On Populism and Democracy

Abstract

Populism became the name of a form of government after the demise of Fascism. As a political form located between constitutional government and dictatorship, it displays family resemblances with opposite political systems, like liberal democracy and fascism. Today, populism grows within both democratizing and fully democratic societies although it takes its most mature riling profile in representative democracies, which are its real target. Historically, it used representation to construct a holistic image of the people that a leader promised to bring into power at the cost of downplaying pluralism and humiliating political and cultural minorities, thus twisting democratic procedures and institutions in ways that stretched it to democracy’s extreme borders. One of the core arguments of this article is that populism is a transfiguration of representative democracy that attempts once in government to reshape the democratic fundamentals, from the people and the majority principles to elections.