When populism and democracy collide

Cas Mudde, one of the world's leading experts in the study of populism and far-right politics, joins us this week to discuss the tensions between populism and democracy, and why populism has increased around world in recent years.

Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia and a Professor II in the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo. His research agenda aims to address the question: how can liberal democracies defend themselves against political challenges without undermining their core values?

Mudde visited Penn State in October 2023 to give the keynote lecture at the Populism, Piety, and Patriotism conference organized by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy.

Chris Beem
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University, I'm Chris Beem.

Candis Watts Smith
I'm Candis Watts Smith.

Jenna Spinelle
I'm Jenna Spinelle, and welcome to Democracy Works. Our guest this week is Cas Mudde, who is a political scientist based at the University of Georgia, where he is the Stanley Wade Shelton, UGAF Professor of International Affairs and a distinguished research professor. So as you might guess, he's a fairly well known scholar in his field, which is, broadly speaking, the study of populism and the far right, Cas recently visited Penn State to deliver the keynote address for the populism piety and patriotism Conference, which Chris, you were instrumental in organizing and leading. And as part of that, he gave a keynote lecture on religion and populism. But for this interview, we talked about populism more broadly, and why it seems to be ascendant in so many different places around the world right now. And that's really think if you take a step back and think about it, Chris, there are lots of places where, you know, these these leaders that are all kind of have a piece as far as their their rhetoric and what they're pushing seem to be gaining rhetorical power, and also political power.

Chris Beem
And political power. That's right. And, and that's really why we want to do the conference, right? Because populism isn't, you know, all that knew. But it is striking how ascended it is right now. And also how widespread right you have people in very different countries, very different circumstances, who are and for that matter, different languages, cultures, and religions, all talking very similarly, about, you know, what the problem is, and what I, the political leader, I'm going to do about it. And, and that is interesting and important, and frankly, a little scary, too. But so we decided to have this conference. And you know, the first name that came up in terms of a keynote was, was Cas Mudde because there's nobody, if you're going to write about populism, you just can't avoid him.

Candis Watts Smith
So the other part is not just what is it and why is it ascendant? But what it's not? I think that most people think about Poppy Poppy list. And they think about particular characters, charismatic characters that seem to kind of bring out in this case, like they'll kind of I won't say the worst in people, but brings out a certain element, that seems to be a similar element across across contexts. And so in this way, I'm really glad that we brought him to kind of think about, what are the patterns? What are the features, and that it's not just about personality. It's not just about charisma. And it's not just about strategy. But we can think more about this in terms of ideology. And so you know, with that, then we have kind of a more capacious way to understand it in a more nuanced way.

Chris Beem
And more precise, too, because you're right. I mean, there are people who talk about Vladimir Putin as being a populist. And that's just, that's just not. So let's just talk about, you know, what it is, you know, in a in a sentence, populism is the politics of the people against the corrupt elite. And, and both of those groups are defined, they're understood to be unified and have the same objectives. And, you know,Cas says that the distinction between the two is fundamentally moral. So the people are understood to be decent, hard working, to be committed to traditional values, and the elites are all corrupt, and they're looking to acts to, you know, to achieve power in order to pursue their own selfish, greedy ends. I think that's pretty pretty pithy summation, would you agree?

Candis Watts Smith
So then if we kind of add on the ideology component of it, we think about political ideology as a system of beliefs, values, ideas, that shape an individuals or groups kind of way of understanding of like, who should get what, where power should lie, right? These have ramifications for policy. These have ramifications for what goals we should set what what the good life is, who should get what and so on and so forth. So again, this kind of you know, this i fear that we typically see it as like, hey, it's, it's the good people against the bad elites. It's not just that, but it moves towards, you know, policy ramifications about, you know, material reality, you know, allocation of resources.

Chris Beem
I mean, you know, there I think, what, what Cas would say is that, yes, it's an ideology, but it's not merely an ideology, it is also a strategy. And so, and that's kind of constitutive of politics generally, right? That you all you always have this kind of understanding of the way the world works and how the world should be. And then you use that to create a constituency and mobilize that constituency towards, you know, political ends. And, you know, the, the fact that in many cases, the, the policy agenda that follows when these people become ascendant, when these populist leaders become ascendant, isn't always populist, it isn't necessarily directed towards their well being. It's often and what we see now frequently, is people are using power to, to cement their own power, right. So they use their political standing to undermine minority rights, freedom of the press. You know, this is something that you see repeatedly in when populist leaders like Modi in India and Orban in Hungary, you you just kind of you know, they have the power, they found this avenue to power. And, you know, I'm certain that, you know, just like, just like any politician, yes, they believe it, but also, they're gonna frame it in a way that is more likely to be successful politically.

Candis Watts Smith
Yeah, I mean, I think, and I think we'll hear this from Congress is that even then it's more complex, because the the examples that you're giving are right wing examples, right. And that there are also left examples of populism. And that looks different, right. And so one of the ways that he describes populism, there is a thin centered ideology, that can be sutured with other kinds of frames, kinds of references. It could be nationalism, it could be chauvinism, it could be religion, it could be class.

Jenna Spinelle
And I think we'll also get to in the interview, why this matters for democracy, particularly as it relates to liberal democracy and the tension between liberalism and populism. So lots of good stuff here. Let's get now to the interview.

Jenna Spinelle
Cas Mudde, welcome to Democracy Works. Thank you for joining us today.

Cas Mudde
Thanks for having me.

Jenna Spinelle
So we're going to talk about populism and some of the things related to it, which has long been one of your areas of study. And I know in your work, you break it down into three core concepts, the people, the elite, and the general will. So as a way of getting into it, I thought maybe we could take those one by one and talk about each of those elements and how they all come together to form a definition of populism. So let's start with the people.

Cas Mudde
So I think it's important that like, almost every definition of populism will have the struggle between the people and the elite in it. And I think what's important to note is that in my definition, the people are seen as homogenous and the elite are seen as homogenous, which means that the people are seen as sharing exactly the same values and interests. All people do, right. And similarly, all elite have that. And the second part is that the distinction between the people and the elite is moral. So it's not about how much money you have. It's not about even whether you have a formal position of power. It is whether you're pure of heart, or whether you're corrupt. And so, the people old people are pure. And at the same time, all the elite are corrupt. And that is that is the main distinction between the two and that is obviously a construction like the people as such do not exist. And that is sometimes used as a criticism of, well, a populism isn't real. But the nation doesn't exist. Class doesn't exist. All of the major collective isms in politics are constructions and the populist use the people versus doe,

Jenna Spinelle
And have those conceptions of who the people are and who the elite are remained consistent over time, or do do they do they change either from place to place or as you go throughout history?

Cas Mudde
I think both. Obviously, the people are always good. And there are some things that are universally seen as good, such as hard working or truthful. And so you will find those everywhere. But at the same time, if you look at in time, initially, the people were the farmers, because that was the bulk of that say to non elite. Now, of course, in many countries, farmers are only like two 3%, or something. So later it became more the worker. And today, as we are in the society, where kind of a vague middle class is the largest group, it is classless in a sense. And so you do see that, over time, the people are constructed differently, but also cross nationally cross regionally. And an STL Laclau, who is a famous scholar of populism wears a very different understanding of it than me as talked about the people as an empty as an empty vessel. And that is, to a certain extent, true, but not completely. Because if you want to be successful as a populace, you cannot describe the people in ways that do not resonate. So if you are hearing us you want to be an important populace, you cannot describe the people as Muslim. Right, you cannot describe them as you heal a stick or whatever else there is that doesn't resonate with a large group of people. So populace always describe the people in line with generally a broader self definition of it.

Jenna Spinelle
Right. So if we think about in the American context, it evokes, you know, maybe images of patriotism, or love of country, or this nostalgic idea of what the country what was what what the country used to be that has a lot of different things wrapped up in it.

Cas Mudde
Yes. And also what is important in the US, for some reason, although probably the largest group of Americans live in subcultures, sorry, in suburban settings, suburban settings, never feature not in in series, not in the self definition of the people. And at the same time, the US traditionally has this kind of anti urban, the sphere of the city, it has anti urban sentiments. So the people here comes from the heartland, and the heartland is always rural. It's also white, but that's implicit to it, right. And so whereas in the Netherlands, that will be different, because it's a very urbanized country. And the rural part is kind of seen as the other part. So in that ways, it always reflects and stays close to the self understandings of the target group.

Jenna Spinelle
So we talked about the people, we've talked about the elite, what about this business of the general will.

Cas Mudde
So general will has two elements on the one end, it again, references this homogenous understanding of the people. And the general will, is a term use Bible. So in a very similar type of way, although, of course, much more nuanced and complex. But the idea is that the people have one will, but at the same time by saying that they want politics to be in line with the general will of the people there is also at the most basic element, a democratic element to populism. And we're talking here about populism in theory, the fact that that doesn't always pan out in reality, we know from all kinds of ideologies right. But the core of populism is that they claim to govern in line with the general will of the people.

Jenna Spinelle
Right, and you say that populism, again in this theoretical framing is neither good nor bad for democracy.

Cas Mudde
Yeah, if you if you keep democracy very limited, so Usually do where democracy is popular sovereignty and majority rule, which means the people elect their leader by majority, then populism in theory is in line with that. However, if you see democracy broader as we really normally do, which I call liberal democracy or constitutional democracy, then majority rules combined with minority rights with separation of powers, things like that rule of law, and there is an inherent tension with populism. And the reason is that liberal democracy is based on pluralism on the idea that there are different groups in society that are all legitimate, and they just tried to find some kind of consensus among them. Mon ism, the idea that there's just one group, one legitimate group is the essence of populism. So there's a fundamental tension between liberal democracy and populism but not meeting populism and democracy.

Jenna Spinelle
Right. Right. And I want to I want to come back to that that tension. But you know, when populism is talked about in the media, it is often done in the same breath as things like authoritarianism and even fascism. And so I wonder if you could talk about those links, how how they come about, and if this is, you know, how much is this just kind of the media throwing words around when the the actual links might not be there in in practice?

Cas Mudde
Yeah, I think there is a natural kind of alliance between populism and nationalism, in the sense that when you define the people on the basis of itself image, you tend to come close to how the nation is defined on the self image. That being said, not all populist or nationalist and certainly not all, nationalists are populist. authoritarianism depends a little bit on how it is used. If you use it as anti democracy, then as said, in theory, populism is democratic, if you use it more in the socio psychological sense of of a, Hank towards order and the idea that chaos is problematic, and that the state should really like enforce order, then that is a bit more of a natural ally, for the simple reason that the distinction between that homogenous bloc of the people in a homogenous bloc of the elite is normative. And that means that the other one is not a legitimate actor. Moreover, the elite is seen as corrupt, corrupting our ways. And if that threat is so fundamental, then you might extend beyond like your regular means of disciplining. Now, fascism is theoretically a purely elitist ideology. It doesn't just see hierarchy between racists but also within the German people. Hitler was not just like everyone, he was superior to every other German elitism is essential to fascism in whatever form, and as a consequence, fascism and poll and populism are to a certain extent, opposing views that being said, fascism in the 1920s 30s went through a so called Popular face, where it did use some kind of what we could perhaps call populist rhetoric. But in essence, the system, both how it was run and justified was much more elitist and populist.

Jenna Spinelle
And it seems that, you know, populism, at least in the past eight to 10 years has become ascendant and often aligned with the far right, so what is it about, you know, kind of the far right ideology that that that aligns so well with what you've described as the populist ideology.

Cas Mudde
So I think that's a very important point. Both theoretically, and historically, populism had left and right wing versions in reality, and even at the turn of the century, there was significant left wing populism, particularly in some Latin American countries. Today, and pretty much since 2016, Brexit and Trump, when we talk about populism, we actually talk about the far right. And that's why I'm less and less happy to talk about populism because I think it has become increasingly used as a euphemism for the far right or for racism. Now, why is it mostly the right rather than the left at the moment that is populist? I think, first of all within the more intellectual realm, as well as the official discourse particularly within a liberal democracies, it is relatively progressive. I'm not saying that countries are actually progressive in the way that they're governed. But the discourse tends to be. And that means that the left tends not to be fundamentally ousted. The far right, although actually, in terms of its ideas, not necessarily that far removed from how countries are being governed, are on the one hand, treated my part of the establishment as outside of the realm, but also have created a kind of a self victimization. And they see themselves as being marginalized by the establishment. And that is in the US even stronger than in other countries, but it has been around for a while. At the same time, what you see is the more the far right, particularly the radical right is being mainstreamed, the less populous they are. And so a good example is the Sweden Democrats in Sweden, who are now supporting a minority government. About 10 years ago, they were strongly populist, the establishment went from left to right. But over the last couple of years, the right has embraced them. And so of course, you're not going to to pretty much bite the hand that's going to feed you. And so today, when they talk about the establishment is often the left. And you see that we're more that the radical right is kind of embraced by at least the right wing of the establishment populism goes down.

Jenna Spinelle
We had Francis Fukuyama here about a year ago, obviously one of the leading scholars on on liberalism. And, you know, I think in his most recent book, he's kind of wrestling with this idea that the liberalism will never be able to fully constrain populism or be able to constrain those kinds of the far right anti democratic impulses. I guess, I wonder what know how you see those two, and whether there is more that the institutions and things that comprise liberal democracy, you know, could or should be doing to try to constrain populism in some way to prevent it from kind of veering into the anti democratic space.

Cas Mudde
So I've described populism as an illiberal Democratic response to undemocratic liberalism. What I mean by that is that populism is illiberal democracy. F argued that it is democratic, but it has problems with the liberal part of liberal democracy, right, and particularly, minority rights, rule of law, separation of powers. Now, what do I mean with undemocratic liberalism, particularly in the heydays of neoliberalism, the 80s and the 90s, what we saw was a buyer larger shrinking of the democratic space, mostly through privatization in the European context, also by putting pushing things up to the European Union. And all of that led to the situation in which a lot of policies are outside of the electoral realm. We cannot vote on public transport, for exam, except for asking for the renationalisation of public transport or public transport is now a private business. And so it's not in the hands of the government. But that then also means it's not in the hands of the people. Now, that in itself is not undemocratic. And it's important is not just economic, but you can think about going further back other liberal types of things which anti discrimination laws or the banning of the death penalty. Now, I'm not taking a normative position here. But these are pretty far reaching decisions, which in many countries are not shared by him. And majority of the people they were, they were put in a judicial realm or in an economic realm by people who are democratically elected. So pure in a formal sense, it was not undemocratic. However, in most cases, it was done without ever really making it part of the electoral process. And so if you get elected, and then implement a policy you never talked about, and make sure that it's all done and dusted before the next election, that goes against the spirit of democracy. And so much of this pendulum swing towards more liberalism at the expense of democracy was done with that fundamental debate and this applies in the European context to European immigration integration, almost everywhere it applies to the issue of immigration, then we have all kinds of other issues.

Jenna Spinelle
And so you talk about populism in terms of supply and demand. And one way to combat it, perhaps, or to keep it in check, or, you know, reduce it in relation to in proportion to liberalism and in liberal democracy is to decrease the populace demand, so is addressing some of these economic issues or kind of organizing in this class based way, an example of that?

Cas Mudde
Yeah, partly, I argued that. And again, like, for me, neoliberalism is not so much an economic system rather than a political ideology. And the thing that a couple of decades of neoliberalism has done is as D politicized and D ideologized. Politics, because in neoliberal, neoliberal ideology, it's all about the market. Right. And so politics is actually bad and stands in the way of efficiency. At the same time, ideology is denied in in neoliberalism, it denies to be an ideology itself. And it argues that's all about rationality and pragmatism. Now, the consequences I've said before, is that more and more of pretty important aspects of our life. And I include public transport in that, for example, are put outside of the realm of politics. I think we need to take a lot of these things back, I think that the state should be responsible for things like public transport for energy policy. And as a consequence, it shouldn't, it shouldn't privatize these, and have a grip on that so that people can decide on that. So that's one part by d by Re politicizing like you, you increase the reach of politics, and you'll get out of this Tina politics, there is no alternative, where people say, Well, yes, this is a problem, but that's outside of our realm, because it's globalization or the EU or the IMF or whatever. The second part is ideology. And my my argument, there is always like, if I give you $100, you will ask me, oh, why do you give that if I say a one to you will say thank you. If I ask $100 of you, you will still ask me, like, why. And if I say, because I want it, you will not give it to me. Now, we are in a cent a century of crisis. Like we had 911, we had the great recession, we had COVID. And now we have Ukraine, Russia, that means together with all kinds of other things that people get less and less, either objectively, or they get less than they expected. That means that you have to have a story. And the story cannot be pragmatism, it cannot be there is no alternative. You have to argue, explain to them? Well, you have to give this up now. And this is your promised land, right. And that's what ideologies are about. There's about promised lands, and it's about values. And I believe that, that it's essential to do these two things together. And with that, it also means that we talk about different things. We have been talking about security about identity obsessively in most country over the last decades, in part as a consequence of the fact that mainstream parties converged on neoliberal economics. And so they couldn't talk about that. But if you look actually at what people care about, in many countries, and particularly younger people, and importantly, gender difference, women, for women, immigration and security are not top issues, health care, education, housing is a major issue in many countries, right? If we talk about these issues, then the radical right to populist are less Central, they don't disappear. They can give a populist spin on climate change, they can give a popular spin on housing like or native has been on, they can, but we shifted the bait from them, we limit to our agenda setting and as long as we have a story, I think we can convince people.

Jenna Spinelle
So that leads me to one last question. This could easily take us into a whole separate conversation which unfortunately, we don't have time to have but thinking about that COVID example in the the American contexts, I you know, I started thinking about the all the no we had six weeks maybe of kind of national unity and we're all in this and then state started going off and we got to reopen and the sort of the You know, I think there was a perhaps a populist element to some of that rhetoric from Ron DeSantis, and others. And so that leads me to a question about, you know, what, what, if anything, should media who are covering these populist figures do differently? Are they giving them too much attention so that a lot of the policies you were just talking about don't come to light? Are there other things about the way that this is all framed, that it make progress, problematic?

Cas Mudde
Yeah, I'm going to upset some of your media listeners now, as well as some of my friends in the media. But I think particularly progressives should really stop looking at the media as an ally, the media is not part of the democratic structure, the media, it's part of the economic structure. Media is about making money. And they, they want to sell stuff. And so we can go on and on. And I've done this for for decades, about how the media should cover this and that, but the media is going to cover things in the way that maximize the profit. That's just that's the business model. And in the end, that's the only way they survive, margins are small. So if they don't do it, they die. And I think that's, that's the big problem. I mean, it's it's institutional. I know a lot of journalists, they would love to write different stories. But the editor tells them to write the next story about whatever outrageous thing Trump says, it is completely irrelevant what He says He hasn't said, or done anything in the last three, four years, that fundamentally changes what we know about him. But these stories are read by us, the people, right? Whereas a really solid analysis of the housing situation is not read by him. And so we can look at the media, but I think we should look at ourselves. Like, we reward like a structure and infrastructure that benefits the populace. And it goes to the level of the newspaper I used to write for The Guardian, which, which has a long history of what I call far right porn, like endless stories about irrelevant far right, with a big picture of a skinhead on it. About they might be the next thing, right? And but they only write it because the Guardian reader eats it up. They love to be afraid of the far right, right. And so why would we expect, like this is to a certain extent saying to your dealer, you should stop giving me heroin? Like, why would the dealer stop? You should stop taking heroin?

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, well, I think that is, that is a good place to end a good reminder for all of us to resist those stories. As tempting as they may be. Cas Mudde, thank you so much for your time today.

Cas Mudde

Thanks so much for having me.

Candis Watts Smith
Thank you, Jenna, for that really great interview, there were so many things that were especially helpful for me. And one I was thinking about, you know, why is this particular moment where populism is ascendant on the right, and why we may not have seen that in, you know, century, you know, it's centuries past, especially in the United States. And I think, cause does a really good job of talking about these two elements, he talks about the elites, and then he talks about the people. And he talks about this idea about the people being pure and homogenous. And so that means that the people are a certain kind of people, it's not inclusive, it's actually XClusive. So let's say, in William Jennings, Bryan era, or Andrew Jackson's era, we wouldn't expect a racial cleavage, because black folks and native folks are not included in the policy, there's no need to exclude them, we can, we can find some other elite, that people frame whereas now, race is very much cleavage that folks can that that the people that people can center themselves around and be exclusive around.

Chris Beem
So I do think that's a really interesting point. Because, you know, there's, you know, if you haven't us, by definition, no, I think that's a really good and important point. And, and it kind of speaks to how populism is is distinctive now, right? Because you have, if you have an us if you have a we then you automatically have a day you have them and who is the them and and, you know, in populism, it's always you know, an elite, but there's always somebody that it's a threat. You You know, you're right that that it wasn't racial for William Jennings Bryan and Huey Long or anybody else, Andrew Jackson, because Because African Americans and Native Americans weren't part of the polity, right. And then the moment that you had the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the mid 60s, boom, you have George Wallace, who was clearly a populace, and was clearly seeing the US, as you know, the good white people, the people of the heartland, whatever euphemism you want to use. But the thing that I was thinking about when you were talking is Charles Coughlin, who was a, you know, a Catholic priest in Detroit in the 20s. And he was a raging anti Semite.

Candis Watts Smith
So one of the things just to piggyback off that, that has mentioned upfront is that elites aren't always wealthy or, or politically powerful, right. So he, you know, he makes it clear that, you know, typically when we think about elites, we think about the powers that be, but he also kind of lays this out, right. So this is why anti Semites can say that Jews are elite or racist can say that black folks are elite, or academics are elite, or like, black academics are elite, because ostensibly, these are people who are influencing culture and influencing the way that, you know, influencing our values, or our way of life. And so in that way, you know, on the one hand, right, you can see how that group can be used as a tool. On the other hand, you can see how this can kind of be delusional on some level, especially if the group that's the so called Elite is shifting culture, culture does not often come with a similar similarly, quick shift in, let's say, allocation of resources. So you know, like who's really been threatened, right, who's really being threatened, who's really losing out, but a populist, can especially, I think, the way that we see it now that a populace can say that, you know, your way of life is changing, and that you're not able to your kids are gonna go to school and learn that they're racist, you know, these kinds of things, when in fact, like, this has nothing to do with people's real life, material realities?

Chris Beem
Well, you know, the idea of democracy is simply majority rule, right. And if a populist is able to garner enough support, then they can basically do whatever they want within the context of democracy, right. But the reason you only hear liberal democracy is because a democracy without liberalism isn't democracy, that does not respect the rights of the minority, it does not respect the rule of law, it does not respect the procedures that are established to maintain those rights. So when you give when you when you say, I am a beleaguered minority, or a beleaguered majority, being exploited by this elites, and we are the pure people, and the other people are evil, then I think it's pretty easy to justify, I mean, at minimum, restricting the rights of, of, of the minority, right? And, you know, Orban in Hungary, he says, I want to create an illiberal democracy, I want to give the power to the people, and I want to get rid of all these institutions that undermine their, their, their, their expression, their pure democratic expression. We've done and what causes interview with Jenna shows is a is an extremely important concept right now. Be it's, it is on the one hand, a little woolly but it's also has some precision, and it allows us to see expressions of it all over the world right now. And so when I think anybody who listen to this podcast is going to say, oh, that that's populism, and that's what I said. And, and so you see it as on the one hand, you know, kind of a completely legitimate democratic expression and On the other hand, extremely dangerous, right? Because once you you know, it's it's once you have an us, then you have them and it makes it very difficult to run a democracy that way, especially when you think you are morally pure. So, anyway, I think there's a lot to chew on here and I really appreciate Cas coming to the conference and and sitting down with Jenna.

Candis Watts Smith
For democracy works. I'm Candis Watts Smith.

Chris Beem
I'm Chris Beem. Thanks for listening.

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