Alternatives to Populism

This chapter focuses on alternatives to populism. Deploying the ideal typical definition of populism developed earlier, it shows that alternative interpretations of popular sovereignty, part/whole relations, forms of antagonism, and leadership can yield a category of “the popular” distinguished from populism. Only popular (vs. the populist) movements, parties, or governments remain on the normative and political foundation of pluralistic civil society. But populism cannot be defeated by a return to liberal democracy as it was before the new challenge. The chapter renews the authors’ 1992 argument of Civil Society and Political Theory, that the “plurality of democracies” based in present tendencies in civil society, meaning insistence of several and complementary projects in politics, the economy, and culture, is the best way to continue or renew democratization processes. It adds the importance of host ideologies, like democratic socialism, patriotism, and cultural equality, that should be rescued by committed constitutionalist democrats from their populist instrumentalization.