U.S. democracy is resilient to populism – checks and balances, polarization prevent power consolidation

Kurt Weyland, “Why US Democracy Trumps Populism: Comparative Lessons Reconsidered,” Political Science & Politics, vol. 55, no. 3, July 2022, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/why-us-democracy-trumps-populism-comparative-lessons-reconsidered/D6EFD45DC709C4D27742C99992FF9417.

My comprehensive analysis of populist governments in Europe and Latin America showed that the risk to liberal democracy was lower than many observers stirred up by Donald Trump’s stunning election had feared (Weyland Reference Weyland2020). I define populism as a political strategy through which personalistic, typically charismatic leaders seek and exercise power through unmediated, quasi-direct appeals and connections to an amorphous, heterogeneous, largely unorganized mass of followers. Based on this definition, I theorized that personalistic plebiscitarian leadership suffocated democracy only when two types of conditions intersected: (1) when institutional weakness created room for maneuvering by personalistic leaders; and (2) when conjunctural opportunities, arising from severe and acute but resolvable crises or from hydrocarbon windfalls, allowed such leaders to obtain overwhelming support.

My wide-ranging analysis substantiated these arguments by examining 30 cases of populist chief executives. It is interesting that they lined up along three paths in which a specific type of institutional weakness coinciding with a specific conjunctural opportunity led to democracy’s asphyxiation in only six cases—namely, under Latin America’s Bolivarian populism in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador; in Latin America’s neoliberal populism in Alberto Fujimori’s Peru; and under Europe’s ethno-national populism in Hungary and Turkey. My investigations thus found that populism was less dangerous for democracy than many feared; only in relatively few cases did personalistic plebiscitarian leaders manage to concentrate enough power to smother democracy.

This examination yielded the prediction that Trump would not destroy US democracy. After all, a rigid constitution and resilient checks and balances provided institutional strength; and, given the absence of a severe and acute yet resolvable crisis and a hydrocarbon windfall, the US populist would not win overwhelming support. Trump’s defeat in 2020 seemed to corroborate these arguments.

Just when I thought that after 30 years in the profession, I finally had correctly predicted an outcome, López and Luna (Reference López and Luna2021) challenged my findings. They claim that my analysis suffered from various flaws and omitted crucial factors that make US democracy appear more precarious than I suggested. I appreciate these critics’ hard work in scrutinizing my analysis and trying to correct and improve it, and I share their underlying concern to take populism’s threat seriously and avoid complacency.

Moreover, I agree that US democracy faces serious problems arising from various factors, including regional industrial decline, deepening urban–rural divisions, serious racial tensions, intensifying cultural conflict, disproportionate power of money, and new challenges to expertise and rationality. All of these factors have fueled stark polarization, which threatens liberal democracy.

However, not all problems facing US democracy go together. For the specific risk examined in my article—that is, democracy’s strangulation by populist chief executives—party polarization arguably limited the danger arising from Trump’s power hunger: Democrats rejected him as intensely as Republicans supported him. Consequently, whereas Venezuela’s Chávez and Peru’s Fujimori achieved 70% to 80% backing and thus gained overwhelming clout to strangle democracy, the US populist never reached 50%—far too little to do similar damage. Therefore, although it is a major problem for US democracy overall, profound polarization actually hemmed in the destructive force of Trump’s populism.