Abstract
When Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe formulated their radical democratic project, the work of Claude Lefort was one of their theoretical inspirations. His analysis of the symbolical dimension of power and the fluidity of social identities in modern democracy informed their conception of democratic politics. In contrast, when Laclau offered his theory of populism, Lefort's thought has become an obstacle to populist politics (Laclau 2005). Does this mean that Laclau's turn to populism came at the expense of some radical-democratic principles? Both of these authors would provide different answers. While Lefort's description of democracy in terms of an empty place of power that resists embodiment implicitly puts populism in conflict with democracy (Arato 2013), Laclau's conception of populism as a political logic consisting in the division between the people and the elite leads to an equivalence between populism and democratic politics (Arditi 2010). In my paper, I will show that these verdicts concerning the relation between populism and democracy cannot be exhaustive because they conceive these phenomena mainly at the ontological level of the political. Therefore, neither conception fully captures the varieties and possible articulations between populism and democracy. I will claim that we can understand the relation between populism and democracy only in the more "ontic" (Moffitt 2016) and context-specific sphere of political practice.
While the theories of both Laclau and Lefort rest as points of departure, I find it more helpful to embrace the current performative turn and other approaches emphasizing the role of the body in populism. This turn towards political performance shows the body as the main vehicle of populist representation. This representation must bridge two different principles - the role of the populist leader and the principle of popular sovereignty. While demonstrating their capacity to represent the people, populist leaders must perform (by using gestures, clothing, or manners) their closeness to the people, and at the same time they must prove their capacity to lead them (Diehl 2017, Casullo 2020). On this level of ordinary political practices and performances, the relationship between populism and democracy is therefore more ambiguous and can develop in different directions. Against performances emphasizing the distance between politicians and ordinary people, as can be found in certain forms of technocratic or liberal politics, populist performances may bring the sovereignty of the people back into politics. In more inclusive populist performances, politics can get closer to the people and become more understandable. On the other hand, the construction of the people in populist representation always includes certain exclusions and empowers the role of the leader at the expense of other political actors. While I agree with Laclau that constructions of the people are always open to further contestations, the mimetic representation in populist performances can suppress the uncertainty of modern democracy by reiterating already existing political identities and therefore limiting the possibility of new articulations. The relation between populism and democracy is thus more ambiguous and can be captured only in particular contexts of populist politics.