Abstract
According to the authors of Populism and Civil Society, ‘populism is situated within the democratic imaginary’ but its logic is authoritarian. This article agrees with the first but challenges the second argument by focussing on the question of representation. In the case of ‘populism as government’ the tensions between bottom-up and top-down articulations seem to be more or less resolved by the repression of bottom-up organization, but in so doing, so the argument of this article, populism is mutating into something else. Furthermore, ‘populist dictatorship’ seems to be closer to a dictatorship strategically using populist tools than to an intrinsic populist logic. While I agree with the authors on the authoritarian cases of populism in government, my argument diverges from the book when it comes to populism as government and introduces a discussion about the nature of populism. To this purpose, I first propose a complex definition of populism which understands populism not as the essence, but as one component of hybrid authoritarian formations, thus enabling the disentanglement of populism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism. Second, I examine two components of populism that Arato and Cohen lay out in the book: the specific representation pars pro toto and embodiment. Building on Lefort, I argue that these components are not populist but totalitarian and that the empirical manifestations of populism are always hybrid, mixing populist and authoritarian or even totalitarian components.
Populism and Civil Society is a rich examination and a fascinating reflection on populism. Arato and Cohen are well-known for their seminal work on civil society and extensive publications in this field. In the last years, they started connecting this expertise with the discussion of the populist phenomenon, becoming very engaged in ongoing academic debate (e.g., Arato 2013; Cohen 2019). Their theoretical piece examines the global phenomenon of populism and its challenge to constitutional democracy. They acknowledge that not all empirical manifestations of populism fully embody an authoritarian logic but focus on the threats posed by its authoritarian inclinations.
The book builds on a robust corpus of literature and depicts populism through immanent criticism and ideal-typical construction. It contrasts populism with a complex concept of democracy integrating political regime and system, constitutional, and governmental form, but also democratic ideal, norms, institutions, practices, and symbolism (pp. 113–115), taking democratic internal tensions and dynamics into consideration (p. 112). Two of these are particularly important for the emergence of populism: the tension between popular sovereignty and constitutionalism and that between popular sovereignty and representation (Chap. 1). They point to populism’s Manichean framing of the people against the elites, a logic of pars pro toto, friend-enemy conception of politics and an anti-establishment and anti-elitist stance favouring movement dynamics and hollow organizational party forms (p. 53). Arato and Cohen endorse the concept of thin ideology that ‘typically’ relies on host ideologies (p. 149).
This is the starting point for revealing the transformation of populism when in power. According to Arato and Cohen, ‘populism is situated within the democratic imaginary’ but its logic is authoritarian (p. 107), a claim that I will discuss later. This makes populism a hybrid phenomenon difficult to classify. They focus on the transformations populist governments introduce into democratic regimes and their ‘hybridization in an authoritarian direction’ (p. 112). Populist governments constitute a ‘distinct hybrid regime’ combining elements from democracy and authoritarianism but are ‘in effect neither one nor the other’ (p. 131). Hybridity allows more precision by tracing the evolution of populism toward authoritarianism, ‘democratic backsliding and even the shift to a new hybrid regime’ (p. 112). By revisiting the literature on populism from the 1960s onwards, the authors raise crucial questions about the reasons and conditions for the emergence of populism and its current prevalence.
Arato and Cohen characterize populist mobilization as complex relationships between movement structure and party involvement deeply affecting political representational relations in democracy and shift democratic government toward hybrid authoritarian forms (chap. 3). When it comes to practice, they show that the top-down/bottom-up distinction becomes blurred, adding an important layer to Ernesto Laclau’s populism conception as discourse articulation. In chapter 5, the authors propose ‘alternative chains of equivalence' as powerful means to counter populism by articulating ‘demands, grievances, and social identities in ways that focus on commonalities and foster cross-cutting pluralism and broad progressive alliances’. (p. 210) This is a highly innovative perspective for both, analysing and countering anti-democratic populist attempts, and makes the reader curious about further empirical cases.
Populism in power
Chapter 3 identifies three stages leading to authoritarianism: 1. ‘Populism in the government’ when populists occupy ‘the key posts in one or more (but not all!) branches of government’; 2. ‘populism as government’ that should be considered ‘neither as a constitutional democracy, nor as an authoritarian dictatorship, but as a hybrid’; and 3. The ‘fully authoritarian form’ that ensues in a ‘populist dictatorship’ (pp. 107–108). These transitions are spelled out in constitutional terms in Chapter 4. Building on cases from left-wing and right-wing populism Arato and Cohen argue that hybrid regimes are the outcomes of populism and that the populist logic is the driving force in this process (p. 107). Populism implies both the potential to become a corrective of democracy (p. 110) and a risk for democracy, yet for them ‘the logic of populism’ is essentially authoritarian (p. 108, p. 186).
I fully agree with the analysis of the hybrid formations of populism in power. I also agree that populism is anti-institutional, relies on the friend-foe logic, and is deeply dependent on political mobilization. These characteristics are difficult to maintain once populist parties and leaders are in office. Arato and Cohen thus identify several consequences: when in government, the populist friend-foe logic cannot unify the citizens in the name of the country. Moreover, ‘the greater inclusiveness and new participatory mechanisms, if they introduce them at all, come at the price of new exclusions, and evisceration of the very democratic system they supposedly seek to improve’ (p. 110). In many and maybe in the majority of the cases, populism in power resolves this dilemma by becoming authoritarian. This happened with Órban, Erdogan, and Chávez. I agree with the analysis of the evolution of these cases toward an authoritarian regime. However, it looks unlikely that the same dynamics could apply to populist movements and parties like Podemos.
My divergence with the authors is about whether the populist logic is per se authoritarian. Although populism can be a facilitator for authoritarian and even totalitarian regimes, this is not the only possibility. I am not sure if what comes after ‘populism in government’ is necessarily ‘populism as government’. For Arato and Cohen, ‘the specific dynamics and constraints of the particular blend of democratic and authoritarian elements in the specific hybrid subtype’ is the ‘populist one’ (p. 142). I wonder if cause and effect are not mixed up here. I propose to consider both authoritarianism and populism as combining parts whose intensities can increase or decrease. Surely, authoritarian hybrid regimes still have populist elements such as anti-institutional attitudes and anti-elite resentments, the outsider status of the leader, her alliance with the people, and the inclination to plebiscitarian procedures and rhetoric. What seems unclear to me is to what extent populist elements are responsible for the authoritarian turn. My argument is twofold: First, I consider populism not as the essence, but as one component of hybrid authoritarian formations. Second, I would challenge two components of populism Arato and Cohen lay out in the book: the specific representation pars pro toto and embodiment. Building on Lefort, I argue that these components are not populist but totalitarian.
Populism as a component of hybrid authoritarian formations
Once in government, populist parties or leaders can push democratic reforms, become mainstream or evolve toward authoritarianism or even totalitarianism. In the last decades, the Peronist party accepted democratic rules and even developed measures described by the authors as tools to counter populism, like pushing the recognition of minorities and women’s rights and seeking common ground in plurality. Surely, in the case of ‘populism as government’ the tensions between bottom-up and top-down articulations seem to be more or less resolved by the repression of bottom-up organization (p. 149). But in so doing, is not populism mutating into something else? Further, ‘populist dictatorship’ seems to be closer to a dictatorship strategically using populist tools than to an intrinsic populist logic. Again, my divergence with the authors is not about the analysis of the authoritarian cases of populism in and as government but rather about the nature of populism.
The gradual perspective helps moving toward an understanding of the fluidity of populism that may permeate politics, culture, and society and that may blend with different host ideologies (Diehl 2023, p. 19). I do not see gradation as contradictory with the authors' analysis since they suggest that gradation of authoritarianism occurs in the transition to populist dictatorship (Arato & Cohen 2022, p. 109). Populism may increase or decrease depending on the situation, as the radicalization of the AfD shows. The party started as typical populist, rejecting the EU because of its elites and lack of accountability, and claiming more popular sovereignty. Shortly after its foundation, the AfD became a right-wing populist party, mostly because of the emergence of extreme-right ideology in its organizations. The result was the first wave of expulsion of moderate members; however, the process did not stop there. In the following years, the AfD became increasingly radical, expelling even right-wing populist leaders such as Petry and Meuthen. Today, it is still using populism but has become a far-right party. In this radicalization process, populism has been a crucial facilitator yet cannot be described as the guiding principle or internal logic of the party.
I would rather cast populism as a phenomenon that can be added to authoritarianism and fascism, such as in the case of Juan Domingo Perón, described by Juan Linz as a ‘populist authoritarianism with some fascist components’ (Linz 2000, 192). I am therefore tempted to reframe the book’s account on populist hybrid regimes. While Arato and Cohen think that a ‘populist regime is a distinctive hybrid that introduces enough authoritarian features into the democratic contexts in which it arises’ (p. 148), I would invert this relation and argue that populism does not introduce authoritarian features, on the contrary, such evolutions show a transformation of populism into authoritarianism. That said, such an authoritarian regime can maintain populist features in order to legitimize itself as democratic.
Pars pro toto representation
Yet the formation of a homogenous body of the people – pars pro toto representation – and embodiment by the leader attributed to populism seems problematic. According to Lefort, these are the two major characteristics of totalitarianism.
Political linguists recognize a synecdochical logic in populism. Accordingly, populist rhetoric is a toto pro parte logic involving positive and negative mechanisms for democratic representation, depending on the host ideology (Reisigl 2007, 1130). Most importantly, populism refers to the key concept of democracy: ‘the people as the political sovereign’. (Reisigl 2007, 1130) There are good reasons to assume that pars pro toto and toto pro parte representations are interconnected. In a famous article (2013), Arato fully developed this notion.
However, pars pro toto representation could already be found in Sieyès’s claim that the third Estate was everything. The very idea that the discriminated majority should be what counts is deeply intricated with history of democracy. The French Revolution abolished the Estate’s privileges and the national assembly was founded to represent the whole. Another pars pro toto logic can be found in the Marxist conception of the revolution. The most exploited and excluded part of the whole, the proletariat, should be the major force of the revolutionary process. Finally, a third form emerged during the 1968 protests, when French students announced their solidarity with Daniel Cohn-Bendit: ‘We are all German Jews’. Here, the victim of injustice is chosen from the whole. Identification with the part is the necessary step for creating solidarity and demanding justice. These three arrangements illustrate the variants of pars pro toto representation.
When the authors refer to pars pro toto representation they are depicting what gives birth to terror and totalitarianism. Populism is supposed to do the same as revolutionary terror: ‘extract the people from within the people’ (Lefort 1988, 79; Arato 2013, 147). Lefort highlights the pars pro toto logic during the revolutionary terror showing that it became more than simply representing the whole by one part or all parts by the whole. Moreover, pars pro toto representation had the function to ‘re-create the people from the people’ and reveals the first contours of the ‘people-as-one’, the homogeneous people of totalitarianism (Lefort 1988, 79). Enemies are not only opponents but existential threats to the body politic (Lefort 1988, 80). I do not think this ideological premise can be extended to populism. Populism is not terror. It defines elites as the enemy, but does not pursuit their destruction. Rather, populism identifies the elite’s structural power position. Its promise is not to destroy the enemy; it aims at their power.
In the case of right-wing populism, things become more complicated, since the host ideology constructs an existential enemy that must be destroyed. That is the case in the narrative of the ‘big replacement’, openly embraced by far-right politicians like Zemmour (Reconquête), Sellner (Identitarian movement), or Höcke (AfD). When combined with a strong portion of populism, this narrative becomes milder and ambivalent (Reisigl 2007).
Disentangling populism and totalitarianism
Arato and Cohen follow Lefort’s argument on the symbolic representation of democracy. In modern democracy, ‘there is no power linked to a body’ (Lefort 1986, 303) and the image of the people is ‘indeterminable’ (Lefort 1986, 304); totalitarianism responds to this lack of determinacy by constructing ‘the people-as-one’, the imagination of a homogeneous unity embodied by the leader. These are two major totalitarian distortions of democratic symbolism that Arato and Cohen attribute to populism (Arato & Cohen 2022, 153).
For Lefort, the problem is not the formation of a unity of society but the specific shape of this unity. Contrasting democracy with the ancient regime clarifies the point: If the ancient régime ‘represented its unity and its identity to itself as that of a body’ (1986, 302), democracy undermines the constitution of society as a body and homogeneous unity that totalitarianism attempts to rebuild. In democracy, unity cannot efface social division. Therefore, society’s identity ‘will constantly be open to question’ and its identity will remain latent (Lefort 1986, 303–4). This is the opposite of totalitarianism, in which the people ‘is’ constructed as a homogeneous unity, whereby differences and conflicts within society disappear. Imagining the people as a homogeneous body should be a source of concern. I fully agree with the Lefortian democratic view adopted by Arato and Cohen and their rejection of ‘the people-as-one’ as well as with the need for ‘the strongest possible taboo against leaders stating or even thinking that they embody or they alone speak for the mythical entity “the people”’ (p. 191). My divergence with their view concerns the attribution of ‘the people-as-one’ and their embodiment by the leader to populism.
I think it is more accurate to depict the people in populism as a harmonious heartland than as a homogenic unity. Populist movements and parties like Podemos can defend the diversity of society, advocate for LGBTQ rights and for anti-racist policy while claiming the unity of the people. The problem is that the predominance of right-wing populism today obfuscates the different possibilities of populism. A closer look at right-wing populism shows it. Right-wing populism adopts all the elements of populism but its definition of the people is borrowed from fascism. In fascism, the people build a homogeneous body that constantly needs to defend itself from strangers and heterogeneous elements. Here, the very idea of ‘body infection’ legitimizes the destruction of the ‘others’ since they represent a threat to the people. This was very prominent in national-socialist ideology and influences right-wing extremists today. The ‘people-as-one’ can indeed be found in right-wing populism. Nevertheless, it originates from the host ideology and varies depending on the intensity of right-wing extremism. Although the risk of populism becoming authoritarian and even totalitarian is immanent (Diehl 2019), this does not necessarily mean that populism builds the totalitarian ‘people-as-one’.
The second feature of totalitarian representation attributed to populism is embodiment banished by democracy. In the ancient regime, the place of power was seen as embodied by the king (Lefort 1988). The principle of popular sovereignty kept the symbolic place of power empty, preventing representation to embrace embodiment. This symbolic mutation is the very condition for democracy.
I admit that there is something disturbing in populism regarding the representation of the people by the leader. Some scholars described it as semi-embodiment (de la Torre 2013). Under populism ‘power is not embodied permanently’, but it is semi-embodied ‘because populists claim legitimacy in winning open and free elections that they could conceivably loose, and they might be bound by electoral results’ (de la Torre 2013, 14). This is indeed different from totalitarian representation, where elections are not necessary. In totalitarianism sovereignty is transferred to the leader, who embodies the power and the people’s will. Populism is more complex and ambivalent. It keeps promising popular sovereignty to be realized by the people. However, I think that what happens here must be described as a populist twist that can be progressively fulfilled up to the point that populism has mutated into authoritarianism or totalitarianism.
The populist twist
As I wrote elsewhere, populism has a very sophisticated method to cope with the democratic tensions between authorization and accountability and between verticality and horizontality regarding the people. First, populist leaders amplify the tension between the people’s power and authoritative leadership; second, they foster the mimetic representation of the people by the leader, promoting identification and downplaying mistrust and critique. Populism twists democratic representation, but, here again, the question is of intensity. If populist leaders overemphasize the verticality of their relationship with the people, authorization is reinforced and accountability eclipsed. This dynamic can provide the ideal conditions for the emergence of authoritarian or totalitarian power without being identical to it (Diehl 2019, p. 130).
Many of the features I use to describe this twist are compatible with Arato and Cohen’s approach: (1) The leader’s interpretation of the popular will is presented as a straightforward act of popular expression; (2) Deliberation and participation are bypassed as followers are rallied; (3) The gap and power asymmetry between the leader and the people are disregarded, simultaneously bolstering the former’s personal influence; (4) Individuals neglect their cognitive authority, abstaining from scrutinizing the leader’s actions. The populist twist requires identification, endorsement of leadership through similarity, and near-unquestioning trust. These elements collectively enable the leader to overshadow followers' wills with his own. The populist twist thus negates the tension between vertical leadership and horizontal equality without eliminating accountability. However, this does not mean (yet) that populism is already authoritarianism or totalitarianism. The tension between verticality and horizontality apparently disappears when the leader’s will is presented as the people’s will, but it remains latent and can be activated, differently from totalitarianism. Additionally, populist leaders still insist on the idea that the people – and not the leader – are the actual sovereign.
Arato and Cohen are right in insisting on the risks of populism and on its function in legitimating hybrid regimes. In contrast to their conclusions, I emphasize the fact that populist representation is always at the edge yet still operates within the democratic frame. However, when it becomes the embodiment of ‘the people-as-one’, populist representation turns into totalitarian representation. Of course, symbolic representation does not need to be stable and coherent all time, so that multiple combinations of democratic promises, populist claims, and totalitarian representation may emerge.
