Representing The People:
Does Populism Increase Legitimacy in Representative Democracy?
By Imaël Snijders, BSc
student no. 5768705
Supervisor: dr. Sjoerdje van Heerden Second Reader: dr. Tjitske Akkerman
Date: 30th September 2015
Master Thesis Political Science
i. Acknowledgements
Writing a thesis can be of great fun to those who happen to have an inquisitive mind. Luckily, I may count myself amongst them. It can be a challenging experience too, however, for those who have to juggle several time consuming obligations at once. And no less do I have to count myself amongst those people too. Writing a thesis whilst working literally seven days a week to make ends meet certainly has not been one of the easiest episodes of my life. But it has been one that I have gone through with my head held high. It has been a direct consequence of having enjoyed my studies to the fullest for a full eight wonderful years, thus having achieved a major goal in life that I had formulated at high school already: I vowed to not graduate from university before the age of thirty. All this, of course, would not have been possible without the tremendous help of my fellow Dutch taxpayers and their political representatives for which I will always remain immensely grateful (and quite possibly indebted).
My interest in politics started at high school around the age of fourteen when I was attending a sewing workshop at school. Whilst working on making my own trousers I got absorbed in a fascinating discussion on Marxism and Liberalism with my dear friend and then-classmate Ruben. With the elections of George W. Bush in the United States and the rise of populism in the Netherlands with Pim Fortuyn a few years later, our discussions continued and further sharpened our minds. I believe it has been the constellation of political events that occurred during my high school years together with the countless discussions we have had that ultimately drew me into the studies of politics. An intellectual occupation I have not come to regret up to this very day. So thank you Ruben for igniting that spark of fascination for the machineries of power.
I would also like to express my gratitude to my family and friends in general, whom have always been there to support me. Henk, Pascale, Mieke and Ilya: I do not know what I would have done without you. Your warm words of support in times of need have meant and still mean a great deal to me. Lars, Inge, Kalle, Trudy and Delphine, our sparkling conversations, picnics in parks and on beaches and moments of laughter were wonderful and invigorating and have helped me see the sun when times seemed dark and dreary. Fons, our visits to Huize Gaudeamus, the Concertgebouw, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ and De Doelen have all been pure treasures lifting up my emotional wellbeing – moments I will never forget.
the studying so much more fun! And Simon, Martijn, Ellen and Luc: although our student years together have certainly contributed to the postponement of the end of my studies, I would not dream to have missed a single day of it. They have been worth every bottle of wine we have shared together on those long, philosophical (and not quite so philosophical) nights and early mornings.
Ellen, on a more personal note: thank you for luring me into our bet so as to motivate me to finish the thesis I can now present to you. Although it is going to be a karaoke night in Louvain instead of wine tasting in Lille (I missed my first deadline, after all…), I am sure that without it I would not have made the progress necessary for arriving at this final point. Let us hope we can sing Here Comes The Sun from The Beatles, as my hopes for stumbling upon Vivaldi’s Vedro con mio diletto are rather meagre to say the least.
And finally, my special thanks go to my supervisors Sjoerdje van Heerden and Tjitske Akkerman for taking their time in reading and commenting upon my work as well as for their patience with the delays that were necessary to make it to this end product that is now finally lying in front of you.
Imaël Snijders 4th of September 2015
Contents
i. Acknowledgements 3
ii. Introduction 6
1. True Democrats? 8
2. What is Democracy? Past, Present, Ideal and Reality 12
3. Responsive Government 14
4. Models of Representation and Accountability 19
5. Aristocracy by Design 23
6. Limits to Contestation: The Case for Liberal Democracy 27 7. Disjuncture between Public Opinion and Public Policy 32
8. In Search of Legitimacy 41
ii. Introduction
Populism as a political force has swept across Europe to such an extent over the last decade or two that it has been able to establish itself as a new party family to be reckoned with and with no signs of it leaving anytime soon. Together with the Greens they have been the only new contenders for political power since the Second World War that have been able to establish themselves as a successful party family, in that they remain electorally viable parties over time and space throughout Europe (Mudde 2007: 1). That is not to say that their growth has been welcomed much by either the established political parties or academics and political commentators alike – a situation which has not changed much ever since they first entered the political arenas.
At the same time, populists have managed to further fortify their position within representative democratic systems and there are no signs of them leaving the political stage anytime soon. Populism is here to stay. While mainstream political parties and their leaders keep denouncing them, their support seems to grow only further. What are we to make of this reality? Is populism merely a symptom of a democracy in crisis or do they bring more to the fore than disgruntled voters who want to punish incumbents for not living up to their expectations? In this theoretical inquiry, therefore, I have set out a normative assessment on the positive effects of populism on the functioning of representative democracy, if any. I will look at the aspects that legitimize a political system and our current regime of liberal democracy in particular, and at the extent to which populist contenders may or may not add to its overall legitimacy.
I will proceed my line of argument as follows. Beginning with trying to grasp what we mean when we speak of the obscurely used concept of populism and what their political aims are, I will firmly ground the debate from where to take off. As will become clear from here, populism and democracy are related to each other in ways that may be described as less than harmonious or even sustainable. To be able to make a proper assessment in this regard, I will explore what we mean when we speak of democracy – another concept that has caused great misunderstandings. Not least because it has existed in different forms over time. Next, I will treat the requirement of responsiveness on democratic governments and the different models of representation and accountability that may be devised to make this responsiveness a social reality. When looking closer at representative democracy and its origins, I will analyse its
aristocratic elements and imposed limitations that have been institutionalized to contain popular sovereignty, which may help in explaining the current populist tide. Turning to the role and systemic functions of parties and their evolutionary path, a further causal relationship between the current state of democracy and the all-pervasive populist wave may become more apparent. I will conclude my argument with a theory on what constitutes a legitimate political regime to assess whether populists do in fact contribute to democracy or not.
1. True Democrats?
For the purpose of this study, namely the uncovering as to whether populism contributes to further legitimating representative democracy, a normative account will be provided on the merits and shortcomings of this relative newcomer in western democracies. Whereas a great number of commentators and analysts are of the opinion that the phenomenon should be treated with suspicion or outright condemnation, as they are of the opinion that populism ought to be regarded as a potential threat or destabilising factor to modern democracy (Abts and Rummens 2007, Taguieff 1995, Urbinati 1998), I want to explore whether there may be found another side to the story of populism and whether in fact it may also embody some positive influence on the workings of representative democracy in the 21st century.
On the one hand, populism is seen as a dangerous phenomenon, which, through reference to popular sovereignty, may wish to pursue objectives that are considered problematic by the establishment, such as the exclusion of (ethnic) minorities in the case of the populist right, or opposing austerity measures in case of the recent rise of the populist left in Greece. On the other hand, it may also be considered a positive democratic corrective, as it aims to voice grievances and concerns of groups that do not feel represented in their political system. As such, populists may force traditional political actors to adapt their political agenda to the newly formed political reality of the day (Kaltwasser 2012: 184-185). To that end I will begin by looking into the definition of populism and its core ideological traits as a starting point for the construction of this theoretical inquiry.
Populism is a widely used term, but one which has been used to mean many different things to different people at different times. It ‘has been a force for change, a force against change, a creature of progressive politics of the left, the refuge of a measured defence of the status quo and a companion of the extreme right. (…) Attempts to identify a core of populism – something that runs through it in all its various guises – have left some writers with the clear sense that there is no sense to it’ (Taggart 2000: 10). But although it is true that populism has appeared in various forms and in different political contexts, it is my aim here to account for its influence on de democratic system as a whole and its legitimacy in particular, irrespective of whether a populist party is right or left wing oriented. To define populism in a way which ensures that the term covers most, if not all individual members that can be brought under the overarching concept of populism, defining it on the basis of a lowest common denominator would make
most sense, thus providing us with a minimum definition, which aim ‘is to describe the core features of the ideologies of all parties that are generally included in the party family’ (Mudde 2007: 15).
Many attributes may be added to each individual populist party, but at their very core they all share the following ideological features: populism ‘considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite,” [claiming] that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people’ (Mudde 2007: 23). Populists see themselves as the true democrats who give voice to the grievances and opinions in society that are consistently ignored or disregarded by governments, mainstream parties as well as the media – in short: the elite. Populists stand up against the prevailing power structure in society by reference to the ignored people (Canovan 1999: 2-3). It follows from this definition of populism that as a starting point one must assume that populism provides, or aims to provide, a solution to the identified ailments of the current state of democracy. Admittedly, the ailments as identified by the populists themselves, on which grounds it establishes its raison d’être.
Although the core ideology of populists remains the same regardless of their specific political colouring, its opposition against the established power structure and concomitant elite values logically leads to the fact that under different contextual circumstances its content will vary accordingly. Its values and principles depend strongly upon the nature of the elite(s) they are mobilising against and the dominant political discourse they find themselves confronted with.
Thus, the opposition of the Dutch Freedom Party against the progressive establishment is largely inspired by its alleged cultural and moral relativism, facilitating a multicultural state. By refusing to distinguish between superior and inferior cultures, its argument goes, the future of Western civilization is at risk by the increasing threat of Islamism (Vossen 2010: 27-28). By contrast, the political opposition of Greece’s Syriza against the Greek ruling classes, while still fulfilling both requirements of the definition of populism, mobilizes its electoral support primarily on economical grounds when it opposes neoliberalism and the financial actors of the EC, the ECB and the IMF that have imposed the harsh austerity measures upon Greece during the financial crisis. At the same time, Syriza has been a fierce advocate of equal rights towards immigrants and shown itself in favour of gender equality and LGBT rights (Stavrakakis & Katsambekis 2014: 132).
Populist parties derive their alleged legitimacy on the grounds of representing the democratic sovereign people as opposed to some kind of sectional interest (Canovan 1999: 4). When one considers populism beyond a mere style, strategy or rhetoric and instead takes this ideological orientation as the analytical point of departure, a number of observations can be made. When populism is understood as an ideology, its first element is that it considers the nature of society to be consisting of two homogenous and antagonistic groups, i.e. “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite” in which politics should be the expression of the general will of the former, thereby implicitly asserting that this expression of the people’s general will is not taking place as of yet, or at least not as much as it should be done in the eyes of the populists. And not only in the eyes of the populists themselves, as has been shown through empirical findings.
With regard to the question of how the electorate conceives populists and their role in the contestation for power, studies have established that one of the key voting motivators of populist parties’ clientele has been their sense of feeling alienated from politics, and that support for these parties ‘is motivated by the same ideological and pragmatic considerations as support for other parties’ (Bos, Van der Brug, De Vreese 2011). As it turns out, certain elements of the electorate who feel discontent with the workings of the political system and the party establishment thereof tend to vote for parties who are positioning themselves most strongly against the system as it is, i.e. populist parties (Oesch 2008).
A point in case is the rise and continuing support of the Front National in France, which began its ascendance in the early 1980s. During presidential elections, the party started with 0,75% of the votes in 1974 (or 190.000 votes) but has since then risen from 14,4% in 1988 (4.4 million) to 17,8% (5.5 million) in the runoff in 2002. Over the same period, the FN won its highest share of votes for legislative elections in 1997 at 15,2% (or 3.8 million) and for regional elections in 1998 at 15% (3.3 million). This share remained constant for the regional elections of 2004 at 14,7% or 3.6 million votes (Shields 2006: 126) and is likely to grow even further in the regional elections that are to be held in December 2015.
According to the latest Ifop poll for Le Journal du Dimanche of 27 September 2015, a likely breakthrough of the FN is predicted, showing that it will be nip and tuck between right and left who are expected to get around 40% of the votes in both rounds on 6 and 13 December. The FN confirms its third place throughout France. On the question ‘if next Sunday the first round of regional elections would be held in your region, for which of the following lists would you most likely vote?’ 32% chose for the list of the Républicains, UDI and MoDem (centre-right),
24% indicated to vote for the Parti socialiste and PRG (centre-left), and 18% answered they would vote for the Front National (website JDD, 29 September 2015).
Other polls, held in 1997 and 2002, reveal that FN voters are the most politically alienated of the total electorate in France, with astonishingly high levels of political disenchantment. Among FN voters, over 77% believe the democratic process in France to be failing, and another 72% showing no faith in either left or right in governing their country. 93% criticizes the remoteness of politicians, 89% beliefs that ‘most leading politicians are corrupt’, and another 89% dismisses both left and right as ‘more of the same’ (Shields 2006: 127). Yet a vote for FN should not be considered merely a protest vote against mainstream parties. In line with the findings of Bos, Van der Brug, De Vreese (2011), support for FN is motivated by the same ideological and pragmatic considerations as support for other parties. The ideas of the party are gathering considerable support across the wider electorate, with approval rates ranging between 20-40% on specific issues (Shields 2006: 128).
2. What is Democracy? Past, Present, Ideal and Reality
A recurring characteristic in any analysis of the relationship between populism and democracy, and more specifically whether it poses a threat or rather a democratic corrective to it, is that its answer is encapsulated within the normative premises of the democratic theory that is being used as its reference guide. For those who adhere to the liberal democratic model, populism is often considered a pathology, whereas for radical democrats it constitutes a positive force that actually strengthens the political representation of the people. In order to account for these different appraisals I will compare both models before moving on to having a closer look at the merits and shortcoming of populism and its possible contributions to the further legitimation of representative democracy. But before delving into both strands within democratic theory, let me begin with the basic idea that underlies both models, and that is the idea of democracy itself.
A good starting point for this inquiry is to analyse the literal meaning of the word democracy. It comes from the Greek words ‘demos’ (people) and ‘kratos’ (rule) signifying rule or power of the people. But to answer the question of what democracy means in the real world is a question less easy to answer. The first problem is that there is a difference between what democracy is and what it ought to be, between its translation into everyday’s reality and its ideal form. What we need then, is both a descriptive as well as a prescriptive definition of the concept.
To take the literal meaning of democracy as our starting point for disentangling these two definitions, a first question soon arises, and that is: power of the people over whom? According to Sartori, power may be defined as ‘the force and capability of controlling others’ (Sartori 1987a: 29). So following the literal definition of democracy, the people are in control. They exercise their power over the governed. And the governed are the citizens belonging to the democratic polity – the people themselves. So ‘democracy is the power of the people over the people’ (ibid.: 30). It is moreover a word with innumerable promises and perspectives. In principle, it appears to be the most attractive way of organising power in society. The people govern themselves, either in real or through their representatives, and everyone, being at the same time governor and governed, will learn to take part in taking into account both the general interest of the community he belongs to as well as his private interests (Holeindre & Richard 2010: 5).
And here the second problem arises. Because what does this body of people amount to? First and foremost, democracy is a procedure to arrive at decisions that shape public policy in such a way as to guarantee a government that is responsive to the people they govern (Dahl 1978: 2). In order to render it possible to make decisions under time restraints and other practical considerations that make it necessary for a clear cut procedure to exist when it comes to formulating public policy on a day-to-day basis, the idea of the people will have to be translated in terms of counting rules. Requiring unanimity in decision-making would simply make it impossible to rule a community in this world and so a more practical solution needs to be found. The two options left, then, are either rule guided by the absolute majority principle or a limited majority principle. In the first instance, this would mean that the greatest number of a given population would be taken as the representation of the will of all, turning it into a right to decide for all. The limited majority principle, by contrast, entails that no matter how big a majority is to be found, it can never assert some kind of absolute or limitless right to rule. It must always take into account the rights of minorities that happen to hold a different view.
As it turns out, ‘the limited majority principle turns out to be the democratic working principle of democracy’ (Sartori 1987a: 25, emphasis in original). Whereas both principles would allow for efficient decision-making, the fact remains that the people consist of the majority plus the minority. Would the first principle be applied to the democratic procedure, the minority (which in reality often constitutes a very large segment of society) will turn into what Sartori calls a ‘non-people’. By adopting the second principle of limited majority rule, i.e. majority rule that is limited by minority rights, the people as a whole are taken into consideration in public policymaking (ibid.: 32-33). But there is another important reason for protecting minority rights and that is that without it, ‘the first electoral test [would] determine, once and for all, those who are free and those who are not; but also the liberty of those who voted for the majority on the occasion would be lost because, in practice, they would not be permitted to change their opinion. Thus the first election would be, in effect, the only free election. And this amounts to saying that such a democracy dies at the moment of its inception’ (ibid.: 33).
3. Responsive Government
The underlying principle informing the limited majority rule is that a prerequisite for ruling an association of people is that all members ought to be considered each other’s political equals concerning the participation in the collective making of its public policy. A decision-making in public policy moreover that ought to be responsive to, and responsible towards public opinion, with elections being the means to an end. What democratically held elections ultimately aim to secure then, is to establish ‘a government of opinion’ (Sartori 1987a: 87). But for this to occur, elections alone are not enough. Giving people the power to vote is the mechanical guarantee of democracy. The substantive guarantee to secure a responsive government depends upon the conditions under which citizens inform themselves about public affairs before casting their vote.
In that connection, Dahl has provided us with five guiding principles. In the first place, all members should have equal and effective opportunities for articulating their views to their fellow citizens with regard to how they feel public policy should look like. This is the criterion of effective participation. Secondly, each member should have equal and effective opportunities to vote at the moment when the decision on which policy to adopt is about to be made. This is what Dahl calls the criterion of voting equality. Thirdly, all members should have equal and effective opportunities for getting to know about the relevant choices with regard to policy options as well as their likely consequences. This is the criterion of enlightened understanding. Fourthly, all members should have the exclusive opportunity so as to decide on how and what issues should be put on the agenda. This implies that the democratic process is a never-ending story, as its policies are always open for change if their members would wish it to be so. This fourth criterion is the requirement of control of the agenda. And fifthly, all, or most of the adult population that reside within the borders of the polity on a permanent basis should have full citizenship rights as embodied in the previous four criteria. This is the criterion of inclusion of adults (Dahl 2000: 37-8).
For Dahl (1978), these five criteria are all necessary for ensuring an important quality of democracy, which he calls a sustained responsiveness of its government to the preferences that exist among its citizens. This normative ideal is in congruence with the idea of democracy understood in either its Athenian form or in its representative model we are accustomed to in our days. But where our governors are chosen through competitive elections today, citizens
responsible for governing in ancient Athenian democracy were selected through the drawing of lots. What is important for our present purposes is that modern democracy should be understood as ‘that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions which realizes the common good by making the people itself decide issues through the election of individuals who are to assemble in order to carry out its will’ (Schumpeter 2010: 225).
In the past this institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions was organized through a system of direct democracy. But since the last two hundred years countries have adopted a system of political representation instead. The basic democratic ideal of rule of the people over the people thus needed to be understood in new terms. It was already noted that modern democracy equals representative democracy, for which the oft-heard claim goes that it is the only viable way if we are to have a democratic government within the reality of the large-scale nation state that we are all accustomed to today. Dahl calls this the law of time and numbers: the bigger a political unit, the less its people will be able to participate in its decision-making process for practical reasons, and by consequence, the need for delegating this task to representatives will grow in direct proportion to the increase in size of the polity (Dahl 2000: 109).
To illustrate why this is so, he provides his readers with a hypothetical committee of only ten members. Assuming each member would be allowed at least ten minutes of speaking time for discussing the issue under debate, this debate would take approximately one hour and forty minutes if everyone were to be heard on the matter. But if the debate would revolve around a more complex issue requiring its members not ten but thirty minutes of speaking time, the debate would already take five hours (or two meetings of two-and-a-half hours, to keep everybody sharp and concentrated). Dahl extends this example to the size of a village of two hundred people of which hundred persons would be entitled to participate in the assembly. Supposing again a speaking time of ten minutes each, this would already amount to two days of eight hours each. Extend the size of the village to an “ideal polis” of a full ten thousand inhabitants, and the necessary time for a debate where each and every participant is allowed ten minutes of speaking time would result in two hundred eight hour days for debate. If the speaking time would be extended to thirty minutes each, this would result in a debate of nearly two years (ibid.: 106-107).
Clearly, an alternative to direct participation was necessary with the steady growth in size of the different polities in the West. With the shifting political landscape into the modern
nation-state system, direct democracy was simply no longer an option. It resulted in a system of representation instead. But what it needed was a new way of envisioning its legitimacy to gather support and uphold it among the populations it was presented to. In the search for new theories, different solutions were being proposed.
For Hobbes, state power had to be absolute if it were to guarantee peace on its territory. He formulated the now famous thought experiment in which he envisioned a natural state in which political authority was entirely absent. Without some superior power to maintain peace and security, Hobbes argued, there would be a ‘continuall feare, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’ (Hobbes 1909: 99). He thus concluded the sovereign to be legitimate, as long as he was able to secure peace and security on the land he surveyed. Later Locke argued that this idea, though important, in itself did not constitute enough of a basis for legitimizing a political regime without further amendments. A liberal at heart, he argued that ‘the right to life, liberty and property could not be transferred or given up to secure civil peace or security’ (Tormey 2015: 43) and that the individual’s rights were to be promoted by the state, thus making it necessary to limit state power at the same time (ibid.: 43). Accountability, whilst under Hobbes’ account conspicuously absent, thus became an important and indispensible aspect in thinking about the relationship between the state and the people. In order for representation to have any substantial meaning, it should entail a foundation of a voluntary act of compliance, with citizens being able to hold their representatives accountable. In practice this came down to periodic elections with representatives having a mandate to govern, rather than a right or entitlement.
It has often been taken for granted by pre-democratic thinkers that this translation of the people’s will into government action would occur more or less automatically. Even when it became apparent that a system of representation became inevitable for ruling larger communities such as the current nation-states, no real obstacles of transposing the will of the people to the level of government were imagined (Schattschneider 2009: 13). For Schattschneider, the space between the sovereign people and the government had to be filled by political parties as vehicles through which the popular will would be expressed at the political level (ibid.: 15). And indeed, it has been very hard for political scientists to envision a functioning system of representative democracy without political parties at this intermediary level between the people and government.
It is by virtue of inter-party competition in their bid for power that a government responsive to the peoples’ preferences becomes possible in representative democracy. The primary function of political parties in representative democracy is not to produce a government – though this being an important function of parties – but to produce a certain kind of government. The reason parties are occupying such a central place in our political system is because we aim for representative government, a government that is responsive to the peoples’ preferences and one that fulfils its expressive function (Sartori 2005: 29).
So what then, is a political party? Still following Schattschneider, a political party is ‘an organized attempt to get power, [here] defined as control of the government’ (…). ‘The life of the parties revolves around the present possession of power or the bid for power, a bid made with a reasonable expectation that it will be successful at an early date. Only when an organization is in control of the government or is able to create and maintain a widespread expectation that it will take over the government soon does it become a major party or a real party’ (ibid.: 35-6). A party thus defined, is a party defined in terms of its purpose. A party may also be defined in terms of its methods used to achieve its purpose, in other words, in terms of the party method. A method, one should add, that is conducted in a peaceful manner. Parties act within the institutional framework of the political system and both ruling parties as well as parties of the opposition tolerate each other, thus rendering party government possible by allowing the successful party to get control of the government (ibid.: 37).
The space within which the political party manoeuvres may either be a representative assembly or the electorate itself, as long as the following three conditions apply. Firstly, the party must have the power to govern, at least potentially. Secondly, the rights and position of the ruling body are clearly defined and upheld, making it a safe activity to be engaged in as a member. Lastly, the governing body ought to be large in number, making it necessary to act by voting, often by either a majority or plurality vote (ibid.: 38).
In order to gain power it will have to attract support from the electorate to such an extent that it will yield a majority or plurality of the votes, depending on the specifics of the political system within which the party operates. From this stratagem, it follows that a party in serious pursuit of power will have to compromise on a number of issues as a sacrifice for the aim of winning enough support to take office. A refusal to make concessions in order to attract a sufficiently sizable powerbase equals a refusal to make a bid for power. A willingness to compromise – or lack thereof – is also what differentiates major and minor parties from one
another (ibid.: 62-3). By the same token, as a result of competition between parties bidding for power, the different parties making any serious attempt at taking office will, whether they want to or not, have to be responsive to voters’ preferences to a considerable extent. Without it, passing the ‘threshold for gaining the right to coerce’ (Bartolini 2002: 102) will remain aspirational at best.
To become responsive to the peoples’ preferences, three additional conditions are necessary. Firstly, the political system must be designed in such as way so as to ensure that incumbents are vulnerable as they are being exposed to the voters’ decision to either punish or reward the politicians in either office or opposition, based on their proven track record. In the second place, a certain segment of the electorate must be available and not inherently opposed to changing its party preference once a better offer comes along. This in turn requires that the electorate is sensitive affected by and responsive to changes in either political issues or political programmes on offer. As a result, parties and politicians will have a serious incentive to act in accordance with the preferences of the electorate. Lastly, for a political system to be responsive to the will of the electorate, offers must be decidable by voters. In other words, no matter what a party is offering, it has to be different from what its contenders are offering while being clearly visible to the voter at the same time (ibid.: 89-95). As will become clear in what will follow in chapter seven on the disjuncture between public opinion and public policy, two of the three conditions required for a responsive government are largely absent in today’s politics. But before going into detail about these three conditions, it is necessary to look at the ways in which parties and politicians, from a theoretical perspective, can be held accountable in order to produce responsive government.
4. Models of Representation and Accountability
The three requirements of responsive government all revolve around basic principal-agent problems, i.e. incentive theory, and involves the question of how the principal can best motivate the agent to act in accordance with the principal’s preferences while taking into consideration the complexities regarding the actions performed by the agent (Sappington 1991: 45). To gain a better understanding of the mechanisms at work to get elected politicians responsive to the preferences of their constituencies, a good starting point is to look at the role and function of elections and electoral campaigns.
In its most basic form, representation revolves around the idea that aspiring delegates make political pledges during electoral campaigns on the basis of which – though not exclusively – the people choose to elect them or not. The delegates chosen will then either keep or break their promises in the ensuing period that lasts until the next elections. But as will become clear soon enough, democratic representation comes in different forms with norms particular to each particular model (Mansbridge 2003: 515). The Westminster model is markedly different from the consensus model of democracy, for instance. And within those two broad, encompassing models, a great deal of variation may be found across countries that are all representative democracies. What does remain constant across modern democracies however, is the combination of two pervasive ideas. Namely, ‘those who rule should do so in the public interest or in response to the public will; and [secondly] that they will be more likely to do so when they are, in some way, representative of, and/or accountable to those they rule’ (Philp 2009: 28). It is the actual manner in which these two democratic requirements are being fulfilled that varies, thus requiring different normative evaluative criteria.
With the traditional model of so-called promissory representation, the power relationship between voter and representative is being directed in a forward manner and in a linear way, using the standard forward-looking concept of power of Dahl’s intuitive “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do” (Dahl 1957: 202-3, cited in Mansbridge 2003: 516). Representation thus conceived follows the classical principal-agent format in which the voter (or principal) tries to exercise power over his representative (or the agent). From a normative stance this model works through the promises made by the representative during election time, which got him elected. Failure to deliver on these promises, or a failure to account for a deviation thereof by the representative in a
convincing manner will result in the sanctioning mechanism that is being exerted by the voter at the next election, thus in effect creating accountability. Its attractiveness as a model lies in the fact that it reflects the will of the citizenry in a relatively direct manner, thus coming as close as one can get to the democratic ideal of channelling the voter’s will through the appropriate institutions into government policy (Mansbridge 2003: 516).
Instead of following the classical principal-agent format, a representative may also anticipate future preferences of voters, causing him to choose a certain course of action amongst several alternatives he finds himself presented with. His actions during his term in office thus represent the anticipated preferences of the voter at the next election, though not necessarily his real preferences at that time, as future events cannot cause events in the present and the representative may be proven in future to having been wrong about his anticipation of the voter’s preferences at a point in the future. Whereas the traditional model is forward-looking, the anticipatory model of representation works backwards, with power being defined as ‘a causal relation between the preferences of an actor regarding an outcome and the outcome itself’ (ibid.: 517). This model of representation allows for considering voters to be educable or manipulable, both by the representatives themselves and parties, the media, interest groups, et cetera.
Whereas the promissory model of representation entails the traditional concept of accountability where the core of the matter revolves around the question whether the representative is actually acting in a way his voters want him to act – that is to say, at the time of the elections prior to his time in office – the anticipatory model of representation renders the voter at this time irrelevant, as the actions of the representative are all informed by anticipated, future preferences. And unless the voter’s preferences at the time of the new elections after a period in office for the representative have remained stable in comparison to his preferences at the elections prior to the period in office, he is not using his voting power to reward or punish his representative for either remaining on track or deviating from it vis-à-vis his initial preferences. Instead, the representative’s actions are being informed by his anticipation of future preferences of his voters. This shifts the accountability relationship from a moral one where the representative should stick to his promises made during election time to a prudential one where he tries to please his voters through anticipating their evaluation of his actions (ibid.: 518).
A third model of representation is characterised by the fact that voters elect their representatives knowing that they may act in ways their constituents approve of while the representatives are not motivated by external incentives, unlike the previous two models. They are accountable to their own beliefs and principles and nothing else. Voters elect their representatives on the basis of their behaviour and other observable characteristics, in an attempt to predict to a certain degree how they will act after being elected. The representative is chosen not on the basis of a traditional accountability relationship but because of his personally held value system, which, ideally come as close as it gets to the one of the voter that stood up and cast a vote for him in the ballot. As a consequence, representatives in this model have a responsibility not to lie about their character or values, on which they are being selected. But they are not expected to relate to their voter the same way agents relate to their principals. This is the model of gyroscopic representation (ibid.: 520-22).
A final model of representation, called surrogate representation, concerns representation by someone with whom the supporter has no electoral relationship whatsoever, as the representative acts on behalf of a district other than the one of many of his supporters. It is a model that is particularly relevant for electoral systems with single member plurality districts, as is the case in most of the Anglo-Saxon world. Here, citizens who support policies that only attract a minority of like-minded voters often end up with no representation of their preferred policies at all. If support for certain policies (and therefore for certain parties) would be evenly distributed across a country, this situation would extent to the entire state. But with interregional differences being large enough, the preferences of a minority losing in one district may well win in the next, yielding a situation where ‘voters in the minority in District A will have surrogate representation through the representative of District B’ (ibid.: 523).
While there is no relationship of accountability between the representative and the constituent from a district other than his own, there is a power relationship at work between those who contribute to the representative in either material or other ways, as the contributor can demand promises through either one of the previous three accountability relationship models. And while this creates a far greater political inequality than the traditional legislator-constituent relationship, surrogate representation is of vital importance to enhance the democratic legitimacy of political systems characterised by single member plurality voting (ibid.: 522-23).
From these different models of representation it has become clear that, contrary to the common trend within the literature about accountability relationships, a principal-agent theory does not necessarily and universally apply in order to create accountability within the system. Thus, accidental conditions or conditions arrived at by chance to make one believe it is fit to speak of accountability will be unjustly regarded as conditions necessary for accountability to come into existence. The variety of models of representation discussed above has shown this assumption to be a false one. For instance, we ‘may want the possibility of reward or sanction as a further condition for enhancing the outcome of holding certain office holders to account within democratic systems, but that does not mean that it is a necessary condition for an institution or individual to be accountable that rewards or sanctions can be applied’ (Philp 2009: 30). To the extent that one analyses the democratic system from the point of view of how its institutions are to be regarded as truly accountable ones, the real crux of the matter is to delve into the types of accountability that are operating rather than asking whether or not democracy’s institutions accountability mechanisms fail to live up to one’s democratic values. Whether or not the latter is true, it should not be confounded with the idea that by consequence this would equal the institution lacking accountability in and of itself. Therefore, ‘whether (and in what forms) an accountability relationship exists is a descriptive claim; whether we want more or less of it, or different types or additional dimensions of it, will be driven by normative commitments’ (ibid.: 32).
5. Aristocracy by Design
Intuitively democracy is often equated with representative democracy, as this has come to be the norm of modern large-scale societies. But as Manin aptly reminds us: ‘[contemporary] democratic governments have evolved from a political system that was conceived by its founders as opposed to democracy. (…) [What] today we call representative democracy has its origins in a system of institutions (established in the wake of the English, American, and French revolutions) that was in no way initially perceived as a form of democracy or of government by the people’ (Manin 1997: 1). On the contrary, when representation initially emerged in the early modern period it had nothing to do with democracy whatsoever. To take the example of England, representation was instigated on behalf of the king. When he was in need of additional revenue, he decided to order each town and county to have a delegate send over to him, whom in turn were instructed to commit their localities to additional taxes thus imposed upon them. Through repeated practice, the operation turned into custom. ‘Sometimes the delegates were sent with instructions from their communities; sometimes they were expected to report back on what had transpired. Gradually they began to make their consent conditional on redress or grievances, to think of themselves as members of a single, continuing body, and sometimes to join forces against the king. So representation slowly came to be considered a matter of right rather than a burden, though even then the selection of delegates was by no means democratic, often not even accomplished by election’ (Pitkin 2004: 337).
The echo of this undemocratic origin can still be observed up to this very day and is illustrated by the simple fact of the way in which we elect our governors. While we celebrate having free, fair, regular and recurring elections, in essence they signify an aristocratic political order. A truly democratic way of selecting our governors would be one in which our deputies are appointed through the selection of lot. For true democracy to exist, its proper method of selection must be that of lot rather than election, leaving each and every citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country. Presenting our current democratic practice as an accidental historical outcome would amount to missing the point entirely. Modern representative democracy has been consciously designed by its founding fathers the way it is today. At the same time they ‘were declaring the equality of all citizens, they decided without the slightest hesitation to establish, on both sides of the Atlantic, the unqualified dominion of a method of selection long deemed to be aristocratic’ (Manin 1997: 79).
Indeed, it was James Madison, the founder of the American Constitution, who declared in The Federalist Papers no. 57: ‘The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust. The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government.’ On the other side of the Atlantic, it was Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès who declared in his 1789 pamphlet Qu’est-ce que le tiers état? that France was not a democracy and neither should it become one: ‘Le peuple, je le répète, dans un pays qui n’est pas une démocratie (et la France ne saurait l’être), le peuple ne peut parler, ne peut agir que par ses représentants’ (Sieyès cited in Van Reybrouck 2014: 100).
There were also democrats who were not supportive of the idea of representation, however. Rousseau, for one, opposed the idea entirely, claiming that it was incompatible with democracy. For him, the freedom associated with democracy required active citizens to be personally engaged in politics, coming together to jointly decide upon public policy. As a consequence, he could not envision freedom to last beyond the local, small community with public-spirited people. And much as Rousseau may have been a utopian thinker, representative democracy has come to mean a political system echoing some of his warnings. Representatives seem to act like hired expert professionals deeply lodged within party structures and insulated to a considerable extent from society at large (Pitkin 2004: 339). ‘The repeated widening of the suffrage and the many technical improvements in systems of representation have brought about neither the property redistribution and social chaos the conservatives feared nor the effective democracy the reformers expected. The arrangements we call ‘representative democracy’ have become a substitute for popular self-government, not its enactment’ (ibid.: 340). This has been further aggravated by the tendency of political parties to become entrenched in the state structure instead of acting as the mediating body located between state and society as it did in the past at the time of the mass party.
To further understand why elections in representative democracy as an institution create and sustain, rather than abolish aristocratic tendencies in society, it is instructive to analyse the consequences it brings about once enacted and put into practice. An analysis moreover, that will help in understanding the rise of populism in our current political system and the inevitability thereof. It all starts with the practice of elections. As an institution, they instigate an unequal treatment of candidates running for office by voters. Citizens are political equals
when choosing their representatives and at the same time they are potential candidates to run for office one day. Elections, considered as a mechanism of distributing offices, at the same time means that public functions will not be allocated to anyone nor that this will be done in an equal manner. In democratic elections, which by consequence are to be free, voters are entirely free to discriminate between the different candidates based on individual characteristics that differentiate one from another (Manin 1997: 136). There is nothing in elections that can ensure candidates aspiring for office will have an equal chance nor do elections guarantee equal opportunities for the political contenders. On the contrary, elections facilitate the possibility for unequal treatment of them, yielding representatives who are thought to be superior to the people who voted for them (ibid.: 138).
Secondly, confronted with a situation of choice, voters will necessarily make a distinction between candidates, informed by a motive to prefer one candidate to another. As a corollary, if candidates become indistinguishable from one another voters will become indifferent, making it much harder on them to choose consciously between one candidate or another. Thus, a candidate will have to demonstrate his uniqueness in such a way that it is deemed a positive trait by the electorate while at the same time demonstrating a lack thereof among his contenders, making him stand out. This constitutes superiority over others, as those who are endowed with this specific set of attributes while others do not make them stand apart which leads to their selection over others to represent the people. Far from this being a consequence of people’s psychology and individual attitudes, this distinction requirement is fundamentally structural: it originates from the situation of choice itself that is embodied in the institution of free elections. In its core, ‘there is a force pulling in the opposite direction from the desire for similarity between rulers and ruled’ (ibid.: 142).
To attract attention from the electorate, thirdly, candidates will have to stand out in a way so as to be judged positively. This is done primarily by associating and profiling oneself in salient issues, as these are particularly apt to elicit strong evaluative judgements among voters. Due to cognitive constraints where voters are not able to compare all of each individual’s characteristics with those of his contenders due to time and energy costs that this would incur on people, an effect similar to the constraints deriving from the situation of choice as elaborated on above exists (ibid.: 142).
And lastly, there is the cost of disseminating information that creates an inegalitarian streak to the electoral process. Obviously, for a candidate to become known to the public at large
certain costs are inevitable, and quite often these costs are quite considerable too. It may come as no surprise then, that the more well off candidates have an advantage over the less prosperous. Candidates have different possible tactics at their disposal making it possible too for the less affluent to have a fair shot at becoming known and successful for their bid to power, but the advantage for the former does not disappear. It will simply take more of an effort, more organisation and more activism to collect the amount necessary among the more modest constituencies than it is from the rich (ibid.: 144).
Instead of elections having contributed to democracy, we now find ourselves in a political system in which ‘[our] governors have become a self-perpetuating elite that rules – or rather, administers – passive or privatized masses of people. The representatives act not as agents of the people but simply instead of them’ (Pitkin 2004: 339). What this may lead to is a considerable divergence between the will of the people and the actual policy making that is being enacted on their behalf through their elected representatives, which has indeed been one of the objectives of the founding fathers of our current political system, as we saw earlier.
6. Limits to Contestation: The Case for Liberal Democracy
The central problem within democratic systems is the requirement of its elected government to be responsive to the will of the people while at the same time being confronted with a myriad of diverging opinions, interests and views on what policies should be given preference on the political agenda, the means of achieving these political goals, and what policies to enact. To complicate things even further, there is also the need for efficient and effective government. The realization of this reality has led political scientists to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a common good or will that all people within a given society could all agree upon, either in real or from a philosophical point of view by the force of rational argument alone. Ultimately, people’s conceptions of what the good life and society should be like are derived from personally held values and beliefs, which are not captured by sole reference to logical reasoning per se (Schumpeter 2010: 226).
In large part, this is due to the fact that many, if not all important policy decisions involve ethical judgements, whether the issue under consideration refers to health, justice, security, equality, or whatever else. A further complicating factor is that the ends that are being pursued often find themselves in conflict with other ends while resources are limited, which make a trade-off between different ends a necessary fact of political life. ‘In deciding how much we should sacrifice one end, good, or goal in order to attain some measure of another, we necessarily move well beyond anything that strictly scientific knowledge can provide’ (Dahl 2000: 72). Even in the case that the desired ends of certain policy proposals are agreed upon, conflict is abound over the means to achieve those ends, as the following examples will demonstrate: ‘[what] are the best means of taking care of the poor, the jobless, the homeless? How are the interests of children best protected and advanced? How large a budget is needed for military defense, and for what purpose?’ (ibid.: 72).
With such a divergence of opinions and interests, what rests is the design of a political model that allows for this social reality while at the same time providing for effective and legitimate decision-making in public affairs. It is not least because of this realization that modern democracy has been referred to as the open society (Popper 2013), in defence of the liberal character of the Western political system. In contrast to Athenian democracy, our modern idea of freedom recognizes the individual as a person who has the right to not be subjected to the power of the whole: ‘our problems cannot be solved by a system that provides
only that the exercise of power be collective’ (Sartori 1987b: 286). Modern democracy cannot be separated from the idea that ‘dissent, diversity, and “parts” (the parts which became parties) are not incompatible with social order and the well-being of the body politic. The ideal genesis of our democracies is in the principle that difference, not uniformity, is the leaven and the nourishment of states’ (ibid.: 289-290).
When we speak of the liberal character of modern democracy, or of liberal democracy itself, what is meant in fact is a political system that adheres to the idea of liberty in a political sense. Freedom in politics is not the same as freedom in a psychological, intellectual, moral, social, economic, or legal type. Although political freedom tacitly assumes these freedoms, it is of another kind (ibid.: 298). Sartori illustrates the differences by making use of the phrase “I am free to”, explaining that these four words can have completely different meanings. It may refer to freedom in the permissive sense, to which the use of the words “I may” belongs. By contrast, it can also refer to enabling freedom, providing the ability to exercise your freedom – “I can”. Or it calls on some other condition to sustain it: “I have the power to”. Whereas the first two kinds of freedom relate to the external and internal sphere of freedom, respectively, political freedom is of the instrumental kind and is a relational freedom. Its main objective being to establish the conditions necessary to be free (ibid.: 300-301).
Political freedom is of the latter kind, and conforms to the freedom advocated by Hobbes when he argued in favour of an absence of external impediments. Political freedom is ‘freedom from, not freedom to’ (ibid. 301) and is often referred to as negative freedom. What it does is protect citizens against arbitrary and unbounded power (ibid.: 302). Applied to representative democracy, this principle implies that the elections of politicians should not be seen as the mechanism ensuring that citizens will have their laws made through their representatives or that they express them having wanted the laws enacted by the government thus elected. What it does imply is that citizens are free citizens because the power of their chosen representatives to enact those laws is limited and put under effective control (ibid.: 321) by placing the law above men, thus depersonalizing power.
When this particular form of liberty is applied to representative democracy we speak of a regime that may be typified as a liberal democracy. The powers and acting practice of elected government are bound by the rule of law and individual rights, effectively creating a limited government. The rule of law requires that a government is bound by established rules and regulations that have been announced in advance so that it becomes possible to anticipate with
fair certainty how the government will use its coercive powers in given circumstances, making it possible to plan one’s course of action in accordance with this knowledge (Hayek 2001: 49). The primacy of the individual and the protection of his natural or inalienable rights take shape in the form of freedom of speech and religion, protection of private property rights, and the freedom of association, among others. Together they result in the protection of the private sphere and respect and freedom for plurality and diversity within a given society in order to enable each and every individual to pursue their own idea of happiness.
But by having combined liberty with democracy, the founding fathers of modern democracy have created a structural tension within this political system due to the irreconcilable differences between the liberal and the democratic logics. Because next to the rule of law, liberal democracy contains a democratic element as well, which envisions the rule of the people as opposed to the rule of one person (a monarchy), the rule of the best (an aristocracy), or the rule of the few (an oligarchy). This rule of the people comes with a proviso as we have seen earlier: the binding rules and policy decisions are in fact not made by the people themselves but by their representatives who are being selected through free, fair and competitive elections by the people they govern.
What takes a central position in the entire philosophy that underpins liberal democracy are the following three questions: first, how much democracy should there actually be; second, how can democracy be reconciled with the requirement of skilled administration in a complex society; and third, what should be the legitimate limits of state action (Held 2008: 85)? In trying to accommodate for these dilemmas, the design of modern day democracy has led to the articulation of two irreconcilable logics with the ideal of equality on the one hand and the ideal of liberty on the other. The former has been addressed through the establishment of democratic institutions, the latter through liberal ones.
But here the difficulties only begin. They can best be explained through what Mouffe calls the ‘democratic paradox’. Whereas the democratic logic requires the drawing of borders between who belongs to the demos and who does not, the liberal logic demands respect for individual, sometimes even universal rights. The tension is located in the fact that there is no guarantee that decisions arrived at through the democratic process will not run counter some of these established rights. In order to prevent this from happening, the model of liberal democracy imposes a number of limits on the exercise of the sovereignty of the people. They are presented as non-negotiable in order to respect the centrality of human rights. But as
human rights are defined, established and interpreted in a certain manner at a given time in history, they are nothing more than the expression of the prevailing hegemony at that moment, thus being ipso facto contestable. ‘What cannot be contestable in a liberal democracy is the idea that it is legitimate to establish limits to popular sovereignty in the name of liberty. Hence its paradoxical nature’ (Mouffe 2009: 4). Combined, the democratic and the liberal logics are incompatible with one another and the inherent tension that exists between both elements can ultimately only lead to a temporarily stabilization through the hegemony of one of them over the other (ibid.: 5).
With the enactment of liberal democracy the nature of democracy has radically shifted from one of ongoing contestation to a situation where pluralism in society is relegated to the private sphere, whether it concerns religious, moral or philosophical doctrines and convictions. Where they do remain into the open, they are being limited and channelled with as its ultimate aim a universal and rational consensus (ibid.: 21), thereby solving the age old dilemma of liberalism which tries to find a way to establish peaceful coexistence among people with different conceptions of ‘the good’, whether it concerns life, society, justice or otherwise. But much as liberal thinkers have tried to present this political configuration as a neutral terrain on which politics can unfold in a pluralist society, it is within the liberal framework that the manifestation of politics is to occur.
Is there an alternative to this seemingly unsatisfying compromise? Under the reign of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s in England, the phrase ‘there is no alternative’ – often shortened to TINA – was used to argue that there was no alternative to liberalism in the fields of politics, economics and political economy. And it is this diverse use of the term liberalism that has caused great confusion among students of politics and students of representative democracy in particular. Restricted to liberalism as meant in liberal democracy, it denotes nothing but the political freedom elucidated above and in the sense in which Hobbes meant to describe freedom: an absence of external impediments to the way citizens wish to live their lives. A freedom realized by placing the law above men, thus depersonalizing power. With as the most important liberties needing protection ‘the freedoms of conscience, thought and feeling, holding and expressing opinions, pursuing one’s life plans, and combining with others for any (nonmalicious) purpose. Because these civil liberties typically and directly affect only those who enjoy them, people should be exempt from the interference, paternalistic or otherwise, by others and especially by the state, including the democratic state’ (Cunningham 2002: 28).
Intuitively, this non-negotiable right to put limits on the sovereignty of the people runs counter what many believe to be at the heart of the democratic thought. But as Sartori explains, ‘the limitation and control of power that our liberal democracies provide is not a lesser achievement vis-à-vis Greek democracy. For we have largely solved a problem that the Greeks did not have or did not face: providing a secure freedom for every individual’ (Sartori 1987b: 283). The fundamental difference between the ancient and modern idea of freedom hinges on the realization that a human being is more than a citizen to the state he is part of. This implies that in order to resolve the problems we encounter we cannot rely upon a system that only ensures that the exercise of power is organized in a collective way as it did in ancient Athens. Modern democracy is founded on the idea that the freedom of the individual needs to be protected against the power of the whole (ibid. 286). ‘If, according to the Greek criterion of freedom, the Greeks were free, by the same token we certainly would not be’ (ibid.: 291).
7. Disjuncture between Public Opinion and Public Policy
Whether we speak about a democracy, an aristocracy, an oligarchy or a monarchy: all political systems are ultimately confronted with the task of finding an equilibrium between the need for efficiency in governing a country and the need for it to carry legitimacy. The first demand answers to the question of how much time a government needs to put real solutions in place to arising problems, the latter to the question to what extent its citizens recognise the authority of their government. Both criteria need to be fulfilled but are inversely related to one another. A dictatorship is most probably the most efficient form of government imaginable, but it will be hard to foster a durable legitimacy among its subjects. Conversely, in a country in which each and every decision is open to contestation to all citizens, legitimacy will be substantially greater but at the expense of the state’s capacity to act (Van Reybrouck 2014: 16-17).
For governing parties acting within representative democracies that are trying to approximate this balance this is becoming an increasingly difficult task to fulfill. In large part this is a consequence of yet another tension, namely, one between responsiveness and responsibility. Whereas classic democratic theory places high emphasis on parties’ role to be responsive to public opinion in society, parties also find themselves confronted with their responsibilities towards both internal as well as international requirements imposed on them through demands of coordination issues or other limitations. Increasingly, these two responsibilities are becoming more difficult to bring back together (Bardi, Bartolini & Trechsel 2014: 236).
But before delving into these issues at a deeper level, let us first consider what parties are and what their systemic functions entail within modern democracies. As should be clear by now, to proclaim that parties are the vehicles for expressing public opinion at the level of government tout court without further elaborating on how exactly they arrive at uncovering this sentiment and its subsequent articulation and implementation at the government level would be an oversimplification. What is more, as we have seen earlier, populist ideology regards traditional parties, whether conceived of as the mass party, the catch-all party, or the cartel party, as not capable of performing well on this responsibility. Populists consider the political party as a dividing tool of the people rather than as a vehicle for the expression of its general will (Ignazi 1996: 552).
Notwithstanding the foregoing appraisal made by populists about the political party, a democracy without parties – populist or otherwise – is rather hard to envision within the
