The lesson is that people will abandon democracy if they are worried that an elite has captured its institutions. Medieval Italy’s democratic institutions succumbed to what we might now call populism: an anti-elitist, anti-pluralistic and exclusionary strategy for building a coalition of the discontented. Nonetheless, populism can become an attractive political strategy when three conditions obtain. As a de-institutionalizing strategy, populism appeals to the growing cohort of those who are disillusioned with existing arrangements. That starts with recognizing that populism can emerge only when there are real social and economic problems to give it electoral traction.

Source: Mint June 15, 2019 14:12 UTC