Tried Before — and Worked

Mamdani’s Ideas Have Been Tried Before — and Worked

Politicians on both the right and the left have used urban subsidies to rise to power in countries around the world.

By Asli Aydintasbas

Afew years back, I walked into a city-run grocery store in my hometown. It was the spring of 2014, and I was a journalist covering the run-up to municipal elections in Istanbul, a city of 16 million. What I saw shocked me.

It was a no-name market in one of the city’s low-income districts — not much to look at from the outside. But inside were shelves packed with bread, lentils, cheese, oil and even basic household appliances. Most of the items were cheaper brands sourced from small manufacturers that I had never heard of — companies happy to donate goods to the city stores because they could write them off their taxes. The non-profit stores run by the municipality were only available to households whose low-income status had been verified by the city. Prices were low, and families received pre-loaded monthly loyalty cards that worked exclusively at these municipal markets. The balance wasn’t tied to wages or a bank account — it was direct public support, and it was very popular with residents of the neighborhood.

The city-run market was part of a formula that fueled the rise of conservative populism in Turkey since Tayyip Erdoğan — the country’s current president — first came to power as mayor of Istanbul in 1994. He established a vast, and largely underreported, system of urban subsidies and food aid that organically transformed into grassroots outreach.

It’s the same kind of ecosystem of urban subsidies that New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has proposed as part of his effort to make that city more affordable: grocery stores, free buses, controlling rent increases and expanding public services.

Critics across the political spectrum have scoffed. If there’s one thing members of the Republican and Democratic establishment seem to agree on, it’s that when it comes to things like city-run grocery stores, Mamdani is living in a fantasy world. Everyone seems to agree that free buses, subsidized groceries and cheaper housing are out of step with America’s deeply ingrained faith in the marketplace.

But Mamdani’s ideas aren’t as outlandish as they may sound in the power halls of New York or Washington. In fact, they’ve been tried elsewhere around the world — by politicians from both the left and right — and in many cases, proved both popular and politically effective.

In Erdoğan’s case, the markets created both a safety net for the poor and a distribution channel for small producers who rarely made it into high-end supermarkets in wealthier neighborhoods. It also delivered huge political rewards. Erdoğan and his conservative allies used subsidies and low-cost public services to build enduring loyalty among working-class and low-income voters, eventually harnessing it to gain national power.

Istanbul’s city government only changed hands when Erdoğan’s secular, center-left opponents adopted a similar playbook. Ekrem İmamoğlu, a young social democrat with a populist touch, was elected mayor of Istanbul in 2019 after 25 years of conservative rule. He ran on democracy and freedoms but also expanded the city’s social programs by opening affordable dorms, introducing subsidized transportation for students and creating free public kindergartens. These policies were so popular that İmamoğlu won again in 2024. (In fact, he has emerged as Erdoğan’s chief political rival — and was imprisoned earlier this year on charges widely seen as politically motivated.)

Turkey is hardly an outlier. Across Europe, Latin America and Asia, local governments have long used targeted subsidies to ease the burden of urban living.

In Europe, subsidized housing and free health care are pretty much the norm. Berlin, London and Vienna have spent decades building and maintaining public housing that keeps rents within reach for working-class residents and young families. In Mexico City, programs like Leche Liconsa provide subsidized milk and other food staples to low-income households. Bogotá runs transit subsidies that lower fares for the poor. Seoul has built youth dormitories to help students cope with sky-high housing costs. Barcelona has experimented with rent caps and municipal housing support.

These programs aren’t revolutions. They don’t come with Karl Marx Boulevards or Rosa Luxemburg libraries. They’re pragmatic, relatively low-cost subsidies with outsized political impact — and a familiar part of modern urban governance around the world. And while Mamdani’s critics seem to suggest that such ideas are un-American, the truth is that the U.S. has its own history of subsidies and income support, from the New Deal to food stamps to Medicare and Medicaid — programs now recognized even by Republicans as critical components of public welfare.

Embracing Mamdani’s left-wing populism wouldn’t make America socialist. It would simply mean using local government to meet basic needs — housing, transportation, education — when markets don’t. It’s about making life less precarious and prices less punishing.

What’s striking to someone like me who has seen these types of programs work elsewhere isn’t Trump’s predictable attacks, but the handwringing among Democratic elites. In the U.S., as in much of Europe, mainstream parties have struggled to respond to widespread discontent among voters — discontent that has fueled the rise of right-wing populists worldwide. Trump’s two elections were a direct result.

But instead of exploring a new contract with working Americans, Democrats — united by their fear of systemic disruption — have largely positioned themselves as guardians of a neoliberal order that no longer inspires.

Meanwhile, as New York elites clutch their pearls at Mamdani’s “unrealistic” proposals, Trump has been flirting with his own version of state capitalism: organizing the sale of TikTok, meeting corporate leaders in ways that expand the government’s influence in markets and making the government a shareholder in Intel. This is state capitalism, just for corporations, not ordinary Americans.

Politics abhors a vacuum. When liberals have no bold ideas, the populist right fills the void with its own narratives of identity and protection. If Democrats want to compete, they must stop treating redistribution as taboo and start imagining alternatives. For too long, the party has been paralyzed by fear of being labeled anything but mainstream, clinging to a centrist consensus even as it crumbles beneath them. In doing so, they’ve ceded the imaginative ground to the MAGA right.

Maybe the answer to right-wing populism isn’t cautious centrism, but a more daring form of left-wing populism. Istanbul’s experiment suggests these kinds of policies are not only popular but sustainable at relatively low cost. By combining stipends, targeted subsidies, and smart use of tax incentives, the municipality created a functioning welfare mechanism that won loyalty without blowing up the budget. It wasn’t socialist chaos; it was good governance — and shrewd politics.

Mamdani’s bet is that the same logic applies in New York. Instead of measuring politics by Wall Street’s applause or elite comfort, he asks whether families can afford rent, groceries and the subway. Mamdani’s municipal populism may or may not work in New York. But the idea behind it is hardly fringe.

Pragmatic, relatively modest redistribution that people can see and feel won’t be the end of capitalism — or America.