An inquiry into populism’s relation to science
| Published date | 01 August 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221109541 |
| Author | Cristóbal Bellolio |
| Date | 01 August 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221109541
Politics
2024, Vol. 44(3) 486 –500
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/02633957221109541
journals.sagepub.com/home/pol
An inquiry into populism’s
relation to science
Cristóbal Bellolio
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a question seldom addressed in a straightforward manner
by political theorists: whether populism is intrinsically anti-science. This article identifies three
different ways in which populist actors worldwide have grounded their scepticism, distrust, or
hostility to scientific inputs, to the extent that they are relevant for political action: (1) they raise a
moral objection against scientists who have been allegedly corrupted by foreign interests, turning
them into enemies of the people; (2) they present a democratic objection against the technocratic
claim that scientific experts should rule regardless of the popular will; and (3) they employ an
epistemic argument against scientific reasoning, which is said to be inferior to common-sense and
folk wisdom, and antithetical to the immediateness of political action. While these objections have
been wielded in a selective and unsystematic way, they all speak to the core feature of populism,
which is the people versus elites divide: the moral objection targets scientists as members of an
elite in cahoots with alien powers; the democratic objection targets an unelected elite that seeks
to undermine the people’s rule; the epistemic objection questions that the standard to validate
knowledge-claims is a complex and detached-from-ordinary-experience rationality.
Keywords
epistemology, pandemic, populism, science
Received: 16th August 2021; Revised version received: 20th January 2022; Accepted: 24th May 2022
How have governments worldwide handled the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a
question only tangentially addressed by political theorists: is populism essentially anti-
scientific? Many commentators have argued that the pandemic has been a blow to popu-
list politics, which could even mean the end of the so-called populist zeitgeist (Betz,
2020; English, 2020; Mead, 2020; Patman, 2020; Rachman, 2020; Wright and Campbell,
2020). As the argument goes, populism is mainly a rebellion against elites, which is a
flexible category that includes experts of all sorts, such as scientific experts. It follows
that populism opposes science. As the COVID-19 crisis has vindicated the value of
science and the role of scientific experts – particularly doctors, epidemiologists,
Corresponding author:
Cristóbal Bellolio, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Diagonal Las Torres 2640, Santiago 7941169, Chile.
Email: cristobal.bellolio@uai.cl
1109541POL0010.1177/02633957221109541PoliticsBellolio
research-article2022
Article
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