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Yeah someone else linked it. It was fairly meaningless: According to today’s workhorse definition, populism is defined as a political style centered on the sup

Yeah someone else linked it. It was fairly meaningless: According to today’s workhorse definition, populism is defined as a political style centered on the supposed struggle of “people vs. the establishment” (Mudde 2004). Populists place the narrative of “people vs. elites” at the center of their political agenda and then claim to be the sole representative of “the people.” This definition has become increasingly dominant, and is now also widely used by economists (see Section 2, and the recent survey paper by Guriev and Papaioannou, 2020). Populist leaders claim to represent the “true, common people” against the dishonest “elites,” thus separating society into two seemingly homogeneous and antagonistic groups.

willis936 3y ago
That seems to fall neatly into the previous definition without saying the words "demagogue", "opportunism", and "simplistic". It's more of a practical characterization than a definition.
RandomLensman 3y ago
Why do you consider it meaningless (section 2 goes a bit deeper)? For example, not every politician claims to be the sole representative of the people vs an elite.
pydry 3y ago
That's possibly vaguer than it could be but it doesn't seem meaningless. I'd take FAR issue more with the fact that the authors appear to have mixed up correlation and causation. e.g. the fact that, say, international conflict causes a bad economy and populism (the "war is bad" theory) appears to have flown completely under the radars of Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch. Also the fact that GDP is well known to be a shitty measure of well being for the average person. Nonetheless, it is a pretty good measure of how things are going for that particular country's oligarchy (the targets of those populists). There is a strong causal relationship between using GDP as a measure and getting published in the AEA, though.
LaundroMat 3y ago
Well, it's vague, but not that meaningless. For one, it refutes the notion that populists' actions are actually what the people want, let alone benefit the people, because populists only claim to act against the elites and for the common people. This means grandparent's reading of the paper that what the people want does not benefit them (at least not economically), because populists only claim to act in the interest of the people. As a side-note, it's interesting to see that their data shows that populists generally stay in power twice as long as none-populists and they are often removed from office in "non-regular ways".

willis936 3y ago

That seems to fall neatly into the previous definition without saying the words "demagogue", "opportunism", and "simplistic". It's more of a practical characterization than a definition.

RandomLensman 3y ago

Why do you consider it meaningless (section 2 goes a bit deeper)? For example, not every politician claims to be the sole representative of the people vs an elite.

pydry 3y ago

That's possibly vaguer than it could be but it doesn't seem meaningless. I'd take FAR issue more with the fact that the authors appear to have mixed up correlation and causation. e.g. the fact that, say, international conflict causes a bad economy and populism (the "war is bad" theory) appears to have flown completely under the radars of Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch. Also the fact that GDP is well known to be a shitty measure of well being for the average person. Nonetheless, it is a pretty good measure of how things are going for that particular country's oligarchy (the targets of those populists). There is a strong causal relationship between using GDP as a measure and getting published in the AEA, though.

LaundroMat 3y ago

Well, it's vague, but not that meaningless. For one, it refutes the notion that populists' actions are actually what the people want, let alone benefit the people, because populists only claim to act against the elites and for the common people. This means grandparent's reading of the paper that what the people want does not benefit them (at least not economically), because populists only claim to act in the interest of the people. As a side-note, it's interesting to see that their data shows that populists generally stay in power twice as long as none-populists and they are often removed from office in "non-regular ways".