Populism, Institutions and Institutionalization

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Whether defined as thin ideology (Mudde 2004) , a political style (Moffit, 2016) or as a discourse (Laclau, 2005), there is a considerable conceptual and empirical gap in the study of the relations between populism and institutions. This void is partly related to what most scholars of populism consider as the core definitional elements of populism, namely, “an appeal to the people against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values of society” (Canovan 1999, 3). Given that institutions by definition crystallise established structures of power, populism is set to have an anti-institutional bias, expressed in the imaginary of the people being addressed by the populist leader in a personalistic and direct fashion with no institutional mediation.
Yet, populism has a complex relation with institutions, particularly when populist movements, parties and leaders gain office and rule on their own or as part of governing coalitions. By upholding the principle of the sovereignty of the people, populist movements are meant give primacy to the constituent power of the people over the constituted power of institutions. In some cases, the primacy of the sovereignty of the people has translated in constituent processes aimed at setting up an alternative institutional order. This has been the case, for example, in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. In other cases, however, populist parties and leaders rule within the existing state institutional and administrative order, an order which they regard as politically suspect and biased in favour of the establishment.
The panel will examine populist governments’ relations with the institutional order in comparative perspective. In particular, it will look at the tensions between the constitutive power embodied in the populist people and the constraints to it imposed by existing institutional arrangements, to the impact of populism on public administration and governance, to the relations between populist governments and the public bureaucracy and to the differences between populist and liberal- democratic institutionality.
Canovan, M. (1999) Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy. Political Studies. Vol. 47, pp. 2-16.
Laclau, Ernesto (2005) On Populist Reason, London: Verso.
Moffit, Benjamin (2016) The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation . Redwood City: Stanford University Press.
Mudde, Cas. 2004 “The Populist Zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition, 39 (3) 541-63.

Sub Unit

• Related Groups / IPSA/ISA Research Committee

Individual Presentations

• Populist and Liberal Notions of Citizens’ Rights - Francisco Panizza, London School of Economics

• It's About Time: Populism's Claims on Democracy - Tony P. Spanakos, Montclair State University; Mishella S Romo, New York University

• Populism and Public Administration: Evidence from a Survey Experiment - B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh; João Victor Guedes-Neto, University of Pittsburgh

• Populist Institutions: Plebeian Bureaucracies and “Dirty Institutionality - Pierre Ostiguy, Catholic University of Cordoba, Argentina

Chair

• Francisco Panizza London School of Economics

Discussants

• B. Guy Peters University of Pittsburgh

• Sherry Zaks Stanford University – CISAC