Global rise of populist politics is a grave threat to democracy
Cherrie Short takes a look at the rise of populist political movements in countries around the world and what it could mean
POPULIST political movements are on the rise in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other regions of the world. These movements are often headed by a dominant male figure, such as a Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, and appeal to ordinary citizens who feel their concerns are disregarded by the established political and economic elites who run the government.
Many of these ordinary citizens are experiencing the perceived and sometimes real negative consequences of global forces over which they have little control.
Violent conflicts in the Middle East and Central America, and persistent huge income inequality between countries, are causing unprecedented numbers of refugees and immigrants flowing into North America and Europe. Robots and artificial intelligence are changing the workforce, requiring higher levels of education to make a livable wage. Within wealthy countries, income inequality also stands at levels similar to the Industrial Revolution of more than 100 years ago, with declining mobility across social economic classes. And globalisation of production is moving manufacturing and other jobs out of advanced countries to lower-income areas of the world, causing older, industrial areas of many Western countries to suffer precipitous decline.
These forces are creating fertile ground for populist movements headed by strong men, not only in the US and the UK but also in other countries, such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Victor Orbán in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Andrzej Duda in Poland and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
These movements and their leaders are dangerous to democracy for several reasons. In addressing the economic issues of inequality and declining social mobility, populist leaders typically cast blame on internationalism, trade and immigrants by making xenophobic arguments that advocate extreme nationalism.
President Trump’s policy of building a wall on the southern US border, treating refugees and immigrant families and children as bad people who are criminals, and initiating a trade war with China and other countries supports this nationalistic
“America First” narrative. Brexit represents populist politics as well. Many think the 2016 referendum vote was won on the back of a toxic form of nationalism combining racism, xenophobia and imperialist nostalgia for the heyday of the British Empire.
Domestically, populist blaming of others for economic ills often takes the form of highly divisive arguments about race and ethnicity, while seeking to preserve the dominant culture and ethnicity.
In India, Prime Minister Modi is using inflammatory rhetoric and hateful policies to promote Hindu culture against Muslims and other religious faiths. In America, President Trump implicitly condones white supremacy groups, attacks Muslim and mixed-race members of Congress, and treats Puerto Ricans differently than Texans when it comes to disaster relief.
Foreign aid and international cooperation are also among the targets of populist politicians. President Trump, along with other right-wing populist leaders – Putin in Russia, Erdogan in Turkey and Orbán in Hungary, to name a few – want to significantly reduce aid and shift the purpose of foreign aid from helping the neediest abroad to more selfserving political and economic ends.
President Trump, for one, has repeatedly attempted to slash US development assistance and use it as a tool to reward allies and punish countries that vote against the US at the United Nations.
But the efforts by populists to undermine the norms and constitutional protections of democracy are just as worrying as their nationalist policies. Populist leaders appeal directly to the people through the powerful vehicle of social media platforms such as Twitter, which allow them to bypass political parties, legislatures and the news media in communicating with “the people”.
Populists typically urge their followers to distrust intermediating democratic institutions, such as the courts, the legislature and free press. They attack the courts and press as “enemies of the people” and attempt to politicise these institutions and remake them in the image of the populist leaders. They accuse the established news media of promoting “fake news” but propagate their own falsehoods and distortions of the truth.
They also disregard Parliament and Congress and attempt to rule through executive power. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s suspension of Parliament prior to the deadline for the Brexit deadline is a most egregious example of the disregard for Parliament, and President Trump’s extensive use of executive orders to foster trade wars, decimate environmental regulations and close the US border are illustrations of excessive use of executive power.
While populists pursue nationalistic and xenophobic policies and weaken democratic norms and institutions, they fail to solve or even lessen the economic difficulties experienced by the ordinary citizens who voted them into office. President Trump’s trade policies are hurting farmers and rural areas as well as older manufacturing regions, two constituencies that voted him into office. Prime Minister Johnson’s Brexit policies have hurt Wales and other areas of Britain and will severely damage the British economy if the UK crashes out of the European Union with a “no-deal” Brexit.
For the sake of a free and democratic society, it is essential that we defeat populism, protect our democratic institutions and stop blaming refugees and immigrants. Instead we should develop actual policy solutions to the many economic ills afflicting older manufacturing and rural areas, caused by digitisation and globalisation of production.
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