Is populism a democratic form of illiberalism?

Abstract

As much as the concept of populism eludes a precise definition, we can find in the thesis of the incompatibility between democracy and liberalism a useful starting point for understanding the phenomenon as it has manifested in recent decades. However, given the polysemic nature of the term liberalism, it is necessary to determine which sense of liberalism populism opposes in the name of popular sovereignty. In this work, we identify political liberalism as the target of populism, showing that its antagonism with popular sovereignty (as argued by authors such as Carl Schmitt) arises only from a distorted view of what democracy is, since democratic legitimacy depends on liberalism in its political sense. Economic liberalism, in turn, is perfectly compatible with populism, but in its pure form, it does not result in an arrangement that aligns with the normative requirements of political liberalism. Finally, the question arises as to whether, in certain circumstances of profound economic inequality, the traditional institutional arrangements of political liberalism can be modified in the name of its own normative demands.