The Future of Populism

Abstract

Populism has become one of the buzzwords of our times. Populist leaders have gained popularity in many countries around the world. All have promised to wrest power from the corrupt elite and return it to the people. However, the populist phenomenon is versatile, and this characteristic has helped cultivate three myths about populism that it is high time to dispel. First, as populism is identified with certain political actors, people assume it to be associated with a specific agenda. Scholars have largely dispelled this myth, but the media still commonly uses populism as a synonym for one particular form of the phenomenon: the (populist) radical right. Second, the moralistic rather than programmatic nature of populism enables it to interact with other ideas. Yet, the tendency to classify populists in a dualistic way - either left-wing or right-wing persists. Nevertheless, some populist actors can be meaningfully classified using categories of either valence populism or agrarian populism rather than using the left-right dichotomy. Third, populists are no longer only outsiders, relegated to the margins of national politics; instead, they have increasingly penetrated mainstream party politics – especially the populist radical-right parties. Thus, mainstream and populist parties are no longer mutually exclusive categories. Dispelling these myths can help avoid overestimating the importance of populism in comparison to the two pillars of populist radical right ideology: nativism and authoritarianism. On the other, it can help us avoid underestimating the capacity of the populist radical right to implement at least part of their agenda.