The growth of Populism represents a working democracy

The argument

Democracy is dominated by elites, and the growth of populism is best read as a symptom of that rather than as a threat to it. The starting observation is one of representation. Many central political parties do not represent the views of large demographic groups, whose members felt they had no one to vote for who would speak for them, their values and their anxieties. This is a failure of the party system rather than of the voters: a democracy is supposed to convert held opinions into represented opinions, and where mainstream parties converge, a set of views can be widely held and still have no candidate attached to it. The popularity of populist parties and politicians shows that there was a hunger for this type of politics — a demand that existed before any populist party arrived to meet it. Parties do not manufacture constituencies from nothing; they find them. The speed with which these parties grew is evidence about the size of the unrepresented group rather than about the persuasive powers of their leaders. Elite consensus had held for decades that these views were not viable or sensible, and so they were ignored by the mainstream. The fact that they have since gained so much support shows that they existed all along but were not represented — the consensus had settled a question that the electorate had not. In a democratic world, the representation of views is something we should value. Whether or not we agree with them, they should be openly discussed rather than left outside the system where they cannot be argued with. Everyone has an equal right to vote and to be represented, and the fact that a few elites disagree with a set of views is no reason to stop it.

Context

Populist policies are about engaging people who felt left behind and cut off from politics. They are about mass appeal to large groups of people.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Populism threatens democracy. While its greatest beneficiaries may be using democratic process to increase their own power, they do not intend to keep these channels open for others to compete once they are elected.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The claim is plausible in part but is stated without evidence and without specifying which views or which groups. It also treats every unrepresented view as a failure of representation, when in a system with several parties a view may be represented perfectly well and simply lose. [Rejecting P2] Electoral success demonstrates demand for something; it does not establish that the something is the representation of previously excluded views. Support can equally be produced by changed media environments, by a particular figure, or by economic shocks, and the premise does not distinguish these. Populist parties have also risen in proportional systems with low barriers to entry, where the excluded-views account fits least well. [Rejecting P3] This is the strongest step and still does not reach the conclusion. Populism is generally defined not by the content of the views but by a claim to speak for a unified people against a corrupt elite — and it is that claim, that opponents are illegitimate rather than merely mistaken, which the counter identifies as the danger. Representing a view is compatible with a healthy democracy; a movement that treats losing as proof of a rigged system is what the question is really about, and neither premise addresses it.