A given populist movement will have a better chance of being more virtuous than vicious when the following conditions are present:

1. When democracy is sufficiently well established in law, tradition and, especially, citizen expectations that the movement will not be able to make major changes in the rules unilaterally or to mobilize coercive forces to perpetuate itself in power.
2.  When the followers that they mobilize are also willing to play according the existing constitutional rules ― however marginalized they have been by those rules and however much they desire to reform them.
3. When prevailing parties fail to represent salient cleavages within the citizenry and perpetuate historical ones that have lost their meaning.
4. When their leaders are oligarchic and cannot be removed by internal partisan politics and/or engage in collusion with each other to avoid conflicts that divide their respective publics.
5. When the polity is facing major social or economic choices that cannot be made or adequately exploited because existing political formations cannot make the necessary decisions due to partisan stalemate or entrenched privileged interests.
6. When the multiple promises populist leaders make are transformed sequentially and experimentally into public policies ― however logically inconsistent and politically heterodox these policies may be.
7.  When these policies are revocable at acceptable cost or do not introduce ‘sunken costs’ and ‘path dependencies’ that subsequent governments have to accept.    
8.  When the international context is neither polarized nor threatening and, hence, when external powers are more willing to tolerate ‘insubordination.’
9. When the foreign policies changed and challenges issued to hegemonies by populist regimes are potentially reversible or relatively insignificant.
10. When the nationalist appeals made are inclusive of the population and not exclusive of targeted classes, ethnicities or generations within the nation.
11. When the concentration on a single ‘charismatic’ leader is mitigated by some forms of collective deliberation and internal accountability within the populist movement.
12. When the single, most visible and most responsible leader is not personally corrupt and (even more difficult to satisfy) when he or she is capable of detecting corruption among followers and punishing it. 
13. When populist leaders compete ‘freely and fairly’ in regular elections and accede to leave office if they are defeated.
    

I would admit that this is quite a lengthy (and probably incomplete) list of conditions that would make populism a more virtuous occurrence for a given polity. Some are clearly more significant than others. Number 13, for example, is indispensable. Number 12 may be almost impossible to satisfy fully.  
But the list is not prohibitive. Especially if one concedes the desirability of making a comprehensive judgment concerning the emergence of populism in a particular polity that would have to weigh specific items according to its circumstances and also factor in the probable alternative type of government, then, there is a place for ‘positive’ and not just ‘negative’ populisms.

* Conclusions of Professor Philippe C. Schmitter’s paper ‘A Balance Sheet of the Vices and Virtues of Populisms,’ presented at the conference on ‘The Challenge of the New Populism,’ which took place in Sofia, May 10-11, 2006.

By Philippe C. Schmitter
Philippe C. Schmitter was professor of political science at the European University Institute in Florence, Department of Political and Social Sciences, until September 2004. He was then nominated professorial fellow at the same institution. He is also a professor at the Central European University, Budapest.

European University Institute website: www.iue.it

Central European University website: www.ceu.hu