Populism and democracy: a reassessment

ABSTRACT

Populism comes in so many forms, both historically and in its contemporary manifestations, that we cannot assess its relationship with democratic institutions as if it were homogeneous. In this article, we reconnect with the history of the first movements that have called themselves populists and draw on an understanding of populism as an egalitarian impulse against oligarchic tendencies, centred on anti-elitism and the defense of a democratic common sense. This genetic approach goes against the dominant definitions which tend to overstretch its range of application while assuming a form of anti-pluralism as part of its common features. Then, we draw attention to the diversity of conceptions of democracy within populist thought and practices and show that the types of democratic institutions favoured by populist movements, and their attitudes towards intermediary bodies, are highly contextual. Finally, we argue that populism’s inherent ambiguities shed some doubt on its capacity to respond to the current challenges faced by representative institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• democracy
• anti-pluralism
• oligarchy
• representation
• participation

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Think about socialists emphasising the divide between workers and capitalists, or neoliberals emphasising the divide between those who work hard and the ‘assisted’.

2 Consider again the moral condemnation of the ‘assisted’ who fail to take responsibility for themselves, or conservatives’ moral battle for the respect for ‘life’ or for family values.

3 We take inspiration, here, from Mansbridge and Macedo’s (2019) ‘core-plus’ approach to populism, while deviating from their own definition of the core, which insists on the ‘moral’ aspect of the populist battle against the elite and leaves the common sense aspect outside of the core.

4 On the more ambivalent case of ‘La France Insoumise’, see Cervera-Marzal, 2021.

5 This may apply more to activist populists and populist theorists than to some cynical citizens who would want the representative system to ‘deliver what the people want without them having to pay continual attention to it’ (Stoker & Hay, 2017).

6 Vergara (2020b, p. 4) claims that initiatives, referendums and recalls are, just like elections, ‘powers of the individual, not the many as collective subject’.

7 One could even argue that the more established actors are discredited, the more populist forces are tempted by a radically anti-political approach that adds fuel to a fire. The Italian Five Star Movement stands as a perfect example of this tendency.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Belgian Fund for scientific research (FSR-FNRS) and the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO - Grant 1283723N).

Notes on contributors

Arthur Borriello

Arthur Borriello is an assistant-professor in political science at Université de Namur (Belgium). His research focuses on the political management of the economic crisis within the Euro area and on the upsurge and transformations of populist movements in Southern Europe. He has recently co-authored The Populist Moment: The Left after the Great Recession (Verso, 2023) with Anton Jäger.

Jean-Yves Pranchère

Jean-Yves Pranchère is a professor of political theory at the Université libre de Bruxelles. His work focuses on the anti-Enlightenment traditions and on the links between the nation, secularism, democracy and human rights. He is the author of L'Autorité contre les Lumières. La philosophie de Joseph de Maistre (Droz, 2004), an annotated edition of Louis de Bonald, Réflexions sur l'accord des dogmes de la religion avec la raison (Cerf, 2012), and, with Justine Lacroix, of Human Rights on Trial: A Genealogy of the Critique of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Pierre-Étienne Vandamme

Pierre-Étienne Vandamme is a Senior FWO Postdoctoral Researcher at KU Leuven (RIPPLE). His research in political theory deals with representation, democratic innovations and deliberation. His current research project, ‘Hybrid Democracy: Combining Elections, Sortition and Direct Democracy’, explores the ways in which democratic innovations could be articulated with traditional representative institutions, and the foundations of this new hybrid form of democracy. He is the author of Démocratie et justice sociale (Vrin, 2021).