I have an article in UnHerd adapting some of the ideas from Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster, which is out on Tuesday. Unlike other UnHerd pieces, this one is ungated.
The rise of President Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party, moving it in a populist direction. On the Left, we see the rise of figures like Maine senatorial candidate Graham Platner and other DSA-affiliated candidates, indicating that the Democrats might not be far behind.
While much has been written about the rise of populism from the American perspective, what we are witnessing in the United States is part of a global phenomenon.
Just months before Americans first elected Trump, the British public voted to leave the European Union, a move that had practically no support among media, academic, and political elites. The Populism in Power database shows an approximately fivefold increase in the number of populist leaders and parties ruling over democracies between 1990 and 2019.
An analysis of six major democracies — the UK, the US, Australia, Germany, France, and Canada — reveals a significant decline in support for traditional center-Left and center-Right parties, dropping from about three-quarters of the vote share in 2000 to just over half in 2024.
Latin America is also seeing one of its perennial populist waves, and populism is even making inroads into Asia. Ruling elites even in nondemocracies, such as Putin’s Russia, are adopting aspects of populist rhetoric as legitimization strategies.
Beyond how we feel about any particular candidate or party, perhaps the political question of our time is whether we should embrace or reject this trend. Approaching this topic from a social science background, my inclination is to first look for data. Practically all of it points to the lesson that countries should avoid populist leaders if they want to maintain freedom and achieve economic growth. How do we know this? Ideally, you’d have randomized experiments where you assign some countries to be ruled by populists and others by normal leaders.
One of the cool things about writing a book is seeing smart people you admire engage with some of the ideas you care most about. On that note, here are reviews from Robin Hanson, Bentham’s Bulldog, and Scott Sumner. The one by Sumner in particular I think had a lot of good points, and was interesting in critiquing the book for not being anti-populist enough. I agree that the victories of populists tend to be short-lived and democratic institutions are better at aggregating information in the long run and building lasting institutions. Then again, Peru has been doing pretty well since Fujimori, even though they ended up locking him up. Maybe the ideal path for a dysfunctional country is to get a populist leader to clean things up, and then crucify him but stay on the same general path? Anyway, I appreciate the spirit of the review, which emphasizes that human societies are complicated, and knowing why populism tends to work out poorly simply gives you one more tool with which to understand the world.
We’re now at the day before release, so time is running out to preorder, which you can do at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Just send your receipt to hanania.preorders@gmail.com. Reminder that the offer is only available to those who aren’t already paid subscribers and haven’t already preordered. More details here.
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