Socialist, small holders, and Christian parties are often not populist. Mere anti-elitist rhetoric is insufficiently distinctive of populism.
Anti-elitist concepts of populism are also too narrow because they exclude obviously populist movements that adore elite plutocrats (or apparent plutocrats) such as Berlusconi in Italy, Babiš in the Czech Republic, and Trump in the United States. Most ancient populist demagogues in Greece and Rome were scions of famous and old political families. Some contemporary populists respect and even admire wealthy elites and celebrities like the Italian populist leader Pepe Grillo and, of course, Trump. Trump’s fear of divulging his tax returns probably reflects status anxiety. He fears losing the respect and adoration of his followers should they realize that he is not much richer than they are. Contemporary populists do not necessarily resent professional politicians. Some populist leaders had been professional mainstream center-right or center-left politicians before adopting populist style and politics; for example, Hungary’s prime minister Orbán, the Czech president Zeman, and Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu. Though India’s Modi had modest caste origins, he was also a professional politician, the chief minister of Gujarat for over a decade, and his policies have been distinctly favorable to the upper castes. Brazil’s Bolsonaro was a professional politician for decades after being a military officer in a country with a traditionally political and authoritarian military. The Polish populist leader Kaczyński was both a celebrity actor and a professional politician. By contrast, virtually all the totalitarian leaders, Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and their close associates, had no elite background of any kind.
The political etymology of the term “populist” goes back to the late Roman Republic (133–27 BCE), when conflicts between the Optimates and Populares tore it apart in civil wars. Both groups were of elite Roman families, but the weaker clique sought popular support in its struggle with the stronger party that controlled the Roman Senate. The struggle was not so much between the people and the elites as between factions within the elite, some of whom did not shy away from attempting to use common people to support them. In response, the Optimates accused the Populares of demagoguery, the emotional manipulation of the political passions of the masses.
At least since Plato, upper-class authors and orators have attempted to associate the passions exclusively with the lower classes. Conversely, they associated self-control and reason with the upper classes. The oligarchic conclusion is obvious and fully developed in Plato’s political philosophy: An elite moved by reason rather than passion should rule, if not enslave, people who cannot rule their own passions. Democracy, the rule of common people who cannot control their passions and subdue them to reason leads to the politics of the passions, demagoguery, and eventually self-destruction.
Elite propaganda aside, the ancient Greek and Roman elites were just as likely as the lower classes to succumb to passions, both political and personal. Passions for social domination, economic rapaciousness, and arrogant condescension begot resentment and class warfare. The difference between the ancient classes was not marked by reason versus passion, but by different kinds of passions, different tastes for self-destructiveness, like the difference between single malt whiskey thrice distilled and industrial alcohol: consumed in sufficient quantities, they both kill, though at different price ranges and levels of smoothness. Elite and popular populisms fed on each other and led to mutual destruction in civil wars, the end of the republic.
I adopt the core of the ancient concept of populism as the politics of passions, while rejecting its class bias, the exclusive association of the passions with lower classes. I propose to interpret populism, ancient and contemporary, as the rule of political passions. I maintain the ancient association of populism with passions and their manipulation by demagogues, but drop the class bias that associated populism exclusively with the politics of bread and circuses in Rome or beer and sausages in Marx’s view of the politics of the undisciplined poor, the Lumpenproletariat.
The eighteenth-century “moralists” introduced a useful Greek-inspired tripartite division of motivations between passions, interests, and reason. Contemporary political theorists like Jon Elster used this terminology to explain politics and liberal constitutions. Framers of such constitutions foresaw circumstances when politicians and voters would be compelled by passions to act against their interests. They enacted constitutions that constrain passionate choices, much as a sober recovering alcoholic may give the keys to the liquor cabinet to a trusted friend, with the instruction not to open it, irrespective of what the alcoholic may say in the future. Liberal institutions like the independent judiciary and central bank act as that trusted friend, to constrain political passions. Neo-illiberalism lifts such constraints to permit the politics of passions, populism.
The distinctions between passions, interests, and reason do not have to presume value judgments about which motivations are “legitimate” or “rational” and which are not. When the realization of passions comes at the expense of most other life projects, the passions are clearly and distinctly self-destructive. For example, irrespective of which life projects and goals jealous spouses may have, if they commit murder in jealous rage, whatever else they may have wished for, the rest of their lives will become impossible. Similarly, some economic policies give precedence to economic growth and social mobility, while others prefer economic equality and social cohesion. But populist policies, as in Venezuela, destroy the economy to an extent that growth and equality, mobility and cohesion, all become impossible.
Not all passions are sufficiently extreme to be assuredly self-destructive. Some passions lead the people they motivate to take extreme risks, thereby increasing the probability, rather than certainty, of self-destruction. Political passionate recklessness may pay off when the populists who lead it are lucky. They may come to believe themselves invincible, smart, or empowered by their passions, until luck runs out.
Other passions come at the expense of interests that, upon reflection and consideration, people would give precedence to. As La Bruyere (quoted in Elster 1999, 337) put it: “Nothing is easier for passion than to overcome reason, but the greatest triumph is to conquer a man’s own interest.” For example, anger has led people in history to burn down their own neighborhoods. They lived another day, but made themselves homeless. States have overreacted to provocations, built lavish dysfunctional buildings, and paid for the rescue of whales caught in ice, when the same resources could have been allocated for other purposes (hospitals, orphanages etc.) that both government and people, upon reflection, would have recognized as more important. Populists find challenging postponement of gratification to maximize satisfaction, giving precedence to some motivations over others, and recognizing that scarcity of resources forces choices between motivations.
Populists tend to miss what Harry Frankfurte (1988, 11–25) called second-order volitions, a will to determine their own passions. Populists accept all their passions and do not recognize contradictions between the passions; the constraints that satisfying some imposes on satisfying others. Demagogue may enflame and manipulate passions, but cannot control them and would not try. Populist leaders must promise immediate gratification in the form of simple policy solutions that they may misrepresent as having no undesirable consequences. They cannot acknowledge the complexity of the world (Mounk 2018, 36–39). When populist leaders cannot gratify, they divert attention to something else. Populist passions demand policies that are incompatible and undermine each other. They necessitate more policies to correct those contradictions, and so on. This is most obvious in macro-economic policies that want to improve public services, reduce taxes, and keep inflation and the national debt down; or keep high levels of transfer payments from the young to the old, with low birth rates, and strict restrictions on immigration of young workers, as in Japan. Populist policies, as distinct from populist rhetoric or expressions of passion, eventually consume themselves in self-destructive bonfire of passions.
Populist passions can be powerful enough to affect the beliefs of their adherents. Beliefs become narrative representations of passions, rather than probable results of reliable processes of inference from evidence. For example, if populists hate or fear somebody, they come to believe that they must have committed horrible crimes. Since the passions precede the stories told to represent them, evidence cannot convince or dissuade the passions. For example, fear and