Populism as democracy´s nemesis?

ENRIQUE PERUZZOTTI

Conferencia; populism in the age of globalization; 2017

The article is organized around three sections. The first one analyzes the reasons that have promoted the current centrality of populism as a political phenomenon, arguing that the present diffusion of contemporary forms of populism must be seen as the corollary of the third democratizing wave that expanded the geographical presence of liberal democracy. In this scenario, populism is positioned as the main contender of liberal democracy, presenting itself as a democratizing political force that seek to transcend the latter´s limitations. The second part of the article analyzes the shortcomings of populism as a democratic theory from a brief discussion of the work of Ernesto Laclau, arguing the Laclaunian analysis merely focuses on populism as a strategy to questioning and accessing to power, but has nothing what to say about populism as an exercise of governmental power. The third and last section analyzes the processes of institutional hybridization of liberal democracy that are generally promoted by populism as government, arguing that this pattern of political change (and not the traditional pattern of regime rupture) expresses the main threat faced by democracies nowadays.