Populism in Western Democracies : A View from France

Abstract

The present article is the author's own English translation of a French piece entitled "Le populisme contemporain en Occident : Une autre lecture". ; Drawing upon the extensive literature on populism that has accumulated since the 1960s, this article first tries to characterize contemporary Western populist movements (I). It then details the key points of one of the most penetrating analyses of populism-E. Laclau's On Populist Reason (II)-, with a view to using it in a perspective other than its author's own (III). Having identified "civic" nuances among populist currents of the Left as well as of the Right, and in between them a moderate populist vote expressing disenchantment with government parties, it hypothesizes (on the basis of secondary analysis of existing studies) that the centre of gravity of the populist nebula in the West resides in a reference to the demos, rather than ethnos or plebs, and that the balance of forces within the populist support base is in its favour. It goes on to probe the causes of growing citizen alienation-the main source of populism. It suggests (based on fifteen unstructured interviews) that while the social aspect-the destabilization of the lower-middle classes induced by the neo-liberal order-is important, it does not exhaust the issue (IV). One reason is that the audience of populist themes is much wider than that central segment of societies ; another is that social demands only serve to trigger protests, and are soon followed by institutional demands to remedy a perceived disenfranchisement of majorities that has come about over the last half-century due to the rise of culturally-defined minority groups, accommodated by ruling and expressive elites. The ensuing "tyranny of minorities" has resulted in multiple everyday life constraints and reduced freedoms for the many, generating more frustration than meets the eye (V). The same result is achieved when citizens are treated as minors by a "framed democracy" in which their capacity for discernment is deliberately ignored, ...