Muntaha Syedah Qadri
For the past year and a half, the pandemic caused chaos to occur. The pandemic invoked a serious level of stress on everyone around the world. It has caused the good and bad to occur in not only people’s lives but also in the global political system. In some ways, the pandemic showed the true front of the system, most particularly, Populism. It showed what the political system is capable of and what the true meaning of Populism is. Populism is a stance that most countries around the world have experienced, most particularly with their global leaders. Populism’s main idea is to deal with “the people ”.
Looking closely at the countries around the world, we observe global leaders like Johnson, Salvini, Trump. Erdoğan, Kaczyński, Le Pen. Modi, Orbán, Putin (Balfour 2020). The leaders can be labeled as Populists (Balfour 2020). Surprisingly, these leaders barely survived the pandemic. Did they have unforgettable moments that made the history books in both a positive and negative way? Yes, of course. The leaders incited drama and chaos that changed the way people look at certain political situations (Balfour 2020). Modern-day populists during the weakened governments around the globe. This is because most of them did not experience anything like the pandemic or expect it to even occur in the whole world, or let alone in their own country. Poor performance was conducted during these times, but it did not completely deplete the countries from any populism aspects (Balfour 2020).
Populists were said to come into power because of claimed external crisises. The external crisis mostly included financial situations that end up impacting a certain region. Because of the pandemic, many crises had an impact. The majority of the crises during the pandemic were social and financial (Balfour 2020). This external crisis gave the populists leverage. These crises caused these populists to gain more ideas on creating policies along with creating structuralized plans that help support the people. Populism survived the pandemic mainly because of the right-wing. It is because of the move in the ideology that is shifting to the right along with the political aspects.
Populists, like Trump, in the very beginning had a hard time coping with the whole idea of Covid-19 (Spilimbergo 2021). They had disbelief. This is because they had a distrust in science, which had the whole pandemic a lie until it hit the country hard (Mounk 2021). They were stating statements like, “the virus is no worse than a simple cold or flu”. The denial of believing in the existence of pandemics caused chaos resulting in poor outcomes. In some cases, populist countries like Poland and Hungary did shockingly well during the pandemic and were able to control the people (Mounk 2021). As time goes on during the pandemic, the whole quality of the government kind of downgrades. This is because populism was ruling and caused certain aspects like the economy to be damaged as well as the mortality rate to change frequently.
Populist leaders all around the world were mainly seen as people pointing out the problems. If the pandemic caused a high rate of unemployment, they would point it out. They would identify the problem rather than solving and creating a solution for it (Spilimbergo 2021). While the populist brought up some ideas of creating certain policies, but at the end of the day, the actions spoke louder than the words. Along with that idea, trust is a major element being used. The element is being associated with the pandemic to implement certain decisions, that allows the truth to come out. If there is no trust and no solution created, there is no way the populist would be able to survive the pandemic (Spilimbergo 2021).
As time goes on, the use of factual evidence of the countries and the situations that have taken place during the pandemic overall help determine whether if the populists survived the pandemic. This is because there are no clear distinguished methods to determine if they did survive the pandemic. From the perspective of the populist, it changes the appearance of the populist. This is because if a person believes there is no evidence of whether the populist mishandled the pandemic, it changes the way the populist is seen (Spilimbergo 2021). Some people believed that the populist did their best and appropriately conducted the right solutions in handling a global-wide pandemic.
Overall, during the pandemic, populist was seen right through. The media was involved in exposing the populists and opening any hidden facts (Spilimbergo 2021). The limitations of the populists were tested as well as their leadership skills (trust, responsibility, morals, etc.). These added up and showed “the people” whether they were fit for the position as well as if they would end up surviving the pandemic. Some people lost their presidency or leadership role during the pandemic like Trump (because of re-election loss), fewer people follow the leader of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, etc., but these populists end up the way they did because of not handling the situation currently. The populists survived to blame others for not following their beliefs or strategies. The strategies implemented could not end up working for every single person in the country (Balfour 2020).
I think not only your blog, but the topic of populism thriving during the COVID-19 pandemic is very interesting. It’s something that I hadn’t really thought about until reading your blog post. It seems as though since we were all dealing with this pandemic which most of us, the leaders included, had never dealt with or even imagined happening, the leaders took this as an opportunity to take a different stance and begin taking a populist outlook and leading for the people. I had never thought that the pandemic gave leaders leverage for populism. I like how you included what types of leverage these leaders had, you mentioned social and financial crises; what other, if any, crises would aid leaders with their populist agendas?
After reading your blog post, it has become clear that this happened not only in the US but in several countries across the world. We have talked about how the pandemic was politicized but not yet about how the pandemic actually changed the way in which politicians acted and lead their countries. In class we have talked about Trump being a populist leader, but your blog has shed light on the fact that not only was he a populist leader, but the pandemic gave him a greater platform to be a populist. It seems increasingly evident now that we have almost overcome this pandemic the effects that it has had on different governments.
The question of the impact of COVID-19 on populism is an important one to discuss because the pandemic has undoubtedly impacted every country. I feel as if this paper makes a few good points, but I would encourage another proofread of your work. I feel some of this information gets lost in grammatical errors. I do agree with your point that despite the poor performance of populist leaders, they were rarely held accountable. This is in line with the theory of Milan Svolik in “Polarization vs Democracy” who states, “Voters are reluctant to punish politicians for disregarding democratic principles when doing so requires abandoning one’s favored party or policies.”
A question that I had when reading your paper is: do you consider your work to be exclusively an evaluation of right-wing populists. It was unclear in your introduction, but it seems as if we may be working with different definitions of this idea. Cas Muddle has defined populism as a “thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite.” Based on this definition, I do not think that we can ask the question if populists themselves have survived the pandemic. A more useful question perhaps would be to evaluate if the number of leaders who could be categorized as populist has increased or decreased.
Muntaha Syedah Qadri’s blog, “Is Populism Thriving During the Pandemic,” introduces a relevant argument regarding politics in the current situation of our world today amidst the Coronavirus pandemic. Populist-authoritarian leaders like Donald Trump pose the blame on a specific group for the mass suffering according to Yascha Mounk. Trump labelled the virus, the “China virus” or “kung flu” as he blamed Chinese Americans for bringing the Coronavirus to the United States (Moynihan 2020). This racialized rhetoric can harshly stigmatize those who are deemed “responsible” by such a prominent figure. This then creates a more polarized setting where people either agree or disagree with Trump.
The author brings up a solid point that Trump’s denial of the severity of the pandemic was extremely evident as his followers began to trust him and avoid health precautions. This sort of moral manipulation is emphasized by Jan-Werner Müller in his book What Is Populism? to contain and isolate power. I also appreciate your idea about Populist leaders using the pandemic for leverage to create new policies that appeal to the public. I suggest that you offer some examples of what policies were made to benefit these leaders. Maybe you could discuss the economic gains or losses that were affected by the pandemic or new jobs created or lost.
After reading this blog post, I have to say I disagree with Qadri’s stance that populism has thrived during the pandemic. Countries like Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, and the Philippines have all see populist leaders fail to gain any momentum and/or lose power (Mounk 2021). Mounk notes that, “If you look around the world today, it becomes painfully clear that those countries that are ruled by populists have paid an especially heavy toll in economic damage, case load, and mortality.” Populist leaders have heavily mishandled the brutality of the pandemic and have strayed away from stability which has deterred the public away from populist support. Furthermore, the public desires leaders who have faith in science and technology that will explicitly benefit the wellbeing of individuals in unfortunate times. Roberto Foa suggests that, “The planet has experienced a wave of political populism. Covid-19 may have caused that wave to crest.” Additionally, Xavier Romero-Vidal offers that the pandemic has established “A sense of shared purpose that may have reduced the political polarization we’ve seen over the last decade.” Conclusively, the support of populist leaders around the world has notably decreased. A study conducted by the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy “found that populist governments had performed worse than non-populist governments at handling the crisis.” Populist-led countries suffered much greater amounts of loss due to COVID-19.
Though before I stated that I disagreed with the idea that populism has thrived during the pandemic, I do believe it has not disappeared altogether. Many people still align with populist beliefs because, according to Mounk and Pitchfork, they represent the will of the people and not solely the elites. A lingering dissatisfaction with the current leadership of liberal democracy is sort of heightened in the pandemic. Responsibility and blame are passed around among people in authority with no definitive resolutions. Moreover, a feeling of distrust towards experts and unsureness of the economy impacts the beliefs of many individuals. A polarizing factor during this crisis is the media’s representation of COVID-19. There are multiple sources describing the various precautions, such as social-distancing, masks, and vaccines, that people must take to reduce the spread of the virus. Some sources deem these safeguards as hoaxes or unsuitable and people take notice to that. The spread of the virus is unpredictable and there is no known end. One essential component of people’s political ideology is trustworthiness and faith in leaders to accurately represent them and provide them with substantial feedback and ideas. This is where the line between anti-establishment and democratic leaders tends to fade because no one knows who to trust in a global situation that has never been seen before. Now, polarizing issues are bringing people closer together as everyone shares a common goal of relinquishing the magnitude of this pandemic and putting it to rest. Still, however, democracy support has not gained much traction either. “Satisfaction with democracy has recovered only slightly since the post-war nadir of 2019, and is still well below the long-term average,” said Foa. With conflict and debate plaguing countries, the importance of policy priorities and allocation of resources are pushed to the side as argued by Robert Dahl.
In conclusion, this blog post highlights the stability of populism throughout the pandemic and emphasizes some really valuable points, but as much as populism is surviving, it is also declining. Although this looks promising for liberal democracies, contentment with democracy remains significantly low. Hopefully, a balance is established, and a solution is in the future.
Works Cited:
Mounk, Yascha. “How Populism Has Proven Lethal in This Pandemic”. Council On Foreign Relations, 2022, https://www.cfr.org/article/how-populism-has-proven-lethal-pandemic.
“Support For Populist Politics ‘Collapsed’ During the Pandemic: Global Report”. Phys.Org, 2022, https://phys.org/news/2022-01-populist-politics-collapsed-pandemic-global.html.
Taylor, Chloe. “Populist Politics Lost Support Globally During the Pandemic, Research Finds”. CNBC, 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/18/populist-politics-lost-support-during-the-pandemic-research-finds.html.