Andrew Petter is president emeritus of Simon Fraser University. Jim Rutkowski was the principal secretary to former Alberta premier Rachel Notley.
Populism has had a bad rap of late.
The appeal of authoritarians such as Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary and former president Donald Trump in the United States has led many academics and pundits to conclude that populism, by its very nature, represents a threat to free, open and democratic societies.
“A brazen attempt to personalize authority under the cliché of ‘power to the people,’” argue Canadian political scientists Daniel Drache and Marc D. Froese.
“A pernicious and romantic myth,” writes The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols of populism professed faith in the common wisdom of the people.
“A threat to democracy,” maintains renowned political theorist Francis Fukuyama.
Insofar as distrust of elites is core to populism’s appeal, these commentators are right to maintain that it has helped fuel the rise of authoritarians who feed on people’s frustrations with the status quo. Where they go wrong is conflating populism’s anti-elitist sentiments with an inherent opposition to democracy.
Populism is not an ideology. It is a mode of political discourse that seeks popular support based on claims that ordinary people are not being well-served by social and political elites. In a world rife with social and economic inequality, such claims are as pertinent to the agendas of democratic reformers as they are to the interests of populist authoritarians.
Indeed, two of Canada’s most consequential populists – former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas and former British Columbia premier Dave Barrett – were democrats to their core. They railed against concentrations of power in the hands of elites to marshal support for far-reaching legislative reforms that endure to this day. The Saskatchewan Bill of Rights – the first of its kind in the country – and B.C.’s Human Rights Code emerged from a populist politics that spoke to the needs and aspirations of ordinary people.
Populism has also been harnessed by right-of-centre Canadian politicians for democratic ends. Former prime minister John Diefenbaker, no friend of the establishment, used political power to end racial discrimination in immigration policy and to enact the Canadian Bill of Rights. And as the founding leader of the Reform Party, Preston Manning put democratic reform at the heart of his message and agenda.
The appeal of these Canadian populists centred on their ability to speak to people’s anger over the maldistribution of power and economic opportunity in Canadian society. One can argue with their policies, but not with their fundamental commitment to democratic reform. Far from threatening the liberal democratic order, these populists sought in their own way to extend and deepen the power of democracy in our lives and communities.
This is more than a semantic debate of interest to pundits and political scientists. By castigating populism as a threat to democracy, commentators such as Mr. Drache and Mr. Froese throw in the towel on a powerful means for marshalling support in favour of democratic reform, and for countering claims that progressive reformers are themselves elitist.
Thankfully, some progressives are beginning to recapture the language of populism. U.S. President Joe Biden’s “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America” calls for increased taxes on the wealthy, promises to stand up for people “getting stiffed” by big business, and presents a passionate defence of entitlement programs upon which middle-class and low-income people depend.
In the U.K., Australia and Germany, social democrats are appealing to working people with commitments to rebuild manufacturing industries and the jobs that go with them.
And here in Canada, B.C.’s NDP government was twice elected on a promise to work for everyday people, not those at the top.
No one could accuse any of these parties of being anti-democratic, though to one degree or another, they speak to people’s distrust of elites in a political system that isn’t meeting their needs.
No doubt, the authoritarian right is employing populist traditions and language to advance a fundamentally illiberal and anti-democratic world view. This must be countered. But it’s both wrong and counterproductive to argue that populism and democracy are natural enemies when they have so often been allies.
In the hands of democrats, populism has been – and can continue to be – a powerful tool in the cause of a more humane, democratic and egalitarian society.