On the Will of the People: Notes on the Political “Theory” of Populism

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Offe
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
National People ◽  
The Will

The “will of the (national) people” is the ubiquitously invoked reference unit of populist politics. The essay tries to demystify the notion that such will can be conceived of as a unique and unified substance deriving from collective ethnic identity. Arguably, all political theory is concerned with arguing for ways by which citizens can make e pluribus unum—for example, by coming to agree on procedures and institutions by which conflicts of interest and ideas can be settled according to standards of fairness. It is argued that populists in their political rhetoric and practice typically try to circumvent the burden of such argument and proof. Instead, they appeal to the notion of some preexisting existential unity of the people’s will, which they can redeem only through practices of repression and exclusion.

Rousseau on the People as Legislative Gatekeepers, Not Framers

2005 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
ETHAN PUTTERMAN
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ideal State ◽  
The People ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject

Who drafts the laws in Rousseau's ideal state? According to John T. Scott it is the people alone who execute this function and Rousseau “does not positively argue that commissaires, magistrates, or anyone else has the power to propose laws.” Challenging this view, I argue that the philosopher's varied statements on the subject of lawgiving can be shown to establish merely a right by the people to participate in agenda-setting by others. Rousseau believes that the laws must reflect the will of the people but not necessarily through their physical writing, drafting, or framing of constitutional legislation. More important than popular agenda-setting is the majority's freedom to check those who do draft the laws. Amending my earlier argument that the sovereign is barred from legislating, I reveal how Rousseau's notion of self-legislation as “gatekeeping,” rather than agenda-setting, is central to the political theory and institutions of Du contrat social.

scholarly journals Political Theory of Populism

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Urbinati
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
Democratic Principles

Populism is the name of a global phenomenon whose definitional precariousness is proverbial. It resists generalizations and makes scholars of politics comparativist by necessity, as its language and content are imbued with the political culture of the society in which it arises. A rich body of socio-historical analyses allows us to situate populism within the global phenomenon called democracy, as its ideological core is nourished by the two main entities—the nation and the people—that have fleshed out popular sovereignty in the age of democratization. Populism consists in a transmutation of the democratic principles of the majority and the people in a way that is meant to celebrate one subset of the people as opposed to another, through a leader embodying it and an audience legitimizing it. This may make populism collide with constitutional democracy, even if its main tenets are embedded in the democratic universe of meanings and language. In this article, I illustrate the context-based character of populism and how its cyclical appearances reflect the forms of representative government. I review the main contemporary interpretations of the concept and argue that some basic agreement now exists on populism's rhetorical character and its strategy for achieving power in democratic societies. Finally, I sketch the main characteristics of populism in power and explain how it tends to transform the fundamentals of democracy: the people and the majority, elections, and representation.

scholarly journals Come Fly With Me: Analyzing The F-35 Aircraft Acquisition Discourse to Study Incivility in Question Period

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arun Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
The People ◽  
Canadian Politics ◽  
The Government

The main objective behind the parliamentary practice of Question Period is to ensure that the government is held accountable to the people. Rather than being a political accountability tool and a showcase of public discourse, these deliberations are most often displays of vitriolic political rhetoric. I will be focusing my research on the ways in which incivil political discourse permeates the political mediascape with respect to one instance in Canadian politics - the acquisition of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. I believe that incivility in the political discourse of Question Period must be understood within the mechanics of the contemporary public sphere. By interrogating the complexities of how political discourse is being mediatized, produced and consumed within the prevailing ideological paradigms, I identify some of the contemporary social, cultural and political practices that produce incivility in parliamentary discourse.

Laws, Liberties, and the Will of the People

2021 ◽  
pp. 155-177
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
Development Of Resistance ◽  
The People ◽  
The Will ◽  
Role Of Religion

From the 1560s, tensions between Protestant and Catholics escalated and this was accompanied by a wave of writing on political and religious ideas, especially in France and the Netherlands. There was a renewed interest in the nature and origins of authority within the political sphere, particularly the importance of the ‘people’ and the ways in which their will could be both represented and controlled. This chapter considers some of the key texts of resistance theory written in the 1560s and 1570s, including Francogallia and the Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos in France, and George Buchanan’s De Jure Regni apud Scotos in Scotland. Discussions of liberty and privileges in the Netherlands during the Dutch Revolt are also considered; here historically based arguments began to be supplemented by appeals to wider principles of morality and natural law. The election of Henry of Valois to the Polish throne provides one example of elective monarchy in practice. This chapter discusses the role of religion and of legal arguments in the development of resistance theories. It also highlights some of the practical and conceptual difficulties in appealing to popular sovereignty, especially in a period of deep confessional divisions, and shows how the authority of magistrates could be understood in different ways.

Comunero Politics and the King’s Justice

2019 ◽  
pp. 145-166
Author(s):  
S. Elizabeth Penry
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
The Town

In 1774, a mob of commoner Andeans in one town in the viceroyalty of Peru attacked and killed their cacique, claiming that no person could be held responsible because the común, the community of commoners, had done it. The political theory was simple: if the cacique is good, he should be obeyed, but if he is a tyrant, if he does not serve justice, the people of the community have a right to overthrow him. A synthesis of pre-Columbian practices, religious teachings, and Spanish political philosophy, it was taught by officers in the cabildo and cofradías of the town. Also known as the rey común, Andeans defined it as “the ayllus together.” In testimony and written petitions, comuneros defended their right to overthrow their cacique, while professing loyalty to the Crown by paying tribute and serving mita. This idea of commoner self-government spread to other indigenous towns.

The Institutions of Deliberative Democracy

2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The People ◽  
The Will ◽  
Over Time

A theory of democratic institutions should provide us with a coherent combination of definition and justification. It should explain how it defines democratic institutions and also how they will or should function; but it also should explain why democracy, so understood, is desirable. We are all familiar with stories about the fiscal excesses to which democracies are prone, stories about the ignorance of voters, and stories about the venality of legislators. Some of us may also be suspicious of concepts such as “consent” or “the will of the people” associated with traditional arguments for democracy. Against this background, the current interest in deliberative democracy seems promising. This conception of democracy does not rely, for example, on the idea of rational and knowledgeable voters satisfying preferences they have independent of the political process. Nor does it rely on any notion of an independent popular will. Instead, it offers a picture of the democratic process as one in which men and women engage in constructive discussion, seeking a principled resolution of their differences and developing, over time, a conception of the terms on which they will live with one another.

The People, Rhetoric, and Affect: On the Political Force of Du Bois'sThe Souls of Black Folk

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
MELVIN L. ROGERS
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Black Folk ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
Souls Of Black Folk ◽  
Racial Lines ◽  
The One

In recent decades, the concept of “the people” has received sustained theoretical attention. Unfortunately, political theorists have said very little about its explicit or implicit use in thinking about the expansion of the American polity along racial lines. The purpose of this article in taking up this issue is twofold: first, to provide a substantive account of the meaning of “the people”—what I call its descriptive and aspirational dimensions—and second, to use that description as a framework for understanding the rhetorical character of W.E.B. Du Bois's classic work,The Souls of Black Folk, and its relationship to what one might call the cognitive–affective dimension of judgment. In doing so, I argue that as a work of political theory,Soulsdraws a connection between rhetoric, on the one hand, and emotional states such as sympathy and shame, on the other, to enlarge America's political and ethical imagination regarding the status of African-Americans.

The Failure of Political Argument: The Languages of Anti-Fascism and Anti-Totalitarianism in Post-September 11th Discourse

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Shorten
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Change ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
September 11Th ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
Public Imagination

Terms like ‘Islamo-fascism’, the ‘anti-totalitarian’ case for war in Iraq and the description of religiously motivated political extremism as a ‘new totalitarianism’ were all remarkable features of the political discourse organised around the response to the events of 11 September 2001. They share in common the attempt to ground political commitments and allegiances in two morally charged political languages: anti-fascism and anti-totalitarianism. But why did they fail to connect with the public imagination? This article argues that they were not constructed for present purposes so much as appropriated. Yet their projected consumption by a broader public turned on the feasibility of effecting conceptual change to accommodate new meanings and applications. The failure, in this case, to meet the standards thereby required suggests that an important dimension of the response to September 11th is the failure of political argument. It is proposed that this has implications more broadly for the relation between political theory and political rhetoric.

‘Rebellious Slaves’ and ‘Great Citizen’

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-51
Author(s):  
Boris Ivanovich Kolonitskii
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
The People ◽  
Personality Cult ◽  
The Press

The article treats one of A. F. Kerenskii’s most important speeches, the speech of 29 April 1917, known to historians for its reference to ‘rebellious slaves.’ It examines the speech’s political significance by reconstructing its reception and political currency and by analyzing its effect on the revolution’s political culture. The article compares variants of the speech as reported in the political press, resolutions and collective letters printed in the press, and also Kerenskii’s personal documents bearing on the speech. The article demonstrates that Kerenskii’s speech was a part of his tactical effort to create a coalition government on conditions favorable to him. The speech had a major impact on the political rhetoric of the revolutionary epoch, with various participants in the political arena manipulating Kerenskii’s reference to ‘rebellious slaves’ for their own purposes. The address contributed to the formation of a personality cult, built on Kerenskii’s image as ‘leader of the people.’

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