Category Archives: Populism

The Trump-Pence sign still hangs on the older building off Main Street in this historic town, a lasting vestige of the campaign fervor that roused voters, including many who still believe the falsehood that the former president didn't lose in 2020 and hope he'll run in 2024.

The enthusiasm for Donald Trump's unique brand of nationalist populism has cut into traditional Democratic strongholds like Monongahela, about 25 miles south of Pittsburgh, where brick storefronts and a Slovak fellowship hall dot Main Street and church bells mark the hours of the day. Republicans are counting on political nostalgia for the Trump era as they battle Democrats this fall in Pennsylvania in races for governor, the U.S. Senate and control of Congress.

"Trump just came along and filled the empty space," said Matti Gruzs, who stitches old blue jeans into tote bags, place mats and other creations she sells at the weekly Farmer's Market downtown. "He's still the king, and the kingmaker."

Against the backdrop of this picturesque place, House Republicans recently released their campaign agenda, hoping their "Commitment to America" can tap into the same political sentiment Trump used to attract not just Republican but independent and former Democratic voters. But it's unclear whether the support that propelled Trump to the White House will be there on Election Day, Nov. 8.

Perhaps even more challenging for the GOP is whether Trump's false claims of voter fraud will cost the party if people believe, as the defeated president claims without evidence, the elections are rigged. Some may just decide to sit out the election.

"It started out as a low-enthusiasm race," said Dave Ball, the Republican Party chairman in Washington County, which includes much of western Pennsylvania.

Ball said enthusiasm has been "building rapidly" his main metric for voter interest in the elections is the demand for lawn signs. "We were wondering, at one point, you know, we were going to see any," he said. "Right now, I can't get my hands on enough."

But Amy Michalic, who was born and raised in Monongahela and works the polls during elections, said she hears skepticism from some voters, particularly Trump supporters, "who think my vote doesn't count."

Trump's claims of fraud have no basis in fact. Dozens of court cases filed by Trump and his supporters have been dismissed or rejected by judges across the nation, but he continues to challenge President Biden's victory. In every state, officials have attested to the accuracy of their elections, and Trump's own attorney general at the time, Bill Barr, said in 2020 there was no voter fraud on a scale to change the outcome.

Michalic reminds skeptical voters in her hometown of the importance of voting and notes that in 2016, no one thought Trump could win. "Look what he did, he took Pennsylvania," she said.

At the Farmer's Market on a recent afternoon, voters shared concerns that many people in the United States voice this election year about the high prices of everything, about finding workers and good-paying jobs, about the culture wars.

"Where do you start?" said Michelle DeHosse, wearing an American flag shirt as she helped vendors set up stands.

DeHosse, who runs a custom-screen print and embroidery shop on Main Street, said she has had trouble hiring employees since the pandemic. While she said just cannot afford the $20 an hour and health care benefits many applicants demand, she understands that many workers need both. "It's the economy that's the biggest concern," she said.

Democrats were sparse among the voters, who didn't seem to have strong feelings for their choices this fall for either of the Senate candidates, Democrat John Fetterman or the Trump-backed Republican Mehmet Oz. Several said they probably would vote party line.

"I don't like either one of them," said Carolyn McCuen, 84, a Republican enjoying sunset with friends and McDonald's coffee at a picnic table by the river.

"Me either," said another Republican, Sam Reo, 76, a retired mechanical engineer, playing oldies from the portable speaker he sets up for the group.

Both still plan to vote. Support for the GOP candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, who was outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, can be seen in the giant signs along Lincoln Highway, an east-west route across the state.

Mastriano is a "folk hero around here," said Gruzs, who recalled his regular updates broadcast during the pandemic.

A history buff who home-schooled her children, Gruzs hasn't missed a vote since she cast her first presidential ballot for Ronald Reagan. The same goes for her husband, Sam, a plumber. They moved here two decades ago from Baltimore, for a better life. Now a grandmother, she spends her days working on her crafts and listening to far-right broadcasts Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk and others.

She is not a fan of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, and isn't convinced he has the toughness needed to push the party's ideas forward. But she did attend the event at a nearby manufacturing facility where lawmakers outlined the GOP agenda. She was heartened to see far-right Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene at the event with McCarthy, and made sure to shake Greene's hand.

"If she's behind him," she said, trailing off. "It looked today he had enough behind him, pushing him."

Trump remains popular, and the sign hanging on the building off of Main Street from his 2020 campaign was far from the only one still visible in the state, two years since that election.

Several of the voters dismissed the investigations against Trump as nothing more than a "witch hunt" designed to keep him from running again office, despite the potentially serious charges being raised in state and federal inquiries. Some voters said they didn't believe the attack on the Capitol was an insurrection, despite the violence waged by pro-Trump supporters trying to overturn Biden's election.

Those views stand in contrast to the hard facts of Jan. 6: More than 850 people have been arrested and charged in the insurrection, some given lengthy sentences by the courts for their involvement. Hours before the siege, Trump told a rally crowd to "fight like hell" for his presidency. Loyalists soon broke into the Capitol, fighting in hand-to-hand combat with police, interrupting Congress as it was certifying the election results. Five people, including a Trump supporter shot by police, died in the immediate aftermath.

And if Trump runs again?

"I wish he would," said McCuen, a retired church secretary. "But I don't know if he will."

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Trump still "king" and "kingmaker" to some in Pennsylvania - CBS News

Last month, a video was posted to Pierre Poilievre's Facebook page accusing the federal government of causing high food prices and driving farmers to ruin. The post on the Tory leaders page laid the blame on "proposed fertilizer cuts" that would force Canadians into an "irresponsible" reliance on expensive imported food.

The video was misleading. The federal government last year announced it was developing a voluntary plan to reduce nitrogen fertilizer emissions by 30 per cent by 2030. Mandatory restrictions on the chemicals were never in the works; instead, farmers would be encouraged to help out by using more efficient fertilizers or using less by changing their farming techniques.

Nitrogen fertilizers account for about two per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions about the same as aviation. In Canada, they account for about a quarter of agricultural emissions and are the only source of emissions in the sector that is growing.

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Within weeks, the 40-second clip posted on Poilievres page was viewed over 35,000 times and received more than 7,500 interactions, making it among the most popular posts about fertilizer on the platform this year. Interactions are a metric used by Facebook parent company Meta that combines a post's likes, comments and shares.

Disinformation and conspiracy theories about Canadas fertilizer reduction strategy have run rampant online, since the release of a doomsday report last year by Canadas $23-billion fertilizer industry. The report claims the plan will cost farmers $48 billion by 2030 and slash yields of our major crops. Since then, conservative politicians and advocacy groups linked to Canada's far-right and fossil fuel lobby, have been posting erroneous information that ranges from greenwashing to flat-out disinformation about the government fertilizer plan, a Canada's National Observer investigation has found.

Nitrogen fertilizers are primarily made from natural gas. As the world tries to reduce gas production and consumption, the chemicals are poised to become increasingly important to the survival of gas companies.

Canada's National Observer looked at Facebook posts containing the word "fertilizer" posted by Canada-based Facebook pages over the past year using Meta's proprietary search engine Crowdtangle, which captures most of the more than 1,000 posts. Of the 120 that garnered the most interactions, 64 per cent were posted by conservative politicians or political parties, right-wing populist groups and pro-fossil fuel groups about the federal fertilizer emissions reduction plan.

Poilievre tops the list of 20 politicians and political parties who posted on the issue, garnering nine of the top 120 posts. Those messages framed the federal emissions reduction plan as an effort to restrict fertilizer use and an attack on farmers that would increase the cost of food for Canadians.

The federal government has not proposed restrictions on fertilizer use and this summer signed a $2.5-billion deal with the provinces to subsidize Canadian farmers. The price of food is primarily shaped by global forces, meaning associated soaring food prices are largely out of Canadian control.

Some comments by Conservatives went even further. Manitoba MP Dan Maziers Facebook page shared a video claiming the fertilizer plan was an "attack on farmers" that would "kill a foundational sector like agriculture" after first "shutting down our oil and gas industry." The federal government continues to offer generous subsidies to farmers and the oil and gas industry.

Canada's National Observer did not receive a response to a request for comment from Poilievre's office by deadline. A spokesperson for Mazier did not address specific questions about the MP's claims about the plan.

Thirty of the top-performing posts were made by right-wing populist groups or media outlets, many with a track record of attacking the Trudeau government. This list includes groups like Ontario Proud, which holds itself out as a grassroots community group but operates anonymously and is part of a family of similar pages linked to conservative operative Jeff Ballingall and right-wing media outlet True North.

For instance, on Aug. 27, a post by the group Alberta Proud warned the federal government to "keep your hands off our farmers" by backing off its "demand" that they reduce fertilizer emissions and use, and highlighted a cartoon repeating a conspiracy theory that the plan is a plot to make people eat crickets and starve them into submission.

Alberta Proud describes itself as "a group of citizens concerned about Alberta's future within Canada" but does not publicly list its members or staff.

The post received over 8,000 interactions, including about 3,200 shares.

Pro-fossil fuel groups received the highest number of interactions. Take an Aug. 15 post by Canada Action, a group that bills itself as an advocate for Canada's natural resource industries. It does not publicly list its members or staff. The post asked followers to support farmers by signing a petition against the fertilizer emissions reduction plan. It received nearly 17,000 interactions.

The confluence of these groups over the fertilizer emissions reduction plan doesn't surprise Simon Fraser University communications professor Shane Gunster, who studies online links between right-wing groups, politicians and natural resource industry lobbies.

"Clearly there are a cluster of groups fossil fuel industry supporter groups, right populist groups, right-wing politicians, etc. that have latched on to this issue as an effective one to whip up outrage against Trudeau and the federal government," he wrote in an email.

Farmers had largely been overlooked by these right-wing groups until recently, but Gunster said their sudden focus on fertilizers suggests they think food-related issues can generate more support for their broader political goals than less publicly "appealing" industries like mining or oil and gas.

Right-wing populism works by politicians finding groups that are "allegedly victimized by those in power" and claiming to stand up for them. Politicians spreading inaccurate information about the federal fertilizer plan then saying they will "stand up for farmers" against it is "emblematic" of this process, Gunster wrote.

Their message is amplified further by the tight links between the different groups. He pointed, for instance, to a July 27 post where Poilievre's Facebook page posted the link to a Toronto Sun column slamming the federal plan. The piece was written by Anthony Furey, a columnist for the paper who also writes for True North.

"This is exactly how the polarizing echo-chambers that now dominate our media and public sphere are built and sustained, pulling audiences into right-wing networks in which the merchants of fake populism in media and politics reinforce each others appeal," Gunster said.

Groups and politicians turning their focus onto the proposed fertilizer emissions reduction plan comes as no surprise to Darrin Qualman, the National Farmers Union director of climate crisis policy. For decades, right-wing politicians have promised farmers that fewer regulatory measures would boost their incomes. While many of those changes have been implemented by conservative, market-friendly governments, they haven't fixed problems like farm debt, high land prices and widespread consolidation.

"The problem for right-wing candidates is that after decades of blaming farm problems on govt agencies and regulations, so little of that policy and infrastructure is left that they are now having a hard time finding agricultural issues to run on little to whip up rural support," Qualman explained via email.

Thus the push by politicians like Poilievre and right-wing groups aligned with his message to frame the government's voluntary emissions reduction plan as a mandatory cut in fertilizer use that will harm farm incomes and food security.

"Farmers are being pushed to have a false fight about fertilizer because those on the right have few agricultural issues or ideas to talk about," he said.

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Investigation reveals Poilievre, populist and pro-natural gas groups spread fertilizer disinformation to whip up outrage against Trudeau - Canada's...

Is populism seeping into County politics? Are we at risk of becoming consumers of services rather than citizens? What responsibility do we have as residents and taxpayers to advance our community? Has Covid altered our mutual contract?

The message resounding from town halls in this municipal election is of detachment rather than engagement. But its more than that. Local politics, at least as expressed at all-candidate meetings, is tending toward the transactional: What will you (candidate) do for me? Some folks insist their taxes are spent where they can see them. They dont trust their elected officials to work in their interest and have a dwindling sense of the collective good. Of the power of community. Was it ever thus? Or is there a harder edge to our politics locally?

We seem some distance from the Ask not what your country can do for you aspirational sense of community. After all, why should we care if others cant afford a home in Prince Edward County? If I have a home I can afford and pay for, is it really in my interest to see more folks living close by? Especially affordable homes? How much of my property tax dollars do I want to see put into homes for other people?

These questions are rarely stated quite this way. Instead such objections are couched euphemistically as Its not what I imagine as the County or It will harm the character and charm of the County.

If I have retired wealthy to Prince Edward County, do I really care if the local economy works? Or, if theres a place for young people?

Some just want their roads fixed. Beyond that, some just want local government to stay out of their way.

Worryingly, some elected folks and candidates are feeding the consumer model of citizenship.

Mayoral candidate Dianne OBrien opposes low-income housing outright proposing that developers be compelled to build rent-to-own.

With 12 years of incumbency on her side, Ameliasburgh candidate Janice Maynard suggests that perhaps the County shouldnt be in the business of affordable homes at all. Perhaps the responsibility to ensure homes for our neighbours belongs solely at the feet of the federal and provincial levels of governmentnot local government. Maynard calls for a massive shift of County resources and dollars away from the things that support our community to roads and bridges.

Like a lot of populist messages, it gets traction at these meetings. Likely at the doorstep too.

There is, however, a cost.

When the frustrated resident tells the candidates from the back of the room that he wants Ameliasburgh tax dollars spent in Ameliasburgh, he is expressing a narrow view of citizenship. It is borne of frustration and a sincere belief his roads should be better maintained.

It is the upshot, I think, of a decade in which elected officials have failed to acknowledge the arithmetic fact, that we cannot afford the 1,100 kilometres of roads that have been downloaded onto the 25,000 residents of Prince Edward County to maintain. Its not an opinion; it is the conclusion of experts hired by the County in 2012 and reaffirmed recently. Yet, neither Shire Hall nor elected officials have yet formed the backbone to say it out loud.

So, while the resident is right to complain about the condition of his road, the truth is that there are no good answers. But suggesting that Shire Hall get out of the business of community-buildingthat it merely becomes a funnel of taxpayer dollars into the bottomless pit of the County roads department is a dangerous path. It is the end of community.

Janice Maynard has pushed for more road money in every budget. Having witnessed the pointlessness of throwing an extra $1 or $2 million into an already expensive roads department, Maynard is planning to go all-in. She said last week that an extra $20 million should be added to the roads budget each year. Where is this money coming from? Property taxpayers? Or libraries? Arenas? Parks? Affordable homes? Transit services?

Robbing community building projects, including nurturing affordable home development, to feed a road hole that will never be filled is a dead end. Stealing support from our most vulnerable and giving it to asphalt companies is as immoral as it is futile. Worse, it is corrosive. To us all.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca

Correction: Last week, this column reported that Mayoral candidate Kyle Mayne was forced to sit through the Ameliasburgh all-candidate meeting on the town hall window ledge as every chair had been taken. In fact, a resident gave up their chair for the candidate.

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Citizens or consumers | The Times - The Wellington Times

This is an excerpt from Global Politics in a Post-Truth Era. You can download the book free of charge from E-International Relations.

The scope and implications of global threats often transcend nation-states jurisdictional and territorial boundaries. By creating inevitable trans-planetary connectivity and interdependencies, globalization and its associated threats have challenged the effectiveness of state-centered interventions and, for that reason, have instigated the need for global governance. In the absence of an overarching authority, global governance aims to manage interdependencies caused by transnational threats and issues (Rosenau 1999). Accordingly, different approaches have been expounded to govern and manage these threats, including policy networks, epistemic communities, interest groups, advocacy groups, issue networks, and international organisations. These approaches focus on the involvement, nature, and authority of the actors involved in the global policy enterprise (Sending 2015). In other words, actors within these approaches compete for authority. For that reason, each approach claims a different source of legitimacy, including institutional, expert, moral, or delegated.

The emergence of post-truth politics has deepened global governances authority and legitimacy challenges at the policy making and implementation levels. Sensationalised, provoked, and emotionally driven public opinions on issues such as climate change, public health, immigration, and others push global policy initiatives toward fragmentation and disintegration. Populism, driven mainly by simplistic explanations, the fast and furious spread of misinformation, and the conspiratorial understanding of given issues (Bergmann 2020, 251-65), has erected new obstacles for policy on issues with global scope and implications. The authority and legitimacy of transnational actors is challenged or rejected by the polarised and mostly nationalised public opinion of post-truth politics. Such limitations are more consequential in political and social contexts where democratic deliberations are essential for policymaking.

Returning to science and facts has been promoted as the antithesis of the post-truth age and socialisation. Science as a fact-based enterprise should be an accepted central source of authority for informed reflection. One approach with claim to science and facts is the notion of epistemic communities networks of professionals with recognised expertise and competence in a particular domain, who withhold an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue-area (Haas 1992, 03). Unlike interest- based or normative approaches, the significance of epistemic communities is their empirical and objective orientation. As a knowledge-policy nexus, the approach should be consequential for global policy outcomes in the age of post-truth politics. The question, however, arises concerning the practicality of this approach in the realm of democratic politics in the post-truth age, where polarised discourses, beliefs, ideologies, and emotions are more influential in shaping public opinion. Furthermore, with the democratisation of knowledge creation and dissemination due to technological advances and social media, the post-truth age challenges epistemic communities authoritative claim to knowledge and facts and their interpretations for policy consumption. Therefore, it can be argued that in an age characterised by the rejection of monopolising information, facts, and knowledge, epistemic communities do not serve as a solution but as part of the problem. An elitist approach to issues and policies can further stir populist controversies and strengthen the rejection of authority over the production, interpretation, and dissemination of facts, if not facts per se.

This chapter is built around three sections. The first section looks at the evolution of the concept of epistemic communities. It discusses how a promising concept in a time characterised by hyperglobalism (the early 1990s) could not stand its ground as an approach to global governance. The second section deconstructs post-truth politics. By destabilising the link between objectivity and Enlightenment, the section argues that untruths, distorted facts, and misinformation have been prevalent in public discourses and politics since the European Enlightenment. The current hype about the post-truth politics is due to the losing grip of elite circles in Western societies over the monopoly of constructing and disseminating master narratives and discourses for channelling distorted facts, misinformation, and untruths. The third section explores the theoretical and practical challenges associated with epistemic communities approach to dealing with global governance in the age of post-truth.

Epistemic communities: An approach for global governance

Realism, and later neoliberalism, have dominated International Relations (IR) theory for most of its evolutionary age. Despite conceptualising the nature and dynamics of the international system differently, these approaches converge on the unmalleability and fixed nature of state interests, which constrain states behaviour on the international stage. However, these mainstream and positivist IR paradigms could not adequately explain states uncertainty regarding their respective interests in the age of globalisation. The emergence of transnational threats and structural issues has caused uncertainty and misperceptions about states interests, which are the underlying reasons for conflicts in international relations (Stein 1990, 55). Uncertainty and misperceptions about states interests have inspired and shaped new patterns in states behaviour for realising new interests in a rapidly transforming and unpredictable international milieu. Accordingly, such dynamics expanded the scope of intellectual inquiries in International Relations to the new frontiers of global governance. New analytical approaches and tools for explaining and comprehending the socialisation of states on a globalising international stage have emerged. Research on epistemic communities is one of many bodies of literature that seeks to explain patterns of states behaviour in an uncertain and complex global context.

As a conceptual framework within the constructivist IR paradigm, the epistemic communities approach explores the coordination of global governance in an interconnected and interdependent world (Haas 1992, 135). It explains the authority, role, and effects of experts in global affairs. Haas identified four defining characteristics for epistemic communities: shared normative and causal beliefs, shared notions of validity, and common policy enterprise. Unlike interest-based and normative approaches to global policy such as policy networks, interest groups, and issue networks that are engaged in political exchanges to secure better stakes epistemic communities scrutinise issues exclusively under a scientific lens. It is considered more instrumental to effective policy formulation and tangible outcomes. As an example, the approach was deemed influential in shaping some directives and consensus of the European Union (Haas 2016, 08). However, it could not seem to evolve beyond its initial conceptualisation and became marginalised (Cross 2013, 137). Different aspects of the concept have been scrutinised to understand the reasons behind its stagnation, including the political autonomy and orientation of experts, the vague definition of experts, confusion about the target audience (state only or non- state actors as well), the application of science-based arguments in public policy and discourses, and the lack of an analytical tool to explain the consensus on the authoritative claim to knowledge.

While the proponents of epistemic communities have responded to such criticism, a novel area of inquiry about these communities is their application and implications in the post-truth age. Thus, while the concept has emerged to coordinate and facilitate informed policy initiatives in a globalising world with prevailing uncertainties, contemporary post-truth politics have introduced the concept to new challenges. Before exploring these, it is essential to shed light on the emerging narrative of the post-truth age.

International Relations (IR) in the age of post-truth politics

Post-truth is a relatively new adjective in the domestic and global political lexicon. In the age of globalisation, the implications of post-truth politics are directed at societies collective intellectual reflection on issues with national and transnational scope. As such, post-truth politics have effects on international politics and global governance, mainly in societies with democratic deliberations on policy making. It can be inferred that rather than being informed by the objective reflection of the truth of reality, the circumstances related to the post-truth drive the orientation of public and global policy initiatives towards populistic socialisation.

The unexpected rise in narratives related to post-truth politics resulted in widely varying accounts of what caused it to emerge. However, many existing explanations fail to revel the substantive aspects of the problem. The RAND Corporation, for example, identified the transformation and proliferation of conventional and social media, the spread of disinformation, and polarisation as drivers of truth decay (Kavanagh and Rich 2018, 79). Such is a simplistic description of a complex and multidimensional issue. While the proliferation of information sources can facilitate a conducive environment for disseminating both facts or lies, restricting or monopolising these sources have social, political, and moral implications. Furthermore, having control over sources of information does not mean the objectivity of information or the reality of truth. It only restricts the plurality of given narratives in favour of the status quo.

Lewandowsky et al. (2017, 356) relate the malaise of post-truth to the creation of alternative epistemic spaces as platforms for sharing alternative realities. Similarly, Fuller (2016) argues that the post-truth age results from the universalisation of symmetry or epistemic democratisation. Such perspectives hold post-truth as circumstances facilitated by the proliferation of information production and dissemination instruments. Once again, these accounts exclusively focus on the tools and platforms (conventional vs. popular, or mainstream vs. alternative) of information, not on the underlying processes and structures involved in producing information and knowledge. Accordingly, in an editorial, the Social Studies of Science (2017, 3) argues that while the production of scientific knowledge requires infrastructure, effort, ingenuity, and validation structures, the current popular information tools destroy these structures. In general, existing explanations of the post-truth age revolve around the role of social media and other alternative information platforms. They point to the diminishing role of scientific knowledge, objectivity, and facts in shaping public opinion, politics, and policy initiatives. Such comprehensions seem to be based on the assumed role of conventional sources and spaces of information in socialising public opinion with objectivity. The question, however, is if conventional sources truly disseminate facts and objective information?

Scrutinising against the theoretical and practical aspects of objectivity and facts in informing public opinion, the rigor and robustness of existing comprehensions about post-truth politics are questionable. Notably, in the milieu of International Relations, conceptual and practical relationships between objectivity and facts with politics and public opinion are complex. Therefore, it is essential to have a theoretical discussion on the subjectivity of truth and a brief retrospective look at the Western powers long tradition of politicising realities and distorting facts to shape public opinion. These two discussions reveal a complicated picture of truth and objectivity in the political sphere.

Science and Truth

Truth is a philosophical concept, and plenty of controversies are associated with the simple statement of what is truth? (Glanzberg, 2021). It has a strong subjective appeal and is shaped by personal convictions and opinions. Therefore, truth is contested. As a belief-based enterprise, the popularity or universality of a truth does not make it factual or objective, per se. These characteristics complicate the relationship of truth with science, for that reason, with facts. Within the realm of scientific knowledge, the purpose of inquiry is not about truth. Scientific inquiry and its different epistemologies confront or support a position, idea, thesis, and theory with facts and evidence. This is to draw a clear line between scientific and non-scientific endeavours, such as authoritative knowledge. While the beliefs and personal convictions of an overwhelming number of people can constitute a truth this does not necessarily constitute facts, as these truths can be based in superstition or other unprovable mental processes, such as beliefs.

Furthermore, as a self-restraint measure and to avoid transforming to a belief- based enterprise that is not only unquestionable but at the same time equally unprovable, scientific inquiry applies anticipatory processes. These make science open to challenge and change. Within the complex field of philosophy and history of scientific knowledge, explanations such as the 20th centurys probabilism, Karl Poppers falsifiability (Popper 2002), Thomas Kuhns paradigm shift (Kuhn 2012), and Lakatoss research program (Lakatos 1980) identified different mechanisms and structures for the internal consistency of and progress in scientific knowledge. Consequently, while not directly dealing with truth, scientific knowledge actively evolves to defy becoming a belief- based enterprise that can neither be disproved nor subject to argument and challenge.

These arguments do not imply to justify the manifestations of the post-truth politics, such as deceptions, lies, and misinformation in the public sphere. However, the point is that the concept of truth is a complicated philosophical construct that can hardly be squared within the fundamental characteristics of scientific inquiry, including falsifiability, testability, generalisability, and parsimony. Truth is a multifaceted, delicate, and loaded notion that even those who talk about post-truth avoid talking about the truth. For example, RAND Corporation, in its report on Truth Decay, while using the phrase truth decay hundreds of times, the term truth however, is used not more than a handful of times and that exclusively in the context of disclaiming discussing the truth (see Kavanagh and Rich 2018). Similarly, Kakutani (2018), unlike what the books topic reads The Death of Truth did not discuss truth but focused on the fall of reasons or the vanishing of reality. Even though these three truth, reality, and reasons are separate and different elements of mental processes.

The intellectual context surrounding the philosophical juggernaut about discussing truth is understandable. Truth has a pervasive use in ordinary language. However, its meaning, interpretation, and comprehension are nothing but intellectually nebulous. As such, where does this leave the conceptualisation of the term post-truth? A logical fallacy. While the premise truth cannot be straightforwardly conceptualised, at least intellectually, the conclusion post-truth also is challenging to hold up to scrutiny. Nevertheless, it does not mean that prevailing manifestations of the construct of post-truth such as lies, dis/misinformation, and deceptions should be acceptable. However, it also must be acknowledged that the contemporary manifestations of post-truth politics are not novel in the domestic and international domains. In retrospect, the history of modern politics, mainly in a democratic setting, is hardly based on communicating pure facts and evidence. In international relations, the manifestations of post-truth politics has been there forever. This leads us to briefly look at the history of Western powers use of distorted facts, lies, and deceptions in public discourses for shaping public opinion.

The politicised utilisation of facts

Misinformation, fake news, lies, deceptions, and erosion of trust in facts and reality are identified as the manifestations of post-truth politics (Lewandowsky et al. 2017, 364). These ills are even considered deliberate efforts against the broader idea of sanity (Gopnik 2017). A retrospective look at the history of using facts in democratic politics, however, indicates that the contemporary understandings and outcries about the post-truth age are hyper-sensational and idealistic. In politics, distorting, bending, stretching, moderating, or appropriating facts and evidence for public consumption have always been practiced in political deliberations, both democratic or non-democratic.

Public consumption of facts and evidence (acquired or experienced) goes beyond the control and mandate of the scientific knowledge enterprise. The enterprises scope is limited to describing and explaining (positivist approaches) or constructing and interpreting (post-positivism) reality through producing evidence and facts. The utilisation of the discovered or constructed facts within domestic and international political arenas is a political process that contextualises, configures, or appropriates facts for public consumption. The Social Studies of Science (2017) refers to such a process as the configuration of the practices, discourses, and epistemic politics of modern facts. Studying the history of the modern facts, Poovey (1998) explains that facts need to go through a complex configuration with educational and government agendas to look more credible. In the contemporary world, even the hard facts related to environmental issues and catastrophe are appropriated and politicised by juxtaposing them with a politicised deep geological past that is likely to be confusing and forgettable (Davis 2016, 25).

Retrospectively, in international relations, the politicisation, configuration, and appropriation of facts for serving political agendas have existed since the Enlightenment. Therefore, facts, reality and truth have hardly been apolitical. On the contrary, they have been used as raw material for constructing discourses and legitimising power and oppression. European imperial and colonial powers formulated discourses based on distorted facts, lies, and deceptions to shape public opinion in their political domains. They were not concerned with telling the truth but with their interpretation of the truth (Du Bois 1946, 24). They went to the extent of holding their version of truth and facts as representations of nature. From misrepresenting and twisting the notion of natural law, the history of which goes as back as to ancient human civilisations (Neff 2003), to the reducing the state of nature to mans nature and reducing the latter to the good-evil dichotomy (see Hobbes 2011; & Locke 1986), the Enlightenment thinkers carelessly but confidently messed with the truth.

In service of Western imperial and colonial agendas, the Enlightenment thinkers relied on empirical or fact-based validation to construct abstractions that could justify and rationalize violence and subjugation. For example, the abstraction of sovereignty, a contested notion in the contemporary globalized world, was formulated to rationalize the violence against the illegitimate and invisible non-state people (Krishna 2006). Beyond literal meanings, such abstractions contain legal, moral, or political tropes for codifying societies. These are anything but objective, factual, or truthful classification criteria, and schemes. Indeed, ideological, moral, and even pseudoscientific imperatives were packaged and configured as facts and truth for advancing power agendas. Such falsifications were, and still are, needed for influencing Western public opinion about legitimising endeavours undertaken by their states and governments. The philosophical and intellectual foundations for such fabrications were provided by the very Enlightenment ideas such as Lockes government by consent and natural rights (Locke 1986); Kants metaphysics of morals and perpetual peace (Kant 1983); Mills promotion of happiness (Mill 1963); and Cobdens natural harmony of interests, to name a few.

Enlightenment era ideas, such as equality of citizens, limited state power and property rights, served Western societies and their domestic politics. These ideas became instruments for European powers to legitimise violent imperialist and colonialist agendas by constructing discourses grounded in unscientific and untruthful ideas. For example, while Kant promoted republic constitutionalism in the Western world, his pro-slavery and culturalist ideas of mental and cultural incapability of native Americans, Indians, and Africans gave imperialist powers all the [pseudo]intellectual and moral reasons to justify their imperialist endeavours and brutal oppressions in those lands. Similarly, Mills unscientific construct of promotion of happiness, and his pseudoscientific classification of non-European as barbarians and savages provided European powers with intellectual and moral contents to justify their brutal practices elsewhere under the discourse of civilising barbarians and savages. Even Mills idea of non-intervention within and among civilised nations was to effectively create internal harmony among these powers to implement their outward expansionism.

Against the backdrop of Enlightenment thoughts, the news, oral stories and published materials from non-Western colonised or occupied territories presented the Western audience with moral and intellectual reasons to justify Western interventions. They, therefore, legitimised the brutal practices of oppression and domination of their states as it seemed a burden over their shoulders to humanise the less human. The sources of such a mandate were nothing but the very reasons, morals, facts, truths and knowledge fabricated by Enlightenment thinkers. In brief, the intellectual revolution of the era, on the one hand, domestically helped Western societies in terms of subjecting government power to public opinion and consent. On the other hand, it enabled the same powers to construct discourses based on fabricated facts and truth orchestrated by intellectuals to legitimise oppression and brutality.

As a result, the Enlightenment era provided intellectual materials for forming a highly stratified and racially driven and codified international society. The Western powers and their public were unanimous about the subjectivity of [non-European] races to be ruled and about the well-deserved and earned right of the [European race] to rule and expand its rule beyond its own domain (Said 1995, 30). Therefore, in addition to having controversial racial histories, the thinkers of the Enlightenment were instrumental in shaping public opinion via untruthful facts. By doing so, these thinkers served as enablers in legitimising European violence and repression. Hence, post-truth is not an ahistorical contemporary phenomenon but a historical one which goes as least to the onset of the modern age, the age of reason and Enlightenment.

Similarly, since the end of the Second World War, fabricated facts and overstretched truths have been influential in defining power dynamics and the relationships between the Western powers and the rest. To advance their international agendas Western powers package distorted facts and truths within constructed discourses with moral and normative appeals for the domestic audience. Modernisation, development, freedom, security, globalisation, democracy, terrorism and other such terms are examples of discourses that have been shaped and presented as objective facts and undeniable truths for stratifying international society. The main instrument for the Western powers to disseminate fabricated facts and untruths is through the media.

Conventional media is an integral part of this enterprise that furthers the discourses by adding additional layers and contents. From the colonial era, including during the professionalisation period of journalism in the early 20th century, media has routinely used hoaxes, sensationalism, and exaggeration (Finneman and Thomas 2018, 112). In addition to serving specific ideological and strategic goals, the media also has an economic incentive in promoting and disseminating constructed discourses. Using hoaxes, sensationalism, and exaggeration has remained means of selling newspapers from colonial times to today (Fedler 1989). So, if lies, deceptions, and untruths have been shaping public opinion since the beginning of the modern era, why is the concept of post-truth now becoming a lexicon in political science and international relations?

Post-truth or the end of a monopoly?

In the current age, the problem is not the invention of the post-truth political malaise but the dissolution of monopoly over the means of constructing discourses and their subsequent propagation. Since the Enlightenment, such a monopoly was in the hands of states machinery and mainstream traditional media. The populace was only at the receiving end to consume or recycle the presented discourses containing lies, fabrications, and untruths. With the democratisation (or proliferation) of information production and dissemination tools, the one-way top-bottom dynamic of manufacturing and dissemination of discourses has drastically transformed. Popular and alternative information creation and dissemination sources have become relevant, significant and influential in todays world. This has challenged the authoritative grasp and monopoly of elite sources, including the mainstream media, over the production, configuration, and dissemination of facts. Such a challenge has caused the emergence of the current alarmist narratives about post-truth politics. Among others, the proliferation of social media is crucial in challenging the domination and monopoly of political and ideological elites to influence and shape public opinion on given issues.

This change has three main aspects. First, with the proliferation of social and alternative information sources, the domain of discourse formulation and dissemination has diffused to the public sphere. Referred to as the universalisation of symmetry or the democratisation of epistemic (Fuller 2016), the monopoly over influencing and shaping public opinion is no longer the exclusive enterprise of the government and conventional media. Now the populace has platforms and tools to construct discourses and shape the opinion of their own kinds. Secondly, this democratisation subjected politics and power structures, mainly in democratic societies, to polarised public scrutiny through (mis)informed reflection shaped by alternative sources. Thirdly, and perhaps the most crucial but overlooked aspect of the post-truth age, is the changing relationship between the populace and the mainstream/ conventional media.

The popularity of the alternative means of information over the mainstream may not necessarily mean denial of facts or science, but the rejection of master narratives and discourses channelled from (mostly) mainstream media sources. Polarised public opinion may not indicate rejecting specific policy but resisting political discourse channelled from ideologically oriented mainstream sources, including media, corporations, and networks. Farrell (2015, 373) found that the increase in the climate change contrarian/denialist materials in five US media sources from 19932013 was not directly the rejection of climate change but the attached discourses. The study revealed that networks and corporations successfully influence the production and dissemination of denialist discourses, as they have broader interests in the privatisation of science and the influence of corporate lobbying around scientific issues (Farrell 2015, 373). As such, the public scepticism or rejection of media and corporate discourses does not imply the rejection of facts and science. Boussalis and Coan (2016, 98) found that relative to arguments against climate policy, the amount of denialist materials against mainstream climate science has increased since 2009. The study concludes that scientific scepticism often has political roots. This indicates that the polarised popular approach in the post-truth age is not necessarily against facts or truth but against monopolising facts and truth by elites, establishments, corporations and mainstream media.

The hyper-sensationalism about post-truth politics does not indicate the emergence of a new age in the relationship between the public and the truth. It is about the diminishing monopoly of conventional sources over controlling the construction and dissemination of master narratives. On the contrary, alternative sources effectively sway public opinions away from the mainstream influence on different issues. In such an antagonistic epistemic milieu, when the proliferation of epistemic sources and spaces disrupts the realisation of informed public reflection on issues related to public and global policies, what challenges are there for epistemic communities.

The Challenges of Epistemic Communities in the post-truth Age

In the age of post-truth, the epistemic communities approach to policy enterprise has practical challenges. These challenges, however, stem from the epistemological foundation of the approach, which is at a crossroads of constructivism and empiricism. Hence, before discussing the practical challenges, it is helpful to review its theoretical limitations.

Theoretical challenges

Constructivism challenged the fundamental tenets of the positivist IR paradigms. However, before the emergence of constructivism, the positivist tradition experienced an internal rift by reconceptualising the assumption of facts as natural. Thomas Kuhn, in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, rejected correspondence theory which claims that true statements correspond to facts about the world (Hacking 2012). The theory was fundamental in shaping the logical empiricist International Relations approaches that inferred conclusions about the nature of the international system from the overarching ontological assumptions such as nature of man and man in nature. Subsequently, constructivism reconsidered the fabric of facts and reality, which led to redrawing the fundamental theoretical premises of international politics and governance.

As an IR theory, constructivism discusses the role of ideas and structure in shaping world politics by redefining relationships between actors. While ideas shape the meaning and structure of material reality through interpretation, structures give the agents autonomy to interact with others inside the structure to reshape the structure (Wendt 1999). This challenged the fixed nature of actors interests, leading to restrained manoeuvrability in their behaviour on the international stage. Within the ideas and structures theoretical premises of constructivism, epistemic communities offer a model in which state and non-state actors construct their political realities through the knowledge provided to them by the experts. These actors formulate their interests and reconcile differences of interests (Haas 2015, 13). Haas argues that in their efforts to ameliorate uncertainty surrounding unfolding issues and hold some reality or truth about them, policymakers would turn to epistemic communities for knowledge. The communities will bring their knowledge- based interpretation of their casually informed version of reality and validity (Haas 1992, 21).

This account of reality and truth is embedded in constructivist epistemology, which argues against the true existence of reality out there in the social world (Holznere and Marx 1978). However, by claiming an authoritative claim to policy knowledge, epistemic communities epistemic attitude converges toward positivist orientation. While constructivism conceptualises reality as socially constructed and is suspicious of the existence of objective reality, the epistemic communities approach monopolises its construct and interpretation to a close expert circle. Haas argues that the communities do not necessarily generate truth (Haas 1992, 23). However, monopolising the construct of reality to experts is not compatible with the fundamental premises of constructivism. As such, while originating from constructivist epistemology, epistemic communities as an elitist approach re-introduces policy enterprise to empirical orientation. In the post-truth age characterised by the proliferation of epistemic sources and spaces and a hyper-polarised political struggle for dominance within the domain of policymaking, such a monopoly over the construction and interpretation of reality is counterproductive. Instead of offering a solution, epistemic elitism further polarises the struggle for authority and dominance within policy and knowledge enterprises.

Policy enterprise, by nature, is in a dialectic tension between knowledge and politics (Torgerson 1986, 3359). This tension was crucial in derailing the public policy field from its initial envisioned post-positivist and democratic epistemological orientation towards empirical enterprise (DeLeon and Vogenbeck 2007, 3). The latter is characterised by the objective separation of facts and values (Fischer 2007, 223). As a result, the empiricist orientation introduced epistemological and methodological limitations to public policy enterprise, including over-generalising facts to non-related contexts. Initially, the facts-values paradox prompted the overlooking of political and social values that could not be translated into brute facts or pure scientific ends. As a result, the paradox practically distorted the effectiveness of the policy field for much of its evolutionary age. Rigorous quantitative analyses did not prove practical for social problems. With the shift of policy enterprise to post- positivism, the facts-values paradox seemed to resolve by reconciling empirical and political ends. However, the epistemic communities approach revives the facts-values paradox by pushing policy enterprise into the empiricist-constructivist epistemological juncture. It designates exclusive circles to reside over constructing facts, reimaging values, and, hence, shaping public policy as an exclusive expert or elite-oriented policy enterprise.

Such an epistemological realignment of public policy is not a solution but a problem in the post-truth age, characterised as the democratisation of the epistemic. In such a contested milieu, claiming expert authority cannot overrule the significance and relevance of other sources of authority claimed by other actors such as moral authority by activist and advocacy groups, or delegated and institutional authorities of elected officials and technocrats. As such, to claim exclusive expert authority in the age of post-truth is to conspire with political elites to monopolise facts and truths. The monopoly of expert and political elites over facts and reality production is not a novel idea, but a tradition that has been in practice at least since the Enlightenment, where intellectuals created norms, morals, ideas, and knowledge, and the imperialist and colonialist statesmen built upon them and created their own truths and realities about the world.

Practical Challenges

Given its elitist orientation, a question arises about the functionality of epistemic communities in the realm of democratic politics in the post-truth age. How can expert communities influence public opinion that socialises within unconventional and alternative epistemic spaces? The first practical challenge the approach faces in the post-truth age is its disconnect with democratic deliberations. The elitist orientation of epistemic communities to dominate policy enterprise contradicts the competition and pluralism principles of democratic deliberations.

In democratic settings, competition between actors is integral to policy processes. These processes are undertaken in a crowded and contested field of actors who claim different sources of authority and legitimacy to influence policy proposals and outcomes. In addition to expert authority, delegated, institutional, or moral are sources of authority in the policy arena (Sending 2015). This shows that scientific reasoning is only one instrument among many means of influence and reasoning at the disposal of different actors to advance their ideas and interests. Pluralism is another characteristic of democratic policy deliberation incompatible with the epistemic communities expert-centred approach. Public participation is crucial for policy initiatives and a core normative value in functional democracies (Fischer 2002, 01). To realise this, public opinion (directly or indirectly) in policy deliberations is an unavoidable condition, and elected officials are entitled to moral, delegated, or institutional authority by virtue of representing people. Within the contemporary political landscape, socio-cultural, ideological, and identity- related values and discourses are crucial in defining and shaping polarised public opinion and perspectives. Opinions on given issues, domestic or global, shape a unique character of contemporary democratic politics the rise of both right and left populistic orientation to public policy. Epistemic communities, claiming to offer an apolitical instrumentalist approach to policy processes, are impractical options whilst policymaking is becoming more politicised.

In the post-truth age, the malleability of public opinion to emotional appeals and personal beliefs should not, and cannot, defy the public deliberation principle of policymaking in democratic settings. While the functionality of democracy is linked with well-informed citizens (Kuklinski et al. 2000, 790 816), misinformed or ill-informed reflections on policy issues cannot override the principle of public participation. More importantly, with the emergence of post-positivist approaches to knowledge and reality, the notion of informed or ill-informed became more subjective to meaning and interpretation. This challenges the legitimacy of the elitist authoritative claim to policy knowledge. In general, these limitations point to a gap in dialogue and communication between epistemic communities and democratic politics. By relying on scientific language, experts may not convince a politician whose arguments may be focused on public interest or opinion.

The second practical challenge is that the instrumental rationality of epistemic communities is incompatible with the bounded rationality that drives policy practices. Epistemic communities hold expert knowledge as an exclusive means to policy ends. Policy practices, on the contrary, are driven by bounded rationality which is defined as incomplete human understanding of social phenomena due to limited cognitive, attentive, or scientific factors that drive policymakers to be part of a given problem at the expense of others (Andrews 2007, 161). As such, such a tension weakens the robustness and practicality of the epistemic communities authoritative claim to knowledge.

The expert-focused approach of epistemic communities reinforces the challenges for its practicality in post-truth politics. Focusing exclusively on instrumental rationality as the means of influence overlooks the significance of dialectic/communicative discourses and participatory action practices of democratic politics and policy deliberations. Communicative rationality makes the democratic policymaking processes contested with dialogue and argumentation to reach a consensus. Rather than merely scientific, such argumentation is based on various discourses normative, socio-cultural, ideological, and identity. In addition, communication and interactions are necessary conditions in policy deliberation. It not only contextualizes rationality but also validates normative rightness, theoretical truth, and subjective truthfulness (Habermas 1992, 2857). In the post-truth age, in addition to scientific facts, these three elements of mental processes are crucial in driving public opinion. As such, the role of these elements in domestic policy deliberations has become substantive. They shape perspectives and public opinion.

Communicative rationality is a widespread practice within democratic policymaking processes. Epistemic communities, by offering policy solutions from a highly centralised and elitist source, on the contrary, is an authoritative approach and is incompatible with dialogue and argumentation. Focusing exclusively on instrumental rationality as the means to influence, the approach overlooks other practicing communicative discourses and participatory action practices of democratic politics.

A fundamental epistemological assumption of constructivism holds human agreement on social facts independent from the voluntary contract between actors. On the contrary, the exclusive contract between experts and policymakers that excludes public and democratic deliberations prevents epistemic communities from transforming into structures capable of offering language and meaning for generating agreement. Furthermore, in the age of post-truth, characterised by the proliferation and dissemination of sources of inferring meaning, any efforts to monopolise processes of inference and interpretations in the hands of experts are counterproductive. It further pushes public opinion on facts, reality, and truth towards novice alternative sources and spaces. This can happen as a reaction against pushing policy enterprise further away from democratic deliberations toward the expert- policy nexus.

Furthermore, global policys uncertain and complex nature challenges epistemic communities claim of authoritative expert knowledge. Paradoxically, given the changing nature of global issues, such a claim seems subjective and unsubstantiated. For instance, about global immigration, in an intellectual and scientific milieu, where different studies of various disciplinary nature and at different analytical levels suggest conflicting impacts of immigration on a national economy what authoritative knowledge can a given epistemic community offer to policymakers? Similarly, the authoritative claim to knowledge cannot be objectively verified when globalisation and its master discourse of neoliberalism affect and transform contemporary social and economic issues differently in different socio-economic and political contexts. As such, any authoritative claim to facts and reality lacks objectivity and rigor and is more inclined to secure dominance and primacy in a contested global policy milieu crowded with different actors claiming various types of authorities.

Lastly, the increasing complexity of domestic and global issues confounded by the prevailing manifestation of post-truth politics necessitated an additional task in the policy enterprise public education and learning. The task of scientific policy professionals would be to provide technical information for problem-solving and combine it with a new function of facilitating public deliberation and learning (Fischer 2004, 2127). Fischer proposes that public deliberation and learning are highly relevant to domestic and global issues of democratic politics to expand and enable popular participation and informed reflection in the policy process.

With the polarisation of public opinion on domestic and global issues, policy formulation and making processes have become more contested by a struggle between science and politics or facts and values. In addition to competing for authority and power within these processes, the need for the contemporary science-based policy intermediaries including expert networks and think tanks to facilitate transferring learnings, communicating knowledge, and fostering public debate on policy issues and solutions to the grassroots multiplies. In its expounding, the epistemic communities approach mostly overlooks these undertakings in policy-related practices. While the role of science and facts in policy endeavours is becoming more crucial in a time identified as post-truth, focusing exclusively on the experts-politicians dynamics excludes an increasingly crucial element from the nexus the significance and the role of informed public reflection.

Conclusion

Contemporary narratives on post-truth alarm us about the emergence of a new age in the relationships between truth and public opinion. These accounts describe the post-truth age as a circumstance in which emotions and beliefs are more effective in shaping public opinion and political actions than facts and truth. However, in the realm of international relations, objectivity, pure facts, and the truth of reality do not often have the currency for informed reflections. On the contrary, since the Enlightenment, untruths,

distorted realities and fabricated facts have enabled Western powers to domestically shape public opinion to justify their inflicted injustices, oppressions, and brutalities elsewhere. The current hype about post-truth in Western societies has less to do with facts and science but more with a dissolving monopoly of power circles political establishment and mainstream media over constructing and disseminating master narratives and discourses. The proliferation of alternative epistemic sources and spaces has provided the populace with instruments and tools to construct and disseminate their own narratives about given issues. Such epistemic democratisation pushes public policy endeavours on domestic and global issues towards a populist orientation. Accordingly, having a pure scientific orientation, epistemic communities approach to public policy seems promising in counteracting the post-truth politics both in domestic and global policy arenas. However, the approach has theoretical and practical limitations in effectively shifting policy practices from populist toward scientific socialisation.

The post-truth age reinforces epistemic communities challenges to be an effective and transformative policy approach. Its expert-centred epistemic practices are not aligned with some crucial aspects of policy processes in a democratic setting. The elitist orientation defies the competitive and pluralistic nature of democratic policy practices. Furthermore, the instrumental rationality of the approach is not compatible with the practical bounded rationality of public policy. In the post-truth age, instrumental rationality is far from having an authoritative command on peoples perspectives, perceptions, and understandings shaped by emotional appeals and personal beliefs.

With the spread of populism, where emotions and beliefs shape public opinion and political actions and where the arguments of politicians are centred exclusively on public opinion the scientific nature of the language employed by epistemic communities may not be convincing. Such divergence creates a strategic gap in dialogue and communication between epistemic communities and democratic politics. Lastly, as post-truth politics is characterised by being informed by polarised and ill-informed public opinion, epistemic communities approach to policy offers no initiatives to facilitate an informed public reflection on policy issues through public deliberations and learning. By offering an exclusive expert-policy nexus, epistemic communities overlook the significance of communicating knowledge and fostering public debate on policy issues.

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The Challenges of Epistemic Communities in Shaping Policy in the Age of Post-Truth - E-International Relations

I have found through my constant exposure to them through the years that the EUs intellectual cheerleaders among geopolitical analysts funded as they so often are by the very institution they are supposed to be impartially analyzing are as numerous as they are clueless.

At my political risk firm, the joke goes that if Brussels is for something entrusting its energy security to the Russians, confidently predicting that Europe will emerge as the dominant superpower in our new era, or ignoring the threat that China poses we should instinctively bet against them, so often and regularly are they proved mistaken. Beyond the mirth, there are two concrete reasons EU analysts are so unerringly wrong.

First, the corkscrew way EU cheerleaders reason dooms them from the start. In a sort of Kafkaesque example of magical thinking, they believe that while EU policy success confirms the upward trajectory of Brussels, failure also somehow means the bloc is about to arrive. Success obviously means the EU is headed in the right direction; failure, in a bizarre form of Hegelianism, means Brussels will inevitably learn from whatever it has done wrong, immediately and rationally make the necessary corrections, and move onward unto sunlit uplands. As ever with wish-fulfillment, these cheerleaders fool no one so much as themselves.

Their second major intellectual mistake is to confuse analysis with what they would like to happen. Brussels advocates invariably tout the death knell of populism, the EUs sworn enemy, because across Europe it embodies the very things Brussels most hates it is nationalistic, suspicious of experts, and democratic rather than elite-driven.

So, EU cheerleaders excitedly (but wrongly) thought European populism would be extinguished as a result of the pandemic crisis, when the vital need for the supremacy of technocrats became self-evident (at least to them). Instead, these experts were proved wrong time and again from vastly overstating the efficacy of lockdowns, to the quasi-religious primacy of mask-wearing, to wholly subordinating economic, social and democratic rights, all in the myopic service of a health dictatorship.

Next, with the invasion of Ukraine, these same experts felt populism would come to an end, because the overriding imperative of international cooperation (a supposed strength of Brussels) over the conflict was self-evident. Once again the EUs cheerleaders got it wrong, while populists learned the realist lesson that a countrys specific national and geostrategic interests are paramount; plus actually having an army neither of which are policy areas in which the EU is anything other than a pipsqueak.

What did Italys newly victorious Giorgia Meloni do, even before coming to power, that so threatens the Brussels establishment?

Dr. John C. Hulsman

Recent political facts confirm my political risk call, rather than that of my cheerleader foes. In Sweden, the rightist populist Sweden Democrats, rather than disappearing as most EU analysts had confidently predicted, now hold the balance of power. Even more importantly, last week in Italy there was an overwhelming populist rightist electoral victory over the remnants of the Brussels-installed center-left political establishment. One of the great powers of Europe, contrary to the fever-dream of the EUs favored pundits, decisively elected a government deeply skeptical about the very nature of Brussels itself.

Of course, confronted by the imminent election of a government not to its tastes, the EUs authoritarian visage, so often hidden behind banal verities about its innate goodness, became plain for all to see. Just a week before the Italian election, a grim European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, referencing serial troublemakers Poland and Hungary, threatened that Brussels had the tools to deal with wayward members not content to sing along with the EUs supranational, elite-driven hymnal.

What did Italys newly victorious Giorgia Meloni do, even before coming to power, that so threatens the Brussels establishment? Or, to put it another way, what explains the meteoric rise of her rightist populist Brothers of Italy party from 4 percent of the vote in 2018 to a dominant 26 percent now? First and foremost, Meloni crucially decided to stay out of the EU-imposed government of national unity run by Brussels darling Mario Draghi, which managed to last for only 18 storm-tossed months.

Meloni proved to be highly effective in opposition, artfully questioning whether Draghis authoritarian response to COVID was serving basic democratic ends, given his habitual governing by authoritarian decree rather than the usual parliamentary process. As ever, biography proved to be destiny; Draghi, a technocrat to his fingertips, thought the pandemic crisis too important to be left to the vagaries of democratic scrutiny. Meloni brilliantly made her commitment to democracy (despite the present hyperventilating of the mainstream media) abundantly clear, while yet another unelected, Brussels-imposed prime minister ignored any shred of democratic practice.

Second, this Brussels-imposed elite (incredibly, Meloni will be Italys first elected prime minister since the odious Silvio Berlusconi was ousted by the EU in 2011) has utterly failed at the policy level. Extraordinarily, Italian GDP per capita is lower now than it was before the country adopted the euro in 1999. This lost economic generation is only a few years away from irrelevance, more likely to end up a crumbling, irrelevant Greece than to emerge as the new Germany.

In just practical terms, EU tutelage has been an absolute disaster for Italy, and for a long while. It is little wonder its citizens have revolted against its EU-shackled establishment.

John C. Hulsman is the president and managing partner of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, a prominent global political risk consulting firm. He is also a senior columnist for City AM, the newspaper of the City of London. He can be contacted via johnhulsman.substack.com.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point of view

Originally posted here:

The EU, not Meloni, is the threat to democracy - Arab News

Bulgaria, where I serve as a legislator, is at a crossroads, and I fear that the U.S. does not have my country truly in focus.

I realized this recently following various meetings during my first visit to Washington. Ukraine was discussed, rightfully so, and of course Bulgarias support for the NATO effort. But the U.S. must be equally aware that Russia considers Bulgaria the soft underbelly of NATO and the European Union and that Vladimir Putin is deploying resources to influence our National Assembly elections Sunday. Depending on the outcome, Bulgarias support for the Wests objectives could waver in the near future.

The Bulgarian people have a strong bond with Russia in terms of history, Slavic culture, and religion. But Bulgaria took a definitive step westward, away from Russias influence, to create a fully democratic country in the 1990s. We followed this up by seeking membership in the EU and NATO. Bulgaria has since implemented sound economic and fiscal policies and has the lowest debt in Europe. It has not been destabilized by ethnic strife, as other countries have in the region. Despite ongoing problems with corruption, the rule of law, and media disinformation, we continue to reform and improve.

Still, Bulgaria is the poorest EU member state. I represent a corner of Bulgaria that suffers from the highest unemployment rate and the lowest amount of investment. Before the invasion of Ukraine, the average monthly income was only $600 for my constituents. Outside the capital city of Sofia, people are struggling and may be susceptible to false promises.

Bulgarias citizens are facing a very cold winter. Anti-democratic forces see this situation as an opportunity to exploit. A good example of this is the Vazrazhdane Party (Revival Party), a party led by Kostadin Kostadinov, who cultivates relations with Bulgarian minorities throughout the Balkans and is proposing a referendum to exit the EU and NATO. The partys support is increasing in the run-up to this election.

Bulgaria is strategically located in southeast Europe and on the Black Sea, another reason Russia sees us as a desirable target. Bulgaria was the first country in Europe to be shut off from Russian natural gas, on which our economy is highly dependent. This was a calculated attempt to foment unrest and weaken pro-Western parties. Some political figures have openly opposed the implementation of sanctions in support of Ukraine, telling people that Ukraine is responsible for Bulgarias economic problems. These anti-democratic forces are trying to create a regional distraction from the Wests important goals in Ukraine.

Today, Bulgaria needs a government to stand as a bulwark against such destructive, ultra-nationalistic populism encouraged by foreign actors. Such messages have serious consequences. In just the last year, three new far-right parties have been formed, underpinned by a populism voicing overtly pro-Russian sentiments. However, it is the covert Russian influence of some of the other populist parties that could tip the scales in the weeks ahead during the formation of a new government.

Bulgaria has relied upon and welcomed both American support and assistance, viewing the U.S. as a partner for Bulgarias democratic future. We could use some American help right now. The U.S. must encourage all pro-Western parties in the post-election period to cooperate and to form a coalition that will act as a bulwark against the ultra-nationalist and populist parties that are gaining ground with each election in the past 18 months. Now is not the time for division among like-minded parties.

A failure to cooperate will carry a high cost not only for Bulgaria but also for the EU and the NATO alliance. What we need from the U.S. is a clear sign that it staunchly supports all the pro-trans-Atlantic parties that will ensure Bulgarias firm anchoring in the West. This will ensure that Bulgaria continues to move forward, not to fall back into Moscows orbit and not to backslide on the reform work it has already undertaken.

Rossitsa Kirova served as deputy speaker in the 46th and 47th Bulgarian National Assemblies.

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Bulgaria's elections could threaten NATO and EU unity on Ukraine - Washington Examiner

Prof. Daron Acemoglu of MIT is considered one of the three most important, prominent and quoted economists today - and there is no prize, title or summit that he has not conquered, with the exception of one, the Nobel Prize for Economics, which is likely to be awarded to him in the coming weeks, according to estimates.

It is worth listening to what he has to say because today there is no academic or researcher with a reputation like that of Acemoglu - a Turkish-American of Armenian origin - who is an expert in the main issues of international political economy, including the influence of political and economic institutions on the main macroeconomic variables: growth, economic development and inequality.

Since bursting onto the scene in his early 30s with his book "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development", Acemoglu has tried and quite succeeded to answer a question that has occupied economists from the beginning of time: What are the factors that explain the existing differences in the wealth of countries.

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Prof. Daron Acemoglu.

(Photo: Augustin Iglesias )

In 2012 he published another book, "Why Nations Fail?", in which he reached a similar conclusion: political institutions - not culture, natural resources or geography - explain why some countries have become rich while others have remained poor. This is the reason why Acemoglu is considered one of the prominent representatives of institutional economics - a segment in the science of economics that emphasizes the importance of social and political institutions in economic developments. In recent years, he has spent most of his time analyzing the technological changes and the effect of automation on employment and growth, and teaching and raising new generations of economists.

Acemoglu answers the question of whether he now recognizes the beginning of a "new era" with an absolute no. This comes on the back the words of the famous economist Nouriel Roubini, the "prophet of rage" of the global economy, who wrote about two months ago that we are moving from a "great moderation" - a period that began in the 1980s and was characterized by a sharp decrease in macroeconomic volatility - to a "great stagflation".

"I never believed in the theory of the great moderation. In my eyes, what is called the great moderation was a period of building huge financial risks, including in the global supply chain," he says. "There were more obvious risks and there were some more hidden from view. What's more, I'm not optimistic about the future of the global economy and I don't expect the next ten years to be particularly good."

"There are many problems - a crisis in democracy, a crisis in globalization, and a crisis in inequality - and they are of course the result of the current political path we are on. These problems are the result of ongoing trends from the past and they continue to erode the existing institutions. So if you want to call it a new era' - you are welcome. But I would not extend it to 2019, nor to 2020. I am of course very disturbed by those dangerous trends, both political and economic, which are becoming even more dangerous now. By the way, I would not count inflation as one of them."

We will talk about inflation, but from your angle: as one of the prominent economists, does its dramatic jump not constitute an important opportunity to bring about a revision in the powers of one of the most important economic institutions today - the central banks?

"I am divided within myself because the current inflation makes me think about two things that conflict with each other. On the one hand, curbing inflation is important because given the market mechanisms, it is a huge 'trust breaker'. When inflation is high, the public begins to lose trust in the system, in money and in the market mechanism. For some it's a conscious and rational process, and for many it's not. When does it happen? Is it when inflation is 2%? I don't think so. When it's 4%? Maybe, but I don't think so either. If it crosses 10%? Probably yes."

Acemoglu, who is Turkish and was in Turkey at the time of the interview, emphasizes that "the Turks lived for two decades with almost 100% inflation. The danger is that trust in the system could be destroyed. This is a real threat and it is a much more significant threat to democracy and the fight against populism than it is to the cost of living itself. That is why the anti-inflation fight is essential. On the other hand, I am always suspicious of technocrats who take over something and there is no balancing democratic mechanism."

According to him, central banks in democratic regimes are the ultimate example of this. It is clear to all of us that people without knowledge or economic background cannot make decisions, design policies or establish monetary regulation. However, the complete absence of democratic inputs on a critical issue, which is what to do with the money and how much of it should there be - is a problematic thing. Not only because sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it doesn't - but because sometimes they may serve certain groups at the expense of other groups, without even admitting it or noticing it."

How do you resolve these issues?

"It's complex and this complexity receives a lot of attention in these historical moments. I don't have the answer."

You mentioned inflation, inequality, financial risks, a crisis in globalization - these are all a proven recipe for the strengthening and rise of "populism".

"Absolutely. This is one of my biggest concerns. I would only frame the phenomenon under a larger heading: the deterioration of democracy. This is reflected in the deterioration in every parameter that is examined and in every index that indicates the health and robustness of democracy. We are already in a sequence of about 16 years in which the existing democracies are weakening, More countries are abandoning the democratic regime, trust in democratic institutions is declining and it is already at a low level. In addition, political polarization is high, there is a wider place for extreme opinions, and the public's ability to analyze political facts is lower. Populists, mainly on the right, offer a new guide to the perplexed after learning from one another. In addition, inequality has been rising for a long time in the U.S., the UK and Israel, and has reached levels that fuel frustration and dissatisfaction. All these things are warning lights for democracy. That's why I said earlier that I don't think inflation is the ultimate challenge now, but that it is another straw. It is not clear which of all the difficulties I mentioned will finally break the camel's back."

The populists use this inflation as a political tool for personal gain and for the purpose of crushing trust in many institutions. Benjamin Netanyahu is building his entire election campaign on the cost of living and the temporarily high inflation - even though he was in power for 12 years and under his reign the cost of living skyrocketed.

"Bibi is the founding father of right-wing populism. He, along with Italys Silvio Berlusconi, began concocting the methods upon which many others were later built, such as Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump and even Boris Johnson, to a certain extent. Therefore, I am not at all surprised thats how he works. It is clear that he will pull the discourse in these directions because it is much easier to sell 'negative' than 'positive'. It is much easier to say 'I am against' instead of offering what you are in favor of. It is much more difficult to carry out reforms that mean creating 'winners and losers' who tomorrow may oppose you. It is clear that Israel too - similar to the USA and the UK - stands at a critical point where it must strengthen its institutions and decide on the direction of its policy. Not only its foreign policy, but especially its domestic policy, including its economic policy."

One of the amazing and sad things now is that in preparation for the upcoming elections in Israel there is no real, deep, meaningful economic discourse. There is no ideological debate. Everything is quite hollow, emotional and above all personal.

"This is an extremely disturbing development because one of the strongest impressions I got the last time I was in Israel, and that was not long ago, is that this is a population that is very involved in the discourse and in shaping the policy. And I am talking about a very high level of intervention and participation in the democratic process, even more than in a large number of European countries. I really hope you don't lose this value within one generation."

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Donald Trump (from right), Marine Le Pen, and Benjamin Netanyahu.

(Photo: Alex Kolomoysky, Reuters, AFP)

The political processes you describe have an effect on the economy. How does the rise of populism affect long-term economic growth for example?

"There is definitely an effect and it is very bad. Limiting inequality creates a kind of prosperity that is more spread over more groups, and this is more possible when the institutions are democratic. All the regimes that emerged from the populist right have been a very bad combination of corruption, inefficiency and inaction. It is very difficult for me to see such regimes bringing any kind of benefit or good news in terms of growth, infrastructure, innovation, education, science. Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, has set Brazil back environmentally but also institutionally. So did Trump in the USA. Netanyahu in Israel has also caused quite a lot of damage to Israeli institutions as it appears from the outside. And so too with Marine Le Pen, Johnson, and Duterte in the Philippines."

Another phenomenon that is now accelerating and disturbing is the rapid retreat of globalization. How does this affect long-term economic growth?

"I am an expert in the consequences of technological changes and automation on inequality, and there are three common denominators between these issues and globalization that are relevant to our conversation. First, both globalization and technology were presented as 'gifts' to humanity that would free everyone from the cycle of poverty, improve everyone's standard of living and empower us. We know this is not true. Second, both have been presented as 'neutral' phenomena whose trajectory is determined by economic science or other existing knowledge. We know that there was 'selection' in the trajectory and there were many alternative promotion trajectories. For example, you may decide that you will indeed use Israeli technology as a tool for monitoring your citizens and you can decide otherwise. In the same way you can decide that globalization does not have to be a tool for prioritizing capital at the expense of labor and employees. The route or type of globalization that happened in the end was one that allowed the international corporations to arbitrage between the tax systems of the countries, and just as importantly, between differences in employment regulation and differences in workers' rights between different countries."

According to Esmoglu, the third common element between technology and automation and globalization is that the path chosen for their implementation served the powerful players in the system and fueled inequality, and therefore they also clashed head-on with all the ambitions and expectations they aroused at the beginning. "The developments on these two levels only intensify the current populist momentum. On the other hand, I do not think that there is an inherent characteristic - neither in globalization nor in technology and automation - that necessarily causes inequality. You can choose other paths of automation that benefit the working public to the same extent that you can choose other paths of globalization that produce different risks than those that exist today. The current economic reality was supposed to be an opportunity to 'do a different globalization', but I doubt that will happen due to the increase in geopolitical tension, the weakening of democratic institutions and the strengthening of regimes - such as in China and Russia - and their increasing influence in the international arena.

Speaking of China and Russia, many are already talking about the "Balkanization of the world" - splitting into several geopolitical blocs with separate trade, technology and currency systems. Do you think this is the end of the era of "hyper-globalization"?

"That's not what bothers me and that's not the real problem. At the end of the day, the interdependence between us is big enough and our problems are global enough, so that if the world becomes bipolar, tripolar or multipolar - our problems will be shared: the climate problems are shared, technologies will transfer from country to country, so are pandemics, as we have seen in the age of the Coronavirus. What is happening now, and this is a real problem, is that the current situation increases a double risk that works in the same direction: more likelihood of a real military conflict, and we see this in Ukraine and Taiwan. At the same time, a lower effectiveness among the international institutions to coordinate joint activity, to agree and settle conflicts and disagreements. This is the real problem."

Acemoglu emphasizes in this context that "we must admit that even in their good old days, the international institutions never enjoyed sufficient legitimacy and were not strong enough. Some of those international institutions were excessively lenient towards China, in the negative sense of the word, and some of them were too committed, sometimes in appearance and sometimes in practice, to U.S. interests and were not independent enough. All of this contributes to their current complex and dangerous situation."

Finally, what are your thoughts about "the great resignation". Is there really such a phenomenon, or is it a natural and permanent dropout of more and more unskilled workers who remain irrelevant and are forced to leave the labor market?

"Indeed, its an important question. This is a time of great confusion on this issue. The data shows a rapid increase in the wages of those unskilled, low-wage workers at the bottom of the income distribution in the U.S.. That's a really great thing because that hasn't happened in many, many decades in the U.S.. If that's the case, it may indicate a combination of increased demand for workers along with employment safety nets that protect those workers who will no longer be completely at the mercy of their employers. It's no longer 'Work at McDonald's for $6 an hour or starve to death'. Therefore, the conclusion is that wages at the bottom can indeed recover and this will be a great inspiration. On the other hand, we have seen how real wages lag behind inflation, so it is already less worth it if wages run but inflation runs faster.

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I'm not optimistic about the future of the global economy and I don't expect the next 10 years to be particularly good - CTech

FACULTY Q&A

The first round of Brazils presidential election happens this weekend, Oct. 2. The 2022 elections reflect a nation divided between two well-known candidates, current President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva.

Are Bolsonaro and Lula populist leaders? Is there such a thing as right-wing and left-wing populism?

Henrique Kopittke, a doctoral student in the University of Michigan Department of Sociology, studies the relationship between populism, democracy and social movements in Latin America. In the following Q&A, he discusses its impact on the upcoming elections.

How do you analyze current populism, democracy and social movements in Brazil?

My research deals with processes in which popular mobilization and social movements may result in the strengthening of populist challengers. This is not a process that happens deliberately or linearly. Instead, it is a history of the closure of political options, of how one form of politics came to dominate others and why.

There are a lot of competing definitions of populism. These accounts generally agree that populists idealize and may seek to enact their form of popular sovereignty, fuel anti-establishment sentiments, and postulate a fundamental antagonism between the people and the elite. Whether populism erodes or enhances democracy is a point of contention.

Populists may expand popular sovereignty and civil rights to long-excluded segments of society while subverting institutional mechanisms of accountability. This may occur to render a more superficial image of politics, with authoritarian beliefs, better expressed by Bolsonaro when he stated, The minority must bow down to the majority.

Social movements further complicate the picture. As far as they prioritize their demands and identities and do not submit entirely to the strategic necessities of leaders and their coalitions, they may render a less stifled representation of the people. Populist leaders may ally with social movements and attend to their demands, but by doing so, they might co-opt and subdue these movements entirely.

Has there been a rise in populism in the country?

Yes. In terms of rhetoric, Bolsonaro emphasizes the antagonism with the political system, especially the Workers Party. He attacked other branches of government associating them with corruption and accusing them of usurping democracy. In addition, he mobilized his followers to express their rejection of the Brazilian Supreme Court, targeting justices who censored supporters of the president.

Apart from rhetoric and mobilization, his populist leadership style is also notable for his continuous communication with his followers through social media, daily live broadcasts and press meetings, where his followers have attacked journalists.

Looking beyond Bolsonaro, his election was the result of the failure of the political establishment to present a coherent response to the multifaceted crisis that Brazilian society has been experiencing since 2013. Bolsonaro already captured much of the anger and indignation of the electorate. Lula bets on the popular desire to return to a more prosperousand orderlypast. The political landscape seems, thus, saturated, without opportunities for new actors to emerge.

Are candidates Lula and Bolsonaro considered populist leaders? Or are they just using populist strategies to capture votes?

A different way of approaching populism involves viewing it as a strategy used by actors seeking to mobilize support and consolidate power. Therefore, the focus is not on defining which leader or movement is populist but on how and when populist strategies are used. Components of this strategy could be popular mobilization, antagonism and direct communication.

Lula and Bolsonaro both communicate in very folksy and direct ways. They both have antagonistic elements in their rhetoric. But the similarities stop there. Lula transits with ease between different registers and modulates his communication according to the constituency he addresses. Bolsonaro is more consistent in antagonizing institutions and portraying his supporters as the true majority.

How different are left-wing and right-wing populism?

Left-wing populist leaders generally emphasize economic and class antagonisms, focusing on opposing big business or finance capital. In the case of Latin America, global institutions and elites will also be featured in speeches, namely the IMF and its policies, as well as the United States. Right-wing populists emphasize cultural antagonisms. In Latin America, neoliberal populists antagonize states bureaucracies as sites of inefficiency, corruption and incompetence.

Bolsonaro follows both conservative and neoliberal patterns, blaming setbacks in his presidency on infiltrated Workers Party activists and crusading against the degeneracy and corruption of values embodied by celebrities and artists that oppose him. Xenophobia and racism are also characteristics of right-wing populists.

How do you explain the growth of populist politicians in Latin America?

There are structural and contingent factors. Leaders like Bolsonaro and Hugo Chvez in Venezuela came into the spotlight during severe social and economic crises. It is the contingent factor. Bolsonaro emerged after corruption scandals demoralized the Brazilian political establishment, alongside a hard-hitting economic recession and continuous popular unrest. Structural elements also explain how these crises hit Latin American political systems harder than elsewhere.

In Brazil, I would pose additional structural factors: the general institutional weakness of political parties, which benefit more from personalistic forms of politics; the weak democratic commitments of national elites, which may be in strongman outsiders to push for unpopular policies without the setback of persuading the public on the benefits or necessity of such policies; and finally, and maybe the most import factor, the gross inequality. Inequality in Brazil means that large population sectors feel excluded from politics. Still, it also means that exclusionary and authoritarian perspectives of who counts as the righteous people may thrive and become official speech.

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Brazil's election: The rise and impact of populism - University of Michigan News

William A. Galston writes the weekly Politics & Ideas column in the Wall Street Journal. He holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institutions Governance Studies Program, where he serves as a senior fellow. Before joining Brookings in January 2006, he was Saul Stern Professor and Acting Dean at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, founding director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), and executive director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal. A participant in six presidential campaigns, he served from 1993 to 1995 as Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy.

Mr. Galston is the author of 10 books and more than 100 articles in the fields of political theory, public policy, and American politics. His most recent books are The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge, 2004), Public Matters (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), and Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (Yale, 2018). A winner of the American Political Science Associations Hubert H. Humphrey Award, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.

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Opinion | Right-Wing Populism May Rise in the U.S. - The Wall Street Journal

The survey was commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of its global Estonian diaspora project, and posed the question: "Please could you name one person or fact related to Estonia which characterizes Estonia for you, in a positive or a negative way."

Answers could be couched only in a short comment, with one positive and one negative aspect.

2,250 positive answers were received, compared with 1,850 negative responses, and the surveyors organized the answers into different categories.

Among the negatives, more than a third (39 percent) or respondents expressly named populist and/or right-wing politicians and politics, with two or three politicians specifically named in the responses, ERR reports.

The responses saw a smaller range in the negatives, meaning the most dominant aspects in respondents' minds such as the politics dimension noted above held a much larger share of the total than did any of the positive answers.

The authors of the study said it was: "Noteworthy that, while in the topic block of negative facts there was a large share of politics and factors relating to the political field, the share of positive factors was rather more diverse."

Additionally, 13 percent of respondents referred to "politics" more broadly, and referenced, again, specific politicians, political parties, and policies on, for instance, Covid, and education.

The remaining negative answers constituted less than a tenth of the share, though 9 percent referenced Estonian people's: "Rudeness, carelessness, self-centeredness, envy, narrow-mindedness, intolerance," and other negative character traits.

Racists attitudes and intolerant attitudes to LGBT+ persons were also referenced specifically.

Other negatives included "low salaries" and other economic factors, alcoholism, the cold climate, the proximity of Russia, and the activities or existence of other, non-political public figures.

(including significantly at least in the positive category, and above all politicians), and two to three percent of the answers reflected a negative attitude towards the LGBTQ+ community and alcoholism.

Positive aspects found a much broader range

As noted, respondents to the survey presented a much more diluted selection of answers when it came to positive perceptions of their home country.

These ranged from some political figures most notably the current head of state (appeared in 11 percent of positive asnwers) as well as his preecessors, the e-state, including facets such as e-residency, cyber security and Estonia's international reputation as a digital powerhouse, and the beautiful natural environment and its forests, islands and Baltic coast.

Composer Arvo Prt, many other figures from the world of music, literature, art, sport, science, national and folk culture and even politics, education, innovation, the startup culture and general memories of the homeland were also referenced.

Some positive character traits, such as hard work, ambition and resourcefulness were also mentioned, as well as the fact of being a sovereign, independent republic.

The study, entitled "Estonian foreign communities: Identity, attitudes and expectations towards the Estonian state"was conducted by the Institute of Baltic Studies on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Culture, while those polled were of Estonian origin and resident in: Finland, Russia, Italy, the UK, Switzerland, Turkey, the US and Australia.

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Survey: Right-wing populism ex pat Estonians' main negative image of home - ERR News