I talk a lot about models of democracy. In this post, I want to talk about a kind often called populism, largely because I’m worried about the implications of that term. I think it hinders our ability to think usefully about policy deliberation because it implies that a flawed model of deliberation is restricted to one group. Thus, once again, it makes inclusive democratic deliberation an issue of identity rather than approach.
Several models of democracy presumes that we really disagree, and there is no one viewpoint from which the best policy is obvious. We really disagree because we have different values, priorities, perceptions, interests, needs, experiences, and so on. There is no one right policy, but a large number of policies that are good enough in terms of appropriately sharing the burdens and benefits.
If we operate from within this sort of model, then, if people come to a decision that seems wrong to us, we try to figure out the perspective from which it makes sense, or the negotiations and compromises that might make this a “good enough” decision. Sometimes there is none, btw, and it really was a bad decision. Or it’s only good from some a narrow perspective that it’s really not good enough, if the goal is inclusion. There are lots of decisions that people later regretted that don’t look any better close up–refusing to change the “Jewish” immigration quota in the late 30s, eugenics, Jim Crow (I’ve picked examples that were bipartisan in their support, btw).
There are other models that presume that there is one perspective from which it is obvious what is the right thing to do, and I want to talk about one kind of that model–it’s the one to which we’re appealing when we decide that an entity has come to an obviously bad decision, and it’s obviously bad because it hurts or doesn’t help us. It assumes that there is no point of view with any validity other than our own. It assumes that the right course of action is obvious to a sensible person. There is a disengaged elite that has made a decision that ordinary people know is wrong.
This model is often called populism, but I’m not happy about that term, since it implies that the “populace” engages in this approach to politics and not elites.[1] The problem is that very few people think we’re in the elite, and yet, if you think about elite in terms of education or class, elites engage in that rhetoric just as much as any other group.
There is, for instance, the “makers v. takers” rhetoric, which is used to justify massive tax breaks to the very wealthiest, because they’re ordinary, in a way, and opposed to “the liberal elite” or “the Washington elite” who want intrusive government. Wealthy people complain about professors as an intellectual elite, as though wealthy people are oppressed by Ernesto Laclau.
I’ve talked about it before as “obvious politics,” which might be the right way—the right course of action is what looks obvious to MEEEEEE. It’s also called “stealth democracy” by some political scientists. In my grumpier moments, I think the right term might be something like narcissistic politics. Because of the rise of discussion about narcissism, we’ve lost the term “self-centered,” and that might be the right term.
In any case, to make the point that it isn’t about the unwashed, uneducated, and gullible masses being seduced into thinking badly about things, I want to talk about some academic conflicts in which I’ve seen super-smart people reason exactly this way—whatever we call it. It’s a way of approaching politics that assumes that there is one viewpoint (MINE) from which it’s obvious what should be done.
One example was when there was discussion at one of my universities of shifting the academic calendar in a particular way, and many faculty wanted the change enacted immediately. This came up at a Faculty Council meeting, of which I was a member since obviously I am paying for sins of a past life that must have been pretty fun. Most faculty talked purely in terms of how it would help them and their students. Several people from the College of Engineering said that enacting this change immediately would cause the University to lose its accreditation with important engineering entities. They agreed with the problem (classes on the day before Thanksgiving) but disagreed about the plan. The majority of faculty voted for the change happening immediately.
This was at a University at which the College of Engineering losing accreditation would severely damage the university as a whole. But, the faculty who voted for changing the calendar immediately didn’t listen or didn’t care. They just looked at it from their perspective.
So, anytime that people who pride themselves on their education are outraged that Those Idiots are voting for something or supporting a candidate or party who will hurt them in the long run, I think about that meeting. It isn’t just Them. That’s what’s the matter with, for instance, What’s the Matter with Kansas.
The second example is actually a lot of examples, and it has to do with the cost of academic conferences. They are expensive, and travel is expensive, and departments often don’t support faculty adequately for attendance, or graduate students at all. Faculty at less prestigious colleges and universities sometimes have neither the salary nor university support to attend. Yet, attending conferences is tremendously useful for teaching, research, job-hunting, networking. Thus, the cost of conferences reinforces all sorts of nasty hierarchies in academia. It is a really important problem about which a field that claims to be inclusive really needs to work. We’re agreed on the need.
The plan, however, is up for argument, and one recurrent plaint is that the conference hotel is expensive, and the organization is clearly out of touch, greedy, or in cahoots with the hotels, and so conferences should be hosted at less-expensive hotels. There are complaints that rooms at the conference hotel are expensive, for instance, or that hosting an event in the hotel is pricey, or that the conference registration is far above what so many people can easily afford. Sometimes the accusation is that the organization is clueless about the financial situation of most academics.
My favorite moment, by the way, is when someone complained that the bagels at the conference hotel were expensive, in a somewhat incoherent post but that seemed to suggest they thought the organizers were bathing in champagne on the basis of the profits of bagel sales.
And, just to be clear, I made all those complaints, and more, until I organized a conference. I looked at this issue through the model of narcissistic politics. I’d love to say that I reasoned my way out of it, but I didn’t. I experienced my way out of it.
I made those complaints (except the bagel one) because, from my perspective, it looked like an obviously stupid set of decisions.
In fact, the whole situation is much more complicated and boring than these fantasies of obviously stupid or nefarious conference organizers imply. (Although I’ll admit I kind of love the image of some conference organizer trying to bathe in as much champagne as they could buy with what they profit from the sale of bagels in the hotel lobby, or perhaps even in bagels, hence the doodle above.)
Before I was involved in hosting a conference I didn’t consider so many things, such as the cost of the rooms in which panels were held. Nor was I even remotely aware of the normal cost of the hotel rooms that attendees might get and thus how huge the discount often is, or how that discount is achieved. I’m not sure any academic organization profits from its annual conference; the registration fees barely cover the costs (and some lose money). Sometimes the host covers the losses. I’m not aware of any conference in my field that profits from the annual conference.
In my (limited) experience, the registration fee pays for the rooms in which the panels are held, and the organization has to guarantee a certain number of room rentals in order to get the substantial reduction on room rates (and it is a substantial reduction), and that room rental is connected to a lower price on the conference space. In other words, an organization can’t host the conference at cheaper hotels because those hotels don’t have the space for the panels, and it can only get that panel space by guaranteeing a certain number of room rentals. The more room rentals it can guarantee, the greater the room rental discount.
So, I was wrong to imagine that conference organizers were bathing in bagels, or in the profits from bagels.
I’ve come to think that the problem is big, and the solutions aren’t obvious, and that organizations are working on them–they involve things like funds for certain kinds of attendees, tiered registration rates, perhaps more virtual attendance options (which doesn’t help with networking), organizational support for regional conferences. What I do know is that leaders of academic organizations worry about this a lot.
There are, of course, people in power who are greedy, narrow-minded, malevolent, corrupt, stupid, and so on, and we need to condemn them. My point is simply that no one died and gave us omniscience. We see as through a glass darkly, and a glass that only shows part of the possible world. That tendency to assume that only people like us matter, and people like us see the world in an obvious and unbiased way, isn’t about education, in-group membership, or some universal genius. It’s about information. We can’t know whether a decision is bad without trying to hear why people have made the decision they have. That it looks bad to us doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad.
Unless they’re bathing in bagels. That’s a bad decision.
[1]Paul Johnson talks about “conservative populism,” meaning a specific rhetoric mobilized by groups that claim to be “conservative” (spoiler alert: they aren’t), and he uses the term precisely and usefully, but I think one still might infer that populism is unique to people who self-identify as “conservative” (which is very clearly not what he means). Chip Berlet and Mathew Lyons have a book I still like, in which they talk about “Right-Wing Populism” which has as examples more than one Democrat, or supporter of the Democratic Party. Like Johnson, the term “right-wing” is restrictive. An awful lot of really good and smart work talks about populism more generally, which appears all over the political spectrum. But, again, it seems to me that, while no one is claiming that only people on that point of the political spectrum appeals to populism, there does seem to be the implication that it’s a vice of “the populace.”