COVER STORY • 3Post-Coronavirus
Populism & Japanese
Politics (Part 1)

By Sota Kato

Globalization movements suffered a great setback around theworld with the coronavirus pandemic. As countries were pressed toaddress the crisis, the momentum of populism which had been apowerful force around the world before the pandemic was losingsteam. This essay will examine how globalization may impact
populism and what the implications will be for Japanese politics.

Globalization & Populism Under the Coronavirus
Pandemic
It now seems like an ancient memory, but before the coronavirus
pandemic, what was shaking the world was the global expansion ofpopulism and skepticism towards democracy. Populism presented
itself in varying forms in various countries, but the rise of populist
leaders and parties in the past was often inter-connected with antiglobalist movements. Globalization progresses in the order of goods,
money and people, but in recent years what has caused strong
repellence, especially in several Western countries, has been
immigrants and refugees moving across borders. Economic andcultural populists have both attacked the immigration policies of theircountries. Wealth inequality, which is said to be another big factor
behind the rise of populism, has also been amplified by globalization
due to cheap labor and products crossing over borders.
The trend of globalization in the modern era was, however, alreadystalling before the coronavirus pandemic. There was a rise in antiglobalization movements and global economies had deflated due tothe sub-prime loan financial crisis. Now with the coronavirus
pandemic, the trend of globalization seems to have decisively stalled.
Was this an unexpected victory for anti-globalist populism due to theblack swan of the coronavirus pandemic?
From one aspect, the pandemic seems to have all at once
materialized things that populist leaders had been calling for. With
the pandemic, certain aspects of globalization that they have been
especially critical of, such as the movement of people acrossborders, seem to have been blocked, if only temporarily. Envy ofauthoritarian leaders, another element of populism pointed out bysome critics, has been fulfilled as the desire for strong leadershiphas heightened under coronavirus pandemics in polls of variouscountries. The public sentiment of “rallying around the flag”, astrong support of national leaders by the public during national
crises such as war, was also observed in many countries except for afew including Japan. Overall, the current situation in whichhttps://www.jef.or.jp/journal/

Author Sota Kato

globalization has seemingly halted and the sense of national unity
among people has strengthened under the pandemic is close tosomething many populist leaders were advocating for prior to thecoronavirus.
Yet the full force of populism cannot be seen in countries underthe pandemic. On the contrary, some commentators have pointed toa decline in populism, especially during the early phase of thepandemic. Political philosopher Francis Fukuyama even stated that
not all things are bad under the coronavirus pandemic, mentioning
the lost momentum of populism since the dissemination of Covid19. Election results under the pandemic have been mixed, butoverall, as symbolized by U.S. President Donald Trump’s loss in thepresidential election and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s falling
approval rates, populist leaders and parties have not fared so well.
Some critics cite populists’ lack of administrative ability torespond to a crisis and disregard of scientific wisdom as reasons
why populist figures have lost momentum. Although this might havebeen the case for Trump and Bolsonaro, according to more carefulanalysis, populists and populist parties around the world were notuniform in their handling or mishandling of the crisis: responses
varied widely according to factors such as whether they were holding
office or not.
Rather, the decline of populism during the coronavirus pandemic
might be more attributable to populists’ losing sight of the “enemy”
they have been attacking. Various definitions of populism areavailable, but most of them include a political stance of defending theinterests of the “common people (us)” in contrast to the “privilegedelite (them)”. By portraying the elites and the policies they have beenpromoting as the “enemy” of “us”, populism has gained enthusiastic
support among the public by amplifying the anger towards “them”.
In this sense, populist movements can be seen as a relative
political campaign by presupposing the existence of “them” tocompare with “us”, rather than the pursuit of absolute policy
objectives. In other words, if “them” as the enemy ceases to exist,populism could ironically lose its momentum. With globalization andthe inflow of immigrants and refugees declining under thecoronavirus pandemic (according to the OECD, those immigrants toOECD nations declined by 46% in the first half of 2020 over the same
period in 2019), continued attacks on “them” (such as EU
bureaucrats and domestic elites who promoted globalization) began
to lose their meaning. As borders closed and cities were being
locked down, populist leaders who had been attacking globalization
Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 202213

could not garner enough public enthusiasm and anger for populism
to burn up.
Populist leaders sought to replace globalization with a new“enemy” under the coronavirus pandemic – for Trump it was China,
generally thought to be the origin of Covid-19, while Bolsonaro
furiously criticized regional governments and their leaders for overly
restricting the economy and public life due to the coronavirus. Theirattempts, however, have not been as successful as before.

Will Populism Regain Force Post-Coronavirus?
If populism is lacking the force it once had before the pandemic,
will this continue after the virus and its variants have been
contained? The key to the populist side is whether a separating line
can be drawn to divide citizens of each country as “us” and “them”.
To the anti-populist side, in contrast, the key to contain populist
movements is how to maintain the unity of the public garneredthrough the fight with Covid-19.
Globalization, which was one of the driving forces of populism
before the coronavirus pandemic, will come back although its shapeand magnitude should be different from what it was before thepandemic. Under the pandemic, indicators such as trade and foreign
direct investment have shown a large drop for the first time sinceWorld War II. But many of them are recovering much faster thaninitially estimated, and some have even surpassed those of the prepandemic level.
In the past, the global spread of pandemics has led to thewidening of economic inequalities. As earlier studies imply, theCovid-19 pandemic is also highly likely to widen economic
inequalities. In such circumstances, anti-populist political leadersneed to carefully maneuver to maintain the sense of public unity
gained under the Covid-19 pandemic and restrain the forces ofpopulism. What is especially difficult for them is to address the issueof widening inequalities and the fast-recovering globalization.
Several national leaders have made an analogy between the fightagainst Covid-19 and real war. But those two differ greatly in termsof their redistributional effects. That is, after a war, as economists
have empirically pointed out, economic inequalities usually diminish
substantially. In contrast, inequalities are likely to widen “postwar” in
the fight against Covid-19. Thus, post-Covid-19 leaders seethemselves in a more complex and difficult situation than leaders in anormal postwar situation to maintain a sense of unity among thepublic. If inequalities widen after the “war”, the public will feel that
their sense of unity during the coronavirus pandemic has been
betrayed, and this could cause a populist backlash. Historically,
postwar periods of turmoil have been breeding grounds for political
14 Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2022

disasters such as the rise of totalitarianism and dictators.
During the coronavirus crisis countries have implemented massscale economic measures to address it. These economic measures
have had an impact in reducing inequalities. But no country cancontinue to implement economic measures matching the scale under
the coronavirus once the pandemic has been contained. In order toavoid a resurgence of populism after the coronavirus, national
leaders will need to adopt liberal policies that will lead to diminishinginequalities. Scaling down the emergency coronavirus crisis
measures to a sustainable level and then turning them to an income
redistribution policy under normal times will become a test to
prevent the rise of populism.
In addition to addressing the inequalities, post-coronavirus
pandemic leaders will once again be asked about how to interact withresurging globalization. As political scientist Peter Katzenstein once
pointed out, in order to address the economic and social issues thatcome with opening up an economy, political adjustments will benecessary. There will need to be compensation for those who bearlosses with liberalization. If this point is minimized, as some
economic fundamentalists did in the past, it could invite an antiglobalization backlash. A political system that excels in coordination
among stakeholders in a flexible manner is crucial in responding toglobalization of the economy. Indeed, as early as several decadesago, a paradoxical relationship has been observed by politicalscientists where the more open an economy is to foreign countries,
the larger its government.
Throughout the pandemic, the role of the nation state has once
again been rising. Center-left political parties which had been
struggling globally before the pandemic have begun to come back in
Europe and the United States, most recently in Germany, and in Latin
American countries. In Japan also, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida,
who took office last September, comes from a liberal faction in theruling Liberal Democratic Party and has declared a shift fromneoliberalism to “new capitalism”. Such movements in variouscountries are not likely a coincidence. The liberal leaders need toundergo a difficult task of maintaining national unity amidst risinginequalities and fast-recovering globalization. Their failure would
invite a resurgence of populism from both left and right extremes.
This is the first part of a two-part article. The second part willappear in the March/April 2022 issue of Japan SPOTLIGHT.

Sota Kato is a research director of the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research
and a professor at the International University of Japan.