What Is Populism? QUOTES

1 " Even for the most minimal definitions of democracy—as a mechanism to ensure peaceful turnovers in power after a process of popular will-formation —it is crucial that citizens be well informed about politics; otherwise, governments can hardly be held accountable. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

2 " Many populist victors continue to behave like victims; majorities act like mistreated minorities. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

3 " A “crisis” is not an objective state of affairs but a matter of interpretation. Populist will often eagerly frame a situation as a crisis, calling it an existential threat, because such a crisis then serves to legitimate populist governance. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

4 " Populists are, after all, often deemed to be heirs of the Jacobins. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

5 " Populist constitutions are designed to limit the power of nonpopulists, even when the latter form the government. Conflict then becomes inevitable. The constitution ceases to be a framework for politics and instead is treated as a purely partisan instrument to capture the polity. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

6 " The danger to democracies today is not some comprehensive ideology that systematically denies democratic ideals. The danger is populism—a degraded form of democracy that promises to make good on democracy’s highest ideals (“Let the people rule!”). The danger comes, in other words, from within the democratic world—the political actors posing the danger speak the language of democratic values. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

7 " ...even if ballots are not stuffed by the ruling party on the day of the election, a vote can be undemocratic if the opposition can never make its case properly and journalists are prevented from reporting a government’s failures. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

8 " In short, the problem is never the populist’s imperfect capacity to represent the people’s will; rather, it’s always the institutions that somehow produce the wrong outcomes. So even if they look properly democratic, there must be something going on behind the scenes that allows corrupt elites to continue to betray the people. Conspiracy theories are thus not a curious addition to populist rhetoric; they are rooted in and emerge from the very logic of populism itself. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

9 " Principled antipluralism and the commitment to “direct representation” explain another feature of populist politics "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

10 " In addition to being antielitist, populists are always antipluralist. Populists claim that they, and they alone, represent the people. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

11 " … egy PiS-kormány vagy egy Fidesz-kormány nem csupán egy PiS-államot vagy egy Fidesz-államot alakít ki; arra törekszik, hogy létrehozza a PiS-népet, illetve a Fidesz-népet (gyakran valamiféle ezzel megbízott, kormányközeli civil társadalom segédletével). A populisták megteremtik azt a homogén népet, aminek mindig is a nevében beszéltek. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

12 " populism is strong in places with weak party systems. Where previously coherent and entrenched party systems broke down, chances for populists clearly increased "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

13 " Populists, by contrast, will persist with their representative claim no matter what; because their claim is of moral and symbolic- not an empirical- nature, it cannot be disproven. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

14 " populists have no problem with representation as long as they are the representatives; similarly, they are fine with elites as long as they are the elites leading the people. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

15 " In Italy, it is not Beppe Grillo’s complaints about Italy’s la casta that should lead one to worry about him as a populist but his assertion that his movement wants (and deserves) nothing less than 100 percent of the seats in parliament, because all other contenders are supposedly corrupt and immoral. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

16 " populist parties are particularly prone to internal authoritarianism. If there is only one common good and only one way to represent it faithfully (as opposed to a self-consciously partisan but also self-consciously fallible interpretation of what the common good might be), then disagreement within the party that claims to be the sole legitimate representative of the common good obviously cannot be permissible.61 And if there is only one “symbolically correct” representation of the real people—the understanding on which populists always fall back, as we have seen—then there’s also not much point in debating that. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

17 " What distinguishes democratic politicians from populists is that the former make representative claims in the form of something like hypotheses that can be empirically disproven on the basis of the actual results of regular procedures and institutions like elections.67 Or, as Paulina Ochoa Espejo has argued, democrats make claims about the people that are self-limiting and are conceived of as fallible.68 In some sense, they’d have to subscribe to Beckett’s famous words in Worstward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Populists, by contrast, will persist with their representative claim no matter what; because their claim is of a moral and symbolic—not an empirical—nature, it cannot be disproven. When in opposition, populists are bound to cast doubt on the institutions that produce the “morally wrong” outcomes. Hence they can accurately be described as “enemies of institutions”—although not of institutions in general. They are merely the enemies of mechanisms of representation that fail to vindicate their claim to excusive moral representation. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

18 " Not everyone who criticizes elites is a populist. In addition to being antielitist, populists are antipluralist. They claim that they and they alone represent the people. All other political competitors are essentially illegitimate, and anyone who does not support them is not properly part of the people. When in opposition, populists will necessarily insist that elites are immoral, whereas the people are a moral, homogeneous entity whose will cannot err. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

19 " It can often seem that populists claim to represent the common good as willed by the people. On closer inspection, it turns out that what matters for populists is less the product of a genuine process of will-formation or a common good that anyone with common sense can glean than a symbolic representation of the “real people” from which the correct policy is then deduced. This renders the political position of a populist immune to empirical refutation. Populists can always play off the “real people” or “silent majority” against elected representatives and the official outcome of a vote. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?

20 " Popülistler, halkı sadece kendilerinin temsil ettiği fikrine dayanarak yönetirler. Somut olarak, devleti işgal etmek, kayırmacılık ve yozlaşma, eleştirel sivil topluma benzeyen herşeyi bastırmak gibi eylemleri olur. Popülist tahayyül içinde bu eylemlerin açık bir ahlaki onayı vardır ve saklanmalarına ihtiyaç duyulmaz. Popülistler anayasalar yapabilirler ve bunun sonucu partizanca ve 'dışlayıcı' olur. Ayrıca bu metinler, popülistlerin orijinal ve sahici olduğu varsayılan bir halk iradesini sürdürecek şekilde, seçimleri kaybetse de, iktidarda kalmalarını sağlar. Sonuç olarak, er ya da geç, bir çatışma olacaktır. "

― Jan-Werner Müller , What Is Populism?