Is Populism Necessarily Bad?

From a Liberal Standpoint, Yes

Daniel Klein recently published on Bryan Caplan’s Substack an essay on “popuphobia.” A popuphobe is someone who “propagates revilement of something that he or she calls populism.” Klein’s main argument is that popuphobia is unjustified from a classical liberal perspective because populism is “not necessarily bad.” He takes Argentine’s president Javier Milei as his main example to make his point. In a context where almost all academic and journalistic accounts of populism view populism as a threat to (liberal) democracy, Klein’s argument surely deserves to be taken seriously. Indirectly, it may help to understand why some classical liberals/libertarians do not seem worried by Donald Trump’s return to the White House – or at least do not see him as threatening as the election of Kamala Harris – precisely Klein’s view.

It’s not the first time I discuss Klein’s views on populism. Interestingly, as I explained then, Klein was reluctant to even use the concept. His perspective on the subject seems to have changed since. Now, he provides a definition that he argues reflects the use of the concept of the mainstream media:

“A political movement is populist when it portrays itself as being in opposition to corrupt elites. The elites that matter here are especially those of governmental structures. Populists suggest that a governing class have ensconced themselves into positions of power, that the elites network with one another to serve their own interests rather than the common interest, that they have abused their powers.”

The characterization of populism as being foremost a set of political movements emanating from a systematic and uncompromising critique of “elites” is indeed largely accepted and used, including in academic scholarship.[1] So, there is nothing wrong per se with this definition. Note however that this indicates a change in Klein’s view, as two years ago he was arguing that the concept of populism was ill-defined and useless. As he acknowledges, there is no doubt that Milei is populist in this sense, as both his campaign to become president and his actions since elected have largely consisted in targeting the established “elites” of his country. Klein then proceeds by arguing that since being elected, Milei’s politics has mostly made decisions that reflect a real and sincere commitment to classical liberalism, with somehow promising results. Now, Klein notes that this poses a problem for popuphobes among classical liberals.[2] For them, populism is bad because it goes against core principles of classical liberalism, starting with a proclaimed and often actual relative disregard for constitutional principles such as the rule of law. Hence, Klein concludes, that either Milei is not populist or he is not a classical liberal. But this seems to be contradicted by the universal acknowledgment that Milei is one of the main examples of populist politics and the fact that there is no conclusive evidence that he has been implementing illiberal policies or patently violating Argentina’s constitution or political conventions.

Against this background, I would like to make a few points. First, to evaluate whether something is “bad,” we should start from a particular normative standpoint. Klein’s is classical liberalism or at least his understanding of it. Even if we agree with Klein, as part of an intellectual exercise, that there is no principled contradiction between populism and classical liberalism, that doesn’t entail that populism is not necessarily bad. Someone who takes a different normative standpoint may find no merit in populism whatsoever. But Klein is addressing classical liberals and so it is in this context that we should evaluate his criticism of “popuphobia.” Second, Tyler Cowen remarked that, regarding Milei’s economic policies, they are essentially a strict application of the IMF playbook and are relying on an IMF bailout. On economic matters at least, it is therefore unclear that Milei’s decisions can be analyzed in terms of the anti-elitism that, on very Klein’s definition, characterizes populism.

This leads me to my third point. In the same way that I think it’s vain to argue ad infinitum about definitions, I think it’s pointless to discuss whether one really is a populist or not. I don’t think populism is a black-or-white issue. Obviously, analyses of populism may not have time to delve into too many nuances, especially when they are addressed to a general readership. But the point is that populism is a matter of degrees, even with Klein’s relatively restrictive definition. In this sense, it is not implausible to argue that Milei comes as being “less populist” than say, Trump if he really implements the protectionist policies he has promised, or Orban who has really put a firm hand on part of Hungary’s civil society. After all, as Klein himself notes, there are disagreements between classical liberals on many issues and the compromising nature of politics often makes it impossible for a political leader to behave as a “pure” classical liberal. In this sense, it’s absolutely intelligible to say that while populist in several aspects, Milei’s populism remains mild because it’s counterbalanced by classical liberal features. It’s not incompatible to have a mix of populist and classical liberal politics, while the former sets limits on the latter.

More relevant however is my fourth point. As I’ve noted, Klein equates populism with the critique of the elites, especially political elites. More specifically, and the expression is used several times in Klein’s essay, populism denounces the “corruption of elites.” This is indeed familiar rhetoric that, I’ve the impression, was already widespread when populism was mostly a phenomenon concerning South American democracies in the 1970s or 1980s.[3] The terms “corruption” or “corrupted” are however ambiguous. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines corruption as a “dishonest or illegal behavior, especially by powerful people” or an “inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (such as bribery).” Is it in this sense that populists (and presumably, Klein) are claiming that political elites are “corrupted?” It’s not necessarily easy to answer, but if that is the case, then it is doubtful that it objectively applies to most political elites in contemporary Western democracies. Consider the U.S. case. Klein says it’s becoming a “second world” if not a “third world” country, and it is implicitly implied that this is because of the corruption of its political elite. But which corruption are we talking about? Clearly not in the Merriam-Webster sense. Populists seem rather to mean a kind of “ideological” or “moral” corruption. But then, it is highly likely that calling someone “corrupt” is just another way to say that you strongly disagree with their ideas that you regard as being widespread (they are part of “the system”) but deeply misguided. Or maybe you mean in the other sense of “corruption,”, i.e., the departure from what is pure or correct, implying a kind of decadence or decay. Then comes an ingredient that Klein omits in his characterization of populism but that seems a logical counterpart of the denunciation of elites: popular sovereignty. Elites are corrupted but not the People who are by nature “correct,” or “pure.” In the populist outlook, the decadence of the elites is always an inverse reflection of what the People value.

If there is something bad in populism, this is this conception of the political as a fundamental opposition between the corrupted elites and the People, the source of sovereignty being only located in the latter. Not only this is bad, but it is illiberal however you can plausibly conceive liberalism. Both historically and intellectually, liberalism has emerged as a doctrine of the control of political power, whatever its origins. This is especially true in the U.S., where American constitutionalism is born from a nuanced and skeptical account of the sources of popular sovereignty. In this respect, populism is problematic from a liberal perspective at least at two levels. First, by pretending that something like a popular will, against which the corruption of elites can be characterized, exists, it disregards the importance of pluralism (of values, of interests, of perspectives) that makes it necessary to always hold political power in check. Second, it encourages a conflictual conception of the political where the elites (and those who agree with them) should be treated as enemies. In other words, populism is fundamentally antagonistic to liberal politics.

Classical liberals who are not troubled by populism are either blinded by their hate of political views and policies that (some) populists happen to oppose, or to the contrary, too much carried away by the fact that (some) populists are willing to implement the policies they prefer. These are short-term views that underestimate the damage that populist politics can do on liberal morality and political foundations.

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[1] A good example is Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism (London: Penguin, 2017).

[2] Klein mentions Nils Karlson and Shikha Dalmia, but there are many others, undoubtedly.

[3] Acemoglu et al. use for instance the expression in their political theory of populism and note in particular to the South American case. Daron Acemoglu, Georgy Egorov, and Konstantin Sonin, “A Political Theory of Populism,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 128, no. 2 (2013): 771–805.