Populism is essential for democracy in the US – it is the only way that the middle class can have an impact on policy when the elite and ruling class has a monopoly over policy.

The core elements of populism are not antidemocratic. On the contrary, when a large group has designated itself “the people” and has come to see itself in a moral battle against “the elites,” the members of that group have often had significant interests and values that political elites have neglected or even denigrated. At these moments, populism is democracy’s way of saying, “Listen harder.” Although ordinary citizens are not policy experts, they are in a position to judge how their lives are going, and when they have long-standing grievances that powerful elites have not effectively addressed, organizing in protest is a rationally and emotionally appropriate democratic response. Because citizens are frequently ignorant about and lack interest in the details of public policy, democracies need political elites to attend to growing grievances, listen to what citizens are 27Frank (2017) analyzes the intellectual and educational orientation of the US Populists, quoting Garvin & Daws (1887, p. 87) that the Farmers’ Alliance “was initially organized for the purpose of studying and investigating questions having direct reference to economic legislation”; Mitchell (1987, p. 93; also pp. 3–23) that the party had a goal of creating “dauntless, intelligent citizens”; and Goodwyn (1976, p. 33) that the Alliance wanted to “more speedily educate ourselves in the science of free government.” “Knowledge is Power” was an Alliance slogan, and contemporaries often called it the “reading party” and the “writing and talking party” (Frank 2017, p. 9). The Populists had a “vast lecturing network, hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers, inexpensive books and pamphlets, lending libraries, book clubs [with many]… articles on tax policy, commercial regulation, the financial and monetary system, but also on American history and political theory, cooking tips, and home economics” (p. 11). 28See Müller (2016, p. 8), Mouffe (2018, p. 81), and Urbinati (2014) on this differential usage. 70 Mansbridge • Macedo Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci. 2019.15:59-77. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by Princeton University Library on 02/25/20. For personal use only. saying, and respond with policies tailored to their real needs. Populism arises when elites do not listen.29 Democracy particularly needs the populist impulse at certain historical moments. Elites often develop interests and values that diverge from those of the less affluent, less educated, and less privileged who live far from centers of political, economic, social, and cultural power. They often talk primarily with one another and reinforce one another. Power tends to beget more power. When groups with more power neglect the values and interests of the less powerful for too long, populism is what we want from democracy—the capacity to let the needs and values of the less powerful break through and thrust themselves on the increasingly insulated political, economic, social, and cultural ruling classes. Laclau (2005, p. 177, emphasis in original), for example, has argued that “populism presents itself both as subversive of the existing state of things and as the starting point for a more or less radical reconstruction of a new order whenever the previous one has been shaken.” It “proceeds by articulating fragmented and dislocated demands around a new core.…[Thus] some degree of crisis in the old structure is a necessary precondition of populism.” This analysis leads Laclau to endorse “the notion that populism is the democratic element in contemporary representative systems” (p. 176). Economic loss often produces the required crisis. For economic loss, inequality, or social dislocation to trigger populism, however, the losers have to consider either the causes of these losses or the government response to these losses unfair. The perception of injustice is central to the moral component of populism. It arises most easily when the government is already perceived as corrupt.30 It also arises when policies give too little attention to the policy preferences of the average citizen.31 As Rodrik, a distinguished economist, writes, “Part of today’s populist backlash is rooted in the belief, not entirely unjustified, that…multinational corporations and investors have increasingly shaped the agenda of international trade negotiations, resulting in global regimes that disproportionately benefit capital at the expense of labor.” He gives stringent patent rules, international investor tribunals, and independent central banks as examples, adding that in the European Union, “where economic rules and regulations are designed at a considerable remove from democratic deliberation,” in almost every member state the “political gap…has given rise to populist…parties” (Rodrik 2018a). Even in the highly consultative parts of the EU administration, the committees consult and negotiate almost exclusively with high-level stakeholders, such 29On grievances, we note below that many observers, including economists (Autor et al. 2016; Rodrik 2018a,b,c), empirical political scientists (Gilens & Page 2014), and political theorists (Galston 2018), have concluded that in the economic realm elites have paid less than democratically appropriate attention to the interests of some groups, many of whose members now support populist parties. On citizens’ lack of information, see Schumpeter (1942), Converse (1964), and Achen & Bartels (2016), all with problems in their analyses but also tapping important realities. On the ideal of greater “recursive,” or mutually responsive, communication between representatives and constituents, see Mansbridge (2019). 30In the United States, a long-standing belief in government corruption has intensified along with rising inequality, leading more than 70% of Americans since 2010 to report believing that “corruption is widespread throughout the government in this country” (Galston 2018, p. 99). The meaning of “corruption” in such surveys is unclear. Although direct bribery has very probably decreased in Congress over the past century, the importance of money in politics (“institutional” corruption, as per Lessig 2011) has increased, to a point at which 64% of Americans had concluded by 2012 that “the rich buy elections” (compared to 17% in Germany in 2013; see ANES 2012, Norris 2015, World Values Survey 2013). 31Gilens & Page (2014) show that in the United States from 1981 to 2002, controlling for the political preferences of the top 10% and the interest groups, the preferences of the “average citizen” (preferences at the fiftieth income percentile) had a “near-zero” effect on the policies enacted.