Populism and the Politics of Rights: The Dual Attack on Representative Democracy

1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Knopff
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
New Science ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
The Cost

AbstractIn Canada as elsewhere, representative democracy is under attack by both populists and rights advocates. The populist challenge comes mainly from Preston Manning's wing of the Reform party. The rights-based challenge is grounded on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These two challenges are different in obvious ways, but from the point of view of representative government—and ultimately of liberal democratic constitutionalism—what they have in common outweighs their differences. What they have in common is the appeal to a mystical being or icon beyond ordinary politics. In effect, the People or Rights become what God was to pre-liberal theocratic politics: a transpolitical trump on ordinary political division, a way of placing opponents “beyond the pale,” a demand for unattainable purity in public life and policy. While bills of rights and populism appear to flow, respectively, from the liberalism and the democracy of liberal democracy, they are, in fact, vehicles for precisely the kind of politics liberal democracy was designed to overcome. Representative government, not populism or entrenched rights, was at the heart of the “new science of politics” designed to make liberal democracy possible. Representative institutions, properly arranged in a system of checks and balances, were a way of blending liberalism with democracy, giving each its due, but indirectly, so that neither would be taken to self-destructive extremes. Populism and the judicialized politics of rights threaten to dissolve this salutary blend, at the cost of liberal democratic constitutionalism.

scholarly journals POPULISME, KRISIS DEMOKRASI, DAN ANTAGONISME | POPULISM, THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY, AND ANTAGONISM

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Otto Gusti Madung
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
New Order ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic Discourse

<b>Abstract:</b> Populism generally expresses the conflict between the majority of the people who are “out of power” versus the powerful small elites. The competition is the response to the perpetuating social divisiveness between the small elites and the marginalized majority. Hence, populism can be described as a social and political protest of the citizens against the failures of elitically and pro establishment oriented representative democracy. In this case, the democracy tends to leave the people behind who are the primary goal of the the democracy itself. This essay tries to pose some criticism against the practices of the liberal democracy tranformed into a consensus machine and in this way ignores the dissensual or conflictual aspect of the democracy. The dissensus democracy emphasizes the unlimited conflictual dimension of the democratic discourse. From the point of view of the dissensual democracy, populism can appear as social transformative forces that bring back the democracy to its original meaning as an expression of the people’s sovereignity. However, this can only be realized in a pluralistic millieu and populism can be transformed into an antagonistic democracy. Finally, the essay argues that the practices of populisme in Indonesia fail to be an alternative and antagonistic power to the practices of the Indonesian democracy coopted by the predatory oligarchy. The reason is that the populistic leaders in Indonesia including the Jokowi regime fail to transform the populistic ideas into the new democratic institutions independent from the domination of the oligarchic political parties inherited by the New Order regime. <b>Keywords:</b> Populism, Democracy, Antagonism, Dissensus, Indonesia <b>Abstrak:</b> Secara umum populisme mengungkapkan pertentangan antara rakyat kebanyakan (the people) yang tidak berkuasa versus segelintir kecil elite yang berkuasa. Pertarungan tersebut merupakan tanggapan atas persoalan kesenjangan sosial berkepanjangan antara elite penguasa versus mayoritas masyarakat yang berada di luar kekuasaan. Oleh karena itu, populisme dapat diartikan sebagai ekspresi protes warga masyarakat terhadap sejumlah kegagalan demokrasi representatif yang cenderung elitis dan pro establishment dan melupakan masyarakat umum yang menjadi tujuan awal dari demokrasi. Di dalam artikel ini dikemukakan sejumlah kritik terhadap praktik demokrasi liberal yang sudah bertransformasi menjadi mesin konsensus dan mengabaikan aspek disensus. Demokrasi disensus menekankan aspek pertentangan yang tak terselesaikan secara argumentatif dalam proses demokrasi. Dalam kaca mata demokrasi disensus, populisme dapat tampil sebagai kekuatan transformatif dan mengembalikan makna demokrasi kepada kedaulatan rakyat yang sesungguhnya. Namun, untuk maksud itu, populisme harus menanggalkan corak antipluralisme dan menjadi demokrasi antagonistis. Pada bagian akhir tulisan ini diuraikan juga bahwa di Indonesia politik populisme gagal menjadi kekuatan antagonistik dan emansipatoris terhadap demokrasi yang terkooptasi kekuatan oligarkis. Alasannya, para pemimpin populis termasuk rezim Jokowi gagal menginstitusionalisasikan ide-ide populis dalam institusi demokratis baru yang terlepas dan bebas dari cengkeraman partai-partai politik oligarkis warisan Orde Baru. <b>Kata-kata Kunci:</b> Populisme, Demokrasi, Antagonsme, Disensus, Indonesia

scholarly journals Populism, liberal democracy and the ethics of peoplehood

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Wolkenstein
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Justification ◽  
Normative Standards ◽  
Democratic Principles

Populism is widely thought to be in tension with liberal democracy. This article clarifies what exactly is problematic about populism from a liberal–democratic point of view and goes on to develop normative standards that allow us to distinguish between more and less legitimate forms of populism. The point of this exercise is not to dismiss populism in toto; the article strives for a more subtle result, namely, to show that liberal democracy can accommodate populism provided that the latter conforms to particular discursive norms. What the article calls a ‘liberal ethics of populism’ turns out to be closely bound up with a broader ethics of peoplehood, understood as a way of articulating who ‘the people’ are in a way that is compatible with liberal–democratic principles of political justification. Such an ethics, concludes the article, inevitably has a much wider audience than populist political actors: its addressees are all those who seek legitimately to exercise power in the name of the people.

Democracy and Good Governance

2019 ◽  
pp. 91-96
Author(s):  
Henk Addink
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government

Democracy is about government and governance by the people in different forms. Democracy is direct or by representation. Sovereignty of the people, however, is not the same as democracy. The position of minorities related to majorities, in a democracy, is not always easy to regulate. This situation has made clear that democracy also has qualitative contents and it is even clearer when we speak about democracy in the sense of a liberal democracy or of a social democracy. Two key elements in and topics related to democracy are the participation of the people and the elections by the people and the transparency of the government. There are some restrictions in a representative democracy and, for that reason, participation will be necessary to maintain the connection between the government and the people. But to have an adequate functioning of this participation and of the elections, transparency on behalf of the government is a necessary condition for a democracy.

scholarly journals Representing the People: British Democracy in an Age of Political Ignorance

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Parvin
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
First Century ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Widespread View ◽  
Political Decisions

The article evaluates the arguments presented in Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy, Ilya Somin’s Democracy and Political Ignorance and Achen and Bartels’ Democracy for Realists and their implications for democratic theory and practice. The article uses their work to shine a light on ongoing and contradictory trajectories of democratic reform in Britain at the local and national levels, and to argue against the widespread view that British democracy should be reformed in ways that give citizens more control over political decisions. These books point to ways in which democracy might be salvaged, rather than replaced, and in which British democracy in particular might be reformed in order to better meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, by focusing less on participation and more on representation. This requires a two-pronged strategy. First, that we reform liberal democratic institutions in ways which better harness the power of non-majoritarian institutions, strengthen formal epistocratic checks and balances, and embrace the move towards greater political elitism in order to appropriately constrain the popular will and to ensure rigorous scrutiny within a traditionally configured representative democratic system. Second, that we explore ways of incorporating citizens’ voices at different points in the democratic system in order to circumvent some of the problems these authors describe and to ensure that the strengthening of representative institutions does not unfairly marginalise citizens. Achen CH and Bartels LM (2016) Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Brennan J (2016) Against Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Somin I (2016) Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, 2nd edn. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

scholarly journals Female terrorism phenomenon in the "Narodnaya Volya" (People's Will) movement (1870s to 80s)

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-36
Author(s):  
Sergey A. Sotnikov ◽  
Andrey A. Sotnikov ◽  
Galina P. Kamneva
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
The People ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
Law And Morality ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Gender Aspect

The article deals with the problems of the institution of autocratic monarchy in the mid 19th century, which entailed an unprecedented rise of the revolutionary territorial movement. Public life liberalisation that followed the era of the "oppression of censorship and reaction" under Nicholas I gave the ideological and philosophical foundations to the terrorist methods of the revolutionary struggle. The spread of nihilistic ideas in society based on the denial of existing state foundations, law and morality, contributed to the radicalisation of forms and methods of political struggle against the government, which, in the opinion of revolutionaries, was uneager to continue socio-economic transformations in the interests of the broad masses of people. The authors are of the opinion that transition to terror was associated with disillusionment with peaceful methods of political struggle (especially after the failure of "going to the people"). The article analyses the gender aspect of terrorism in the Russian empire – female terrorism from the point of view of new historiographic approaches.

scholarly journals The “populist” foundation of liberal democracy: Jan-Werner Müller, Chantal Mouffe, and post-foundationalism

2022 ◽  
pp. 019145372110668
Author(s):  
Lasse Thomassen
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
The People ◽  
Agonistic Democracy ◽  
Ultimate Foundation ◽  
The Way

This article examines the connection between populism and post-foundationalism in the context of contemporary debates about populism as a strategy for the Left. I argue that there is something “populist” about every constitutional order, including liberal democratic ones. I argue so drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theories of hegemony, agonistic democracy, and left populism. Populism is the quintessential form of post-foundational politics because, rightly understood, populism constructs the object it claims to represent, namely the people. As such, it expresses the fact that, because there is no ultimate foundation, politics consists in the construction of contingent foundations. I develop this argument through readings of Jan-Werner Müller and Chantal Mouffe, showing the differences between their respective post-foundational approaches. I show that Müller cannot uphold the distinction between populism and democracy in the way he seeks to do, but I also argue that this does not mean that we must jettison all normativity, only that it requires that we rethink normativity in hegemonic terms.

THE INFLUENCE OF POPULISM ON DEMOCRACY IN THE CONTEXT OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL THEORY

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 46-52
Author(s):  
Mirilias Azad ogly Agaev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Silent Majority ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Impact

The article is devoted to the impact of populism on democracy. To investigate the impact of populism on democracy, the author explores key approaches to the populism notion: political, socio-cultural and ideological. The article notes that populism studies lack a single definition and emphasizes there are negative, positive and neutral evaluations of the nature of this phenomenon. These conclusions are used for further assumptions about the impact on liberal democratic institutions. After analyzing the works on the populism of such scholars as B. Arditi, H.-G. Betz, M. Canovan, E. Laclau, K. Mudde, S. Mouffe, K. Rovira Kaltwasser, N. Urbinati, and others, the article draws conclusions about the multidimensionality of influence on liberal democracy and, in particular, about the fallacy of solely negative assessments of this impact. The author underlines the presence of both positive aspects (providing the interests of the “silent majority”, mobilizing excluded groups and integrating them into the political sphere), and negative aspects (rejection of representative democracy and parliamentarism) of populism.

scholarly journals The Center for Liberal-Democratic Studies as an NGO Promoting Economic Neoliberalism in Serbia

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-166
Author(s):  
Sreten Vujović
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
New Right ◽  
The West ◽  
Educational Organization ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Basic Ideas ◽  
Monthly Journal ◽  
Trade Market

This article presents a study of the basic ideas of the Center of Liberal-Democratic Studies (CLDS) Belgrade and its main activities as a non-government research-educational organization. At present, CLDS is the most important NGO in Serbia, which, starting from the liberal point of view, primarily deals with economic, political and legal issues of development. This article is about an NGO that promotes “the culture of capitalism” in the sense of the “new right”, that is, the neoliberalism or liberianism. Its goals are the following: the protection of individual freedoms, free trade market and economic development, the governance of law, responsible and restricted state and liberal democracy. The research results are based on the analysis of approximately 20 studies published by the Center, the articles appearing in its monthly journal Prism, and interviews with 8 CLDS members regarding their cooperation and exchange of ideas with the West.

Freedom of Political Communication in Australia

1996 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-401
Author(s):  
Timothy H. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
High Court ◽  
Australian Capital ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The People

In three important decisions,1 handed down on the same day in October 1994, the Australian High Court continued its exploration of the implied constitutional guarantee of freedom of political communication. Two years previously, in the judgments in Nationwide News Pty Ltd v. Wills2 and Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v. The Commonwealth,3 a majority of the High Court had distilled an implication of freedom of political communication from the provisions and structure of the Australian Constitution.4 This was not an implication of freedom of expression generally, since it was derived from the concept of representative government which the majority considered to be enshrined in the Constitution: “not all speech can claim the protection of the constitutional implication of freedom … identified in order to ensure the efficacious working of representative democracy and government”.5 The extent of this implied constitutional guarantee was left rather unclear, since a number of different views were expressed. As Justice Toohey has now explained,6 there were two possibilities. The first was a more limited “implied freedom on the part of the people of the Commonwealth to communicate information, opinions and ideas relating to the system of representative government”. The second was a rather more expansive “freedom to communicate in relation to public affairs and political matters generally”. In the recent trilogy of cases a majority of the High Court was prepared to endorse the second of these alternatives.7 In Cunliffe v. The Commonwealth Chief Justice Mason concluded that it would be too restrictive to limit the implied freedom to “communications for the purposes of the political processes in a representative democracy”.8

On Populism and Democracy

Populism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Finchelstein ◽  
Nadia Urbinati
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Core ◽  
The People ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Cultural Minorities ◽  
Family Resemblances ◽  
Political Form ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Real Target

AbstractPopulism became the name of a form of government after the demise of Fascism. As a political form located between constitutional government and dictatorship, it displays family resemblances with opposite political systems, like liberal democracy and fascism. Today, populism grows within both democratizing and fully democratic societies although it takes its most mature riling profile in representative democracies, which are its real target. Historically, it used representation to construct a holistic image of the people that a leader promised to bring into power at the cost of downplaying pluralism and humiliating political and cultural minorities, thus twisting democratic procedures and institutions in ways that stretched it to democracy’s extreme borders. One of the core arguments of this article is that populism is a transfiguration of representative democracy that attempts once in government to reshape the democratic fundamentals, from the people and the majority principles to elections.

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