Populism
Authoritarianism

Scholars have argued that populist elements have sometimes appeared in authoritarian movements. Some, but not all, populists are authoritarian, emphasizing "the importance of protecting traditional lifestyles against perceived threats from 'outsiders', even at the expense of civil liberties and minority rights."

The historian Roger Eatwell noted that "major ideological differences... lie at the core" of fascism and populism, the former being anti-democratic and latter being rooted in democracy, "albeit not liberal democracy". However, he says that fascist politicians have "borrowed aspects of populist discourse and style". Some fascists have for instance used the terms "people" and "nation" synonymously. The historian Peter Fritzsche argued that populist movements active in Weimar Germany helped to facilitate the environment in which the fascist Nazi Party could rise to power, and that the Nazis utilised, "at least rhetorically", the "populist ideal of the people's community". The scholar Luke March argued that the populist Narodnik movement of late 19th-century Russia influenced the radical rejection on the constitutional limits of the state found in Marxism–Leninism. Although the Marxist–Leninist movement often used populist rhetoric—in the 1960s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union called itself the "party of the Soviet people"—in practice its emphasis on an elite vanguard is anti-populist in basis.

In recent history, a 2018 analysis by political scientists Yascha Mounk and Jordan Kyle links populism to democratic backsliding, showing that since 1990, five out of 13 elected right-wing populist governments and five out of 15 elected left-wing populist governments brought about significant democratic backsliding. From the left, the pink tide spreading over Latin America was "prone to populism and authoritarianism". Correa in Ecuador and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and his regional allies used populism to achieve their dominance and later established authoritarian regimes when they were empowered. Such actions, Weyland argues, proves that populism is a strategy for winning and exerting state power and stands in tension with democracy and the values of pluralism, open debate, and fair competition.

In 2019, Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart classified over 50 European political parties as 'authoritarian-populist' as well as world leaders like Donald Trump, Silvio Burlesconi, Viktor Orbán, Hugo Chávez, Nicholas Maduro, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, and Rodrigo Duterte. They described the combination of authoritarian values disguised in populist rhetoric as perhaps the most dangerous threat to liberal democracy. They also argue that authoritarian-populism provides a more powerful analytical lens than conventional labels like right-wing populism.
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