[Soodang Distinguished Speaker Colloquium #6] Buying Power: The Economics of Populism from Ancient Greece to the Present

• Date: April 23, 2021 16:00

• Presenter: Paul D Kenny (Australian Catholic University)

• Organized by: Peace & Democracy Institute, Department of Political Science and International Relations at Korea University

 

On April 23, 2021, Peace & Democracy Institute invited Professor Paul D Kenny to hold the 6th Soodang Invited Scholars Colloquium.

Professor Paul D Kenny studies political order and the economic roots of political action at the Institute for Humanities & Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University.

In the lecture, Professor Kenny published a working paper, “Buying Power: The Economics of Populism from Ancient Grace to the Present.” Populism, the core of this research, has been used as a kind of ideology to win votes in everyday and academic circles. However, the author characterizes populism as a “political strategy” based on a political organization that is very personally obsessed with the charismatic mobilization of the public to pursue political power. Populism is what happens when people feel inequality in terms of demand, dissatisfied with this, and politicians’ ambitions to have power in terms of supply meet.

Therefore, the author noted “populism as a political strategy” and analyzed the history of populism from ancient Greece to the present from an economic perspective.  In the study, the author suggested party, sponsorship, and populism as a way for politicians to gain power in the democratic system, and argued that populism has advantages because it costs voters directly. For example, the author analyzed the flow and trend of populism along the historical trend, presenting populism in ancient Greece, which had no concept of a party, Napoleon and Trump. In conclusion, the author suggests that if you look at populism as an ideology as before, it is a threat to democracy, but if you look at it as an election strategy, it is not a threat to democracy, but because it has been historically frequent, so it may not be a threat or a new phenomenon