Demagogy, Populism, and Charismatic Representation

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Abstract

Both populism and demagogy are commonly understood to be dangers for democracy today. The danger of demagogy was identified very early in the history of democracy. Though the term "demagogue" did not initially have a negative connotation, it eventually became a key concept for understanding its vulnerabilities among both critics and supporters of democracy. The opposite of the genuine statesman, the demagogue easily exploited the passions of the people to undermine the common good.

The danger of "populism", by contrast, is of more recent vintage, despite the fact that both terms share a common root in ancient words for "the people" (Latin *populus* and Greek *demos*). Like demagogy, the terminology of "populism" has not always had a negative connotation; American "populists" of the late 19th century bore the title proudly, and even today some theorists -- most notably Ernesto Laclau -- have attempted to preserve a positive valence for the concept. But most discussion of populism today focuses on its dangers for democracy. Indeed, while the usage of "demagogy" as a term of art (rather than a simple pejorative) has declined greatly within scholarly work -- used mostly within some corners of the study of rhetoric (e.g., in Patricia Roberts-Miller's work) -- the last three decades have seen a veritable flood of scholarship on populism as a threat to democracy, even if theorists occasionally see positive aspects in it. As I show in this paper, the concept of populism has in some respects *replaced* the concept of demagogy in scholarly work, occupying the problem space that demagogy used to fill.

The relationship between (modern) populism and (ancient) demagogy is nevertheless not straightforward. I propose to examine this relationship by focusing on the fundamentally *discursive* nature of populism. Though there is no agreement on how best to conceptualize populism, with different authors stressing ideological, stylistic, and strategic elements, all of these views implicitly agree that it is ultimately a *discourse*, including ideas, linguistic tropes, and practices that can in turn shape identities and other social practices. In particular, I suggest here that populism is best conceived as a *discourse of representation* that draws on essential features of democratic legitimation for its persuasive power. As a discourse of representation, populism developed in response to the specific conditions of modern democracies, where governing elites could be plausibly depicted in opposition to "the people", and "the people" itself could be constructed in a variety of ways.

There is also little agreement on how best to conceptualize demagogy and demagogues. While the concept has more or less disappeared from political science research except as a pejorative, there is still a lively debate among some students of rhetoric about the nature of demagogy, and indeed on whether the category of the "demagogue" is still useful. Within this tradition, the demagogue is nevertheless broadly understood as a specific kind of political leader in democracy -- a leader of the *demos*, speaking directly to them, and "moving" them in specific directions with his speech -- whose rhetoric is to some extent "counter-normative": inflected with emotion, drawing on the "lower" passions, contemptuous of the canons of "reasonableness". I argue that we can understand demagogues as leaders who are structurally advantaged to make use of populist discourses of representation to accumulate what Max Weber called "charismatic" authority.

From this point of view, the dangers to democracy come less from the discourse of populism than from the accumulation of charismatic authority through populist demagogy, since charismatic authority is (as Weber saw) *per se* destabilizing of the legal-rational forms of authority that underpin modern democratic institutions. Yet while demagogy can be more or less prevalent depending on characteristics of the media, electoral, or other institutional systems, the conditions of modern democratic life preclude the complete elimination of demagogues. Indeed, it is only through some forms of populist, charismatic demagogy that distinct conceptions of the people (and their attendant values) can be fully articulated. Demagogy thus plays a *functional* role in modern democracy; the key problem is less to prevent its emergence than to guard against the excessive accumulation of charismatic authority and thus to render demagogic leaders accountable. Following Max Weber, the ideal demagogue is, if not reasonable, at least *responsible*, and in principle can be held institutionally accountable by others.

Author

• Xavier Marquez, Victoria University of Wellington