Abstract:
The purpose of this article is to offer an interpretation of some of the recent literature on populism, focusing on two fundamental aspects of how the concept has been used: (i) to identify the kind of political processes that populism intends to explain and whether it’s the concept is adequate for analytically differentiating a specific phenomenon and (ii) to understand how such interpretations articulate populism with an understanding of the functioning and possible crisis of democracy. The thesis here is that the uses of the concept of populism are always based on a certain conception of democracy and, therefore, on the type of conflict that populism is believed to awakens within a given system. Different uses of the concept of populism presuppose different readings and different expectations about the interaction between representation and democracy and, therefore, are related to different conceptions about the limits of the relationship between democratic legitimacy and political institutions.
Keywords:
Populism; Democracy; Ideology; Representation; Popular Sovereignty; Crisis