In the Coronavirus Pandemic Battle, Populist Leaders Perform Poorly

Academics have been fretting about whether liberal democracy — the political system that helped defeat fascism in World War II, set up international institutions like the World Health Organization and seemed to have triumphed in the Cold War three decades ago — can muster the stuff to take on the new populism and address complex 21st-century challenges.

The coronavirus pandemic has crystallized that dilemma.

“This is a public health crisis that requires expertise and science to resolve. Populists by nature ... have a disdain for experts and science that are seen as part of the establishment,” says Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank. He was discussing Brazil, where at least 81,000 people have died.

“Brazil has a wealth of expertise and the US does, too,” Shifter says. “But the problem is, the populist politics makes it very difficult to implement rational policies that really resolve the issue — or at least manage the crisis more effectively.”

The United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Mexico all are led by leaders who have been skeptical of scientists and who initially minimized the disease.

Read also: Indonesians Believe Coronavirus Is a Lie: Covid-19 Task Force Head

These four countries account for half of the 618,000 Covid-19 deaths worldwide so far, according to statistics tracked by Johns Hopkins University.

India, meanwhile, is coming on strong. It just passed the mark of 1.2 million confirmed cases.

“The pandemic and the economic crisis reveals the price of incompetence, and that this actually matters," said political scientist Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution.

Wright, who directs the think tank's Center on the United States and Europe, said the disease “hits every blind spot that the populists have" and discredits a core piece of their proposition to voters.