In defence of 'populism'

Stephen Morris, from Coorparoo, Australia, has started a one-man letter-writing campaign against the Economist's use of the word 'populist', which has now been picked up and backed by the Economist's own Democracy in America blog. “Exactly when did 'populist', enter your style guide as the preferred all-purpose pejorative?” Mr Morris asks in a letter published in the February 21st edition of the newspaper. “Given that neither John Edwards nor Mike Huckabee have come anywhere near winning their parties' nomination, it is far from clear that they are even 'popular', let alone 'populist'.”

In the March 19th edition he continues:

Sir - Despite my recent letter (February 23rd) you still throw the term “populist” around with abandon. Your leader (“Hope and fear”, March 1st) used the term “populist” or “populism” no fewer than five times in describing the Democratic Party's candidates.

But when we turn to your article on John McCain (“No country for old men”, March 1st) it is a completely different story. Here we read: “Mr McCain sells himself as a scourge of special interests and hammer of lobbyists. He also styles himself a hands-on reformer who has tried to fix America's campaign-finance system.” Is this not populism? If not, why not? If so, why is the word so conspicuously avoided?

Mr Morris' concern is misplaced. 'Populists' do not have to be popular; they merely have to court popularity at the expense of good policy. Of course, unless a candidate is utterly transparent in advocating a measure which he or she knows makes little sense simply to pander to a portion of the electorate, the label 'populist' will be no more than an opinion, but one can hardly accuse the Economist of shying away from regularly casting judgement on whatever it sees fit. After all, it was set up in 1848 to engage in a “severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an worthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress”, and pejorative terms form a natural part of its armoury in its self-declared struggle.

The Democratic candidates' economic policies are labelled 'populist' because the author considers them designed to improve poll ratings rather than the country's economy. John McCain's attempts at tackling Washington politics-as-usual are not cast as such because, whilst they may or may not be popular, the author considers them worthy. The sensitive reader may disagree with this analysis, but they should be challenged by it, not troubled. Elsewhere in the Economist, Mr McCain has come in for his own share of criticism, and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama their own portion of praise.

Used discerningly, 'populist' undoubtedly deserves to keep its place in the lexicon of advocacy journalism.

News Reviews through the ages

As seen in this month's issue of the DA News Review:

The first humans emerged from the African savannah around 200,000 years ago. It took them over 190,000 years to develop writing, at least another 3,000 to perfect paper, and 2,000 more to publish the first ever DA News Review, a mere four copies of which were printed back in March 2007, which makes the issue before you our first anniversary special. Of course, by definition, the Sisyphean course of human history did not go unrecorded before then, and the men and women of the primitive past found other ways to mark and comment upon the rise and fall of empires and civilisations, the ebb and flow of wars and financial crises, and the derring-do of the Luxembourgian anti-terrorist unit. None of these means were, perhaps, as well informed, sophisticatedly articulated or incisively argued as the DA News Review, but they existed nonetheless.

In the 5th Century BCE Darius the Great proclaimed the legitimacy of his ascent to the Persian kingship on a 15 by 25 metre large inscription at Behistun, and Heroditus depicted in The Histories Darius' decisive setback at Marathon, but these accounts were deliberately a step removed from modern expectations of dispassionate analysis and verified detail. We move closer to the exacting standards demanded of the DA News Review team with the Acta Diurna of ancient Rome, which saw government notices published daily on metal or stone, or the Kai Yuan Za Bao of Tang Dynasty China, which saw political and domestic news handwritten on silk and distributed throughout the empire. In medieval Europe, texts such as the Gesta Francorum recording the course of the First Crusade were repeatedly redacted to reach ever wider audiences, while troubadours would travel from court to court singing tales of scandal and war. Newssheets began to be produced to be read out by town criers, and by 1563 the Venetian republic was charging one gazeta (approximately three-fourths of a penny) per person for public reports of the war with the Ottoman Empire, a practice which begot the modern term 'Gazette'. Pamphlets covering specific events came to be produced, distributed and eventually collated into newsbooks, which evolved into the first periodical summaries of the news by the late 16th century, among the more prominent being the Mercurius Gallobelgicus, which ran from 1588 to 1638. The first fully fledged 'newspaper' is generally held to be Johann Carolus' Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, published in the imperial free city of Straßburg in 1605, and from there the medium spread out across Europe, reaching Hapsburg lands by 1620 and England a year later. Current affairs journalism has flourished in the centuries since, serving as a repository of fact, a forum for opinion and an outlet for dissent. As the so-called 'Fourth Estate', the press has played a vital role as the lifeblood of the body politic of modern democracies, checking governmental excess and galvanising public opinion, telling truth to power and plebeians alike. Some have criticised over-mighty media empires for toppling governments and orchestrating wars and coups. Yet we at the DA News Review have, in our year-long and illustrious past, endeavoured not to illegitimately exploit our (admittedly deserved) influence as opinion formers on the global scene, beyond the bare weight and wit of the arguments we present between these pages. We shall, of course, continue to restrain ourselves in the future.

Whilst the DA News Review is the natural first recourse for current affairs analysis, it is not alone in the field. Each and every open society is blessed with a plethora of titles to choose from, and, with a hat-tip to the finest British political satire of the 1980s, Yes Prime Minister, whichever one is chosen says a lot about the chooser. Here in the Land am Strome, Der Kurier is read by Austrians who think that they run the country, Der Standard is read by Austrians who think that they ought to run the country, while Die Presse is read by those Austrians who actually do run the country. Die Krone is read by Austrians who think that they know how the country ought in fact to be run, while Österreich is read by Austrians for whom Die Krone is just that little bit too high-brow. Over in La Grande Nation, Le Figaro is read by the French who love Sarkozy, La Liberation by the French who hate him and Le Monde by the French who naively wish the debate was less about Sarkozy than the state of France itself. In fairest Albion, meanwhile, the Guardian is read by Britons who are confused as to why they are not running the country eleven years after they thought they would be, and The Times is read by those who actually still do. The Daily Telegraph is read by Britons who want to know why the government's social policy is not that of Victorian England, while the Daily Mail is read by those who want to know what the government's social policy will be next week. The Independent is read by Britons whose interest in current affairs extends no further than front-page splashes of planetary doom, while the Daily Express is read by those whose interest in current affairs extends no further than how Princess Diana was killed, by whom and why. The Financial Times, in contrast, is read by those whose interest in current affairs runs so deep that they happily spend the sunniest days of the year so far chained to a laptop writing articles about newspapers.

But what of the DA News Review, whose heart beats in Vienna, but whose purview extends across the globe? What can be said of those who feverishly flick through its serried leaves? The readers of the DA News Review, by grappling with the collective wisdom of the world's finest young minds as they train for their future international careers, seek tomorrows answers to the problems of today. Who knows where humanity will find itself in 200,000 years? Wherever it goes, the DA News Review will be right there with it, charting its progress, and guiding its path. We hope you'll be with us for at least some of the journey to come.

Guido stakes his ground

"The CDU, and the CDU alone, bears the entire responsibility for" the current leftwards drift of Germany's political Zeitgeist, FDP leader Guido Westerwelle has told the Finacial Times. Plans to introduce a minimum wage to the postal industry are a "disaster", destroying jobs and infecting future electoral debate. This minimum wage is perhaps particularly pernicious. But the prospects of pro-market politics in Germany, pace Westerwelle's criticism of the CDU's current popularlism, are far from dimmed, not least thanks to the successes of Westerwelle's own party, the FDP. Painting the CDU as close to the SDP as possible is all part of the FDP's strategy of carving out for itself as much space on the political spectrum as possible. Even Westerwelle acknoleges that "The SPD is vacating the centre much faster than the CDU", and that the latter therefore represent his prefered coalition partner. The trick will be breaking past its post-war high of 12.8% of the vote; opinion polls currently give it 9-10%. If it can manage that, Germany's political Zeitgeist will be firmly back on the right.

In praise of pluralism

In British politics, it is nothing new to note the rush to the centre of the country's major factions. Labour flanks to the 'right' of the Tories, the Tories flank to the 'left' of Labour, while proposals to scrap taxes are borrowed with abandon. This is obviously far from ideal from the perspective of voter choice. The most votes might well be found in the 'centre', but with seemingly only two (at times three) electable parties fighting over the same political ground, those whose opinions fall beyond this 'centre' find themselves without a realistic chance of representation. In Britain the situation is compounded by the fact that this 'centre' is not even defined by the electorate as a whole, but by those 'swing' voters in 90 or so marginal seats whose choice ultimately determines who governs the country; it is this narrow section of the electorate to which the biggest parties must pander if they are to have any hope of power.

So far so standard in the argument against first-past-the-post electoral systems. But even systems governed under proportional representation (PR) are not immune from the 'magpie' politics practiced in Britain. Take Spain, for example, whose government have just announced 'wealth' tax reforms 'borrowed' from the opposition. Yet the Congreso de los Diputados of the Cortes Generales in Spain, unlike Britain’s House of Commons, is proportionally elected. It makes no sense, therefore, to blame both first-past-the-post and PR for policy convergence in both Britain and Spain. A common explanation must lie beyond their quite different electoral mechanisms.

The crucial shared trait is bi-polarity; the hold which a mere two parties have on the system. Taking 81.6% of the vote and 312 of the 350 seats between them, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and the People's Party (PP) dominate Spanish politics, and they are heirs to dominant movements of the left and right which have been the essence of Spain since before the Civil War. Under current conditions, the only real options for voters at election time are a PSOE or a PP government. With no substantial factions on their respective outer flanks, votes are to be won in the 'centre', from each other, and this is where Zapatero has gone to find them with his promise of reform. In Britain, meanwhile, its ‘third’ party, the Liberal Democrats, serves as no check on this phenomenon, since the Lib Dems are widely considered to sit in the 'centre' between the two major parties. Fighting over the ‘centre’ ground thus has the added attraction for the big two of potentially enticing Lib Dem voters as well.

Contrast this with the situation in Germany. There, alongside the two main parties, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SDP), sit the Greens, the Left Party and the Free Democrats (as well as the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union), each of whom are significant enough to be a threat to the voting base of the big two, and thus serve as a check on their policy platforms. Witness the recent speeches of Angela Merkel and Kurt Beck, leader of the CDU and SDP respectively, who deliberately put clear blue water between their two parties. The seeming paradox is, of course, that despite the greater distance on many issues between the SPD and the CDU, than between Labour and the Conservatives or the PSOE and the PP, a ‘grand’ coalition in Britain or Spain is almost inconceivable. Greater plurality might serve to force parties to mark out their territories, but it also makes compromise necessary, obliging a dilution of the hostility and bitterness which a bi-polar system seems to engender.

But would greater plurality serve to give voters greater choice even under first-past-the-post? It arguably does to some extent in Canada, with four parties represented at the federal level. Yet against this, Duverger's law suggests that in most cases plurality in a first-past-the-post system is a temporary phenomenon. First-past-the-post helps prevent the emergence of fresh political forces, famously hamstringing the Alliance in the 1983 general election, and today stops the Liberal Democrats from becoming a true alternative by forcing them too to contest much the same 'centre ground'. Recent developments in Spain suggest that PR might not be enough on its own to give voters a real choice at election time. But, from the perspective of Britain, it certainly would be a start.

No change - for now

"The fight back is just beginning" reports the Economist, after Hugo Chavez's proposed amendments to the Venezuelan Constitution were defeated in a national referendum on Sunday.

"Defeat means he is unable to stand again, legally, for the presidency. His aura of invincibility is forever damaged, and the battle for the succession seems bound to begin soon. Survival strategies no longer necessarily involve unquestioning loyalty to the 'comandante'. Fractures may begin to appear in important institutions like the supreme court and parliament."

"For the first time", we are told, "it is possible to envisage life after Mr Chávez." Really? With a mandate until 2013, the outlines of post-Chavez Venezuela are far from settled - and it remains naïve to believe that Chavez will not take another tilt at the constitution before he is obliged to stand down. The idea that we are now witnessing the beginnings of a succession struggle is to take Chavez's own rhetoric at face value. True, the referendum campaign saw the emergence of a reinvigorated opposition and the first signs of popular disillusionment among his Bolivarian base, but Chavez easily retains the upper hand over his rivals. He need but gather in the alienated arms of his movement, and we are no nearer a world without him than we were last week.

It is quite clear by the letter of the law that Chavez is unable to stand again for the presidency. Yet it is also quite clear that this was not his last attempt at constitutional reform: he echoed the combative tenacity of his defeated 1992 coup when he cast the outcome of the referendum as only "for now". He retains a pliant National Assembly, and has the time to re-introduce his proposals at an opportune moment of his own choosing. It would not take much to overturn the result in a future plebiscite; the margin of his defeat was tiny, fewer than 200000 votes out of a registered pool of 16 million, and its explanation lies in the high rates of abstention among his supporters, not a decrease in that support. Venezuelans are still largely in support of the president, but were alarmed at the extent of the power he was trying to amass. A few peripheral concessions tempering the excesses of the proposed reform, say by abandoning proposals which would allow presidents to declare an unlimited state of emergency or to choose provincial and municipal leaders, and there is no reason why in a future referendum he would not secure widespread support for his central objective: the dismantling of term limits and the opportunity to be president for life. Buttressed by extensive exposure on television, he remains a charismatic and popular leader who many Venezuelans genuinely want to remain in power after 2013.

There is thus little reason why a less blatant power grab would not succeed where his current proposals foundered. If it does, the optimistic conclusions of the Economist are to naught. The one undoubted positive to have emerged from the referendum is that Venezuela clearly remains a functioning democracy; a functioning democracy moreover, with an enlivened opposition, rooted in student protest. Having secured their first electoral victory in nine years, we can at least hope that the opposition now has faith in the system, and will not attempt another electoral boycott in the near future (as they did at the last parliamentary poll, which handed Chavez the National Assembly). They might even try and force a presidential recall referendum after 2010 (the mid-point of Chavez’s mandate beyond which such recalls are allowed) as they were able to in 2004. Yet as things stand, Chavez would almost certainly again be returned triumphant, with fervent grass roots support pitted against an opposition which remains divided and discredited by its past. Can it find a coherent platform around which to unite, beyond hostility to the 'comandante'? It might not need to, for it might well be fighting him for a long while yet.

The PiS and the PO: subtle shifts in Polish politics

Here's a full (and, exclusive to Constitutional Lore, hyperlinked) copy of an article penned for this month's DA International News Review:

In a general election on October 21 Poland voted the free-market Civic Platform (PO) into office, ending a turbulent two year period of government led by the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS). The outcome was widely welcomed across Europe, with hopes for a fresh, constructive approach to foreign relations and domestic reform. The aftermath sees an altered political landscape in Poland, with the PiS forced into opposition and its old coalition partners annihilated after failing to reach the 5% threshold required to secure representation in the Sejm, the Polish lower house. Yet this election was no earthquake. The new government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, sworn into office on November 16, will seek to distance itself from the PiS in terms of style, but much practical policy is set to remain the same. Both parties were born of the rightwing then-governing Solidarity Electoral Action coalition in 2001, and have been tussling ever since to emerge as the dominant party on the Polish centre-right. The PO may have won this electoral battle, but the PiS are still a powerful player on the political scene, and the wider struggle between them remains unresolved.

The PiS-led government was dominated by two men, the twins Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński. As President and Prime Minister respectively, they were inspired by a staunch Catholicism, leading a government which was socially conservative and committed to a relatively generous system of welfare. They focused abroad on a pugnacious defense of Poland’s national interest, and at home on rooting out corruption and the remnants of the old Communist order. Both prongs begat more acrimony than success. The PiS succeeded in alienating many European partners, through crass stunts such as invoking Poland’s war dead as justification for obstructing EU voting reform, and attempting to humiliate Denmark by enumerating its abortions at a ministerial working lunch. Domestic reform and privatization were stalled as the PiS tried to hold its shaky coalition together and focused instead on lustration laws forcing disclosure of communist-era collaboration.

Under the PO the emphasis will shift from righting historical wrongs to achieving concrete improvements in the present. The government has plans to press ahead with privatisation, tax reform and cuts to social spending and direct taxation, and hopes to speed up Poland’s entry to the euro. In Europe, Tusk will benefit from widespread goodwill for simply not being a Kaczyński. He has been busily mending ties with Russia, with a spat over Polish meat imports drawing to a close and greater skepticism over American plans to build missile interceptors on its soil. At a time of growing suspicion between Russia and the EU, Poland might pull off the feat of simultaneously improving relations with both. This is related to a weakening of Poland’s transatlantic relationship, with Tusk hoping to pull Polish troops out of Iraq in 2008.

Yet while it may do so with a little more grace and sophistication than the PiS, a PO-led government will continue to mount a vigorous defense of Polish interests, even when these run counter to those of larger EU powers. It will fight its corner in forthcoming EU debates over measures to counteract climate change and reform agricultural subsidies. With the US missile defense shield still not shelved, and Poles still angry at a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany bypassing eastern Baltic countries, Poland will not lift its veto over an EU-Russia trade agreement just yet. At home, the PO’s reforming zeal will be tempered by slowing rates of economic growth, restrained by their centrist coalition partners, the Polish Peasants Party (which in a previous incarnation sent deputies to the 19th Century Reichsrat in Vienna, no less), and hamstrung by the need to secure the support of the centre-left Democrats and Left party if they are to overcome a presidential veto, which will lie in the hands of Lech Kaczyński until at least 2010. Poland remains a deeply Catholic country led by a pious Prime Minister who took the time to pray with the Archbishop of Gdansk, Tadeusz Gocłowski, in the aftermath of victory.

This election has not, of itself, ushered in a new era in Poland’s politics and closed the door on the PiS’s vision of the centre-right. The Kaczyńskis have proven themselves formidable election winners in the past. They capitalised on Lech’s undoubted popularity as Justice Minister in the outgoing government to secure 44 seats for their new party in the elections of 2001, and the following year Lech was voted President of Warsaw. PiS twice came from behind in opinion polls to best the PO first in general and then presidential elections in 2005, and led going into the final week of campaigning this time around. They only lost after a bumbling performance by Jarosław in televised debate with Tusk, and a hike in turnout among the expatriate community and young professionals, galvanised by the referendum on PiS’s rule which the general election essentially became. The Kaczyńskis will not make the same mistake with a televised debate again, and the PO cannot rely on future high turnouts among their base of support, once anger against the PiS is dimmed by the passage of time and the limitations of the PO’s own programme.

Polish voters are notoriously fickle; since the fall of communism in 1989, no Polish government has ever been re-elected. The current PO-led government faces poor odds to be the first, especially if the economy begins to falter as it now forecasted. Enthusiasm for extensive economic reform might well recede rapidly, and Poland could witness a resurgence of the left, in the doldrums since the Democratic Left Alliance was routed from office in 2005. With Lech still in the presidency, however, able to pose as the protector of the Polish people by picking and choosing which of the PO’s initiatives to veto or allow, it is the PiS, with its own programme of social welfare, who are arguably best placed to capitalise on any increasing hardship.

Donald Tusk and the PO may have only just won a convincing electoral victory, but they face a difficult task if they are to win a second term, or if Tusk is to fulfill his own personal ambitions and become Polish president in 2010. The PO must repair damaged ties with EU partners without giving PiS a pulpit to decry relinquished Polish interests. It must either press ahead with domestic reform and risk a backlash in favor of the stronger social safety-nets which it is committed to dismantle, or vacillate and risk the disillusionment of its own supporters who believed they had voted for change.

When the PiS and the PO emerged as the largest parties in the Sejm in 2005, most pundits expected them to work together in government; now they are all but sworn enemies. While there still remains space on the Polish political spectrum for two big parties on the centre-right, Poland would be unique in Europe if it maintained such a situation for long, particularly as the memory of communism fades further and Polish society opens up under the influence of her prosperous EU partners. The PO, holding the reigns of government, currently has the edge over their more socially conservative brethren. But the governments of Europe, for now relieved at the Kaczyński’s diminished influence on Polish policy, may well in the not too distant future have to deal with a PiS-led government again.

Opening up

Russia is to invite a at most 400 foreign experts, with just 70 from the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's election monitoring arm, to observe the forthcoming State Duma elections. As well as thus slashing by 2/3rds the 1,165 observers present at the previous parliamentary poll of 2003, Russia will also itself define the "monitoring modalities" prescribing what the observers can and cannot do. This is major a set-back for those hoping for at least the semblance of an open contest as Russia goes to the polls first on December 2 and then again to elect a new President on March 2 next year.

Clearly, circumscribing election observation is a tactic in need of justification if Vladimir Putin is still to profess himself a "true democrat". According to Alexei Borodavkin, the Russian Permanent Representative to the OSCE, Russia's gripes are threefold. Firstly,

"instead of giving technical assessments of how the elections were held, ODIHR observers often issue political assessments, which sometimes adversely affect the internal political stability of the countries where monitoring is being conducted."

Secondly,

"the monitoring of elections is held mainly in countries east of Vienna. That is, the focus is on post-Soviet countries. Although there are plenty of violations of election rules in countries west of Vienna as well."

Finally,

"the selection of heads of observer missions is absolutely nontransparent. This is being done behind closed doors by ODIHR itself. Never once throughout the whole history of ODIHR has its observer mission been led by a representative, say, of a CIS country."

The first allegation only has substance in contexts where the idea of the "open" society itself is contested, precisely those locations where external monitoring is at its most neccesary. To get "closed" societies (Russia itself remains "not free" in Freedom House's annual report of global rights and liberties) to at least continue to sign up to ODIHR's ideals, it is vital for the same standards to be applied to all, namely by firmly addressing allegations two and three.

Thankfully, ODHIR already are. Contrary to Borodavkin's assertion, observation missions can indeed be led by CIS nationals, such as Vadim Zhdanovich of the Russian Federation who currently heads the heads the monitoring team of the forthcoming parliamentary elections in Croatia. While election monitoring in the 1990s concentrated wholly on transistion countries, ODHIR has broadened its horizons over the past few years, sending observers to elections in America in 2004 and 2006 and this year to Belgium and Switzerland, to name but a few.

Nevertheless, more could be done, particularly by the member states. The UK, for example, has still to implement Paragraph 8 of the 1990 OSCE Copenhagen Document and fully throw open its electoral processes to foreign and non-partisan observation, with current legislation restricting access to polling stations on election day. Resources are obviously short, with monitor expenses met by the sending state. But with painful choices to make in other areas of the open world's relationship with Russia, an issue soluble in part by simply throwing money at it is surely one to be embraced.

The challenge is for supposedly open societies to positively embrace foreign scrutiny. The benefits, like Borodavkin's criticisms, are threefold. Firstly, open societies are of course not above election shenanigans themselves, with, for example, proven electoral fraud in Birmingham, England, in 2004. Secondly, they are nevertheless the standard against which closed societies must be assessed. Finally, and most importantly, the demanding the highest standards from all countries denies closed societies cover when the spotlight of election monitoring is cast upon them. Russia's grounds for limiting foreign observance of its forthcoming elections are weak, but that doesn't mean the open world wouldn't benefit from a more even application of its own rules.