key: cord-0076442-u622p90g
authors: Rockman, Bert A.
title: Introduction to special issue on global populism and governance
date: 2022-03-31
journal: GPPG
DOI: 10.1007/s43508-022-00037-y
sha: bf1d3642c9f1166136f0dc1ca6ed27150a2962ca
doc_id: 76442
cord_uid: u622p90g

nan

dominated the government in Rome. That emphasis was regional nativism but not nationalism as such. With a change in party leadership came a change in the name of the party transforming its internal regional nativism into Italian nationalism. Woods goes to show how this alteration affects policy framing and development.

From this, two articles, one by David Barker and Ryan DeTamble and another by John Hibbing examine empirically the support base of populism with particular emphasis on the American case. Barker and DeTamble, as with Woods, note that concepts such as nativism, nationalism, and authoritarianism are not intrinsic to populism. In that regard, they distinguish empirically between economic populists, cultural populists, and ideologically constrained populists using a wide variety of socio-economic, attitudinal, and psychological measures. The first two of these seem to be polar opposites inasmuch as they reflect very dissimilar values. Notably, in the context of U.S. politics, "economic populists" tend strongly to be on the political left whereas "cultural populists" tend strongly to be on the political right. However, neither conforms to all of the stereotypes used to depict them. The analysis further compares the predictive characteristics of these two streams of populism with those of non-populists and of ideologically constrained populists. The authors conclude by suggesting that while their empirical analysis is based on U.S. data, there are reasons to think that their findings would plausibly be applicable to both Latin American and European contexts as well.

John Hibbing asks what it is that motivates the core supporters of Donald Trump in the case of the United States and by extension those of similar leaders across the world. Contrary to some mainstream explanations based on authoritarian mindsets, Hibbing's survey-based evidence suggest that this support hinges less on comprehensive authoritarian mindsets than on the specific support for policies that protect the inner core of society from outsiders, including immigrants, minorities, and norm violators. This support base is characterized by what Hibbing calls a "securitarian" personality more attracted to anarchy than to authority as such. Authority is typically synonymous with the preservation of institutions, stability, and order. But Hibbing is skeptical of that as the organizing principle of Trump's base or those of similar leaders elsewhere. The greater concern is that a significant minority of populations in many countries view their own governments as illegitimate, strongly implying thereby that the risks of authoritarianism and omnipotent government are at least equaled by those of citizens who are "insular, exclusive, and divisive" leading to dysfunctional government.

Does the formation of national political coalitions emphasizing a populist bent affect trans-national organizations whose policies traditionally have emphasized fiscal restraint and government reform? Utilizing a framework of two-level games discussed by Robert Putnam as a means of conceptualizing bargaining in international trade negotiations involving the interaction between domestic audiences and potential international trade partners, Edoardo Ongaro, Fabrizio Di Mascio, and Alessandro Natalini discuss how a coalition of populist parties in Italy interacted with the European Union (EU) during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis to alter the tendencies of the European Monetary Union (EMU) in a direction contrary to the imposition of further disciplinary strictures on the more fragile public economies within the EU. In fact, exactly the opposite occurred. Hard hit early on by the pandemic, the EMU Introduction to special issue on global populism and governance produced reforms to provide recovery and resilience support for Italy and other southern and eastern tier European governments with no quid pro quo demanded for internal governmental reforms. The authors hypothesize that the EU turn to a logic of solidarity with affected governments that displaced its traditional logic of conditionality (dependence upon internal reform) in part because of the pandemic emergency but also because of the rise of populism reflecting the Italian governmental coalition at the time and the need to co-opt and moderate traditional anti-EU sentiment from such a coalition.

While populist parties have been common in Italy and also different from one another in their principal emphases, Hongqiang Lyu and Youxing Lang focus their attention on a party in the United Kingdom that played a prominent role in support of the Brexit referendum, namely the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). The party, founded in the early 1990s, had very low levels of support until 2014 when it won more than a fourth of the British vote for the European Parliament. UKIP followed that up with a good showing for a non-mainstream party in the 2015 British general election taking over 12% of the national vote. After the Brexit referendum passed in the Spring of 2016; however, its charismatic leader, Nigel Farage stepped down as the party's leader, claiming that the party had accomplished its mission with the referendum vote to leave Europe. Generally speaking, UKIP's constituency fits well with a model of hyper-nationalism (low levels of political trust, anti-immigration, anti-Europe). It was the victim of its own success. Such parties are often thought to be "flash parties", momentarily risen from the dormant only to descend again once it has achieved its principal ambition.

But where did its followers go? Although there is no definitive answer to that question, in all likelihood its support transferred to the Conservative Party, currently under the leadership of a pro-Brexit government. The authors conclude that the nature of the British electoral system (plurality winner-takes-all) and its subsequent system of representation (single district, single representative) likely lead to a brief "flash" existence for protest movements organized in the form of parties. Once the cause fades away, so does the party. But that does not mean that the voters sentiments have similarly faded.

Finally, B. Guy Peters asks whether a populist regime in the past has any effect on social outcomes in the present. In the form of a natural experiment, Peters compares states in the American South that had populist governors and traditions from those that did not. Are there any lasting effects? Surprisingly, there appear to be very few. In fact, in some cases the states that had no prior populist influence seem to have done better in achieving good social outcomes than those that did have populist traditions.

In sum, the articles in this special issue on populism take us from grappling with the concept of populism itself in its operational forms to dealing with the complexities of its support base and available constituencies to understanding how and why mutual accommodations develop between populist dominated governments and technocratic trans-national organizations. This issue then closes first with an article that relates the institutional structure of party systems, election rules, and representational outcomes to the viability or lack thereof of populist parties and, therefore, the ways in which populist sentiment can be expressed, and finally whether the

of a populist regime has long term positive social impact when compared to non-populist regimes

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