In the Name of the People: How Populism is Rewiring the World

By Tendai Biti, Nic Cheeseman, Christopher Clapham and 4 more

Shaken by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and staggering after the COVID-19 pandemic, the global political order is entering a new era of volatile uncertainty that may roll back the gains of the last century.

Open democracies, where opponents respect one another even as they contest for power, are under threat from the rising tide of populism. In this stark new world, political opponents are enemies to be destroyed by fake news, and independent institutions are being used as tools to perpetuate power.

In societies as diverse as Argentina, the Philippines, Tanzania and Hungary, populists have taken power, promising to restore accountability to the people. But, once in office, they have sought to hollow out democracy and to demonise the opposition as they hold onto power and oversee the economic decline of their countries.

In the Name of the People examines populism from its Latin American roots to liberation movements in Africa and the rise of a new European nationalism. At its most virulent, populism has destroyed democracies from the inside out, causing social instability, economic catastrophe and, in some cases, authoritarian repression. In other cases, such as in South Africa, populism is a rising threat as strong constitutional guarantees of democratic accountability come under fire.

The authors analyse 13 countries across the globe to understand how populism is evolving into a threat to free and open societies, addressing questions such as: Where is populism taking us? Is there hope of a return to rational policy-making? Is the world doomed to descend into ever-greater conflict?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Picador Africa
• Release date: Oct 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781770108189

Tendai Biti

Tendai Biti is a former finance minister of Zimbabwe.

Book preview

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First published in 2022 by Picador Africa

an imprint of Pan Macmillan South Africa

Private Bag X19, Northlands

Johannesburg

2116

www.panmacmillan.co.za

isbn

978 1 77010 817 2

e-I

isbn

978 1 77010 818 9

Text © 2022 Tendai Biti, Nic Cheeseman, Christopher Clapham, Ray Hartley, Greg Mills, Juan Carlos Pinzón, Lyal White

Forewords © 2022 Lech Wałęsa, Leopoldo López

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Editing by Sally Hines

Proofreading by Russell Martin

Design and layout by Triple M Design

Cover design by mr design

Contents

Foreword by Lech Wałęsa

Foreword by Leopoldo López

Abbreviations

Introduction

Part One: Old-Style Populists

Chapter One: Peronism, Argentina’s Populist Capsule

Greg Mills and Lyal White

Chapter Two: Marcos and the Shoe Lady in the Philippines

Greg Mills and Lyal White

Chapter Three: Africa’s Military Populists

Christopher Clapham

Chapter Four: Chile, Allende and the Populist Tradition

Greg Mills and Lyal White

Part Two: Liberation-Movement Populism

Chapter Five: Zimbabwe: Democracy with Brutal Characteristics

Tendai Biti

Chapter Six: Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda: When the Clean-Up Gets Dirty

Ray Hartley

Chapter Seven: South Africa: Populism of a Special Type

Ray Hartley

Part Three: New-Order Populists

Chapter Eight: Venezuela: How to Destroy a Country

Greg Mills and Lyal White

Chapter Nine: El Salvador: Social Implosion,Elite Introversion and Populism

Greg Mills

Chapter Ten: Brazil’s Populist Pendulum

Greg Mills and Lyal White

Chapter Eleven: Colombia: Caught in the Clutches of Populism

Juan Carlos Pinzón

Chapter Twelve: Hungary: Populism with Ancient Characteristics

Ray Hartley

Chapter Thirteen: Populism across Borders: How Foreign Leaders Encourage Populists

Nic Cheeseman

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Foreword

Lech Wałęsa

This book tells the fascinating story of how populism, once the preserve of dysfunctional Latin American countries, has developed into a global political phenomenon.

The reasons for the rise of populism are complex and sometimes baffling. But what is certain is that the ‘old school’ populism of the last century has been replaced by a new and far more sophisticated version, which relies on social media to drive home divisive messages and depends on the lack of debate on policy matters to govern through shallow, self-serving agendas.

Political leaders who attempt to take a long-term view by arguing that sacrifices must be made today to make tomorrow’s world better for everyone are being shunted aside by populists, who take a short-term view. They drive up spending, leaving future generations in debt. They polarise society, leaving future generations to deal with social instability. They mock rational policy decisions, making fewer of those who support them willing to enter politics.

The sum total of this is a world where elites are hollowing out democracy and turning it into a device to perpetuate their rule. Worse than that, many use the veil of democracy to conceal their greedy drive for enrichment.

This is possible because they do away with independent institutions that are meant to be keeping rulers in check by preventing abuses of power.

Populism starts out with great intentions: it seeks to right the wrongs of social inequality and injustice. But it always ends badly, with democracy suffering and the people worse off than before.

The reality is that there are no shortcuts to social progress. Hard decisions and sacrifices have to be made to build strong economic and political foundations that ensure that the people, and not rapacious elites, remain in control of their societies.

The good news is that this cycle can be broken. People are not fools, and they are starting to see through populist promises. To make a decisive change, however, requires strong political leaders who are willing to stand against the populist tide and steer debate back to making rational, effective policy that serves the people.

Such leaders are in short supply. When they emerge, they deserve the support and encouragement of all who value inclusive, people-centred democracy. It is our duty to seek out, guide and develop a new generation of leadership that values accountability, transparency and open societies.

During the dark days of the Soviet empire – days that Vladimir Putin seems determined to relive – it seemed to many that nothing could be done to turn the tide against an elite that was accountable only to the party. Totalitarian societies, such as those that were imposed on Eastern Europe, provide a frightening vision of where populism ends up when it goes unchecked. Present-day Russia, although a shadow of the former Soviet Union, remains just such an authoritarian regime, which appears to be led by a mutation of Homo Sovieticus.

In Poland, we did not despair and throw up our hands. We organised the workers in the dockyards into a powerful social force that was able to stand up to and, ultimately, remove the totalitarian regime of Wojciech Jaruzelski and replace it with a new, open and accountable government that was democratically elected.

We succeeded because we persevered, even under severe repression. We knew what the people wanted: a society in which they, and not an imposed elite, governed in the interests of all.

It is just such a society that the people of Ukraine were building when the Russian invasion occurred. But the people of Ukraine have tasted democracy and freedom, and they are willing to lay their lives on the line to defend it.

It was an extremely proud moment for me when I was sworn in as the first president of a democratic Poland in 1990.

Unfortunately, in Poland – and elsewhere in Eastern Europe – we underestimated democracy and too quickly took it for granted. We have allowed populist demagogues to attain power. We must now ensure that they do not succeed in hollowing out our democracy.

Democracy is made out of three important components. The first 30% is legal: laws, regulations and constitutions. The second 30% is assessing whether people are taking advantage of this and are organised in political parties and are engaged. And the third 30% is the size of the bank account. And if democracy is criticised, then we have to decide which of these elements is not really operating well. Is it the laws and regulations, or are people not really getting involved in political activity and elections? Or maybe they are just too poor to get involved.

Poland has shaken off the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, and now it must confront the dangers of populism to ensure that that struggle was not in vain.

Again, there is no shortcut to democracy. Countries that have a strong constitutional order, along with strong institutions (courts of law and parliaments), are resistant to the temptation of radical ideologies and populism and show better economic progress and development than authoritarian states, where cliques amass power at the expense of the people.

Foreword

Leopoldo López

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shook the world out of its post-Cold War complacency. There have, of course, been many wars fought since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but the intensity of the conflict and the ground traversed – the same as that which changed hands between the Nazis and the Soviet Union in the Second World War – have raised alarm.

The once-distant prospect of a ‘Third World War’ has become real as Russia and NATO come into increasingly closer military proximity. The possibility of a nuclear strike, until now discounted as highly unlikely, has veered back onto centre stage.

You might wonder what this has to do with populism. The answer is that Russian aggression has its roots in the erosion of democracy from within by populists who have since become autocrats. In the post-Soviet era, Russia adopted a democratic system of government, with Boris Yeltsin becoming the first directly elected president in Russian history in 1991.

But this democratic spring was short-lived. The establishment of credible checks and balances to bolster democracy was not successful, and the judiciary, police and security machinery of the state remained centrally controlled arms of the executive.

In addition, a privatisation campaign led to a small number of oligarchs becoming extremely wealthy and influential, allowing them to operate above the law and to accumulate vast wealth as ordinary citizens suffered.

In 2000, Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin’s chosen successor, won the presidential election and began implementing increasingly authoritarian policies that limited media freedom and led to the constant harassment, and even imprisonment, of opposition leaders.

While an extreme example, Russia’s adoption of democracy and its ­hollowing-out followed the classic populist playbook. The development of an ideology based on the return to Soviet-era boundaries, great-power glory and a strong Russian nationalism provided further signs of a populist agenda.

The lesson from this is that unless democracy is deeply embedded with an independent judiciary, regular free and fair elections, and political openness, bad actors will seize the state and turn it into a weapon to accumulate power and wealth.

It is tempting to look to the developing world where there are many examples of populist hollowing-out, which this book does an admirable job of enumerating.

But, as the authors write, there are also examples of this type of populist slide in Europe and elsewhere in the developed world.

You need not look further than Hungary, where elections are barely credible, while a coterie of connected politicians enrich themselves on state contracts and preach xenophobia. Hungary erected a border fence to keep Syrian refugees out, but – commendably – welcomed Ukrainians. In both cases, the refugees were fleeing Russian military aggression, but Hungary deemed the Syrians unworthy of assistance because of their ethnic and religious backgrounds.

And you do not need to just look east or south. The US has seen insurrectionists storm the Capitol, seeking to overturn an election result on a populist platform, led by former President Donald Trump, which challenges the validity of the judiciary and the entire architecture of democracy.

The rise of populism and the slide away from democracy towards sham democratic states, where mock elections are held while opposition leaders are constantly on the run from the law, are real and are happening before our eyes.

This book provides a timeous account of how populism evolves and how it threatens to undermine the freedom that comes with democratic accountability and transparency.

Perhaps the key lesson we should draw from this is that governments must remain connected to the people – not just the people who elected the ruling party, but all the people, regardless of their political persuasions, who are entitled to equal treatment by the state.

To achieve this, parliaments must hold the executive to account and demand that it serves the entire country, and the judiciary must be free from interference so that all are equal before the law.

Populism is built on a Manichean divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The ‘us’ consists of those who support the ruling party, and this group is frequently defined by its shared conviction that only it has the answers to the big questions facing society. ‘Them’ is defined as those who support the opposition, which is regarded as being an illegitimate brake on progress and therefore worthy of exclusion from the benefits of society, including freedom of speech and assembly.

The descent into populism is seldom a short-term affair. It is the accumulation of years, sometimes decades, of gradual undermining of institutions and the slow collapse of accountability.

This makes it doubly important that government leaders watch their words and allow free and open debate on policy, including during electoral contests. This guarantees democratic accountability and allows all to enjoy the services of the state without discrimination.

It really means something when a president hands over power peacefully and congratulates their opponent on victory after a hard-fought election. It means something when lawmakers seek to follow rational policy advice rather than social media trends when making policy and law. It means something when government is brought to account for its failings and made to correct its wrongs by lawmakers from all parties who are serving their constituents and not some abstract political agenda.

Countries that have a strong constitutional order along with strong institutions – courts of law and parliaments – are resistant to populism and show better economic progress and development than authoritarian states, where cliques amass power at the expense of the people.

Abbreviations

ANC – African National Congress

ARENA – Nationalist Republican Alliance

BNDES – Brazilian Development Bank

CCM – Chama Cha Mapinduzi

COSATU – Congress of South African Trade Unions

CPAC – Conservative Political Action Conference

ECZ – Electoral Commission of Zambia

EFF – Economic Freedom Fighters

ELN – National Liberation Army

EU – European Union

FARC – Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia

FDI – foreign direct investment

Fidesz – Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége (Alliance of Young Democrats)

FMLN – Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front

FUSADES – Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social Development

GANA – Grand Alliance for National Unity

GDP – gross domestic product

GEAR – Growth, Employment and Redistribution

IMF – International Monetary Fund

ISI – import substitution industrialisation

KCM – Konkola Copper Mines

MAS – Movement Towards Socialism

MDC – Movement for Democratic Change

MPLA – People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola

MUD – Democratic Unity Roundtable

NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCR – National Capital Region

OAS – Organization of American States

OFW – Overseas Filipino Worker

PDVSA – Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A.

PSUV – United Socialist Party of Venezuela

PT – Workers’ Party

SADC – Southern African Development Community

SEBIN – Bolivarian National Intelligence Service

SEZ – Special Economic Zone

UN – United Nations

UNITA – National Union for the Total Independence of Angola

V4 – Visegrád Four or Visegrád Group

ZANU-PF – Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front

ZAPU – Zimbabwe African People’s Union

ZIPRA – Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army

ZUM – Zimbabwe Unity Movement

Introduction

A true democracy is one where the government does what the people want and defends only one interest: the people.

— Juan Perón

Evo Morales was elected to office in January 2006. Once in office, he clung on to power for 13 years by winning the confidence of the voters and, when that wavered, by systematically hollowing out Bolivia’s democracy. He demonised the opposition, cowed previously independent institutions by placing loyalists in charge of them, and turned the public broadcaster and the courts into instruments in his partisan arsenal.¹

He was finally hounded from office after mass protests in the capital city, La Paz, and other urban centres rendered the country dysfunctional.

How did someone who promised reform and progress end up dismantling democracy? Morales’ journey from democratically elected president to undemocratic demagogue illustrates many of the key tenets of populism.

The first is that populists project one agenda while seeking power and another agenda once they have it. Populism has gained traction and, it could be argued, is becoming the ‘new normal’ in political conduct, because democracies have failed to deliver enough benefits to large constituencies that begin to question whether the system is working.

Such constituencies – the unemployed, marginalised and excluded, in some cases, and the resentful middle class that sees massive wealth accumulation in a tiny section of the population, in others – are susceptible to the message that the system is rigged against them and that what is needed is a radical disruption of established institutions, be they political or economic.

What is absent is a clear vision of how overthrowing these institutions and replacing them with others will solve the problem of exclusion. More often than not, the new populist regime ends up perpetuating exclusion of its own, sometimes causing a new populist movement to arise in response.

Populists frequently rise to power by mobilising ‘the people’ against what they describe as a powerful enemy, which has a hidden agenda to cause a large section of the population to suffer. This creates an ‘us’ and ‘them’ political environment, in which you are either with the people’s chosen one or with the establishment, which is an enemy of the people.

In Morales’ case, the enemy was ‘American imperialism’, which he blamed for impoverishing Bolivia by attacking coca production. Of course, such ‘imperialists’ were working through local proxies – the domestic political establishment – who were wielding power in their interests rather than those of the people.

In Bolivia’s case, United States efforts to fight the production of coca – which provides the raw ingredient for cocaine – were demonised as an assault on the country’s farmers who depended on the crop. Morales rose to power as a fighter for the coca farmers against attempts to eradicate the production of the plant.²

This provided him with the platform to rise to the leadership of the Movement for Socialism, an alliance of miners, farmers and left intellectuals.

Sticking to the anti-imperialist theme, Morales then headed a rebellion against the sale of Bolivian gas to the US via Chile.³

When the authorities reacted with violent repression, Morales’ status was cemented as the people’s hero fighting an evil regime that was collaborating with the ‘imperialists’, and he took power after winning the 2005 election.

During his initial years in power, he lived up to the hero billing. Helped by a boom in oil and gas prices, he had the space to introduce social programmes and to partially nationalise energy assets.

Political scientist Diego von Vacano was born and raised in Bolivia before moving to the US, where he learned English as a political refugee. He claimed Morales ‘ushered in a new, more modern Bolivia that is more egalitarian, less racist, and more economically vibrant’.⁴

But, once established in power, Morales took a different tack, initiating a series of vanity projects, such as a large museum dedicated to himself in his home town and a flashy government skyscraper in La Paz, which included a luxurious presidential apartment and a helipad.

He had come to power on promises of protecting farmers against im­perialism, but, once in office, he drove a highway through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory, against the wishes of the local people. He relaxed environmental protections, leading to wildfires and the virtual disappearance of Lake Poopó, partially due to water being diverted for mining and agriculture activities with Morales’ approval.⁵

Once in power, Morales enacted another key tenet of populism – the cowing of independent political institutions that threatened the continuation of his political project. As with so many populists, what started out as a noble cause morphed into a scheme to stay in power at all costs.

When a two-term limit – which he had championed in his 2009 election – got in the way, a new constitution was introduced, allowing him to stand for a third term in 2014.⁶ When he wanted to run for a fourth term, he sought approval through a referendum, but his bid was rejected by the people he once claimed to serve.

Morales then got the Constitutional Court – its members chosen off lists compiled by the ruling party – to rule that term limits violated his human rights.⁷

When the election did not appear to go his way, electricity, the internet and phone lines were cut to interrupt voting. Twenty-four hours later, when counting was eventually concluded, Morales emerged victorious.

Morales had not yet taken the final steps of the classic populist – establishing control over the security forces and using these to suppress public protest – and it was game over when General Williams Kaliman suggested he step down during a television appearance.⁸

With nowhere to hide, Morales fled to Mexico, which promised him asylum.

There was a time when the rise and fall of Morales would have been dismissed as another episode in the ongoing soap opera of South and Central American politics, but this overlooks an important sea change in global politics.

The political process followed by Morales is no longer an aberration, nor is it just a Latin American phenomenon. It is, in some senses, fast becoming the ‘new normal’ in a world where strongmen – and strongwomen – are rising to power as voters become increasingly disillusioned with the ability of liberal democracy to deliver economic improvement beyond a middle- and upper-class elite.

Latin America remains the epicentre of populism, these days churning out left- and right-wing populists who adhere to the classic populist template – overturning a ‘degenerate’ old order to reassert the rights of the people.

Two recent examples from Brazil and Mexico reveal another key tenet of populism – it is a political style onto which can be bolted left- or right-leaning ideologies.

On 1 January 2019, half a million spectators flooded the Altiplano in Brasília to celebrate the inauguration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Described as the ‘Trump of the Tropics’, President Bolsonaro’s decisive victory over the Workers’ Party (PT), which had dominated Brazilian politics since 2002, marked a stark shift to the political right. The Ele Não (Not him) campaign mounted by opponents could not quell the growing wave of popularity and confidence among Brazilians, leading up to Bolsonaro’s first address to the nation that day. Outspoken and divisive, Brazil’s new president declared a ‘liberation from socialism’, promising to transform the world’s fourth-largest democracy into a bastion of conservatism, imbued with law and order, safe for all, and free of the corruption that had gripped the country for decades while in the hands of the traditional political elite.

One month earlier, on 1 December 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known by his initials AMLO, was sworn in as Mexico’s new president. Tens of thousands of supporters packed into Latin America’s largest plaza, Mexico City’s famous Zócalo, to hear the veteran leftist politician’s much-anticipated address. AMLO promised a ‘profound and radical’ transformation of Mexico, from the politics of exclusion to a new system that would put the people first.

The emergence of Bolsonaro and López Obrador marked the start of a fascinating period for Latin America. Brazil and Mexico are the two largest economies in Latin America, accounting for more than half of the region’s output. While they may have emerged from opposite ends of the political spectrum, both are staunch nationalists. Both are outsiders elected to overturn the status quo in a disillusioned and angered response to the misgovernance and corruption of the traditional elite.⁹ They are two very different sides of the same populist coin.

From the coca fields of Bolivia to the Great Hungarian Plain and the city states of Southeast Asia, a new generation of populists is rising, promising to deliver a better life by cutting liberal democracy down to size and replacing it with a grand vision that is the true ‘people’s will’.

What is populism?

As recent developments in Latin America and Europe demonstrate, popu­lism, as distinct from a traditional left, right or centrist political agenda, is a political style that develops within democracies, where a strong, charismatic leader amasses support by juxtaposing the righteous ‘people’ with an out-of-touch or, worse, self-enriching ‘elite’.

In the words of Hanspeter Kriesi, professor of political science at the European University Institute in Florence: ‘All populists also share the notion of people as sovereign, and all of them deplore that democracy is not working because the sovereignty of the people has been eroded and is threatened with being ever-further eroded.’¹⁰

Populism is ‘intrinsically linked to crisis’, writes Kriesi. ‘Given its anti-elitist orientation, populism can be expected to thrive on popular dissatisfaction with the elites. Such dissatisfaction can have different origins, depending on the national context, but it is certainly expected to increase in crisis situations.’¹¹

Anna Diamantopoulou’s office at Athens’ DIKTIO think tank is virtually next door to the gates of the ancient city, midway between the 800 metres separating the Acropolis and the Pnyx. The site of the Athenians’ popular assemblies and one of the earliest forms of democracy, Syntagma Square is the epicentre of the modern capital. The square around the Greek parliament was a battlefield between police and rioters in a series of demonstrations and strikes in 2010 and 2011 against government plans to cut public spending and raise taxes in exchange for an international bailout to solve the country’s debt crisis. The centre-left PASOK and centre-right New Democracy parties, which had traded power for over 40 years, became the political scapegoats as power shifted to the extremes.

Diamantopoulou, a minister in two socialist-led governments and, before that, the European Union Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, sketches out how Greece came to be in the throes of a populist moment:

While we had prosperity over the last 40 years, since the end of the military dictatorship in 1974, the political system was still immature and our institutions still superficial, despite our entry into the European Union [EU]. This, plus a failure on the part of the Greek people to take responsibility for their own plight, created the perfect landscape for populism.¹²

Diamantopoulou identifies four populist traits that defined this shift, which saw a coalition of the far-right Independent Greeks (ANEL) and the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), a party of former student activists and intellectuals that had hitherto struggled to win more than 4% of the vote, win power in the January 2015 election.

‘First,’ she says, ‘the creation of an enemy outside in the Germans, with the revisiting of old scores from the Second World War, attempted to justify the payment of debts in the form of reparations’.

Second, there was ‘the creation of an internal enemy in the form of the previous political system and the economic elite’, where the government sought to wrest control of the state media.

A third element was the offer of outlandish promises to the electorate ‘not to decrease but to increase salaries and pensions. There were no limits to anything,’ she notes.

And the final tactic was the seeding and widening of social divisions, a ‘we-and-them’ approach that left no middle ground, ‘no space in the political centre’, with the aim of also ‘delegitimating’ and demonising their political opponents.

She is joined in this assessment by Thanasis Bakolas, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the centre-right New Democracy party. ‘Greece is the first country [in Europe] to be embroiled with and taken over by the forces of populism.’ The country is, he notes, ‘a textbook example of a populist regime. You have a party of the radical left in a coalition with the populist right, a symbiotic relationship which has become the strongest in Greek politics bound not by ideology or a plan, but simply by their quest for power.’¹³ They got into power, he says, because ‘Greeks were in a state of trauma, shocked and angry that their pensions were cut, that they had lost their jobs, that their way of life had been disrupted. The political dialogue, which had never been of the highest state anyway,’ he smiles, ‘deteriorated further, giving rise to a populist government whose aggressive message had appeal to a people who were hurting.’

The leader rises to power through the ballot box, based on promises to address the grievances of the people with some sort of radical action, and then extends their stay in power by hollowing out democracy and cowing independent institutions such as the media, the courts and, frequently, the electoral machinery itself.

In the words of Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham, Nic Cheeseman: ‘The classic feature that runs through populism is that the leaders claim to be one with the people. They claim to have a unique and unmediated relationship with the people. They are the people.’¹⁴

The precondition for the rise of a populist – as distinct, for example, from a military coup or the seizure of power through extra-­parliamentary protest – is an existing electoral democracy that tolerates free speech, allowing the leader to mobilise a constituency using strongly confrontational language that may offend but that is nonetheless permitted.

Populism thrives where the spectre of an existential threat, such as an economic policy, immigration or imperialism, can be summoned and then blamed for the failure of the system to sufficiently include the people.

Frequently, populists use ethnic nationalism to mobilise a critical mass of support while striving to win a majority, alleging that a particular ethnic group is the victim of those in power.

Finally, populist leaders might play on the fear their followers have that, unless their movement takes power, their country will be returned to a previous state of repression and deprivation that occurred in living memory.

Although populist leaders come to power within broadly liberal democratic orders, they often set about dismantling them. Noam Gidron and Bart Bonikowski describe this process:

The relationship between populism and liberal democracy, however, is inherently ambivalent, because populism prizes majority rule over other liberal democratic ideals, such as institutional checks and balances, deliberation, and minority rights. As a result, successful populist appeals risk destabilizing democratic institutions, challenging the separation of power, and eroding trust in unelected government bodies.¹⁵

Rather than liberating, however, populism usually ends up servicing a new elite, which is intent on excluding rival political voices and economic claims, capturing the state for their own purposes and ends, hindering the very meritocracy that it once promoted, and falling prey to the failings that it professed to fight. But there are two different sorts of populism, and we do ourselves a disservice by lumping them together. There is one guided by ‘normal’ politics, and another where populists seek to alter the constitution and place themselves at the centre of power, hanging on by whatever means possible, including authoritarianism.

In the case of the former, the agenda includes robust politicking, basic civil rights including equality before the law and freedom of expression, and the retention of constitutional legitimacy and protection. Such is the case, for example, in the US, where President Donald Trump made most of his public commentary on the social media platform Twitter and encouraged his supporters to storm the Capitol. Trump has his own unfortunate style, of course, but other political extremes in the US are not averse to mob rule. This is not a new phenomenon. The verb ‘borking’ has its origins in the left’s successful attempt to prevent the nomination of the Yale University jurist Robert Bork to the Supreme Court 30 years ago. The borking of Bork was the beginning of the polarisation of the confirmation process into partisan war zones. It reappeared soon in the confirmation process of Clarence Thomas and, more recently, during that of Brett Kavanaugh.

In the case of the latter ‘constitutional’ variant, the populists see themselves as the voice of the disenfranchised, as expressing the will of the people. As Hugo Chávez declared ahead of the 2006 Venezuelan presidential election, ‘You are not going to re-elect Chávez really, you are going to re-elect yourselves. The people will re-elect the people. Chávez is nothing but an instrument of the people.’¹⁶ This variant of politics is borrowed from Argentine political philosopher Ernesto Laclau and his Belgian colleague Chantal Mouffe, who believe that ‘radical democracy’ is a necessary palliative for neo-liberalism. They argue that if democracy wants to preserve its superiority among other political systems, it must return to the people ‘a way of constructing the political on the basis of interpolating the underdog to mobilise against the existing status quo’. For them, populism is a means of bringing together ‘identities, interests, and needs that have been de­legitimised’ by traditional centre-right and centre-left parties.¹⁷

Populism typically ends badly. Usually a democratic response by voters frustrated by the interests and antics of entrenched elites, cronyism, insecurity, economic failure and rising inequality, populist regimes invariably end ignominiously in fiscal ill-discipline, financial collapse and even greater corruption. We have seen this time and again in Latin America. The cyclical rise and fall of populist leaders, and the subsequent