While the rise of populism in Western Europe over the past three decades has received a great deal of attention in the academic and popular literature, less attention has been paid to the rise of its opposite— anti-populism. This short article examines the discursive and stylistic dimensions of the construction and maintenance of the populism/anti-populism divide in Western Europe, paying particular attention to how anti-populists seek to discredit populist leaders, parties and followers. It argues that this divide is increasingly antagonistic, with both sides of the divide putting forward extremely different conceptions of how democracy should operate in the Western European political landscape: one radical and popular, the other liberal. It closes by suggesting that what is subsumed and feared under the label of the “populist threat” to democracy in Western Europe today is less about populism than nationalism and nativism.
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In Democratic Theory
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–16 (16 total)
Ordoliberal White Democracy, Elitism, and the Demos
The Case of Wilhelm Röpke
Phillip Becher, Katrin Becker, Kevin Rösch, and Laura Seelig
's death in 1966, former West German chancellor Ludwig Erhard—political flagship of the social market economy—praised his works as a “decisive inspiration in his journey toward liberalism” ( Kolev 2019: xxi ). The fear of the people and the distaste for
In Democratic Theory
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 70–96 (27 total)
Democratic Procedures Are Not Inherently Democratic
A Critical Analysis of John Keane's The New Despotism (Harvard University Press, 2020)
Gergana Dimova
, dissenting. They may take it to the next level and seek to overthrow the regime. This feasible perspective of democratic procedures benefiting the demos, and not the elites, is what despotisms fear the most. Their fears are justified. Mikhail Gorbachev
In Democratic Theory
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2021
- Article Type:
- Review Article
- Pages:
- 96–109 (14 total)
Monique Deveaux
women selected for involvement in community committees were often inactive, and when they did participate, often deferred “to the authority of men in the household and project affairs” for fear of ridicule or worse (2005: 309). In the final project
In Democratic Theory
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 2–25 (24 total)
China’s New Silk Road
Autocracy Promotion in the New Asian Order?
Octavia Bryant and Mark Chou
Western analysts have begun questioning “the extent to which China, as its power grows, will seek to remake the world in its authoritarian image.” The fear is that countries under Beijing’s sphere of influence will begin to see the appeal of autocracy
Lest We Forget (Matter)
Posthumanism, Memory, and Exclusion
Matthew Howard
apprehensions of life. For instance, when Butler states that “our fear of understanding belies a deeper fear that we shall be taken up by it, find it is contagious, become infected in a morally perilous way by thinking of the presumed enemy” (2004: 8), it brings
In Democratic Theory
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 71–90 (20 total)
The Will of the People?
Carl Schmitt and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on a Key Question in Democratic Theory
Samuel Salzborn
Fromm (1942) called “the fear of freedom.” The emancipation of bourgeois capitalist society was a political and legal one, with the goal of economic emancipation—but unfettered equal rights for all does not actually mean unfettered equal possibilities
In Democratic Theory
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 11–34 (24 total)
Neoliberalism, the Left and the Rise of the Far Right
On the Political and Ideological Implications of Capitalism's Subordination of Democracy
Costas Panayotakis
Democratic advantage heading into Tuesday's midterm elections for Congress” ( Harwood 2018 ). A related development is the proliferation within the far right of fears of ‘replacement.’ Replacement theory, which has been spreading rapidly enough to alarm the
In Democratic Theory
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 48–72 (25 total)
Wolfgang Merkel and Jean-Paul Gagnon
interest to attract investments on the one side but, in an open global economy, they also have to fear that if they put too many conditions like taxes and environmental protections and so forth in place then investors may go to different countries. This is
Democracy's Conceptual Politics
Liberalism and Its Others
Christopher Hobson
democracy, the first decades of this century have been defined by increasing doubts and fears. In their introduction, the editors are explicit in their hope that, “by paying attention to these marginalized conceptions of democracy we contribute to the
In Democratic Theory
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 97–117 (21 total)