Populism, Representation and the debate on democratic deepening

ENRIQUE PERUZZOTTI

Washington DC

Conferencia; Populisms of the XXIst Century; 2011

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

It is not the intention of this chapter to engage in a detailed analysis of current theories on populism or their alleged contribution to democratization. Instead, I will focus on one specific aspect that present debates bring to the fore: the relationship between populism and representative politics. The first section of the chapter presents an overview of current debates on the role of populism in a democracy. The second outlines the features that best characterize the classical populist model. The third section distinguishes between three democratic projects that are dominant in Latin America today: the minimalist, the delegative, and the populist models. The final section argues for the need to move beyond all of these previous models through the development of a more complex model of democratic representation that could serve as a roadmap for a process of democratic deepening.