Populist Trust as Democratic Mistrust

In this paper, I argue that good populists are just pessimistic (or wary) democrats. To make this argument, I firstly show that the populists’ idea of trust is grounded on three pillars: leadership morality, conflict resolution, and reproof for power. First, trust is justified in terms of the individual’s moral virtues. Second, trust is incompatible with conflict (between the elite and the people). Third, trust is incompatible with continuous power exercise. I then argue that these three pillars are problematic. First, there are non-moral reasons to trust a politician, and there are institutional reasons to do so. Second, there exist several other types of conflict that populists overlook, and some of them are beneficial for democracies. Third, populists impede a more sophisticated (moral) assessment about the use of power by failing to see that power is necessary for realizing any cause in politics. I then argue that what is left is democratic mistrust.