Public ideas and the US election
On populism
Shikha Dalmia, of The Unpopulist, writes on the Persuasion site about populism – what it is and what it isn’t. She introduces her essay describing the consequences of populism:
Wherever populism appears, so do various forms of illiberalism that if allowed to run their course result in strongman politics with its contempt for dispersed power, checks and balances, freedom of the press, and other constraints on one-man (or woman) rule.
Populist movements, she writes, are generally mobilized against some real or imagined domestic “establishment”, which, over time “has become corrupt – genuinely or allegedly”. Followers of populist movements identify themselves not by who they are, but by who they aren’t.
She goes into the difficulties in liberal democracies in determining the “will of the people”. (Older Australians may remember how defenders of upper houses of parliament with restricted franchises claimed that they represented “the permanent will of the people”.)
Populist demagogues claim that they aim to represent or even embody the will of the people, but “populism means pursuing policies that the majority favors without subjecting them to normal deliberative processes, simply because the majority favors them”.
She concludes with a distinction between “left” and “right” populism. Both are destructive, but they are very different, and “right” populism is far more dangerous than “left” populism.
On US-Australian differences
Over this weekend there will be many discussions about the differences between US and Australian electoral systems, with references to compulsory voting, our independent Electoral Commission, and preferential voting.
In an interview on Radio National, a few days before the US election, Timothy Lynch of the University of Melbourne – Is Australia too smug about the US election? – discusses those differences on a different level. In part they relate to the way the two nations were founded – one as a revolutionary experiment, the other as an administrative outpost of a colonial power. That experiment has been in progress since 1776 and the process has not always been peaceful.
Along the way he provides an (unconvincing) explanation why an electoral outcome based on first-past-the-post voting in seven “swing” states is a reasonable way to elect a representative government.
Stan Grant on America
I would never dare to summarize Stan Grant’s writing. His contribution in The Monthly – Once upon a time in America – written shortly after Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate, takes you into his observations of America. His style in that essay is reminiscent of Emma Lazarus’s inscription on the Statute of Liberty, but his message is far less soothing about America.