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103 Foreign Aff. 108 (2024)
The Populist Phantom: Threats to Democracy Start at the Top

handle is hein.journals/fora103 and id is 1178 raw text is: The Populist Phantom Threats to Democracy Start at the Top LARRY M. BARTELS Many countries have been roiled in recent years by what is often called a populist wave.In the Anglophone world, this new era began in 2016 with the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Media and political elites shocked by these events tied themselves in knots trying to figure out what had happened and why. According to the most popular strand of this thinking, the Brexit vote and Trump's victory were the reverberations of a profound economic and social transformation. Globalization and technological change had shattered the livelihoods of working-class people and eviscerated their communities, provoking a groundswell of anger and resentment, a populist rejection of the status quo and the political establishment. Since then, observers have been quick to find further evidence of the LARRY M. BARTELS is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University and the author of Democracy Erodes From the Top: Leaders, Citizens, and the Challenge ofPopulism in Europe. FOREIGN AFFAIRS 108