Beyond populism: the ideological dimensions of anti-politics

ABSTRACT

The tendency to identify anti-politics with populism obscures the diverse ideological positions from which the political class and political institutions are denounced and rejected. It is important, therefore, to distinguish between populist and non-populist anti-politics discourses. An anti-politics discourse can be classified as populist only when it is articulated with key concepts of populism, understood as a thin ideology, such as popular sovereignty, the people as the underdog and the will of the people as the ultimate source of political legitimacy. Given that populism as a thin ideology consists of a very limited number of core concepts it is rarely the only, or the dominant, ideological dimension of anti-politics. The rejection of the ruling political class and institutions can be justified from a number of ideological positions. There are populist, conservative, nationalist, liberal and socialist anti-politics, or a combination thereof. It is only by distinguishing between populism and anti-politics that we can identify the multiple ideological dimensions of the latter.

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Notes

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