Political Scientists Don't Understand the Public

One of my favourite writers is economist Branko Milanovic who has an interesting post about a conference he attended recently on the theme of “democracy and inequality”

I would like to go through a short historical excursus. The most compact definition of 

democracy is by Joseph Schumpeter in 1942 in his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy: 

the struggle of political parties for the largest number of votes and thus for the right to 

rule. With that very narrow definition of democracy, we must acknowledge that the 

1930s authoritarian regimes came to power observing it. NSDAP won the largest 

number of votes in the German Parliament in the last two elections in 1932 and was 

kept out of government precisely because it was believed that it would rule dictatorially 

once it came to power. Eventually large industrialists and large landowners decided to 

somehow fence Hitler in and Hindenburg gave him the mandate to form the government 

(see, for example, Henry Turner’s excellent Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power). 

They did so because the country was becoming entirely ungovernable not only in 

Parliament but in the streets. Similar autocratic and dictatorial regimes ruled practically 

all of Europe in the 1930s: Metaxas in Greece, King Alexander in Yugoslavia, 

Marshal Pilsudski and Colonel Beck in Poland, Admiral Horthy in Hungary, 

Schuschnigg in Austria, Mussolini in Italy, Smetona in Lithuania, General Franco in 

Spain, Salazar in Portugal. 

Mark Mazower describes the period very well in Dark Continent. “Dark” of course refers 

to Europe of the 1920s and the 1930s. 
What we notice is that all these leaders were popular, some very popular, and many 

came to power by democratic or semi-democratic means. Ian Kershaw in his two-volume 

biography of Hitler writes that Hitler in 1937 was surely the most popular head of state 

in Europe. His popularity increased after Anschluss, and even more so after he got most 

of Bohemia and united the Sudeten Germans who lived there.

Let us now move to the current situation. We see something similar: governments that 

ruling opinion-makers believe are bad do seem to do well in the polls. At this very moment 

the genocide in Gaza is being conducted by a fully democratically elected government 

of Israel. The invasion of Ukraine against all international norms is being led by Putin 

who won all the elections since 2000 and although there was certainly a significant 

amount of fraud nobody denies that even if the election were totally free he would win 

them. Erdoğan who is now trying to crack down on the opposition has nevertheless 

ruled Turkey for 22 years and won the elections whose outcomes were accepted by the 

opposition (except the last one where the opposition contested the validity of the vote). 

Other so-called undemocratic leaders like Orbán in Hungary, Fico in Slovakia and 

Vučić in Serbia might at some point lose elections but, so far, for more than a decade, 

they had won them all and they still enjoy significant or even majority popular support. 

Milanovic then goes on to question the difference between the thinking of 

political scientists and the wider public 

We need to reassess why there is a gap between what most political and social scientists 

believe is desirable, and what normal people who participate in the process find attractive. 

This gap has produced many other negative effects. Those who believe that people tend to vote 

wrongly disparage them by calling them malcontents, envious, deplorables or fascists. 

The other side accuses in return various elites to be supercilious and estranged 

(precisely thanks to their education and wealth) from what normal folks really want. Both

 accusations have some truth. 

And goes on to argue -

Those who attack majorities that vote wrongly seem to speak, when it comes to international 

organizations, in tongues that come from an entirely different era. They call for 

international solidarity, inter-country cooperation etc. at the time when the world is being 

divided Into political, economic and military blocs. 
It is a fantasy that under the current conditions which are likely to prevail for at least 

several decades there will be anything but the very minimal ability to do things internationally 

whether it be fighting climate change, epidemics, or coordinating monetary policies, 

rescheduling of debts, trade rules. All of it basically has to go out of the agenda and 

would be dealt with either bilaterally or from position of force by whoever is in that position. 

So the presumption that there is some general interest shared by all citizens of the world 

is entirely inapplicable in today’s times. When one hears some such speakers, one feels 

that they have been stuck in the 1990s (when such illusions could at least have been 

entertained) and to not have observed that the world has since changed. 

The two sides speak past each other: one speaks about things which existed in 

the past and no longer exist today, and the other tries to speak of the things that 

exist today but is accused of glorifying the present and of lacking aspiration or vision 

for the betterment of humankind. This leads both sides to produce unhinged, one-sided, 

and in some cases borderline crazy arguments.