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Populism is ochlocracy, rather than democracy though. One defining feature of democracy is that it is 'supposed' to take some account of minority views and righ
by inflatableDodo 7y ago
Populism is ochlocracy, rather than democracy though. One defining feature of democracy is that it is 'supposed' to take some account of minority views and rights when legislating for the majority. People claiming winning mandates to steamroller policies from knife edge splits, inflict some of the severest damage on democracies.
- vixen99 7y agoSo you get to define it? As Wikipedia suggests, 'There is no single definition of the term, which developed in the 19th century and has been used to mean various different things'. Included in these is a non-perjorative one as in 'a political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite or The movement organized around this philosophy.' (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English) A personal agenda will decide which one to pick.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago>A personal agenda will decide which one to pick. My personal agenda was to go with the usage in context. You can introduce other uses of the term, for sure. My point is that populism, in the context of "populism can show the danger of democracy. A tyranny of the majority is not a good thing." is rule of the mob and so is actually ochlocracy, not democracy, as the demos is all of the people. A good example is wealth redistribution. A democracy might decide that it is good for society as a whole to tax and spend its way to a more even society, an ochlocracy is more apt to sieze that which is owned by whoever is currently most unpopular. Not all populist movements are ochlocratic, but all ochlocratic movements are in some way populist. Is hard to form a public mob without being populist.