Reposting: LSE Public Lecture on the Causes of Populism (Oct 2019)
A few days before the Polish election, and with only few weeks to go before the Brexit deadline of 31.10.2019, with impeachment proceedings finally started in the US, many of us still grapple with trying to make sense of how the electorates in so many affluent, advanced societies, including those with the oldest demoracies in the western hemisphere, and those - like the Poles - who valiantly fought illiberal and totalitarian regimes, from the Nazis through the Soviets to the socialist yoke, have chosen in free and fair elections politicians that have sought to limit freedoms, cajole electorates, and are expressing a set of values that are, for the most part, inconsistent with the liberal and free tendencies exhibited by these countries and peoples for some time.
If those questions are of interest to you, you may benefit - as have I - from listening to the recording of a recent public lecture at LSE, where CEU Dean Michael Ignatieff, himself a former Canadian politican, and Harvard political scientist Pippa Norris, explain their perspectives and research on Brexit and wider populist tendencies:
Listen to Populism: causes and responses [Audio] from LSE: Public lectures and events in Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/lse-public-lectures-and-events/id279428154?i=1000451332993
There’s also a short youtube video outlining the key concepts and upshots from Pippa Harris’ new (2019) book on the underlying causes of populism, co-authored with Ronald Inglehart of Michigan University:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICUu1AioKoo
You can read their key thesis in relation to the BREXIT causes in this 2018 academic paper, which is a partial preview of their new 2019 book (see above). (click on hypertext for download of pdf)
The Financial Times has tried to shed light on Poland’s own idiosyncracies in continuing on the chosen path in a recent article:
https://www.ft.com/content/176e701c-e8ec-11e9-85f4-d00e5018f061
PS: Michael Ignatieff also comments on what he terms ‘digital disinhibition’, referencing the uninhibited vitriol often expressed in digital commentary on public fora in the internet, something that he never experienced in such massiveness and brutality in the analogue world when he was a politician. This phenomenon is the key reason why I have chosen not to allow comments and feedback on this blog.
