An Epistemic Account of Populism

December 20, 2025 | 1,333 words | 7min read

Paper Title: An Epistemic Account of Populism

Link to Paper: https://philpapers.org/rec/MLLAEA-2

Deate: January 2023

Paper Type: Philosophy, Philosophy of Politics, ideology, Political Epistemology

Short Abstract: Populism is a highly contested term. This term makes two contributions: first, it offers a way to evaluate contested concepts like populism; second, it proposes that populism can be understood as a coherent ideology adhering to four foundational principles.

0. Methodology

• Müller uses explication (following Carnap and Brun) rather than conceptual analysis to reconstruct contested concepts like populism.
• Explication aims for theoretical advantages such as explanatory power, precision, and simplicity. The method of explication does not necessarily produce a single correct answer.
• Ideologies are treated as ideal types—maximally coherent reconstructions of the often patchy belief systems of political actors.
• A group shares an ideology if its paradigmatic beliefs and dispositions can be logically derived from a small set of foundational principles.

1. Reconstructing Populism

Müller provides the following four principles he considers foundational for populism:

1. Common good objectivism: There exists an objective common good and a truth about which public policies are conducive to it.
2. Epistemic optimism: Ordinary people are endowed with a commonsense capacity that permits them to reliably discern the truth of political statements, particularly those affecting the common good, because the truth of such statements is self-evident.
3. Moral optimism: Ordinary people have a capacity for a sense of justice—that is, an effective desire to pursue the common good.
4. Corruption theory of disagreement: Persistent political disagreement exists because of the epistemic or moral corruption of the elite.

1.1 Common Good Objectivism

Populism presupposes an objective common good. Like many political ideologies, populism assumes the existence of shared, abstract interests (such as security, liberty, or justice) whose validity is not settled by empirical testing.

What distinguishes populism is not a detailed account of the common good itself, but a claim about how it can be known. Populists hold that ordinary common-sense judgment is sufficient to identify which policies serve the common good.

Some philosophers argue that populism does not require a common shared good; instead, the people and the elites hold their own versions of truth, a form of relativism. However, this is problematic: if populists believed that different groups simply had their own equally valid moral truths, the accusation that elites are corrupt would be incoherent.

1.2 Epistemic Optimism

Epistemic optimism is a defining, not incidental, feature of populist ideology. It is the view that ordinary people possess a faculty—common sense—that enables them to reliably judge the truth of political statements and the validity of arguments because political truths are self-evident or “manifest.”

Crucially, epistemic optimism does not claim that ordinary people can independently generate correct policy solutions. Rather, it holds that they can reliably assess whether claims made by others (including experts) are true or false. This distinction explains why populist movements may still rely on selected experts.

Populism commits to a strong version of epistemic optimism. Liberal democracy rests on epistemic humility and collective truth-seeking; populism rejects this framework because it assumes truth is already accessible to the people.

Examples:

• Viktor Orbán frames political solutions as obvious and debate as unnecessary.
• Donald Trump asserts that the people are right across complex policy domains while elites are systematically wrong.
• Studies on “epistemological populism” show that populist rhetoric elevates everyday experience as the primary source of political knowledge.

1.3 Moral Optimism

Knowledge of the common good is insufficient for populist politics; people must also be motivated to pursue it rather than their private interests.

Populist ideology addresses this by ascribing to ordinary people a moral capacity for a sense of justice. This moral optimism ensures that when political power is placed in the hands of “the people,” it will not be systematically diverted toward narrow self-interest.

Populism attributes to ordinary people a minimal moral quality: a reliable motivation to pursue the common good in the political sphere. This interpretation aligns with populist rhetoric, which often rejects politeness, moral refinement, or political correctness.

1.4 Corruption Theory of Disagreement

If ordinary people can easily recognize political truth (common good objectivism), and if true policies are self-evident (epistemic optimism), and people want to follow them (moral optimism), then correct views should spread quickly. On this epistemology, ignorance cannot plausibly explain enduring disagreement, since a truthful position should convince others once it is presented.

Unlike liberal epistemology, which treats disagreement as a normal outcome of human reasoning under conditions of uncertainty and plural values, populist epistemology reverses the explanatory burden. Here, truth is easy to see, and what requires explanation is why people fail to accept it.

Within this framework, populism allows only two explanations for persistent disagreement:

• Moral corruption: actors knowingly defend false positions for self-serving or malicious reasons.
• Epistemic corruption: actors are incapable of recognizing the truth even when confronted with it.

Hence, persistent political disagreement exists because of the epistemic or moral corruption of the elite.

Examples: Populist leaders routinely dismiss critical media, experts, and opposing politicians as corrupt, dishonest, or serving hidden interests. If the truth is obvious, dissent must be corrupt.

3. The Explanatory Power of the Epistemic Account of Populism

So far, Müller has shown that populism is consistent with a number of characteristics frequently attributed to populists. This means there is no contradiction in accepting the four principles of populism while acting, behaving, and speaking as populists usually do.

Next, he aims to show that populism is not only consistent but also coherent with how populists act, behave, and speak. If an agent adopts the four principles as commitments, it becomes rational for them to hold the beliefs and engage in behaviors commonly associated with populism.

To do this, he deduces ten items commonly associated with populism in the literature:

1. Disdain for the political elite (Mudde, 2004; Müller, 2017)
2. Disdain for the traditional media (Brubaker, 2017; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017; Waisbord, 2018)
3. Populism’s claim to true or sole representation (Mudde, 2004; Müller, 2017)
4. Disapproval of mediating institutional bodies (Brubaker, 2017; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017; Waisbord, 2018; Müller, 2017)
5. Disapproval of compromise (Akkerman et al., 2014)
6. Anti-intellectualism (Brubaker, 2017; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017; Waisbord, 2018; Müller, 2017)
7. Approval of direct democracy (Brubaker, 2017; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017)
8. Approval of personalization of power (Akkerman et al., 2014; Müller, 2017)
9. Emphasis on action rather than deliberation (Akkerman et al., 2014)
10. Latent autocratic tendencies (Akkerman et al., 2014; Müller, 2017)

This deductive framework not only explains populist behavior from an external perspective but also provides internal justification for the populist agent, creating a coherent ideological system. Features like the frequent invocation of conspiracy theories also emerge naturally from the epistemic account, since persistent disagreement must be explained as corruption.

4. Genus of Populism

Should populism be considered an ideology or merely a style/rhetorical repertoire? Answer: Müller argues that populism is best understood as an ideology because its paradigmatic beliefs and dispositions can be explained in terms of four foundational principles. These principles both explain (externally) and justify (internally) populist behavior, establishing coherence.

Populism lacks a “grand normative vision,” but this is explained by its epistemic core: the truth about the common good and correct policies is already manifest to ordinary people.

Counterexamples: Not every action or statement of a populist politician must be strictly populist.

Why it matters: Distinguishing populism from other political ideologies (authoritarianism, nationalism, socialism, etc.) highlights its incompatibility with liberal democracy, because it denies reasonable disagreement:

• Truth is manifest.
• Disagreement is due to corruption.
• One is either aligned with the truth or morally/epistemically corrupted.

My Opinion

Personally, I am not a fan of “what is X?” questions, see my article Stop Asking What Things Are. However, the author here clearly states that this is an explication, so alternative answers are acceptable. Explications are still helpful because they allow us to better make sense of a phenomenon even if a single definition never captures its full breadth, since language is too dynamic for that.

Besides that, I’m not a fan of this paper overall, as I find political philosophy rather boring.

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