Tax revolts, direct democracy and representation: populist politics in the US and Canada

ABSTRACT

This paper examines ideological foundations of the ‘tax revolt’ theme in American and Canadian conservative politics, through an examination of two of its most notable expressions. One was the use of direct democracy in California in the late 1970s and early 1980s to reduce property taxes. The other was the Reform Party of Canada’s blending of appeals for more extensive direct democracy and lower taxes from the late 1980s through 2000. Each of these relied on a critique of ‘representational failure’ in their respective political orders. The popularity of direct democracy across North America has been aided by the right-populist analogy between a market that enables consumer sovereignty and direct democratic instruments that facilitate end runs around legislatures – the sites of representational failure – to allow unmediated registration of the people’s low tax, anti-statist will. Employing analytical methods and theoretical perspectives developed by Michael Freeden and Michael Saward, I identify shared and distinctive conceptual and strategic/rhetorical elements in the two cases, and suggest ways of developing a ‘hybrid’ approach to the study of populisms.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada with a Connections Development Grant, number 611-2015-0386, and by Simon Fraser University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For Oliver and Rahn, the ‘representation gap’ occurs ‘when existing political parties are not responding to the desires of large sections of the electorate.’ J. E. Oliver and W. M. Rahn, ‘Rise of the Trumpenvolk: Populism in the 2016 Election’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 667:1 (2016), pp. 189–206; 194.

2. See, among others, C. Mudde and C. R. Kaltewasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); D. Caramani, ‘Will vs. Reason: The Populist and Technocratic forms of Political Representation and Their Critique to Party Government’, American Political Science Review 111:1 (2017), pp. 54–67; N. Urbinati, ‘Populism and the Principle of Majority’, in C.R. Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P.O. Espejo and P. Ostiguy (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Populism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); J-W Müeller, What is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); B. Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016); K. Abts and S. Rummens, ‘Populism vs. Democracy,’ Political Studies 55:2 (2007), pp. 405–424; B. Arditi, ‘Populism as an internal periphery of democratic politics’, in F. Panizza (Ed.) Populism and the Mirror of Democracy (London: Verso 2005); E. Lacalu, On Populist Reason (London: Verso 2005); M. Canovan, ‘Populism for Political Theorists?’ Journal of Political Ideologies 9:3 (2004), pp. 241–52 and P. Taggart, ‘Populism and the pathology of representative politics’, in Y. Mény and Y. Surel (Eds.) Democracies and the populist challenge (New York: Palgrave, 2002).

3. M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) and M. Freeden, The Political Theory of Political Thinking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) .

4. M. Saward, The Representative Claim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and M. Saward, ‘Shape-shifting Representation’, American Political Science Review 108:4 (2014), pp. 723–36.

5. E. Laclau (2005), op. cit. Ref. 2; C. Mudde and C. K. Rovira, eds., Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or Corrective for Democracy? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

6. Freeden (1996), op. cit., Ref. 3, pp. 333–34.

7. M. Freeden, ‘Editorial: ideological boundaries and ideological systems’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 8:1 (2003), pp. 3–12; 13.

8. Both Mudde and Kaltewasser and Stanley have applied Freeden’s notion of a ‘thin ideology’ to their analyses of populism. See C. Mudde and C. R. Kaltewasser (2017) op. cit., Ref. 2; B. Stanley, ‘The thin ideology of populism’, Journal of Political Ideologies 13: 1 (2008), pp. 95–110. More recently, Michael Freeden has argued that most current European populisms are not complex and nuanced enough to qualify as ‘thin-centred’ ideologies. Freeden suggests the descriptor ‘phantom ideologies’ to characterize populisms, due to their amorphous, sporadic and contagious nature, and populist politicians’ intentional blurring and concealing during public discussion of ‘pressing and intricate socio-political issues’ (Freeden, ‘After the Brexit referendum: revisiting populism as an ideology’, Journal of Political Ideologies 22:1 (2017), pp. 1–11.).

9. See Oliver and Rahn (2016), op. cit., Ref. 1, and authors referred to in endnote 2 earlier.

10. See, for example, D. Laycock, ‘Visions of Popular Sovereignty: Mapping the Contested Terrain of Contemporary Western Populisms’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 8:1 (2005), pp. 125–144.

11. This is stressed in, among others, Y. Mény and Y. Surel, ‘The constitutive ambiguity of populism’, in Y. Mény and Y. Surel (eds), Democracies and the Populist Challenge (Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); P. Taggart (2002), op. cit., Ref. 2; E. Laclau (2005), op. cit., Ref. 2; B. Moffitt (2016), op. cit., Ref. 2, and Y. Stavrakakis (2014), ‘The Return of “the People”: Populism and Anti-Populism in the Shadow of the European Crisis’, Constellations 21:4 (2014), pp. 505–517.

12. See M. Saward, ‘Authenticity and Authorization’, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 17 (2008), pp. 1–22, and Saward (2010), op. cit., Ref. 4.

13. Saward (2010), ibid., p. 36.

14. Saward (2010), ibid., p. 36.

15. Saward, (2014) op. cit., Ref. 4.

16. Full Text: Donald Trump 2016 RNC draft speech transcript, Politico 21 July 2016, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/full-transcript-donald-trump-nomination-acceptance-speech-at-rnc-225974.

17. B. Bonikowski and N. Gidron, ‘The Populist Style in American Politics: Presidential Campaign Discourse, 1952–1996’, Social Forces, 94 (2016): 1593–1621; 1605.

18. B. Bonikowski and N. Gidron, ‘Populism in Legislative Discourse: Evidence from the European Parliament, 1999–2004’. Working paper, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, 2016, p. 3.

19. C. Mudde and C.R. Kaltwasser, op. cit., Ref. 2; D. Laycock, (2005), op. cit., Ref. 10.

20. For a clear articulation of this by an influential movement conservative, see R. Viguerie, The establishment vs. the people: is a new populist revolt on the way? (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1983).

21. Freeden (2013), op. cit., Ref. 3, pp. 285–86.

22. See B. Moffitt (2016), op. cit., Ref. 2, ch. 7.

23. Several promising investigations of ‘populist political communication’ have recently been published which offer alternate ways of appreciating the connection between conceptual structure, performance and representative claiming in populist ideology. See especially T. Aalberg, F. Esser, C. Reinemann, J. Strömbäck and C. de Vreese, eds., Populist Political Communication in Europe (London: Routledge, 2017), and M. Hameleers, L. Bos and C. de Vreese, ‘They Did It’: The Effects of Emotionalized Blame Attribution in Populist Communication’, Communication Research 44: 6 (2017), pp. 870–900.

24. For more insight on this, see Saward (2010), op. cit., Ref. 4, and L. Disch, ‘Towards a Mobilization Conception of Representation’, American Political Science Review, 105:1 (2011), pp. 100–114.

25. Saward (2014) op. cit., Ref. 4 stresses the multiple and potentially inconsistent roles played by makers of representative claims. For an insightful account of the importance of performance, broadly construed, to the presentation and success of populist ideologies, see B. Moffitt (2016), op. cit., Ref 2.

26. Saward (2014), ibid., p. 727.

27. See D. Barney and D. Laycock, ‘Right-Populists and Plebiscitary Politics in Canada’, Party Politics, 5:2 (1999), pp. 317–339.

28. Saward (2014), op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 731.

29. This connection among variants of populist ideology, rhetoric, communication style and organization is creatively explored by M. Caiani and P.R. Graziano, ‘Varieties of populism: insights from the Italian case’, Italian Political Science Review (2016), pp. 1–25. B. Moffitt (2016), op. cit., Ref. 2, does a particularly good job of analyzing the connections between ideology, performance and modes of representation.

30. See Laycock (2005), op. cit., Ref. 10, and the references listed in endnote 2 earlier.

31. Saward (2014), op. cit., Ref. 4, 733–34.

32. Hannah Pitkin showed over 50 years ago that almost all modern political actors attempt to present their actions as legitimate because representative of the people’s will or the public interest. H. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).

33. See Saward (2010), op. cit., Ref. 4, ch. 6, for an account of how such reception provides representative claims with a measure of democratic legitimacy.

34. V. Williamson, ‘Tax me. Please’, New York Times, 8 October 2016.

35. See Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative (1960), especially chs. 7 and 8, and C. Mohr, ‘Goldwater Gives a Tax-cut Pledge’, New York Times, 6 September 1964, at http://www.nytimes.com/1964/09/06/goldwater-gives-a-taxcut-pledge.html?_r=0.

36. I. Martin, ‘How Republicans Learned to Sell Tax Cuts for the Rich’, New York Times 18 December 2017, accessed on December 20 at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/opinion/republicans-tax-cuts-rich.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-2&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article.

37. R. Reagan, ‘Reflections on the Failure of Proposition #1’, National Review, December 1973. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/210999/reflections-failure-proposition-1-governor-ronald-reagan.

39. My account of the Proposition 13 campaign is based on visits to the Institute for Governmental Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California State Library in Sacramento, in November 2015. Sources included newspaper files, pamphlets, academic and media commentaries and the personal papers of Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann.

38. See M. Klausner, ‘Inside Ronald Reagan’, Reason, July 1975, accessed 20 December 2017 at http://reason.com/archives/1975/07/01/inside-ronald-reagan.

40. See http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/proposition-13-then-now-forever.

41. See Moffitt (2016), op. cit., Ref. 2.

42. Oliver and Rahn (2016), op. cit., Ref. 1.

43. D. Smith, ‘Howard Jarvis, Populist Entrepreneur: Reevaluating the Causes of Proposition 13‘, Social Science History 23(1999), pp. 173–210.

44. For a brief primer, see Miriam Pawel, ‘Ballot Initiatives are Powerful. The Powerful have noticed’, The New York Times, 5 November 2018, at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/opinion/california-ballot-initiatives-direct-democracy.html?action=click&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=Article&region=Footer&contentCollection=Opinion.

45. E. Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London: Verso, 1977), ch. 4.

46. H. Jarvis, I’m Mad as Hell (New York: Times Books, 1979), pp. 36–40.

47. See Clyde Haberman, ‘The California Ballot Measure that inspired a Tax Revolt’, New York Times, 16 October 2016. TV news clips from the campaign are available at http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004711534/proposition-13-mad-as-hell.html?action=click&contentCollection=us&module=lede&region=caption&pgtype=article.

48. Jarvis (1979), op. cit., Ref. 46.

49. In 1911, Progressive California Governor Hiram Johnson secured state legislative enablement of the initiative, referendum and recall. The editor of the Sacramento Bee, a good friend of the Governor, opined that ‘Big business, the Interests, the Southern Pacific … the unclean and vile in politics and in social and commercial life … these no longer dominate the halls of legislation. The money changers – the legions of Mammon and of Satan – these have been lashed out of the temple of the people.’ Quoted in P. Schrag, ‘Drowning Democracy: Our Century of Voter Initiatives’, in Boom: A Journal of California (2011), 1:3, p.13.

50. Jarvis (1979), op. cit., Ref. 46, p. 125.

51. Freeden (1996) op. cit., Ref. 3, p. 334.

52. See in particular M. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).

53. D. Sears and J. Citrin, Tax Revolt: Something for Nothing in California. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).

54. J. Ross, ‘What has Proposition 13 Meant for California’? California Voter: The League of Women Voters, (Spring 1998), pp. 10–14; P. Schrag, (2011), op. cit., Ref. 49, pp. 13–29.

55. Proposition 62 was invalidated by the courts.

56. Proposition 218 imposed referendum requirements on all general local tax increases and a 2/3 vote requirement on all special purpose taxes, while prohibiting school districts from imposing taxes. Ross (1998), op. cit., Ref. 54.

57. See, for example, R. Perlstein The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2014).

58. Reagan commented in a syndicated column that ‘the news of Jarvis’s success [in collecting enough signatures] was barely out when the special interests that gourmandize at the public trough began howling.’ R. Reagan, ‘Great Tax Revolt’, (1978) Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram, np. (Jarvis Collection, California State Library, Sacramento, Boxes 1677 and 1974).

59. http://www.conservativeusa.net/hpbio.htm.

60. Howard Phillips, back cover endorsement of Richard Viguerie’s influential The Establishment Vs. The People, op cit., Ref. 20.

61. See, in particular, L. Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).

62. The American Legislative Exchange Council has drawn up model legislation for state legislatures to press for a federal constitutional amendment and promoted another such run at constitutional change. See https://www.alec.org/model-policy/alecs-balanced-budget-amendment-policy/ and http://bba4usa.org/.

63. Donald Trump listed tax reform as the first component of his ‘economic vision’, at https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/tax-plan/, accessed 12 May 2016.

64. P. Krugman, ‘Budgets, Bad Faith and ‘Balance’, New York Times 18 February 2018, accessed February 18 at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/opinion/republicans-bad-faith-krugman.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugman&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=collection.

65. J. Stein, ‘Ryan says Republicans to target welfare, Medicare, Medicaid spending in 2018‘, Washington Post 6 December 2017, accessed December 10 at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/01/gop-eyes-post-tax-cut-changes-to-welfare-medicare-and-social-security/?utm_term=.12b5fa9df1a6.

66. Five years after the referendum, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a conservative American think-tank conference that ‘this constitutional proposal was supported by the entire Canadian political establishment … all of the major media. … the three largest traditional parties … very vocally by all of the major CEOs of the country [and] the leading labour unions. … And most academics. And it was defeated … [by] a rag-tag opposition of a few dissident conservatives and a few dissident socialists.’ Speech to Council on National Policy, June 1997, Montreal. http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes2006/leadersparties/harper_speech.html. See also https://cfnp.org/.

67. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/charlottetown-accord-document/#h3_jump_12.

68. T. Flanagan, Waiting for the Wave: Preston Manning and the Reform Party of Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995); D. Laycock, The New Right and Democracy in Canada: Understanding Reform and the Canadian Alliance (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001).

69. R. Johnston, A. Blais, E. Gidengil and N. Nevitte, The Challenge of Direct Democracy: The 1992 Canadian Referendum (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1996).

70. Laycock (2001), op. cit., Ref. 68.

71. See E.P. Manning, The New Canada (Toronto: Macmillan, 1991), and Reform Party of Canada, Blue Sheet: Principles, Policies and Election Platform (Calgary, 1993).

72. D. Barney and D. Laycock (1999), op. cit., Ref. 27, p. 324. The Reform Party’s account of the special interests manipulating the political system was ideologically remote from earlier populist promotion of direct democracy in Canada. From 1910 to 1921, various farmer and labour organizations presented direct democracy as a means of reducing the power of corporate interests and their old party ‘agents’. D. Laycock, Populism and Democratic Thought in the Canadian Prairies: 1910–1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).

73. Flanagan (1995), op. cit., Ref. 68.

74. Reform Party of Canada (1993), op. cit., Ref. 71, p. 3.

75. E. Bélanger, ‘Anti-partyism and Third party vote choice’, Comparative Political Studies 37:9 (2004), pp. 1054–1078.

76. Western Report, ‘Let the people decide: the RPC (Reform Party of Canada) stands alone in demanding that ruling elites relinquish their stranglehold on power’, Western Report, 20 September 1993, pp. 16–17.

77. Visible minority immigration, official bilingualism and conversion from Imperial to metric measurement were hot button issues for many Reform party members, who believed that ‘Eastern elites’ had forced all of these ‘changes to Canada’s basic social fabric’ down the throats of ordinary people. Opposition to non-white immigration among Reform party voters was markedly higher than among all other party voters, and between 2004 and 2015 a large gap remained on this issue between Conservative party voters and all other party supporters.

78. For an account of the Reform party’s opposition to ‘native rights’ and multiculturalism, see Laycock (2001), op. cit., Ref. 68, ch. 4.

79. Reform Party of Canada, Blue Sheet: Principles and Policies (Calgary, Alberta: 1996).

80. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/norquists-tax-pledge-what-it-is-and-how-it-started/.

81. Reform Party of Canada, A Fresh Start for Canadians: 1997 Reform party Platform. (Calgary, Alberta: 1997), p. 11.

82. Reform Party of Canada (1997), ibid., pp. 6–9.

83. Barney and Laycock (1999), op. cit., Ref. 27, p. 326.

84. Freeden (1996), op cit., Ref. 3, p. 336.

85. For details, see Laycock (2001), op. cit., Ref. 68.

86. These were treated as such in Manning (1991), op. cit., Ref. 71, and in the party’s early manifestos.

87. D. Laycock, ‘Populism and Democracy in Canada’s Reform Party’, ch. 11 in Mudde and Rovira (2012), op. cit., Ref. 2.

88. http://www.conservative.ca/prime-minister-harper-announces-new-tax-lock-law/ (September 25). This announcement was posted immediately to Conservative party candidates’ websites.

89. I. Martin, Rich People’s Movements: Grass Roots Campaigns to Un-tax the 1%. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

90. E. Laclau (2005), op. cit., Ref. 2. Laclau presents ‘the people’ as both the central populist concept and as an ‘empty signifier’ par excellence, the most open to discursive appropriation and use as a powerful ideological tool.