Can the young save democracy from the grip of neoliberalism and populism?
Populism is not just a symptom of older people’s nostalgia for traditional values, writes Henrik P Bang. It is a rejection of a global neoliberal creed that pits individuals against each other. The hard-won social capital and notions of fairness that older generations prize have been replaced by a race for success in which human relationships exist as much online as in the real world. But if the young are not tempted by populism, they should realise that the technologies they have adopted can be used for political as well as technocratic ends.
A woman uses her phone in Trafalgar Square. Photo: Vladimir Yaitskiy via a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence
It is commonplace to discuss populism as an interim obstacle to liberal democracy’s development towards freedom and equality. Populism is widely claimed to result from a periodic growth and legitimation crisis, creating rising economic inequality and cultural backlash. This crisis threatens the crucial equilibrium between pluralism and stability in liberal democracy which is a precondition of keeping power in check and hinders its concentration and abuse. As Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart claim in Trump, Brexit and the Age of Populism (Harvard Kennedy School, 2016, p. 31):
‘Western societies face more unpredictable contests, anti-establishment populist challenges to the legitimacy of liberal democracy, and potential disruptions to long-established patterns of party competition’.
Populism is considered a menace because it leans towards authoritarianism and makes use of ‘gaslighting’ to win the public debate over those who try to reason and deliberate with it. Populism favours conflict over consensus and the national home of ‘the people’ over the globalised world of reflexive individuals. But liberal democrats can console themselves that populism mostly enjoys support from the older generations (2016, p. 7):
‘They are the groups most likely to feel that they have become strangers from the predominant values in their own country, left behind by progressive tides of cultural change which they do not share.’
In particular, older white men are intolerant of all progress – ‘but this is a shrinking sector swimming against the tide of generational value change’ (p. 31). They will not be able to hinder the progress of values of globalisation and multiculturalism.
Populism in Norris’ and Inglehart’s analysis is more a generational conflict than a reaction against liberal democracy as such. In my view, however, it is neither. What nativist populism primarily reacts against are globalist neoliberalism, and its professionalisation and individualisation of politics from the local to the global. The reason why in particular ‘older white men’ have become so angry and hateful is surely not ‘traditional values’ but the undermining of the liberal democratic values of fairness, trust and equal opportunities that they have grown up with.
In fact, the neoliberalist takeover of liberal democracy has put an end to popular democracy as they know it. Only professionals from the private, public and voluntary domain count in globalist neoliberalism’s political system, and their networking and competitive games have left ‘the amateurs’ in their political community largely voiceless and powerless. As Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser put it in their inspiring Populism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2017):
‘we define populism as a thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite,” and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.
Norris and Inglehardt (2016, p. 6) take Mudde and Kaltwasser’s definition to mean that populism is ‘a loose set of ideas that share three core features: anti establishment, authoritarianism, and nativism.’ But this is not their position. In his view ‘populism is most fundamentally juxtaposed to liberal democracy rather than to democracy per se or to any other model of democracy.’ Hence, Mudde and Kaltwasser do not think that populism is ipso facto authoritarian, but, like Norris and Inglehardt, they do blur the difference between liberal democracy and neoliberalist democracy.
However, later on in their book, Mudde and Kaltwasser do admit that although populism mostly has occurred within the context of liberal democracy, it is primarily a reaction against the surrender of all ‘government-able’ parties on the left-right axis to globalist neoliberalism’s political economy. As they emphasise: [even] ‘social democratic parties…have embraced economic globalisation, European integration, and multiculturalism.’ No one has expressed this change of goal in democracy from equal freedom to unceasing competition and growth better than the former Danish Minister of Finance, the social democrat Bjarne Corydon. In an interview from 2013, he announced: “I believe in the competition state as the new welfare state.”
Social capital and equality have been sidelined
The crisis for social democratic parties and the flight of their members and supporters towards populist parties has very much to do with their surrender to globalist neoliberalism’s idea of progress as based on professional managers’ permanent reform efforts. This is also why populism cannot be identified by ‘cultural backlash’ and ‘economic decline’ only – or even primarily. In the US, for example, liberal democracy has always been claimed to rely on the accumulation of social capital in the civic culture. As Robert Putnam and Lewis Feldstein most succinctly have defined it in Better Together (N.Y. Simon and Schuster 2004, p. 9):
‘Creating robust social capital takes time and effort. For the most part, it develops through extensive and time-consuming face-to-face conversation between two individuals or among small groups. [This is required] to build the trust and mutual understanding that characterise the relationships that are the basis of social capital. So we see no way that social capital can be created instantaneously or en masse.’
The social democrats who shaped the Nordic welfare states were heavily influenced by this notion of social capital inherent to the US civic culture concept (Almond and Verba 1963). Like ‘older white men’ in the US they grew up in ‘slower’, less globalised and diversified times where communication and interaction were very much face-to-face and local in nature. They were socialised into believing that deliberation, negotiation and compromise take time and depend on ‘copresence‘, and relations of mutual trust. But neoliberalism prioritises competition and inequality over social capital and equality, and that obviously favours those ‘professionals’ who are better at exercising their human faculties for getting success and ‘making a difference’.
No wonder, therefore, that the tension between actors in political institutions and associated individuals in the political community today has grown to the point where democracy is approaching an existential crisis. Liberal democracy has traditionally emphasised the relationship between the building of robust institutions and the accumulation of social capital. But the populist notion of popular sovereignty as relying on the exercise of strong and decisive leadership has always been an element of liberal democracy as well. So in a way liberal democracy and populism form a political unity:
Table 1: The liberal-populist model
| System | Lifeworld | |
| Populism | Strong, decisive leadership | Popular sovereignty |
| Liberal democracy | Robust institutions | Social capital |
The crisis for democracy is that globalist neoliberalism is articulated up against all four cells in the liberal-populist model: it revolves around the relationship between soft and smart professional managers in the system, and reflexive individuals in the lifeworld. Globalist neoliberalism has converted politics into a public spectacle for ‘celebrities’ front stage and a technocratic reform game for managers backstage. It’s no wonder that populism has succeeded in portraying ‘the system’ as ‘rigged’ and as having robbed ‘the people’ of its dignity and sovereignty. Meanwhile, populism is a reminder of the ‘good old days’ where popular rule was more than an empty word.
Why the young reject populist politics
But populism does not resonate with the young, who have grown up with global neoliberalist management. This has ‘nudged’ them to seek success above all else from the day they met each other in the daycare centre. The young are not disciplined to comply by ‘hard power’ and ‘duty norms’ but by ‘soft power’ and ‘engagement norms’. In addition, they have learned from day one that their own life is not a life peculiar to themselves. Everyone has to be active, inventive, faster, ‘change ready’ and self-responsible to attain success in neoliberalism’s competitive world.
Most young people would consider the idea of ‘robust, creative social capital’ surreal. They have no time for living such a slow and quiet life in any of their everyday practices. To the degree that they communicate and interact ‘face-to-face’, it is mostly online. They live their life in the virtual realities provided by smartphones, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and technological gadgets. Understandably, the old do not feel so much at ease in this virtual space as do the young. To the old, all the new gadgets are merely tools, whereas to the young they are inseparable parts of their personality.
The anxieties called forth by accelerating globalisation differ substantially between the generations. Many older people feel that their private and social spaces are being invaded and intimidated by undemocratic foreign forces and influences. In contrast, most young people are rather afraid that they will be outpaced by globalist neoliberalism and miss the possibilities for personal success and development afforded by it. This is another reason why populism mostly appeals to older generations. It reminds them of a more nativist, harmonious and quiet past where they did not always have to fear losing their jobs, houses or life due to ‘intruding foreigners’.
Perhaps the young can save democracy, and recouple system and lifeworld? The everyday world they live in is not like the system world of ‘professionals’. They are not just reflexive consumers and dedicated to success. They connect with each other in movements and organisations online and offline, to problematise how the globalised neoliberal technocracy handles the risks and challenges they confront in their everyday life. They show that the road ahead for democracy is to ‘think globally and act locally’. It’s about time for the young to realise that they must extend these practices to cover active participation as voters, supporters and members of parties.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit.
Henrik P Bang is Professor of Governance at the University of Canberra Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis. This post reflects a recent talk given at the Politics Department, University of Sydney.
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Who are these “the young”? Everywhere in the world? All countries? Presumably the author has read of studies (for example by the respected Friedrich Ebert institute) which make clear that “the young” (in for example Hungary and France) are the main supporters of what are often simplistically described as “populist” movements throughout the EU. The ‘far right’ Jobbik party in Hungary was recently at 50%+ of young voters. Had only young voters turned out earlier in the year, Marine Le Pen would have won the presidency in France. The young (and specially the 16-18) are Golden Dawn’s great hope in Greece. The links to this are legion as are the studies.
The problem with trying to bang the jigsaw pieces in to this theory of all young people leading the revolt against ‘populism’ is that it is simply not representative of the whole picture, or even a third of it. It all sounds nicey and cosey and lovey, right down to the grisly and wildly comic heading about the young ‘saving’ democracy… but it misses the main points and misleads. In reference to Brexit (of course this has to be in such a biased article, spoiling it and crashing all over logic and fact with the obligatory irrational and whiny swipe against those who voted to restore democracy from the unelected and unaccountable EU as if THEY were the anti-democrats), the young are supposedly saying “tomorrow belongs to us” and are supposedly instinctively in favour of the glorious EU and all its works. But if you look in the UK at attitudes towards the EU over a long period of time, until three years ago the 18-24s were the most eurosceptic after the 65+. In most EU countries they still are. It is the elderly in France and Greece and Hungary who are most pro-EU. The middle class and bourgeois youth changed ‘side’ in the UK because of the remorseless focus by the anti-EU movement on immigration, which they worried might rebound on their own desire to travel. Fine and totally right, but it is not altruism and democracy they want to save, but self interest.
If you just look at the very regular yougov polling for several years until that point, you will see a pretty consistent picture that the young at that time represented UKIP’s 2nd largest constituency…again after the 65+. When I was responsible for the party’s efforts in colleges, we were amazed at the support and interest in the anti-EU message (2002-04).
The happy side of this is not reported at all – instead of guff about the young rescuing democracy (aw shucks, you actually mean ‘siding with us’), it seems that they have finally found a voice and the ability to translate this into voting and making themselves heard. It matters not that I think they are misguided. And they are voting because of the ‘right reasons’ – self interest and a perception (as the 65+ have used to great effect for half a century) that you vote to get what you want and to reinforce your own interests. Soon the young will realise that their self interest is in departure from the EU and greater links with the whole world, and they will swing back from this ‘aberrant four year interregnum’ of opposition to Brexit…and fall into line with their fellow youth throughout Europe, bringing their new found votes with them…
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I’m slightly troubled by the chains of apparent assumptions in this article (despite the quotes) – but then I’m not a political scientist.
Two aspects were not discussed.
Firstly populism can be described in terms of social psychology, as gang behaviour or tribal. There is a dangerous group sense where individual thoughts and opinions are suppressed. Social media is very successful at engendering this – and groups can be easily manipulated by e.g. Cambridge Analytica.
Secondly, over my 73 years (I’m an angry old man!), I’ve witnessed the removal of “service” as a factor in society – and the wholesale take-over by monetarism and capitalism into every aspect of our society. It’s hard to think of any aspect that hasn’t. So not just neoliberal, but also liberal democracy and the new on-line populism has to be described in terms of the power of money.
Finally, democracy is a system that acknowledges that every one of us has our own attitudes, beliefs and opinions, and – amazingly! – must give equal power to all of us whatever our views. We should be able to express these through our choice of MPs in secrecy through the ballot box. Democracy should therefore be the perfect antidote to the dangers of populism.