A Political Explanation of Authoritarian Populism

A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Zürn, Michael Article — Published Version How Non-Majoritarian Institutions Make Silent Majorities Vocal: A Political Explanation of Authoritarian Populism Perspectives on Politics Provided in Cooperation with: WZB Berlin Social Science Center Suggested Citation: Zürn, Michael (2021) : How Non-Majoritarian Institutions Make Silent Majorities Vocal: A Political Explanation of Authoritarian Populism, Perspectives on Politics, ISSN 1541-0986, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Iss. 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Second, the rise of this new cleavage and authoritarian populists cannot be reduced to one of the two well-known explanations, namely the economic insecurity perspective and cultural backlash perspective. This current paper develops a political explanation that integrates struggles over policies with a focus on endogenous dynamics of political institutions in and beyond democracies. In this account, it is the historical compromise between labor and capital that has triggered a dynamic in which the rise of so-called non-majoritarian institutions (NMIs)—such as central banks, constitutional courts, and international organizations (IOs)—have locked in liberal policies in most consolidated democracies. This explanation brings together the party cartelization thesis with the observation that NMIs are a major target of contemporary populism. The explanatory model is probed by translating it into descriptive propositions and by showing step by step how the sequence unfolded in electoral democracies. n 2018, populist parties like Geert Wilders’ Party for government in consolidated democracies either as chief I Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) received an executives by capturing a mainstream party (mostly in average of 22.2% of the vote in thirty-three European majority voting systems, as in the United States) or as part countries (Timbro Populism Index 2019). While authori- of a coalition government where no party can govern on tarian populists are thus far beneath a majority of the vote their own (mostly in proportional voting systems as in in most societies, some of them have even made it into Italy). Outside the group of consolidated democracies, they are even more successful. In some large countries like India, Brazil, or Turkey, as well as in some Eastern A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided European countries, they are in power, and they still by the authors precedes the References section. maintain elections that are open to opposition parties. In any case, populists claim to act in the name of the people Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: and display significant electoral support. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/7BCD4I. Concurrently, all the populists mentioned have an authoritarian bend and “negativist” approach (Urbinati Michael Zürn is Director of the Global Governance unit at 2019,22).Theyare“anti-pluralist” in the sense that they WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Professor of Inter- often hold a de-proceduralized and homogeneous notion of national Relations at Freie Universität Berlin (michael. “the silent majority.”1 They are “anti-liberal” in the sense [email protected]). He is director of the DFG-funded Cluster of that they question individual and especially minority rights. Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script” (SCRIPTS) Authoritarian populists also are “anti-internationalist,” since and member of the Berlin–Brandenburg Academy of Sciences they unconditionally support national sovereignty and reject and Humanities as well as the Academia Europaea. Previ- any political authority beyond the nation-state. These nega- ously, he served as Founding Dean of the Hertie School. His tivist positions are bound together by pitting the “people” work focuses on the emergence and functioning of inter- and against a “corrupt cosmopolitan elite” that belies the natives. supranational institutions and organizations and their Authoritarian populists challenge liberal orders (Levitsky impact on political orders. A Theory of Global Governance and Ziblatt 2018). Liberal orders contain commitments to was published by Oxford University Press, 2018. individual rights, the rule of law, democracy, and relatively doi:10.1017/S1537592721001043 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1 Article | How Non-Majoritarian Institutions Make Silent Majorities Vocal open borders (for a discussion of the liberal international set of ideas that not only depicts society as divided between order, cf. Lake, Martin, and Risse 2021). the ‘pure people’ versus the ‘corrupt elite,’ but also claims Authoritarian populists are a worldwide phenomenon, that politics is about respecting popular sovereignty at any and, in most electoral democracies, there is at least one cost” (Mudde 2004, 542). Accordingly, the emphasis on strong authoritarian populist party in the parliament. Why anti-elitism and popular sovereignty is a thin ideology, do we witness such a strong growth of anti-liberal forces i.e., a specific set of ideas that is distinct from thick twenty-five years after the triumph of liberalism that came ideologies—such as liberalism—because it has limited with the fall of the Berlin Wall? The answer has two programmatic scope (Freeden 2003). components. First, authoritarian populism is put into While I follow the ideational approach and consider context; it has not sneaked into a given political space populism as more than just a political strategy of leaders but is co-constitutive of a new cleavage in most modern independent of their underlying political vision (Weyland societies. Second, the argument is introduced that the rise 2017), “authoritarian populism” is considered to be a full of this new cleavage and authoritarian populists cannot be ideology. From a cleavage perspective (Lipset and Rokkan reduced to one of the two well-known competing explan- 1967; Mair 2005), no ideology speaks to all potential ations (Norris and Inglehart 2019; Przeworski 2019, issues, but it responds to the urgent problems of a given ch. 6). The economic insecurity perspective explains it by era. In this perspective, ideologies only develop in inter- focusing on the distributive consequences of economic action with competing ones and bind together the topics globalization and post-industrial transformation. The cul- relevant for a given cleavage. Such an ideology does not tural backlash perspective suggests that authoritarian popu- depend on sophisticated philosophical texts but on the lism is the result of a retro action against the value change “capacity to fuse ideas and sentiments” to “create public indicated by terms like post-materialism, feminism, and justifications for the exercise of power” (Müller 2011, 92). multi-culturalism. Both of these explanations capture key The anti-liberalism, anti-internationalism, anti-pluralism, aspects, but they seem to ignore the underlying politics. and anti-elitism of authoritarian populism connects to the Therefore, a political explanation is developed that inte- relevant issues of the new cleavage by privileging closed grates struggles over policies with a focus on the endogenous borders and the will of the majority, as well as by rejecting dynamics of political institutions during recent decades. authority beyond the nation-state. Accordingly, the historical compromise between labor and Authoritarian populism,

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