Populism or the European condition?

Tavares Furtado, Henrique; Eklundh, Emmy

Abstract

Ten years after the movements of the squares we are reminded of how the popular surge of activism shook the foundations of European politics. The ensuing appearance of new political parties—envisioned as carrying the torch of popular participation—has led to recurrent claims that the European “Peoples” would be better represented by challenging a depoliticized, unpopular, and technocratic mainstream. Populism is depicted as a force that has reawakened the political spirit of ordinary people, for better or worse. In the wake of these empirical developments, populism and its relation to the mainstream must be interrogated. The field of populism studies has different approaches to how populism relates to mainstream politics and democracy itself. Some would like to argue that it is a complete exception and a danger to democracy, whilst others make the claim that it is an intrinsic part of a democratic society.
This article investigates the literature on populism studies, paying particular attention to the spectrum of descriptions of populism along two axes: (1) normal and exceptional forms of political participation and (2) inclusive and exclusionary forms of politics. These two axes are found to constitute the central themes in the contemporary literature on populism, namely the question of whether populism poses an external threat to liberal democracy and whether progressive movements can successfully appropriate the populist form. Avoiding the usual pitfalls of opposing populism to an idealized version of liberal politics (often associated with the proper, European way of civilized political representation) the article investigates the elements of coloniality and the myth of civility sustaining populism studies. In other words, it contends that the debates in populism studies can only make sense in an absence of considerations about the links between the historical experience of colonial conquest and the constitution of modern forms of political subjectivity. This determines which forms of politics are to be considered normal or exceptional. This article will draw on the interfaces between Laclau’s work and decolonial thought (using the latter to complement the former). It proposes a framework and sets an agenda for a thorough recognition of the problems of modern subjectivity—its relationship with coloniality and civility—in populism studies. The article develops a radical critique of populism studies and argues that any emancipatory break always carries vestiges of the order it wishes to overthrow and that this needs to be recognized to a higher degree in the field.
This article will be laid out as follows. The first part introduces the concepts of coloniality and civility—the guiding principles of our analysis of the field of populism studies—and relates them to the exceptionalist thesis, or the idea that populism poses an external threat to democracy. The second part engages with critical approaches to populism that do not subscribe to the exceptionalist view but remain oblivious to the question of coloniality. We argue that this omission, to different degrees and with very different political undertones, is responsible for the inscription of the myth of civility as the “cipher” of their analysis of populism. In response to this, the third part proposes a research agenda that attempts to bypass the field’s debates and re-focus scholarly attention on the reproduction of colonial/Eurocentric forms of political subjectivity as a central problem of democratic theory.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 3, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jul 1, 2022
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2022
• Deposit Date: Jul 20, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 2, 2023
• Journal: The Journal for the Study of Radicalism
• Electronic ISSN: 1930-1189
• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 21–38
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.14321/jstudradi.16.2.0021v
• Keywords: Populism; Coloniality; Colonialism; liberal democracy; democratic society; European politics; Politics; Exceptionalism; Power; Europe
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9621410
• Publisher URL: https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/msup/jsr/article-abstract/16/2/21/319822/Populism-or-the-European-Condition