2021 a year expected to bring joy and happiness and glory into the lives of people, this is what people expected when they saw the way 2020 turned out to be but have you noticed that this is the same thing we expect and the politicians promise during elections, to make our country the best, to make the lives of common citizens better, to end corruption in the country, etc. These types of politicians are called populists and the term where they use political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often connect this group against "the elite” is called populism. This term was first used in the 19th century along with the promotion of democracy in the United States by the People’s party and from then we have seen many leaders come out as populists, for example, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini, Nigel Farage, Narendra Modi, Indira Gandhi, etc. Now the reason politicians are coming out as populists simple, people are fed up with politics, people are fed up with “the elite” enjoying the riches while the common citizens are suffering. Now you must be wondering if politicians win the elections by addressing the issues the people of the country are truly suffering from then where is the problem? Isn’t it democracy under work? Theoretically yes but there is a lot more to it than its mere meaning and today we are going to go to the depth of populism and see why it is a threat to democracy.
Types of populism
First, there are two types of populism radical populism and respectable populism.
.Radical populism
Radical populism is often seen with the “new radical right parties”. These parties address the problems of common people, blame the vested party and win the election but the problem is that they exploit the minorities, become authoritarian, anti-democratic, corrupt, develop fascist ideology, blame people who oppose them but these types of parties are hardly successful in western democracy. The problem comes when people do not realize that their democracy is moving towards dictatorship as seen in the case of Germany in the 1930s, where nationalism was preached to a very high extent, people were given fake news and those who were against it were called anti-nationals and sent to concentration camps.
.Respectable populism
A complete opposite of what we have noticed above is respectable populism. This type of populism can also be found in leaders of vested parties like president Barak Obama. What distinguishes this respectable populism from the radical right populism is its constitutionalism. In contrast to the radical populist parties, that tend to press for radical reforms in the direction of a popular majority, respectable populism does not pose a threat to constitutionalism. Reforms in vested parties are often motivated by the wish to appeal to voters in general. To this end, vested parties are also increasingly the main forces behind the expansion of direct democracy. It is not merely as a reaction to competition with populist parties that vested parties adopt these reforms but vested parties also experiment with these forms of respectable populism to appeal to voters who generally have become more critical and active.
Populism a threat to democracy?
Yes because radical populist believe that the power should not be divided it should either be with the people or the parliament and they do not have respect for the principle of separating and spreading powers, while respectable populism unlike radical populism does not aim to roll back constitutional restraints of majoritarian democracy, on the contrary, it strengthens constitutionalism. Therefore, populism is a threat to democracy but it is radical populism and not respectable populism.
Solution
Now the problem is no single party is completely clean and some policies made by the government can be aiming towards your country becoming the next country run by a “supreme leader”. Well, the simple solution to this problem is to QUESTION! Question the government at every point you think your country is going in the wrong direction and next time while voting, cast your vote wisely because democracy doesn’t die in silence it killed because of the silence of the people.
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