Populism, Resentment-in-Power, and Democracy

• In Event: Publics and Democratic Action

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on the relationship of two polemical concepts, resentment and populism, and their connections with democracy. We first overview the uses of the concept of resentment in the populism literature. We observe that, in this literature, resentment is mainly utilized to describe the negative emotion that leads to the rise of the so-called ‘noxious’ political phenomenon of populism, while there is a lacuna in the study of the relationship between populism-in-power and resentment. We then make two arguments. First, populism defined as a socio-cultural phenomenon relates better with the concept of resentment than strategic or ideological definitions of the concept. Our second and main argument connects resentment and its production/reproduction with populist leadership in power in a democratic institutional framework. Nietzsche provides the insight that ressentiment is not simply a psychological but a typological phenomenon producing particular moral judgments, so manufacturing resentment from the position of power does not necessarily need to be a strategy of the leader, but it could also arise from the fact that the leader is a “man of ressentíment” reproducing resentfulness ineluctably. Based on this insight and utilizing Ure’s conceptual framework that distinguishes among different forms of resentment, we argue that populism-in-power (especially its right-wing forms) is potentially the vehicle that transforms ‘socio-political resentment’ to ‘ontological ressentiment’. This occurs because of the tendency for populists-in-power to hyperpoliticize socio-cultural differences, their promise of redemption in this world through politics without delivering equality of power, and their rhetoric of victimhood while in power.

Authors

• Yunus Sozen, Le Moyne College

• Eylem Dogan, Istinye University