Populism, in short, is an emphasis on the wisdom and preferences of common folk at the expense of an educated elite. From the perspective of a world we don't understand, populism offers promise and peril.
One large advantage of populism is that common folk are often more attuned to traditional wisdom, as laid out in Part 6. They may not know why or how they believe what they believe, but populists can serve as a necessary corrective to elite opinion, when elite opinion falls prey to passing intellectual fads. At their best, populists keep us grounded in the known, and hesitant to dive headfirst into the new and untested.
But at its worst, populism leads towards hero worship of a tribune: a leader who proclaims that (s)he can fulfill the desires and needs of the people by virtue of his/her will and good intentions. While the populist may connect to valuable and forgotten ideas (like the preeminence of the nation-state in the face of an increasingly cosmopolitan and detached elite), they often delve into discredited ideas and conspiratorialism. Populism demands a villain: whether it be immigrants or bankers, it's toxic for thoughtful policymaking and governance. (In a world we don't understand, the contention that there is a grand conspiracy causing our problems seems particularly rich. As if the conspirators know enough to pull the strings!)
Although prudence demands a healthy skepticism of elite pieties and schemes, populists often take it too far, disdaining all of the conclusions of scholarship as biased and corrupt, and choosing to “wing it” instead.
But we must also acknowledge the potency of the populist appeal, particularly when popular concerns are ignored. The prototype is the European Union. Since World War II, gradually, technocratically-minded officials have accumulated more and more power for the largely-unelected European Union bureaucracy. National sovereignty has been frayed, and voters in those countries have gotten angry. As mainstream parties have largely acceded to this course, extremist parties on the Far Right and Far Left have grown more competitive in elections: the public demands a voice in a democracy, and in getting ignored, they turn to destructive voices and ideas. Or, to quote Alfred from The Dark Knight: “... in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn’t fully understand.”
Moreover, populists often identify valid and important policy problems that demand thoughtful attention. People generally point to problems that they are experiencing, even if elite opinion doesn’t. A classic example: elites in American society are deeply concerned about the costs of a four-year education. In my estimation, this is because most of them had a four-year education and resent paying their student loans, or resent hearing about their friends paying their student loans. But a plurality of students in higher education are starting in community colleges, or going part-time. These stories are ignored, or, the square peg of these experiences is jammed into the round hole of the four-year residential college experience, in much policy development.
We may not fully understand it, but we see it as a refrain in the history of democracies. It is a force to be reckoned with, and one that should serve as a constant reminder: do the people's business and care about their concerns, or face their wrath. It’s important to start by listening. Elite expertise is essential, but it must be grounded.
I close this series tomorrow with a review of where all of this leads, and some suggestions for future (and better) reading.
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