The Rise of National Populism

22 March 2017

On Monday, 13 March 2017, the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University and the David Davies Memorial Institute hosted a roundtable discussion on ‘The Rise of National Populism’.  The event was chaired by Director of the DDMI Jan Ruzicka; the speakers included E.H. Carr Professor Richard Beardsworth, Dr. Ali Bilgic of Loughborough University, Dr. Kamila Stullerova, and Dr. Lucy Taylor.  Each focused on manifestations of national populism in the regions on which they are authorities – respectively, France, Turkey, Europe, and Latin America.

Richard Beardsworth opened the discussion with a reference to the upcoming French presidential elections.  Currently in the lead is Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front (FN), who, like US President Donald Trump, seeks to overturn the international liberal order that both France and the United States were instrumental in establishing.  Le Pen’s platform is authoritarian in political essence, and her policy positions include more stringent immigration measures, re-introduction of the franc, and renegotiation of France’s membership in, or even withdrawal from, the European Union.  To better understand national populism, Professor Beardsworth outlined certain characteristics of the phenomenon that tend to recur across contexts, such as a tendency to represent those who feel disenfranchised as the ‘real people’, and the effective ability to present economic issues as cultural in nature.

Dr. Ali Bilgic discussed the rise of populism in Turkey, a process that has accelerated under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  Dr. Bilgic emphasized the importance of the 2010 constitutional referendum, which allowed Erdogan to consolidate his power by strengthening the executive branch at the expense of the judiciary.  Erdogan has also cultivated a close relationship with the media; portrayed himself as the representative of the ‘real people’, a group that consists of those who have been historically disenfranchised; and quashed internal challenges to his rule, such as the pro-Kurdish independence movement.  The cumulative result of these actions has been to effectively establish a single party system under his exclusive control, all while maintaining that, under his rule, Turkey has become a true democracy.

Dr. Lucy Taylor drew on her extensive knowledge of Latin America to describe frequent features of populist movements.  She argued that populism is not about ideology or a particular political position or doing what the population wants.  Rather, populism is about creating a political relationship between a large mass of people who feel underrepresented and a charismatic figurehead.  In this relationship, the figurehead creates the ‘people’ he then claims to represent, in the sense that he develops a national identity that individual people can connect with, often through the exclusion of historical elites or racial minorities.  The charismatic leader represents himself as an outsider, like the disenfranchised members of society who support him, but also as someone with unique knowledge or capabilities.  Populist leaders strive to create high levels of mobilization in terms of realizing injustices, but not in the sense of participation in civil society or consciousness raising.  Finally, populist leaders often celebrate traditional gender roles, especially hyper masculinity, and trade in racist and xenophobic tropes.  Dr. Taylor gave Argentina’s former President Juan Perón as an example of a populist leader.  Perón began his career as a military officer from a lower-middle class background.  He successfully portrayed Argentina’s historical elite, the oligarchs, as exploitative and parasitical.  His popularity was bolstered by his marriage to Eva Perón; together they acted as father and mother to the national family.  Integral to the success of a populist movement, Dr. Taylor argued, is eliciting an emotional response from the ‘people.’  Thus, efforts to combat populism cannot rely exclusively on logic, but must also recognize and appeal to people on an emotional level.

Dr. Kamila Stullerova began by questioning the appropriateness of the term ‘national populism’.  She argued that what is today termed national populism is not a new phenomenon, but rather a new configuration of nationalism and populism, two forces that have reappeared in areas of the world where they had been successfully repressed for a long time.  She predicted that the current configuration of nationalism and populism would die out within one generation, although she warned that within that time they could lead to violence both internally and externally.  She described populism as a kind of moralist politics, where the created ‘us’ is portrayed as morally pure and the ostracized ‘them’ is characterized as morally corrupt.  Recent catalysts to nationalism and populism include globalization and the resulting crisis for white working-class men; perceived increases in migration and concerns about porous borders; post-colonial guilt and suppression of hatred of the other leading to a projection of negative emotions regarding non-Western people onto migrants; and perceptions of Islam as a political alternative that threatens the core values of the West.

The event concluded with questions from the audience.  The topics under discussion included the reactive tendencies of the Labour Party in Britain, how to understand the rise of national populism as an emotional response, the danger that stems from embracing nationalist rhetoric while assuming that we have moved beyond the era of total war, and the relationship between the media and national populism.

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