Lessons From the American Midterm Revolt: What the NPP Must Learn to Avoid the Anti-Establishment Trap

When Outsiders Become the Establishment

Across the democratic world, a familiar pattern has begun to emerge — movements that rise to power on waves of public anger against entrenched political elites often find themselves facing the very same backlash they once weaponised. Sri Lanka's National People's Power (NPP) government, still in the early stages of its transformative mandate, would do well to study this paradox carefully, particularly as it plays out in the United States.

The American Midterm Warning

American midterm elections have long served as a referendum on the sitting administration, and recent cycles have demonstrated just how quickly an anti-establishment movement can be recast as the establishment itself. Voters who once rallied behind outsider candidates, drawn by promises of systemic change and a break from political orthodoxy, have repeatedly turned against those same figures once they assumed the levers of power.

The underlying frustration driving such revolts rarely disappears once an election is won. Instead, it transforms — waiting to be redirected at whoever occupies the seat of authority, regardless of the ideological banner under which they arrived there.

The NPP's Precarious Position

Sri Lanka's NPP, led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, swept to power on an unprecedented wave of public disillusionment with the traditional political establishment. For decades, Sri Lankan voters had watched the Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe political dynasties alternate control over the country, culminating in the catastrophic economic crisis of 2022 that pushed millions into poverty and triggered mass street protests.

The NPP's victory represented a decisive rejection of that old order. Yet therein lies the paradox — the very expectations that brought the NPP to power are now the standard against which its performance will be ruthlessly measured. The public anger that fuelled its rise has not been extinguished. It has simply been placed in reserve, ready to be redirected should the government fail to deliver meaningful change.

The Danger of Transitioning From Challenger to Incumbent

Political analysts observing global trends have noted several key vulnerabilities that anti-establishment movements face once in government:

• The gap between campaign rhetoric and the complex realities of governance tends to disappoint supporters accustomed to bold promises.
• Structural economic constraints — such as IMF programme conditions — can force unpopular decisions that alienate the working-class base that powered the movement.
• The longer a government remains in power, the more it becomes indistinguishable from the establishment it once opposed, in the eyes of impatient voters.
• Opposition forces, once scattered and demoralised, invariably regroup and reframe their own messaging as the new anti-establishment alternative.

Navigating the Expectations Economy

For the NPP, the challenge is not simply one of policy delivery — it is one of narrative management. The government must continue to visibly position itself as a force for systemic reform even as it operates within the constraints of a fragile economy undergoing a painful IMF-guided recovery.

Sri Lankans who supported the NPP did so with a profound sense of hope — hope that corruption would be genuinely prosecuted, that public institutions would be reformed, and that the burden of economic hardship would be distributed more fairly. Any perception that the new administration is merely recycling the habits of its predecessors risks triggering the same anti-establishment sentiment in a new direction.

A Cautionary Tale Worth Heeding

The American experience, repeated across multiple election cycles, suggests that no political movement is permanently insulated from the volatility of public discontent. What wins elections in an era of mass frustration is not a fixed ideology but a credible promise of change — and that promise must be continuously renewed through demonstrable action.

For Sri Lanka's NPP government, the lesson from across the Pacific is both timely and sobering. The mandate it holds is historic, but it is also conditional. Governing well, transparently, and with genuine accountability is not merely a moral obligation — it is the only sustainable path to avoiding the anti-establishment trap that has consumed so many movements before it.