The populist moment

opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/chantal-mouffe/populist-moment

Chantal Mouffe

The 'demos', the sovereign people, has been declared a 'zombie' category and this is why
we now live in 'post-democratic' societies. Português Español

Spain's Podemos party leader, Pablo Iglesias, addresses Spain's acting conservative Prime
Minister, Mariano Rajoy, at the Spanish parliament, Oct. 27, 2016. Francisco Seco
AP/Press Association Images, all rights reservedWe are experiencing a 'populist moment'
in Europe today. This is a turning point for our democracies, whose future depends on the
response to this challenge. To address this situation, it is essential to discard the simplistic
vision of the media, presenting populism as mere demagogy, and adopt an analytical
perspective. I propose to follow Ernesto Laclau, who defines populism as a way to
construct the political by establishing a political frontier that divides society into two camps,
appealing to the mobilization of the 'underdog' against ‘those in power’.

Populism is not an ideology or a political regime, and cannot be attributed to a specific

programmatic content. It is compatible with different forms of government. It is a way of
doing politics which can take various forms, depending on the periods and the places. It
emerges when one aims at building a new subject of collective action –the people– capable
of reconfiguring a social order lived as unfair.

Examined from this standpoint, Europe’s recent success of populist forms of politics is the
expression of a crisis of liberal-democratic politics. This is due to the convergence of
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several phenomena that, in recent years, have affected the conditions in which democracy
is exercised. The first phenomenon is what I have proposed to call 'post-politics', referring
to the blurring of political frontiers between right and left. It was the result of the consensus
established between the parties of the center-right and center-left on the idea that there
was no alternative to neo-liberal globalization. Under the imperative of 'modernization', they
accepted diktats of globalized financial capitalism and the limits it imposed on state
intervention and public policies. The role of parliaments and institutions that allow citizens
to influence policy decisions was drastically reduced. The notion that represented the heart
of the democratic ideal: the power of people was abandoned. Today, talking about
"democracy" is only to refer to the existence of elections and the defense of human rights.

This evolution, far from being a progress towards a more mature society, as it is said
sometimes, undermines the very foundations of our Western model of democracy, usually
designated as 'liberal democracy'. That model was the result of the articulation between
two traditions. The first one is the liberal tradition of the rule of law, separation of powers
and the affirmation of individual freedom. And the second one is the democratic tradition of
equality and popular sovereignty. To be sure, these two political logics are ultimately
irreconcilable, since there will always be a tension between the principles of freedom and
equality. But that tension is constitutive of our democratic model because it guarantees
pluralism.

Throughout European history, it has been negotiated through an ‘agonistic’ struggle

between the ‘right’, which favors freedom, and the 'left', which emphasizes equality. As the
left/right frontier became more and more blurred due to the reduction of democracy to its
liberal dimension, the space disappeared where that agonistic confrontation between
adversaries could take place, and today the democratic aspiration can no longer find
channels of expression within the traditional political framework. The 'demos', the sovereign
people, has been declared a 'zombie' category and this is why we now live in 'post-
democratic' societies.

These changes at the political level took place within the context of a new 'neo-liberal'
hegemonic formulation, characterized by a form of regulation of capitalism in which the role
of financial capital is central. We have seen an exponential increase in inequality not only
affecting the working-class, but also a great part of the middle-class who have entered a
process of pauperization and precarization. One can therefore speak of a true phenomenon
of 'oligarchization' of our societies.

In those conditions of social and political crisis, a variety of populist movements has
emerged rejecting post-politics and post-democracy. They claim to give back to the people
the voice that has been confiscated by the elites. Regardless of the problematic forms that
some of these movements may take, it is important to recognize that they are the
expression of legitimate democratic aspirations. Nonetheless, the people can be
constructed in very different ways and the problem is that not all are going towards a
progressive direction. In several European countries, this aspiration to regain sovereignty
has been captured by right-wing populist parties that have managed to construct the people
through a xenophobic discourse that excludes immigrants, considered as a threat to
national prosperity. These parties are constructing a people whose voice calls for a
democracy aimed at exclusively defending the interests of those considered ‘true
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nationals’. The only way to prevent the emergence of such parties and to oppose those that
already exist is through the construction of another people, promoting a progressive
populist movement that is receptive to those democratic aspirations and orientates them
toward a defense of equality and social justice.

It is the absence of a narrative able to offer a different vocabulary to formulate these

democratic demands which explains that right-wing populism has an echo in increasingly
numerous social sectors. It is urgent to realize that in order to fight this kind of populism,
moral condemnation and demonization of their supporters does not work. This strategy is
completely counterproductive because it reinforces the anti-establishment feelings of the
popular classes. Instead of disqualifying their demands, they must be formulated in a
progressive way, defining the adversary as the configuration of forces that strengthen and
promote the neo-liberal project. What is at stake is the constitution of a collective will that
establishes a synergy between the multiplicity of social movements and political forces and
whose objective is the deepening of democracy. Given that numerous social sectors suffer
the effects of financialized capitalism, there is a potential for this collective will to have a
transversal character that exceeds the right / left distinction as traditionally configured. To
live up to the challenge that the populist moment represents for the future of democracy
what is needed is a politics that reestablishes the agonistic tension between the liberal logic
and the democratic logic. Despite what it is sometimes argued, it can be done without
endangering the basic democratic institutions. Conceived in a progressive way, populism,
far from being a perversion of democracy, constitutes the most adequate political force to
recover it and expand it in today's Europe.

Translated from Spanish by Teresa Sastre, member of Democracia Abierta's Volunteer

Program.

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