Populism, acclamation, and democracy: The politics of glory in the populist era

The day after his inaugural address, Donald Trump rejected the media estimates about the attendance to the event. While the media spoke of a quarter of a million attendants, the President's numbers-between one and one and a half million-told a very different story (Trump, 2017). South of the American border, Mexico's President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has pledged to govern "With the voice of the people," suggesting, for instance, that the people should judge whether former president Felipe Calderon told the truth about not having illicitly enriched himself during his mandate (El Financiero, 2019). In both cases, and despite the ideological distance between the two, the reliance on the acclaiming majorities is unmistakable.