Populism and Publicity: Or How (Not) to Value Populism

• In Event: Populism, Publicity and Public Deliberation

Abstract

In the empirically oriented and historical literature, it is common to ask whether populism is a threat or a corrective to democracy. The conclusion tends to be that it is both, that is, that populism has both democratizing and anti-democratic effects. Some normative accounts, most notably those of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, promote (left) populism because of its alleged ability to deepen and recover democracy. However, both of these strands of the literature are inhibited by what I call an observer’s perspective on the relationship between populism and democracy. This means, inter alia, that they assess populism with standards that are external to populism itself, often liberal democratic standards of inclusion and pluralism. The downside of this approach is that it fails seriously to interrogate and evaluate the standards promoted by populism itself. Moreover, it creates an ambivalence regarding the question of how populism is assessed and valued, as a mere means or because of its inherent features.

My paper suggests an alternative approach to the assessment of populism and its relationship to democracy. This approach takes outset in the publicity condition first suggested by Immanuel Kant and later expounded by John Rawls. The publicity condition holds, roughly, that doctrines promoted in politics should have the capacity of being communicated to, fully known, and followed by everyone in society. The publicity condition demands two things of us. First, it asks us to consider whether the doctrine we promote and the principles we use to assess the effects of the former are the same. If the principles we use to assess the effects of a doctrine we promote are opposed to the principles of the doctrine itself, it means that the latter has failed the publicity condition. Second, the publicity condition asks us to make sure that public recognition of the doctrine we promote does not undermine its end. If a doctrine cannot be publically recognized without undermining its value, it has failed the publicity condition. The publicity condition, I emphasize, concerns the relationship we establish to others by promoting our doctrine. Publicity matters because of the respect it expresses for those the doctrine affects. This entails that we should take a participant’s perspective and see ourselves as involved in relations with others as morally responsible beings. It asks us to consider not how a detached observer might look at the effects of different doctrines, but whether we could make a doctrine our own, as something we would want to promote for others and ourselves, as well as use to assess the health of our democracy.

The paper analyzes how populism fares when approached from the participant’s perspective and subjected to the publicity condition. This approach helps us to understand and avoid two fallacies. The first fallacy is the idea that if populism has democratizing effects, then populism is democratic. The second fallacy is the notion that because populism can have democratizing effects, then democrats ought to promote populism. Both of these notions are non-sequiturs; the latter parts of the two propositions do not follow from the former parts. This might sound obvious and not in need of an extended argument. However, the pitfalls of these fallacies are not sufficiently appreciated, neither in political practice nor in some of the literature on populism. It is worth highlighting these fallacies and their connection to the publicity condition to avoid confusion and dangerous mistakes in the discussion and assessment of populism. The notion of publicity contributes to understanding that populism is an esoteric doctrine that depends on a sharp division between the strategies and intentions of the leaders and the knowledge and self-understanding of the followers.

While the participant’s perspective is essential in some respects, we also sometimes need to take an observer’s perspective. The Kantian approach might be criticized for naïve assumptions about human motivations, the nature of real politics, and for blindness to the forms of privilege and domination that exist in neoliberal societies. Thus, defenders of populism might say that the latter has the advantage of a more realistic understanding of human nature as driven by affect rather than reason and a more adequate understating of the social conditions of contemporary society, which in fact are oligarchical and dominated by a social elite to the detriment of the majority. They might even say that the Kantian assumption of freedom and equality is ideological, because it disguises and upholds structures of inequality and domination. The paper seeks to meet this challenge by giving an account of how we can combine social critique with the mutual respect involved in privileging the participant’s perspective and the quest for publicity.

Author

• Christian F. Rostboll, University of Copenhagen