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Wondering exactly about such a category error—Dahrendorf 2003: “one man’s populism is another’s democracy, and vice versa.” @BenChu_ eurozine.com/acht-anmerkung… (German only) — Who decides which public communication and policies count as ’sound’ or ‘populist’?
@BenChu_ “Populisms have a legitimate place in liberal democracies. One could even say that they are inevitable given the likelihood of entropy inherent in these regimes.” A Balance Sheet of the Vices & Virtues of ‘Populisms’: eui.eu/Documents/Depa… Schmitter 2006
Populisms "have their distinctive virtues, as well as vices, & it is by no means evident that the latter always prevail. To paraphrase James Madison, any effort to exclude them from competition would be worse than the damage they could potentially produce"
“a populist form of political opposition…has been endemic to modern and modernizing societies": "a response to the growth of the state and the extension of capitalism…shaped by the apparent distance of centers of power from most people's everyday lives.”
“A liberal-democratic order cannot succeed through situational politics built on popular resentments. It requires a sense of the medium term & a commitment to rational debate of issues…revived…enlightened thinking" Dahrendorf 2006 project-syndicate.org/commentary/par…
“It would be a mistake to think that populists reveal to us the ultimate objective truth about society. Yet many nonpopulist actors make precisely these mistakes.” Müller: items.ssrc.org/the-wrong-way-… – Bartels:
“Is there a remedy?…One tradition that *can* be revived—that of enlightened thinking—is the most important of all.” Dahrendorf 2006: @rodrikdani project-syndicate.org/commentary/par… @BenChu_
"Economists dislike populism, & for good reason. The term evokes irresponsible, unsustainable policies that often end in disaster & hurt the most the ordinary people they purportedly aim to help.” drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rod… → @rodrikdani: past ECON=populism!
Dahrendorf’s quip: aimed against essentializing “populism”—like @bartbonikowski : Analyzed at the level of communication, rather than as a property of individual or collective actors→ No conceptual self-immunization of select actors
“Mainstream economics shades too easily into ideology, constraining the choices that we appear to have.” @rodrikdani on “ideology when it masquerades as economic science” since the 1980s: “In public, the tendency is to close ranks.”
Populism: @rodrikdani's concept – juxtaposed with @rodrikdani's historical analysis &
and seen through Dahrendorf's & @bartbonikowski's eyes:
and seen through Dahrendorf's & @bartbonikowski's eyes:
Populist past: @rodrikdani versus @rodrikdani continued (thread): Economists, in their "tendency…to close ranks” in public, helped advance 'populist' rather than 'sound' ideas: @pseudoerasmus via @rodrikdani
“One man’s populism is another’s democracy, and vice versa.” Dahrendorf's quip against essentializing "populism" → synthesis: "situational politics built on popular resentments” vs "a sense of the medium term and a commitment to rational debate of issues”
“Choice…disguised in a rhetoric of necessity…Once centered on preventing war, the rhetoric of necessity is today overwhelmingly economistic…Choices are actions…that imply the availability of multiple possibilities”@craigjcalhoun eurozine.com/the-democratic…
“Necessity is an extreme form of argument based on interests, in which interests are understood to be both associated with specific actors and their social circumstances and objectively constraining or determining.” eurozine.com/the-democratic… @craigjcalhoun
"It is importantly challenged by the suggestion that democratic participation is itself the educative process which potentially makes a people ever more ready.” eurozine.com/the-democratic… @craigjcalhoun
“Populist effects on the quality of democracy: corrective and threat”: bildungsportal.sachsen.de/opal/auth/Repo… @CasMudde
“We should be very careful about making normative judgements about populism, since the latter can be both a threat to and a corrective for democracy.” @CasMudde: cambridge.org/core/services/… @rodrikdani – Thread:
1989 “was…viewed by their protagonists not as a national but fundamentally as a democratic revolution…Only when tough choices…have to be made…we can much more clearly see which one…was really a driving force.” glineq.blogspot.com/2017/12/democr… @BrankoMilan
“An honest populism that stands a chance of achieving its stated objectives, without harming fundamental democratic norms”: “not…cosmetic gimmicks but…going after the roots of economic injustice directly” nytimes.com/2018/02/21/opi… @rodrikdani – thread:
"Populism": "invoked…to designate persons or movements they do not like or would not like to have come to power. In other words, to be called a ‘populist’ is to be insulted &, if possible, excluded from ‘respectable’ liberal democratic practice” Schmitter
“Populism as a normative stance toward the proper ideal & practice of democracy…assuming that many…observations of populists about how democracy is currently practiced are factually correct” dropbox.com/s/9xmrqay2ga1f… @howserob→Thread: @rodrikdani @BenChu_
“The secret of democracy lies in the expectation that one's day will come, that today's loss is only a temporary setback, that everyone eventually gets a chance…That shared belief is a social product.”
– Charles Tilly
– Charles Tilly
“Why has so little changed in populism studies? Why does a concept that was declared bankrupt by its very inventor still have such a stellar career?” jacobinmag.com/2018/01/populi… via @samuelmoyn
Different models of democracy “all pivot on methods for ensuring that a body of citizens exercises collective controI over some central executive…The trouble, obviously, starts there: how will we know that effective control exists?”essays.ssrc.org/tilly/wp-conte…
The “efflorescence of populist politics (of both left & right) simultaneously is a response to the split between system world & lifeworld, & is limited in an often poorly recognized way by the implications of large scale system integration” @craigjcalhoun:
“Government may be feared & capitalism praised…or corporate depredations seen as the major evil & government as a…solution. Either way, people motivated by attachments within the lifeworld are led to embrace one of the major system world challenges to it…to resist the other.”
“Democratic public discourse does not depend on pre-existing harmony or similarity among citizens…but rather on the ability to create meaningful discourse across lines of difference.” @craigjcalhoun: …institute-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/docume…
“Dispelling certain public understandings of the term ‘populism’ in contemporary public discourse…to enhance a more reflective attitude towards usages of the word in the political register at large”: populismus.gr/wp-content/upl… @AntonJaegermm
“No successful social movement has ever worked by figuring out in advance how much rectification of injustice society…will tolerate—& then demanding only exactly that much” bostonreview.net/class-inequali… @samuelmoyn→empirical crux of "good" populism @rodrikdani
“Good” populists @rodrikdani @howserob “bet on the creation of a new constituency across…lines to be brought about in an unpredictable concatenation of imagination and interest.” bostonreview.net/class-inequali… @samuelmoyn @BostonReview
“A liberalism, the likes of which the U.S. has yet to see”: the “discombobulation of liberals who intuit the need to change their ways before they actually move to do so” bostonreview.net/class-inequali… @samuelmoyn @BostonReview Dewey 1937:
"Where the general sense of citizen efficacy is low, populism can flourish; but…also…where the parties of the Left struggle in understanding+dealing w/ widespread senses of identity threat+can only respond w/ condescending condemnation." items.ssrc.org/is-democracy-s… Taylor @SSRC_org
“As early as the late 1760s, American jurists were putting forward justifications for revolution that appealed to the authority of the people, not…Parliament…The language of popular sovereignty was very much in the air.” legalform.blog/2018/03/15/con… – Tilly:
“The idea of a ‘rule of law’…comes on the scene alongside…popular sovereignty as a second source of legitimation. This duality raises the question of how the democratic principle and constitutionalism are related.” pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a513/75dffa1ca… – Habermas
Essentializing foreign “populism”: ‘courageous leaders resisting populism’ suddenly turn 'authoritarian' (or vice versa) — Spain/Rajoy case (Aznar deputy 2003): cnn.com/2003/WORLD/eur… 'courageously' joined war against 90% poll & w/o prior parliament vote elpais.com/elpais/2016/07…
“Good” vs “bad” populism: which applies to Spain 2003 (when PM Rajoy was Aznar deputy) @rodrikdani @howserob? It seems not just a historical question, but of comparative and explanatory relevance (maybe European populism expert @Yascha_Mounk can also help)
“One man’s populism is another’s democracy, and vice versa.” (Dahrendorf 2003) – Thread: (@BenChu_ raised this very issue in reply to @rodrikdani January piece)
"Political polarisation should be re-crystallised between the established parties on substantive conflicts. Parties that grant right-wing populists attention rather than contempt should not expect civil society to disdain right-wing phrases and violence.”
Making Austerity Popular osf.io/preprints/soca… via @rodrikdani @sjwrenlewis “Popular attitudes regarding austerity are influenced by media (and wider elite) framing…Deficit preferences change based on the presentation of deficit information.”
“We should be cautious…not to allow certain anxieties—especially when they become linked to ‘ordinary people’ and their allegedly unquenchable desire for populism—to frame our political challenges the wrong way.” items.ssrc.org/the-wrong-way-… @SSRCanxieties
“To understand populism, one needs to analyze both the form and the content of politics seriously, and not treat one side of this as more ‘serious’…a difficult thing to grasp for people who consider politics as basically being about ‘policy’” the-american-interest.com/2018/05/02/rev… @nils_gilman
It's “a mistake to assume that all voters for populist parties…share the antipluralist views…that populists reveal to us the ultimate objective truth about society. Yet many nonpopulist actors make precisely these mistakes” items.ssrc.org/the-wrong-way-… Müller
Incl. foreign policies, co-producing future "populism" & "democratic fatigue" abroad: how ‘courageous foreign leaders resisting populism’ suddenly turn 'authoritarian' – see e.g. Spain or Italy 2003 vs today
“Populism in its 1890s permutation represented a vision of democratic participation…far from being a threat to democracy…America’s way of expressing class antagonism” theguardian.com/books/2018/may… @thomasfrank_ via @BrankoMilan “Trump’s politics is ‘demagoguery’ or ‘pseudo-populism’“
“Liberal democracy may well be under strain, and perhaps even under threat, but the categories of illiberal democracy and undemocratic liberalism mostly serve to obscure the phenomena at hand.” lareviewofbooks.org/article/reason… @jonnythakkar via @samuelmoyn
“The appeal of equality as a legal claim & democratic norm has grown & grown—& is paradoxically attested to by anti-establishment uprisings derided as ‘populist’ threats to liberal democracy. It is unlikely to be defused by…yuppie populism” lrb.co.uk/v40/n12/pankaj… HT @samuelmoyn
“One man’s populism is another’s democracy, and vice versa.” Dahrendorf 2003 quip – Thread:
“No successful social movement has ever worked by figuring out in advance how much rectification of injustice society at large will tolerate—and then demanding only exactly that much.” bostonreview.net/class-inequali… @samuelmoyn @BostonReview
"invoked…to designate persons or movements they do not like or would not like to have come to power…To be called a ‘populist’ is to be insulted and, if possible, excluded from ‘respectable’ liberal democratic practice” – Schmitter
“Populism entered the English language to describe a 19th-century political movement born of struggle against the oligarchic economic and political order of the United States’s first Gilded Age” bostonreview.net/politics/jason… @BostonReview – @rafkhach:
“It’s not citizens who have become unreasonable. Rather, their leaders…treating the public as nothing more than a periodic reservoir of votes, an obstacle to be managed on the path to smooth, technocratic governance.” aeon.co/ideas/against-… @stevenmklein
“It is no accident that the founding constitutional act is experienced as a decisive point…The performative meaning…to bring forth a self-determining community of free＆equal citizens…is simply spelled out in…the constitution.”
“Politics can be…pro-law, as well as pro-democracy. There is no legal shortcut to building that politics, although it can only succeed through the use of law, & there are many ways that law can undercut it” lpeblog.org/2018/10/02/no-… @JedediahSPurdy @LPEblog
“It is simply assumed that populists have revealed the truth of what is happening deep inside our societies…such as the supposedly objective dislike of foreigners and immigrants by the working class.” nybooks.com/daily/2018/11/… via @samuelmoyn
“The idea that the addressees of the law must also be able to understand themselves as its authors does not give the united citizens of a democratic polity a voluntaristic, carte blanche permission to make whatever decisions they like.” – Habermas
“The allegedly paradoxical relation btw democracy＆the rule of law resolves itself in the dimension of historical time,provided one conceives the constitution as a project that makes the founding act into an ongoing process of constitution-making” Habermas
“The entitlement to political participation is bound up with the expectation of a public use of reason: as democratic colegislators, citizens may not ignore the informal demand to orient themselves toward the common good” pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a513/75dffa1ca… – Habermas
"Populism entered the English language to describe a 19th-century political movement born of struggle against the oligarchic economic and political order of the United States’s first Gilded Age” bostonreview.net/politics/jason… @BostonReview
In contemporary Europe, “‘populism’…is always invoked as an epithet…to designate persons or movements they do not like or would not like to have come to power” eui.eu/Documents/Depa… – Schmitter 2006
“At a regional election in Andalusia on December 2nd Vox, a newish populist party of the right, won 11% of the vote. Spaniards are shocked…In that, as in other respects, Spain is now a normal European country.” via @nils_gilman
With a methodological artifact? See also:
“Any politician who opposes government efforts to drive down these costs…supports the U.S. dramatically overpaying…And yet, [they] are never asked…to explain how their vision for American health care is realistic or affordable” nymag.com/intelligencer/…
“This notion—that a political faction’s proximity to the ideological center is tantamount to its concern for empirical truth…a world in which factual reality consistently lies somewhere between the claims of left and right” nymag.com/intelligencer/…
“Here again, the U.S. essentially declared a state of exception from the normal rules in play for the declaration of war, in which only the justification of imminent self-defense works to exempt a state from…going through the U.N.” scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewconten…
“whether the majorities that have put…‘populists’ in power are in revolt for a reason…＆…the attempt to protect basic rights through judicial agents backfired by depriving…incentive to take their cause to the people” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… @samuelmoyn
“Terms like ‘anger’ and ‘resentment’ are used routinely, reflexively, in contemporary commentary on populism, but these long-distance diagnoses can be patronizing…After all, people are angry for a reason.” nybooks.com/daily/2018/11/… Müller – Habermas:
“Wanting to bolster a moderate center is no virtue when it is based not on principles but on an implausible equidistance.” nybooks.com/daily/2018/11/…
“Rather than looking forward to a perfected future, right-wing populists in particular conjure up a fantasized past of a homogeneous, pure volk. In fact, they tend to reduce all political questions to questions of belonging” nybooks.com/daily/2018/11/… Müller
“One man’s populism is another’s democracy, and vice versa.” Dahrendorf's 2003 quip 2006 synthesis: "situational politics built on popular resentments” vs "a sense of the medium term and a commitment to rational debate of issues”
“As I started to write this article I had constantly in front of me on the TV one of Europe’s outstanding contemporary populists, Silvio Berlusconi. This did not facilitate my task.” – Schmitter 2006
“The irony…is that although critics often charge populists with peddling reductive messages…these same critics…now grasp at simple explanations for populism’s rise…amplifying the dubious stories that nationalist populists tell about their own success” foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-…
“Populist leaders tend…in an authoritarian direction…reject all criticisms with the claim that they are merely executing the people’s will…seek out and thrive on conflict; their political business model is permanent culture war.” foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-…
“What we have to explain is a move toward ‘authoritarian populism’…which, unlike classical fascism, has retained most…of the formal representative institution…&…has been able to construct around itself an active popular consent” banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt…
“’Destruction through imitation’…is unlikely to succeed in the long run, but it is bound to do serious damage…No matter how fast one chases populists to the fringes, it’s almost impossible to catch them" foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-… "opportunistic shifts”
“Only by ignoring their interventions can one pull the ground from under the feet of…rightwing populists. But this requires willingness to open up a completely different front in domestic politics…vis-à-vis…unbridled capitalist globalisation” eurozine.com/for-a-democrat… – Habermas
“Since the 9/11 attacks, Islam has moved…to the foreground of the US public sphere…Although most organizations deployed pro-Muslim discourses…anti-Muslim fringe organizations dominated the mass media via displays of fear＆anger” cmes.uchicago.edu/sites/cmes.uch…
“Mounk described populism as 'a move from a liberal to an illiberal democracy.'" law.yale.edu/yls-today/news… via @samuelmoyn
“The fact that Kant avoids the word ‘democracy.’ In the 18th century, this term referred to ancient democracy, which knew no division of powers. This is why Kant uses ‘republic’ to refer to his strong conception of a democracy” books.google.com/books?id=NFg3D…
“The word ‘democracy’ appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution” – whereas “mob”, “mobocracy”, “mob rule”… @BW? bloomberg.com/news/articles/… “a Republican Form of Government” uscis.gov/sites/default/…
