Civil society and populism in Europe: outbreak or cure?

ABSTRACT

Scholarly debates on the links between the rise of populist parties, leaders, and movements and the role of civil society are growing and increasingly fascinating. However, this is one of the areas within ‘populism studies’ that has received less attention. Exploring the links between populism and civil society opens up space for many possible avenues of research, rooted in different research traditions. This special issue, with a total of 10 papers, aims to deepen this increasingly important line of research, highlighting both lesser-described forms and examples of populism as well as dominant forms of populism in Europe, such as right-wing or left-wing populism. In this introduction, we aim to (1) outline the various links between populism and civil society and place them in the context of populism studies, and (2) summarise the papers in this issue and their main findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• civil society
• uncivil society
• European politics
• demand and supply side of populism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Although there is a consensus that there is no such thing as a unified ‘populist voter’ (Rooduijn 2018) or ‘populist citizen’ (Rovira Kaltwasser and Van Hauwaert 2020), we do know a lot about those who vote for radical right-wing populist parties in particular (Lubbers, Gijsberts, and Scheepers 2002; van der Brug, Fennema, and Tillie 2000; etc.).

2. In this regard, we can mention (at least briefly) the very complex issue of the link between populism and democracy. Most authors agree that populism is not the antithesis of democracy as such (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2012), but it is based on a different conception of democracy (Baggini 2015; Canovan 1999), understood only as the power of the people, without the liberal emphasis on the protection of individual rights (‘the majority wants it’) or on democratic procedures (‘the parliament is stalling’). If the people want something, it must be done (even if minority rights are violated or constitutional procedures are not followed). Populism is therefore not undemocratic, but it is illiberal and anti-pluralist. The rejection of pluralism is based on an understanding of the people as unified – if the people are a homogeneous group, there is a general will directed towards the common good. This closes the space for accepting pluralism since the only conflict presented is the conflict between the people and the elite, not the competition between political parties within a pluralist system (Havlík 2019). However, there are also specific situations in which liberal democracy could benefit from populism (cf. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017; Pacewicz 2023).

3. However, the debate about the link between pirate and populist politics is more complex (see Naxera 2023a, 79–80).

4. In this election, Andrej Babiš was particularly successful in these three specific regions. In this respect, these are the same regions where former president Miloš Zeman (as the first directly elected Czech president, who is also usually considered a populist – cf. Naxera 2023a, 49–50; Naxera and Krčál 2020), who supported Andrej Babiš in 2023, achieved the best results (cf. Maškarinec 2013).