Abstract
The rhetoric of populism stresses benefiting “the people” who have been ignored by a corrupt elite, whether that elite is political or economic. If the reality is to match the rhetoric, then populist governments should provide social and economic benefits for the public, including healthcare, education, and income redistribution. This paper examines the effects of populist governments in the American South during the time of the Great Depression on a number of indicators of social and economic well-being. The general finding is that the populist governments were successful in the short term in producing changes, but that these changes were not sustained over time.
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Notes
The Tea Party was a movement of right-wing Republicans, focused on fiscal probity, who were successful in winning a number of Congressional seats in 2010. At about the same time, a left-wing movement—Occupy Wall Street, and later more generally Occupy—was protesting against the concentration of wealth in the United States.
A number of the countries in this “sample” had mandatory voting, so the effects of populism on participation may not be as significant as expected.
“Black Belt” refers not to racial composition of the population but rather to the dark alluvial soil.
Some parts of the Charity Hospital system were created before the American Revolution.
The movie “Oh Brother Where Art Thou”, with its depiction of Southern populist politics, was clearly set in Mississippi.
One could even add Jimmy Carter as a more sophisticated populist who also lacked the racist policies of most other Southern populists.
“Big Charity”, the major public hospital in New Orleans, was built with a major lead-bearing wall separating the white and black sides of the hospital building. This structurally ensured segregation and continued to present major challenges to hospital management for years.
In 2019, for example, the level of poverty in counties in Alabama varied between 41.3 percent and 8.4 percent. In Arkansas, the differences were between 25.1 and 8.5 percent of the population below the poverty line.
This difference was due primarily to the significant change in infant mortality in Mississippi during this period.
This measure is not as reliable as the Gini Index. For example, in the recent years, California and New York—two progressive states—have the largest proportion of income earned by the top one percent among the states.
This is perhaps especially true for Louisiana that became heavily influenced by the oil and gas industry, and spinoffs such as petro-chemicals. Some of the Long legacy remains rhetorically, but relatively little remains in place in practice.
The language from Plessy v. Ferguson 163 U.S. 537 (1896) that upheld segregated public services.
Interestingly, Bibb Graves the populist Governor of Alabama mentioned above, had been a member and leader of the Klan, but later renounced the organization and worked for greater racial integration in the state.
This is especially true in fictional accounts such as Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men.
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Peters, B.G. What has populism ever done for you? Are populist governments successful in producing economic and social change?. GPPG 2, 110–128 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-022-00038-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-022-00038-x