The Coronavirus Pandemic And Its Possible Effects On The World Politics In the Context of The Populist Politics

Could the Coronavirus pandemic be a ‘’blessing’’ for the world after all? The Coronavirus pandemic is believed to be one of the worst things that happened to mankind by many. There have been a total of nearly 67 million cases and 1.5 million deaths around the globe since the pandemic started. Populism is thought to be similar to the Coronavirus in some ways by many people as they think that it is a ‘disease’ that could mark the end of the democratic societies. On the contrary side, some people think it is an ideology that should be adopted by all countries because it is the most ‘suitable’ ideology for world communities. The Coronavirus pandemic may help one of the two sides of the debate as it may shape the future of world politics. Moving from that motive, it will be argued in this study that ‘’The populist politics -an ideology which is currently experiencing a rising trend in many countries all over the world-, may be seen as either a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ ideology and depending on how it is interpreted, the Coronavirus may have a ‘positive’ impact on the world by accelerating or decelerating the populism trend’’.

Before looking into the Coronavirus pandemic and its possible relation with populism which could shape millions of lives by either existing or disappearing, it could be useful to grasp the meaning of populism. Populism may be defined as ‘‘a political program or movement that champions, or claims to champion, the common person, usually by favourable contrast with a real or perceived elite or establishment.’’ (Munro, n.d.) According to Cas Mudde’s definition, ‘‘Populism is a communication style or ‘thin’ ideology that adds a second division between ‘us’ and ‘them’: it pits the ‘pure people’ against the untrustworthy ‘corrupt elite’.’’ (Mudde, 2007) The reason for Mudde to call populism a ‘thin’ ideology is that populism does not have a specific opinion on how politics, economy and society should be organized unlike other ‘thick’ ideologies such as communism (Kyle & Gultchin, 2018). Despite the academic debate on how populism should be defined and classified, it is mostly agreed upon that it is rather more about how a specific ideology is implemented. For that reason, it should be underlined that populism may be teamed up with both left and right wing parties, although it has been associated with mostly right political parties lately. Citizens can either end up having an ideal democratic system or an authoritarian regime by electing populist politicians. Thomas Greven claims that ‘populism’s central and permanent narrative is the juxtaposition of a (corrupt) >>political class, << >>elite, << or >>establishment, << and >>the people, << as whose sole authentic voice, the populist party, bills itself.’ (Greven, 2016) Populist politicians mostly try to gain votes through the rhetoric that they are not members of the ‘political elite’, and they are ‘ordinary people’ (Lewis et al., 2019). At this point, it should be realized that populism is hard to define and it is not clear what should be classified as ‘populism’ since even academicians who are studying and researching on that specific topic are having a hard time in defining its framework. One reason for that hardship is that normally politicians who belong to a specific ideology (liberalism, communism, socialism, …) name themselves as such types of politicians (liberalist, communist, socialist, …) Populism is an exception to this classification. Populist politicians mostly do not call themselves populists much likely because of the bad reputation it has and its being used to ‘shame’ a specific politician. That is why determining who is a populist politician and who is not has become a responsibility of journalists and academicians (Kyle & Gultchin, 2018). However, knowing some characteristics of a populist politician and his/her politics could help the reader as to know what could possibly be classified as ‘populism’. Firstly, populist politicians are acting at odds with social norms and taking pleasure in displaying ‘bad manners’ (Moffitt, 2016). For further understanding, one could investigate the manners displayed by the 45th President of the United States of America Donald J. Trump who has been classified doubtlessly as a populist politician by many academic societies. He had been an ‘unorthodox’ president since the day he was elected to the White House. Even though he had many controversial comments and approaches during his four years in the Office, his comments on Coronavirus pandemic could be given as an example. On February 10th, 2020; President Trump had said that the virus would ‘miraculously go away by the time it becomes a little warmer’ at his rally in New Hampshire. His ‘the virus will go away’ claims have been thought to be doubtful at the very least by the scientists when these comments were made. (McDonald, 2020) Therefore if he had consulted the scientists about the topic or had considered their comments, he could have known that it would not be the case. As time passed, the claims were proved to be wrong as the virus continued its widespread much after the summer. However, the reason why he made these comments is his populist attitudes and ‘acting at odds with social norms’ as Benjamin Moffit stated, which social norms are taking the scientists’ opinions into account in this specific case. Another definition of the populist politician characteristics is made by Reinhard Heinisch. He claims that populists tend to adopt ‘‘a political style that demarcates them from other ‘mainstream’ candidates, often exhibiting more bombastic, exaggerated, spectacular and ostensibly provocative behaviour intended to breach all ‘political and socio-cultural taboos’’ (Heinisch, 2003). It can be observed that the words ‘exaggerated’ and ‘ostensibly provocative’ are constantly embodied in Donald Trump’s comments. He exaggerates his accomplishments as he did on drug prices that he claimed them to have gone down for the first time in 53 years, though 46 years is the correct figure. (Dale, 2019) This may not come as a big problem for readers. Nevertheless, it should be thought of as constant misinforming the public by a president of a country which has great importance. Donald Trump also provokes the public with his comments and uses it as a strategy for election and for strengthening his authority. One example for his provocative actions is his standing in front of St. John’s Church and holding a Bible during the Black Lives Matter Protests, there he said that he would ‘‘deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them’’, if necessary (Bennett, 2020). These actions are all provocative steps taken by the President. First, he shows that he is still strong and ‘not afraid’ of the protesters. Secondly, he threatens the protesters with the military. Further information will be mentioned in later parts of this study about the methods used by populist politicians. There is one other topic that should be discussed in relation to the topic of this study. It is the trend of rising in populist politicians around the world. There is a rise in the number of countries where populist political parties are in government either by themselves or as part of a coalition. Populism is more common than it has ever been. One indication may be the number of the Guardian articles that mention populism by years. In 1998, 300 articles had mentioned the term. It has risen to 1,000 articles in 2015 and doubled to 2,000 in the next year (Rooduijn, 2018). According to the Populists in Power Around the World study by Jordan Kyle and Limor Gultchin, the number of populist politicians in power around the globe has increased five-fold from four to twenty between 1990 and 2018 (Kyle & Gultchin, 2018). By the time that the study has been prepared, populist politicians such as Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom were not in the office, which means that the figure is increasing every election around the world. Another study that shows the increase in the impact of populist parties is Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash by Ronald F. Inglehart and Pippa Norris. Their study shows that populist parties across Europe have increased their average share of the vote from 5.1% to 13.2% since the 1960s. Also, their share of seats jumped from 3.8% to 12.8% within the same time interval (Inglehart & Norris, 2016). It should be noted that this specific study was published in 2016, again before Boris Johnson and other ‘election successes’ of the populist parties across Europe. Therefore, it could be claimed that there is an ‘obvious’ trend of rising for populism around the world.

For fulfilling the purpose of this study, as it is shown that populist politics is on the rise throughout the world, now it may be wise to prefer to review the possible effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on the populism trend. Before looking into the future of the populism, it should be underlined whether an ideology is positive or negative for the citizens of the country which is governed by that specific ideology depends on how that ideology is implemented as well as on its ‘content’. What is meant by that is, for example, populism in Europe is typically based on ‘divisive messages and emphasises racial divisions’, on the other hand, populism in Africa is about ‘multi-ethnic support bases’ (Cheeseman, Bértoa, Storm, & Dodsworth, 2018). In addition to that, even though populism is seen as close-knit with right-wing politics especially in the United States of America and Europe, there are also left-wing populist politicians around the globe (Molloy, 2018). Therefore, it is exceptionally hard to refer to populism as either completely ‘good’ or completely ‘bad’. However, to understand how the Coronavirus pandemic may affect the citizens of the world in the context of populism trend, some characteristics of populism may be shown. Firstly, why populism may be interpreted as a ‘positive’ ideology and how Coronavirus pandemic may escalate the populism trend, therefore may have a positive impact for the world may be a starting point. Although populism is mostly seen as an ‘evil’ with the latest trend of populism in the world and the latest representatives of politicians who are referred to be populists; populism is not necessarily ‘bad’ for mankind. One characteristic of the populism that may support that claim is that the populist politicians build their narrative on the claim that they are not like the existing political parties who ‘failed’ in delivering policies, to the citizens of the country, that matter to the people, but they are part of the ‘people’ (Kyle & Gultchin, 2018). That is why populist parties may be seen as ‘saviours of the people’ from the existing political elements of the status quo. At this point, it should be added that most researchers agree upon the fact that populist political parties have two main principles: ‘‘A country’s ‘true people’ are locked into conflict with outsiders, including establishment elites.’’ and ‘‘Nothing should constrain the will of the true people.’’ (Kyle & Gultchin, 2018). Left-wing populists base the conflict between the ‘true people’ and the ‘outsiders’ on the socioeconomic grievances, while, on the other hand, right-wing populists locates the conflict on the basis of the socio-cultural issues (Bryant & Moffitt, 2019). Thus, they take side with the ‘true people’ against either ‘economic elites’ in the context of left-wing or ‘socio-cultural threats’ in the context of right-wing populist politics. So, populist politicians’ being on the side of the citizens may be one of the positive characteristics of the populism. Through that specific narrative of being on the side of people, populist parties may gain relatively high support from the voters and this may lead existing mainstream politic parties to feel threatened by the ‘populist wave’. Therefore, populist parties may cause existing parties to improve themselves in the way of paying attention to what people want. As it is claimed, competition in a free market usually is in favour of the consumer. Taking that claim into account, it may be speculated that competition in democracies with new political parties may be in favour of the people. Since most political parties that are new to the competition or at least to being a serious threat to the current parties are populist parties, it may be stated that populist parties are helping democracies to function in a more pro-voter way. Another positive impact of populist parties is that they may encourage the citizens who have been previously ‘‘mis- or underrepresented’’ by the existing political parties to vote in the upcoming elections (Leininger & Meijers, 2020). It is proved that populist parties may increase political participation (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). Considering that political participation is one of the main building blocks of democracies, it may be said that populist parties are improving democracies which is why populism may be interpreted as ‘positive’ ideology. Moving to how Coronavirus pandemic may lead populism to prosper even more around the globe and therefore, doing a ‘favour’ to the people who consider populism to be positive; handling of the Coronavirus crisis may be given as the key element. It should be kept in mind that Great Depression of 1929 and Great Recession of 2008 are two of the greatest crises of the last century which lead to increase in populism throughout the world politics, as they are seen to be among the reasons of the rising in populism in the world for the time these crises have happened (Dehesa, 2019; Witte, 2019). It means that Coronavirus may be the next crisis that will lead to an increase in populism around the globe. To understand why that may be the case, one should look into countries’ performance on containing Coronavirus. For example, Spain was one of the countries which had the worst death figures in Europe in the first wave of the virus during the 2019 spring. As of 03.12.2020, Spain has the fourth-worst ratio of deaths per 1 million population with 985, following respectively Belgium, San Marino and Andorra; according to the figures on Worldometers.info. Spain is governed by the coalition of the Socialist Party and the Podemos since November 2019. The performance of the government with such figures is widely criticised by the opposition parties including the right-wing populist Vox party which had the third-highest percentage of votes in the latest elections. One other country with a criticised performance on containing Coronavirus is France. According to Worldometers.info, France has the worst record of the total Coronavirus cases in Europe with over 2.2 million cases and the third-worst record of the total deaths in Europe with close to 55 thousand deaths. France’s President Emmanuel Macron is criticised by the French opposition parties including the populist politicians Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The significance of the critics lies behind the fact that Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon had the second and fourth highest percentages of the votes respectively in the latest French presidential election in 2017. Marine Le Pen had 21.30% and Jean-Luc Mélenchon had 19.58%. Those percentages are even more significant considering the fact that Emmanuel Macron had 24.01%, which means they were closely following him and were strong threats to him. Also, Le Pen went to the second round with Macron as no candidate had the majority of the votes, then lost the election to Macron. However, these results are still remarkable for populist politics in France as especially Marine Le Pen continues to be the biggest threat to ‘dethrone’ the president Emmanuel Macron in the upcoming presidential elections in 2022. According to the data on Politico.eu, Le Pen is only 1 per cent behind Macron in the presidential election voting intention. The way Coronavirus will be handled in the coming days may determine the future of the populism in France. However, the performance of the countries having populist opposition parties is not the only case that is discussed in this study. Some populist politicians are attributed to be successful in taking the necessary precautions. Prime Minister Babis of Czechia is one of them. Among the precautions he initiated are executing a lockdown before facing any death in Czechia and mandating mask-wearing in public in March when no other country had done it except Slovakia (Dudik & Ponikelska, 2020; Tait, 2020). Thus, he is one of the successful leaders who turned the crisis into an opportunity through his prudential actions. Another leader is Prime Minister Boyko Borisov of Bulgaria. State of emergency was declared on March 12th and public places where the possibility of contamination is higher were closed. He also appealed to the public to wear masks (Meyer, 2020). With such actions, Bulgaria is one of the countries where the pandemic is handled with relatively less ‘damage’ which adds to his credit in the public eye. Since examples of populist parties both in government and opposition, and their performance on containing Coronavirus are given, it may be speculated that Coronavirus may help populist politicians that are currently in opposition to gain more votes and maybe even to become the leading party in the countries such as Spain and France where governments are criticised because of the way they are handling the pandemic; on the other hand, it may help populist politicians who are in government to further consolidate their power. Consequently, the Coronavirus pandemic may have a positive impact on the world after all the ‘damage’ it had caused, in which case the populism will be referred to as a ‘positive’ ideology.

As for all debate topics, there is a dissenting opinion, on how populism should be interpreted, which states that populism is a ‘negative’ ideology. There are some reasons for that opinion which will be mentioned in the following parts of this study. The first reason is about the way populist politicians do politics. As mentioned earlier, populist politicians locate their politics on the conflict between ‘true people’ and ‘outsiders’. According to Jordan Kyle and Limor Gultchin’s study of Populists in Power Around the World, populist politicians uses three main strategies to consolidate their bases and gain more votes through their narrative of conflict. These strategies are as follows: ‘‘a political style in which populists identify with insiders’’, ‘’an effort to define and delegitimize outsiders’’ and ‘’a rhetoric of crisis that elevates the conflict between insiders and outsiders to a matter of national urgency’’ (Kyle & Gultchin, 2018). What is meant with the first strategy is that the populist politicians claim that they are on the side of the ‘true people’ against the ‘outsiders’ or ‘elites’, as explained earlier. The second strategy is based on creating a ‘threat’ to the ‘true people’ or if there is one but not ‘realized’, naming it as a ‘threat’. Then the third one is about making the voters threatened by ‘outsiders’ as much as they can so that they have a unified voter basis against that ‘threat’. The impacts of these strategies are that they cause populist politicians to be less agreeable, less conscientious and emotionally more unstable (Nai & Martínez, 2019) which makes them less ‘eligible’ for governing a country; they polarize the citizens of the country through the conflict narrative by creating a ground where people who vote for and support the populist party are ‘true people’ of the country, but whoever does not support them are the ‘outsiders’, therefore, the ‘threat’ to the ‘true people’ (Liddiard, 2019). Evidence of the results of the populist policies may be given through the studies conducted by Pew Research Center. According to an ideological consistency study, there is a sharper distinction between people’s political-ideological views. In 1994, 10% of the Americans were on either consistently liberal or consistently conservative side; on the other hand, 49% had mixed views. In 2014, 10% had jumped to %21; 49% had gone down to 39%. Thus, it means that people have become more polarized with identifying themselves with a certain ideology. Another study shows the views of the people on the voters that support the opposite party. In 1994, 16% of the Democrats viewed the Republicans unfavourably; this percentage was 17% for the Republicans. In 2014, 38% of the Democrats viewed the Republicans unfavourably; 43% of the Republicans had negative views on the other party. The next results may help the readers even more on understanding how populist parties’ policies may affect the citizens. In 2014, 27% of the Democrats were seeing the Republicans as a ‘threat’ to the country; 36% of the Republicans had thought the Democrats to be the ‘threat’ (‘’Political Polarization in the American Public’’, 2014). It should also be noted that these studies were conducted before the presidency of Donald Trump who is said to be the most ‘populist’ and ‘polarizing’ president by many academicians. That is why it is probable that the results will show a greater effect of populism with higher polarization among citizens if this study were to be conducted in 2020. Another characteristic of the populist politicians is that they generally claim that will of the ‘true people’ should never be constrained (Kyle & Gultchin, 2018). Moving from that motive, a populist leader should do whatever the ‘true people’ want and that is why there should not be any obstacles in the way of the populist leader to implement the wishes of the ‘true people’. If the traditional liberal democratic institutions are the obstacles, they should be removed. These actions pave the way for the populist leader to become more and more authoritarian (Bugaric, 2019). That tendency to authoritarianism is one of the reasons for populism to be seen as a ‘negative’ ideology. One of the recent examples where this ‘’nothing should constrain the will of the ‘true people’’ argument is used is Donald Trump’s impeachment process. Donald Trump argued that impeachment is a ‘’coup’’ and “seditious conspiracy to overthrow the people’s president.” (Thomas, 2019) It should be underlined that he was using such arguments when The House of Representatives is authorized with the “sole power of Impeachment,” and the Senate with the “sole power to try all Impeachments.” (Presser, n.d.; Gerhardt, n.d.) In addition to those characteristics, populism supports the monoculturalism over multiculturalism (Inglehart & Norris, 2016) which is contradicting with the globalisation trend all over the world since the 1990s. Monoculturalism is seen to be negative because it creates intolerance towards ethnic and religious minorities as well as immigrants, leading to xenophobia and to these minorities, immigrants be targeted as ‘outsiders’ against the ‘true people’ by mostly cultural populists who are a type of populists (Kyle & Gultchin, 2018). The given characteristics are the reasons why populism is interpreted as a ‘negative’ ideology. As the reasons are given, the possible effects of Coronavirus may be discussed as to why it may mark the end of the populism trend. First of all, President Donald Trump of the United States of America should be observed when talking about the performance of populist politicians on handling the Coronavirus pandemic. As of 05.12.2020, according to the figures on Worldometers.info, the United States of America had close to 14.7 million Coronavirus cases and 216 thousand deaths, locating it at the top of the list. Behind them, India is the second with 9.6 million cases which places a 5 million difference between the first and second country though India has four times greater population than the United States of America. That is why President Donald Trump is widely criticised for his management of the Coronavirus pandemic. He is named “among the worst failures of leadership in American history” and an “American fiasco” by a report of House Democrats (Aratani, 2020). He recently lost the presidential election to Joe Biden which casts back his populist politics, at the very least, for four years. Trump’s losing the election may be commented to be a ‘reaction’ by the voters to his populist discourse because, according to data provided by BBC, Donald Trump was successful at economy management of the United States of America during his years in office with rising trends of stock market growth and wages; the declining trend of unemployment and poverty rates -poverty rate had experienced an all-time low in 2019- (US 2020 Election, 2020) The voters’ not choosing him over Joe Biden despite his ‘successful’ economy management may mean that the American voters have a specific displeasure against populist politics which could make it hard for another populist politician to be elected in the near future. Another country that had issues on handling the Coronavirus pandemic is the United Kingdom. According to the data on Worldometers.info, the United Kingdom had close to 1.7 million total cases which place it in the 7th place and 60 thousand deaths which locate it in the 5th place all over the world. In addition to total cases and deaths, the United Kingdom has a ratio of 891 deaths per 1 million population which gets it the 8th place. Prime Minister Boris Johnson who assumed office in July 2019 with the main election promise of Brexit is another leader widely criticised for his government’s Coronavirus pandemic management (Murphy, 2020). There are also some surveys conducted by YouGov.co.uk which may help the reader to understand the voters’ opinions about Boris Johnson. The first survey is Boris Johnson approval rating. The Prime Minister has the highest disapproval rating with 58% ever since he assumed office and he has an approval rating of 34% which is only two points ahead of his all-time low. One other survey shows that 51% of UK citizens believe that the government is handling the issue of health in the UK ‘badly’. On the other hand, the rating of the people who think that the government is handling that issue ‘well’ is 42%. Another survey is conducted with the question ‘‘How the government is handling the issue of Brexit in the UK?’’. 60% of the people’s answers were ‘badly’ and only 27% of the people think that the government is handling the issue of Brexit ‘well’. The reason why this rating is important is that it is Boris Johnson’s main election promise, as stated earlier, which means if the voters think that the Prime Minister is ‘failing’ on keeping his main promise, there is no need to support him anymore. That thinking may have led to the following survey results which are Keir Starmer approval ratings. Before the results are given, it should be noted that Keir Starmer is the leader of the Labour Party which had gained the highest amount of votes after Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in the last election and is the greatest ‘threat’ to defeat the Conservative Party in the next elections (Lis, 2020). The approval rating of Keir Starmer is 45%, while his disapproval rating is 29%, according to YouGov.co.uk data. With all those survey results, it is shown that Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom may experience a hard time winning the next election if he manages to stay in office without resigning from office as the former Prime Minister Theresa May did before him. If such an incident to occur -resignation from office or loss of the election-, that could impede the trend of the populism movement in the United Kingdom as in the United States of America. Another country where populism may have a hard time gaining power in near future is Germany. Germany has had relatively successful management of the Coronavirus pandemic as reported by Worldometers.info. Germany is in the 76th place for the total cases per 1 million population and in the 67th place for the deaths per 1 million population. Also, a German company BioNTech has announced that they produced a Coronavirus vaccine in cooperation with an American company Pfizer. Therefore, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has received many praises from both inside and outside Germany for the relatively successful handling of the Coronavirus pandemic (Strack, 2020). The German Chancellor’s approval ratings peaked as 72% of the German people are either satisfied or very satisfied with her management of the Coronavirus pandemic which is the highest since 2015 (Bowry, 2020). On the contrary side, Germany’s far-right populist party Alternative for Germany had experienced a decline in voter support as it went from 24% to 18% in Eastern Germany where Alternative for Germany has strong voter support. They have also gone to third place with a drop from first place in voter support, which locates them behind the Christian Democratic Union and the Left Party in Eastern Germany (Brady, 2020). Another comment on the populist trend is made by Robert Vehrkamp, “The trend toward an increasingly populist political climate in Germany has been turned around,” as stated in a Bertelsmann Foundation study on populist views in Germany (Populism in Germany, 2020). Such events may mean that populist politics in Germany and specifically Alternative for Germany may experience difficulties on gaining the same support they had before the Coronavirus pandemic which will be in contradiction with what happened in 2017 Federal Election when Alternative for Germany had received the third-highest amount of the votes in the second election they competed in since their foundation in 2013 (Connolly, 2017). All the evidence provided from different countries with either populist leaders who are observed to be ‘failing’ on the Coronavirus pandemic response or the leaders who are not populist and thought to be ‘successful’ with their response may create problems to populist politics in the world after the pandemic. Therefore, the Coronavirus pandemic could have a ‘positive’ impact on the world if populism is seen as a ‘negative’ ideology.

Although it is debatable whether the Coronavirus pandemic is one of the worst things humans ever experienced, it is beyond any doubt that its effects will not be limited by either the time-period it is occurring or the health aspect of life. It will affect the populism trend around the world one way or another and that effect will be ‘positive’ for at least one side of the debate on how populism should be interpreted. On the one hand, some people believe that populism is a ‘positive’ ideology and they have their own reasons for that such as ‘it helps the democracy to improve in a more pro-citizen way’. On the other hand, it is thought to be the ‘evil’ ideology by some people because of the reasons such as ‘the populist politicians tend to seize an authoritarian governing style’. Regardless of the fact that whether populism is a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ ideology, there are many different approaches around the world by a list of leaders which includes both populist and non-populists, as it could be expected from a global phenomenon as Coronavirus. Also, their being praised or criticised about their Coronavirus pandemic response is not related to their being populist or non-populist politicians since there are populist and non-populist politicians who are attributed to be ‘successful’ or vice versa. Those politicians’ responses to the Coronavirus pandemic may decide the future of populist politics in their countries as well as all over the world. Therefore, it may be claimed that the thesis of this study is proved. The reason for such a claim is that it is shown there are two possible ‘scenarios’. First one is that the Coronavirus pandemic may accelerate the existing rising trend of populism because of the ‘successes’ of the populist politicians and the ‘failures’ of the non-populists which would do the world a ‘favour’ if populism is seen to be a ‘positive’ ideology. The second ‘scenario’ is that the Coronavirus pandemic may cause the existing trend to decelerate, if not ending it completely, because of the ‘failures’ of the populist politicians and the ‘successes’ of the non-populists, in which the virus would have done the world a ‘favour’ if the populism is believed to be a ‘negative’ ideology. In both ‘scenarios’, the Coronavirus pandemic will have a ‘positive’ impact on the world depending on how populism is perceived.

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