Is Populism Necessarily Bad Economics?

摘要

Economists dislike populism, and for good reason. The term evokes irresponsible, unsustainable policies that often end in disaster and hurt most the ordinary people they purportedly aim to help. The emergence recently of populist movements in Europe and the United States has made these concerns more relevant. But populism is a term with many possible meanings and its political and economic ramifications are different. In this short paper, I will provide a limited defense of economic, but not political, populism under our present circumstances.I. Defining Populism and its Political and Economic VariantsThe distinctive trait of populism is that it claims to represent and speak for "the people," which is assumed to be unified by a common interest. This common interest, the "popular will," is in turn set against the "enemies of the people"-minorities and foreigners (in the case of right-wing populists) or financial elites (in the case of left-wing populists).Since they claim to represent "the people" at large, populists abhor restraints on the political executive. They see limits on their exercise of power as necessarily undermining the popular will.