Schrödinger’s Elite: How Populism Turns Power into Moral Performance

Populists rise to power by claiming outsider status against a corrupt elite. Yet many—from Erdogan and Modi to Trump—retain legitimacy long after becoming establishment actors. How? Yilmaz and Morieson argue that populist leaders occupy a dual identity they term “Schrödinger’s Elite”: simultaneously insiders and outsiders. They convert privilege into moral performance—projecting humility, purity, and sacrifice while governing as entrenched elites. This performance is not hypocrisy, but strategy. Whether through Trump’s theatrical diplomacy, Imran Khan’s pious nationalism, or judicial populism in Pakistan and the United States, authority is reframed as service to “the people.” The paradox reveals why populism persists despite policy failure: emotional authenticity eclipses institutional accountability, transforming power into virtue.

By Ihsan Yilmaz & Nicholas Morieson

One problem populists face when they enter government is that, by definition, they become the very thing they claim to despise: elites. Populist legitimacy is always predicated on their status as outsiders intent on cleansing a corrupt system. However, once the populist outsider becomes part of the governing elite, then it naturally becomes very difficult for them to present themselves as outsiders. One should expect that, once populists begin governing, they should lose their legitimacy. Yet this does not always occur. 

Indeed, this notion has been exploded by a generation of populist leaders who, despite making promises they could not keep and becoming insider elites, have retained their popularity and governed in some cases for more than a decade. 

The long reigns of populists such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Narendra Modi in India, and the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States, demonstrate that populists can survive in power despite appearing to lose their outsider status. Moreover, many populist leaders are themselves part of the very elite they condemn. They are educated, wealthy, and deeply embedded within existing institutions. Some populist leaders have emerged from within state institutions, from the judiciary and the military, and cannot therefore be considered in any way outsiders. 

However, if populists are supposed to be outsiders battling ‘elites’ on behalf of ‘the people’, why do we see so many populist leaders emerging from, and remaining inside, the most elite sectors of society, including from state institutions and from the super-wealthy?

We call this paradox Schrödinger’s Elite. Like the famous cat in Erwin Schrödinger’s thought experiment that exists in two states at once, populist elites are both insiders and outsiders. They inhabit positions of privilege while performing rebellion. They rule as establishment figures but speak as insurgents. They preserve elite power while transforming it into a moral drama of virtue, authenticity, and at times sacrifice.

Schrödinger’s Elite

Populism, as theorist Benjamin Moffitt notes, does not destroy elite rule. Instead, it dramatizes crisis, performs outrage, uses ‘bad manners’ to present itself as authentic and ‘of the people, and ultimately presents power as service. Leaders appear both powerful and humble, dominant yet close to “the people.” This emotional theatre renews legitimacy without real change.

The idea of Schrödinger’s Elite helps explain everything from Donald Trump’s rallies to former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s pious nationalism, and even the moral language of judges in Pakistan and the United States who claim to speak for “the people.” In each case, insiders perform as outsiders and power survives through spectacle.

The Paradox of Populist Elites

Populism pits “the pure people” against “the corrupt elite.” However, its champions are often wealthy, famous, or institutionally entrenched. For example, US President Donald Trump, a billionaire celebrity, plays the rebel in order to portray himself as an outsider in Washington and a man of the people. His crude humor and defiance convince supporters he is authentic and unfiltered. His wealth – whether real or not – is reframed as proof of independence from the effete Washington elite, which cannot buy him.

Imran Khan performs a similar balancing act. Oxford-educated and once adored as a cricket hero, he recast himself as a pious Muslim and moral crusader against corrupt, insufficiently religious elites. He promised a “New Pakistan” guided by Islamic values, blending humility with righteousness amid promises to save “the people” from corrupt rule. 

This combination of purity and power is not hypocrisy but better described as a strategy. Within this strategy, populist leaders turn privilege into moral capital. Their appeal rests less on policy than on emotion, and contra Mudde, less on ideology than on the performance of sincerity.

When Bureaucrats and Judges Turn Populist

Populist performance is not limited to politicians. Bureaucrats and judges can play the same role, posing as the conscience of the nation. Pakistan’s judiciary offers a clear example. For decades, judges have justified coups and interventions under the “Doctrine of Necessity,” claiming to act for “the people.”

In 2007, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry became a folk hero after defying President Musharraf. The Lawyers’ Movement celebrated him as a defender of democracy, yet it expanded the judiciary’s political reach. Courts later used moral language to disqualify Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. One judgment compared him to a mafia “Godfather,” casting legal authority as moral and national purification.

The courts presented these rulings as virtue rather than law, appearing humble while exercising vast power. This can be described as a form of judicial populism, in which authority is framed as populist representation of the will of the ‘pure’ people.

The Supreme Court’s Populist Turn

The same pattern arguably surfaces in stronger democracies. For example, when the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson (2022), the majority framed the decision as restoring democracy, saying “the people” should decide. In doing so, the Court claimed moral authority even as it arguably concentrated power.

American justices are familiar public figures, and now speak publicly more than ever, often presenting themselves as moral figures rather than distant experts on law. As a result, the line between law and storytelling begins to blur, and in an already politicized court, procedure gives way to conviction. And like populist politicians, judges adopt the language of authenticity to build a direct connection between themselves and the public, increasing their own power.

Trump in Cairo

Trump’s October 2025 appearance in Cairo showed how populist performance travels. At a peace ceremony marking a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, he turned diplomacy into entertainment. He joked with Viktor Orbán and Giorgia Meloni, calling Meloni “beautiful” and boasting that even if nobody liked Orbán, he did, and “I’m the only one that matters.”

To his followers, this vulgarity was truth-telling. His refusal to play by elite rules made him seem both powerful and free. He was the most influential man in the room and the only “outsider.” This was Schrödinger’s Elite in pure form: authority disguised as rebellion.

Imran Khan’s Moral Stage

Imran Khan’s career shows how this paradox works in a postcolonial setting. Khan embodies privilege and once was regarded as a playboy, yet he built his politics on piety. He invoked Riyasat-e-Medina, the ideal early Islamic state, and urged citizens to show moral discipline. His Oxford education became proof of competence and incorruptibility.

Khan attacked the Pakistan’s elite, calling them puppets of the West and those who, as he said, “carried the begging bowl to the IMF.” He vowed “never to bend the knee to Western powers.” He accused Washington of “desecrating the Quran,” defended the Taliban as “freedom fighters,” and praised them for having “broken the chains of mental slavery.”

Each statement arguably turned politics into moral theatre. His suffering, including dismissal from power, arrests, court battles, and subsequent imprisonment only reinforced his image as a truth-teller persecuted by corrupt elites. 

Emotion Over Structure

The figure of Schrödinger’s Elite shows that populism does not end hierarchy but rather reshapes it. Populist elites thrive by performing virtue, and in doing so, turn their dominance into service, their power into purity, and self-interest into sacrifice for “the people.”

This helps explain why populism persists even when it fails to deliver positive results. Accusations of hypocrisy become proof of authenticity. Challenges to legitimacy become attacks by corrupt elites. Through these reversals, leaders convert their own failings into legitimacy and authenticity.

Digital media amplifies the cycle. Outrage, alas, spreads faster than rational argument, while visibility online replaces accountability. Trump’s tweets, Khan’s livestreams, and activist judges’ speeches all use the same grammar of feeling. They create intimacy between elite and follower while bypassing institutions that might check power.

The Theatre of Power

Across regimes and ideologies, populism redefines what it means to be elite. It replaces expertise with emotion and legality with morality. The populist elite, in this way, claims to represent the people while keeping control.

In Pakistan, judges act as the nation’s conscience while consolidating power. In the US, the Supreme Court claims to restore democracy. In Cairo, Trump mocked his peers to show he was above them. Each act sustains authority through performance.

The danger of all this lies not in populism’s attacks on elites, but in its ability to moralize populist domination of politics and law. It turns power into a spectacle of virtue, and in doing so, keeps citizens powerless while making them feel morally included and thus represented. 

A Paradox That Endures

Populism’s strength lies in its contradictions. Its leaders inhabit both rebellion and authority, humility and dominance. Across democracies and hybrid regimes alike, the populist governing powers claim to speak for “the people” while reinforcing control. And that is perhaps why populism endures. Its elites have learned not to abolish hierarchy but instead found ways to perform populism while entrenching themselves in power.