This article recovers Claude Lefort’s engagement with the issue of populism, which was inspired by the emergence of Jean-Marie Le Pen as a major figure in French politics during the late 1980s. I show how Lefort developed both an analysis of populism as a pathology of modern politics and a new vision of representative democracy as the alternative to populism. In doing so, Lefort drew upon his more familiar theory of democracy and totalitarianism, his study of the history of French (...) political thought, and his partnership with Pierre Ronsanvallon, who was also developing an analysis of populism in response to Le Pen. Lefort’s approach to populism has outlived the context in which he first expressed it. Over the last decade, a number of prominent political theorists have drawn on Lefortian themes to formulate their own accounts of populism and democracy. In many cases, their arguments are quite similar to those that Lefort was expressing in the late 1980s and 1990s. A particular version of Lefortianism, which was foreshadowed in the writings of Lefort himself, has become one of the defining democratic theories of our political moment. (shrink)

While early studies of populism, usually dated from the 1960s, were highly interdisciplinary, contemporary research in this field is dominated by political science and political theory. This current phase of research is narrowly focused on certain forms of political action and remarkably reluctant to pathologize the US case. Social theory plays at most a marginal role. Recent historicizations of this field have failed to recognize the significance of the prior ‘missing first phase’ of populism studies (1940–65) led by key sociological (...) figures among the New York Intellectuals and the Frankfurt School. Social theorization was prominent then and US populism’s contingent vulnerability to demagogic exploitation was a major research focus. This article provides an immanent critical reconstruction of these thinkers’ key social-theoretical insights, building to a schematization of ‘modern demagogy’. (shrink)

Two recent books on populism represent more than any other the new mainstream in populism studies. Through a reconstruction of the main arguments advanced by Jan-Werner Müller, on the one hand, and Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, on the other, this article aims to highlight both the significant accomplishments as well as the main limitations of this orientation. Special attention is given to the way in which the two projects deal with the relationship between populism and democracy. In this (...) respect, substantial differences emerge between them, largely due to the different scope of each intervention: Müller articulates a polemical argument, while Mudde and Kaltwasser seem to encompass a more nuanced research agenda. And yet, despite all their differences, the two books share a common definitional basis when they identify moralization and moralism as the kernel of populist ideology. It is here, however, that the shaky basis of the new mainstream is revealed. Apart from betraying substantive continuities with a discredited Cold War pluralism, this moralistic stress seems ultimately inadequate to function as the central criterion for the differential identification of populism. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 28, Issue 4, Page 522-536, December 2021.

The concept of populism has generated endless controversy marked by both the contrasting political feelings it conveys and a particular problem of definition. This article—based on political speeches, academic literature, and relevant online sources, such as Google Ngram Viewer, catalogs of great libraries, and digital archives of newspapers—adopts a pragmatic approach to the concept throughout its history, from the moment when the noun appeared in North American political life in the late nineteenth century until the most recent “populist moment” in (...) response to the economic crisis that started in 2008. The study of its changing meanings shows, however, some elements of continuity that make sense of what Margaret Canovan defined as “a notoriously vague term.”. (shrink)

This article argues that understanding the dangers and risks of authoritarian populism in consolidated constitutional democracies requires analysis of the forms of pluralism and status anxieties that emerge in civil and economic society, in a context of profound political, socioeconomic, and cultural change. This paper has two basic theses. The first is that when societies become deeply divided, and segmental pluralism maps onto affective party political polarization, generalized social solidarity is imperiled, as is commitment to democratic norms, social justice, and (...) liberal democratic constitutionalism. The second, is that populist political entrepreneurs excel in fomenting social antagonisms by framing shifts in the forms of social pluralism in ways that foster deep political polarization, generalized distrust and a politics of resentment against “elites,” “the establishment,” “the oligarchy,” and “outsiders.” Why populist offers resonate requires a social theoretical analysis of status/solidarity and class issues and a direct response to them. I draw on Polanyi and Habermas to develop an explanatory approach to the current crisis and the populist responses it triggers. I navigate between two inadequate approaches: that of the Hofstadter consensus school which construes status concerns and populism as retrograde, anti-modern, paranoid and meriting no direct response; and that of the neo-Marxist tradition that acknowledges the mobilizing power of “cultural factors” and status anxieties but deems them to be epiphenomena of the deeper story of economic distributive injustice. I reject this assessment and seek to take up the status/solidarity issues in ways that take them seriously, challenge populist framing and provide alternative direct responses to them. I reject the narrative frames of left populists who foment polarization and I try to present an alternative narrative framing for a future democratic politics that draws on the best in politically liberal, constitutionalist, democratic, and socialist traditions. (shrink)

It is a commonplace to observe that we have been living through an extraordinary pan-European and trans-Atlantic populist moment. But do the heterogeneous phenomena lumped under the rubric “populist” in fact belong together? Or is “populism” just a journalistic cliché and political epithet? In the first part of the article, I defend the use of “populism” as an analytic category and the characterization of the last few years as a “populist moment,” and I propose an account of populism as a (...) discursive and stylistic repertoire. In the second part, I specify the structural trends and the conjunctural convergence of a series of crises that jointly explain the clustering in space and time that constitutes the populist moment. The question in my title is thus twofold: it is a question about populism as a term or concept and a question about populism as a phenomenon in the world. The article addresses both the conceptual and the explanatory question, limiting the scope of the explanatory argument to the pan-European and trans-Atlantic populist conjuncture of the last few years. (shrink)

As political crises and social unrest proliferate worldwide, the appeal of populism grows steadily in various fora, including academic fora. In this respect, an abundance of scholarly publications has sought, through the study of populism, to unravel important aspects of contemporary political and social dynamics. Discourse theory scholars, in particular, have played an important role in pushing the boundaries of populism studies forward. They have challenged objectivist perspectives in the sciences by foregrounding the role of meaning-making and by treating populism (...) as a discursive logic that better characterises the political articulation of social reality. In situating its analytical focus at the frontier of populism studies, this paper-based dissertation contributes to this literature from both an empirical and a theoretical point of view. Through the four papers which make up this thesis, I contribute to discourse theory by presenting three main lines of analysis in the study of populism in Brazil, a case that is frequently referenced but which remains under-explored. Firstly, by exploring Brazil’s fourth republican period, this thesis shows how populism is best understood as both a concept and a signifier, revealing the way the dynamic interplay of populism discourses shape our sense of social reality. Secondly, by studying a leading magazine with an upmarket readership in Brazil, I explore the affective force running through anti-populist discursive articulations, affirming the value of the category of fantasy from an empirical and analytical point of view. Thirdly, by focusing on the collective candidacy of the Bancada Ativista in the Sao Paulo State elections, I explore the potential of the concept of populism, conceived as a logic, to shed light on aspects of political life beyond populist phenomena. Finally, in recognising a gap in the literature in relation to the constitutive role of desire in social meaning-making processes, the fourth paper constructs, through the psychoanalytic category of hysteria, an approach to knowledge production informed by desire, which constitutes the main theoretical contribution to the discourse theory tradition. By paying close attention to Brazilian politics, this thesis explores some of the distinctive virtues of a discourse theoretical approach to populism by drawing out the normative, ideological, and politico-strategic implications of complex political dynamics and social meaning-making processes within and beyond the study of populist phenomena. (shrink)