Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy
1999/03/01 by Margaret Canovan · 56 citations
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Political Theology and Sovereignty #Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought #Foucault, Power, and Ethics
paper · doi:10.1111/1467-9248.00184
Abstract
Populism, understood as an appeal to ‘the people’ against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values, should not be dismissed as a pathological form of politics of no interest to the political theorist, for its democratic pretensions raise important issues. Adapting Michael Oakeshott's distinction between ‘the politics of faith’ and ‘the politics of scepticism’, the paper offers an analysis of democracy in terms of two opposing faces, one ‘pragmatic’ and the other ‘redemptive’, and argues that it is the inescapable tension between them that makes populism a perennial possibility.
Cited by
- Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation and Political Style
- Understanding and Challenging Populist Negativity towards Politics: The Perspectives of British Citizens
- Populism versus Democracy
- Changing affective alignments between parties and voters
- How technocratic is the power elite? A new approach and evidence from a mixed-method study of the Danish power elite
- A Question of Commitment: Investigating How Citizens Perceive Parties' Programmatic Responses to Competition
- Populism and emotions: a comparative study using Machine Learning
- Populism and Carbon Tax Justice: The Yellow Vest Movement in France
- “ <i>They</i> Did It”: The Effects of Emotionalized Blame Attribution in Populist Communication
- Waves, Floods, Currents: The Politics and Poetics of Water in Social Movement Analysis
- A complex cocktail: reappraising the role of positive emotions in the appeal of populist radical right parties
- Polarising the Christian West: Us and them in far-right parties’ rhetoric
- Populist radical right party representation and satisfaction with democracy in Europe
- Identity Through Distinction: Contextualizing Populist In- and Outgroup References
- Freedom for all? Populism and the instrumental support of freedom of speech
- Populism in election times: a comparative analysis of 11 countries in Western Europe
- The technocratic side of populist attitudes: evidence from the Spanish case
- Simply Speaking? Language Complexity among (Non-)Populist Actors in Parliamentary Debates
- A spectre of democracy: are populist citizens less supportive of democracy?
- Birth of a scapegoat: An actor‐affect‐affordance model of symbolic attribution in the digital age
- Let's talk populist? A survey experiment on effects of (non-) populist discourse on vote choice
- Populism, the far right and EU integration: beyond simple dichotomies
- Challenging Liberal Principles: Understanding of Democracy among Populist Radical Right Youth Leaders in Austria and Germany
- Have Europeans Grown Tired of Democracy? New Evidence from Eighteen Consolidated Democracies, 1981–2018
- States of Solidarity
- Power Preservation, No Matter the Means
- Populism and the Rule of Law
- Resentment, nostalgia and the underpinnings of a populist worldview
- A populist incitement? Populism, attack rhetoric, and support for political violence
- Backlash by Men against the Socio-Economic and Political Promotion of Women in Europe
- Saved by the diaspora? The case of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians
- Populism and nationalism
- The cultivation of the ear: practices of political listening and The Belief in Intuition
- The Landscape of Populist Content and Style on Facebook during Taiwan's 2020 Election: Examining Their Manifestations, Communication Mechanisms, Inter-Party Differences, and Linkages to Electoral Agenda-Setting
- Populism in the age of social media: A systematic review of recent digital populism research
- Discussing the Populist Features of Anti-refugee Discourses on Social Media: An Anti-Syrian Hashtag in Turkish Twitter
- Populism as a Transgressive Style
- Measuring the Impact of Populism in the Face of EU Multi-level Governance: Politics and Constitutional Change
- Performing populism: Trump’s transgressive debate style and the dynamics of Twitter response
- Apocalypse Forever?
- The framing of politics in a Ukrainian comedy show: a populist appeal?
- Epistocracy and populism: second-order ideologies challenging democracy
- The Impact of Politicians’ Populist Performance on Perceived Political Authenticity
- Normative Konstituenzien der Demokratie
- Decision‐makers, advisers or educable subjects? Policymakers' perceptions of citizen participation in a Nordic democracy
- The emotional logic of populist communication: a systematic review
- Introduction: Analyzing the Nexus Between Populism and International Relations
- Populism beyond the Nation
- Mainstream Parties’ Construction of Populist Discourse in Australia’s Temporary Migration Policy
- After Hegemony: The Varieties of Legal Consciousness Research
- Right-wing populism and the climate change agenda: exploring the linkages
- Playing populist: the relationship of convenience between populist language and demarcationist ideological positions in the Italian parliament (1948-2020)
- Inviting the Populists to the Party: Populist Appeals in Presidential Primaries
- Positions on populism in the European Parliament
- Representation matters: Technocracy, populism, and attitudes towards international organisations
- Against the <i>status quo</i> : how Trump’s second inauguration speech pre-configures the privileged future
Related