Populist Government and Constitutional Democracy

Abstract


 
 
 Until the first decade of the 21th century, scholars and reporters have identified contemporary populism as an element of anti-systemic revolt; furthermore, they have also recognized an incompatibility between populist phenomenon and government function. However, some recent cases of populist parties in power seem to be able to put into crisis more than one certainty regarding the nature and scope of the populist phenomenon. This observation raises the questions of this work: what harmful effects does populism in government produce on liberal institutions, pluralism, and representation in constitutional democracies? Do these effects merely erode the liberal component, or do they extend to produce a degeneration of democracy as a whole? And finally: what are the risks for democracy? The article corroborates the diarchic theories of democracy and aims to demonstrate the lack of compatibility between the principles of liberal democracy and populist principles, which have a negative impact not only on the liberal component, but also on the quality of democracy in its entirety.
 
 

Donald Trump’s Appeal

“…Bonilla-Silva (2018) rightly identifies that returning to "politics as usual" may be counterproductive as those systems had inherent features susceptible to fallouts and conducive to imbalanced power dynamics. Global right-wing populist trends, sparing not even developed nations, raise important questions about why they came to be and what impact they will leave on the country's institutions, questions which the whitelash perspective significantly falls short of addressing (Scanni 2021). Thus, future trajectories must also account for such issues with democratic systems.…”