The difference between the two crises in securing support for populist parties could be explained by their consequences in terms of impact. While the former lasted only a couple of years, after which western countries’ economies started to recover, the latter produced an altogether heavier and more prolonged effect. In recent years, a marked decline in the principal macroeconomic indicators has occurred, to different degrees, within most western democracies: national growth rates, that collapsed in 2009, are struggling to recover to pre-crisis levels, and income inequality has increased substantially, while unemployment (in particular youth unemployment) and poverty have risen to alarming levels. Within most western democracies, national growth rates that collapsed in 2009, are struggling to recover to pre-crisis levels.

This situation has generated discontent among citizens, because western democracies have not been able to combat, in a timely and effective way, the negative effects of the crisis. From a political perspective, the last financial crisis had the adverse consequence of delegitimizing the democratic system. Since liberal systems are stable if a large majority of citizens directly support democratic institutions as the only legitimate form of government, the fact that the many material advantages usually provided by democracy have not been delivered has had the consequence that many citizens, disappointed by what has not been delivered by traditional political parties, are now supporting new forces, in most cases populist ones. And as has already happened in Europe once before in the 1920s and 1930s, the word ‘democracy’ is becoming an empty vessel for far too many of its citizens.

The root causes of the rise of populism should therefore be sought in the growing inability of western democracies to respond to citizens’ concerns and guarantee them high standards of living, and that this inability is having the consequence not only of removing from office traditional political parties, but also of provoking a de-legitimization of democratic institutions and the democratic system as a whole.

What can be done in order to avoid other populist backlashes, and possibly their non-democratic consequences? In other words, what can be done to cure the populist infection before it becomes an incurable illness? Since the spread of the populist infection is mainly due, on the one hand, to western inability to respond to economic crises and, on the other, to the consequent decrease in legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens, a twofold strategy is necessary. Protecting democracy today means, above all, to dare more in the economic sphere in terms of creating job opportunities for the young and social protection for the weak.

On the one hand, liberal democracies should start to rethink their economic systems and the instruments they can employ in case of severe crises, both at national and international level. We need to re-think the history of the 1930s when liberal democracies managed to survive only when governments introduced major plans of job creation and income support policies (as happened in the New Deal of the United States). When democratic countries did not manage to do that, the outcome was the rise of totalitarian political parties. Protecting democracy today means, above all, to dare more in the economic sphere in terms of creating job opportunities for the young and social protection for the weak. These policies will be effective in re-balancing the polarization in income distribution that has occurred over the last decades.

On the other hand, established parties as well as new democratic form of political participation should work to reignite citizens’ interest in politics, and in public affairs in general, especially among the younger age cohorts, to overcome the current crisis in legitimacy of democratic systems. To do so, democratic forces should become more sensitive toward citizens’ concerns and aspirations, deepening their inclusion in domestic political and policy processes. Furthermore, democratic forces should deepen their international collaboration, pushing for citizens’ inclusion also at the level of international decision-making. Phrasing it differently, all democratic political forces, new as well as consolidated, should work hard to include citizens in all those decisions that directly affect their lives, regarding both national and international affairs.

Can the real answer to the populist infection be a bigger dose of democracy? In the United States, the Democratic Party has already learned the hard lesson that the best candidate against populism is not necessarily the one closer to the establishment, and that to propose old solutions for new kinds of problems can be counterproductive.

Now the challenge for democratic partisans is that of being capable of coming up with new and credible, alternative answers to contrast those offered by the populist view. A few leaders, including Benoît Hamon in France, Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and, before them, Alexis Tsipras in Greece, seem to have taken on the challenge of re-thinking both democratic procedures and outcomes. Today, faith in democracy may well be in their hands, and in their ability to accomplish this task.

This article originates from a dialogue at the 21st Global Dynamics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. It has been first published on OpenDemocracy.net (April 10, 2018).

\ref{127074} The classification of populist parties mainly relies on the party classification provided by Wolfram Nordsieck according to which populist parties are part of the right-wing political spectrum: “right-wing populist parties are protest parties that appeal to the fears and frustrations of the public. They appeared first in the early 1970s. These parties combine national stances with an anti-elitist rhetoric and a radical critique of political institutions. They usually prefer strict law-and-order and anti-immigration polices”.  However, the limitation of the populist parties’ definition encompassing right-wing parties only is problematic, since we can often see centre or centre-left oriented parties employing the same, anti-establishment, and anti-elitist rhetoric, as in the case of Podemos in Spain. Morever, we can also find instances where the left-right cleavage is less marked, as in the case of the Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, which proposes both leftist and rightist policies, framed by an anti-establishment rhetoric. We decided to leave aside the left-right classification and to simplify the definition of populist parties by considering more relevant the presence of strong antisystem and anti-elitist instances. 

Daniele Archibugi : Director at the Italian National Research Council, Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies in Rome; Professor at Birkbeck College University of London.

Marco Cellini : PhD student in Political Science at LUISS University, Rome; Research fellow at the Italian National Research Council, Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies in Rome.