Donald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, Marine Le Pen, Hugo Chávez—populists are on the rise across the globe. But what exactly is populism? Should everyone who criticizes Wall Street or Washington be ...called a populist? What precisely is the difference between right-wing and left-wing populism? Does populism bring government closer to the people or is it a threat to democracy? Who are "the people" anyway and who can speak in their name? These questions have never been more pressing.In this groundbreaking volume, Jan-Werner Müller argues that at populism's core is a rejection of pluralism. Populists will always claim that they and they alone represent the people and their true interests. Müller also shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, populists can govern on the basis of their claim to exclusive moral representation of the people: if populists have enough power, they will end up creating an authoritarian state that excludes all those not considered part of the proper "people." The book proposes a number of concrete strategies for how liberal democrats should best deal with populists and, in particular, how to counter their claims to speak exclusively for "the silent majority" or "the real people."Analytical, accessible, and provocative, What Is Populism? is grounded in history and draws on examples from Latin America, Europe, and the United States to define the characteristics of populism and the deeper causes of its electoral successes in our time.
Constitutional Patriotism offers a new theory of citizenship and civic allegiance for today's culturally diverse liberal democracies. Rejecting conventional accounts of liberal nationalism and ...cosmopolitanism, Jan-Werner Mller argues for a form of political belonging centered on universalist norms, adapted for specific constitutional cultures. At the same time, he presents a novel approach to thinking about political belonging and the preconditions of democratic legitimacy beyond the nation-state. The book takes the development of the European Union as a case study, but its lessons apply also to the United States and other parts of the world. Mller's essay starts with an engaging historical account of the origins and spread of the concept of constitutional patriotism-the idea that political attachment ought to center on the norms and values of a liberal democratic constitution rather than a national culture or the "global human community." In a more analytical part, he then proposes a critical conception of citizenship that makes room for dissent and civil disobedience while taking seriously a polity's need for stability over time. Mller's theory of constitutional patriotism responds to the challenges of the de facto multiculturalism of today's states--with a number of concrete policy implications about immigration and the preconditions for citizenship clearly spelled out. And it asks what civic empowerment could mean in a globalizing world.
This book is the first major account of political thought in twentieth-century Europe, both West and East, to appear since the end of the Cold War. Skillfully blending intellectual, political, and ...cultural history, Jan-Werner Mller elucidates the ideas that shaped the period of ideological extremes before 1945 and the liberalization of West European politics after the Second World War. He also offers vivid portraits of famous as well as unjustly forgotten political thinkers and the movements and institutions they inspired.Mller pays particular attention to ideas advanced to justify fascism and how they relate to the special kind of liberal democracy that was created in postwar Western Europe. He also explains the impact of the 1960s and neoliberalism, ending with a critical assessment of today's self-consciously post-ideological age.
Against the background of recent developments in Hungary, the article discusses the question whether the European Union ought to play a role in protecting liberal democracy in Member States. First, ...it is argued that the EU has the authority to do so, both in a broad normative sense and in a narrower legal sense (though the latter is more likely to be disputed). The article then asks whether the EU has the capacity to establish a supranational militant democracy; here it is argued that at the moment both appropriate legal instruments and plausible political strategies are missing. To remedy this situation, the article proposes a new democracy watchdog, analogous to, but more powerful than, the Venice Commission. Finally, it is asked whether EU interventions would provoke a nationalist backlash. There is insufficient evidence to decide this question, but the danger of such a backlash probably tend to be overestimated.
This article assesses recent normative theorizing on militant democracy-the idea that, to protect themselves, democracies might under some circumstances have to restrict the rights of those set on ...undermining or outright destroying democracy. Particular attention is paid to new justifications of militant democracy that seek to avoid the danger of militant democracy itself damaging democracy, as well as to the question of who the agent deciding on implementing militant democracy ought to be. Three new challenges for thinking about militant democracy are identified: certain forms of religious belief and practice, new varieties of authoritarianism that include elections and some limited freedoms, and the question of whether international and supranational institutions can play a role in protecting democracies.
Militant democracy calls for pre-emptive measures against political actors who use democratic institutions to undermine or outright abolish a democratic political system. Born in the context of ...interwar fascism, militant democracy has recently been revived by political and legal theorists concerned about the rise of authoritarian right-wing populists. A long-standing charge against militant democracy-also articulated with renewed force in our era-is that, as a top-down way to deal with the intolerant, militant democracy is inherently elitist and bears uncomfortable similarities with technocracy (also understood as an intolerant form of governance). But while it is true that militant democracy relies on state institutions to preserve democracy, it by no means excludes citizen engagement: "courts or the people" is a false choice. On the other hand, citizens engaged in militant democracy must take on the difficult task of distinguishing very clearly between democratic essentials under threat and political questions about which citizens might reasonably disagree. While citizen assemblies are not the answer to all of contemporary democracies' travails, they might be very helpful in clarifying such distinctions for wide audiences.
It has become conventional wisdom that populism is on the rise across the West. In Latin America, where populism is often perceived as a long-standing political tradition, leaders often described as ...populist have recently occupied center stage (and office) in a number of countries. The usage of the word populism signals anxieties both by liberals about democracy and by democrats about liberalism. Adapted from the source document.
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