Democracia vs. O Povo

Em vez de tentar suprimir o “populismo”, devemos ampliar nossa visão da política e tornar as democracias mais responsivas aos cidadãos.

Alberto Polimeni

Boston Review

Protestos do Black Lives Matter enchem Benjamin Franklin Parkway na Filadélfia em junho de 2020. Imagem: Rob Buhlman

Democracy Rules
Jan-Werner Müller
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27 (cloth)

What Is Populism?
Jan-Werner Müller
University of Pennsylvania Press, $19.95 (cloth)

Para alguns, o final de 2020 trouxe consigo um ar de otimismo em relação ao destino do populismo de direita. No Reino Unido, o partido do Brexit de Nigel Farage caiu na obscuridade e o experimento GB News da direita populista naufragou. No Brasil, a resposta desastrosa de Jair Bolsonaro ao COVID-19 pareceu sangrar seu apoio e ameaçar suas chances de reeleição. O partido fascista da Grécia Aurora Dourada foi legalmente dissolvido, o AfD da Alemanha começou lentamente a perder popularidade e assentos parlamentares, e Donald Trump perdeu para Joe Biden.

A imagem parece diferente hoje. Trump continua alegando fraude eleitoral, Bolsonaro pode ser reeleito ainda este mês e partidos de extrema-direita avançaram na Suécia e na Itália. Mas com a aparente trégua veio uma enxurrada de análises políticas buscando tirar lições importantes disso – sobre estratégias usadas para derrotar a direita populista e reformas estruturais que poderiam codificar essas vitórias.

Uma das vozes mais proeminentes sobre essas tendências foi o teórico político de Princeton e historiador do pensamento político Jan-Werner Müller. Em 2016, Müller publicou um estudo muito divulgado, O que é o populismo?. Embora escrito antes da vitória eleitoral de Trump, o livro refletia as ansiedades de muitos europeus que já viviam entre poderosos partidos e movimentos populistas e se tornou ainda mais relevante nos anos seguintes. Após a retração populista percebida de 2020, Müller voltou sua atenção em Democracy Rules para perguntar o que estava errado antes dessa “maré populista” e como podemos corrigi-la.

Ao longo de ambos os livros, Müller demonstra uma vontade de perfurar os principais pontos de discussão. O que é Populismo?, por exemplo, começa com uma crítica poderosa e convincente à visão de que os apoiadores de líderes populistas – sejam de esquerda ou de direita – são comportamentalmente dispostos ao autoritarismo ou de alguma forma submetidos a uma lavagem cerebral em seu apoio. Como ele observa, essas alegações muitas vezes reforçam visões condescendentes de apoiadores populistas, absolvendo as elites da responsabilidade de envolvê-las. Müller também rejeita a fusão superficial de políticos populistas com meros oportunistas políticos ou manipuladores. Muitos populistas são elites dissimuladas, ele concordaria, mas nem todos são; esta fórmula não faz nada para iluminar o significado preciso do populismo. Em sua essência, argumenta Müller, o populismo é caracterizado pela adoção e armamento de uma visão excludente do “povo”, que eles afirmam representar autenticamente.

Esses são argumentos valiosos, se não incontroversos. No entanto, a abordagem focada na norma de Müller deixa algumas pedras-de-toque mainstream intocadas, talvez mais notavelmente sua visão geral negativa do populismo. Como Adom Getachew observou nestas páginas, “o populismo tem uma má reputação”. Müller contribui para essa reputação. Sua compreensão do momento atual é predominantemente de cima para baixo: como são as elites que armam as reivindicações sobre “o povo”, o remédio deve envolver a mudança de comportamento das elites políticas e das instituições que administram. O resultado dessa abordagem é desenfatizar as pessoas que, no final, só têm a opção de participar em melhores condições dos sistemas em que vivem. Muito pouco é dito na análise de Müller sobre seus sentimentos políticos: o que são, de onde vêm e como podem ser seriamente engajados ou respondidos em diversas sociedades democráticas. No final, isso significa que muito pouco é dito nesses livros sobre a natureza real da política e do poder.

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What Is Populism? destaca-se de outras análises do populismo em sua dupla metodologia, combinando teoria política com ciência política. Do ponto de vista da filosofia política, Müller argumenta que o populismo vem com um conjunto distinto de incentivos e prioridades, que não necessariamente se sobrepõem aos dos atores políticos tradicionais. No entanto, seu modelo também tenta apresentar argumentos causais relacionados às ações frequentemente tomadas pelos populistas, que ele ilustra por meio de exemplos empíricos.

O argumento básico de Müller é que a principal característica que distingue os populistas dos atores políticos tradicionais é como eles afirmam representar seus apoiadores. De acordo com esse quadro, os políticos tradicionais oferecem propostas de políticas sob medida para atrair um conjunto específico de apoiadores, plenamente conscientes de que muitos dentro do eleitorado discordarão. Em contraste, os populistas são fundamentalmente “antipluralistas”: eles afirmam representar absoluta e exclusivamente o povo – ou pelo menos, as únicas pessoas que contam. Para que isso seja possível, o populista deve rejeitar a heterogeneidade da sociedade democrática e, em vez disso, invocar uma vontade comum fictícia. (Assim, as grandes declarações de líderes populistas como a de Marine Le Pen da França em 2014: “O povo soberano proclamou que quer tomar de volta as rédeas de seu destino em suas mãos.”) Qualquer cidadão que discorde é difamado e excluído de fazer parte do povo. Em vez disso, eles são vistos como atores imorais, corruptos ou com “lavagem cerebral”, sustentando “a elite”, o Outro na narrativa populista nós-contra-eles.

Segundo Müller, é essa lógica de representação que explica o comportamento dos líderes populistas. Seu uso frequente de referendos, por exemplo, é uma tentativa de “ratificar o que o líder populista já discerniu ser o genuíno interesse popular”. Da mesma forma, os populistas frequentemente rejeitam resultados eleitorais desfavoráveis, pois, para eles, seria impossível para o povo selecionar genuinamente outras escolhas.

O Democracy Rules parte de uma preocupação específica com o populismo para perguntar como exatamente ele ameaça a democracia, abraçando o que Maquiavel chamou de “um retorno aos primeiros princípios”. Adota, assim, um modo de análise mais estritamente teórico, mesmo quando recorre a estudos empíricos como suporte. “Todo mundo pensa que sabe que a democracia está em crise”, escreve ele, “mas quantos de nós têm certeza do que a democracia realmente é?” O livro oferece, de fato, uma teoria ideal da democracia: uma imagem de como a política democrática deveria ser se merecesse ser chamada de democrática. Ao defender uma certa compreensão da democracia, o livro também lança luz sobre várias propostas para curar democracias enfermas hoje.

Alguns sugerem que a atual crise da democracia pode ser enfrentada com mudanças nas regras eleitorais; outros propõem a adoção de novos sistemas eleitorais. Aqueles que examinam mais de perto as causas do apoio populista argumentam a favor de reformas econômicas para diminuir a desigualdade e proteger os cidadãos de choques econômicos. A abordagem de Müller é mais abstrata: ele sugere que existe um “espírito” de democracia que transcende todas essas propostas. Embora ele endosse certas reformas concretas, especialmente em relação ao financiamento de campanha e mídia, seu argumento não se reduz a elas: independentemente da política específica que se deseja seguir, há uma certa maneira de fazer as coisas, afirma Müller, que torna a ação política propriamente democrática. “Um dos insights importantes dos estudantes de política”, observa ele, “é que essas normas não codificadas podem ser pelo menos tão importantes quanto as leis; elas realmente mantêm o jogo democrático em andamento.” Qualquer política, projeto ou partido pode cair em desordem se não for informado e guiado por esse compromisso.

Em que consiste esse espírito? Müller começa focando no que ele chama de “fronteiras duras” da política que não devem ser cruzadas para que a democracia exista. Primeiro, não se pode expulsar ou privar os cidadãos; segundo, não se pode alegar estar “acima” do conflito político (por exemplo, alegando representar uma vontade comum singular); e terceiro, todas as declarações políticas devem ser “constrangidas” por fatos. A partir daí, Müller vê a democracia, em sua essência, como uma busca pela igualdade política de todos os participantes. Para Müller, isso não implica necessariamente formas radicais de democracia direta. Em vez disso, ele sugere que essa igualdade deve se traduzir na igualdade de todos para participar de uma variedade de processos democráticos: acima de tudo, nas eleições de representantes e em instituições intermediárias, como partidos políticos, organizações de mídia e outras instituições da sociedade civil. Estes formam a “infraestrutura crítica” da democracia.

Por tudo isso, Müller enfatiza o cultivo de uma certa atitude democrática. Nas eleições, é necessário que todos reconheçam que suas crenças podem estar erradas. Müller está mais preocupado em perder. A saúde da democracia, ele argumenta, depende de todos os participantes estarem dispostos a perder com desenvoltura e assumir a posição de uma “oposição leal”, em vez de fazer falsas acusações de fraude ou, mais provavelmente, tentar minar o poder daqueles que ganham. Da mesma forma, os políticos devem reconhecer publicamente que os eleitores podem mudar de ideia e, portanto, que a política é marcada pela incerteza e definida pela incerteza: o apoio dos eleitores não pode ser dado como certo, mesmo que pareça certo na próxima eleição.

Quanto às instituições intermediárias, particularmente os partidos e a mídia, Müller argumenta que, para serem eficazes na representação, devem permitir o pluralismo – tanto externamente, em uma série de partidos e novas organizações, quanto internamente, dentro das próprias organizações. Da mesma forma, eles devem “estruturar o tempo político” com uma programação consistente de notícias, eleições e campanhas para “dar ritmo à vida democrática” e “fornecer pontos de referência comuns em torno dos quais os partidários possam se coordenar”. Ao mesmo tempo, para promover uma igualdade política significativa, eles devem ser acessíveis a todos aqueles que desejam se envolver com eles, ter autonomia de doadores e outros interesses adquiridos, e seu comportamento deve ser claro e fácil de avaliar. Embora seja fácil ver quantos desses princípios são violados pelos piores infratores da “falsa democracia”, o livro também incentiva a reflexão sobre outros partidos políticos contemporâneos. A exigência de pluralismo interno implica partidos dominantes que relutam em promover membros de partidos ideologicamente diferentes e mais jovens.

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While these are persuasive arguments, both What Is Populism? and Democracy Rules suffer from a notable omission: there is very little discussion of the people themselves. This makes it difficult for his account of populism to adequately understand the passion and drive that moves supporters. It also makes it difficult to understand how the “spirit” of democracy can be implemented and protected in practice. Müller paints a clear picture of an ideal democratic society but does not tell us precisely how to achieve or maintain it.

This approach is not a mere oversight but rather a theoretical choice. In an earlier essay, Müller goes as far as to say that, when they give their support to a populist, people become essentially “passive.” Yet this assumption is empirically questionable. On an observational level, there are plenty of cases of supporters punishing even the most charismatic populist leaders. One example is the booing of Trump during one of his own rallies in 2021, after he briefly encouraged his supporters to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Given Trump’s powerful influence, it is surprising that such a small comment should lead to any reaction at all, let alone such a passionate one.

More generally, minimizing the agency of the people makes it difficult to understand what makes populists successful in the first place. Most populists obtain only small, fleeting support, and even those who are successful can find their fortunes fade abruptly. At the start of the pandemic, for example, Italian far-right party Lega Nord lost a significant amount of popular support to the very similar Brothers of Italy party over a surprisingly small period of time. Lega Nord leader Matteo Salvini had faced some backlash for his decision to blow up the 2019 coalition government but nonetheless remained true to the rhetoric that made him popular. Instead, it was the supporters who felt better represented by the newcomer: in comparison to Giorgia Meloni’s grave predictions of an EU economic intervention, Salvini’s continued focus on refugees felt stale and irrelevant to many. Of course, populist leaders—in both formal parties and in civil society organizations—do exert a powerful influence on the attitudes of supporters. The rise and spread of anti-vaccine sentiment, for example, indicates just how successfully populist leaders can orchestrate and influence popular opinion. But this does not mean that the people do not exert a significant amount of pressure on populists in their own right. The relationship between populist supporters and populist leaders is complex and multidirectional, rather than one-way.

Müller might reply that these issues were simply beyond the scope of his argument in What Is Populism?, which is more concerned with explaining how and why populists act as they do. But a theory of populist behavior that leaves out the relationship between populists and their supporters is at best incomplete and at worst politically stultifying. The relative costs of supporting a populist can be fairly high for individuals. Many experience interpersonal conflicts. Some move into echo chambers that promulgate fear and anger. Many face ridicule from prominent social voices while breaking political norms and advocating for new approaches to policy (though they may also build new forms of community to seek shelter from this scorn). Populists must expend a great deal of effort to reassure supporters that these costs are worth it and sustain their energy and passion. In other words, supporters must be compensated in some form or another. Focusing exclusively on the internal logic of populist behavior obscures the fact that populists must always act with this goal in mind, at least insofar as they care about retaining support.

The same problem haunts the norms-based analysis in Democracy Rules. Near the beginning of the book, Müller observes that “one can say all kinds of unfriendly things to other citizens in political battle without disrespecting them, but one can’t say ‘You’re a second-class citizen’ or ‘You don’t really belong here’ (as Trump did, for instance, when he told progressive congresswomen of color to ‘go back’ to their countries).” This criterion may well help us identify a departure from democracy, but how are we supposed to enforce it, especially when people support it? The norms, rules, and principles Müller offers primarily make reference to how institutions and elites ought to orient themselves—down to what they should or shouldn’t say. He says comparatively little about how those institutions and actions should relate to the people and their desires and interests. Of course, Müller’s argument is that good results from politics are dependent upon the cultivation of the “spirit” of democracy, which is logically or theoretically prior—the condition that makes democracy possible. Good representation, on this view, is unlikely or at least unsustainable when political institutions are inaccessible or stubborn even to internal challenges. It is only when all participants abide by these rules that good representation can emerge.

But practically speaking, this leaves a lot to be desired. Müller’s preoccupation with “borders” and “infrastructure” overlooks the political importance of results. As Colin Hay argues in Why We Hate Politics (2007), what elites understand the scope and purpose of “politics” to be has a considerable effect on how they act and what types of representation they are likely to offer voters. Hay contends that the rise of pessimistic models of political behavior from the mid-twentieth century—making influential arguments against the meaningful possibility of representation and diminishing trust in the rationality of voters, politicians, and bureaucrats alike—led to the depoliticization of many issues, especially those regarding the economy and social policy. This, combined with globalization, meant that voters and politicians saw government as being increasingly powerless, causing voter apathy and falling turnout.

It is plausible that Müller’s hard borders and critical infrastructure could exist while the depoliticization of many areas of public life remains entrenched in the common sense of elites. Institutions may remain accessible, but the people may lose the desire to access them. Frustration may still build, and “fake democracy” may take hold once again. In fact, “good” representation is a necessary condition for the realization and reproduction of Müller’s hard borders and critical infrastructure. The accessibility and assessibility of institutions have little democratizing effect if the people do not have faith in them and opt out of contributing to them. The hard borders of politics will not hold water when their participants’ politics will do little for them.

This point is especially important when considering why the “spirit” of democracy is often contradicted. Institutional inertia, unquestioned ideas, and uncertainty on how to behave in new situations create situations where people inadvertently lose interest and access to institutions. For example, as Richard Katz and Peter Mair famously argue, gradual shifts in the dominant forms of political identification within many liberal democracies, as well as a change in the nature of electoral campaigning, created inflexible and ideologically rigid “cartel parties,” who found it electorally advantageous to diminish voters’ expectations, move more policy decisions to independent bodies and separate themselves from any particular constituencies.

Democracy and its principles are surprisingly fickle, and they can be usurped even if all elites have the best intentions and wish to defend them. These principles therefore presuppose an agent of accountability who has reason to remain engaged enough to take swift action and make big changes when the political system begins breeding dysfunction. As such, Müller omits from the spirit of democracy what should be at its core: an enthusiastic people and a broader populist culture.

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To these criticisms, Müller may have two responses. He might say there is no reason to believe that the key to securing democracy lies exclusively with the people. As he argued in Project Syndicate in 2018, theoretical accounts that look to social movements as the primary engines of democratic renewal often overlook the ways that charismatic leaders or harmful ideologies can dominate and disrupt them. Second, Müller may point out that nothing in his account precludes politics from becoming more ambitious or conflictual. Indeed, throughout Democracy Rules, he hints that he might support such a suggestion.

But these responses fail to envision how the impetus for populist politics can be channeled toward a richer and more passionate form of democracy. While Müller does not seek to make an empirical claim as to why people are drawn to populists, Democracy Rules gestures at populism’s economic roots—its exacerbation by the growing separation between rich and poor. As the rich gain more political power and become less tethered to specific countries and the poor lose faith in political responsiveness, more people become susceptible to populist disaffection, whether in a right-wing or left-wing direction. Desire for populist leadership stems not just from simple frustrations at policymakers, however, but from the steady building up of these frustrations over time. The sense of “dislocation” that results is the far more pessimistic feeling that the system is rigged, the world is going to hell, and that democratic institutions, as they currently exist, cannot or will not remedy it.

What populists offer in this context is not a political platform or even a vision of the people, as Müller suggests. Above all, they offer a crisis: a spectacularized narrative that explains the sources of their feelings in terms of some powerful “them” who are responsible for the various failures the people are suffering from. (On the right, this enemy is familiar: immigrants, racial and sexual minorities, liberal cultural elites. But the phenomenon exists on the left, too: its targets have notably included bosses, capitalists, and the bourgeoisie.) It is this sentiment of crisis that can better explain the sources of populist support.

This leads to two different conclusions from those offered by What is Populism?.

First, populists—like traditional parties—make a kind of contract with their supporters that creates expectations for which voters can hold them accountable. Their actions cannot be solely governed by an internal populist type of representation: they must deliver results, of some form or another. Such accountability need not run very deep, but it does exist. Far-right populists often do this by fixating on abstract or symbolic panics, engaging in brazen displays of political incorrectness, or exploiting racism, sexism, and ethno-nationalism to scapegoat minority or marginalized populations—all ways of scoring easy points by upsetting “the elites.” But that is by no means the only way to do it: many populist movements have clear political demands and, even when symbolism is important, they look for more concrete ways to rebuff elites, ranging from the subversion of elite dress codes by leaders like Evo Morales to the outright forms of sabotage taken up by militant unions during the Great Depression.

Second, we should be skeptical of Müller’s overall negative image of populists. After all, sometimes there do exist real political crises, and surely the way that those are represented and fought against ought to differ, in some way, from the representative claims made in “normal” political disputes. Certainly, populism can be a dangerous strategy, but populists who craft responsible and deep platforms, like the American Populist Party that Müller concedes defies his model, tend to build crises around clearer and more pragmatic imagery, issues, and goals, unleashing a passionate response to persistent and dangerous problems. It is from this perspective that Erin Pineda has suggested we view the U.S. civil rights movement as “the nation’s longest, sustained populist struggle.”

This line of thought also presents a conclusion contrary to the argument of Democracy Rules. Beyond its claims about the fundamental “spirit” of democracy, the core contention of the book is that a fairer and more equal political system would strip away the conditions in which populism thrives and create a prosperous democracy in its wake. But dislocation can and will persist even under the best political conditions. Legislative errors, changes in social attitudes, or lingering contradictions in path-dependent institutions all breed frustration and, over time, can foster populism. Indeed, as Michael Kazin argues in The Populist Persuasion (1995), while the form it takes may change, influential populism has been present in politics more often than not. There is no good reason to think that the vanishing point Müller imagines is anything more than an ideal—a vision that has never been and is unlikely ever to be realized in practice. In this sense, imagining the end of populism is not far from imagining the “end of history”—or the end of politics itself.

If history is any guide, then, it is a fool’s errand to seek to exclude populism entirely. Instead, the spirit of democracy should entrench those features that can make it a powerful form of representation while making it harder for its more regressive forms to arrogate its power.

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What would such a populist-democratic culture look like? At least two general principles can be identified.

First, as Müller himself suggests in Democracy Rules, there must be a proliferation in the locations where people can find the representation they crave. This entails not only the existence of parties that represent a wider set of platforms across the political spectrum but also an increase in the places where citizens can constructively mobilize their anger. Unions and other forms of workplace democracy are an obvious place where political passions can be channeled in transformative ways, but local governments and mass movements also can give people real political agency. Moreover, these institutions must not simply exist: they must be able to make change. They ought to be seen as necessary counterbalances to electoral forms of democracy and should be empowered accordingly.

Second, politics must be ambitious in all places, and the trend toward centrist, technocratic depoliticization must be vigorously opposed. Crisis has its uses: it can “establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue,” as Martin Luther King famously put it in his critique of the white moderate in his letter from Birmingham jail. A populist culture should embrace this vision. Parties must seek to politicize new issues, offer new ways of thinking about relevant debates, and represent new ways of doing politics. Many mainstream parties decide their platforms by identifying those already most likely to vote for them and catering to their existing, heterogeneous preferences. By creating crises, populists can make new political demands and change the terms of political discussion. Erik Baker argues in a critical review of Thomas Frank’s latest book The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism (2021) that these terms will not always be purely economic. But populism’s power does not lie in articulating any particular set of demands. It lies in the ability to link potentially popular ones, give them serious urgency, and incentivize voters to take risks they might usually avoid.

Farage and Boris Johnson did exactly this in their advocacy of Brexit, turning a relatively marginal idea into the focal issue of UK politics more than three years, which also popularized demands for more aggressive border controls and an interventionist form of conservatism. Unfortunately, it is far-right voices who have dominated this passionate, ambitious political space, with mainstream parties, like the Democrats, content to continue seeking consensus and compromise. Populist opposition to this state of affairs need not devolve into conflict for conflict’s sake. In healthy politics, norms must be broken, radical ideas must always have a seat at the table, and the discussions being had must constantly evolve.

None of this is to suggest that figures like Trump, Johnson, and Le Pen have some special insight into the feelings of the people, nor is it to claim that new principles of democracy should be built around the desires of supporters of contemporary far-right movements. But it is to cast doubt on Müller’s vision of a democratic politics ideally structured around second-order consensus about pluralism. Political cynicism crosses partisan lines, and it is that feeling that must be addressed. This won’t happen so long as democratic politics is conceived of as ideally a matter of rule-following instead of a field of constant conflict and experimentation. In the United States, the mass mobilizations of Occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, and Black Lives Matter—which facilitated the largest protest movement in U.S. history over the last two years—gesture toward a very different vision of politics.

Müller is aware of these tensions. He anticipates the charge that he places too much emphasis on the stability of rules and norms, writing in the preface of Democracy Rules, for example, that “neither rules nor norms are in and of themselves good things” and that they “can be broken while one remains faithful to their underlying principles.” Likewise, he explicitly supports forms of disobedience, including publicly yelling at especially egregious public figures such as Tucker Carlson and Dominic Cummings. But these gestures to a more conflictual vision of politics are in the end carefully qualified: norm-breaking is justified, Müller cautions, only “to preserve the very meaning of the game” and “when all else fails.” In the end, his animating concern is keeping things from getting out of hand. We may think society is deeply unjust, but our anger must be disciplined: it must only seek to exclude the most egregious rule-breakers. The effect is to portray passionate politics as a kind of last resort, an extreme departure from an otherwise comfortably maintained consensus. On this picture, serious struggle is something best undertaken warily and in moderation, with an eye to ensuring that civility can be restored in the future.

The truth is that a diverse democratic society requires openness to rule-breaking as an integral and ordinary component of politics, whether in good times or bad. Politics is risky, but anger is often apt. Rather than waiting for epochal breakdowns to occur, societies ought to preempt them by constantly being amenable to change. Stable democracies thus rely on claims that exclude or blame others, at least to some extent. Without the possibility of overthrowing not just the leaders who fail but their fundamental vision of politics, even the most principled institutions will breed frustration and ultimately undermine democracy. It is precisely the promise of actually making change in the future that can keep citizens “loyal” to the system even when they lose elections. You agree to keep playing the game not out of neutral, dispassionate respect for the rules, but because you think you actually have a chance of winning.

Alberto Polimeni é escritor em Londres. Ele estudou filosofia e política no King's College London e na London School of Economics.