Populist Authority Beyond Weber: Democratic Legitimacy, Institutional Erosion, and the Crisis of Rationality

• In Event: Theorizing the Populist Moment

Abstract

This paper proposes a new ideal-typical form of authority generated by contemporary authoritarian populism. While populism has been widely analyzed as ideology or political style (Mudde 2007; Müller 2016; Brubaker 2017), less attention has been paid to the distinctive authority it consolidates in power. I argue that this authority cannot be fully captured by Weber’s classic distinction among charismatic, traditional, and legal-rational domination (Weber [1922] 1978). Unlike charismatic authority, populist authority does not primarily depend on extraordinary personal qualities; rather, it is legitimated through democratic elections and institutional procedures. Yet unlike legal-rational authority, it systematically erodes the very institutions that authorize it. Electoral legitimacy is invoked to justify executive encroachment on parliaments, courts, and independent media (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017; Norris and Inglehart 2019). Populist authority thus rules through democratic institutions in order to weaken institutional constraints. In the long term, this configuration also undermines the rational foundations of democratic modernity. Intensified polarization corrodes the conditions for communicative reason (Habermas 1984, 1987), replacing deliberation with moralized antagonism. By conceptualizing populism as a distinct mode of authority production, this paper contributes to debates on democratic backsliding and explains how regimes can remain electorally competitive while hollowing out liberal democracy from within.

Authors

• Sang Kyung Lee, Sogang University

• Je eun Yook, Sogang university