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Studies in Comparative International Development

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15-06-2021

Populism and Nationalism: An Overview of Similarities and Differences

Author: Ashutosh Varshney

Published in: Studies in Comparative International Development | Issue 2/2021

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Abstract

Both populism and nationalism are rooted in the idea of popular sovereignty. They look alike when populism gravitates towards the right, identifying “the people” with an ethnic or racial majority, and when nationalism turns against the minorities. But populism can also go towards the left, embracing the low-income citizenry as the nation’s “true people,” just as nationalism can include ethnic and racial diversity under its umbrella. Some other key differences are also noteworthy. Populism is inevitably defined as an anti-elitist doctrine, whereas nationalism is often led by the elites. Moreover, embedded as it normally is in state institutions, laws, school textbooks, museums and maps, nationalism can be a state ideology, taking routinized forms. In contrast, populist politics thrives on a virtually relentless mobilization of popular energy. Nationalism acquires this fervent form mainly under two conditions: when it is secessionary, trying to break states up, or when it becomes majoritarian, attacking internal minorities. Otherwise, nationalism can easily exist in a quieter register.

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Ding, Slater, and Zengin (this issue).

Bonikowski, Bart. 2017.

If the poor come entirely, or preponderantly, from one ethnic or racial community, then ethnicity/race and class can coincide, and such lower-class populism can also take an ethnic/racial form. Such systems are called vertical ethnic orders by Horowitz (1985). Bolivia under Evo Morales is an example.

Most of these articles were initially presented as papers at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association (August 2019) and the Social Science History Association (November 2019).

Brubaker 2017 and 2020; de la Torre 2017; Moffitt 2016.

There is also an argument that populism should be viewed in strategic terms, not in ideational terms at all. See Weyland 2017.

Brubaker 2020; Levitsky and Loxton 2013; Mudde 2004; Laclau 2005; Mastropaolo 2008; Ostiguy 2017.

Another objection to populism’s alleged anti-elitism takes a different form. According to some scholars, if the business elites support populist regimes, as they often do, then they can be called anti-political establishment, but not anti-elite. This objection depends on how the term “elite” is defined. See Evans (2020) and Heller (2020).

Jenne et al. (this issue).

Ding et al. (this issue).

In a similar vein, De Cleen (2017) says that populism has a “down/up” structure where people are presented as underdogs and elites at the top as illegitimately privileged, whereas nationalism has an “in/out” structure, castigating non-nationals or non-citizens as adversaries, not the elites.

It can certainly be argued that when it was first born as an ideology, nationalism was anti-elite in that it was against empires and imperial rulers were the elite then. See Anderson (1983).

Ding et al. (this issue).

de laTorre 2017, 7.

Hawkins 2009, 1044.

See Jenne et al. (this issue).

Betz 1994.

See also the discussion in Varshney, 2002, Ch. 3.

Singh, this issue.

Schmitt 1996, 28.

Muller, 2018, 61.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v36Zj5NAIiA (translated from Hindi). For a fuller discussion of Modi as a populist, see Varshney 2019.

Singh (this issue), citing Plotkin 2010 and de la Torre 2017.

See the account in Muller (2016). Also see Mishra (2016).

Rousseau, 1985, The Government of Poland, 11–12.

Rousseau, 1968, 23.

Laclau (2005), however, argues that populism does not have to privilege visceral impulses. It can be based on deliberation.

Canovan 1999, 10.

Ibid, 13.

Rousseau 1968, 23.

Rousseau 1985, 35.

Ibid, 25.

See, however, Tang 2016. Also noteworthy is Bell (2016), who calls China a meritocracy, not a democracy, participatory, or Schumpeterian. Perry (2015) does use the term “populist dream,” but she appears to equate local participation with populism.

Canovan 1999, 10.

Ibid, 13.

Ibid, 16, emphasis added.

For the various ways in which national identities have been historically defined, see Varshney 2002, Ch.3.

See, however, Kedourie (1960) and Connor (1994).

Mao Zedong might have disagreed with this claim, at least partly. The mobilization-heavy cultural revolution lasted 10 years (1967–76), following not so long after the Great Leap Forward (1958–61). See Gurley 1970.

Singh (this issue) explains this at length.

For an application of this idea to India, see Varshney (2013); for America, in different ways, see Huntington (1981) and Morone (1990).

Mounk, 2018, 44–45. Also see Pappas (2019)

Also, see Jenne et al. and Singh (this issue).

On democratic backsliding, see Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018).

Those who do not subscribe to the liberal conception of democracy would not find this kind of erosion necessarily undemocratic. See Laclau (2005).

Ding et al. (this issue).

Jenne et al. (this issue).

For how this was calculated, see Sachs and Warner (1995: 22).

Ibid., 22–23.

In a roughly analogous vein, Esping-Anderson (1990) wrote about three different welfare regimes in Europe, and the explanation of such divergence was how those states came to view the relationship between nationhood and citizenship.

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Title: Populism and Nationalism: An Overview of Similarities and Differences
Author: Ashutosh Varshney
Publication date: 15-06-2021
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Studies in Comparative International Development / Issue 2/2021
Print ISSN: 0039-3606
Electronic ISSN: 1936-6167
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-021-09332-x

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