LOSING THE PLOT
What is populism? What drives it? Commentators have shed much ink trying to understand this phenomenon sweeping the globe from Turkey to Texas. Former Indian diplomat Hardeep Singh Puri is the latest to wade into this noisy debate. By analysing three cases of populism— Brexit, Trump and Modi—Puri seeks to understand what lies behind the global populist turn. His answer, “delusional politics”, also forms the book’s title. Puri examines what he sees as delusional politics at the global level—in climate change, international trade, and combating terrorism.
Delusional politics, according to Puri, is decision-making characterised by “arbitrariness and unilateralism… without regard to factual reality”, exhibited by leaders in a “fit of hubris, megalomania or bad advice…against their own and their country’s best interest in the belief that they are making history”.
Puri’s first work, Perilous Interventions, was a major contribution to the analysis of the global politics around humanitarian intervention. Unfortunately, his second foray comes up short. Its weaknesses begin at the conceptual level itself. According to Puri’s definition, delusional decision-making chiefly operates at the individual level, where the personality of the leader is central. Yet, Trump’s decisions to pull out of the Iran deal or the Paris climate agreement were not quite a fit of arbitrariness from a delusional leader. Both accords have faced strong opposition in the United States, thanks to the persistent unilateralist strain in its history. This anti-globalist strain has grown stronger more recently due to a sense in its rural hinterlands of being left behind. Some of these points do emerge in the book, but Puri fails to link them clearly to his core concept of “delusional”.
The Brexit example also fails to convince. The individual “delusions” of David Cameron and Nigel Farage were probably less central than the longstanding isolationist strain in British (specifically English) politics. This strain only grew as the European Union deepened and expanded and a growing backlash against immigration gripped England. In calling the referendum, then PM Cameron was trying to smoke out the Brexit dissenters within his party before their clamour became a crescendo—not an irrational strategy in and of itself. Had the close vote gone the other way, he would have been hailed as a hero by liberal internationalists. Structural factors, rather than the delusions of individual leaders, may have been more salient in the gathering storm that was Brexit.
Puri’s treatment of the Indian case is even more mystifying. The delusional exemplar here turns out not to be the populist (Modi), but the Congress party. One is left wondering how Puri can so casually dispense with his claimed link between the phenomenon of populism and what he calls delusional decision-making.
The chapters on global governance are far more insightful, particularly the one on international trade. Puri lays out the weaknesses of the global trading regime and how New Delhi might work towards achievable compromises. But these chapters still come across as disconnected from the national case studies. One wishes the book had given much more prominence to the global governance topics, where the author, with his deep experience as a senior diplomat, demonstrates his expertise.
The book had the potential to contribute something new to our understanding of populism from an Indian perspective. However, “delusional politics” appears to be a catch-all term for everything the author considers “bad” in domestic and global affairs. That is less than useful.
Puri’s treatment of the Indian case is mystifying. The delusional exemplar here turns out to be not the populist Modi, but the Congress party