Populism and Democracy: What We Know and Don’t Know

Abstract

What is the relationship between populism in power and democratic rule? Kurt Weyland's Democracy's Resilience to Populism's Threat argues that democracy is resilient in the face of populism. It requires the combination of preexisting institutional weaknesses and exogenous opportunities, skillfully utilized by a populist chief executive, for populism to asphyxiate democratic rule. I argue in this essay that Weyland's impressive examination of forty cases of populism in power in Latin America, Europe, and the United States should settle the debate on whether victory of populism at the polls inexorably leads to regime transition. However, the book is less likely to end definitional debates about populism, not because it fails to make a convincing argument in favor of the definition it advances, but because ontological debates are largely immune to empirical adjudication. I also contend that despite the explosive growth of scholarship on populism, some key issues remain unsettled. We do not have a good understanding of the causes driving the rise of populism, and we lack consensus on the most effective ways for opposition forces to confront populist leaders in power.