Political Theory



H14(a) - The Political Theory of Populism #2: Competing Definitions

Date: Jun 13 | Time: 03:30pm to 05:00pm | Location: 680 Sherbrooke St. West 365

Chair/Président/Présidente : Lincoln Rathnam (Duke Kunshan University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : William Gregson (University of Toronto)

‘Populist Backlash’ Is an Oxymoron: On Ernesto Laclau’s Radical Realism: Jun-han Yon (McGill University)
Abstract: Political theorists (and scientists) today often associate populism with backlash. Populism is considered a reaction to the procedural consensus of constitutional democracy that would undermine citizens’ equal political rights and membership in a polity. Through a symptomatic reading of the popular usage of ‘populist backlash’ in academia, this paper demonstrates an inaptness of the knowledge on democratic politics that political theorists often rely upon to discredit populism’s democratic credentials. I argue that the notion of populist backlash exhibits political theory’s incapacity to capture (or unwillingness to take seriously) the widespread and frequent tendency in actually-existing democracies to distort, detract, and dismiss the claims made from the margins of society against social and political inequalities. Backlash is a central feature of democratic politics as we know it. This paper turns to Ernesto Laclau’s oft-neglected ‘radical realist’ critique of modern constitutional democracy to substantiate its core argument. Laclau is best known for his theory of populism, where he argues for the necessity of antagonism in promoting democracy’s egalitarian cause. While Laclau’s position is often denounced by his critical and sympathetic commentators as fundamentally anti-democratic, such an evaluation rather reflects critics’ idealized view of democratic politics, which significantly understates power asymmetries within this process. This paper reads Laclau as offering an epistemological-methodological critique of the liberal paradigm of democratic politics to not only shed new light on Laclau’s political thought but also call for a renewed understanding of what genuinely democratic politics should be amid persistent and pervasive backlash.


Something new, something borrowed, something old: A conceptual clarification of classic and contemporary definitions of populism.: Marc Hooghe (Université de Louvain)
Abstract: Already in the 18th and 19th century, the concept of "populism" was used to describe a distinct form of political ideology. In recent decades, however, the concept has acquired a new meaning, with an emphasis on a hostility toward the (political) elite. In the current paper, we first review both these historical and contemporary definitions of the concept, before addressing the theoretical question whether this historical concept is still informative for current theoretical debates about extreme challenger parties in liberal democracies.


Narrating Stories of Peoplehood: A Scientific or Aesthetic Practice?: Agnes Tam (University of Calgary)
Abstract: Some political theorists (MacIntyre, 2007; Taylor, 1989) have long argued that narratives play a crucial role in shaping shared identities, which are essential for the orientation of political communities. The central premise of this argument relies on the structural conception of narrative, which posits that a coherent narrative structure has the capacity to unify otherwise disjointed events and fragmented values within a community, forming a meaningful whole. Narrative politics is currently experiencing a resurgence in various subfields of political science. Narrative identity has been shown to fuel populism (Smith, 2021) and extremism (Katsafanas, 2022), forge coalitions (Shenav et al. 2014), sustain movements (Polletta et al., 2011), and facilitate justice (Moody-Adams, 2021) and decolonization (Lu, 2023). In this paper, I aim to contribute to the ongoing revival of narrative by deepening our understanding of the nature of narrative. Specifically, I contend that the existing structural conception of narrative fails to differentiate between scientific and literary narratives. Although both scientific and literary narratives share a similar structural representation of a sequence of events, they present a certain coherence and implied significance. Literary narratives, however, are distinct works of art, striving for aesthetic qualities. Drawing on the philosophy of literature and history (Danto, 1981; White, 2014; de Bres, 2021), I explore two aesthetic qualities, namely, engagement and sublimity, and analyze how powerful political narratives typically embody these qualities. The paper not only provides more specific guidance on which stories to tell but also clarifies the normative potential and risks associated with narrative politics.