the virus across India. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, dismissed covid-19 as “the
sniffles” while touting bogus cures. And President John Magufuli of Tanzania declared
his country to be covid-free, thanks to divine intervention—even as bodies were being
secretly stacked in cemeteries at night.
In all these cases, an ignore-the-experts approach at the top led to widespread death
and needlessly severe economic damage. But populists are good at finding excuses and
changing the subject. Mr Modi blames Muslims for spreading the virus, and maintains a
stellar approval rating. Mr Bolsonaro has handed out truckloads of public money to
cushion the shock to Brazilian livelihoods. This has helped him remain more popular
than Mexico’s left-populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO),
who has also done a shoddy job of stopping the virus but has been reluctant to give
people money. Mr Magufuli won re-election in October by muzzling the media and
locking up opponents.
Populist leaders claim to know the will of “the people” and vow to defend them against a
shadowy, wicked “elite”. But the people have a range of views, and the “elite” includes
doctors, scientists and epidemiologists. The populist tendency to dismiss expertise is
harmful at the best of times; during a pandemic it is disastrous. From Mr Trump’s
decision to pull America out of the World Health Organisation—the main global body
for fighting pandemics—to Belarusian despot Alexander Lukashenko’s suggestion that
people treat the virus by drinking vodka and driving a tractor, populists have favoured
soundbites over science, with lethal results.
Unfortunately, the pandemic itself makes some voters more susceptible to populism.
People are scared; populists are adept at exploiting fear. People are confused; populists
offer narratives that are easy to grasp, such as the suggestions that China or
globalisation are to blame. There is sometimes an element of truth in these stories:
China’s initial cover-up of covid-19 was indeed grossly irresponsible. But that is in the
past. Governments everywhere have to fight the virus now, and probably throughout
- They can do so effectively only if they are guided by evidence.
Happily, there are reasons to predict that the pandemic will eventually weaken
populists. Voters notice when their leaders fail to deliver. A survey by More in Common,
an NGO, found people were far more likely to blame their governments for mishandling
the pandemic in America, Britain and Poland, all run by populist or somewhat populist
governments, than in Germany or the Netherlands, which are not.
Electoral calendars mean that not many voters in 2021 will have a chance to sack or
restrain populist governments. Russia’s legislative elections will not be free or fair.
Indians will elect a new upper house, but Mr Modi will maintain his grip. Mexicans will
elect lawmakers, but AMLO will stay in charge.
Vote the rascals out
Yet the pandemic has shown that the populist toolkit—fearmongering, scapegoating,
appeals to emotion—is useless against a virus that fears nothing and does not respond
to divisive rhetoric. By hitting the global economy, covid-19 has also made it harder for
demagogues to keep bribing voters with their own money, especially in developing
countries that cannot borrow cheaply.