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The responses of populism to Dahl’s democratic dilemmas

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-15, 13:54 authored by Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser
From Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Sarah Palin in the U.S., populist leaders claim to offer more power to ‘the people’. However, most scholars argue that populism is in fact a democratic pathology, because it seeks to build a political system devoid of the rule of law. While it is true that populism maintains an ambivalent relationship with liberal democracy, little attention has been paid to the legitimacy of the questions raised by populist forces. Drawing on the work of Robert Dahl, I argue that current manifestations of populism are offering specific responses to two dilemmas that do not have a clear democratic solution: the boundary problem (how to define the people?) and the limits of self-government (how to control the controllers?). My paper shows that populist forces are posing legitimate questions about the current state of democracy in Europe and the Americas, although their solutions may be more controversial than helpful.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Political Studies

ISSN

0032-3217

Publisher

Blackwell Publishing

Department affiliated with

  • Politics Publications

Notes

Online first

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2013-03-14

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2012-10-26

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