Populism

Populism: simple demagoguery or threat to democracy? Ilze Tralmaka In recent years the term “populism” has become a part of public debate, especially during the period leading up to election. However, we seem to find different understandings of the term in media, political science and in everyday language. This article attempts to briefly explain what is populism, does it pose threats to democracy and what to do about it. Populism has been on the rise for more than a couple of years now. There have been many attempts to explain the similarities and the root causes for this success in various states and to determine, on the basis of those, the best ways to tackle the challenge that populism may present to democratic discourse and to democracy itself. With the European Parliament elections looming in 2019, there is a growing unease about the prospect of Eurosceptic populist parties finally being successful at uniting themselves and becoming a major, if not the biggest force in the European Parliament.1 On the national level early 2018 with general elections in Czech Republic, Italy and Hungary have shown that the threat of populism has by no means faded and it is high time for the states next on the general election schedule such as Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sweden, Luxembourg and others to take note and learn the lessons. Nobody will doubt that being called a populist is not a compliment. Populism is often closely associated with racism, xenophobia and extreme nationalism and we cannot say populists have not given us ample reason for the birth of this association.2 Populists themselves, however, are not striving for a designated title “populist” and prefer to think about themselves as “patriots”.3 When thinking about populists, we instinctively imagine characters that frequent our own information bubble or most likely are geographically relevant to us. For me the first association with a stereotypical populist would have to be the former United Kingdom Independence party leader, Member of the European Parliament Nigel Farage, the current US President Donald Trump or Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orbán, who all are more or less the on the right side of the political spectrum. However, is populism exclusively a far-right ideology? Is it even a self-sufficient ideology or rather an instrument that can be used by all sides of the political spectrum? Is it inherently dangerous to democratic discourse or democracy itself? And, finally, what can we do about it? What is populism? To answer these questions we need to have a common understanding of populism as a notion. When you google “populism”, the search engine will point you to other suggested searches like “nationalism”, “right-wing”, “demagoguery”. Everyone will also remember Stephen Hawking’s harsh description of Donald Trump in early 2016, where Mr. Hawking famously referred to the