Abstract
“Populism and Civil Society” is a rich book full of insights. I see three crucial overarching points the book drives home: one about the character of current populism, one about the causes, and one about the consequences. First, they define populism in a way that goes beyond the prevailing juxtaposition of the people and the elite. Instead, the definition involves elements of the ideas about a good order, including the central role of popular sovereignty, the symbolic representation and embodiment of the whole of the people, the strict borders between in and out, and a focus on electoral competition. Second, Arato and Cohen provide an explanation of populism that focuses on politics and democratic tensions. Third, the book points to “strong authoritarian tendencies that are almost always fully evident when populism achieves political power.” These propositions are right on target and very convincingly developed. In fact, they are very much in line with an attempt to account for “authoritarian populism” that Armin Schäfer and I have provided. Against this backdrop, I want to comment on the core messages by raising some questions about the details of these issues. It will become evident that this commentary is a case of sympathizing criticism.
‘Populism and Civil Society’ is a rich book (Arato and Cohen, 2022). It is full of insights, and even some of the footnotes are illuminating. It engages fruitfully in many conceptual and theoretical debates based on sound knowledge of the cases, especially in Latin America. It thus offers a perspective that goes beyond the North Atlantic realm. All those colleagues who question the value of books and look only at journal articles should read this one. Then they know why we need books.
Despite the sophistication and richness, I see three crucial overarching points the book drives home: one about the character of current populism, one about the causes, and one about the consequences. First, they define populism in a way that goes beyond the prevailing juxtaposition of the people and the elite. Instead, the definition involves elements of the ideas about a good order, including the central role of popular sovereignty, the symbolic representation and embodiment of the whole of the people, the strict borders between in and out, and a focus on electoral competition. Second, Arato and Cohen provide an explanation of populism that focuses on politics and democratic tensions. Third, the book points to ‘strong authoritarian tendencies that are almost always fully evident when populism achieves political power’ (Arato and Cohen, 2022, 2). They do so by highlighting the dynamic character of populism. I fully share these propositions. They are right on target and very convincingly developed. In fact, they are very much in line with an attempt to account for ‘authoritarian populism’ that Armin Schäfer and I have provided. 1 Against this backdrop, I want to comment on the core messages by raising some questions about the details of these issues. It will become evident that this commentary is a case of sympathizing criticism.
How to grasp and explain contemporary populism?
In the introduction, Andrew Arato and Jean L. Cohen present an ‘ideal typical definition of populism’ (2022, 13) comprising seven features. Accordingly, populism is a strategy of political mobilization that offers a symbolic representation of the people as a whole, is embodied by the charismatic leader, builds on a friend–enemy dichotomy and nationalism, valorizes political competition, and depends on thick ideologies as a host ideology. This seems like an appropriate way to capture a large segment of contemporary populism. It certainly does not apply to all contemporary forms of populism. Some of the so-called leftist populists like Bernie Sanders in the United States, Syriza in Greece (at least in power), and some others do not fulfill all the criteria; neither do so-called mainstream populists such as Emmanuel Macron. In its essence, Arato’s and Cohen’s definition is a definition of authoritarian populism. This is good for two reasons: To meaningfully analyze democrats, liberals, and populists, we always seem to require a qualifying adverb. Neoliberals and social liberals cannot be grouped together when we want to understand the causes of their success and their consequences on society; the same is true for liberal democrats and people’s democrats, and I would argue for populists as well. The grassroots populists in the nineteenth century United States are very different from the current authoritarian populists to analyze their relative success and impact on the political system. The second reason is simple: The recent rise of populism is, to a large extent, the rise of authoritarian populism.
Given that authoritarian populists have the features mentioned by Arato and Cohen in common, I wonder, whether ‘thin ideology’, which they consider as part of the definition, belongs to the list (Mudde, 2004). From a cleavage perspective (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967), no ideology speaks to all potential issues, but it responds to the urgent problems of a given era. In this perspective, ideologies only develop in interaction with competing ones and bind together the topics relevant to a given cleavage. Such an ideology does not depend on sophisticated philosophical texts but on the ‘capacity to fuse ideas and sentiments’ to ‘create public justifications for the exercise of power’ (Müller, 2011, 92). There is no need for weighty tons full of philosophical treatises before you can start talking about a ‘thick’ or host ideology. An ideology can count as thick (i.e. substantial) if it develops a narrative that brings together various contentious issues of a particular time. This does not exclude many ideologies from developing further as time goes on and adapting to new social challenges and objections, thus becoming more comprehensive and detached from the conditions of their times of origin. Liberalism originated like this in the eighteenth century marking itself off from absolute monarchy but subsequently developed into a far broader conception of bourgeois society.
I want to submit that authoritarian populism is based on a fully-fledged political ideology. Its ideas regarding the content, determination, and implementation of the popular will are what makes it specific. It structures its positioning regarding many contemporary questions on migration, trade, international institutions, reactions to the Russian aggression against Ukraine, Climate and Corona, national welfare institutions, and others. In all of these issues, authoritarian populists juxtapose the position of the Green and New Left parties. In this sense, authoritarian populists represent one pole in a new cleavage between liberal cosmopolitans and nationalist communitarians that is driven by an ideology of its own (Zürn and de Wilde, 2016). While there may be more leftist and more rightist versions of authoritarian populism (Maduro and Orbán), it is an ideology of its own that does not need a host ideology.
Such an understanding of authoritarian populists also helps to sharpen the explanation of the rise of authoritarian populism worldwide. Arato and Cohen eloquently point out that the democratic tension between popular sovereignty and constitutionalism is the long-term factor behind it; cultural and economic issues play out more in the short term. Taking the role of the authoritarian populist ideology as part of the new two-dimensional political landscape seriously helps to integrate the factor in a coherent explanation. 2 At least from a European and probably also from a global perspective, we see an enormous rise of authoritarian populist parties from the 1980s on, after a long period in which these parties played no or, at best, minor role in consolidated liberal democracies. The long-term tension between popular sovereignty and constitutionalism was not absent before the 1980s, but it required globalization, the rise of non-majoritarian institutions, and the rise of international institutions to structure a new cleavage juxtaposing winners and losers of globalization losers in political, economic, and cultural respects. In this situation, the counter-majoritarian institutions have lost their innocence as impartial and trustworthy agents. They are now considered partisan – as stalwart supporters of the liberal cosmopolitans and a force working against the pure people. At the same time, the new cleavage came with new cultural and socio-economic divisions (Manow, 2018; Norris and Inglehart, 2019).
Populism as a hybrid?
Arato and Cohen develop a rigid conception of populism in power as a ‘hybrid’ that is different from democracy and autocracy – namely, a specific hybrid type with thresholds in both directions. This is innovative and distinct from the conventional understanding that democracy and autocracy are two ideal types, and those who mix elements of both are hybrids such as electoral authoritarianism (Papada et al., 2023). I want to raise two questions regarding this move by Arato and Cohen.
First, if populism is a distinct ideal type, should it not have a proper name instead of talking about a hybrid? And how should we label those regime types that combine features of the three ideal types if hybrid is already taken? According to what I argued above, the name of the hybrid could be ‘authoritarian populism’. But then again, does the term not combine elements of both ideal types (popular democracy and authoritarianism) and, in this sense, points to a hybrid. I do not have a definite answer to the question, but I wonder whether there is a value added by identifying a hybrid as a distinct ideal type.
By emphasizing the idea of a distinct type, Arato and Cohen, to some extent, second run counter to their most important insight. By constructing a distinct ideal type, one considers it, on the one hand, a sort of (punctuated) equilibrium. An ideal type has a certain stability over time. The different features of an ideal type reinforce each other and are, therefore, not a-priori transitional. On the other hand, the most important insight of the book is demonstrating the authoritarian dynamic of populism. The basic idea I consider extremely important is that it can start with a movement (e.g. Pegida in Germany); which can be transformed into a party (AFD); which, in the case of full electoral success, may turn a government into a populist one (Bolsonaro); which, in this case, aims to endure power and rule by moving it to an authoritarian populist regime (Orbán). In addition, the book beautifully spells out the central mechanism of transforming a government into a regime (Arato and Cohen, chapters 2 and 3). This does not suggest that each populist movement leads to authoritarianism in the end. There is the possibility of failure to transform the movement into a party, the possibility of little success in elections, and the possibility of already getting voted out of office after the first term in government. Nevertheless, the authoritarian dynamic described in Populism and Civil Society somewhat opposes the notion of a self-reinforcing ideal type.
