The Populist as Plebeian Constitutional Dictator

• In Event: Rethinking Power, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy

Abstract

Given the alarming degree of increasing wealth inequality since the wave of neoliberal reforms that begun in the 1970s, we are experiencing patterns of accumulation and dispossession comparable to those of the ancien régime. Representative governments have been so far unable to revert the rules for wealth accumulation and deal with the deepening problem of immiseration of the popular sectors. While deregulation in the financial system ultimately enabled the 2008 crisis that allowed for a massive transfer of wealth from the many to the few —increasing oppression and undermining liberty— the political field has seen an increasing pattern of collusion between economic and political elites, influencing elections and lawmaking. Left populism seems a response to the crisis of representation prompted by increasing inequality and corruption, and should be conceived as a way of reverting the current patterns of wealth accumulation to regain liberty as non-domination. Rather than a “disfigurement,” as Nadia Urbinati has argued, populism seems to be a response to an already existing deformity in liberal democracies: the overgrowth of oligarchic power. Populism should be then conceived as badly needed, corrective surgery without which the hope for effective equal liberty for all citizens would be frustrated and delayed.

So far, academia has been unable to determine if populism is a democratizing force or a pathology of democracy. This normative ambiguity is partially rooted in the identification of populism mostly with a style of politics, the repertoires used to canvas votes and achieve power. I argue conceiving populism exclusively as a form of political discourse, performance, or strategy neglects the fact that these political parties and leaders being labeled as populists have very different conceptions of the people, goals, and relations to liberal democracy. In an effort to distinguish populism from neo-fascist politics, I propose to understand populism as a political form within the republican tradition of thought. Through this lens, populism would be a mode of representation that has as subject the people-as-plebs and is rooted in a plebeian ideology of emancipation. This republican interpretation of populism introduces a normative layer to the concept, which allows us to properly separate the populist from the tyrant dressed in populist rhetoric, and better understand how to channel populist mobilization for the benefit of democracy.

In the first part of the paper, I offer a republican interpretation of populism that places the concept within an egalitarian, emancipatory conception of plebeian ideology, which was first formulated in the late Roman republic. I argue populism should be conceived as an electoral type of modern plebeian politics aimed at resolving the current crisis of inequality and precarization by reforming liberal democracies to increase popular power. In the second part I analyze the office of the Roman dictator as a way of better understanding the potential powers a populist should wield when in government without undermining liberty. I analyze the origins of the office of the Roman dictator through the account provided by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and then engage with the reinterpretation of the office by Machiavelli as well as the constitutionalizing of dictatorial power in the works of Carl Schmitt, Frederick Watkins, and Clinton Rossiter. Finally, I draw a parallel between the office of the constitutional dictator and the populist leader in government. I argue for conceiving the ideal populist as a popularly authorized constitutional dictator, called upon to bring remedy to the current crisis of inequality and the precarization of social conditions. From this perspective, for a populist to be successful when in power, government inevitably becomes authoritarian, bypassing limits and deliberative procedures to accomplish its project of plebeian emancipation. As an elected officer with extraordinary powers to deal with an internal emergency, the populist would lead a “crisis government,” a “period of absolutism” backed by popular vote aimed at radically reforming democracy in order to save it from oligarchy.

Author

• Camila Vergara, Columbia University