Populism: a threat that lingers: Stuart McMillan outlines reasons why populism may continue to influence politics in many countries in the immediate future.

AuthorMcMillan, Stuart

Populism was not the full explanation for the British vote in the referendum in June 2016 to leave the European Union. Nor did it explain fully the vote for Donald Trump to be president of the United States later in 2016. But it undoubtedly played a major role in both outcomes. In 2017 in the Netherlands the avowedly populist Party for Freedom, led by Geert Winders, won twenty seats in the House of Representatives, becoming the second largest party. Later in the year, in Germany the AfD, the Alternative for Germany, a nationalist right-wing populist party, won seats in the Bundestag, the lower house, for the first time. Members of the far-right Freedom Party, which was founded by former Nazis, now hold major ministerial positions in Austria. Besides these developments, populist nationalist sentiment in the governments of Hungary and Poland is leading those countries in directions worrying the European Union.

Defining populism has some difficulties and the term sometimes embraces beliefs on the far left as well as more often those on the far right. It is characterised by anti-elitism, is generally antiestablishment and often includes nativism, that is, policies that protect the interests of those native to the country as opposed to immigrants. It is often opposed to the existing political leadership, believing that such leadership stands in the way of the will of the people, which generally is taken to mean a majority. Such beliefs can be rough on minorities. Some parties and analysts use the term to register disapproval; some parties wear it as a badge of honour.

For those disposed to see the glass as half-full, comfort may be found in the fact that Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Front fared badly in the French election; that although the AfD is represented in the Bundestag, it is not in Germany's government; and that Geert Winders had only limited success in the Netherlands. Further comfort may be taken from the fact that after the ANO, a centrist party with populist leaning, took the largest share of the vote in the Czech Republic's general election last October, Andrej Babis, the new prime minister, refuses to look for coalition partners in the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy Party or in the Communist Party. Further tests for the influence of populism will be seen in the Italian election in March.

Justifiable concern

Yet a glass half-empty view of populism in the last two years and its likely developments in 2018 and...

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