mr.,nt, -- in case 100 years ago where i'm , the congress of the united states declared war on germany. kelly on thejohn building of the border wall. here, wall makes sense high-tech fencing makes sense here, technology makes sense here. i think -- i have no doubt he will tell me to do it. >> in regards to your top to bottom assessment, has your assessment looked at the morale and ways to improve the row? >> it's what i do. yes. >> actress holly robinson on autism. team agings alternative children and initiative, they are showing how kids -- how amazing kids with autism truly are. all the more accessible and it is part of sesame street's magic. the national at housing coalition conference. you carecracy is when more about the rules than the goals. that is killing us as a nation, so we are working very hard to get the inappropriate things out of the way. do you guarantee that neither usednor anybody has personal communication devices and have fully comply with the records act? no?in a? -- yes or next, a look at the spread of populism in the u.s. and latin america. johnson u.s. president and the implications for global businesses in america. it is an hour and a half. >> i think we are going to start. thinkuickly, i want to thank everyone for coming. our afternoon session which is a public debate about populism. the title is the rise of populism. the moderator. we have a whole panel we will introduce an event. very quickly, we came from a session with experts both in the sector and the public sector talking about issues of populism sector and the. the objective there is to do some conceptual gardening or weeding of what is population -- populism. and what are the indications for policy and business? this afternoon, we will debate something things with reduced crew. before do that, we're going to do this in two parts. keynote and then he will sit down as one of the panelists and i will throw a couple of softballs that everyone has prepared for initially. then, we will open it up to a general discussion. very quickly, my name is cliff young. i wear two hats right now. on the one hand, i am an adjunct professor here. i teach a course that is going on the fifth year around public opinion and decision makers. on the other hand, i am a professional pollster and president of ipsos public president of ipsos public affairs, the third-largest polling outfit in the world. we have boots on the ground in 90 countries and we are polling everywhere -- here, u.k., brexit, in europe, very interesting. i will be the moderator. our keynote talk will be ben smith, editor in chief of buzz feed. he has a long bio, but a quick note. he is one of the most talented and admired mongers in the game. i do not think i have to go into too much detail. buzz feed is in the thick of it in the politics of the u.s. and abroad, because they are reporting on things outside the u.s. now as they expand globally. he will kick it off by talking about journalism, the role of journalism, politics, and populism, which i believe he has entitled "journalistic populism." without much more introduction, ben smith. [applause] ben: thanks, cliff. i do not know, but you did not give me a heads up on the softball questions. thanks for having me. i was asked if i wanted to talk broadly about populism, and i thought that was a dangerous trap, before i know what they are talking about in that regard. i am just a reporter. i know a little bit about a lot. but the things that i do -- i have been spending a lot of time thinking about how you do reporting in this moment, and the thing that prompted this, my thoughts on this -- buzz feed was recently accused of practicing journalistic populism. it came up after we published a dossier of unverified claims about donald trump in russia, which we presented as unverified, with clear errors, and what we knew about its source. and a column in the post took us to task for this and described it as journalistic populism, the notion that the beltway-manhattan cocktail set should not keep information away from the american people. which i think actually echoes some of the anti-elitism that people find disturbing and populism, globally, the sense of the people versus this shadowy elite. but it is also, i think, what we certainly believe. and in this moment, when there is this real crisis of trust in media, our theory of this, which i think is not the same as a lot of others, is that the way you get that trust back is to think about how you get closer to your audience, how you can persuade -- accurately persuade your audience that you are on their side of whatever perceived divide this is, rather than sort of standing above them as gatekeepers. and the simplest level, that means we do know a lot more about our audience, and what they are interested in, and what they want him and then we ever did -- all this data people are probably tired of hearing about. but we also think the kind of transparency the post is talking about is really crucial to that, to winning back that trust, the promise that we are not keeping secrets from you, that we do not pretend to be part of a journalistic priesthood or or clarisy, and we do not fundamentally see our role as gatekeepers. and we think the audience should know not just that we are being straight with them, but we are fighting for them, to tell stories that have impact on their lives. i thought i would talk for a couple of minutes on what we in this populist moment see as journalistic populism, and what it is. i will not go on for too long, so people will be, why will this panel just shut up. obviously, the media is facing the same crisis of institutional competence i know you have all talked about at length, and studied. the numbers in gallup are at an all-time low interest in the media. and the question of what the media is is very confusing. president obama and trump, certainly trump, the list a lot directly themselves -- on video, on twitter. and audiences have segregated themselves into these filter bubbles, where they read what they want to read, which feeds their biases. i think the reaction for a lot of legacy media has been too kind of retreat and look backward, to say, to look back to an era when they were the gatekeepers, to say, we have these trusted brands. trust us. go back to these brands. we are going to put these dark slogans on our brands. and trust us because you trust our brand. there is an argument to this. it makes sense in this chaos for readers and viewers to turn to things they are familiar with and names they trust, which are largely serving them behind payrolls -- paywalls. i think that has been broadly great for journalism, the revival of "the washington post," be great story of the last few years in media. it is something everybody is excited about. their energy at cnn that is broadly incredibly exciting. but i do not think it fully addresses the vast majority of the country who are not watching cable news and subscribing to publications behind payrolls. at buzz feed news, we do not have the luxury of saying, trust our age-old brand. read the buzz feed news your parents and grandparents read. we feel like the path toward winning people's trust in this chaotic environment, this polluted environment, comes from transparency and fighting for our audience on issues they care about. the first thing is that transparency has been a disaster for media in many ways. in the old days, when there was a crime or breaking news stories, if you were in a newsroom, as i was, it would be a total mess. you would be sending reporters to the wrong house, have the wrong name, have the details of the crime wrong, but once you went to publication a few hours later, you would mostly have straightened it out. now, all that happens in public. the audience says, these people are under idiots. of course, we were always idiots. it is that now it is more evident. but that they're seeing that mess in real time, i think, has made it harder to maintain this idea that journalists are this separate class, with this specialized set of skills that allow them to detect the truth in a means you do not have. and so i think a lot of news organizations are wrestling with the idea, what do you do in that situation? do you try to help navigate and engage this chaotic, messy information coming out of a breaking news story, or do you stay silent and wait until you have got it nailed down? i think different organizations take different approaches to that. for us, we know our audience is living in this social media space, where there is constant -- as soon as something explodes, there is things we know that are true, things we know that are false, stories kicking around that we do not know that are false, stories kicking around that we do not know which are which. and the thing we find useful is to do our best to help them navigate that space, to say to them, we know this thing is false. we know this thing is true. this is a widely repeated claim. here is what we know about where it comes from. and we will guide you through this story. and i think that is true on non-breaking stories. spending time on twitter and facebook, there is an enormous amount of garbage and false stories. in 2016, it was a lot about hillary clinton. now, a lot of you are seeing nonsense about donald trump and russia in your feeds, along with carefully reported true stories. and i think we have always thought that the way to engage and win the trust of our readers is to -- is to help them navigate the stuff they are seeing, not to try to keep our hands clean. that led us to stories like this group of macedonian teenagers who are filling the internet with false stories about hillary clinton last year. it was a crazy story. and i do think that when we think about journalistic populism, it is about that you do not have a special knowledge that sets you apart from your audience. and then the other thing, when we think about what kind of populist journalism wins people's trust -- i think it will not ultimately be about politics. there is no more poisoned and partisan space. the stuff where we feel like we have the deepest connection with our audience are things like a big investigation of a mental hospital chain with hundreds of thousands of people. and when they connect with those stories, when they see something exposed that touches their lives and feels real and apart from the social media screaming match -- that is where we sort of find trust. i think there are two other things that this populism is not. i think that also, in this moment when journalism is changing as much as politics -- one is telling people what they want to hear, regardless of the truth. it is obviously a huge opportunity, and a kind of sugar high. we are hopeful by holding back from those, by deep -- by debunking things people want to be true, that you win long-term credibility and they feel like you are serving them. the other is really abandoning the idea of professionalism entirely. the criticism of us in publishing the russia dossier was that we would publish any tip, any piece of information that came. in our view, that was a document affecting decision makers at the highest level of power, and the subject of a real debate. just on one final note, on editor i admire who runs a major global news organization, said he expects journalists to suspend their citizenship to be journalists, because they need to pull back from whatever country they happen to be from in order to follow an abstract set of journalistic values. and i feel like that is, particularly in this moment, but probably always, sort of a trap. american journalism is always basically very patriotic as a business. and we think the audience expects that, and expects reporting as a factor of improving on imperfect country. i think reporters should not be afraid to say that. ask for letting me share those thoughts. i look forward to having them debunked by experts. [applause] cliff: thank you, ben. and by the way, we are being livestream to. and we are being taped by c-span, which will be on tape delay. we will take some of those frames later on. i think we are going to debate the role of the media in today's world. low levels of trust in media -- we just showed a global poll that on average in 25 countries, 27% of global citizens trust the media. that is even lower right now then donald trump. he has higher credibility ratings than the media does. ultimately, can we think of institutions, in this case journalism or media, as having a populist strategy to attract readers and users? we talked about that a lot this morning. let me introduce a panel. i will ask a couple questions. we are going to riff on that. ben smith, already introduced. sitting next to been is francisco gonzales, professor of latin american studies at john hopkins. he is an expert on latin america and will bring that sort of perspective. we have some people from the private sector, some experts from academia, different regions of the world. we can kind of mix it up to have a good and interesting perspective on the issue of populism. sitting next to francisco is sheri berman, a professor of political science at columbia university. her expertise is europe. she has written a lot on issues of populism and politics there. she will bring us that sort of perspective. all of them had wonderful comments this morning. hopefully, we will glean that out this afternoon. finally, our last panelist is christopher garman, managing director at eurasia group. he is the head of country analysis, emerging markets. he is an elite analyst on brazil. he works with sector clients. he is a practitioner, as is ben. he will bring interesting emerging-market and practitioner perspective as it comes to the issues of populism. let me do the following. let me kind of initially throw out -- i do not know if they are softballs. i thought they were. i will throw out some general questions, and we will go from there. listen -- we were surprised by the u.s. election. i'm a professional pollster. we thought there was a probability of trump winning, but it surprised us. the question is, is what we are seeing in the u.s., in europe, brexit, continental europe perhaps with france -- is this new? is this something different? are we entering a new era of politics and drivers of politics? or is this just more of the same? it is more of an empirical question. i'm a pollster. i want people to comment on that. we think it is something new. it walks like a duck. it quacks like a duck. maybe it is a duck. maybe it is something different. the concept of populism -- the term populism has been thrown out a lot by journalists to explain what is going on. we think it is a duck. it walks like a duck. it talks like a duck. but we are not quite sure what it is. if we are really seeing something different, emerging drivers in terms of politics, is that populism? more specifically, what is populism? i would like to try this afternoon to nail down those points. what is populism on the one hand? and is what we are seeing new and different? we will kind of work backward. we will start with chris. we will let everyone talk first, and then we will go from there and see where we are. chris? chris: thank you, cliff. first of all, i want to thank the opportunity to be on this panel. it is great to participate with such a prescient and highly relevant discussion, given what is going on in the world. as cliff highlighted, i work at eurasia group. we are a advisory firm. we live in the interface between speaking with policymakers on the one hand, and business, and elites, and fund managers on the other. i have been at eurasia group for 12 years, navigating this deal. i will say at the get go that i have never, in my 12 years at the firm, had a sense in which the political establishments are so uneasy on the terrain at which they are stepping on. we see this on multiple levels. obviously, we had one moment, which was we had a very favorable global economic environment, leading up to the global financial crisis in 2008, 2009. we had tremendous uncertainty over the sanctity of the eurozone project, and a lot of our clients were asking us, and we were on the hook to anticipate whether or not we were headed toward a breakup of the eurozone. our view at the time was markets underestimated the appreciation of political elites, and political elites were running the game. but what we are seeing here today is something entirely different. i would say, to answer your softball question -- are we seeing something new, something different in terms of underlying voter sentiment? i think the answer is unequivocally yes. we have very good public opinion data. we have got fantastic data. we did not coordinate that before the event. the levels of discontent toward the political establishment, distrust one political institutions, distrust with international institutions, be it the european union or the imf, distrust with big business has never been running as high as it is today. you look at some of the global surveys has done, and clip already highlighted some of the data points on the media. 20% of those surveys in something like 35 countries said they actually trust the media. but you will range from issues -- do you believe that traditional parties and politicians do not care about people like me? 64% agree with that statement, that the economy is rigged to the advantage of rich people. 68% agree with that statement. we need a strong leader to take it back from the rich and powerful, 64%. the demand and distrust with established institutions, demand for antiestablishment candidates, is running inordinately high. and this is creating fodder for political entrepreneurs to tap into that discontent. so i think that what we at the eurasia group spend a lot of time is, to think, what are the repercussions of this? the repercussions are profound. there is a debate in the beltway over whether the trump administration will represent a radical shift with traditional republican parties, and the constraints you can have in pushing through legislation at congress -- and there are large constraints. there is a withdrawal from multilateral commitments. we are seeing a breakdown of the institutions that emerge after the second world war on the multilateral security frameworks, multilateral economic frameworks, the european union slowly chipping away. we are having a realignment of political parties across the board. i think an important debate that we only to tackle is, understand the nature of that discontent. what is driving it? is it economic applications? is there something about technological advancements in globalization that is driving discontent? is that discontent going to continue to grow or not? i think it is transformative. i already got my three minutes up. i think the next shoe to drop may be the emerging markets and if you look at the level of discontent we have a big elections calendar coming up. in a lot of emerging markets, including latin america, next year. i think latin america will be part of the debate in this time in about a year from now. >> let me see if i can briefly address some of your questions and recap some of the stuff we discussed this morning about the question of populism actually is. we spend a lot of time discussing it this morning. the group i was part of basically emphasized two characteristics of populism that we felt needed to be stressed. that first most obvious one is inherent in the term of the idea of the people and that there are a certain people that have been disadvantaged and disenfranchised along with the sense that they have enemies, whether they are internal or external, and politics has become a zero-sum game. and this kind of rhetoric and appeal is what differentiates populist parties and movements from other kinds of movements. second is it is a manifestation and symptom of democratic systems to say they are having a problem that feels it is no longer working for them so it is also a manifestation of problems that arises to revitalize and make it more responsible to people so they feel like they are being left out and it criticizes very heavily existing institutions. political parties, most notably, and the elites that run that system as out of touch and unresponsive, so often they circumvent those traditional institutions in order to say that they are going to revitalize by working against those parts that have made it unresponsive to the people that have been left behind or are disadvantaged. that's with regards to your first question. because this is a panel and it's our job to create some debate i will disagree on the second question, about how new this is. if i had a nice powerpoint, which i do not, on the part of the world i know best and i was to show you a chart of the populist parties in europe, you wouldn't see any dramatic acceleration in the last years that support these parties. they were all more or less at the same time and that is the 1970's, why because it is the 1970's we begin to see the breakdown of what we have come to refer to as the post war order. a time when the institutions and practices and procedures that were put in place after 1945 begin to run out of steam. and most scientists recognize the 70's as the time when it began to run out of steam. and we saw the rise in the systems that is to save them on the authoritarian systems where you can have only two parties. you begin to see the rise of the party is very much against existing orders and the traditional dominance of center-right and center-left parties. what you've seen is they begin to take over the points they've now become viable contenders for political power, but there is no dramatic acceleration in to support for them over the last 10 years. it's been a secular rise since the 1970's. and i would argue that it's probably also what we have seen in the u.s., with a critical juncture being the financial crisis and obama presidency, which crystallized a loss and accelerated the discontent that has been building. and this is true in europe where you can see that reflected in the de-alignment of party systems that began in the 70's and has now tipped over to the point some of viable contenders power, but not because they have come out of nowhere or because they've gotten dramatically higher vote shares, but because the growth has continued as existing traditional political parties, institutions, and elites have proven ineffective in dealing with problems that have arisen since the 1970's. so both perspectives are right that it would be wrong to see this entirely as a creation of the refugee crisis, immigration crisis. these are trends that have been there and i think have been catalyzed and mobilized over the last 10 years or so that but they have deep roots in the breakdown in the postwar order that began much earlier. >> that's great. >> thank you for their present -- perspective. on the first one of what is populism, i think on average we agree it is a political strategy and it has at least two components. one from the top down is for an individual and his or her group to gain and maintain power but there's also a bottom-up element which is those who've told -- those who feel underrepresented, those who feel disenfranchised, and those who feel that a variety of things have to be done on their behalf to improve, so that if you want in some cases is something of a happy marriage but allows the populist be born and grow. it is definitely an issue that has to do with the idea of democracy has majority rule, and against liberalism, where liberalism is individual rights, checks and balances. here, the dynamic is the majority rule does not have the patience to go through the motions of the process of liberal democracy to create structure in socioeconomic processes to try to reach consensus, to reassure negotiation. here, in fact, usually with the successful populist will either do is try to reshape the rules of the game, to strengthen the idea of democracy is majority rule, to try to get delightfully -- directly close to the people. popular initiatives at the expense of the traditional constitution frameworks that talk about. likewise habeas corpus, individual rights different , branches of government are supposed to check and balance one another. on the second one, i think there are certainly new elements in the outbreak of populism. the mean of defusing of the messages and then alluded to this in the group sessions. time and again to see how much stronger, how much more intensely some of these frustrations and disenfranchisement can be felt, given within the profusion of diffusion of information and it can be alternative facts and post-truth. and if people feel it speaks to them, they might easily jump into this bandwagon and much more effectively, in a shorter period of time that used to be the case. barriers to entry have become lower at it's easier to create collective action in the direction of populism. someone mentioned pace and visibility of change, which is related to the first point. lower barriers to entry, easier to gain public appeal for a populist message. it's always back to the real or perceived status -- dissatisfaction is taken over by a voice that says it will represent these people. pompeii, julius caesar, they were all members of the populist group as opposed to the oligarchy. that continues to be there. that public appeal. and the interaction between these two groups need not be two groups, but usually is the champions of the popular spirit of the disenfranchised. it's framed in an antagonistic manner, in which there's little room for compromise or negotiation. it's either/or. it's you or me. the possibility that i can implement my plan that requires me to eliminate you, to silence you if necessary, to water down the rules that you've created, to create a self-serving system where the elite establishment benefits. i would highlight those aspects of a constant that can be seen, at least in the west and in latin america. >> i was going to shoot off another question unless you want to respond. >> i'm happy to skip the definitional question. >> i want to throw out another question. i understand we're talking about political entrepreneurs, is a political strategy redressing grievances, edit hand -- and it can be functional in democracy isn't responding to the basic needs of individuals. there are other concepts, but that's what we're getting at. it can be anti-institutional or anti-elite. it takes on different flavors in different places. >> i was going to respond to sherri's comments. go ahead. >>, laissez-faire moderator. go ahead. >> in the spirit of the debate, it's good that we can contrast some of our views. i disagree with your point. -- i would agree with your point. when we look at the levels of discontent we are seeing in the european continent and the united states -- this has been a discontent that has been slowly growing for a long time. this is not something that changed overnight. i think there are deep underlying structural reasons for that discontent. what's different is we reached a certain tipping point in a lot of these different countries. that's really what different, it starts to translate into a realignment of person issues and translates to a bridge ability of elections. that swell of discontent that was accelerated with the repercussions of the post global financial crisis and the adjustment, and then you throw immigration into the mix, that's when the alignment of the stars that becomes a political solution, and guitar about -- we can talk about is the european union in trouble? so what is the potential for some of these candidates, which we haven't been anticipating coming to power. i agree fully with your point. this isn't something that is driven by short-term factors. it's another reason for us to be cautious that when we look at election results in europe this year, that we don't over impute negative trends. you look at builders and holland lost, so looks like a populist right lost that election, so maybe the tide is turning in the other direction or if marine le pen doesn't win in france, is a blowback against the popular sentiment that we saw in the u.s. no. the electoral discontent is as deep. we can't over impute a binary effects election results and say that the tide is turning. what we have to understand is what's driving the swell of discontent. that's the real question is going to dictate politics over the next five to seven years. my concern is announcing a reason to believe -- is i am not seeing a reason to believe that's going to happen anytime soon. >> i want to focus on grievances and the political entrepreneur in his or her own behavior and strategy. i want to bring it down to practicality starting with ben. talk about on the u.s. elections. we will talk about trump afterwards and his strategies relative to some of his predecessors for pushing forward his agenda. what were those grievances in the u.s. that really drove him to power? from your vantage point and what you understand, i kind of want to hear that a bit. >> i am little hesitant to give a simple analysis of this election, has he lost the popular vote by such a wide margin and people who had represented issues have lost the popular vote. it's not an easy election to interpret. it wasn't a landslide, there were so many factors. i think the obvious ones that have been discussed and apply -- amid a climate -- it's the parents of current voters and experienced that. the white racial resentment, it's all part of it. i think what self new from my perspective is politics has always been a media business. politicians to increasing degree only exists that they are televised and written about and seen. and a political campaign is a media business that produces speeches and images and videos and text. there has been a sort of merger between politics and media that really was consummated the cycle with trump and he was entirely a media character. that in a way pushed all the rest of the political institutions. in a way, i allowed it to be about these grievances, real or imagined. >> i want to get out and stay institutional -- at the anti-institutional aspects. the polling we have done captures this -- in these scenarios, there's a high degree of belief that the system is broken. but also, the need for a leader to break the rules. you cited a data point -- what was the level? a majority belief in that across the globe. i want to come back to this anti-institutional sort of aspect of things. maybe i will just start with sherri. i think it's very important point about the anti-institutional aspects of what we are seeing. >> certainly in europe, the political trend that has gone a long most closely with the rise of the populist right has been the decline of the center or social democratic left. i think those are not just corollaries, i think they are causative. they are causative on a superficial level, in the sense that a lot of voters of social democratic or centerleft moved over to the populist right. this is very clear, more clear in europe than in the united states. a lot of talk about white working-class voters going over to trump, that trend has been even more pronounced in europe, where working-class voters historically would've voted for the left are now overwhelmingly in some countries voting for the right. the trend is not just a voting trend where that is a causative relationship. during the course of the postwar period, the centerleft was kind of the movement that you customized the solution to europe's postwar problems. it said we are going to offer you a positive some version of democracy. everybody wins. we're going to have growth and more equality. we are going to have better redistribution. we're going to have national solidarity. everybody is going to be in this together and we're all going to take care of each other. and when that starts to fall apart in the 1970's as the centerleft lax solutions to these new problems of economic decline and the changing demographics of european societies, and the social issues that began to drive a wedge in european policies after the mobilization of the 1960's, the centerleft just absolutely falls down. it does not have good responses to those questions, and its political decline really begins then. it's not linear. there are always cycles within elections, but you can see a secular decline in support for that is absolutely said -- fed into the rise of the populist right. we see this in a more diffused way in the west because we are stuck in a two-party system. but we have to see these trends together, because they also speak to the question of solutions to problems. if traditional institutions, political parties, he leads, government institutions are not responding or not providing convincing solutions to voters, they are going to look elsewhere. a lot of the voters are looking elsewhere for the 30 years after 1945 would traditionally look to the left. we see a version of this in the u.s., where it's the constituencies voting for the republican and democratic party have gradually potentially realigned. that's probably not a word. >> it is now. >> they have begun to switch. there's talk of the republican party being the party of a significant sector of the working class. that's not a new trend, but is now become something we can talk about as a possible part of the republican coalition. this is a really -- it is an important change, but it's one it's been kind of building for a long time. it's a response to the original institutions not being able to respond to these constituencies or these problems. >> what about the latin american case? what's your experience with grievances and anti-institutionalism? >> several people mentioned that, the classic episodes. they start in the 1920's and 30's. they are what's known as resource-based nationalism. the appeal of the middle class to the elite leaders would be political entrepreneurs is to paint usually captains of industry and therefore analyze, americans, the french, brits, as the enemy. and the idea has very strong nationalist undertones. public ownership of natural resources, to build institutions that work for the improvements of argentina is, mexicans, as opposed to mr. and the surname with three or four names tightly connected to groups in europe or the united states. in terms of the anti-institution, i think it is not certainly hold -- conceptually speaking -- to have a leadership that is anti-institutionalist is a universal autocratic system, where everything depends on the wheel and wins of an individual. -- will and whims of an individual. in most real-life cases of the 20th century and early 21st century, the populist will change some institutions, but will build others. the populist experiments of the late 90's and 2000 throughout latin america, one of the key things that populist leaders stand when they had a lot of political capital and a strong wave of popular support behind them was to say we are going to remake the constitution. we're going to create a constituent assembly to redraw the rules of the game, because they have been rigged in favor of the leads and their foreign partners. this rebuilding and re-crafting of institutions usually follows a very similar blueprint. they want to weaken legislatures and courts or pack them with yes-men individuals. they want to strengthen the executive, but in particular, they want to strengthen the direct connection between the chief executive and the people. they do this by including referendums and popular consultations, which can be triggered by different thresholds. 250,000, 300,000 signatures. you can table is in congress and the system is going to be more nimble, and in fact, helping to address the stasis, the swamp that is the previous system, which has checks and balances, which have individual rights. and obviously, very unequal language like social america. there's a strong impetus for short-term redress. and the institutions are not allowing you to do it. to these people banked on strengthening the relationship between the executive and the people by incorporating into constitutions these elements, they call this a new type of democracy. it's not liberal democracy. liberal democracy is for cosmopolitan elitists. this is participatory democracy, where the people or the majority, or those who feel unrepresented can have a direct channel to the president, who is listening, is very keen to offer some of this redress on behalf of the self perceived as franchised disaffected masses. >> i want to ask a quick question about anti-elitism. it's coming up a lot. you think in the u.s. case, we have an administration basically saying that the media was the opposition party, very anti-media, anti-elites as well. we saw the same sort of dynamic with brexit, the same sort of thing in continental europe. can we talk about that in the anti-elitism? is not a characteristic of what we are seeing? we will start with chris in your reaction. >> i think this is the anti-elitist undertones that we are seeing, we are seeing this in europe, in a very strong fashion, we are seeing this in the u.s. as well. public opinion research really demonstrates that the trust in political parties is an all-time low. the same global survey says that constant -- confidence is at 14% surveyed in 35 countries. i think part of this is this tipping point phenomenon that's driven probably by the nature of economic transformations that we've seen over the past 15 years. and a growing gap that we have seen between upper-middle-class and lower middle class segments. the interesting phenomenal i think is that you have this demand and this anti-elite sentiments, and evidently, it's not clear where the political actors are going to best channel that anger and that sentiments. my gut is that over the next two or three years, how this plays itself out in terms of the political actors that channel that anger will also be intertwined with the economic cycle. right now, we are all talking about how politics is driving economics. but i think it will also have a feedback loop again, let's talk concretely. what is the ability of the trump administration to be robust and hold a base of support not only from a public opinion point of view, but also the will hold into the republican establishment and congress in line. much will depend on the resoluteness of the space of support which is now hovering around 40 something percent. is the u.s. economy going to be in a cyclical economic recovery or not? if we are not in a cyclical recovery and we are in lagging growth, a lot of these things that the new parties are proposing undermine the components of growth. you can also start to cave the basis for that support. you set up for another change cycle. the same thing could happen if marine le pen wins in france. you have a crisis that feedback in to undermining the base of support. i think that many times we underappreciated the extent to which political movements that are antiestablishment and anti-elite either get lucky or unlucky, given economic conditions. i would say a lot of the populist leaders in latin america over the past 15 years and were elected around the early 2000, whether it be the or the pt or shop as -- chaves, they have the opportunity to feed their population on support. it may very well be a critical driver or how sustainable are these movements if they come into office? >> does anyone else want to respond to that? >> to the question about anti-elitism? i think anti-elitism is an inherent part of populism. it's based on this idea of the people are kind of getting screwed by existing elite and institutions. i would see perhaps the anti-elitism and distrust of liberal party is a distrust of the media as part of a larger phenomenon on a breakdown of trust in the traditional institutions that have kind of government democratic societies in the west. for several generations now. what we've seen in europe and the united states is a sort of parallel process on the social field and economic field and in political field of what you might think of as a polarization. polarization politically, people are more at the extreme polarization economically. there's growing inequality, even as the economy overall has not done so poorly. his incredible social segregation. we should think about only in six terms, but now we see -- as ethnic terms, but now we see it in political terms. i live in brooklyn, nobody voted for trump. it is diverse in some ways but on diverse and others. we have begun to see that more and more. it's not a new trend, but one that has grown over time in united states is people can live in communities where their sources of information become completely narrow. this is all part of this larger coalescing of trends that have really created a wide variety of problems in western society. clifford: this brings me to the next question. we have always had, in my adult life, we have had a certain degree of tribalism. on ideological grounds, the distinction between republicans and democrats, there is some ideology that does not put much of a factor. we have a red media. we had a red and a blue media. so how do you feel that this environment is different than in the recent past? think about your career and compared to where you're at now. as actually an actor in the middle of this. i want to hear how is it different? how is a political entrepreneur trump different than his predecessors? is is anything new or is it more of the same? red versus blue? ben: i think the u.s. has always had this strange centrist media. in a lot of places, you have something more like a red and blue media. here, there is sort of a centerleft media that has really dominated for decades. to me, what is surprising is not so much the rise of an alternative conservative media, but there that have been a bunch of attempts to build a conservative answer to the mainstream media. what is new is the rise of this kind of alternate universe media, with real reach, whether that is alex jones, -- we have been describing this like the upside down of "stranger things." the aesthetics of this, it looks exactly like the mainstream media. i do not know if you saw scott kelly's interview the other night, but they are good at speaking the language, mirroring the language, but they are not at all concerned about truth and getting things right. they do not see that as their job, but are really trying to tear down the legitimate media by parody and trolling. i think the mainstream media is unfair for that. if you watch that interview, kelly thinks he is winning and scoring points, but they are playing totally different games. one is more about calling into question the basic premises of trust of these institutions and conventions rather than trying to advance a particular agenda. clifford: let me ask another question. basically, alternative facts, fake news, those are new concepts in our lexicon that we are using quite a lot. this is to the other panelists. when we think about other cases of populism, whether it he in europe or latin america, do we have similar things going on? where facts are relative, where information is relative? i would like you to comment on that. is this something new or reheated populism, just with new terms? i will start off with chris. i will give you the hard question. you start first. chris: there is an element of this that is not new. we have a plethora of examples of populist media -- leaders who distort the truth, bully pulpit. you look at latin america and published statistics you cannot trust them. in argentina, inflation data -- the kirchners tried to say it was low, but most economists knew it was high. so i think that there is an element of post-truth politics, which is probably -- for someone who has been covering emerging markets and in latin america for so many years, it is something that individuals in developed markets like the united states is not used to. this is something we have seen many times. what is new is the phenomena of fragmented media channels and a diminished barrier to entry to have a voice in the conversation. that is new. that is something about social media, the web, and the business model of traditional media outlets starting to crack. in this context of a cracking media business model, and lower barriers to entry, the terrain for populist politicians who are bending the truth and various different sources by which this emerge, it becomes less centralized and more diffuse. that, i think, is probably the new element to it. but the fact that the truth is spent, that is part and parcel of populism that we have seen in many other countries frequently. francisco: first, a qualification on the distrust in the media and on the anti-elitism. probably like western europe and the united states, in latin america, we do not have as many databases going that far back, but there are at least three. they have had data since the late 1970's and 1990's. consistently in latin america, the anti-elitism is broken down into subcategories. consistently, the last 20 years, on average, institutions that retain the highest trust amongst people who are asked about this series of institutions -- the church, the military, the media. from mexico to argentina on average. highest chart, church, military, media. these additions with the lowest level of trust systematically political parties, judiciaries, and law enforcement. the last three are the core of liberal democracy. so that is a problem. the media tends to be connecting with the -- clifford: in the latin american case? francisco: yes. and connecting to the alternative fact-post-truth world, we have not baptized this style of reporting thought in latin america, but we have known it since mastication's, newspaper and radio, started circulating in the 1920's and 1930's. a medium educated person, some with secondary education, will tend to be cynical. to know where news is coming from. a lot of news is packaged in a tabloid medical news. people laugh at themselves. maybe it is a sign of desperation. look at us -- we are in the thick of it. [laughter] we are about to be obliterated, they have accounts in switzerland, isn't it so funny?" people know about it. some of this may be true. some are not. others are in the alternative facts realm. we just have not had ties to the thought. but the mass consumer of information in latin america has been bombarded by this type of reporting on both sides for decades. sheri: i essentially agree -- clifford: in the european case maybe? sheri: in the european case, what ben said is correct. there have been more overtly political what you may term "mainstream" media for a long time. it is true in the british and german case. where newspapers had very clear political lines or bases of support. but these were, in many cases, though not all -- the british case in particular -- still mainstream media, with some sense that they were part of a journalistic cabal that had standards and expectations. the democratization of the media has been a very significant trend. i think it has set into this polarization that has enabled people to pick and choose their sources of information more. it has enabled people with like-minded views to find each other much more easily. so while i do not think the level of facts out there is different, i remember as a person in college thinking about how the vast majority of people thought that floods were punishments from god. i think people have been misinformed or interested in alternative facts for a long time. what has changed is the ability for them to find other like minded people. that has been a politically salient trend. over the last 10 years, perhaps 20 years. clifford: do you want to come in more generally on that? ben: the other thing that has happened in the rise of this is the transparency of the media. it is so much harder now to maintain this kind of unquestioned authority, when it is much easier to examine the errors and biases the media has always had. but i not easy to document and catch. a lot of institutions are uncomfortable when they make mistakes and do not really know how to -- i think -- an air of infallibility 20 years ago, but now, the mass sets you up for parody. clifford: already, we have questions. i was going to ask the last question, but it was not that important. so why do we not open it up to questions? and because we are taping this and we are live streaming it, we want to use a microphone. so why not come down here, and this gentleman -- we will open it up to questions. >> thank you. this is a really wonderful conversation. i considered staying at my desk and working through lunch, and i am glad i did not. clifford: who are you? >> i am a local attorney and i will be a student in the program later this year. the conversation has largely been bereft of discussions of racism and xenophobia. it seems to me a distant of aspect of trumpism and a centerpiece in his announcement and a fairly consistent theme in the campaign and since. my understanding of the national front and issues in europe stem from the refugee crisis and issues of integration in turkey and so on. my question is how closely intertwined are those forces with the rise of populism? are they causes or effects or both? sheri: great question. i think most people see the rise of populism in the west, in particular -- perhaps less so in latin america -- as drawn in these two trends. one is economic disaster action, the other a sense of social or identity question. i think most of the research shows that that latter category has two components. one derives from the 1960's. the decline of the attack on traditional values that begins in the 1960's, making a lot of what you may consider to be traditional voters uncomfortable. then the changing demographics of society. this is more pronounced in europe than in the united states, which is to say these are increasingly diverse societies, many without a history of dealing with the need to assimilate people from different backgrounds, different religions, different languages, etc. so these long-term trends -- immigration in europe is a postwar phenomenon, but these are exaggerated or accelerated by more recent things. in europe, the refugee crisis. in the united states, the decline of concern of the p.c. stuff, which draws on backlash of the 1950's and also because disenfranchised groups are now hiring this powerful political voice. this is very much what is going on. it varies country to country in its manifestation and in precisely what kind of identity issues are activated, but you may say that economics versus the social and cultural, these are much a part of what is feeding discontent and the rise of new movements and parties today. francisco: thanks for the question. two points. they are different ones. on the one hand -- picking up on what she was saying, what you see in europe in particular but to less extent in the u.s., is that racism, xenophobia are strong enablers for the populist voice to rise and to start garnering public appeal. this has been conflated and made worse and potentially more dangerous -- as much as it is connected with ideas of physical insecurity. the issue of terrorism, and the fact that the terrorists do not look like us. there are lots of people coming from destroyed countries, and among them, there must be some wolves hiding and coming, trying to cause harm to us -- something along those lines. we discussed several iterations beforehand. it could be economic, national security populism. becoming popular by offering this per journalistic or -- paternalistic or matriarchal robe of security to society which feels exposed, and where, in fact, few but high visibility impact episodes confirm in the minds of many that we are insecure and a core driver has to do with these different people. the second issue is that in latin america, classic populism, in fact, was predicated on the idea of redressing the vast injustice that was done on the original inhabitants of the americas by europeans. classic 1920's to 1940's latin american popular the contains a significant dimension of racism against whites, europeans. the idea was to engage in nationbuilding of the mixed polity, those of us who are mixed, who have some european inheritance, some indo-american inheritance, some african inheritance. we have to create a sense of longing because we have been exploited by the whites for 400, 500 years. populism in latin america is not synonymous with xenophobia, but it had an easy target and an easy way to win points with many. >> i'm going to take the prerogative and answer as well. >> i am a moderator because i would rather be a panelist. but i'll talk as a pollster that is pulling the united states as well as in europe. i think we do a disservice to ourselves to call xenophobia racism. what we actually do is we delegitimate the real grievances that real people have. we understand it and measure it in the united states and europe that it's really the two key drivers, on the one hand a broad sense that the system is broken and the system is not working. you can understand bernie sanderson trump in two sides of the same coin. when it comes to trump voters specifically it's nativism. it's about identity, about the united states is not the same america as my grandparents'. i no longer identify with the place i live. i often say nativism is a term but we are all a little bit native. all of us could agree that at some level we should probably have policies with foreigners have visas. there should be some control of the borders. but there is a continuum of individuals who are more nativist and less nativist. so understanding that an understanding that has to do with a sense of idea, and loss, allows us to better understand and doing exactly what we did during the election, both in brexit and here. brushing it off saying the reason these things are happening is because we have a bunch of racist xenophobes. by doing that we don't understand the larger picture. that is sort of my -- i think that's an incredibly important point both politically and intellectually. there certainly core of racist voters. it's much larger group and the data supports people maybe want to call them natives who are just concerned about what they see as the traditional values and identity. if you look at the european cases, there's interesting examples. the most powerful populist party in europe is the national front. le pen has done a remarkable job of changing the party from the party of her father. she figures both african and muslim figures in her party to make clear that what she resents or dislikes is people who come to france and don't want to be french. it's not the color of their skin, it's not even where they worship, it's they don't want to be french. if you're willing to come to france and be french, then you're fine. there's a dog whistle going on. but it's a very clear shift in her party from the party of her father. it has made her more popular in the people who call her supporters racist very much part of the problem. they feel themselves protective of french identity rather than negative towards foreigners. by calling them racist, you're reinforcing that divide. i think there is gray area. it's important to differentiate these categories lest we see too much of the polarization causing the problems. mr. young: a long answer to a great question. next question. >> thank you. i'm with the american university. actually, the phrase that you started, mr. young, in your opening remarks where you said you were surprised by trump's winning was a capitalist for me test the question to mr. smith. as a journalist, do you agree that mr. trump was not the only one who lived in his own reality. also mainstream media and polls did that too. and there was a lack of in-depth coverage that left a space for people like mr. trump and activists on the ground like stephen crowder and people like them for the people in speaking their minds, america is great, the problem is globalization, feminism, muslims, and if you have that realization and mainstream media, what has changed in your coverage? mr. smith: there many different things in there, i think the media got somethings wrong. it's also overstated what the polls got wrong. trump did lose the popular vote. people were right to be surprised by the outcome. but things happen. people are unprepared for them by definition. i guess there's now a story line the media didn't cover, unhappy white people in the upper midwest in general and those who showed up to trump rallies just isn't true. if you want to go back and read "washington post" articles in the angry white people in the upper midwest, it will take you days to get through. there was certainly in the media and probably a sense that trump couldn't win in the united states because that had not happened before. and then i don't necessarily see a straight line from that to social media provocateurs like the ones you mentioned. i think it's related to something -- you can get into arguments about definition of racism, but i covered new york politics and i'm used to covering direct group based appeals. trump said to people who shared his ethnicity that he be the candidate for them in the way that i've seen near candidates to forever as the world he comes out of. visits there was not a white majority anymore gives him a cover or excuse to make a direct appeal to white people, so i will be your candidate against them. young: anyone else want to respond? other questions. in the orange and in the back. edmund. i know edmund. sais.m a student at we have talked about the factors that give rise to populism. i wonder if we could discuss states that have bucked the trend or states that will officially do so, either democratic or nondemocratic. mr. young: awesome question. over to the panel. >> it is a good question, and i would look at some of these underlying political resentments that we are seeing against political institutions and elites as really a spectrum of disk and trends that ranges from more to less. and i think the analytic challenge is how do you translate trends which really on our spectrum basis to then focus on anticipating binary results on election day. all right? oftentimesnk we confuse the two, and the analogy i often make is even in sporting events, bear with me on this analogy, you have a very tight basketball game, two teams are down to the wire. let's say at the very end of the game, it is time. kevin durant for the warriors sheets, ounces the room, and goes in and wins the game. afterinitely, the pundits the game will describe the factor that led that team to win, cause they had a very good defensive game plan, and they impute structural factors for the reason why the team lost lost. clearly, the coach had a wrong approach. when in fact it was just a coin flip. the way i would in terms of right now we can probably look at the spectrum of discontent on the european continent and look at some of the global surveys that have been conducted, and you will see certain homogenous countries that do not face a cute issues of immigration or have larger safety nets or if you look at the level of discontent is much lower in japan, sweden and canada. there are interesting reasons why that is the case. the german elections will not have the same type of fervor we have in france. whatis important is that is driving that this content across the spectrum, not on whether a couple of these countries are going to not elect these populist-type candidates, because if in fact the drivers continue to exacerbate, then that will feed into the political process more. i think it is an absolutely correct question to me, and i have no doubts that the headlines we will get in europe over the next 45 months, and in our estimation we do not believe win,e le pen will likely that will be the wrong conclusion to make. mr. young: other people? there are: interesting cases, but fewer than you think. we discussed a little the canadian case which is the outlier because it's an incredibly diverse society. the german case i find less interesting because while there has been less right-wing populism the historical context is so unique, the historical biases are so strong that it is not clear to me the german case is comparable. i do think in places like sweden where you have a strong right-wing party these cases are unusual because given the degree and rapidity of change, the degree of backlash is still surprisingly small. you are getting relatively good polling for something like the democrats in sweden, if you look at the numbers and the changes that have gone on the last generation, that now has a higher population of foreign-born citizen with at least one foreign-born parent in a society that a generation ago was so homogenous that their ns were seen as problematic is unusual. i'd argue that's a case where the backlashes despite being problematic, so much less expect there's probably still something going on we can learn from. the only real outlier i can think is canada. if you're looking for a place where you have both high degrees of diversity and low degrees of dissatisfaction with existing institutions. mr. gonzalez: the classic political economy response, is the right one but it's the framework to try to the question. it provides a framework. so look at the initial conditions, this is you economic stratum, and you find that places with lower levels of inequality tend to lower levels or strident levels of this need for short-term redress given how genetically different things are. germany,there, sweden, kennedy is relatively fair. use theiddle, after you socioeconomic, you need the institutional settings. the response of institutions of government's where citizens have trust, thisent of place works relatively bill. moreeel a stakeholder often than not i do. japan, sweden, canada, germany, i think would also fit the bill. veryg party systems, important. in latin america this is crucial, and this is what managers do to distinguish countries there relatively similar in terms of per capita per capita and years of industrialized nation. but for example you contrast argentina with hawaii and chile, the three have a similar history there. industrialized people where life expectancy and educational attainment starts growing faster than in other places. and if hawaii, you have a strongly rooted hearty system, students where in fact the party advocates are socializing people from school onwards. primary school, not elementary. but heights school and elementary are crucial socializing agents in these places, and they will channel people into a variety of options, from hybrid economies to more modern economies can to social christians democrats, to high-right nationalists. in argentina, you start after , that12 electoral reform these stole with the style of role that undermines parties that recompense is that provides benefits directly from the leader to constituents. and what you end up with is a very unbalanced system whereby it pays more handsomely for a majority of people to take their grievance directly to whoever is in power, particularly if they are winning. she as tailwinds behind them and things to be improving for them, 50%-plus will be with the people and taking their andvances, aspirations, demand bypassing the elements of the presentation. seey systems where you alternations and where results tend to end up in negotiated u.s. call it go on the other side of the fence, the horse trading. those places are no way immune, but less likely to experience bouts of populism. in latin america, there are four or five countries where the incidence is significantly higher than in others. and these processes and issues isponsiveness or lack of crucial to understanding the difference. : thank you. we're getting near the end of the hour. we have one more question. what chances for a non-le pen outcome? 60%. spring,an: by european what do you mean? meaning a revitalization of democracy in europe? mr. young: or the counterpoint? ms. berman: not sure of the question. >> social uprising. ms. berman: social uprising. what do we think the chances of that our? by subsection -- are? meancial uprising you unrest in the streets? we've seen that. i don't expect europe to be violent, at least its western portion. front-row protest all the time. they'll do that all the time. the french are coming up protesting i don't see that something new. neither do i see that a surprising in eastern europe where democracy is still relatively young. if i started seeing violent protests in places like germany and sweden i would be nervous. i would put that relatively low. peaceful protests, we have seen that and that is not unhealthy. beingdo not see democracy destabilized in any significant went way anytime soon. >> maybe i will reframe the question in a way that i think might be also interesting, is what we saw in the arab spring is political institutions that have long been held, and there is an up swell of social discontent that ended up leading to the demise of that institutional order. i do not think he will have the same levels of discontent on the european continent probably because you have competitive market sees, that what i would say is the more interesting question is, can the european union face a version of an error spring over the next five or six years? is that something we are underestimating? we think we are not headed there, but there's a pathway of a series of events, if arena penn wins, if this leads to the politics in germany starts to change and how to keep the eurozone together. zone are a -- if anti-euro sentiment starts to grow, maybe we cannot have in arab spring in the coming years for the european union. i think that's an important debate that will only grow the next couple of years. mr. young: what i am going to do, we look at a lot of american departments, so one more individual. last question. has to be the last question. >> thank you for the great discussion. i am from germany. a visiting scholar at john hopkins, and while i have been here in the u.s. several times and i'm a little bit surprised about the pessimism. maybe this is linked to donald trump. at the moment europeans are far more optimistic than you are. let's not because of polling, marine le pen's electorate is not exceed more than 30% at best. she will surely lose in the run of elections. let's not forget the populous partisan your none of them have reached the majority. they have less than 15%. in germany they will get less than 10% in the election in september. even in hungary and poland where their governing they did not have majorities because of the electoral system. they are far away from having a majority. the european union is far more stable the new think of here in the united states. i would bet money on that. that was not really a question. probably why you should think why you are so pessimistic. [laughter] : on those last words, thank you so much. >> art americans eternal -- aren't americans eternal optimists? >> we think we are. >> thank you, everyone. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017]