Martin Wolf, on of the senior editors at the Financial Times, has an interesting column (notionally about Tony Blair) on populism. As this is a label proudly worn around these parts, I thought it could spark a useful discussion about what we really mean. I'll confess right from the start that I have always been slightly uncomfortable with the label "populist", and that column does a good job of explaining similar misgivings - and yet it also provides an intriguing glimpse as to why Markos's own populism is a slightly different animal and deserves to be supported.
Mr Blair’s (...) style – direct engagement with the people, manipulation of the media and indifference to established institutions – was populism.
The dominant characteristic of the populist is dislike of institutional constraints. This is why the populist is the opposite of the conservative. Conservatives treasure institutions: they embody continuity, ensure predictability and preserve wisdom.
Good government, then, is a government of laws – not of men – and of orderly procedure – not of whim. It uses institutions, modifies institutions and, where necessary, creates new institutions. (...)
Under the Blair government, however, this was more the exception than the rule. Look at the mountains of half-baked initiatives, the manic news management, the higgledy-piggledy constitutional reforms, the frantic propensity to legislate, the hostility to legal restraints, the indifference to the past and the preference for courtiers over permanent officials. Conservative? Hardly. Sensible? No.
These quotes show that the heart of the argument is about representative democracy, and checks and balances.
Populism is the fight against giving the preponderence of voice and power to intermediate bodies ('institutions'). The argument against it is that these bodies have been created (in different ways in each country according to its political history) to provide checks and balances, stability, and a 'civilised' way to identify, explicit and resolve political disagreements. Populism, in that view, by appealing directly to the higher authority of the people, threatens to short-circuit these balancing and stabilizing mechanisms, and can easily be abused by demagogues - especially when topics are complex and easily distorted by soundbites.
I'll admit to some sympathy to that point of view. There are issues that deserve specialist input and require extensive knowledge to be properly understood and for the relevant choices to be made. But the fundamental counterparty to entrusting 'institutions' with such delegated power and exclusing average citizens from the day-to-day work of politics is that such institutions be both legitimate and accountable. Legitimate in that they are the result of historic compromises or in that they have a track record of delivering results widely seen as desirable and/or fair; accountable in that citizens can get access to the relevant debates and underlying information and do have ways to influence the behavior of their representatives or of other interested parties and punish partisan, deviant or ineffective action.
When they become less legitimate and less accountable - or when other interested parties selected on other criteria (money, access, belonging to a narrow social class) begin to overwhelmingly dominate the debate, the case for populism - in the meaning of a direct appeal to citizens to override such institutions, seen as failing, becomes a lot stronger.
The fact of the matter is, the description of Tony Blair's populism by Martin Wolf is that of a government out of control, incompetent and manipulative - something that clearly applies to the Bush administration just as well. It is populist only in the narrow sense that it has been successful in neutering intermediate institutions (and the vital checks and balances they should have provided), not that it appeals to citizens. Both Bush and Blair can be labelled 'populist' in that they won elections, but that tells us more about their ability to eliminate or demonize alternatives for a long time than about their intrinsic popularity - and that happened precisely because they corrupted those institutions that should have limited their misdeeds.
Markos's populism is that of citizens exercising their right to change the institutions that failed them - mostly by changing the people embedded in these institutions and getting new people to do the job the insiders should have done but did not. Blair and Bush's populism is that of contempt for the people and for their representatives; it is the naked exercise of power without restraint, without respect for explicit or implicit rules and checks, via the abuse of "gentlemen's rules" that somehow end up applying only to others and via a permanent - and, it should be noted, very sophisticated - domination over public discourse to manipulatively deceive the public, distract it, and steamroll opponents.
And the institutions that moderates like Martin Wolf cherish (because he is part of them, of curse) failed in their task because they did not properly identify the threat that Bush or Blair's 'populism' represent for democracy - maybe because they focused too much on the supposed 'extremism' of the real democrats - citizens that cared and were informed and realized what was happening before the 'institutions' that were supposed to defend them.
So I know where the failure is, and where the solution is - not in the destruction or short-circuiting of the institution, but in their cleansing and renewal so that they actually do their job.
Which leaves me, I think, in substantial agreement with Markos, but still in two minds about the use of the word 'populism'. I still think that the word has an ugly taint which we should not be associated with - and more to the point, I think that it is a stain that applies to Bush and Blair. This is not a case of a good word that has been hopelessly twisted into supposedly having nasty overtones (like liberal), this is a case of a bad word captured for a good cause.
So I'd be more favorable to using 'responsibility', or 'accountability', or simply, again, the 'common good'. But I know which side I am on. Whatever the label.