What is populism and how does it shape global politics?

Even if French populist candidate Marine Le Pen does not win the election, her movement will not disappear. This is part of a global trend. Read the full transcript below. NOTE: This video incorrectly identifies Sheri Berman as a professor of political science at Barnard University. The institution is actually Barnard College. Subscribe to our channel! https://www.youtube.com/thinkprogressvideo Moving the news forward. ThinkProgress is a news website dedicated to providing our readers with rigorous reporting and analysis from a progressive perspective. To learn more, visit http://thinkprogress.org/. Watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/thinkprogressvideo/videos Follow ThinkProgress on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thinkprogress And on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thinkprogress/ TRANSCRIPT Friday, May 5, 2017 SHERI BERMAN, Barnard University: Populism can be very difficult to define because it varies from one national context to another. The one thing that parties, movements and politicians described as populist tend to share is this insistence that elites and traditional institutions ignore the demands and needs of the masses. There is a very “us versus them” aspect to populism. They are in reality a consequence of the failures of other parties and institutions, rather than their cause. Among left-wing populists, the enemy is usually some sort of financial or business elite. In many other countries, the enemy may be immigrants, people who look different from us, people who think differently from us. The social and economic problems Europe is currently grappling with began decades ago and have gotten progressively worse over time. So what we’ve really had is this kind of amalgamation of economic and social issues that I think is driving many voters to embrace radical change. The upcoming French elections offer us a great prism to understand the meaning and rise of populism. Marine Le Pen, who represents the National Front, has become an incredibly powerful figure. MARINE LE PEN, Front National presidential candidate: The time has come to free the French from the arrogant elite who seek to dictate to you how to live your life. Because yes, I am the people’s candidate. BERMAN: Should Macron win and then not convince voters that his program can actually solve their problems? we should expect it to come back even stronger in the next presidential election. Germany, along with France, remains the main actor, the main power in Europe, so what happens there really has a huge impact beyond the country’s borders. ALEXANDER GAULAND, co-leader of Alternative for Germany: We want to keep our country of origin, keep our identity and we are proud to be German. BERMAN: Only a few months ago, it was predicted that the populist right, the Alternative for Germany, would do well in national elections. Today it appears to have declined, partly due to infighting. Of course, historically, due to Germany’s past, there is a real obstacle to the rise of far-right populism in Germany. So the fact that we are seeing even the seeds of it actually reflects the depth of structural changes in European political life. The Netherlands, a populist country, is expected to win. Even though Wilders didn’t win, he managed to increase his vote count. So I would not view the election result as a sign of absolute defeat but as a sign that we need to continue to be concerned about the underlying trends that fueled the rise of these parties. It is in some ways much more dangerous in countries like Poland and Hungary because the institutions and norms of democracy are much weaker and therefore much easier to circumvent or even overthrow. The real danger of populism, it’s true, is that it moves from populism to authoritarianism. We saw this happen in Hungary, we saw this happen in Turkey. Of course, this also happened in Venezuela. And people are very worried about what is happening in a country like Poland. But if we view populism as the consequence of growing discontent and the inability of elites and institutions to deal with it; there might then be a glimmer of hope in populism. Populists tend to raise issues that concern many people. They tend to focus on problems that are not resolved. If elites and traditional institutions can look and say, “We better find better ways to deal with these problems and concerns,” then the populists will have performed, oddly enough, a kind of backdoor service. Otherwise, we can expect that support for populists will continue to grow and the problems are unlikely to be resolved.

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