done less well out of the process of transition and can therefore be mobilised on the basis of opposition to transition elites. There is some truth to this stereotype, although the reality is somewhat more nuanced. Since 2005, PiS’s electorate has become more rural in character: in 2005, just over a third (34%) of PiS supporters lived in villages, compared with half (50%) in 2015. It has also become older: in 2005, 14% of PiS supporters were aged between 55 and 64 and 15% were aged 65 or more, compared with just under a quarter (24%) in both age categories in 2015. The educational profile of PiS’s electorate has also shifted to incorporate relatively more of the less well-educated and relatively fewer of the better-educated. In 2005, 21% of PiS’s electorate had only primary-level education, compared with 26% of the voting population as a whole, while 14% had higher education, the same proportion found among the average voter. In 2015, 23% of PiS’s electorate had only primary-level education, compared with 17% of voters overall, and 20% had higher education, compared with 30% overall. However, in 2015 PiS’s electorate were no more likely than the average voter to be skilled or unskilled bluecollar workers (13%). Finally, PiS’s supporters were increasingly religious in character: in 2005, the proportion of PiS voters who attended church once a week was seven percentage points higher than the average voter (60%, compared with 53%), but in 2015 it was 14 percentage points higher (59%, compared with 45%). PiS’s electorate was also significantly less likely to regard itself as advantaged: in 2015, just over two fifths (43%) of PiS voters said that their material situation was good, compared with over half (53%) of respondents overall, and over six in ten (63%) of those who voted for PO (all figures above taken from CBOS 2017b). Exit poll data from the 2015 elections bear out these patterns. However, it is also clear from the data that PiS’s success in 2015 was in large measure attributed to its ability to appeal to socio-demographic categories, which constituted a lower proportion of its electorate. While PiS’s electorate was dominated by older voters, it nevertheless had a plurality of support among those aged between 18 and 29, with over a quarter (25.8%) in this category supporting PiS, compared with only 14.6% who supported PO. Nearly three in ten (29.1%) of those with higher education supported PiS, compared to just over a quarter (26.8%) who supported PO. Three in ten (30%) of those in large cities voted for PiS, compared to 28.4% who voted for PO (Szczerbiak 2016, 414). This indicates that while a significant proportion of PiS’s support came from those who might be expected to be more receptive to a populist attack on the liberal elite, the party also enjoyed support from many of those who had been the beneficiaries of transition. Stanley (2018) has analysed the impact of ideological attitudes on vote choice in the 2015 election, using data from the Polish National Election Study. This data distinguishes between ‘thick-ideological’ attitudes on the economy and on cultural matters and the ‘thin-ideological’ attitudes associated with populism. Using index

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scales which operationalise economic attitudes, cultural attitudes and populist attitudes, Stanley calculates the probability of voting for PiS as these attitudes vary. This analysis shows that cultural attitudes are of primary importance for PiS’s electorate: having strongly liberal views is associated with only a 0.04 probability of voting for PiS, while those who have strongly antiliberal views have a 0.67 probability of voting for PiS. Changes in attitudes on the economy do not significantly affect the probability of voting for PiS; this is possibly attributable to the fact that there is less variation on this index, with the average Pole having moderately interventionist views on the economy. When it comes to populism, it is clear that populist attitudes had a significant effect on support for PiS in the 2015 election: among those who have anti-populist attitudes, the probability of voting for PiS is 0.17, while among those who have strongly populist attitudes, the probability is 0.32. The corresponding probabilities of voting for PO are 0.28 and 0.11, indicating that populist attitudes are significant to the main divide in Polish party politics at the demand side as well as the supply side. In keeping with the newer and more ideologically amorphous character of the movement, Kukiz’15’s electorate in 2015 is less clearly reflective of the ‘Poland A versus Poland B’ divide. However, it does have some distinct socio-demographic and ideological characteristics. The most significant aspect of this party’s socio-demographic profile is its mobilisation of younger voters. At the time of the 2015 election, just under two thirds (64%) of Kukiz’15’s electorate comprised voters aged between 18 and 34. Men (57%) were also more likely than women (43%) to vote for Kukiz’15. Geographical support was clearly slanted towards rural and small-town Poland, with just over a third (34%) of the party’s voters coming from villages, compared with only 15% in large cities. However, the educational profile of the Kukiz’15 electorate differed significantly from that of PiS: over two fifths (44%) had secondary education, compared with less than a tenth (9%) who had only primary education. Those voting for Kukiz’15 were also much closer to the average voter in terms of their religiosity. Notably, the Kukiz’15 electorate was just as likely as the average voter to have a positive view of their material circumstances (all figures above taken from CBOS 2017a). The exit poll figures reflect the particular importance of the youth vote to the appeal of Kukiz’15. While they gained 8.8% of the vote, they had 19.9% of the vote among those aged between 18 and 29 (Szczerbiak 2016, 414). The ideological picture on the demand side reflects the fact that the movement is considerably less coherent than PiS in an ideological sense. In 2015, over half (52%) of Kukiz’15 supporters identified themselves as having centrist views, while 24% saw themselves as right-wing and 12% as left wing. Two years on, and with the rightwing element in the party having become more prominent through its work in parliament and active engagement with the media, approximately the same proportions of Kukiz’15 supporters saw themselves as right-wing (37%) as saw themselves as centrist (38%). However, Kukiz’15 voters remain less likely than the average voter (41%) to describe themselves as right-wing. This relative ideological fluidity is reflected in Stanley’s (2018) findings: changing the level of respondents’ cultural and economic attitudes made them no more or less likely to vote for Kukiz’15.

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Similarly, populist attitudes also had no statistically significant effect on the propensity to vote for Kukiz. Overall, these findings reflect the different kinds of populist appeal expressed in the supply-side appeals of the major parties. In the case of PiS, there has clearly been a crystallisation of a core electorate representing socio-demographic constituencies that are more receptive to the antiliberal thick-ideological appeal of the party and the thin-ideological populist narrative through which those values and policy priorities are expressed. At the same time, PiS has been able to appeal to more moderate centrist voters who have not been deterred by its ideological radicalism and are at least insufficiently anti-populist to be deterred by that aspect of the party’s appeal. After 2 years of PiS government, support for the party remains stable. It regularly polls in excess of its share of the vote at the 2015 election (CBOS 2018), and the socio-demographic profile of its supporters remains very similar to that of its electorate in 2015 (CBOS 2017b). On the other hand, the electorate of Kukiz’15 is evidently more volatile in character and less coherent with the party’s ideological appeal. The most salient aspect of its demand side appeal is its ability to mobilise a significant proportion of younger voters. As exit poll data from 2015 show, it effectively mobilised unattached voters, capturing nearly a quarter (23.4%) of those who previously voted for the moribund RP and over a fifth (22%) of those who did not vote in the previous election. Along with the relative unimportance of ideology in determining the Kukiz’15 vote, these factors suggest that the populist appeal for the movement is predominantly effective as a means to galvanise voters who are looking for something different to established parties, rather than those for whom populism is an adjunct to a coherent and consistent set of radical ideological views.

6 Conclusion This chapter has provided a synthetic overview of populism in Poland, covering the historical antecedents to modern-day populist parties, the rise and breakthrough of Polish populist parties in the first decade and a half since the end of communism, the ‘mainstreaming’ of populism by the Law and Justice party and its impact on the process of democratic backsliding in Poland since 2015, as well as the nature of the popular appeal of populist parties in Poland today. In a recent article which provides an overview of populism in Central and Eastern Europe, Stanley (2017) distinguishes between two varieties of populism whose emergence in the region was theorised after the end of communism and for which there is clear empirical evidence. The ‘radical populism’ theory anticipated the emergence of parties and movements articulating opposition to the mainstream model of liberaldemocratic transition. If the political mainstream prioritised the creation of a capitalist economy, the building of liberal-democratic institutions, the elevation of individual rights above those of the collective and integration with international institutions, radicalism would consist in opposition to some or all of these processes, and populist

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appeals would concentrate on mobilising opposition to the elites responsible for implementing the orthodox transition model. Radical populism would appeal primarily to the ‘losers’ of transition: those whose interests were served by parties which would ‘protect the national economy from global competition, preserve national identity and cultural values, and oppose supranational political integration’ (Stanley 2017, 143). The theory of ‘centrist populism’ anticipated a rather different political dynamic. According to this approach, party politics in the post-communist world were expected to remain ‘hollowed out’ due to the weak institutionalisation of political parties, the ideological and behavioural volatility of voters and the persistent weaknesses of civil society, resulting in political competition that would largely revolve around claims to greater competence and moral probity (Stanley 2017, 143). In these circumstances, parties with thick-ideological appeals that were moderate in character or intentionally vague could gain support not by offering a coherent alternative to the politics of transition but by claiming to offer an alternative to corrupt, incompetent and discredited incumbents. Populism would emerge not out of ideological critique and mobilisation but as a natural product of the perpetual churn of elites and counter-elites. This chapter has shown that both types of populism have played a role in postcommunist Poland. PiS is a case of radical populism: it has transformed itself from a relatively moderate party of the post-Solidarity mainstream to a populist radical right movement whose reach extends beyond the conventional bounds of party politics. Although it had to moderate its electoral appeal at times in order to gain support from more centrist voters, having gained a majority, it has embarked on a radical process of elite replacement and system change that has had fundamental consequences on the Polish political system. In doing so, it has drawn support in large measure from those whose interests and values have been neglected or challenged by successive transition elites. Kukiz’15, on the other hand, exemplifies the ‘centrist populist’ variety. While there is a significant radical right element to the movement, it continues to refuse to define itself ideologically or to elaborate a programme, and its political strategy consists predominantly of distancing itself from opposition and government parties alike and campaigning against the partiocracy as a structure that perpetuates elite dominance. This profile is reflected in the ideological diversity of the party: while the connections of Kukiz’15 with the radical right may gain more media attention, there is also clearly a significant contingent of the movement’s electoral base whose views are not incompatible with the ideological mainstream but which is nevertheless alienated from mainstream parties. With PiS firmly entrenched as one of the major political powers in Poland and RP and Kukiz’15 demonstrating in successive elections that new parties can still break through what remains to be a semiconsolidated party system, it looks likely that both varieties of populism will persist in the years to come.

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Populism in Turkey S. Erdem Aytaç and Ezgi Elçi

1 Introduction In this chapter we focus on populism in Turkey, a country with a long electoral experience since the first free and fair elections in 1950. A particular attraction of the Turkish case for studies of populism is that a party with a populist agenda, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), has long been the incumbent party in Turkey. Studies about mass populist attitudes have typically focused on cases where populist actors or parties have been in the opposition, and their findings highlight discontent as a key factor in the appeal of populism. Would we observe a similar dynamic in countries with populist parties in power? Studying cases of populism in power, like Turkey, allows us to address this question. The chapter is organized as follows. First we present an overview of the history of populism in Turkey. We argue that the central cleavage of Turkish politics, first articulated by Mardin (1973), has provided a fertile ground for certain parties to do politics on a strongly populist platform. Next we present a descriptive account of the main populist party in contemporary Turkish politics, the incumbent AKP. The subsequent section lays out how Erdoğan, the long-time leader of the AKP, embraced the dimensions of populism as a political strategy.1 Here we also highlight the institutional changes the AKP implemented that strengthened the power of the executive branch. The penultimate section turns to voters, and presents an analysis of mass populist attitudes in Turkey, drawing on a nationally representative survey. Our findings reveal that populist attitudes are quite prevalent in the Turkish electorate, and support for populism is significantly and positively related to being a partisan of the incumbent AKP. Rather than discontent, the driver of mass populist attitudes in 1

We heavily draw on Aytaç and Öniş (2014) for this analysis.

S. E. Aytaç (*) · E. Elçi Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Stockemer (ed.), Populism Around the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96758-5_6

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Turkey is the fact that a party with a populist agenda has long been in power, and supporters of this party seem to have internalized the core premises of populism. We conclude the chapter by discussing the implications of our findings.

2 The History of Populism in Turkey To identify populist movements retrospectively, it is helpful to delineate the central cleavage(s) of a given society, since populists typically build and expand their constituency by tapping into those cleavages and exacerbating the societal divide (Barr 2009). In the Turkish context, Şerif Mardin (1973) has provided a widely used framework that identifies a central cleavage shaping modern Turkish politics. Mardin (1973) argued that Turkey inherited a sociocultural divide from the Ottoman Empire that pitted the ruling elites of the “center” against a culturally heterogeneous “periphery” (Kalaycıoğlu 1994; Çarkoğlu 2012). While the imperial house and its ruling apparatus constituted the center in the Ottoman polity, in the Republican era (1923–), the center comprised of the quasi-autonomous bureaucracy, especially that of the judiciary and military, in alliance with large, state-dependent businesses and the mainstream intellectual community and academia. The periphery, in turn, consists of a mixture of traditionalist ethnic, religious, and regional groups that have been systematically kept out of the power-wielding institutions of the state. One could argue that this exclusion has effectively ended, at least for certain groups, with the consolidation of power by the AKP, as we will elaborate later. Kalaycıoğlu (1994, p. 403) characterizes the center as “the estate of a coherent body of nationalist, centralist, laicist elite which holds the view that it represents and protects the state.” Thanks to their tight control of the state institutions in the early Republican period, the center adopted a top-down modernization and Westernization program that further alienated the conservative, peripheral masses. While the center has traditionally relied on the support of groups with a more urban presence, higher levels of education, lower levels of religiosity, and lower concentration of ethnic minorities, the peripheral constituencies were dominated by rural, devout Muslim and lowly educated groups. A reflection of this “center-periphery cleavage” in Turkish politics finds itself in the self-placement of voters along the left-right ideological dimension. Those holding centrist values, especially with respect to secularism, identify themselves on the left, while religiosity, a central characteristic of peripheral masses, is strongly associated with a position on the right (Çarkoğlu 2012). In the electoral scene, the founding party of the Republic, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP), has long been considered as the bastion of the centrist values and constituencies. With the introduction of multiparty elections in 1946, the Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti, DP) emerged as the representative of the periphery and won the first free and fair elections in 1950. The parties of the periphery have since dominated centrist parties in elections, despite several interruptions by the military, thanks to the consistent support of the society’s religious and conservative majority. Yet these electoral successes have had relatively

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little impact on the status and value system of the center (Kalaycıoğlu 1994). The dominance of the center has been perpetuated by the “ownership” of the state apparatus and cultural hegemony. Moreover, the key institutions of power, such as the military, high judiciary, and foreign services, were able to insulate themselves from the influence of the elected politicians through their recruitment and promotion practices.2 This structure of relations between the center and peripheral parties has provided a fertile ground for the latter to employ a populist strategy. The parties of the periphery have characterized the Turkish political scene as a struggle between the conservative, pious majority (“the people”) and the Western-oriented secular “elites,” who are holding the key institutions of power despite their electoral defeats (Taşkın 2012). The Western-oriented elites are depicted to be alienated from ordinary people’s values, and they are accused of imposing their “foreign” lifestyle against the will of the people (Bora and Erdoğan 2006; Bora 2006). Contrary to the secular and Westernized nation-building efforts of the Republican elites, parties of the periphery have emphasized nationalist conservatism, nativism, and Islamism (Taşkın 2015). They have a strictly majoritarian and moralistic understanding of democracy where only the conservative majority of the Turkish society is considered as “the people,” and opposition to the government representing this “people” is framed as “desecration to the people’s will” (Bora and Canefe 2008). As mentioned earlier, the DP could be seen as the first in a succession of right-wing parties that draw heavily on the support of peripheral groups. Having won the 1950 election, the peaceful transition of power to Adnan Menderes, the leader of the DP, signified a new era in Turkish politics. Menderes considered the electoral victory of 1950 as a “national uprising” and was critical of what he characterized to be the tutelage of the non-elected authorities, such as the judiciary, over elected ones (Neziroğlu and Yılmaz 2014). According to him, the parliamentary majority should have been the only source of constitutional power, and the separation of powers was actually detrimental to exercising people’s will (Taşkın 2015). As the popularity of his policies and party deteriorated in the second half of 1950s, Menderes has become increasingly critical of dissenting voices in society, arguing that the opposition (CHP), the press, and the academics were united and mobilized against the DP, which represented the values of the ordinary people (Türk 2014). In 1960, the governing DP went as far as establishing the infamous Committee of Inquest (tahkikat komisyonu) in parliament, which vested a group of DP legislators with judicial powers to scrutinize the activities of the CHP and the press, clearly violating the separation of powers principle (Ahmad 1993). This move is widely considered as the trigger of the first military coup in the history of the Republic on May 27, 1960, which deposed the DP government. Menderes was put on trial for high treason and executed the following year.

2

We should again emphasize that this characterization of the dominance of the center does not apply in the aftermath of AKP’s consolidation of power, which roughly corresponds to the post-2011 period.

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The coup of 1960 and the execution of Menderes have traumatized the peripheral groups, as it was the first of successive interventions of the military in politics. This vindicated the narrative that the Republican elites would not hesitate to take power from elected governments by force and treat the elected representatives of “the people” with contempt and even hostility (Çınar and Sayın 2014). The new Constitution of 1961 drafted in the aftermath of the coup was another source of resentment, as it prioritized judicial independence and separation of powers by creating and empowering institutions of horizontal accountability. These steps, designed to check the elected governments, were derided as “instruments of tutelage” by the peripheral groups (e.g., Arslan 2012). Even after more than 50 years, in a speech following his victory in the first popular presidential election, Erdoğan remarked that “today the 27 May 1960 parenthesis is finally closed. The particular understanding of presidency that was imposed by 27 May [coup] as an instrument of tutelage is now over.”3 In the post-1960 era, the Justice Party (Adalet Partisi, AP), founded in 1961 by some ex-members of the DP, emerged as the party of the periphery. It won the 1965 elections, and its charismatic leader Süleyman Demirel became the prime minister. In line with the majoritarian view of democracy, Demirel was critical of the strict separation of powers set out in the Constitution of 1961. He complained that it was impossible to rule the state with the existing constitution, referring to the expansive powers of the institutions of horizontal accountability, such as the Constitutional Court (Ahmad 2003). The characterization of Turkish politics as a struggle of “the people” against “oppressive elites” was a major theme in Demirel’s discourse as well; in 1965 he lamented that while colonial rule was disbanded even in Africa, “there were still those who wanted to treat the Turkish nation as a colonized people” (Mert 2007). The Turkish party system became increasingly fragmented in the late 1960s and 1970s, especially as different parties emerged to “represent different shades of beliefs and interests of the periphery” (Kalaycıoğlu 1994, p. 406). Notables among those were the Islamist National Salvation Party (Milli Selamet Partisi, MSP) and ultranationalist Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP).4 Another military coup in 1980 closed down all of these parties, though they gradually returned to the political scene, albeit under different names, after the reintroduction of free and fair elections. What we observe in the post-1980 era is the branching of the peripheral DP-AP generation into two major parties—the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, ANAP) of Turgut Özal and the True Path Party (Doğru Yol Partisi, DYP) of Süleyman Demirel. During this period, and especially during the 1990s until 2002 when they effectively became irrelevant in the Turkish political scene, these parties have adopted a softer populist tone. The securitization of politics due to the intense armed conflict with the Kurdish separatist organization, the PKK, gave the military an upper hand in politics. Successive economic crises and fragile

3

http://www.bbc.com/turkce/haberler/2014/08/140810_cumhurbaskanligi_secim MSP was the successor of the short-lived National Order Party (Milli Nizam Partisi, MNP) that was closed down in 1971 by the Constitutional Court. 4

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coalition governments further tarnished the power of civilian politicians during this period (Cizre Sakallıoğlu 1997; Jenkins 2001). The most vocally populist movement in the post-1980 era has been the National Outlook (Milli Görüş) led by Necmettin Erbakan. As an Islamist ideology with antiRepublican and pro-Ottoman characteristics, Milli Görüş builds on an antagonistic discourse of a struggle between the materialistic, secular, and imperialistic “West” and the oppressed, moral, and abstemious Muslim community (Erbakan 1975; Hadiz 2016). As such, its appeals do not just limit themselves to the Turkish society but aspire to establish a “just order” (adil düzen) against the dominance of the West that encompasses the whole Muslim community (ümmet), with frequent references to a positively nostalgic view of the Ottoman period (Atacan 2005). This Islamist movement was against the totality of the establishment in Turkey (i.e., the elites of the center), not just against the party in power, as they consider the elites to be the local collaborators of Western dominance against the will of the people (Türk 2014). Many of the leading members of the current incumbent AKP have started their political careers within the Milli Görüş movement.5 Erdoğan has occupied various crucial positions in the movement since 1976, including the mayor’s office of Istanbul. Abdullah Gül, the former president of Turkey, has been the deputy of the RP since 1991, and a minister in the RP-DYP coalition government (1996–1997). The former parliamentary speaker and Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç also entered the politics as a deputy of the RP. In the late 1990s, however, some younger members of the Milli Görüş movement led by Erdoğan distanced themselves from the older generation of Islamists and created a new political faction that culminated in the AKP in 2001 (Coşar and Özman 2004). The AKP came to power as a single-party government as a result of the 2002 general elections and, as we discuss in detail, inherited the essential populist characteristics of the DP and Milli Görüş lineage.

3 Current Populist Parties and Actors As of 2018, the Turkish party system has four major players. The AKP has won pluralities in all of the five legislative elections since its founding in 2002, 2007, 2011, June 2015, and November 2015. The party has been holding the majority of seats in the parliament and ruling with a single-party government for 16 years as of 2018, except the brief period between June 2015 and November 2015 elections. The main opposition party during the incumbency of the AKP has been the CHP, the oldest political party in Turkey with a left-wing, social democratic, secular ideology.

5 Milli Görüş movement is associated with a series of political parties that succeeded each other as they have been repeatedly banned by the Constitutional Court. These parties were the MNP, MSP, Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, RP), Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi, FP), and Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi, SP). Only the SP is still functioning.

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Another major opposition party is the MHP with a right-wing, Turkish nationalist ideological outlook. And the fourth major player in the Turkish party system as of 2018 is Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP). HDP is the latest of a number of successive political parties, many of them closed down by the Constitutional Court, associated with the Kurdish political movement. We argue that among these political parties, only the AKP could be considered as a populist party, since it is the only one harboring the core characteristics of populism.6 The AKP was founded in 2001 by younger members of the Milli Görüş under the leadership of Erdoğan, who had fallen out with the leadership of the Virtue Party, then the standard-bearer party of the movement. Öniş (2015) divides the incumbency of AKP into three distinct subperiods in terms of the party’s relative success in economic policies and democratic governance. He considers the period from 2002 to 2007 as the party’s golden age. At the outset of their incumbency, the leaders of the AKP had defined themselves as “conservative democrats” rather than Islamists, drawing a parallel with the Christian democratic parties in the West, and had explicitly distanced themselves from the Milli Görüş movement (Akdoğan 2004). This period was characterized by swift economic recovery and growth, helped by favorable global economy, together with significant democratization reforms and improved foreign relations. Öniş (2015) highlights that these achievements were mutually reinforcing processes, strongly influenced by the prospect of EU membership. The second phase of the AKP’s incumbency spans from 2007 to 2011, a period of relative stagnation in terms of economic performance and democratization. During this period, Turkey’s economic indicators had lost its momentum, the democratic reforms were stalled as the formal negotiation process with the EU reached an impasse, and Turkey’s relations with its neighbors and allies deteriorated. Furthermore, this period was characterized by a critical showdown between the AKP and the military and judicial elites. Finally, the third phase of AKP’s incumbency, from 2011 to the present, marks a period of disappointing economic performance, rising authoritarianism, and problematic relations for Turkey with its neighbors (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016; Öniş 2015). Many scholars of Turkish politics agree that Turkey has been going through a period of de-democratization and has evolved into a competitive authoritarian regime, especially since 2015 (Esen and Gümüşçü 2016; Somer 2017). While the AKP adopted populism as a strategy of appealing to the Turkish electorate from its inception, in line with its political and ideological lineage (Taşkın 2013), certain key developments during its incumbency further increased the appeal of populism for the party. These events exacerbated the lack of trust between the

6 One question at this point might be whether the HDP could be considered a (left-wing) populist party as well. Adopting a radical democratic ideology and being a staunch supporter of minority rights, the HDP also employs antiestablishment appeals with a heavy emphasis on “the people” (Tekdemir 2016). However, the HDP does not favor plebiscitarian linkages between the people and rulers but advocates a bottom-up movement with expansive participatory mechanisms in decisionmaking. Therefore, in line with Barr’s (2009) emphasis on preferences for plebiscitarian linkages being a key component of populism, we do not consider the HDP as a populist party. Yet we recognize that this is a contentious issue.

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AKP leadership and the elites of the “center,” notably the military and judicial elites, and reinforced the sense among the former that the establishment would not allow a party of a periphery to rule given the opportunity. A major crisis in this regard was over who was going to succeed president Ahmet Necdet Sezer in 2007, as his 7-year term was about to end (Kalaycıoğlu 2015). The 1982 Constitution bestowed considerable powers upon the president, and the office was considered to be the linchpin of the establishment. The AKP had nominated Abdullah Gül, one of its founding leaders and then foreign minister, and was confident in his election, given that the president was to be elected by the members of the parliament and the AKP held majority of the seats. Yet, Gül’s candidacy provoked a strong reaction from the elites of the “center” due to his Islamist background. The military issued a public statement in the evening of the first round of votes in the parliament, declaring their strong discomfort with the prospect of Gül becoming the president of the Republic. The main opposition party CHP, which had boycotted the vote in the parliament, filed an appeal to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that the necessary quorum of members of parliament was not present and therefore the election was not valid. In a controversial decision, the Constitutional Court backed CHP’s appeal and annulled the election process. While one could have expected the AKP leadership to back down in these circumstances given how political actors of the “periphery” have traditionally behaved in the face of strong reactions from the “center,” this was not the case in 2007. Drawing on its popularity at home and abroad largely thanks to the economic and democratic reforms of the 2002–2007 period, the AKP government immediately and publicly criticized the statement of the military, called for an early general election, and proposed constitutional amendments that stipulated direct popular election of the president. The general election of July 2007 was a resounding victory for the AKP; in the aftermath of the election, Gül was again nominated for presidency and subsequently elected by the newly formed parliament. Moreover, the constitutional amendments were approved by a referendum in October 2007, setting the stage for the first direct presidential election at the end of Gül’s term in 2014. Less than a year after the crisis of the presidential election, the AKP faced another serious challenge when the chief prosecutor of the Supreme Court Appeals filed a lawsuit to the Constitutional Court in March 2008. The chief prosecutor demanded that the AKP be closed down and its leader cadre, including Prime Minister Erdoğan and President Gül, be banned from politics on the charges of the party becoming “a focal point of anti-secular activities.” The filing of the lawsuit followed shortly after the AKP passed some constitutional changes in parliament, together with the MHP, that lifted the so-called headscarf ban in universities, only to be annulled by the Constitutional Court a few months later. The Court handed down its verdict in July of the same year, and while it acknowledged evidence supporting the charge, the AKP narrowly avoided closure by just one vote and was instead required to pay a heavy fine. Meanwhile, the Istanbul police had started an investigation in the summer of 2007 on the suspicion that a group of military personnel intended to destabilize the country through a series of bombings and assassinations (Kalaycıoğlu 2012). This

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investigation was quickly expanded to active and retired members of the military and police, journalists, businessmen, academics, civil society actors, and politicians in what came to be referred to as the “Ergenekon case.” It was alleged that a broad, clandestine network of secularists and nationalists within the military, bureaucracy, and civil society conspired to overthrow the government. This was just the beginning of a series of high-profile trials that continued until 2013 and witnessed the detention and imprisonment of hundreds of senior active and retired military officers, including the former chief of staff, accused of plotting a coup. Later, it was found out that these trials were initiated and supervised by police officers, prosecutors, and judges who were followers of the Islamist Gülen movement, now designated as a terrorist organization by the Turkish state, and were based on fabricated evidence and violation of due process. Their aim was to curb the political power of the military by tarnishing its image, sacking secular and nationalist senior officers in order to make way for lower-ranking officers who were clandestine Islamists and followers of the movement, and to intimidate the opponents of the AKP within the bureaucracy and civil society (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016). The AKP leadership welcomed and actively supported these investigations and trials until they fell out with the Gülen movement in 2013 (Esen and Gümüşçü 2016). When opposition parties, some members of the high judiciary, and civil society organizations had criticized the investigations by pointing to the violations of due process and inconsistencies in the evidence, the AKP accused them of providing moral and political support to “coup plotters” (Kalaycıoğlu 2012). The practical implications of these conspiracy-based trials, that is, the subduing of the armed forces as well as of the secularist opposition, were very appealing to the AKP so that one could talk of an AKP-Gülenist alliance behind them (Somer 2017). The pro-AKP and pro-Gülen media outlets went to great lengths to present these trials as heroic efforts to root out Turkey’s “deep state,” and these propaganda efforts were quite effective in Turkey and abroad, even among some leftist and liberal circles. Emboldened by the trials’ success at paralyzing the military elite, in 2010 the AKP moved to redesign the high judiciary through a series of constitutional amendments in a time of heightened tensions between the government and high judiciary (Kalaycıoğlu 2012). While the amendments contained some provisions that expanded civil liberties, the crux of the changes was aimed at breaking the dominance of the secularist judges in the Constitutional Court and the High Council of Judges and Public Prosecutors (Özbudun 2014). They also narrowed judicial privileges and the immunities of the military. The amendments were adopted in a highly polarized referendum with 58% of the votes in favor of them (Kalaycıoğlu 2012). Özbudun (2014, p. 156) notes that the new structure of the high judiciary as a result of the constitutional amendments “significantly weakened the possibility of challenges to the AKP government from the military and/or the judiciary.” In short, during its tenure, the AKP faced the fundamental challenge that parties of the “periphery” have traditionally been subject to in the Turkish context—a deep suspicion, even hostility, by the elites of the “center” that wielded tutelary powers and acted to restrict the political arena when feeling threatened. Unlike its many

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predecessors, however, the AKP did not back down during times of crises and successfully “moved” the crises to the electoral arena, confronting the elites in elections and referenda. The AKP has consistently emerged triumphant at the ballot box due to its impressive economic and democratic performance during its first term (2002–2007) and the charisma and political shrewdness of Erdoğan in playing to the dominant cleavage structures in the Turkish society.7 This strategy depended on a heavy use of populist appeals, as we describe in the following section.

4 Populist Agendas and Strategies We agree with Weyland (2001) that an analysis of populist actors’ strategies should not be focused on economic and distributive policies, socioeconomic structures, or social constituencies. Rather, populist strategies should be understood as a pattern of political rule with certain characteristics. The prevailing “minimal” definitions of populism that we employ to identify populist actors, especially those of Barr (2009) and Mudde (2007), explicate these characteristics as (1) a Manichean outlook of politics as a struggle of “the people” against the “power elite” where the populist leader represents “the people” and (2) an emphasis on the centrality of “people’s will” in politics, with an accompanying disdain for institutions of horizontal accountability, and a preference for direct, plebiscitarian linkages between the leader and citizens. To analyze the agenda and strategies of Erdoğan, it is analytically useful to divide his tenure into two phases. As we have mentioned earlier, there is a scholarly consensus that the political regime of Turkey could be characterized as a “tutelary democracy” when the AKP came to power in 2002—the Turkish military, in alliance with the secular-republican elites that dominated high-level judiciary and bureaucracy, determined the contours of democratic competition and held a veto power over elected officials (Özbudun 2000; Esen and Gümüşçü 2016). The nature of the regime was changed substantially by the end of AKP’s second term in 2011, when the AKP had subdued the elites of the “center” (Somer 2017). This temporal distinction is important because it has a direct impact on how Erdoğan constructs an “us versus them” understanding of political conflict. Two sensitive issues in Turkish politics from the perspective of these secularrepublican elites have typically been the perceived twin threats of political Islam and Kurdish separatism (Jenkins 2001; Somer 2017). Heightened threat perceptions in these areas have led the military and its secular-republican allies to intervene in politics. These interventions have taken the form of party closures, stripping of politicians of their political rights, and pressuring elected governments to pursue certain policies or to resign from power, as it happened in 1997. In addition, there were severe limitations regarding the expression of religiosity and Kurdish ethnicity

7 There is also systematic evidence that the AKP engaged in large-scale vote buying (Çarkoğlu and Aytaç 2015) and strategically allocated public spending (Aytaç 2014).

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in public institutions (e.g., use of Kurdish language, headscarf, etc.). All these interventions and policies were a source of resentment among the Kurdish minority as well as among the conservative majority of the Turkish population. As such, this structure of Turkish politics presented Erdoğan with ample opportunity to construct an “us versus them” understanding of politics. In Erdoğan’s discourse, Turkish politics could have been summarized as a struggle between the conservative masses of Anatolia (the people) and the secular-republican elites who are disconnected from the values of the people: Either the people will win and come to power, or the pretentious and oppressive minority—estranged from the reality of Anatolia and looking over it with disdain—will remain in power.8

In this Manichean view of politics, Erdoğan portrayed the secular-republican elites, embodied in the institutions of the army, the Constitutional Court, the presidency, and the like, as “the enemies of the people” since they “formed an alliance to prevent people from achieving power” (Dinçşahin 2012, p. 632). Naturally, Erdoğan presented himself and his party as the true representatives of “the people” in this struggle. His “outsider” status and humble socioeconomic background when he first rose to power facilitated his use of antiestablishment appeals (Barr 2009; Aytaç and Öniş 2014). During the 1980s and early 1990s, Erdoğan had served as a district and province head of the Islamist Welfare Party, and thus he was not considered part of the mainstream political establishment of the time. He had entered into political spotlight after a surprise win of the Istanbul municipality with just 25% of the votes in 1994. During his tenure, Erdoğan was handed a 10-month prison sentence and a ban from politics for reciting a poem with militant Islamist tones.9 This allowed Erdoğan to present himself as a victim of the political establishment and to stress that his political trajectory reflected the struggle between the people and the elites in the Turkish politics. In line with the populist principle of the centrality of “people’s will,” Erdoğan has a strictly majoritarian understanding of democracy and an accompanying disdain for institutions of horizontal accountability and preference for direct, plebiscitarian linkages between the leader and citizens. He often highlights the supremacy of the ballot box (e.g., “the degree of one’s power solely relies on the number of votes received from the people. A minority should not overpower the majority”10) and emphasizes that the decision-making authority rests firmly on “the people”: “It is going to be as you want. The Prime Minister and the President will be those whom you want. Of course, they will also be like you, one of you.”11 When opposition leaders highlighted the virtues of institutions of horizontal accountability, such as the courts and presidency, Erdoğan rebuked them: “Because our source of legitimacy is 8

Quoted in Yağcı (2009, p. 116). The controversial verses read: “the mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the believers our soldiers.” 10 Quoted in Dinçşahin (2012, p. 634). 11 Quoted in Yağcı (2009, p. 135). 9

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the people but theirs is not. They are trying to take legitimacy from certain institutions. And the people are saying ‘Don’t come to us if we are not the source of your legitimacy. Go and receive votes from dark chambers.’”12 Erdoğan’s hegemonic position in Turkish politics and “conquest of the state” (Somer 2017) by the end of AKP’s second term in 2011 required an adjustment to his populist strategy. As the institutions of the military and judiciary had effectively been subdued and even co-opted, they could no longer serve as targets of his populist discourse. Therefore in the post-2011 era, we do not observe Erdoğan framing the military and judiciary as part of the “elite” against “the people.” The targets of his populist strategy in this period have been the main opposition CHP, academics, intellectuals, and journalists who are not aligned with the government, the Western powers, and some vague actors that are imagined to plot against Turkey. While Erdoğan had targeted the CHP in populist terms throughout his incumbency, he ratcheted up his attacks in the post-2011 period. He went on as far as accusing the CHP of operating in tandem with terrorist organizations.13 Erdoğan’s discourse against opposition-minded intellectuals and academics was even harsher: If you do not give up the fight with the people, with the people’s values, history, culture and their representatives, you will drown in your own ugliness. . .What kind of men are these? Who cares if you are an artist, a professor? First you will respect this people; you can never look down to this people.14

As Erdoğan has grown increasingly powerful against his domestic rivals, the need for a target in his populist strategy has led him to broaden his imagined antagonistic front against “the people” to international actors as well, especially after the coup attempt in 2016. He openly accused “the West” of supporting the coup attempt, emphasizing that it was quashed by ordinary people.15 And he frequently refers to an international “mastermind” (üst akıl, which can also be translated as “higher intellect”), without specifying the actors, that “plays games over Turkey to divide, to weaken, and to swallow it if they can.”16 This mastermind is a very flexible enemy for Erdoğan as he accuses it for being the real culprit behind a diverse set of events, such as the Gezi protests,17 recognition of Armenian genocide by the German

12

Quoted in Yağcı (2009, p. 133). http://www.bbc.com/turkce/haberler-dunya-40602395 14 https://www.sabah.com.tr/gundem/2016/06/22/cumhurbaskani-Erdoğandan-o-akademisyenleresert-tepki 15 http://www.aljazeera.com.tr/haber/Erdoğan-bati-darbeden-yana 16 http://www.haberturk.com/gundem/haber/1219150-cumhurbaskani-Erdoğan-ust-akil-turkiyeuzerinde-oyun-oynuyor 17 https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/12/turkey-erdogan-corruption-foreign-plotoffense-charges.html. See Aytaç et al. (2017) for an overview of Turkish government’s response to Gezi protests. 13

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parliament,18 the support of the USA to Kurdish groups in Syria,19 and rising interest rates in Turkey.20 These populist appeals of Erdoğan have been accompanied by institutional changes that strengthened the power of the executive branch. Three constitutional amendments were especially significant in this respect: the 2007 amendments that stipulated election of the president by popular vote rather than the parliament, which largely rendered irrelevant the check-and-balance role of the presidential office against the government; the 2010 amendments that damaged the autonomy of the judiciary against the executive and legislative branches; and the 2017 amendments, the content of which was drafted behind closed doors and became public only after it was submitted to the parliament, that introduced an executive presidency dominating the legislative branch. It should be noted that none of these amendments were accepted in the parliament by consensus; rather, they were only approved after highly polarized referendums. Rather than seeking ways for reconciliation with the opposition groups over the content of these amendments, which often bundled non-related issues together, Erdoğan decided to present them in a take-it-or-leaveit manner to “the people,” confident of his popularity among the Turkish electorate. Other institutional practices and changes have further weakened horizontal accountability. The AKP has increasingly relied on omnibus bills (torba kanun) that amend a large number of disparate, unrelated laws together (Hazama and Iba 2017). Often approved in late-night emergency sessions, omnibus bills are justified by the AKP on the grounds that they speed up the legislature, where they have a majority of seats anyway. Naturally, omnibus bills prevent a meaningful debate or careful scrutiny of the proposed changes and reduce the parliament into a rubber stamp institution (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016). This practice has taken a different form during the state of emergency declared in the aftermath of the coup attempt in July 2016, which still continues today, where executive decrees with the force of law have become the dominant form of law-making. In violation of the Constitution, the AKP amends laws that are not related to the state of emergency using these decrees and thereby completely sidelines the parliament. The parliament has taken further blows when members of parliament were stripped of their immunity from prosecution in 2016, a move that primarily targeted HDP legislators, and when changes in its internal regulations were adopted in 2017, which reduced the duration of speeches and discussion opportunities for opposition parties. The failed coup attempt of July 2016 and its aftermath have allowed Erdoğan to dominate state institutions and shrink the political space for the opposition. Erdoğan’s defiant response to the coup attempt and ability to mobilize thousands of people to face the putschists on the streets have elevated his popularity to “mythic

18

http://www.diken.com.tr/Erdoğan-soykirim-kararinda-buyuk-resmi-gordu-ust-akil-almanyayatalimat-vermis/ 19 https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/fr/originals/2014/10/turkey-Erdoğan-middle-east-master mind.html 20 http://www.turkiyegazetesi.com.tr/ekonomi/520582.aspx

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proportions among significant portions of Turkey’s population” (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, p. 520). Esen and Gümüşçü (2017) note that, as a result of the state of emergency, Erdoğan has come to rule over a de facto presidential system, with a heavy reliance on executive decrees that are exempt from legal scrutiny. These executive decrees have led to the removal or suspension of tens of thousands from the state bureaucracy, judiciary, and the military, which in turn crippled the already traumatized institutions of the Turkish state. Erdoğan’s newly acquired confidence, mass popularity, and the institutional prerogatives bestowed upon by the state of emergency in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt opened up a wide political space for him to push further his populist agenda.

5 The Appeal of Populism in the Population What is the appeal of populism in the Turkish electorate? In this section we analyze the prevalence and correlates of populist attitudes among Turkish voters by drawing on data from a nationally representative survey (N ¼ 1954) fielded in spring 2017.21 Our dependent variable is an index of populist attitudes constructed by participants’ responses to a set of statements, which reflects the main theoretical dimensions of populism, as suggested by the relevant literature (Barr 2009; Mudde 2004; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013). These dimensions are (1) a Manichean outlook of politics as a moral struggle, (2) centrality of “people’s will,” (3) anti-elitism or antiestablishment feelings, and (4) a disdain for institutions of horizontal accountability. To measure acceptance of populist attitudes, we presented respondents with two statements related to each of these four dimensions (a total of eight statements, see Table 1) that are frequently employed in empirical studies of populism (Akkerman et al. 2014; Hawkins et al. 2012; Castanho Silva et al. 2017). Respondents were asked to indicate whether they agreed or disagreed with the statements on a fivepoint scale, with options ranging from “I do not agree at all” (coded 1) to “I agree completely” (coded 5). As agreement with the statements indicates acceptance of populist attitudes, we created an additive index that sums up the answers given to eight statements. We then transformed the resulting index to a 0–100 scale so that higher values indicate more populist attitudes. The resulting distribution of the index of populist attitudes in the Turkish electorate is presented in Fig. 1. It can be seen that the distribution is nearly normal with a mean of 61 (out of 100), and a small group of respondents have extremely high values. In Fig. 2, this aggregate index is broken down to its four component dimensions, where a respondent can score between 2 (populist statements are

21 The survey is part of a larger project conducted by S. Erdem Aytaç, Ali Çarkoğlu, and Sedef Turper from Koç University. The interviews were conducted by Frekans Research (www.frekans. com.tr) between February 17 and April 2 of 2017. The Open Society Foundation-Turkey and Koç University provided funding for the study.

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Table 1 Statements used to measure populist attitudes

0

50

Frequency 100

Fig. 1 The distribution of the index of populist attitudes in the Turkish electorate

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Manichean outlook Politics is ultimately a struggle between good and evil What people call “compromise” in politics is really just selling out on one’s principles People’s will The people, and not politicians, should make our most important policy decisions Referendums are the ultimate measure of the will of the people Anti-elitism Most politicians do not care about the people The power of a few special interests prevents our country from making progress Disdain for horizontal accountability Political leaders do not need to be checked by institutions since people make their decision in the elections Having a strong leader in government is good for Turkey even if the leader bends the rules to get things done

0

20

40 60 Index of Populist Attitudes

80

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rejected completely) and 10 (populist statements are accepted completely) for each dimension. In the Turkish case, the dimensions of people’s will and anti-elitism are particularly strong with average scores of 7.7 and 7.6, respectively. For example, about 70% of the respondents agree with the statement that “referendums are the ultimate measure of the will of the people,” and about 67% agree that “the power of a few special interests prevents our country from making progress.” There is also a relatively large portion of the electorate that displays a high level of disdain for institutions of horizontal accountability. About half of respondents (47%) agree that “political leaders do not need to be checked by institutions since people make their decision in the elections.” A Manichean outlook of politics is not as strongly pronounced among Turkish voters as other dimensions of populism—for instance, only about a third (34%) of respondents consider compromise in politics as “selling out on one’s principles.”

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People’s will (mean:7.7) 100 200 300 400

Manichean outlook (mean:5.9)

0

0

Frequency 100 200 300

400

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4

6

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4

6

8

10

Disdain for institutions (mean:6.4)

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Frequency 100 200 300

300

400

400

Anti-elitism (mean:7.6)

2

2

4

6

8

10

2

4

6

8

10

Fig. 2 The distribution of the four dimensions of populist attitudes in the Turkish electorate

A multivariate analysis of the individual-level correlates of populist attitudes in the Turkish electorate reveals that partisans of the incumbent AKP are significantly more likely to have populist attitudes than partisans of other major parties and nonpartisans, even after taking account of the effects of several demographic and socioeconomic factors (Table 2). Moreover, people who are relatively more satisfied with their lives, the way democracy works, and their economic circumstances are actually more likely to hold populist attitudes. Populist attitudes are generally thought to be “grounded in a deep discontent, not only with politics but also with societal life in general” (Spruyt et al. 2016, p. 342)—but the opposite seems to be true in Turkey. This is likely due to the fact that the long-time incumbent AKP is a party with a populist agenda, and partisanship strongly shapes both populist attitudes and the evaluations that we considered. Specifically, individuals who are content with the populist party in power (including its partisans) are more likely to have more optimistic outlook in general and more populist views. This is confirmed in our survey as well—partisans of the incumbent AKP express significantly more satisfaction with their lives, democracy, and economy than partisans of other parties (Fig. 3). Our analysis depicts a picture where populist attitudes in the Turkish electorate are significantly and positively related to being a partisan of the incumbent AKP. Therefore the driver of mass populist attitudes in Turkey seems to be the fact that a party with a populist agenda has long been in power, and supporters of this party

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Table 2 Correlates of populist attitudes in the Turkish electorate

Dep. variable: Index of populist attitudes Female Age Education (Log) Income Life satisfaction Democratic satisfaction Economic satisfaction Treated fairly in society Trust in parliament Trust in parties Pro-EU AKP partisan CHP partisan MHP partisan HDP partisan Constant Observations

Coefficient – 0.300 – 0.005 0.639 0.113 0.763** 0.603* 1.249*** – 0.474 0.010 – 0.294 – 0.335 4.316*** 1.960 – 2.196 3.193 46.99*** 1121

SE (1.040) (0.038) (0.536) (0.445) (0.233) (0.256) (0.248) (0.656) (0.260) (0.258) (1.044) (1.265) (1.653) (2.356) (3.364) (4.634)

OLS regression with standard errors in parentheses. Poststratification weights based on gender, age, education level, and region are applied ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05

10

8

7.1

6.9 5.3

6 4.4

5.4

4.5

4.4

3.7 3.1

4 2.6

24

2.1

2

0 Life satisfaction AK Party Partisans

Democratic satisfaction CHP Partisans

MHP Partisans

Economic satisfaction HDP Partisans

Note: Vertical lines are 95% confidence intervals

Fig. 3 Partisanship and satisfaction with life, democracy, and economy (on a 0–10 scale where higher values indicate more satisfaction)

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10 8.1 8 6.2 6

7.4 7.4 7.3

7.7

7.9 7.2 7.4

6 5.5 5.8

7.3 5.6

5.9

6.3

4

2 Manichean Outlook

People’s will

AK Party Partisans

CHP Partisans

Anti-elitism MHP Partisans

Disdain for institutions HDP Partisans

Note: Vertical lines are 95% confidence intervals

Fig. 4 Partisanship and support for dimensions of populism (on a 2–10 scale where higher values indicate more support for the dimension)

have internalized the core premises of populism. When we explore which dimensions of populism are more prevalent among the partisans of the AKP, we see that AKP partisans score considerably higher than other partisans on the dimensions of centrality of people’s will and disdain for institutions of horizontal accountability (Fig. 4). They also tend to display higher levels of Manichean outlook of politics, but the differences with other party supporters are not that large. These results are in line with Erdoğan’s populist discourse that extols people’s will and casts institutions of horizontal accountability as impediments to the exercise of people’s will by the elected government.

6 Conclusion The center-periphery cleavage emphasized by Mardin (1973) proves to be a useful framework for understanding populism in Turkey. The sway of secular-republican elites on politics through non-elected institutions has given politicians of the periphery incentives to engage in populism. As such, an antagonistic narrative of Turkish politics as a struggle between the elites of the center and the conservative majority of the Turkish population has been the bread and butter of peripheral parties in electoral competition. The competition between the current incumbent AKP and main opposition CHP can be seen as the latest incarnation of this historical, politicized cleavage, where the AKP and Erdoğan have cast themselves as the true representatives of “the people.” With the momentum of the success of the economic and democratic reforms during its first term, aided by the favorable global economic conditions and the prospect of EU membership, the AKP weathered the challenges posed by the elites

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of the center thanks to its popularity in the ballot box. Furthermore, by the end of its second term in 2011, the AKP subdued the military-judiciary elite and ended the era of tutelary democracy in Turkey (Somer 2017), though Erdoğan still continues to employ populist appeals, albeit with a slightly different narrative than before as we described. Our survey, designed to investigate the “demand” side of populism, reveals that, in a political context where a populist party has been in power for 16 years, the constituency of this party seems to have embraced principles of populism, even though they do not feel marginalized in the current political system. In a broader comparative context, our results suggest that the dynamics of mass support for populism could be quite different in a case of populism in power than in cases of populism in opposition, which has been the overwhelming focus of the relevant literature so far, for understandable reasons. The Turkish case illustrates that populism does not necessarily need to be “grounded in a deep discontent” (Spruyt et al. 2016, p. 342)—those with positive views of the political system and the economy could also possess strongly populist attitudes, given that their preferred party is in power and it engages in politics on a populist platform. This finding highlights the crucial role of elite discourse in the prevalence and strength of populism. As long as political elites continue to opt for heavily populist platforms in politics, we might expect populist attitudes to prevail in a society, even if the resentments that might have fuelled the populist party have lost their salience. With respect to the Turkish case, what followed the era of tutelary democracy has not been a more pluralistic and liberal democracy as some hoped, however (Öniş 2015; Özbudun 2014). Instead, the AKP has become increasingly Islamist and authoritarian, and the Turkish political system has been experiencing a period of deteriorating horizontal and vertical accountability (Esen and Gümüşçü 2016; Somer 2017). Given the presence of a large constituency that seems to have internalized populist values and an excessive concentration of power in the executive, we can expect populism to continue to be the dominant pattern of rule in Turkey for the foreseeable future.

References Ahmad, F. (1993). The making of modern Turkey. London: Routledge. Ahmad, F. (2003). Turkey: The quest for identity. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Akdoğan, Y. (2004). AK Parti ve Muhafazakar Demokrasi. Istanbul: Alfa. Akkerman, A., Mudde, C., & Zaslove, A. (2014). How populist are the people? Measuring populist attitudes in voters. Comparative Political Studies, 47(9), 1324–1353. Akkoyunlu, K., & Öktem, K. (2016). Existential insecurity and the making of a weak authoritarian regime in Turkey. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 16(4), 505–527. Arslan, E. (2012). Türkiye solunun 1961 Anayasası ile imtihanı. Retrieved from https://www. yenisafak.com/yerel/turkiye-solunun-1961-anayasasi-ile-imtihani-419954 Atacan, F. (2005). Explaining religious politics at the crossroad: AKP-SP. Turkish Studies, 6(2), 187–199. Aytaç, S. E. (2014). Distributive politics in a multiparty system: The conditional cash transfer program in Turkey. Comparative Political Studies, 47(9), 1211–1237.

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Aytaç, S. E., & Öniş, Z. (2014). Varieties of populism in a changing global context: The divergent paths of Erdoğan and Kirchnerismo. Comparative Politics, 47(1), 41–59. Aytaç, S. E., Schiumerini, L., & Stokes, S. (2017). Protests and repression in new democracies. Perspectives on Politics, 15(1), 62–82. Barr, R. R. (2009). Populists, outsiders and anti-establishment politics. Party Politics, 15(1), 29–48. Bora, T. (2006). Muhafazakâr Yerlilik Söylemi. In T. Bora & M. Gültekingil (Eds.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce: Muhafazakarlık. Istanbul: Iletişim. Bora, T., & Canefe, N. (2008). Türkiye’de Popülist Milliyetçilik. In T. Bora & M. Gültekingil (Eds.), Modern Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce: Milliyetçilik. Istanbul: Iletişim. Bora, T., & Erdoğan, N. (2006). Muhafazakâr Popülizm. In T. Bora & M. Gültekingil (Eds.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce: Muhafazakarlık. Istanbul: Iletişim. Çarkoğlu, A. (2012). Voting behavior in Turkey. In M. Heper & S. Sayarı (Eds.), Handbook of modern Turkey (pp. 160–170). New York: Routledge. Çarkoğlu, A., & Aytaç, S. E. (2015). Who gets targeted for vote-buying? Evidence from an augmented list experiment in Turkey. European Political Science Review, 7(4), 547–566. Castanho Silva, B., Vegetti, F., & Littvay, L. (2017). The elite is up to something: Exploring the relation between populism and belief in conspiracy theories. Swiss Political Science Review, 23 (4), 423–443. Çınar, M., & Sayın, C. (2014). Reproducing the paradigm of democracy in Turkey: Parochial democratization in the decade of justice and development party. Turkish Studies, 15(3), 365–385. Cizre Sakallioğlu, Ü. (1997). The anatomy of the Turkish military’s political autonomy. Comparative Politics, 29(2), 151–166. Coşar, S., & Özman, A. (2004). Centre-right politics in Turkey after the november 2002 general election: Neo-liberalism with a Muslim face. Contemporary Politics, 10(1), 57–74. Dinçşahin, S. (2012). A symptomatic analysis of the justice and development party’s populism in Turkey, 2007-2010. Government and Opposition, 47(4), 618–640. Erbakan, N. (1975). Millî görüş ve 3. Beş Yıllık Plan. Istanbul: Dergâh Yayınları. Esen, B., & Gümüşçü, S. (2016). Rising competitive authoritarianism in Turkey. Third World Quarterly, 37(9), 1581–1606. Esen, B., & Gümüşçü, S. (2017). Turkey: How the coup failed. Journal of Democracy, 28(1), 59–73. Hadiz, V. R. (2016). Islamic populism in Indonesia and the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hawkins, K. A., Riding, S., & Mudde, C. (2012). Measuring populist attitudes. C&M working paper 55, Committee on Concepts and Methods. Hazama, Y., & Iba, Ş. (2017). Legislative agenda setting by a delegative democracy: Omnibus bills in the Turkish parliamentary system. Turkish Studies, 18(2), 313–333. Jenkins, G. (2001). Context and circumstance: The Turkish military and politics. Adelphi paper 337. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. Kalaycıoğlu, E. (1994). Elections and party preferences in Turkey: Changes and continuities in the 1990s. Comparative Political Studies, 27(3), 402–424. Kalaycıoğlu, E. (2012). Kulturkampf in Turkey: The constitutional referendum of 12 September 2010. South European Society and Politics, 17(1), 1–22. Kalaycıoğlu, E. (2015). Turkish popular presidential elections: Deepening legitimacy issues and looming regime change. South European Society and Politics, 20(2), 157–179. Mardin, Ş. (1973). Center-periphery relations: A key to Turkish politics? Daedalus, 102(1), 169–190. Mert, N. (2007). Merkez Sağın Kısa Tarihi. Istanbul: Selis Kitaplar. Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563. Mudde, C. (2007). Populist radical right parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Populism in the United States Matthew Green and John Kenneth White

1 Introduction Populism—the belief that society is divided between ordinary citizens and elites and that political outcomes should be determined by the former, not the latter—is a common feature of many modern democratic states.1 Though populism has traditionally been associated with Latin American countries, the United States has hardly been immune. In fact, the populist presidential campaign of Donald Trump, his unexpected election in 2016, and his unusual methods of governance have suggested the possibility that populism is not only currently resurgent in the United States but that it may have considerable national appeal. In this chapter, we briefly review the origins and history of populism in the United States, how it manifests itself in contemporary US party politics, the strategies and agendas of the country’s populist political actors, and the extent to which populism has a broad-based appeal among American voters. We argue that, although Trump’s populist nature is especially bold and unusual for US presidential politics, it is but the latest example of populism as an undercurrent of American political culture that sometimes emerges in popular elections. But Trump’s election notwithstanding, populism has struggled to gain a durable foothold outside of certain states or regions as a consequence of federalism, the US separation of powers system, and Americans’ general orientation toward localism and their distrust of authoritarians.

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For a fuller definition of populism, see Müller (2016) and Mudde and Kaltwasser (2017).

M. Green · J. K. White (*) Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Stockemer (ed.), Populism Around the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96758-5_7

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2 The Foundations of American Populism The potential for populism is ever-present in any democratic state because it rests upon what political theorist Jan-Werner Müller calls the “broken promises of democracy,” the most important promise being that the people have ultimate governing authority (Müller 2016, 75–76). In the case of the United States, populism is founded upon and draws the most appeal from four key features of American politics. First, the country’s political culture is strongly infused with the principle that citizens hold ultimate sovereignty. “Americanism,” observes historian Michael Kazin, “meant understanding and obeying the will of the people” (Kazin 1995, 12). The country was founded on the premise that the people govern, as enshrined in the first three words of the Constitution, “We the People.” In Federalist Paper 57, James Madison praised the fact that the “electors” of the House of Representatives, one of Congress’ two chambers, “are to be the great body of the people of the United States” (Hamilton et al. 1787). Defenders of the newly written Constitution even appealed to popular sovereignty as a rhetorical strategy to counter the argument that their proposed national government was too powerful (Wood 1969, 530–536). Historical developments reinforced this principle of popular sovereignty, including the expansion of the suffrage, the creation of mass-based parties, the replacement of indirect elections for US senators with direct ones, the adoption of the direct primary, and the use of modern polling techniques to capture public sentiment. Unsurprisingly, American populists routinely invoke the sovereignty of the public as the basis for their right to govern. Second, American political culture has long been infused with a sizeable strain of anti-elitism. It is not always dominant, and there have been times, such as during the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century, when expertise was valued as a means of solving pressing national challenges (Link and McCormick 1983, 61). Nonetheless, ever since their revolt against the British monarchy, Americans have found reasons to identify and rail against elitist enemies (Brewer 2016). Concentrated political or economic power is often the basis for criticism, rooted in Americans’ strong belief in equality—a belief so strong that Alexis de Tocqueville feared citizens might be willing to trade liberty in exchange for greater equality (Kazin 1995, 15–16; Tocqueville 2003 [1840], vol. II, part 2, Chap. 1). For many Americans, equality of opportunity is a state of mind that can never be taken away, whereas freedom is something which can be easily lost. Thus, populism has a particular appeal insofar as it not only identifies an elite group leveraging its power to obtain unfair advantages, but it also promises to defeat it. Third, by designing a political system that would mitigate the likelihood of tyranny and demagoguery, the Founding Fathers may have ironically helped foment the frustration and disconnectedness that feed populist movements. History, warned Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper 1, shows that “men who have overturned the liberties of republics” are frequently “commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.” Accordingly, he and others developed the US Constitution to include indirect elections for the Senate and president, to create some distance between voters and

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representatives, and to separate executive, legislative, and judicial institutions because, as Madison famously wrote in Federalist Paper 51, “ambition must be made to counteract ambition” (Hamilton et al. 1787). Such a system invariably requires cooperation and compromise to function, and when neither is possible, the result can be delay or even political paralysis. Populist leaders may gain popular appeal by vowing to circumvent the lumbering, compromise-oriented nature of national government with speedy action, determining the “general will” of the public and carrying it out without hesitation (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017, 16). Finally, the anti-elitism of populism is sometimes stoked by Americans’ physical and psychic distance from the nation’s capital. Created explicitly as a capital city and remaining relatively undeveloped for much of its early history, it developed a reputation as a swampy wasteland far from civilized life. The country’s first elected officials adopted an “anti-power ethic,” expressing open contempt for the possession of political office and further enforcing the idea that elected officials were unaccountable and, as many populists believe, representative democracy is “an aristocratic form of power” (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017, 17; Young 1966). Though modern transportation and communication closed the gap between American citizens and their capital, this attitude remains widespread. This is seen, for instance, in the recurrent claims that government workers are elitists who are distant from the public or care only about the well-being of their city at the expense of the nation at large (Bachner and Ginsberg 2017; Green et al. 2014).

3 A Brief History of Populism in the United States Populism in the United States has never had the depth of support and degree of electoral achievement that one finds elsewhere. But populist leaders have been elected from time to time at sub-national levels of government, and American presidents have occasionally campaigned or governed on populist themes. In addition, the country’s two main political parties have often incorporated populist ideas into their platforms and rhetoric, and in the nineteenth century, a third political party that tied itself explicitly to populism achieved substantial, if brief, political success. Andrew Jackson was arguably the first nationally elected figure in the United States who demonstrated clear populist tendencies. When he won a plurality of the vote in the 1824 presidential election, allowing the House of Representatives to select Secretary of State John Quincy Adams as chief executive, Jackson railed against the “corrupt bargain” between Adams and the political elites that had kept him from the White House (Watson 1990, 82). Jackson defeated Adams 4 years later and became the first American president of the Democratic Party, the earliest modern mass-based political party in the United States. He affirmed the presidency as the sole elected representative of the entire voting citizenry and did not hesitate to invoke the will of the public as a justification for his actions, most famously when he eliminated the Second Bank of the United States on the grounds that it benefited the privileged few over the masses (Remini 1967, 47, 83, 144). The president and his

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followers also liked to decry the excessive influence of the economic aristocracy and “money power” over yeoman farmers (e.g., Watson 1990, 161, 192). But at their core, Jackson and the Democrats were not true populists, committed more to the principles of limited centralized government, white superiority, and civic republicanism (Gerring 1998). The most famous and successful populist political party in the United States was the People’s (or Populist) Party. Coinciding with a post-Civil War farmer-based political movement, the Party campaigned against banks, railroads, and other economic interests that it claimed were responsible for the enduring hardship of agricultural laborers. In the preamble of its 1892 Omaha Platform, the Party insisted that “grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people” and that the country’s two biggest political parties, Democratic and Republican, would “drown the outcries of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over the tariff, so that capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the demonetization of silver and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost sight of.”2 The Party did elect some candidates to Congress and state legislatures, but its 1892 presidential nominee, James Weaver, came in a distant third, and 4 years later it became subsumed into the Democratic Party (Goodwyn 1978).3 The disappearance of the People’s Party was followed by the incorporation of populist elements into the political platforms of both major political parties. Starting with the 1896 presidential campaign of William Jennings Bryan and lasting through the 1940s, Democrats regularly emphasized the struggle of “ordinary” citizens against corporate power. Some Democratic presidents, like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, were especially forceful advocates of this populist view of American politics (Gerring 1998, 187–200; Plotke 1996, 176). Campaigning for reelection in 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt promised to thwart any restoration of Wall Street’s “economic royalists” to power: “The privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over the government itself . . .. And as a result the average man once more confronts problems that faced the Minute Man” (Kazin 1995, 40). In the 1920s, the Republican Party adopted a conservative populism as one of its central tenets, depicting government as a threat to individual liberty and a vehicle for elite groups to extract benefits at the expense of the public and shunning intellectual experts in favor of the “silent majority” of citizens (Gerring 1998, 142–151; see also Shogan 2007). Perhaps not coincidentally, the rise of grassroots conservatism and renewed right-wing populism in the 1970s and 1980s corresponded with growing popularity of the term “inside the Beltway” to describe Washington, D.C., implying that the freeway that encircled the capital city symbolized a federal government that

2 Minor/third-party platforms: “Populist Party Platform of 1892,” July 4, 1892. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ ws/?pid¼29616, accessed November 18, 2017. 3 For more on the People’s Party and the American Populist movement, see McMath (1993) and Postel (2007).

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was separate and foreign from the rest of the country (Federici 1991; Green et al. 2014, 65). Before 2017, Ronald Reagan was perhaps the country’s best example of a Republican president who used populist rhetoric, adroitly pitting liberals, welfare recipients, and the federal government against “ordinary” Americans. Campaigning for the presidency in 1980, Reagan derided the “puzzle palaces of the Potomac” that he claimed undermined traditional values and local neighborhoods (White 1988, 60). Nonetheless, overtly populist leaders seldom gained power in the United States, apart from the election of occasional figures to Congress with national stature like Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) (Kazin 1995, 183–190). American populist movements and leaders found more success at the state level, particularly in the South. Raymond Arsenault identified three waves of populist southern demagogues elected to state office or to Congress between the 1880s and 1970s. Though diverse in their political beliefs and attention to good governance, they “all claimed to be champions of an embattled agrarian folk culture. . .which gave their mass movements the aura, if not always the substance, of populistic insurgency” (Arsenault 1996, 94–95). Among the most famous (or infamous) was James Vardaman, Mississippi governor and later senator from the early 1900s, who believed that “democracy, no matter how dirty, belonged to ‘the people.’” Vardaman was one of the first to take advantage of the establishment of primary elections to determine party nominees, and he sought to associate himself with poor white voters by touting white supremacy and even bringing to one public event an ox that was decorated with flags emblazoned with pejorative words like “redneck” and “lowdown” (Isenberg 2016, 189; Sanders 1999, 154). Another, Huey Long of Louisiana, was probably the closest to an archetypical populist leader in both rhetoric and governing style in American history. Long won elections by consistently criticizing corporate and political elites and promising to provide benefits to the public. Once in office, he routinely used tactics common to populists in power, employing illegal or unconstitutional methods to seize control of state government and implement his preferred policies and using “discriminatory legalism,” the application of laws to selectively punish enemies and reward allies (Müller 2016, 44). Though Long was officially a US senator at the time of his assassination in 1935, he possessed so much influence over state politics, including the Louisiana governor who succeeded him in the office, that he effectively served as governor as well (Williams 1970). More recently, the Great Recession of 2007–2008 and Congress’ subsequent enactment of a financial package providing relief to the sinking financial sector preceded the rise of two populist-like grassroots movements in the United States. On the left, the Occupy Wall Street movement criticized the concentration of financial power against that of the public (i.e., “the 1% versus the 99%”). It manifested itself primarily in marches that culminated in public encampments in several cities. On the right, the Tea Party movement attacked the federal government’s intervention in the economy and, with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the health sector in particular. It staged protests in Washington, D.C., and mobilized voters to help the Republican Party win control of the House of Representatives in 2010 (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017, 26–27; Skocpol and Williamson 2012).

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4 Current Populist Actors in the United States At present, there are no major populist political parties in the United States along the lines of say, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela or the National Front in France, but one can still find strong hints of populism in both of the country’s main political parties. Though arguably less populist than it once was, the Democratic Party’s rhetoric nonetheless has populist echoes, particularly when it accuses economic elites of unfairly exploiting the system at the expense of citizens. In its 2016 platform for instance, the Party promised to “fight against the greed and recklessness of Wall Street” and complained that “large corporations have concentrated their control over markets to a greater degree than Americans have seen in decades—further evidence that the deck is stacked for those at the top” (Democratic Party 2016, 10–11). A principal reason for populism’s recent reemergence in the Democratic Party was the appeal of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to the party’s base. Heretofore a senator from a small state who had eschewed any overt identification with the Democrats, Sanders burst onto the national scene in 2016 as an underdog against his rival, Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady, New York senator, and secretary of state. Clinton was the odd-on favorite to win her party’s presidential nomination, but Sanders gave her an unexpectedly close run. Sanders’s rise came thanks to his populist-inspired rhetoric, which aroused disenchanted Democratic audiences. Announcing his presidential candidacy, Sanders echoed the historical populist claim that the US government was the property of the people, not the province of the wealthy: Today we stand here and say loudly and clearly that, “Enough is enough.” This great nation and its government belong to all of the people, and not to a handful of billionaires, their Super-PACs and their lobbyists . . .. Today, we live in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, but that reality means very little for most of us because almost all of that wealth is owned and controlled by a tiny handful of individuals. In America we now have more income and wealth inequality than any other major country on earth, and the gap between the very rich and everyone is wider than at any time since the 1920s. The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time, and it is the great political issue of our time. (Sanders 2015)

Meanwhile, the right-wing populism that first emerged as a feature of the Republican Party in the 1920s remains an important component of its ideological identity. In 2016, the party platform included the complaint that “the environmental establishment has become a self-serving elite” working on behalf of the Democratic Party and “subordinating the public’s consensus” (Republican Party 2016, 21). It was Trump’s election as president, however, that gave the GOP (and the country) perhaps its most explicitly populist national leader in history. Trump employed populist rhetoric during the campaign, making anti-pluralist appeals to his so-called “base” of poorer white voters, putting himself at the vanguard of a crusade against elites, and using a means of communication to reach voters directly, unmediated by the established press (Müller 2016, 2–3, 34–35). Once elected, he continued those direct methods of communicating with the public but also took steps common to populist leaders, attacking civil society and advocating the use of state power to punish enemies and

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reward friends (Müller 2016). We elaborate on these strategies and the extent to which Trump’s political agenda has resonated with voters below.

5 The Populism of Donald Trump In many respects, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign employed agendas and strategies populist candidates have routinely deployed throughout US history. For instance, in his campaign manifesto titled Crippled America, Trump echoed the common populist appeal to an electorate dissatisfied with delay and inaction by their elected leaders: “There are people who look at a problem . . . and shake their heads, thinking it can’t be done. There is a name for people like that: Governor. Then there are people who talk about the issue, throw around other people’s money, and maybe even show you drawings. There’s a name for those people, too: Senator” (Trump 2015b, 124). Former Mississippi Governor and Republican National Chair Haley Barbour explained Trump’s appeal in terms of Americans’ distance from their capital, arguing that “Trump is the manifestation of people’s anger. People all around the country want to send Washington the bird, and they see him as the gigantic middle finger” (Caldwell 2016). In addition, for more than two decades, Trump has perfected a populist message aimed at those displaced by free trade deals that shipped jobs to low-wage countries, especially to China. Accepting the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Trump declared: “I have visited the laid-off factory workers, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals. These are the forgotten men and women of our country, and they are forgotten, but they will not be forgotten long. These are the people who work hard but no longer have a voice. I am your voice” (Trump 2016). Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, laid out the case for a new economic nationalism: What built the American system from [Alexander] Hamilton, to [James] K. Polk, to Henry Clay, to [Abraham] Lincoln, to the Roosevelts? A system of protection of our manufacturing, a financial system that lends to manufacturers, and the control of our borders. Economic nationalism is what this country was built on. The American system. Right? We go back to that. We look after our own, we look after our citizen, we look after our manufacturing base, and guess what? This country’s going to be greater, more united, more powerful than it’s ever been . . .. As long as you’re an American citizen, you’re part of this populist, economic nationalist movement. (Bannon 2017)

Accompanying Trump’s “America First” nationalism was his cri de coeur against a changing America that saw more immigrants land on its shores than any other time in history. The Pew Hispanic Research Center estimates that there are 41.7 million immigrants residing in the United States. Of these, 11.7 million are undocumented, 1.7 million are temporary legal residents, and 28.3 million are legal residents (Passel et al. 2013). Estimates are that by 2050 (or sooner), the United States will become a majority-minority nation, as whites become a minority group (Passel and Cohn 2008). This is already happening. Among those aged 5 years or younger in 2012,

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minority children outnumbered whites for the first time in US history (US Census Bureau 2012). The disappearance of so many white faces created a backlash against minority immigrants—a reaction Trump exploited in his announcement speech: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people” (Trump 2015a). To curb immigration, Trump promised to build “a big, beautiful wall” along the southern border paid for by Mexico. Further, Trump pledged to undo Barack Obama’s executive order and deport the “Dreamers” (minors who had been brought by parents or relatives to the US illegally) as well as other immigrants who entered the country illegally. As president, Trump signed an executive order vacating Obama’s Dreamers policy, while adults who came to the US illegally feared that Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities would seek their immediate deportation. The backlash against a changing political demography had been building ever since Barack Obama became the first nonwhite person to be elected president. Focus groups conducted by Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg and his partner, former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville, revealed an angry Republican electorate whose members resented the demographic and cultural changes being thrust upon them. As one Republican voter told the pollsters: “Don’t come here and make me speak your language. Don’t fly your flag. You’re on American soil. You’re an American. You come to our country you need to learn our language. Why should I ‘press 1’ if I want to speak in English? You know, everything–every politically correct machine out there—says, ‘Press 1 for English. Press 2 for Spanish’” (Greenberg and Carville 2014). Donald Trump exploited the notion that Barack Obama’s ascendancy represented the rise of a new and very different country, as the 44th president came to be seen as the “other”—a chief executive unlike the “real majority” of “un-young, un-poor, and un-black” Americans represented by presidents like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan who appealed to their cultural values (Scammon and Wattenberg 1970, passim). Trump falsely claimed that Obama was born in Kenya—forcing a visibly annoyed Obama to release a long form of his Hawaiian birth certificate. According to a 2008 survey, one-third of Republicans believed Obama was raised as a Muslim (Princeton Survey Research Associates International Newsweek 2008). Trump capitalized on these resentments, describing inaccurately how Muslims in New Jersey cheered the toppling of the World Trade Center, and advocated a ban on Muslim emigration to the United States: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on” (Trump 2015c). Upon entering office, Trump signed executive orders creating a “Muslim ban” (his tweet) by naming several countries whose emigration to the US would not be permitted. Trump’s travel bans were immediately debated in the federal courts, and his actions created chaos at US airports.

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Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” meant going back to an America the way it used to be—i.e., reversing the social, cultural, and demographic changes of the last half-century. Ronald Ingelhart and Pippa Norris captured the sentiments of Trump’s less educated, white supporters who felt they had become “strangers in their own land”: “They see themselves as victims of affirmative action and betrayed by ‘line-cutters’—African-Americans, immigrants, refugees, and women—who jump ahead of them in the queue for the American Dream. They resent liberal intellectuals who tell them to feel sorry for the line-cutters, and dismiss them as bigots when they don’t. Unlike most politicians, Donald Trump provides emotional support when he openly expresses racist and xenophobic feelings” (Ingelhart and Norris 2017, 452). The key to understanding the strategies of populist candidates is that they see “the people,” whom they purport to represent, as producers, i.e., those who personify the American Dream, while their enemies are the takers, i.e., Wall Street, bankers, minorities, and those who reject conventional social mores and values. Populism is all about us versus them: the makers versus the takers. Donald Trump is the latest vessel to embody these populist resentments. His assertion that it is the “other” who is responsible for what ails disaffected working-class Americans is a classic populist tactic. In 1896, William Jennings Bryan appealed to southern white farmers who were filled with racial resentments and blamed African-Americans for their plight: “Them black bastards is takin’ the food out ‘n mouths . . . . They’re down there sharin’ the good things with the rich while good white folks in the hills have to starve” (Kazin 1995, 40). In 1968, third party candidate George C. Wallace led another working class, racially charged populist insurgency by reminding voters of his segregationist stance amidst racial riots and deriding hippies as knowing a lot of four-letter words except “S-O-A-P” and “W-O-R-K” (Lind 2016). As the history of populist candidates has shown, the reforms they initially champion eventually degenerate into a politics of grievance that blames the “other” for the nation’s ills. Such demonizing leads to what Richard Hofstadter once called the “paranoid style,” a descriptor that can be fully applied to Donald Trump: [T]he paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, the quality needed is not a willingness to compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Nothing but complete victory will do. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated–if not from the world, at least from the theater of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for unqualified victories leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same sense of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes. (Hofstadter 1965, 30–31)

Donald Trump exhibits many of the qualities Hofstadter describes. But what worked for Trump during the 2016 campaign has severely undercut his presidency. His efforts to ban Muslim immigrants has been stymied; there is no real prospect of a

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border wall with Mexico; and most tellingly, his tax reform benefited the rich at the expense of the working class. As Trump so memorably told his wealthy golfing buddies after his tax reform legislation was signed into law, “You all just got a lot richer.” True to his populist instincts, Bernie Sanders noted, “At the end of 10 years, 83% of the benefits go to the top 1%, 60% of the benefits go to the top one-tenth of 1%, meanwhile well over 80 million Americans will be paying more in taxes, 13 million will lose their healthcare, and we will have an additional $1.4 trillion deficit” (Helmore 2017). As Trump’s presidency becomes ever more unpopular, one reason is his failure to live up to his populist promise to reduce economic inequality. As Ingelhart and Norris note, “Trump’s policies of deregulating the financial sector and reducing taxes on the very rich are the opposite of what is needed by the people left behind; these policies will make America great for billionaires who pay no income tax” (Ingelhart and Norris 2017, 452). Meanwhile, Trump’s continued demonizing of the “other” fuels the extreme political polarization that currently besets the United States, pitting older, non-college educated white workers against single women, minorities, and millennials—a rising American electorate that will form a new “real majority” in the twenty-first century. Some of Donald Trump’s failures can be attributed to the checks and balances of our national system of government, which has stymied his border wall plan and halted efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. American federalism has also allowed states to fight vigorously against Trump’s policy proposals, including the travel ban and a short-lived effort to root out nonexistent voter fraud. Trump’s political dilemma aligns with a historical pattern often associated with populism: whenever populism enjoys a temporary success, rhetorical excess inevitably follows. As Michael Kazin so memorably wrote: “By calling the enemy an ‘octopus,’ ‘leech,’ ‘pig,’ or ‘fat cat’ . . . character assassination was always essential to the rhetorical game” played by populist candidates (Kazin 1995, 16). During her 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton denounced Trump’s name-calling: “From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He is taking hate groups mainstream, and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party” (Clinton 2016).

6 The Popular Appeal of Populism in the Population Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party happened because its partisans agreed with his positions. In making his case that the federal government was run by corrupt politicians who allowed illegal immigrants easy entry, signed bad trade deals that undermined manufacturing jobs, refused to stand up for America overseas, and allowed “radical Muslim extremists” to run free in the Middle East and eventually find their way into the United States, Trump found widespread Republican support. Consider: • 71% of Republicans agreed with Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration (Wong 2016)

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• 67% wanted a wall constructed on the US Mexican border (Pfeiffer 2016) • 69% thought immigrants were a “burden” on the United States (Pfeiffer 2016) • 67% thought free trade had been bad for the United States (Pfeiffer 2016) As president, Trump enjoys broad support within his own party. In 2017, more than eight out of ten Republicans approved of his performance, only 26% believed the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election, and 89% thought media coverage of the Trump campaign’s involvement with the Russians has been “irresponsible and overdramatized” (NBC News/Wall Street Journal 2017). It is not an overstatement to say that GOP officeholders are intimidated by Trump’s firm hold on their party’s base and want to do nothing to cross the president, knowing that doing so will provoke Trump’s rage and engender a potential primary challenge that could prove fatal to their election prospects. Yet there are conservatives who are dismayed by Trump’s hostile takeover of their party. Chief among them is Republican Senator Jeff Flake. In his book, Conscience of a Conservative (modeled after Barry Goldwater’s book with the same title), Flake posted a Martin Luther-like list of theses that decried Trump’s abandonment of traditional conservative principles in favor of a resurgent populism: • Is it conservative to vilify religious and ethnic minorities? To exaggerate threats, and stoke security and economic fears? To promise that another sovereign country will be forced to pay for a border wall just because such a promise gets a good response at rallies? • Is it conservative to embrace as fact things that are demonstrably untrue, to traffic in “alternative facts,” and to attack the constitutionally protected free press as an “enemy of the people”? • Is it conservative to propagate a conspiracy theory about the birthplace of the president of the United States, long after the facts have put the theory to rest? And is it conservative for members of Congress to remain silent as such conspiracy theories are propagated? • Is it conservative to undermine confidence in our democratic elections, to describe them as “rigged,” and assert with no evidence that 3–5 million illegal aliens voted in the last general election? (Flake 2017a, 57–58). So far, however, Flake’s denunciations have had little impact on the views of Republican voters. They may be looking to the vast majority of Republican elected officials who have not only failed to denounce the president but, in many cases, have openly praised him. Their loyalty to Trump could be, in some cases, principled, but for the most part, it is probably strategic, since a Republican White House gives them an opportunity to enact long-sought-after conservative policies and the chance to remake the federal judiciary in the party’s image. By turning over the GOP to Trump’s populist impulses, Republicans enjoyed a victory that gave them full control of the government, even as Trump’s populism posed a threat to the party’s long-term survival.

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7 Conclusion For the first time in more than a century, populism has assumed control of a major political party in the United States. The merger of William Jennings Bryan’s People’s Party with the Democrats in 1896 precipitated a partisan realignment that left the GOP in a dominant position, and much the same may be happening now. However, Trump’s victory and his support among Republican voters hardly translate into a national embrace of Trumpian populism. While Donald Trump won enough electoral votes in 2016 to capture the White House, he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million—an astonishingly large margin.4 As president, he has done little to unify the country, and his performance has galvanized the opposition. During his first year in office, Trump’s approval rating averaged 38%—a shockingly abysmal performance for a first year president (Gallup 2017). A 2017 Quinnipiac University poll found that when respondents were asked to describe Trump, the top three descriptors were “idiot,” “liar,” and “incompetent” (Quinnipiac University 2017). Trump’s political weaknesses were on full display in the 2017 off-year elections that saw Democrats sweep to victory in Virginia and New Jersey and, stunningly, capture a US Senate seat in deep-red Alabama. In large measure, this trend was fuelled by suburban college-educated women, millennials, and minorities who are enraged by Trump and turned out in larger-than-usual numbers. All this spells trouble for a Republican party in the twenty-first century where older, non-college-educated white men continue to dwindle. Today, Donald Trump’s populist-inspired Republican Party is devoid of both ideology and ideas. Instead, it is centered upon an individual whose actions are designed to stoke anger and excoriate his perceived evildoers. Trump’s populism presents the Republican Party with a Faustian Bargain that may win in the short term but will have damaging consequences for both the party and the country consequences that will take years to overturn. As Jeff Flake warned, “The longer we wait [to act against Trump], the greater the damage, the harsher the judgment of history” (Flake 2017b, A-19). By embracing Donald Trump’s populism, the Republican Party’s very survival is in doubt. And American-style populism will have enjoyed yet another fling with power before fading into temporary oblivion.

References Arsenault, R. (1996). The folklore of southern demagoguery. In C. Eagles (Ed.), Is there a southern political tradition? Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Bachner, J., & Ginsberg, B. (2017). What Washington gets wrong: The unelected officials who actually run the government and their misconceptions about the American people. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. 4

Much of Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead can be attributed to her overwhelming victories in New York and California where, taken together, she beat Donald Trump by nearly 6 million votes.

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Bannon, S. (2017, September 10). Broadcast interview on 60 minutes. CBS News. Brewer, M. D. (2016). Populism in American politics. The Forum, 14(3), 249–264. Caldwell, L. A. (2016, July 7). A party divided: How Donald Trump emerged from decades of GOP tension. NBC News. Clinton, H. (2016, August 25). Speech on the alt-right movement. Reno, Nevada. Democratic Party. (2016). The 2016 democratic party platform. Retrieved November 17, 2017, from http://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.democrats.org/Downloads/2016_DNC_Platform.pdf Federici, M. P. (1991). The challenge of populism: The rise of right-wing democratism in postwar America. New York: Praeger. Flake, J. (2017a). Conscience of a conservative. New York: Random House. Flake, J. (2017b, October 25) Enough–it’s time to stand up to Trump. Washington Post. Gallup, P. (2017, December 30) Presidential approval ratings–Donald Trump. Press Release. Gerring, J. (1998). Party ideologies in America. New York: Cambridge University Press. Goodwyn, L. (1978). The populist moment: A short history of the Agrarian revolt in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Green, M. N., Yarwood, J., Daughtery, L., & Mazzenga, M. (2014). Washington 101: An introduction to the nation’s capital. New York: Palgrave. Greenberg, S., Carville, J. (2014, Feburary 2). Inside the GOP: Why Boehner is halting immigration reform. DemocracyCorps. Hamilton, A., Madison, J., & Jay, J. (1988 [1787]). The Federalist Papers. New York: Bantam Books. Helmore, E. (2017, December 24). Sanders attacks tax plan as Trump celebrates with friends. The Guardian. Hofstadter, R. (1965). The paranoid style in American politics and other essays. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Ingelhart, R., & Norris, P. (2017). Trump and the populist authoritarian parties: The silent revolution in reverse. Perspectives on Politics, 15(2), 443–454. Isenberg, N. (2016). White trash: The 400-year untold history of class in America. New York: Penguin Books. Kazin, M. (1995). The populist persuasion. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lind, M. (2016, March 9). Donald Trump, the perfect populist. Politico. Link, A. S., & McCormick, R. J. (1983). Progressivism. Arlington Heights: Harlan Davidson. McMath Jr., R. C. (1993). American populism: A social history, 1877–1898. New York: Hill and Wang. Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Müller, J.-W. (2016). What is populism? Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. NBC News/Wall Street Journal. (2017). Poll. June, 17–30. Passel, J. S., & Cohn, D. (2008, Feburary 11). U.S. population projections: 2005–2050. Pew Research Center report. Passel, J. S., Cohn¸ D, & Gonzalez-Berrera, A. (2013, September 23). Population decline of unauthorized immigrants stalls, may be reversed. Pew Research Center, Hispanic Trends Project, Press Release. Pfeiffer, A. (2016, May 12). Poll shows where Trump supporters and other republicans agree. Daily Caller. Plotke, D. (1996). Building a democratic political order: Reshaping American liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s. New York: Cambridge University Press. Postel, C. (2007). The populist vision. New York: Oxford University Press. Princeton Survey Research Associates International. (2008, July 9–10). Poll. Newsweek. Quinnipiac University. (2017, December 6–11). Poll. Remini, R. V. (1967). Andrew Jackson and the bank war: A study in the growth of presidential power. New York: W.W. Norton.

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Republican Party. (2016). The 2016 Republican Party platform. Accessed November 17, 2017, from https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/media/documents/DRAFT_12_FINAL[1]-ben_1468872234.pdf Sanders, B. (2015, May 26). Announcement speech. Burlington, Vermont. Sanders, E. (1999). Roots of reform: Farmers, workers, and the American state, 1877–1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Scammon, R., & Wattenberg, B. (1970). The real majority. New York: Coward-McCann. Shogan, C. J. (2007). Anti-intellectualism in the modern presidency: A republican populism. Perspectives on Politics, 5(2), 295–303. Skocpol, T., & Williamson, V. (2012). The tea party and the remaking of republican conservatism. New York: Oxford University Press. Tocqueville, A. (2003 [1840]). Democracy in America (G. E. Bevan, Trans.). New York: Penguin Books. Trump, D. J. (2015a, June 16). Announcement speech. New York City. Trump, D. J. (2015b). Crippled America: How to make America great again. New York: Threshold Editions/Simon and Schuster. Trump, D. J. (2015c, December 7). Statement on preventing Muslim immigration. Trump, D. J. (2016, July 21). Acceptance speech. Cleveland: Republican National Convention. U.S. Census Bureau. (2012, May 17). Most children younger than age one are minorities: Census Bureau reports. Press Release. Watson, H. L. (1990). Liberty and power: The politics of Jacksonian America. New York: Hill and Wang. White, J. K. (1988). The new politics of old values. Hanover: University Press of New England. Williams, T. H. (1970). Huey long. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Wong, K. (2016, March 29). Half of American voters back Trump’s Muslim ban. The Hill. Wood, G. S. (1969). The creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. New York: W. W. Norton. Young, J. S. (1966). The Washington community, 1800–1828. New York: Columbia University Press.

Conclusion Daniel Stockemer

There are people who look at a problem . . . and shake their heads, thinking it can’t be done. There is a name for people like that: Governor. Then there are people who talk about the issue, throw around other people’s money, and maybe even show you drawings. There’s a name for those people, too: Senator. – Donald Trump (Green and White, in this volume, “Populism in the United States”) I am sure you have seen what happens when a tree falls over a road and many people gather around it. Here you always have two kinds of people. Those who have great ideas how to remove the tree, and share with others their wonderful theories, and give advice. Others simply realize that the best is to start pulling the tree from the road. – Viktor Orbán (Müller 2017, 26)

Poland, the Philippines, France, Argentina, the United States, and Turkey span a diverse transcontinental sweep of the political phenomenon of populism. Each country carries with it the flame of populism in the form of movements, parties, and, all importantly, personalities which personify populism. In each case, the populists personify the Rousseauian claim of the legislator beholden to the general will. This is not to say there is not immense variation in the content of populism, whether it be the penal politics and quasi-fascist extrajudicial killings of the Philippines’ Duterte, the Islamic conservativism of Turkey’s Erdoğan, or the socialist revolutionary fervour of France’s Mélenchon. Yet, what all of these forms of populism have in common is that they express some grievances, whether real or perceived, which are then assembled into a meta-narrative of redemption. This call to arms from the populist to the people

D. Stockemer (*) University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Stockemer (ed.), Populism Around the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96758-5_8

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helps manufacture “the people” through a narrative reifying a historically and socially constructed division between the people and the elite. Populists vary in their rhetoric and discourse, they vary in the policy positions they hold, and they vary in their record of government (Murillo 2015, 57). Nevertheless, even with these variations of intensity, duration, success, direction, and form, there are common similarities in the discursive construction of the people versus the elite, a heavier than usual accentuation on popular sovereignty, a personalistic representation of the general will, and the process of remedying the problem of thin ideologies through rejecting the current establishment ideology. While each specific form of populism engages in differing affectual narratives (and sometimes multiple), each seems to operate through the prism of two meta-narratives: the quest for the reclamation of dignity/sovereignty and the resolution of the crisis of unrepresentation. In their resistance to the elite, populists rhetorically call forth a conflict against the sceptical and investigative press, the interventionist judiciary, the paternalistic and non-partisan bureaucracy, and an unresponsive constitution (and sometimes an intrusive military)—all of which chaff the populist’s preference for popular sovereignty.

1 Populism: A Thin Ideology That Can Be Combined with Basically Any Thick Ideology Populism relies on a Manichaean understanding of the world in which a homogenous group of “true” citizens are pitted against a corrupt elite, with direct representation of the former seen as a solution to the excesses of the latter (Rovira Kaltwasser et al. 2017, 3). As such it is a thin ideology that consists of three components, the pure people, a corrupted elite, and a general will of the people. This thin ideology is normally complemented by a “thick ideology” or an all-encompassing world view such as socialism or liberalism. In the words of Mudde (2004, 4), populism generally cannot exist in a vacuum, but rather is attached to other ideologies, which serve as vehicles that help the populist to manifest and understand the world (Mudde 2004, 4). Poland, the Philippines, and Turkey all demonstrate wildly different ideological interpretations of right-wing politics. The Turkish nation is constructed through the Islamic adhesive of its people, while Poland uses more traditional Polish nationalism and Catholicism (but notable both are rejecting forms of secularity and atheism). In the Philippines, nationalism seems to be both anti-imperialist, conservative in the law and order sense, and with a nationalist closure not predicated on ethnic or cultural bonds per se. In France, the FN frames nativism, authoritarianism, and cultural exclusion as civilizational. In the words of Marine Le Pen—“We, the French, are viscerally attached to our laicite, our sovereignty, our independence, our values. The world knows that when France is attacked it is liberty that is dealt a blow” (Le Pen 2015). While Mélenchon’s party La France Insoumise shares some of Marine Le Pen’s ideological conceptions such as the rejection of the European

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Union, his main ideological landmark is anti-presidentialism; he seeks to abolish the presidential monarchy and refound the French Republic. In the United States, Trump’s populism has been heavily influenced by nativist views, as well, acting on a combination of white ethnic anxiety and economic malaise to promote an ideology of intense nationalism and anti-elitism, despite its lack of explicitly consistent ideological positions (see Green and White, in this volume, “Populism in the United States”). Argentina fails to have consistent populist ideologies, with the changes from Peron to Menem to Kirchner leading to alternating policies of corporatist developmentalism, to neoliberal free markets back to socialist state-led developmentalism. Yet, each of these turns is consistent with Mudde’s definition of populism as a thin ideology. For example, Menem’s turn to neoliberalism is the articulation of a new populist project rejecting the hegemony of developmentalism and its failures. It is also telling that in Argentina the relationship between populism and liberal democracy is more complex than in the other five cases. While in France, the Philippines, Poland, Turkey, and the United States populism is clearly anti-pluralistic, the situation in Argentina is more complex. Of the different manifestations of populism, some are rejecting its liberal cultural implications of increasing multiculturalism, some are rejecting the more economic implications of free trade, some are rejecting the institutional arrangements of liberal democracy, but none are doing all of the same. For example, Nestor Kirchner is both disrupting economic liberalism and in a sense strengthening liberal democracy in his defence of human rights (although undermining it in other ways).

2 The People, the Elite, and the General Will of the People So, who are the “homogeneous, pure and authentic people” and who is the “corrupt elite?” Populists in revolt against the elite are always stoking a periphery-centre dynamic, a dynamic that can be more psychological than spatial per se (but frequently psycho-spatialized). The United States’ two populists’ variants of leftist economic populism and culturally charged radical right-wing populism both embody the periphery-centre-periphery narrative differently. Take, for instance, Bernie Sanders’ 2016 platform which “accuses economic elites of unfairly exploiting the system at the expense of citizens” and rejects the elite values in their promise to “fight against the greed and recklessness of Wall Street . . .” (Green and White, in this volume, “Populism in the United States”). The periphery is the “special interests” or corporate “takers” whose needs are looked after first by a corrupt government and broken economic system. For Trump, the people-elite distinction is constructed by appealing to the “united people” through America First welfare chauvinism and patriotism. He appeals to the “common people” through the heralding of “regular America” in their anxieties by harkening to the poorer voters of the “white working class” through his anti-globalization and antifree trade agenda (see Green and White, in this volume, “Populism in the United States”). The elite in Trump’s definition are the liberals who are shameful and

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disrespectful towards the “real majority” of “un-young, un-poor, and – un-black Americans” (see Green and White, in this volume, “Populism in the United States”). The formula of periphery-centre-periphery slightly changes in postcolonial contexts to a centre-centre-periphery between colonial powers—local elites—and the oppressed elites. In the context of the Philippines, the historical rejection of the local “comprador bourgeois” is also a rejection of colonial power; the nation becomes framed as the underdog and the subject of elite abuse, whereby colonial authorities, interfering foreign powers, and the local oligarchy are all circumspect. In dividing the people and the elite, Duterte masterfully builds on the narrative of virtuous citizens getting the short end of the stick from the failures of the justice system. The enemy in this narrative is within the nation—the dangerous drug pushers, as well as the greedy and tone-deaf elites of Imperial Manila, including the corrupt justice system (see Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”). This antagonism is inherently divisive: on the one hand, “the interests of the nation, and the popular sovereignty of the ‘people’” and, on the other, “weak liberal institutions, oligarchs that benefit from the system” (Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”). Analogously, the “inclusive” populism of Latin America also does not counterpose a special interest of the periphery against a more virtuous and deserving periphery. Rather most variants of Peronism underscore the centre-centre-periphery dynamic at play in postcolonial contexts. Peron and successive leaders have presented themselves as “down-to-earth leaders” who understand the people and “use the language of the ordinary people who have nothing in common with the sophisticated, vain babblers of a Europeanized elite” (Muno, in this volume, “Populism in Argentina”). The ordinary and the downtrodden “descamisados”, poor Argentineans who wore plain shirts and rolled up their sleeves because they could not afford a jacket, were Peron’s chief supporters. To display their support, Peron, and subsequent Peronists, would frequently take off their jackets and roll up their sleeves. In Nestor Kirchner’s rhetoric, the ordinary people favoured the national project of change and recovery, but the “enemies”, the military dictatorships, the private sector having profited from privatizations in the 1990s, and the IMF and international financial investors, sabotaged their mission (Muno, in this volume, “Populism in Argentina”). Both Polish and Turkish populism represent the ways in which populism can shift from a traditional centre-periphery dynamic to a centre-centre-periphery, as these populist elites sought out new elites in their narrative. Traditionally, Polish populism is anchored in the Solidarity trade union movement which aimed to protect “ordinary workers” “against their supervisors, managerial staff and party nomenklatura” (Stanley and Cześnik, in this volume, “Populism in Contemporary Poland”). In this early version, the struggle of the working masses is emphasized as the “opposition between the people as the genuine expression of the legitimate Polish Nation, and the elite as an illegitimate expression of an imposed, alien, and inauthentic state structure” (Stanley and Cześnik, in this volume, “Populism in Contemporary Poland”). The “us versus them” dynamic is centred therein on “concern for the

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dignity of the ordinary man, [and] its appreciation of traditional Polish values and identities” (Stanley and Cześnik, in this volume, “Populism in Contemporary Poland”). The anxieties during the political transition period slowly alter this rhetoric “on behalf of those experiencing economic, political, and social hardships as a result of the transition to democracy”, and this leads to the beginning of the critique of the “entire political class” due to the compromising nature of pacted democracy (see Stanley and Cześnik, in this volume, “Populism in Contemporary Poland”). By that time, Jarosław Kaczynski promised a government of PiS “would target the ‘mendacious elites’ of the Third Republic in the interests of ordinary people, ordinary Poles”. Furthermore, PiS began to align its focus on corruption and to adopt a fundamentalist pro-Catholic ideology. This Catholic populism runs parallel to Turkish Islamic populism. The Turkish Republican elite laid the groundwork for a “center-periphery cleavage” which has become a “struggle between the conservative masses of Anatolia” who are “rural, devout Muslims” and the “traditionalist, ethnic, religious, and regional groups” against the “nationalist, centralist, laicist” “secular-republican elites who are disconnected from the values of the people” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). In France, Le Pen’s FN constructed the people versus the elite in the context of nativism and authoritarian, which is focused on re-asserting “national sovereignty” and “national priority” to defend both the “little and hardworking people” and the French nation (Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). This nativism is strengthened by the explicit reproach of the EU as “an elite-driven project and a ‘totalitarian jail’ for the people . . . . leading to a ‘Europeist multicultural magma’” (Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). The LFI are Eurosceptic, as well, but differently because their people are the working class, so they oppose the tyranny of the EU because of its market liberalism in the form of “austerity politics and agenda of fiscal orthodoxy” (Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). Mélenchon’s people are constructed in response to the immediate conditions of the Hollande government, but he also takes on a “patriotic tone . . . . defend[ing] the ‘homeland’ against foreign forces of globalization” and to “preserve the national sovereignty of the French People” (Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). The politicians and the financial elite are being juxtaposed with a socialist, patriotic people, neo-Jacobin people through his overtures to the French revolutionary tradition. In this way, French populists are calling for a restoration of a formerly in power, or dignified, or virtuous, symbolic people which existed in the past.

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3 The General Will, the Affectual Narrative, and Representation The question of Vox Populi is an interlinking one. It fuses the “general will”, the “affectual narrative”, and “representation” into an understanding of what the populist is, the voice of the people. This question of representation, which I more intuitively summed up by the term silent majority, gets to the root of a unique connection between the citizen and the “people’s tribune”. American Populism is best framed within the constitutional mantra of “We the People”. Bernie Sanders echoed this claim when he stated, “Today we stand here and say loudly and clearly that, ‘Enough is enough’ this great nation and its government belong to all of the people, and not a handful of billionaires” (Green and White, in this volume, “Populism in the United States”). Donald Trump’s narrative is similar; he sees himself as a “vanguard of a crusade against the elite” or—in the words of Republican National Chair Haley Barbour—“Trump is the manifestation of people’s anger. People all around the country want to send Washington the Bird, and they see him as the gigantic middle finger” (Green and White, in this volume, “Populism in the United States”). His manifesto, “Crippled America”, and slogans of “Make America Great Again” and “Drain the Swamp” fit well within the two populist meta-narratives of the crisis of unrepresentation. Trump, like other populists, becomes a personification of the general will—“I have visited the laid-off factory, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals. These are the forgotten men and women of our country, and they are forgotten, they will be forgotten long. These are the people who work hard but no longer have a voice. I am your voice” (Green and White, in this volume, “Populism in the United States”). For Argentina, Peron ascends the ultimate personification and representation of the general will by becoming the “Father of the Nation” (see Muno, in this volume, “Populism in Argentina”). He argued “no power should act independent from the people’s will (which he, of course, embodied), therefore the courts should subordinate to the people’s sense of justice, de facto to his authority” (Muno, in this volume, “Populism in Argentina”). His legitimacy comes from the people while it flows right into his direct personhood. The synthesis of general will and representation is a direct consequence of Peronist political cultural wielding. The “We” rhetoric is used “to create a sense of togetherness of Peronists and reiterate emotional bonds” (see Muno, in this volume, “Populism in Argentina”). In Turkey, Erdoğan rhetorically presents himself “as a victim of the political establishment” like his fellow Muslims (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). His “strictly majoritarian understanding of democracy” solely relies “on the number of votes received from the people” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). His “preference for direct, plebiscitary linkages” as the form of representation of the general will is distilled as well: “It is going to be as you want. The Prime Minister and President will be those whom you want. Of course, they will also be like you, one of you” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). Islamism is an immediate rejection of elite values; it is the restoration of a religious society which is the restoration of

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Turkey and the people: “If you do not give up the fight with the people, with the people’s values, history, culture, and their representatives, you will drown in your own ugliness . . .” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). France follows the same trajectory of unique polarization of the political question between the representation of the general will and the unrepresentative elite. The 2017 FN manifesto issues this declaration, “This presidential election features two opposite projects—the ‘globalist’ choice represented by my opponent—(. . .) and the ‘patriotic’ choice which I personify” (FN 2017). Marine Le Pen is embodying patriotism, paralleling the concept of a plebiscitary linkage to the general will. Her project is alone worthy of moral probity (see Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). This is the epitome of exclusive moral representation. Mélenchon equally places himself on the side of the “national sovereignty of the French People” against the “tyranny of the EU” (Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). When looking at the iconography of his movement La France Insoumise (Unbowed France), his manifesto L’Avenir en commun (the common future), and his slogan la force du people (the force of the people), it is obvious that he claims to be speaking of the people (Willsher 2017). As such, the French case is an extreme polarization of the “crisis of unrepresentation” as an entire political class is rejected. Mélenchon is calling upon the people to show what the sovereign people are worth. The Ballot papers must be used for a sweep that makes all of them [the oligarchy of the “political class”] go away, “without exception” (Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). The Polish populists of Kukiz’15 embrace the “disillusionment with the country’s ruling elite” by painting the elite as a “partiocracy”, which acts as a “spurious cover for an entrenched cartel of professional politicians”. PiS uses the same narrative when articulating the idea that the Polish Third Republic is a “stolen transition” due to the pacted democracy “between the communist-era nomenklatura and liberal Solidarity, with the former yielding power to the latter in exchange for impunity for past crimes and opportunities for enrichment under the new regime” (Stanley and Cześnik, in this volume, “Populism in Contemporary Poland”). These deep narratives touch directly on the problem of “unrepresentation” and the need for a disruption to “redeem” the nation. In the Philippines, this meta-narrative is explicitly couched in terms of dignity in a series of speeches given by successive presidents. In 1963, President Macapagal claimed that “it was time for the Filipino people to have the dignity they deserve”. In 1965, the Dictator Ferdinand Marcos claimed that “not only had the Filipino subject, a brave hero of history, been left without dignity by colonial oppressors; in the present time, he said, the sovereignty of the Filipino people was being derided by the extravagant lifestyles of the political class and the lawlessness of syndicated crime” (Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”). This narrative of the reclamation of sovereignty is continued with Duterte’s response to the spectre of American criticism: “I am a president of a sovereign state. And we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master but the Filipino people” (Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and

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Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”). Duterte is valourizing his persona as a servant of the people; he presents himself as “capable of rescuing the nation . . . he [alone] can restore its dignity, since he will not tolerate its belittling or the infringement of its sovereignty” (Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”). The affectual narrative of Duterte’s penal populism is a “political style that builds on demands for punitive politics” (Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”). The “drug war is the crystallization of a bigger war that the . . . President is waging—a fight to save the nation from liberalism” (Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”).

4 The History of Populism History holds a special place for each populist movement. In each country, populism is rooted in the broader trajectory of social trends and local history by informing the political questions and the national subjectivity that are harnessed by the populist insurgence. History provides the creative wellspring of populism itself. The central act of constructing the symbolic rendition of the people versus the elite only makes sense in the context of each history. As pointed out by Aytaç and Elçi (in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”), “it is helpful to delineate the central cleavage(s) of a given society, since populists build and expand their constituency by tapping on those cleavages and exacerbating the societal divide” (see also Barr 2009). Populists are archaeologists: they excavate a particular narrative from history, present “frozen in time” artefacts as justification and evidence, and in their sensationalist fervour, project a nostalgic possibility of a return to a more glorious past. In Turkey, Erdoğan’s revolt only makes sense when we realize the latent but explosive dynamics that the introduction of the Republican Era (1923–) brought to the fore. Kemal Atatürk’s modernization brought a level of secular-republican centralization that conflicted with the traditional, religious, Islamic majority that were shunted aside in favour of a new republican elite and new institutions (see Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). Webb and Curato’s exploration of the Philippine’s populist experience highlights the role of history as the “stepping stones” that made Duterte possible (see this volume). The deep roots of “lingering anxiety about freedom and sovereignty” continue to haunt the Filipino psyche and colonial history in which imperial powers and “comprador bourgeois” birthed a broken “cacique democracy”. Naturally, these structural conditions lend itself well to the desire for transgressive strongmen who zealously defend the sovereignty and dignity of the Philippines from the elites at home and abroad. The progression in US populism from rugged individualism to the quintessential populist framing of “makers versus the takers”, and the ensuing rigged system which seems to benefit “un-Americans”, lends itself organically to decades of right-wing

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republican rhetoric (see Green and White, in this volume, “Populism in the United States”). In France, it is the embers of the great civilizational aspiration of France that nurture Le Pen’s rhetoric and the fiery revolutionary tradition that ignites Mélenchon’s oratory. In Poland, the corruption of the bureaucratic and atheist communist regime and the pacted, elite-managed transition to democracy provided a fertile ground for the establishment of the decommunizing, populist Catholic, anticorruption Law and Justice Party. In Argentina, populism in the form of Peron has left such an indelible mark that populism has become the cleavage of Argentina.

5 The Tribune of the People: The Central Populist Actors The success of populist parties in the six cases is closely linked to a populist tribune: a former Trotskyite, the daughter of an infamous racist, a real-estate mogul, a longtime senator, a rock star, a mayor, identical twins, a semi-professional soccer player, and a lawyer. Yet, in most cases, the outsider image that is so cultivated by these populist leaders is a farce. Almost all the populists covered, barring Donald Trump and Pawel Kukiz, have had long political careers in lower executive or legislative positions. Their running for, and in some cases winning, the highest office is the culmination of a political career rather than its insurgent beginning. However, there are three central attributes which seem to consistently hold true: (1) the populist establishes outsider credentials, (2) he/she develops an uncommon attachment with the electorate which transforms the populist project into a uniquely personalistic endeavour, and (3) the populist centralizes power. Lech Wałęsa is probably the archetypical populist leader in our sample. This leader of the communist dissident trade union movement and first president of Poland is “a simple, plain-spoken leader with the ability to bypass institutions and elite discourses and implement solutions in the popular interest” (Stanley and Cześnik, in this volume, “Populism in Contemporary Poland”). His style continues to reverberate today with its “distrust in elites and professionals and their institutions, a propensity to communicate using simple, blunt language, an appreciation of the wisdom of ‘ordinary people’, and a conviction that . . . complicated matters can easily be resolved by decisive unilateral action” (Stanley and Cześnik, in this volume, “Populism in Contemporary Poland”). Poland’s modern populists continue to share this personalistic tradition. The leadership of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) is dominated by the twin brothers, Jarosław and the now departed Lech Kaczyński, both of which are long-standing political figures and former ministers. Poland’s other party, the eponymously named Kukiz’15 after its famous rock musician leader Pawel Kukiz, is ideologically heterogeneous but generally shares the political space of right-wing nativist with PiS. Their outsider status is cemented through their selfstyled narrative of being “sidelined by a liberal establishment” during the transition period (see Stanley and Cześnik, in this volume, “Populism in Contemporary Poland”).

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The French populists, both Marine Le Pen’s right-wing Le Front National (FN) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon left-wing France Insoumise (LFI), are poster children of personalism. The appeal of their projects is rooted heavily in their personification as champions of their movements. The outsider status of these parties is reinforced by their refusal to cooperate with the other parties (see Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). For Mélenchon, his concept of dégagisme (clearing out all the politicians) excludes him from the political elite, thus cementing his own uniqueness as a non-politician. The FN’s rhetoric refers to the mainstream parties as the “UMPS Caste” (Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). In addition, both parties propagate strong leadership and grassroots participation. According to Ivaldi, the FN exemplifies the idea of “strong leadership and direct democracy” exhibiting “distrust of pluralism and institutional meditations”; even so, internally the FN “exhibits an authoritarian style of leadership and a highly centralized party organization” which Le Pen dominates with her “marinist” elites (see this volume). The LFI experience only expands the ambivalence between strong leadership and participatory inner-party democracy because internally they integrate “grassroots participation and direct involvement” through “local participatory assemblies . . . [and] bottom-up decision-making” but simultaneously rely on the “traditional top-down mechanism” of Mélenchon’s charisma and “plebiscitarian” leadership (Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). The Turkish case—the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and their founder and leader Erdoğan—represents centralization, personalism, and “outsiderism” in its most traditional way. Most importantly Recep Erdoğan has centralized power at the expense of traditional elites in the military and bureaucracy, fostering an incremental transition into a presidential system which he dominates (see Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). He has premised his “anti-establishment appeals” on his “‘outsider status and humble socio-economic background” in order to present “himself and his party as the true representatives of ‘the people’” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). Part of his outsider status comes from a prison sentence and a ban from politics he received for reciting a poem with “militant Islamist tones” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). Among others, this allows Erdoğan to present himself as an embodiment of the “struggle between the people and the elites” by virtue of being a “victim of the political establishment” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). Argentina’s strong personalist tradition is embodied in Juan Peron, Carlos Menem, as well as Nestor and Cristina Kirchner. The three presidents all cultivated their status as “outsiders” of “ordinary origin” or of “remote provinces”, with an “image of the down-to-earth leader” who speaks the “language of the ordinary people”; they all presented themselves as a modern “caudillo” (“a Latin term for this special type of strongman”) (Muno, in this volume, “Populism in Argentina”). Emblematic of this, Argentinian populists governed extensively through their own popularity as “undisputed leaders of the party and the movement” and even usurped legislative powers through emergency decrees (see Muno, in this volume, “Populism in Argentina”). Muno deploys the term “hyperpresidentialism” to describe the Peronist exercise

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of power which would “neglect or bypass institutions of accountability and manipulate rules of procedure” (Muno, in this volume, “Populism in Argentina”). The word canonization comes into play, when describing President Peron and First Lady “Angel of the Poor” Evita. To this day both are enjoying a quasi-religious popularity. The unprecedented success of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the 2016 American Presidential Elections fits very well within the populist narratives of the other countries. Both were underdogs and outsiders without long-standing memberships to the political establishments they targeted (see Green and White, in this volume, “Populism in the United States”). Each carried a program of significant departure to their new parties, with Trump ending the standard dog whistling in favour of overt racism, alongside foreign policy isolationism and de-globalization, whereas Sanders professed democratic socialism and aimed to be an anticorporate power crusader. The central thrust of each of their campaigns was based on the power of their personalities. After his accession to the presidency, Trump converted the Republican Party. With little resistance from the party establishment, he has centralized power by frequently dismissing and shuffling his team, skirting presidential norms and conventions, denigrating the press, and “innovating” Republican policy positions. Rodrigo Duterte, the foul-mouthed president of the Philippines, is a bit of an extraordinary figure. The undisputed leader of the Philippines has declared war on the “oligarchs”, “the criminal syndicates”, and the “corrupt criminal justice system” and has directly challenged the media and the liberal rights’ regime through, what seems to be his central ideological mooring, a campaign of extrajudicial killings in a drug war against addicts and dealers alike (see Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”). He certainly seems to fit the “category of a typical Asian Strongman”. Yet, he is a strongman, who is well embraced by the Filipino people, with warm greetings from adoring crowds, a scandal-proof reputation, and an approval rating of 80% (see Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”). Duterte’s 20-year mayoral tenure of a major city, Davao City, did not seem to diminish his outsider image. Rather on the contrary, he was heralded for his success into turning the murder capital of the Philippines into an ordered and lawful city. He incorporates a strange fusion of celebrity and politics, but just like every populist leader, cultivates the persona of an “outsider” who can relate to the urban poor and rural populations. The populists may differ by continent, but there is certainly a similar playbook in which personalism and a direct belief in the individual gives leeway to the populists to develop a unique level of personal power over their parties and governments. Populist leaders do not have to be outsiders in the assumed traditional sense, but may be elites who can cultivate this image. This process seems to be done through demonstrating a sense of compassion or a combative nature. The compassion is depicted towards a specific downtrodden group which either makes up the “virtuous” people or other groups which feel culturally related to them. A combative nature is established through consistently fighting the institutions of authority.

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Duterte’s combative, curse-laden language seems to parallel Mélenchon’s firebrand rhetoric. Whether Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, or the Peronists, they all build a narrative of concern for those “left behind”.

6 The Populist Approach There are three forms of populist conduct which do hold some consistency across the cases studied: (1) the establishment of crisis rhetoric, (2) the extra-parliamentary mobilization, and (3) ambivalence towards institutions of democratic constraint. The emotionalization of politics is nothing new, but the ubiquity of populism to rhetorically constructing their political moment into a crisis is a common feature. For example, the French populists are all but declaring the 2017 presidential election as a choice between slavery and freedom in reference to EU and sovereignty. Duterte’s defensive posture reinforces the sense of siege mentality adopted by populists. In Argentina, the populists did not have to rhetorically construct crisis as the political and economic situations were frequently a crisis all on their own. Yet, the populists’ response was not about consensus-building. For example, the term “enemy of the people” alone indicates what “Kirchnerismo” was (see Muno, in this volume, “Populism in Argentina”). In Poland PiS took advantage of the crisis of transition, through a strategy of projecting “strong leadership” and “overbidding and partial withdrawal” by disrupting the status quo and then establishing a new equilibrium (see Stanley and Cześnik, in this volume, “Populism in Contemporary Poland”). The example of Turkey also highlights that the language of crisis lends itself to the conspiratorial nature of populism. “Erdoğan’s discourse is replete with conspiratorial insinuation targeting main opposition parties, academics, intellectuals, and journalists who are not aligned with the government, the Western Powers, and some vague actors that are imagined to plot against Turkey” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). The mass mobilization that seems to frequently complement populist governance is often a show of force of popular legitimacy. Notably in Turkey, when the military looked to be on the verge of a coup d’état, extra-parliamentary mobilizations came in the form of rallies and street demonstrations to demonstrate popular support for Erdoğan (see Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). Mass mobilization in the case of Argentina frequently takes the form of rallies, but could also take the form of extensive patronage networks that operate throughout the country with almost 1% of the population acting as Peronist activists (see Muno, in this volume, “Populism in Argentina”). In Poland, the grassroots “Radio Maryja circles” and the “Gazeta Polska Clubs” coupled with the Solidarni 2010 association, which is a grassroots conspiracy movement, are signs of mass mobilization in Poland. In both the United States and France, the rise of populists has also bolstered the idea of mass rallies as conducted by Donald Trump and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The anti-institutionalism or ambivalence towards democratic elites manifests itself in a drift towards greater aspects of presidentialism in countries where populists

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are in power. This ranges from Argentina’s “hyperpresidentialism” to “constitutional reform” in favour of presidentialism in Turkey. For example, in Argentina, all Peronist presidents have engaged in extensive interference through the judiciary, the subjugation of the legislative arm to the executive branch, and excessive government intervention through executive and emergency powers and decrees (see Muno, in this volume, “Populism in Argentina”). Turkey has engaged in “institutional changes that strengthened the power of the executive branch”, a move that has degraded democratic checks and balances to the point that critics decry Turkey’s descent “into a competitive authoritarian regime” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). Similarly, the Polish Law and Justice Party has an agenda of “elite replacement” through “purging the individuals and networks associated with Poland’s third Republic” in favour of PiS loyalists (see Stanley and Cześnik, in this volume, “Populism in Contemporary Poland”). Their second objective is “fundamental system change” in order to break the supposedly “dysfunctional system of liberal ‘impossibilism’”—which they complained was an undue constraint on the “elected government’s ability to govern freely” (Stanley and Cześnik, in this volume, “Populism in Contemporary Poland”). Polish populists have also politicized the courts, appointed loyalists, and feuded with those who would interfere legally with the regime. Similarly, Trump has tried to consolidate power within his presidency, showing disdain for the press and at instances the judiciary. Even more pronounced, Duterte’s extrajudicial drug war is clearly illegal and a complete circumvention of both the rights and the entire legal apparatus of the Philippines. Finally, the French populist’s articulation of the EU sees it as a clear constraint; for Mélenchon it is in its constraints over economic policy, while for Le Pen, the restraint comes in the inability of the French government to implement harsher immigration policies.

7 Populism’s Appeal It is very difficult to draw universal demographic features of populist voters from these case studies, even if certain conditions are more common than others. The two most common assumptions about the populist support base are as follows: (1) populism is a project of the “silent majority” made up of those “most ‘typically from here’” (Ostiguy 2017, 5) (this is the populism of the racial and cultural backlash), and (2) populism flows from a lack of education; it is the insurgence of the ignorant, and it is made up of those “losers of globalization or modernization” (Kirk Hawkins et al. 2017, 5–6). These characterizations apply to some cases but not to all. American radical right-wing populism seems to comply with these assumptions as it pits “older non-college educated white workers against single women, minorities, and millennials” (Green and White, in this volume, “Populism in the United States”). Trump supporters are the quintessential downwardly mobile cultural backlash voters. In Poland, the Law and Justice Party seems to tap into the same constituency. For example, in 2015, the majority of its electorate was rural, above the age of

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55, and had lower education. These voters were “traditional” in the sense that they were more religious and rather dissatisfied with their material situation. Yet, the party also captured a significant vote share of voters aged 18–29 (i.e. 25%), higher educated voters (29%), and urban dwellers (30%). Poland’s other right-wing populist party, Kukiz’15, is demographically different from PiS. Their support was primarily younger with 64% in the 18–34 age category, had no distinct variance with the general voters on religiosity or self-perceptions of material circumstances, and was actually more educated than PiS voters, with 44% of them holding secondary education. Geographically their support was “slanted towards rural and smalltown Poland”, with 34% of their support coming from rural areas, but only 15% coming from large cities. The French case study is even more diverse when it comes to populist voters. In the 2017 presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon won 19.6% of the first-round vote, while Le Pen won 21.3% and then 33.9% in the second round. For instance, when it comes to gender, the Front National has a “marginal gender gap” with its recent increase in “appeal to women”, whereas LFI’s support is clearly male dominant (see Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). However, contrary to Trump and PiS, the FN has the strongest appeal among young voters. In contrast, LFI receives strong support from “secularized voters” and is stronger among foreign “religious affiliations”; this latter point implies that this party does not attract “traditionally from here” voters (see Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). On an economic basis, FN support is found predominantly among the lower socio-economic strata with lower levels of education (see Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). In contrast, LFI populist voters do not “fulfil the ‘globalization losers’ profile” with “no strong evidence of a strong social electoral basis” (Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). LFI draws its voters across a “broader coalition of voters across social strata”, although with a particular emphasis on “middle-class voters with fewer economic assets” (Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). The Turkish case pits rural religious voters against secular city dwellers, with the former constituting Erdoğan’s base. Yet, there does not seem to be any difference in electoral support based on education, age, or income. Similarly, support for Duterte appears to come from a broad coalition, a coalition that includes business elites, rural workers, city dwellers, as well as young and old citizens. Finally, the Argentine case points to the malleable nature of populist coalitions. To highlight, the unions are involved under Peron and Kirchner, the military under Peron, and human rights groups under Kirchner. While the descamisado (working class) and the poor have always figured strongly among populist supporters, the Argentine case highlights that populism can also be pro-business, pro-human rights, and pro-women’s emancipation, all of which confirms the deep variation possible in the populists’ demographics. Turning to beliefs and attitudes, we have more convergence across the cases, in particular, when it comes to the radical right-wing populist parties, which all of them reject liberal democracy in one form or another. For example, in Poland, voters with

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strongly antiliberal views have a high probability of voting for PiS. Trump’s republican supporters are equally economically antiliberal with 67% thinking “free trade has been bad for the country”; socially illiberal with consistent two-thirds support building a wall with Mexico, banning Muslim immigration, and believing that immigrants were a “burden”. In France, FN supporters are generally drawn towards concerns over immigration, support appeals to law and order (and authoritarian tendencies), opposing globalization, and endorsing welfare chauvinism (see Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). The attitudes of LFI voters are a bit more nuanced. They have higher support for economic redistribution, lower support for law and order claims, have less authoritarian attitudes, but they do converge on opposition to European integration, economic globalization, and retain some cultural protectionism in the form of a weak negative correlation with welfare chauvinism (see Ivaldi, in this volume, “Parties and Voters in the Populist Market in France”). The Filipino case study revolves primarily around the populist voters’ beliefs in the political arrangements of liberal democracy. The “‘virtuous citizens’ who claim to have done everything to earn a decent living” seem to be in support of rejecting the political arrangement of liberal democracy when they are confronted with the descent of their communities and the lawlessness of drug addicts and criminals (see Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”). With Duterte’s popularity spread across social classes, there is little space for a retreat into assuming that “only ‘desperate’ citizens find his populism appealing” (Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”). Equally the middle class seems to be buying in through frustration in unfulfilled demands for better services from a booming economy, “only to suffer from the daily miseries of traffic congestion, rickety trains, and dilapidated airports while paying high taxes” (Webb and Curato, in this volume, “Liberal Anxieties, Ambivalent Citizens: Insurgent Nationalism and Promise of Redemption in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines”). The Turkish case provides an in-depth account into the spread of populist attitudes (see Akkerman et al. (2014), as well as Van Hauwaert and Van Kessel (2017, 71), for a conceptualization of populist attitudes). In Aytaç and Elçi’s survey, the categories of support for “prioritizing the people’s will and anti-elitism” were particularly strong with “70% . . . agree[ing] with the statement that ‘referendums are the ultimate measure of the will of the people’”, and 67% agree that “the power of a few special interests prevent our country from making progress” (see this volume). Of particular note is also that almost half, 47%, agree that “political leaders do not need to be checked by institutions since people make their decisions in the elections” and one-third, 34%, consider “compromise in politics as “selling out on one’s principles” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). The assumption shattering conclusion in the Turkish case is that populism does not need to be moored in “deep discontent, not only with politics but also with societal life in general” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”). With the AKP in power those who are “satisfied with their lives, the way democracy works, and their

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economic circumstances are actually more likely to hold populist attitudes” (Aytaç and Elçi, in this volume, “Populism in Turkey”).

8 Conclusion In reviewing populism in Poland, the Philippines, France, Argentina, the United States, and Turkey, we encounter a host of differences but also a core of commonalities which confirm the empirical basis for a universal conception of populism. Each populist party engages in an explicit program of constructing the people versus the elite, invokes a conception of popular sovereignty, interlinks their representation to that of the general will, and propagates ideologies which are explicit rejections of the contemporary elite values. The general narrative that populists try to invoke is that of the “crisis of unrepresentation” in which the people are currently governed by an inorganic and offensive power to be overthrown through the “reclamation of dignity/ sovereignty” whereby the common values and authentic people will reign. In all of these cases that we have studied, there is also a distinct connection between the leader and the people: a connection that makes up a “plebiscitarian linkage”. This linkage helps legitimize the populist strategy of crisis and mass mobilization. Regardless of the mechanisms of democracy, the difficult relationship between democracy and populism generally ends in open conflict with figures like the press and the judiciary culminating in processes of elite replacement and institutional reform. Each form of populism remains organically planted in the history of its country. It is often coupled with a thick ideology as diverse as nativism, socialism, or in extreme cases even neoliberalism. The coalition of voters seems relatively stable for radical right-wing populism. Be it Trump, the French National Front, or the Polish PiS party, the populist voter is likely to be male, from the lower echelons of society and who embraces traditional and sometimes nativist values. Yet, beyond this radical right-wing variant, the support base of populist actors can be diverse; as the Turkey case highlights, it can even include the economically satisfied. Given these differences, we cannot conceive of populism as a cohesive global political movement. Still, the growth of populist actors of all colours throughout all regions does suggest a contagion effect, either through a direct transferral across polities or through convergent reactions to various global crises. As researchers, we should continue to study this populist zeitgeist, especially across time and space to further disentangle differences and commonalities across various populist parties and countries. Acknowledgement The author of this chapter wants to thank Declan Ingham for valuable research assistance for this chapter.

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