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Webster defines it as:
populism - the political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The causal start is advancing industrialization. This both reduces fertility rates and favors cities over the countryside. The relation is very consistent over many different countries, and it is easy to see what the causal chains are for each of them. >Why is internationalism a practical necessity in cities? Are there no cities in the world with quite ethnically homogenous populations? Have the authors visited easte…
I think the first part of your argument is debatable, especially in modern times. In recent eras advancing industrialisation has meant telecoms, the internet, computers. All technologies that allow people to live and work anywhere. Working from home or working remotely is now becoming commonplace for the first time since the pre-industrial era. Industrialization might have correlated with population movements from ru…
That's very recent, and it effects only a very small portion of the population.
Industrialization might have correlated with population movements from rural areas to the cities in the past. It's not so clear it still means that now.
The article is about trends that we have seen so far. You are speculating about the future.
And as for falling fertility rates, that's surely more related to improvements in healthcare.
Not just healthcare. Having a lot of children is economically beneficial to farm families, it is a great expense for modern urban ones, and so they have greatly reduced how many they have.
but I was talking about internationalism
Cities are booming because factories and big businesses are located there, and these are all involved in economic activity involving the nation, and usually other nations too. Internationalism is the philosophy that this is a good thing.
For instance, if we drill into the definition of "populism", whereby it sets "ordinary people" against "elites", the most direct and simple explanation is that maybe in recent times there have been transfers of power away from ordinary people towards elites, and "populism" is simply politicians reacting to the concerns that this has caused.
I agree with that. The thing is, for most of history, wealth was in the land, and the elite were landed aristocrats. With industrialization, wealth has moved largely to cities, and so that is where the elites live, and the people in the countryside have become much poorer, and so they often become populists.