Rethinking Power, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel will critically interrogate contemporary arguments about the “crisis of democracy” and the “global rise of populism.” It will explore the relationship between these phenomena and the longer tendency toward the de-democratization of national and transnational institutions that corresponded to the rise and consolidation of neoliberalism as a political and social logic. Building on contemporary discussions of “authoritarian neoliberalism,” it will examine how the gradual emergence of this model from out of the crisis of capitalism during the early 1970s fundamentally transformed the nature of capitalist societies. Beginning from the premise that the challenges to the liberal-democratic order today are symptoms of the historical process of authoritarian neoliberal de-democratization, the panel will explore different facets of this tendency. Rafael Khachaturian’s paper will examine the original diagnoses of this phenomenon in the form of “authoritarian statism” and “authoritarian populism” found respectively in the works of Nicos Poulantzas and Stuart Hall, suggesting that populism needs to be seen in the broader context of the emergence of neoliberalism from out of a specific political conjuncture. Camila Vergara’s paper will argue that, contrary to contemporary understandings, populism is best seen as an electoral form of republican, plebian politics that asserts the collective power of the poor against the oligarchy. Steve Maher’s paper will examine how the populist upsurge has stemmed from the concentration of state power and the isolation of the power of finance from democratic pressures, and investigate contemporary arguments in favor of the democratization of finance. Jeffrey C. Isaac will serve as discussant.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 42: New Political Science

Cosponsor

• DIVISION 7: Politics and History

Individual Presentations

• The Populist as Plebeian Constitutional Dictator - Camila Vergara, Columbia University

• Reconsidering Authoritarian Statism and Authoritarian Populism Today - Rafael Khachaturian, University of Pennsylvania

• State Transformation, Corporate Organization, and Economic Democracy - Stephen Maher, York University

Chair

• Rafael Khachaturian University of Pennsylvania

Discussant

• Jeffrey C. Isaac Indiana University, Bloomington