The meaning of ‘populism’

Abstract

This essay presents a novel approach to specifying the meaning of the concept of populism, on the political position it occupies and on the nature of populism. Employing analytic techniques of concept clarification and recent analytic ideology critique, it develops populism as a political kind in three steps. First, it descriptively specifies the stereotype of populist platforms as identified in extant research and thereby delimits the peculiar political position populism occupies in representative democracies as neither inclusionary nor fascist. Second, it specifies on this basis analytically–normatively the particular stance towards liberal representative democracy (in particular towards popular sovereignty and democratic legitimacy) that unifies populism’s political position and explains how populist politics can be compelling for democratic citizens. The normative core (populist ideology) turns out to require no more than two general principles of legitimizing political authority by elections. Surprisingly, it does not need a separate anti-pluralist or exclusionary commitment: it entails it. Third, this normative model allows a response to a contested question in the theoretical discussion, namely, whether populism (properly specified) can be democracy-enhancing. The article defends the negative answer in virtue of the normative core alone and does so as much vis-à-vis a minimal (purely electoral) as vis-à-vis a normatively ambitious (liberal) conception of democracy. The reconstruction of the normative core of populist ideology enables a novel argument to show that populism is incompatible with the continued democratic legitimation of political authority even in the normatively most austere conception of ‘electoral democracy’, not just with ‘liberal democracy’. Assuming a normatively more ambitious concept of democratic legitimation in terms of political autonomy, the model also produces an extremely direct argument showing that populists cannot fulfil their promise of ‘taking back control’ over political decision-making to the population.

Populism and intra‐party democracy

“…This result corroborates the leadership perspective as researched by Weyland (2001, 2021), Kenny (2019), Pappas (2016), or Urbinati (2017, 2019a, 2019b). It stresses personalist leadership and anti‐democratic tendencies of populism as a form of organization (see also Finchelstein & Urbinati, 2018; Mueller, 2019).…”

“…Our core result means that populism as an ideational form does not directly translate into a form of party organization (Rueda, 2021; Weyland, 2021). Instead, the findings highlight that the implications of the leadership perspective can be applied to the understanding of populist parties’ organizations as these parties have adopted highly undemocratic and leader‐centric structures (e.g., Finchelstein & Urbinati, 2018; Kenny, 2019; Mueller, 2019; Pappas, 2016; Urbinati, 2017, 2019a, 2019b; Weyland, 2001, 2021).…”

“…According to Weyland (2001, p. 14), ‘populism is best defined as a political strategy through which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government power based on direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of mostly unorganized followers’. When populism as an organizational form is seen from this lens, it is explicitly not democratic (e.g., Finchelstein & Urbinati, 2018; Mueller, 2019; Pappas, 2016; Urbinati, 2017, 2019a, 2019b). To this end, Pappas (2016), for example, calls populism ‘illiberal democracy’.…”

Why the world economy needs, but will not get, more globalization in the post-COVID-19 decade

“…Since the 2010s, leaders who have been defined as populists have won elections and challenged democratic institutions in several key economies like Brazil, Turkey, India, Mexico, Italy, the Philippines, and, as many would argue, the US under Donald Trump (Hartwell & Devinney, 2021 ). Scholars have noted the growing diffusion of populism, defined as “a kind of platform or politician who engages in confrontational anti-establishment politics aimed at displacing the governing elites in representative liberal constitutional democracies and everything that politically enabled them” (Mueller, 2019 , 1026). Social unrest exploded in several countries in 2020 and 2021 as a result of discontentment with the socio-economic impact of the pandemic, and in some cases, of being stirred by populist leaders.…”

Educating Citizens through Bildung. Didactics and Pedagogy in the service of Democracy

“…* See, e.g.,Mueller 2019, Schäfer & Zürn 2021and Geiselberger 2017, the latter with contributions from, i.a., Nancy Fraser, Zygmunt Bauman, Bruno Latour and Slavoj Žižek.…”