Populism and the Idea of The People

Abstract

The idea of “the people” motivates populist politics, but scholars are often skeptical that it can justify the populists’ claims. Who then are “the people” that both populists and democrats invoke? This chapter describes the logical paradoxes that arise when defining a democratic people and a long-standing debate on the nature and function of the demos in a democracy. These show that scholars’ definitions and judgments of populism depend on whether they conceive of the people as a historical fact (as populists do) or as a hypothetical ideal for guiding legislation (the liberals’ view). The chapter proposes instead an account of the democratic “people as process.” This account explains why populists betray the democratic ideals they claim to endorse.

Claiming the right to rule: regime legitimation strategies from 1900 to 2019

“…These findings are substantively important to the literature on populism. This justification of rule, so common to many anti-democratic movements in the past, should also serve to alert us to the anti-democratic threat of populism, something on which the contemporary literature on populism is sometimes ambiguous (Espejo, 2017;Müller, 2017;Rummens, 2017;Urbanati, 2017). Greater attention to the justificatory claims of populist movements for why they want to hold power would allow us to make substantive judgments about which claims are aimed at revitalizing democracy and which are interested in exploiting the current crisis of democracy to reconstruct power on an authoritarian basis.…”

Who and what is their ‘people’? How British political leaders appealed to the people during the 2019 election

“…Thus, the term 'the people' reaches the highest inclusiveness level, inasmuch as it includes all the individuals of the same state, which become the ground of its authority (Espejo 2011). Since the first medieval enforcing of Roman Law, the people's central role has become 'sovereign' in the modern theories of representation and 'constitutionalized' between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the first constitutions made in their name, as the most crucial source of authority in the state (Espejo 2017).…”

“…In this case, the people become a portfolio of populations held together by the nation. Indeed, 'the people' is used as artificial unity to stabilize a political order (Espejo 2017). In this way, the people have a symbolic reference, often associated with ethnicity or an ethnic group (Smith 2003).…”

“…In the third meaning, 'the people' is indeterminate and characterized by a collective function in the name of which movements and political parties claim to speak for 'the people'. Through a political competition, where it is claimed that majority interests are prioritized against minorities, political movements organize themselves to claim their rights or to redress wrongs done to those they represent (Espejo 2017;Urbinati 2019).…”

Confronting recent history: Serbia’s ‘fateful eight’ and a decade of Kosovo’s independence in the Serbian Media (2008–2018)

“…The whole issue connects to the increasingly popular topics of populism and nativism. Although due to the lack of space in a standardised research article I am unable to go deeper into the questions of populism and nativism (see: Bugaric, 2008;Espejo, 2017;Hawkins & Kaltwasser, 2017;Herkman, 2016;Jagers & Walgrave, 2007), it is fairly clear that both are present in the Serbian media discourse on Kosovo. The Kosovo topic is useful as a decoy from real and practical problems that would otherwise take precedence, were it not for the ubiquitous nature of the Kosovo issue that is continuously being forced onto the public by the media.…”