Fluent Essays

It is an open book assignment; I should use 2-4 sources from the core reading or recommended reading or the lecture, however I am not allowed to use any source from outside. Also, no need for in text citations. We are advised to write a thesis statement that is one sentence long as our introduction and a one sentence conclusion. As in essays, you should make an argument, define concepts, refer to case studies and research to substantiate your argument, and provide critical analysis. You are showing the skills required for ‘critical analysis’ when you recognize the complexity of key concepts and provide evidence for your ideas and interpretations.Recommended reading: https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2018/oct/29/could-populism-actually-be-good-for-democracy-podcast core_reading___read_pp._361_364__until__22strategies._22__and_369_372__until__22shows._22__.pdf exam_format.pptx lecture___populism.pptx recommended_reading__the_price_of_populism___financial_times.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview West European Politics ISSN: 0140-2382 (Print) 1743-9655 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fwep20 The Populist Challenge Hanspeter Kriesi To cite this article: Hanspeter Kriesi (2014) The Populist Challenge, West European Politics, 37:2, 361-378, DOI: 10.1080/01402382.2014.887879 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2014.887879 Published online: 04 Apr 2014. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 16501 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 185 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fwep20 West European Politics, 2014 Vol. 37, No. 2, 361–378, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2014.887879 The Populist Challenge HANSPETER KRIESI Populism has been on the rise for some time in Europe now, and its rise has been one of the key concerns of Peter Mair. He has linked it to the increasing erosion of the representative function of European party systems. The spectre that haunted him was ‘partyless democracy’, a democratic regime where parties had lost their representative function, which opened the door for unmediated populist protest. While largely sharing his interpretation of the overall structural trends giving rise to the populist challenges in Western Europe, the article is critical of the static character of his assessment. It suggests that there are three forms of ‘protest populism’, all of which may eventually end up transforming the West European party systems in the name of the new structuring conflicts that characterise contemporary European societies. In addition, it proposes to extend the scope of Peter’s argument to the less established democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. Populism has been on the rise for some time in Europe now, and its rise has been one of the key concerns of Peter Mair. He has linked it to the increasing erosion of the representative function of European party systems. In numerous publications, he has observed a number of converging trends which characterise all West European countries and which all point to the decline of parties as intermediaries between the citizens and public policy: declining party membership and party identification, declining voter turnout, and increasing volatility of the vote. The spectre that haunted Peter was ‘partyless democracy’, a democratic regime where parties had lost their representative function, which opened the door for populist protest. I would like to address this populist challenge and discuss the way Peter dealt with it in his work. In my discussion of the populist challenge in Western Europe, I shall attempt to put the trends Peter identified in a somewhat different perspective. While sharing his overall assessment of the origins of the populist challenge in this part of Europe, I do not necessarily share the implications he drew for the further development of the West European party systems. More optimistic in my assessment than Peter was, I would like to suggest that populism is a productive force that may serve as the catalyst for a profound realignment of West Correspondence Address: Hanspeter.Kriesi@eui.eu © 2014 Taylor & Francis 362 H. Kriesi European party systems – a realignment that brings the West European party systems more in line with the transformed conflict structures of West European societies. The erosion of the representative function of political parties that preoccupied Peter is a West European phenomenon, which means that the scope of his discussion of populism was largely confined to Western Europe. But the rise of populism has not been limited to Western Europe. It has also been rampant in Central and Eastern European countries since they have made their transition to democracy. The reasons for the rise of populism in these countries, however, have little to do with erosion of the parties’ representative function. Instead, what has plagued the party systems in these parts of Europe was their insufficient institutionalisation which gave rise to a quite specific type of populism. After having discussed the populist challenge in Western Europe, I shall extend the discussion of populism to Central and Eastern European countries, in order to point out the different origins of the rise of populism in the two parts of Europe, and to identify the specificities of the two at first sight very similar phenomena. Before getting to Peter’s assessment of the populist challenge, however, let me briefly clarify what is commonly understood under the term ‘populism’. As suggested by Peter’s former student, Cas Mudde (2004: 543), the term populism refers to a ‘thin’ ideology that can be defined as ‘an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups – “the pure people” versus the “corrupt elite”, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people’. This definition includes the existence of two homogenous groups – ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, the antagonistic relationship between the two, the idea of popular sovereignty, and the positive valorisation of ‘the people’ combined with the denigration of ‘the elite’. Most importantly, populism has a monolithic conception of the people. As Canovan (2002: 34) points out, the people is always conceived as a homogenous category, a unity, a corporate body capable of having common interests and a common will – a ‘volonté générale’. For populists, the people are paramount. But, given the diverse interpretations of ‘the people’, it is impossible to arrive at a clear-cut definition of the phenomenon without giving ‘the people’ a more specific meaning. Populism’s meaning varies with the understanding given to ‘the people’, i.e. to the idealised conception of the community (the ‘heartland’) to which it applies. It is precisely for this reason that populism is a ‘thin’ ideology which needs to be associated with more substantive ideologies to become a ‘thick’ ideology. Following Mény and Surel (2000) we can identify at least three conceptions of ‘the people’ – a political one (the people as sovereign), a cultural one (the people as a nation) and an economic one (the people as a class). The notion of the people as nation is typically associated with right-wing populism, while the notion of people as a class (the class of the downtrodden which stands for the people as a whole) is characteristic of left-wing populism. The people as The Populist Challenge 363 sovereign implies a specific vision of democracy. While it may be part of both left- and right-wing versions of populism, it may also be the genuine element that is less concerned with national exclusiveness or class struggle, and more with the functioning of democracy per se. Whatever the meaning of the people, the general conception of populism as a ‘thin’ ideology implies quite a specific perspective on democracy. The populist theory of democracy is rarely made explicit, but it provides the key to the understanding of the populist ideology. Populism is, according to the minimal definition of Pappas (2013a, 2013b), ‘democratic illiberalism’. First of all, populist democracy is illiberal, because it takes ‘government by the people’ literally and rejects all checks and balances on the popular will. Constitutive elements of liberal, ‘Madisonian’ democracy – the rule of law, the division of power or respect for the rights of minorities – are rejected because they confine the people’s sovereignty. In addition, populist democracy is also an illiberal vision of democracy because of its monolithic conception of the people, which implies that the popular majority (the ‘general will’) is always right (Riker 1982: 8–16), and it is illiberal because of its hostility to the ‘aristocratic element’ (Manin 1995: 174–91) of representative democracy – the fact that the representatives constitute a selective political elite that cannot be controlled on a daily basis. Populists are against all kinds of intermediaries between the people and the decision-makers, and against political parties in particular (Pasquino 2008: 21). They plead for a more direct linkage of masses to elites (Taggart 2002: 67). The central populist message is that politics has escaped popular control and that popular control has to be restored.1 In general, populism has a strong anti-institutional impulse – ‘the romantic impulse of directness, spontaneity and the overcoming of alienation’, which it shares with other ‘redemptive’ visions of democracy (Canovan 1999: 10). The populist attempt to provide a closer link between the citizens and the decision-makers may take different forms, but the characteristic way for the populist vision of democracy to provide such a direct linkage between the people and those who govern is to introduce a charismatic leader (or a political organisation). This leader does not belong to the established political elites, but is an outsider (a new challenger), who incarnates the demands of ‘the people’. The populist leader has direct, unmediated access to the people’s grievances, and acts as the spokesperson of the vox populi (Abts 2011: 930). The monolithic conception of the leader (there is only one) or the leader’s political organisation (it is hierarchically structured and centralised) corresponds to the monolithic conception of ‘the people’. The leader as the spokesperson of the vox populi is, in fact, one with the people whose deepest feelings he (or she) articulates.2 The direct, populist form of representation by a charismatic leader promises to make politics transparent by offering ‘a short-cut that bypasses philosophical disputes and institutional niceties’ (Canovan 2002: 34).3 Let me conclude this short discussion of the concept of populism by pointing out an important distinction which I take from Jagers and Walgrave (2007) – the distinction between populist ideology and populist communication 364 H. Kriesi strategies: the populist ideology manifests itself in the political communication strategies of populist leaders. Such strategies appeal to and identify with the people seen as a unified unambiguously positive entity, they tap into feelings of resentment against the elites, and they call for increased power to the people (March 2012). As an expression of the populist ideology, populist communication strategies may be used to identify the populist ideology empirically, i.e. the operationalisation of the populist ideology may be based on an analysis of populist communication strategies. Preconditions for the Rise of Populism in West European Democracies Arguably, political parties are the most important organisations linking voters and their representatives in established democracies. But parties have a double function: they not only link civil society to the polity, they also organise and give coherence to the institutions of government. As Peter Mair (2009: 5) observes, their unique contribution to the development of modern democracy was that they combined these two crucial roles (representation and government) into one. However, as Katz and Mair’s (1995, 2009) highly influential ‘cartel party thesis’ has maintained, in Western democracies parties moved their centre of gravity from civil society to the state and have begun to shift from combining representative and governmental roles to strengthening their governmental role – to the detriment of their representation function. Peter has not ceased to document empirically the erosion of the parties’ role as intermediaries between the citizens and public policy (e.g. Mair 2006). Relying on party membership as the strongest and most consistent indicator, together with van Biezen and Poguntke (van Biezen et al. 2012), he documented the dramatic decline of party membership ratios over the last 30 years and concluded (p. 42) that parties ‘have all but abandoned any pretensions to being mass organizations’. I would like to suggest, very much in line with Peter’s own interpretations, I think, that the erosion of the parties’ representation function in Western Europe has deeper structural roots, which are related to two major challenges of contemporary democracy – the increased importance of the European and the global level in the contemporary multilevel governance structures and the increasing mediatisation of politics. Let me first turn to the structural changes introduced by the embedding of national governments into increasingly important supra- and international governance structures – i.e. to the increasing denationalisation of politics and policy-making. As is well known, these structural changes lead to the empowerment of the executive branch to the detriment of parliament, which, in turn, serves to reinforce the governing function of the parties that routinely govern, to the detriment of their representative function (which operates above all through parliament). Second, the addition of a European level of decision-making has led to longer, and less transparent, chains of delegation, which has, in turn, reduced the accountability of the political decision-makers. This increasing lack of accountability has been reinforced The Populist Challenge 365 by the fact that, as Peter Mair (2009) has observed, the parties which routinely govern are exposed to an increasing tension between their role as representatives of the national citizen publics, and their role as responsible governments. As representatives of the national citizen publics, they are expected to be responsive and accountable to their voters; as responsible governments, they are expected to take into account the increasing number of principals constituted by the many veto players who now surround the government in its multilevel institutional setting. This extension of the scope of accountability not only implies that the governing parties’ manoeuvring space is reduced, but also and most importantly that their accountability to the national constituency of voters – i.e. their representative function – is diminished. Finally, the increasing importance of supra- and international governance structures contributes to the increasing divorce between ‘front-stage’ and ‘back-stage’ politics at the national level. The electoral channel has, of course, never been the only channel of representation at the national level in established democracies. It has always been complemented by the administrative channel and protest politics and, in some countries, by a direct democratic channel. However, the increasing importance of the European Union and other supranational actors has reinforced representation in the administrative channel to the detriment of the electoral channel. In other words, so-called ‘non-majoritarian’ forms of representation in a range of arenas that are not directly electorally accountable, little visible, and operating ‘back-stage’ have become more important than the ‘front-stage’ of the electoral channel, which contributes to the hollowing out of the parties’ representation function that has always focused on the electoral channel. These implications of the increasing importance of supra- and international governance structures for the parties’ representation function are reinforced and decisively shaped by the effects of mediatisation. The mediatisation of politics contributes to the shifting balance of party functions by reducing the role of the party apparatus, by linking the parties’ leaders more directly to their voters, by enhancing the personalisation of political leadership, and by fostering the ‘depoliticisation’ of the party base. First of all, the increasing autonomy of the media from the political system and their increasing role for politics leads to the adaptation of politicians, parties and governments to the imperatives of the ‘media logic’. Parties and politicians devote more attention to what Esser (2013) calls the ‘self-mediatization of politics’, i.e. the self-initiated stage-management of politics by means of strategic communication in an effort to master the new rules that govern access to the public sphere. Politicians, parties and governments professionalise their internal and external communication and devote more of their resources to communication (Esser and Matthes 2013). Professional communication specialists at the service of party leaders and governments are replacing party militants. The party leaders communicate directly with the public audience via the media and they no longer need the party apparatus to get their message to their constituency. 366 H. Kriesi This reliance on more direct communication between the party leaders and the public audience of the voters contributes to the personalisation of power, since the success of the party increasingly depends on the communication qualities of its leaders (Garzia forthcoming). As we have seen, populism implies the mobilisation by charismatic personal leadership. Personalised leadership is a natural corollary of populism’s reaction against politics-as-usual (Canovan 1999: 6). What seems to be occurring as a result of the expansion of the ‘media logic’ in politics is that personalised leadership also becomes part of politics-as-usual. Accordingly, Mény and Surel (2000: 124) arrive at the conclusion that never before has charisma had as important a role as it has today, not only in politics, but also in economics and religion. This argument reminds us of Weber’s (1992: 44–49) vision of a ‘plebiscitary democracy’. However, in Weber’s view, which built on his observation of democratic politics in the early 1920s, the party leader was something of a ‘plebiscitary dictator’, because he was able to mobilise the masses by using the party apparatus (the ‘party machine’, including the foot soldiers of the regular party members). Relying on media-centred communication, by contrast, the contemporary party leader is able to mobilise the masses largely without the party apparatus. Mediatisation also reinforces the uncoupling of ‘front-stage’ and ‘backstage’ politics. On the one hand, as is argued by Esser (2013), the ‘front-stage’ of the political process, i.e. the political contest side of ‘politics’, is more easily subjected to self-mediatisation by politicians than the ‘back-stage’ of policymaking. The on-going ‘back-stage’ policy-making processes generally are too numerous for the limited scope of public attention, they need to be kept out of the limelight to protect the negotiators’ room for manoeuvre, and they often are too complex and too technical for detailed public scrutiny. On the other hand, the journalists’ practices in a professionalised and commercialised media system – negative reporting, horse-race journalism (focusing on strategies, personalities and campaign tactics), conflict-focus, personalisation, infotainment and their intrusive or interventionist reporting (journalists reporting on politics in their own words granting politicians only limited opportunities to present themselves with their own voice) – mainly tend to focus on the political contest at the detriment of the policies’ substantive content. This, in turn, contributes to the ‘depoliticisation’ of politics – politics either becomes a technocratic exercise (‘back-stage’ politics) or a largely symbolic contest between figureheads (‘front-stage’ politics). In Peter’s analysis, the reduction of politics on the ‘front-stage’ to symbolic contests was reinforced by the convergence of the parties that habitually govern in ideological terms – by ... Purchase answer to see full attachment