Populism is now the guiding political principle in the West and beyond

The argument

This argument, made in mourning rather than celebration, holds that Western liberalism is over because populism has replaced it as the guiding political principle of the age — in the West and well beyond it. The evidence is the political landscape itself. The defining victories of recent politics — Trump's capture of the American presidency, Brexit, Orbán's 'illiberal democracy' in Hungary, and kindred movements from Italy and France to Brazil, Turkey, India and the Philippines — were won not on liberal arguments but on populist ones: the virtuous people against corrupt elites, national will against international rules, majority instinct against minority protections and expert judgement. Even where populists do not govern, they set the terms; mainstream parties survive by borrowing their language on immigration, sovereignty and identity, and leaders like Putin feel confident enough to pronounce liberalism 'obsolete' on the world stage. What makes this a change of principle rather than a passing mood is that populism inverts liberalism's core commitments. Where liberalism disperses power through institutions, rights, courts and a free press, populism concentrates it in a leader who claims to embody the people, and recasts every check on majority will as betrayal. The grammar of politics has shifted from rights and rules to will and identity — and the proponents of this position regard that shift, with regret, as the defining fact of the era: the liberal order's foundations of tolerance, law and openness are being dismantled, and little on the horizon promises their restoration. From this standpoint, an ideology no longer guides the world when its rival writes the script. Because populism is now the guiding political principle in the West and beyond, this argument holds, Western liberalism is over — and it is a shame.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The evidence is a list of election results, which establishes that populist movements have become powerful. That is a different claim from liberalism having been replaced as the guiding principle of the age, and the intervening years have complicated it. In several of the cases named, liberal machinery did what it is designed to do: courts struck down policies, terms ended, and incumbents were removed by voters — Trump in 2020, Bolsonaro in 2022, Poland's governing party in 2023 — with power transferring each time. An obituary for liberalism has to account for the fact that its procedures kept operating on the movements said to have superseded it. The category also carries more weight than it can bear. Trump, Brexit, Orbán, Modi, Erdoğan and Duterte differ profoundly in ideology, institutional setting, economic programme and relationship to constitutional order; the resemblance is one of rhetorical style more than of governing principle, and grouping them as a single guiding idea conceals those differences rather than explaining them. The periodisation is the weakest element. Declarations that liberalism is finished are a recurring genre — issued with confidence in the 1930s and again in the 1970s — and each rested on a decade of adverse results, as this one does. Meanwhile rights frameworks, independent courts, treaty obligations and press freedoms remain embedded in the law of every Western state, which is not what the disappearance of a guiding principle looks like.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Electoral victories establish that populist movements are powerful rather than that liberalism has been replaced, and liberal institutions have subsequently removed several of the figures cited through ordinary elections and judicial review. [Rejecting P3] The movements grouped together differ profoundly in ideology and institutional context, and declarations that liberalism is over recur across the twentieth century on similar evidence — while rights frameworks and independent courts remain embedded in Western law.