Wolf, Maximillian; Grueso, Gadea Mendez; Robinson, Tom; Lortkipanidze, Mariam; Schutz, Imke; Sezer, Julide; Aelbrecht, Heloise and Blink, Melissa. (2022). “Symposium Report—The Future Course of Populism in the Post-Pandemic Era: The State of Globalization, Multilateral Governance, and Democracy.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). April 2, 2022. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0002
The ECPS’s First Annual International Symposium, titled “The Future Course of Populism in the Post-Pandemic Era: The State of Globalization, Multilateral Governance, and Democracy,” was held online in Brussels on February 18, 2022, and brought together scholars from the political, social, and economic sciences, as well as populism experts and civil society audiences, to discuss the impact of populist policies on the national, regional, and global management of the Covid-19 pandemic. In doing so, the symposium aimed at contributing to informed predictions on the post-pandemic international political landscape. This report is the product of these fruitful conversations and is intended to keep the record of the Symposium. It includes brief summaries of the speeches and, also, links to the full videos of presentations.
Introduction
This report is based on the ECPS’s First Annual International Symposium titled “The Future Course of Populism in the Post-Pandemic Era: The State of Globalization, Multilateral Governance, and Democracy,” which was held online in Brussels on February 18, 2022.
The symposium brought together scholars from the political, social, and economic sciences, as well as populism experts and civil society audiences, to discuss the impact of populist policies on the national, regional, and global management of the Covid-19 pandemic—i.e., how populist leaders handled the pandemic, to what extent they could use populist strategies and tactics while dealing with pandemic-related issues, and what kind of challenges populist policies pose to global governance and democracy. In doing so, the symposium aimed at contributing to informed predictions on the post-pandemic international political landscape. This report is the product of these fruitful conversations and is intended to keep the record of the symposium. It includes brief summaries of the speeches and, also, links to the full videos of presentations.
The symposium was held under the auspices of Sir Graham Watson, Honorary President of ECPS, who delivered the opening remarks. Distinguished scholars in the field contributed their insightful speeches: Mark Findlay (Professor, Director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Data Governance, Singapore Management University), Manuel Funke (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), Aline Burni (German Development Institute), Eckart Woertz (Professor of Contemporary History and Politics, The University of Hamburg), Neil Robinson (Professor of Comparative Politics, The University of Limerick), Axel Klein (Professor of Social Sciences on East Asia / Japanese Politics, Institute of East Asian Studies, Duisburg-Essen University), Jens Maesse (Institute of Sociology, Justus-Liebig-University Gießen), Brett Meyer (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change), and Sheri Berman (Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University). The closing remarks were delivered by Hercules Milas (ECPS Advisory Board Member).
The symposium panels were moderated by: Eser Karakas (Professor of Economics, Strasbourg University, ECPS Advisory Board Member and Senior Research Fellow), Werner Pascha (Emeritus Professor of Economics, Institute of East Asian Studies, Duisburg-Essen University), and Naim Kapucu (Pegasus Professor, School of Public Administration & School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs, University of Central Florida).
Last, but not least, Professor Ibrahim Ozturk (Director, Resident Senior Research Fellow at ECPS) chaired the organization committee composed of ECPS staff members and interns. We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the event and made it a real success.
Keynote Address
Professor Mark Findlay: “Rehabilitating Globalization, Repositioning Populism, Proportioning Pandemics – Does Law Have a Place?”
To counteract mythologies, divisive languages and the structures of hate and exclusion, it is necessary to create safe spaces for informed dissent, the exercise of common sense, considered challenges to obsessive rationality, and allow for prudent doubts – a space for the collective flourishing of human consciousness.
Professor Mark Findlay’s keynote began the proceedings. Based on his most recent book, Globalization, Populism, Pandemics and the Law – The Anarchy and the Ecstasy, his wide-ranging account sought to identify the linkages and common themes between governance, the global economy, and populist governance within the context of disillusionment and pessimism.
Beginning with globalization, Findlay argued that critics and pessimists—whether populists or not—had fundamentally misunderstood what the term meant; globalization, he argued, is a process, one incredibly effective at tackling global crises. As such, it is not in itself good or bad; rather, how it is employed, what structures it engenders, and who benefits from them, are the more important questions. Findlay noted that the globalization of today has developed into a mechanism for proliferating a neo-colonial and neoliberal economic order—as such, it is seen by many, including but not limited to radical, disenfranchised protest movements, as the cause of savage exploitation, rather than as an opportunity to arrest the true sources of marginalization. Globalization, Findlay argued, has become a scapegoat, catching the blame for the insidious effects of neoliberal free trade, radical individualism, and co-option of legal protections for exclusionary private property rights which exploit the global North-South divide. Legally speaking, he argued that global law has become an accomplice to neoliberal expansionism, a consequence of neo-colonial political domination from the North and focused almost entirely on the protection of private property, rather than the defence of human rights.
Climate change and more recently the Covid-19 pandemic, however, have shown us that the shared consequences of global crises cannot be avoided through national protectionism. Globalization, Findlay suggested, needs to be re-thought as a process for international engagement which might provide legitimate legal pathways for wider representative governance and universal democratic rights. The internet has proven valuable in this regard, he argues, as it disrupted previous understandings of intellectual property and has changed the way in which we understand the concept of property itself; this has led to large-scale transformations in a number of legal structures and presents the ability of the law to adapt and transition. It is these transitions that might allow us to combat populist anxieties, and come to represent, he believes, “a new global moral culture,” away from the dysfunctional, individualist structures that fuel populist resentment and towards a communal understanding of wealth as well as of crises.
Law, if reformulated as a communal resource, can provide the foundational background for a transition into a normality that is more concerned about human dignity than it is about individualist and exclusive wealth creation, which has been the heart of populist politics in recent decades.
Thus, a new understanding of the law—and the necessary transitions it must undergo—might reclaim and rehabilitate globalization. At the moment, Findlay maintained, neoliberal globalization promotes power asymmetries and disaffection; cultural identity has become a battlefield—populism and ‘cancel culture’ are used as languages of criticism, and the necessity of multiculturalism is ignored. This new emotional grammar, a “taxonomy of disaffection,” aims to give a voice and a language to the experiences of resentment, indignation, and anger that a structurally flawed global system engendered. The issue is that, as it stands, this emotionally charged discourse misses the mark: neoliberalism, the true culprit in his eyes, is let off the hook in favour of superficial cultural grievances. So again, Prof. Findlay asked, how can we rehabilitate globalization? His answer: by settling the sources of disaffection with globalization. He expressed the hope that the ‘neo-statist’ impulse witnessed throughout the pandemic proved the insufficiency, rather than the usefulness, of protectionist logics.
Regarding populism, Prof. Findlay noted a number of paradoxes. Authoritarian populist politics are driven by a sense of economic injustice and exclusion, yet this is the essence of neoliberal wealth creation, which most right-wing populists nonetheless celebrate. Populism rejects conventional, establishment political remedies, but neoliberal elites capture political institutions and processes under populist governments. Findlay argued that inequality is essential for populism in order for an ‘other’ to emerge and the Manichean ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ discourse to function. In power, populists thus often perpetuate the very conditions they claim to combat.
The process that allows this apparent contradiction to sustain itself in paternalistic authoritarian regimes like Trump’s or Bolsonaro’s is what Prof. Findlay termed ‘anxiety governance.’ It is what got Trump elected and was the driving force behind the ‘Brexit’ movement. It is a sense of anxiety, set in the context of radical technological transformation and ever-accelerating economic shifts, fuelling a fear amongst populist voters that they are unable to access political spaces and will thus be left behind. The Canadian truckers’ protest, argued Prof. Findlay, is an example of this: the physical attempt to overtake the traditional spaces of governance occurred under the facade of ‘reclaiming liberal rights,’ when the protest was, in many respects, fed by populism, anxiety, and anger.
Populist populations have been told that their space is restricted, their economic power is shrinking, and that they must, therefore, rely on the authoritarians of the world to give that power back to them. In other words, Findlay explained, populist politics creates anxiety—and an anger against that anxiety—then offers a ‘politics of hope’ as an answer to it. It is the power of populist charisma, however, that Prof. Findlay considers the truly challenging dimension. This power rests on populist leaders’ mass-legitimized ability to create political narratives, name enemies, and bring “new tonalities into the political conversation.” Social media is crucial to these dynamics: ‘Twitter populism’ demonstrates the anxiety, echo-chambers, toxic feedback loops, and crowd-sourced funding that enable and strengthen populist leaders. Unfortunately, Findlay said, artificial intelligence (AI) has been co-opted into the populist machine.
What, then, can be done? And what is an antidote to anxiety? Findlay suggested a return to considerations of human dignity. It is essential, according to Findlay, that the inequality that underlies neoliberal economic politics, driving discrimination and exclusion, be revealed. Anxiety politics, he said, is the product of collective experiences, but it is bound together by a constructed confusion and maintains a mythological dimension. It is important, then, to expose and acknowledge the genuine risks to be feared and talk back at the voices who stir up misplaced anxieties for populist gain. He cited vaccine scepticism as an example of such misplaced fear; besides the danger inherent in such a public health discourse, we must combat the underlying structures that enable and strengthen the resonance of discourses of that kind. For this reason, finding and occupying (actual or digital) safe communal spaces is critical—transformed law, he says, might provide helpful signposting for this shift.
The pandemic, Prof. Findlay argued, proved a double blow against human dignity in two almost contradictory fashions: on one hand, the right-wing populists charge that public safety measures have eroded our libertarian rights grows stronger as the ‘new normal’ of day-to-day pandemic management lingers on; on the other, the facts two years into the crisis speak of an untold suffering and a lack of consideration for those populations, especially in the Global South, who are dying in their thousands due to lack of vaccines and effective protective equipment as global logistics’ slowdowns and ‘panic protectionism’ have again exposed the unequal dividing lines in the neoliberal economy Only by recovering human dignity as a guiding principle, enshrined in an adaptable and effective legal framework, can we provide the platform by which globalization could be turned into a positive tool that might yet engage the threats and challenges posed by the pandemic, global warming, and other global crises. This, in turn, should be embedded in a broader return to what Findlay termed ‘sociability’: pandemic risk, vaccine scepticism, and ‘economic realism’ are all products of a neoliberal individualist logic which diverts attention away from the importance of globalized sociability and solidarity. Human dignity can only be understood as collective and universal.
Reported by Maximillian Wolf
Panel 1
Populism and Governance in the Time of Pandemic
Dr. Manuel Funke: “Populist leaders, the economy, and the pandemic: What can we expect?”
Populists are bad for the long-term health of certain nations, with key economic and institutional indicators all suffering. This, however, does not mean that populism as a phenomenon will disappear. The key focus of the research on populism over the coming years has to look into the factors that more directly determine populist leaders’ success or failure in getting re-elected, as neither reduced growth nor excess mortality seemed to lastingly affect populist popularity.
The first panel of the symposium came from Dr. Manuel Funke of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Kiel, Germany. Dr. Funke began his talk by addressing the fact that, although the academic scholarship on populism as a political phenomenon has grown exponentially over the past years, the research of what happens when populists are in power—and in particular, what happens to economies under populist leadership—remains somewhat undertheorized.
Much of Dr. Funke’s attempt at remedying this deficit centred around a 2020 paper co-authored with two Kiel Institute colleagues, Prof. Dr. Christoph Trebesch and Dr. Moritz Schularick, and succinctly titled “Populist Leaders and the Economy.” Their paper, he explained, sought to provide some concrete empirical data on whether the impact of populist governance was detectable in a number of key economic metrics. To achieve this, they sampled a vast database of articles on populism spanning some 60 countries over 120 years, finally classifying over 1500 leaders into a two-by-two matrix: ‘populist’ or ‘not populist,’ and ‘left-wing’ or ‘right-wing.’ Out of this mountain of data, said Dr. Funke, emerged 50 clear-cut populist actors. Some immediate trends became clear: populism reached its ‘peak’ popularity—primarily owing to the wave of Latin American populist regimes—in the 1950s and 60s; there has, however, also been a discernible uptick in instances of populist leadership since the 2000s, as new forms of right-wing populism spread throughout Western democracies. Dr. Funke added that the average time in power for populist leaders, at around seven and a half years, was nearly double that of non-populist leaders assessed in the same time span, and their rate of re-election, at around 30 percent, was also twice as high as their non-populist counterparts.
As concerning as those numbers are, they at least provide clear-cut timeframes in which Dr. Funke, and his team were able to accurately assess the economic impact of those populist leaders’ governance respective to control cases elsewhere. Dr. Funke noted that not only are populist campaign promises often centred around redistributive policies in favour of the ‘little man,’ but that those proposals often come in tandem with protectionism and economic nationalism. Overspending and fiscal mismanagement is rife, and checks and balances aimed to limit the power of government and restrict the leaders’ options with regards to monetary policy often come under threat over the course of prolonged populist rule.
While such tendencies are well-known and documented, Dr. Funke’s team sought to establish just how significant the impact of populist rule was in real terms. Turning their eyes to perhaps the most influential economic determinant of all, economic growth, the team examined national output indicators from those countries under populist rule and comparing them to the global average growth rate over the same period, finding a 1 percent output loss—a “growth gap”—over that period. The trend became even more pronounced after the team took a more rigorous methodology, constructing hypothetical counterfactuals—which Funke terms “doppelganger economies”; in such cases, populist leadership shows up to a 10-percentage point gap in economic growth indicators over a 15-year timespan. Their findings also showed a 10-percentage point increase in import tariffs, a greater debt-to-GDP ratio, and a marked erosion in indexes highlighting the functionality of the judiciary.
Although this historical approach is not completely compatible with the post-Covid landscape, Dr. Funke cited another paper by the Kiel Institute on the impact of populist governance on Covid management. That paper, assessing 11 populist leaders compared to 42 non-populist ones, found reduced containment efforts and an excess mortality rate that was twice as high in populist-run states at the end of 2020, per data by the Oxford University Covid-19 Government Response Tracker.
It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude, argued Dr. Funke, that populists are bad for the long-term health of certain nations, with key economic and institutional indicators all suffering. This, however, does not mean that populism as a phenomenon will disappear; the key focus of the research on populism over the coming years has to look into the factors that more directly determine populist leaders’ success or failure in getting re-elected, as neither reduced growth nor excess mortality seemed to lastingly affect populist popularity. The ‘dual crisis’ of economy and public health precipitated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the numerous factors at play, means that even scientists have no access to the full picture; as Dr. Funke concluded: “We will have to wait and see.”
Reported by Gadea Mendez Grueso
Dr. Aline Burni: “Will the pandemic bring an end to populism? What are the lessons from the pandemic in a comparative perspective?”
From the outset I believed the claim that ‘the pandemic would bring an end to populism […] is too strong to be held, and it is too early to reach meaningful conclusions’ with the pandemic still ongoing in many countries… On the whole, the prolonged crisis can create new conditions and open up new discursive opportunities for populists. How effectively they can capture those new discursive openings, and how easily they can be countered by centrist actors, will have to remain to be seen.
Second on the panel examining the ties between the pandemic and populist politics was Dr. Aline Burni, researcher for the German Development Institute. Dr. Burni’s sought to illuminate, in a comparative perspective, how the political transformations brought about by the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic two years ago have shaped populist discourse and its popularity.
In response to more hopeful commentators, Dr. Burni stated from the outset that she believed the claim that “the pandemic would bring an end to populism […] is too strong to be held, and it is too early to reach meaningful conclusions” with the pandemic still ongoing in many countries. She noted that the impact of Covid-19 on populist movements differed substantially from region to region and depending on whether the movement was in government or in opposition. While early evidence suggested that populists had lost popularity as a result of their own mismanagement of the crisis when compared to non-populists, for example, those initial studies focus on populists mainly in Europe and predominantly during the first wave of the pandemic; it would be premature, she argued, to draw long-term conclusions from these short-term trends.
According to Dr. Burni, the pandemic was, in many ways, new territory for all global political actors, not just populists. While the link between the emergence of crises and the resonance of populist discourse is well-documented, data from the early months of the pandemic showed a noticeable decline in popularity of populists in power, as scientific denialism and early mismanagement undermined the legitimacy of many populist governments in the West and elsewhere. While populists in opposition also struggled, their popularity stabilized rather quickly. Overall, however, Dr. Burni diagnosed a clear difficulty among populists to capitalize on the Covid-19 crisis: next to the inherent difficulties of mobilizing against a health crisis, she argued that citizens valued, above all, expertise and decisive leadership throughout the pandemic, and that most governments experienced a drastic ‘rally around the flag effect,’ particularly in the early months. Staples of populist discourse, like anti-immigration stances, also quickly faded into the background as many nations shut their borders to prevent the spread of the virus. All these factors, combined with obvious showcases of populist mismanagement in the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), or Brazil, made for a potent anti-populist surge in many democracies worldwide.
As the Covid-19 crisis progressed, however, and the initial shocks made way to a ‘new normal’ of pandemic management, data—especially from Europe—showed a stabilizing of populist movements. While some populist-right actors, like the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) managed to weather the early stages of the pandemic without suffering much loss of support, others, like Chega in Portugal even gained support in the months that followed, with the party going from one MP to twelve in the 2021 elections. As pandemic politics persisted throughout many Western democracies and lockdown measures and vaccine mandates proved less and less popular, most populist actors in the West consolidated their positions. Populists in government were hit more lastingly, with Donald Trump losing the 2020 presidential election, but even then, he received the second highest electoral tally in US history with over 74 million votes, behind only Joe Biden’s 81 million; Bolsonaro and Johnson, though weakened, remain in power. “Populists in government have been resilient despite their mismanagement of the pandemic, at least in these prototypical cases,” Dr. Burni concluded. “Therefore, in a nutshell, I do not think that [populism] will be defeated by the pandemic.”
To explain this stabilization, Dr. Burni pointed to several factors. First, the pandemic will likely aggravate economic and political conditions that populists thrive in—for example, see the impact of post-Covid inflation, slowed GDP growth, rising income inequality and shocks in the job market. Additionally, populists will likely bring cultural issues like immigration back on the agenda, especially in Europe. Other extant political conditions troubling many democracies—such as corruption, lack of trust, polarization, and cultural cleavages—remain and have, at times, been aggravated by the pandemic. The ‘anti-vax’ movement in the West, largely already captured by far-right populist actors, is a key example of old anti-system discourses receiving a fresh coat of post-Covid paint.
The old fault lines that energized the pre-pandemic ‘culture war’ discourse in the West not only remain in place but have been invigorated by a new anti-authoritarian thrust in response to lockdown measures and mandates. As mainstream parties who so successfully channelled the initial ‘rally around the flag’ effect mismanage the ‘new normal,’ the easier it will be for populist actors to adjust to their own ‘new normal’ and incorporate more failures of the status quo parties into their existing anti-elite discourse. As Dr. Burni concluded, “On the whole, the prolonged crisis can create new conditions and open up new discursive opportunities for populists.” How effectively they can capture these new discursive openings, and how easily they can be countered by centrist actors, remains to be seen.
Reported by Tom Robinson
Panel 2
Pandemic of Authoritarianism/Populism: The State of Democratic Institutions, Rights and Freedoms
Professor Eckart Woertz: “The need for multilateral institutions against global challenges: The impact of populism on Euro-Mediterranean Cooperation 25 years after the Barcelona Process”
The 2021 EU Agenda for the Mediterranean is an area where populism has had a marked influence. It largely bypasses the issue of migration, with its wording essentially trying not to cause too much disagreement from the Eastern European side, while the Palestinian cause is not even mentioned. With ‘resilience’ becoming the new mantra of the EU, it has somewhat downgraded its earlier discourse on the export of democracy in favour of a much more malleable technocratic notion, compatible with more authoritarian forms of government.
Panel II was inaugurated by Dr. Eckart Woertz, professor of Contemporary History and Politics at the University of Hamburg and Director of the GIGA institute for Middle East Studies. Dr. Woertz talked about the impact of populism on Euro-Mediterranean cooperation. To begin, Dr. Woertz pointed out that the idea of Mediterranean cooperation is not a politically neutral one. Indeed, the notion of ‘Mediterraneanism’ reverberated in Mussolini’s ideas and French colonial policies, and this baggage should be considered to a greater extent by the European Union (EU) and European politicians in general.
The 1990s marked the pinnacle of Mediterranean cooperation, with the Barcelona Process or Euro-Mediterranean Partnership that started in 1995 at the Barcelona Euro-Mediterranean Conference. After the great European disunity regarding the Iraq war, European ‘Mediterranean cooperation’ shifted into a neighbourhood policy—a kind of ‘privilege bilateralism,’ where some countries (like Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, etc.) were regarded and treated as ‘good pupils,’ and others as ‘bad students’ (e.g., Algeria).
Another landmark was the establishment of the Union of the Mediterranean in Barcelona, which to this day functions as a vehicle of projects between European states and other regional actors. Here we find a tension between a drive towards a re-nationalization of policies by conceptualizing this as an exclusively Mediterranean union, and a push to make it a broader European initiative—which is why, today, we find non-Mediterranean countries like Sweden or Finland part of the Union for the Mediterranean. Therefore, increased institutionalization does not necessarily mean increased consensus when it comes to Euro-Mediterranean policy.
How has populism affected Euro-Mediterranean cooperation? Dr. Woertz argued that most of the impact has come from right-wing populism, with the topic of migration being a major stumbling stone. Populist leaders in Eastern European countries, in particular, have opposed the refugee quota system proposed by Angela Merkel. Hungary’s Viktor Orban has become a kind of bugbear of the EU, actively torpedoing a more unified stance and damaging the core brand of the EU as a model of democratic cooperation. Thus, it has been very difficult for the EU to push forward initiatives, for example regarding human rights and NGOs, not just in the Mediterranean, like in Egypt or Turkey, but also in Hong Kong, where Orban openly sided with European adversaries. As Dr. Woertz explained, this kind of personalistic populist approach can exacerbate existing tensions that are rooted in diverging national interests. Euro-Mediterranean cooperation is also affected, however, when Europe is on the receiving side of populism from the MENA region (e.g., Turkey, Israel under Netanyahu, Tunisia under Kais Saied).
The 2021 EU Agenda for the Mediterranean is an area where populism has had a marked influence, argued Dr. Woertz. It largely bypasses the issue of migration, with its wording essentially trying not to cause too much disagreement from the Eastern European side, while the Palestinian cause is not even mentioned. With ‘resilience’ becoming the new mantra of the EU, it has somewhat downgraded its earlier discourse on the export of democracy in favour of a much more malleable technocratic notion, compatible with more authoritarian forms of government.
In summary, Dr. Woertz outlined the extent of populist influence on Euro-Mediterranean cooperation. Whether in power (most notably Eastern Europe but also in Italy, with Salvini as Minister of Foreign Affairs), or in opposition, populists still have considerable influence in terms of agenda-setting, perhaps best illustrated by French President Macron’s own co-opting of populist rhetoric on migration. Nevertheless, the weight of institutions behind Mediterranean cooperation has somewhat mediated the impact of populism, and the pre-existing national interests that remain provide a potent counterweight to the new wave of nationalisms taking hold. The situation remains dynamic, however: we have seen that the personalization of power within populism can exacerbate existing tensions and lead to the relative emasculation of the diplomacy-making bureaucracy necessary for cooperation.
Reported by Mariam Lortkipanidze
Professor Neil Robinson: “Future course of global governance under the rising hybrid regimes that cohabitate with populism”
According to Professor Robinson, possible solutions to populist problems will be the restoration of a global social contract or dealing fairly with the consequences of economic change on a global level. However, even this might only solve the populist problem in some countries, but not in all. Mechanisms used to solve such problems in Western liberal democracies might even exacerbate the problems and causes elsewhere.
Next was Professor Neil Robinson of the University of Limerick, who spoke of the undertheorized connection between populism and what he called “hybrid regimes.” Introducing his subject matter, Robinson pointed to two ways in which populism today threatens the existing liberal order. First, populism is a threat to globalization as a process: in general, economic actors demand the facilitation of international trade and its regulation, as a key driver for creating and maintaining global governance; populists, as a threat to economic liberalism, jeopardize the economic actors’ ability to press for global mechanisms of regulation. Second, populism is a threat to political liberalism: while often themselves creating a demand for global governance issues like human rights, populists undermine the liberal NGOs and IOs that advocate for such values. Pointing out that populism in established democracies is predominantly driven by domestic changes, Prof. Robinson briefly explained the economic motivations that mobilize the economically disadvantaged. Referring to Trump voters or to supporters of Brexit, he described how communities that support populist main narratives frequently promote forms of sovereigntism.
Prof. Robinson then turned towards the cases where politicians use populism to exacerbate crises of democracy. Two cases were distinguished: in the first case, populists come to power and use this to make significant changes to the democratic order, leading to a “hybridization” of the political regime. He cited examples of such a turn in Venezuela, Hungary, or Poland. In the second case, politicians in power use populist discourse to secure power and to consolidate their position against challengers. Here, the political space gets constricted. In addition, their use of the populist logic of social and political antagonism often reformulates the basis of legitimate political agency. From the post-Soviet space to nowadays, Russia exemplifies this shift to authoritarian law. These countries are normally not perceived as being a threat to the international liberal order and to global governance because of their alleged peripheral or small economic position. Furthermore, they are not seen as actually affecting global governance or playing major roles in international organizations, or indeed, as is the case with Russia today, become pariahs whose very resistance consolidates the organizations themselves.
It is sometimes argued that such countries reject so-called Western modernity, because the international liberal order is based on its rules rather than on brute power. However, for Professor Robinson, it would be too simplistic to break this down into some form of revolt against the West and modernity. According to him, there are two key issues that need to be considered when trying to assess the impact of hybrid populist regimes on the liberal international order. First, one must differentiate between states that are “rule-benders” and states that are “rule-breakers.” In short, rule-breakers (e.g., Russia) endeavour to become the centre of new regional projects, both in terms of security and economy, carving out a zone of influence that lies considerably outside the liberal international order. The rule-benders (e.g., Hungary), on the other hand, are more constrained by a greater degree of relative democracy and international commitments with neighbouring states.
The second key issue of which to be aware is hybridization as a political rather than an economic revolt. Global governance and a liberal international order seek to enforce certain standards of political behaviour and promote certain types of issues in politics, such as human rights. Rather than opposing the global economy, hybrid states would reject the political elements of global governance. Being part of global financial systems and benefiting through revenues from global trade, hybrid regimes are economic actors. Thus, these hybrid regimes wish to decouple political issues or perceived political issues such as security from value-driven politics, which are often cherished by Western states. In short, depending on the power, type, and immediate environment of the hybrid regime, the degree of revolt against global governance varies.
The standard solution to populist problems is to advise the affected countries to sort out their problems at home, to get rid of their basis for populism. This answer, according to Professor Robinson, needs to be revised. Possible solutions would be the restoration of a global social contract or dealing fairly with the consequences of economic change on a global level. However, even this might only solve the populist problem in some countries, but not in all. Mechanisms used to solve such problems in Western liberal democracies might even exacerbate the problems and causes elsewhere.
Reported by Imke Schutz
Professor Axel KLEIN: “Is there populism in Japan? A closer look at Asia’s oldest democracy.”
Polarization might be the missing link in the Japanese population: political education in Japan does not encourage people to become critical and question their own stance; the Japanese system is a very closed and competitive market, with very few people being encouraged to become involved in politics, while the media does not like to be overly critical of the government. Thus, populism may be a latecomer to Japan, but the political and sociocultural predispositions of Japanese society make its emergence relatively less likely.
Dr. Axel Klein, Professor of Social Sciences on East Asian and Japanese politics at the Institute of East Asian Studies of the Duisburg-Essen University, dealt with the topic of populism in Japan, or, more concretely, the conspicuous lack thereof. As Dr. Klein pointed out in his introduction, Japan is not discussed when scholars talk about populism. In fact, some scholars, such as Ian Buruma and Jennifer Lind, have argued that there is no populism in Japan. Their arguments focus on the lack of elites in the country’s population, its society’s egalitarianism, its low immigration, and the government’s contribution to Japan’s economic growth. Another key for understanding Japanese politics is its political system: Japan has a one-party-dominant regime, in which the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been in power for sixty-two years.
Nevertheless, some figures have been labelled as ‘populist’ in the Japanese public discourse. For instance, Shinzo Abe (2012- 2020), the longest-serving prime minister, is an example of such a politician. Indeed, Abe tried to push his opinions on national security legislation, and consequently, one of the biggest newspapers in Japan, Vox, labelled him a populist. Another example was prime minister Koizumi Junichiro (2001- 2006): his different leadership style, clashing with people in his own party for being too inflexible and against reform, as well as his media savvy and his ambitious reform projects, all led to him being called a populist. This is because, Dr. Klein explained, in Japanese public discourse, populism has come to refer to ‘mass opportunism.’ The discourse of mass opportunism occurs when the politician engages with the public generously, shows attention to public opinion, and tries to satisfy the target audience. So, promises to raise the child allowance or reduce taxes would be enough for a politician to be seen as a populist in the Japanese political landscape.
To counter this, Prof. Klein aimed to clarify this conceptual confusion by focusing on two of the more prominent definitions of populism in the literature today. First, the political-strategic approach sees populism as a strategy through which a leader gains support from unorganized followers and comes to encompass governmental power by establishing, or claiming to establish, unmediated links to these otherwise weakly attached mass constituencies. Second, the ideational approach pioneered by Cas Mudde and others sees populism as a ‘thin-centred ideology’ that divides society into two opposed groups, the ‘pure people’ and ‘the elite.’ The ideational approach sees populism as always aiming to be the expression of the general will of the people. Applying these two important concepts of populism to the Japanese politicians most often labelled as populist, Prof. Klein concluded that, in the absence of a ‘pure people vs. elite’ discourse, and of serious anti-pluralism or illiberalism, it would be difficult to seriously consider them as actual populists.
Prof. Klein therefore introduced the concept of ‘Populist In Name Only’ (PINO), to refer to such figures that may be called populist by those who seek to attack them politically but are not actually populists. Examples of this phenomenon include the Reiwa Shinsengumi Party and its leader Tarō Yamamoto, who argue that Japanese people lack love and money from the state; the Okinawa Party, whose goal was to remove US military bases; and Hashimoto Toru, the former leader of the Japan Restoration Party who was aggressive in attacking bureaucracy. But none of these have populist tendencies in the theoretical sense.
Consequently, the cultural and political background of countries plays a crucial role in determining and measuring populist figures and actions. Due to the political culture in Japan, some ways of competing politically and being outwardly in favour of reformist ideas may brand one a populist, whereas similar strategies may be seen as acceptable (and not populist) in a Western democracy. In fact, Dr. Klein concludes, there are no serious populist politicians or populist parties in Japan, according to any serious theoretical definition found in the literature today. The small number of phenomena discussed in Prof. Klein’s speech allows Japan to be considered as ‘low on populism.’ This, however, raises the question why there is so little populism in Japan. If one looks closely at the country, there are multiple opportunities to have populism in the territory: there is rising social inequality, one dominant party, and a ministerial bureaucracy that could be categorized as a ‘corrupt elite.’ Furthermore, Dr. Klein observed, the economic crises and negative effects of globalization should lead the population towards some political frustration that would eventually open space for populism.
Dr. Klein’s presentation demonstrated that polarization might be the missing link in the Japanese population: political education in Japan does not encourage people to become critical and question their own stance; the Japanese system is a very closed and competitive market, with very few people being encouraged to become involved in politics, while the media does not like to be overly critical of the government. Thus, Prof. Axel Klein concluded that populism may be a latecomer to Japan, but the political and sociocultural predispositions of Japanese society make its emergence relatively less likely.
Reported by Julide Sezer
Panel 3
What’s Next in a Post-COVID-19 World?
Professor Jens Maesse: “Post-neoliberalism in Europe? How economic discourses have changed through COVID-19 pandemic”
New institutional structures have been formed in the EU since the pandemic’s onset. The system of economic observation was rearranged, and new elements were introduced. For example, rescue packages were adopted according to the needs of the pandemic situation; a short-time allowance, ‘Kurzarbeitergeld,’ was established as a global model; a €750 billion investment fund was created; taxes within the EU have changed; European supply chains are constructed with transnational economic awareness; and, finally, the role of the ECB as a crisis manager has been confirmed once again. Thus, EU economic institutions were further developed, and some were extensively modified. These developments prove problematic for populism as it has changed the context.
In his presentation, Professor Jens Maesse from the Institute of Sociology at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen, Germany, presented his research and explained how economic discourses have changed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Maesse outlined three different levels of neoliberal influence and analysed how they were impacted by the pandemic. In doing so, he examined the discursive logic and structure of institutions within the European Union, as well as the EU economy in the world global economy.
First, the Professor Maesse explained the context that allowed the collapse of neoliberalism during COVID-19, outlining a number of key reasons: the rise of China as a major economic partner, technological competitor, and systemic rival; Brexit-populism—a shock experience which changed the political majorities in the EU; various ambivalent experiences with crisis management since 2009; and, finally, climate change and the changing production chains within Europe since the 1990s. As such, he concluded, “the neoliberal competition state does not make sense anymore.”
Indeed, since the Covid crisis, there has been a sharp change in economic discourse in Europe. The first, according to Maesse, was one of temporality. Previously, institutional temporality created space for categorizations and evaluations over longer timespans; today, the virus has replaced discursive temporality in a logic of what he called “crisis-deixis,” a process of specification and localization. Second, the authority is no longer the same: during the pre-crisis period, in the neoliberal EU-Maastricht system, the authorities were in competition. However, the crisis has become a master signifier and a discursive authority. It has become a dominant element that challenges the neoliberal balance. Finally, the ethical themes within economic discourse have radically altered: there has been a shift from professional objectivity to more emotional investment and, indeed, sometimes hysteria. Thus, Professor Maesse holds, one of the pandemic’s consequences has been a major transformation in the way EU economic experts perceive the EU and its economic policy. There is a new discursive logic in Europe, based on reasoning, and it is this discursive shift that has further occluded populist discursive logics.
Moreover, he elaborated, new institutional structures have been formed in the EU since the pandemic’s onset. The system of economic observation was rearranged, and new elements were introduced. For example, rescue packages were adopted according to the needs of the ‘Corona’ situation; a short-time allowance, Kurzarbeitergeld, was established as a global model; a €750 billion investment fund was created; taxes within the EU have changed; European supply chains are constructed with transnational economic awareness; and, finally, the role of the European Central Bank (ECB) as a crisis manager has been confirmed once again. Thus, EU economic institutions were further developed, and some were extensively modified. These developments prove problematic for populism as it has changed the context in which it previously existed and thrived. In the world economy, however, there is a perpetuation of existing trends. Brexit, the crisis of the North Italian industrial structure, the ‘under-stratification’ of the central and Eastern European industrial suppliers, and the tourism crisis in Southern Europe show us that the world has not really changed, and that familiar problems persist. Professor Maesse argued that we, now, “observe an intensified path-dependency and further splits and fissures among European regions, classes and sub-economies,” a state of affairs that remains quite similar to the old one.
Professor Maesse concludes that Covid has had many consequences for European economic discourse. Firstly, according to him, “economic experts [now] speak in the name of the ‘crisis’ as authorization device and take measures that no longer follow a clear economic theory.” Second, institutions and their structures are constantly changing, and “there is no longer any decency and continuity possible in the institutional path.” Third, national societies and communities are now “dis-embedded and reticulated along post-national spaces of inequality.” Finally, the structures of the European and global economy are constantly creating new crisis events. Thus, he concludes that the post-neoliberal ‘new normal’ lies between the old and the new structure.
Reported by Heloise Aelbrecht
Dr. Brett Meyer: “An analysis of populist leaders’ responses to Covid-19”
Many populist leaders have been in power for a long time. Blaming establishment figures for everything that goes wrong is an essential strategy of the populist playbook; once populists themselves become the establishment politicians, however, no-one else remains to blame and citizens’ patience may eventually run out.
Dr. Brett Meyer, research fellow at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, presented his research on populists’ performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr Meyer’s research tracked the types of policies populist leaders pursued, how their countries fared in terms of cases and deaths, and how the pandemic affected support for populists.
At the start of the pandemic, many believed that the nature of the crisis would prove a problem for populist leaders, who tend to eschew expert advice and favour show over substance. Indeed, Dr Meyer found that 2021 saw the biggest decline in the number of populist leaders ever, down from seventeen to thirteen populist leaders in power, the lowest number since 2004. Correlation does not equal causation, but this trend provided an interesting topic for investigation.
In August 2020, Dr. Meyer published a report detailing populist leaders’ responses to the pandemic in its first few months. Most headlines stating that populists were doing poorly during the pandemic focused on the US’s Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, both of whom downplayed COVID-19. However, only five of the world’s eighteen populists downplayed the pandemic during the early months. The remaining thirteen took it seriously: most responded similarly to non-populist democratically elected leaders. Five of the thirteen, however, took ‘illiberal responses,’ involving punishing lockdowns, excessive emergency powers, and biased enforcement. Dr Meyer also looked into the responses of populists in Northern and Western Europe. Although there are no populists currently in power there, there are many right-wing populist parties. Like most populists around the world, they took COVID quite seriously.
Dr. Meyer also elaborated how COVID affected support for populists. In 2020, he looked at support for different types of parties in Western Europe over the first few months of COVID. He found that the lead parties in government enjoyed big boosts in support, but that other mainstream parties did not benefit from COVID. Right-wing populist parties suffered most. Dr. Meyer later expanded his sample to track support for leaders in both Western and Eastern Europe. He found that before the pandemic populist-led governments enjoyed higher support than non-populist governments. This immediately changed upon the onset of the pandemic and remained so throughout. Towards the end of the collected sample support flipped in favour of populists again, but by this time several populists in Eastern Europe had lost power.
Dr. Meyer also investigated how populist- and non-populist led governments polled against death rates in corresponding countries. He found that, at the first spike in mortality numbers during the pandemic, support for non-populists shot up, and remained at a high point throughout the pandemic. Support for populists suffered a gradual decline after the first mortality spike, a trend that continued after the second spike. Dr. Meyer referred to this as a “flight to seriousness,” foreshadowing the consequences COVID might have for populism. During crises like pandemics there is increased support for established politicians, perhaps because they are the ones who appear to follow experts’ advice and take responsible approaches to the crisis. Puzzlingly, populists did worse even when they took COVID seriously. This might, again, be explained as a lack of patience for populist leadership styles during uncertain times.
Finally, Dr. Meyer discussed populists’ prospects going forward and how the opposition might counteract populism. For one, many populist leaders have been in power for a long time. Blaming establishment figures for everything that goes wrong is an essential strategy of the populist playbook; once populists themselves become the establishment politicians, however, no-one else remains to blame and citizens’ patience may eventually run out. Furthermore, Dr. Meyer found that of three of the four elections that populist leaders lost in 2021, the opposition parties had focused their campaigns entirely on ousting the populist leader, despite their very different goals and commitments. This was successful in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Israel.
An issue, however, is that an ideologically diverse opposition uniting may dislodge populism but lack the stability to form a lasting government once the populist has been ousted. Israel’s extremely diverse government is taking strategic policy steps, focused on implementing institutional changes designed to prevent populist retrenchment. Another issue appears in countries like Turkey, where populist leaders have set up significant institutional roadblocks, granting them institutional protection and increasing the chance of electoral corruption. Again, strategic institutional changes appear an advisable tactic.
Reported by Melissa Blink
Dr Sheri Berman: “Populist and non-populist governance performance during the Covid pandemic and prospects for democracy in the West going forward”
Studies show that the higher the levels of self-reported ‘pandemic fatigue’—that is, tiredness of dealing with Covid and restrictions on freedom—the more people grow dissatisfied with their governments and with democracy itself. Even in places with relatively high levels of trust and compliance, like Germany or Canada, we are now seeing that “restrictions on individual freedom can have very obvious, very serious negative political consequences.”
Dr. Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University, began her talk with a basic observation: COVID-19 appeared as a crisis at a particularly difficult time for democracy. Since approximately 2010, scholars have observed a period of backsliding or ‘autocratization’ during which numerous countries seemed to turn their backs to democracy. Data from Cambridge University’s Bennett Institute also shows that satisfaction with democracy has been in decline over the past decades, a decline that is particularly prevalent in the US.
One manifestation of this dissatisfaction with democracy is growing support for populism, which tends to feed off dissatisfaction with the establishment. At the beginning of the pandemic some feared that the crisis would accelerate these negative trends. However, data sources like V-Dem and others did not find any broad trend towards leaders, populist or otherwise, using the pandemic to further erode the foundations of democracy. Particularly in Europe there was no acceleration of autocratization or general increase in support for populist parties. In the US, however, the health of democracy did continue to decline during the pandemic, and the populist portion of the Republican Party grew ever stronger, to the point where it is now a dominant tenor in the party. Neither, though, did the pandemic boost the fortunes of democracy; dissatisfaction with democracy remains quite high.
Professor Berman mentioned two notable connections. The first is that satisfaction with democracy is partially dependent on performance. She explains that democracy enjoys ‘systemic legitimacy’—people value it not only for its outcomes, but because they value its central goals and tenets. As such, democracy does not rely on performance legitimacy as much as contemporary dictatorships do, for example. Nevertheless, performance also matters. Dr. Berman cites data from the Bennett Institute, which found strong connections between actual crises and levels of satisfaction with democracy. When crises hit and governments seem unable or unwilling to deal adequately with incoming problems, satisfaction with democracy goes down. This was observed throughout the Euro and refugee crises, and again during the pandemic. Leaders who seemed to react clearly, effectively, and rationally were generally rewarded.
One might wonder why some leaders were better able to respond to the needs of their population than others. This leads to the second significant connection: both satisfaction and performance are linked to the variable of trust. One study, recently published in The Lancet, found that when citizens were more trusting both towards their government institutions and towards fellow citizens, pandemic outcomes were better because, Dr. Berman argued, individual citizens are more willing to sacrifice for the common good when they can expect politicians and fellow citizens to do the same. Trust creates a feedback effect, enabling governments to do better. The United States, Dr. Berman notes, is anomalous here: trust in government has plummeted, reflected in the way the pandemic played out in the US, as people were hesitant to follow rules, and suspicions about leaders’ and experts’ directions persisted. The politicization of vaccines was, according to Dr. Berman, another tragic result of this mistrust.
Finally, Dr. Berman commented on the contemporary situation: studies show that the higher the levels of self-reported ‘pandemic fatigue’—that is, tiredness of dealing with Covid and restrictions on freedom—the more people grow dissatisfied with their governments and with democracy itself. Even in places with relatively high levels of trust and compliance, like Germany or Canada, we are now seeing that “restrictions on individual freedom can have very obvious, very serious negative political consequences.” They can trigger right-wing fears, for example, as seen in the US and Canada. She also noted that these restrictions have negative effects on the left, too, where increasingly, many people are willing to support severe punishments for people who disagree with their views on necessary health measures.
Dr. Berman warned that we do not want to end up in a situation where the long-term implications of extensive government restrictions on freedom are tested: hardening views on the left and further triggering populist attitudes on the right and dissatisfaction with democracy overall. As such, Dr. Berman concluded, scholars and analysts would do well to turn their attention increasingly to the potential long-term consequences of the crisis on populism and other social and political trends.
Reported by Mariam Lortkipanidze
