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What Is Populism? What Is Populism? Jan- Werner Müller UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS PHILADELPHIA Copyright © 2016 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104- 4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America A Cataloging- in- Publication record is available from the Library of Congress Cover design by Bradford Foltz ISBN 978- 0- 8122- 4898- 2 hardcover ISBN 978- 0- 8122- 9378- 4 e- book The only meaning I can see in the word “people” is “mixture”; if you substitute for the word “people” the words “number” and “mixture,” you will get some very odd terms . . . “the sovereign mixture,” “the will of the mixture,” etc. — Paul Valéry All power comes from the people. But where does it go? — Bertolt Brecht C o n t e n t s Introduction: Is Everyone a Populist? 1 1. What Populists Say 7 2. What Populists Do, or Populism in Power 41 3. How to Deal with Populists 75 Conclusion: Seven Theses on Populism 101 Notes 105 Acknowledgments 121 In t r o d u c t i o n Is Everyone a Populist? No US election campaign in living memory has seen as many invocations of “populism” as the one unfolding in 2015– 16. Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have been labelled “populists.” The term is regularly used as a synonym for “antiestablishment,” irrespective, it seems, of any particular political ideas; content, as opposed to attitude, simply doesn’t seem to matter. The term is thus also primarily associated with particular moods and emotions: populists are “angry”; their voters are “frustrated” or suffer from “resentment.” Similar claims are made about political leaders in Europe and their followers: Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, for instance, are commonly referred to as populists. Both these politicians are clearly on the right. But, as with the Sanders phenomenon, left- wing insurgents are also labeled populists: there is Syriza in Greece, a left-w ing alliance that came to power in January 2015, and Podemos in Spain, which shares with Syriza a fundamental opposition to Angela Merkel’s austerity policies in response to the Eurocrisis. Both— especially Podemos— make a point of feeling inspired by what is commonly referred to as the “pink tide” in Latin America: the success of populist leaders such as Rafael Cor- rea, Evo Morales, and, above all, Hugo Chávez. Yet what do all these political actors actually have in common? If we hold with Hannah Arendt that political judgment is the capacity 1