Populist Peril to Democracy: The Sacralization and Singularization of Competitive Elections
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929918814613 |
| Author | Yunus Sozen |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929918814613
Political Studies Review
2019, Vol. 17(3) 267 –283
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929918814613
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Populist Peril to Democracy:
The Sacralization and
Singularization of
Competitive Elections
Yunus Sozen
Abstract
In this article, I critically engage with the populism literature, and predicated on a conceptualization of
modern democracy as a mixed regime (combining oligarchy and democracy), I provide a mechanism
to connect populism-in-power to authoritarianism. As such, I elucidate a particular populist path
to authoritarianism in a competitive setting by exploring two questions. First, what is the impact
of populism-in-power on the modern democratic mixed regime? Second, what is the locus of
populism in a modern democratic institutional framework? Utilizing the Turkish and Argentinean
cases as illustrative examples of populism-in-power, I conclude that, first, unless a populist vision
is accompanied by democratic institutions outside of the spectrum that modern democracy offers,
when that vision which sacralizes and singularizes competitive elections becomes preponderant,
it will lead to the opposite of its claim of making the people sovereign, and instead will make the
rulers sovereign. Second, I argue that although there is no internal contradiction between modern
democracy’s liberal or constitutional and democratic elements, there is still a paradox surrounding
modern democracy. This paradox is found between the sources of its imaginative appeal and its
practice as a mixed regime, and this is where we should place the perennial potential of populism.
Keywords
populism, authoritarianism, modern democracy, competitive elections, populism in Argentina
and Turkey
Accepted: 31 October 2018
Introduction
In the past decades, in tandem with the global resurgence of populism, studies on this
phenomenon have proliferated. Both theoretical and empirical studies of the populism
literature revolve around three principal issues: the concept’s definition;1 the conditions
Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
Corresponding author:
Yunus Sozen, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University, Louis A.
Simpson Building, No., 163A, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
Emails: sozen@princeton.edu; yunus.sozen@gmail.com
814613PSW0010.1177/1478929918814613Political Studies ReviewSozen
research-article2019
Article
268 Political Studies Review 17(3)
of the emergence of populism, including the related theoretical debate about populism’s
locus within democracies;2 and finally, the impact of populism on political regimes (Abts
and Rummens, 2007; Espejo, 2015; Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2012). This article aims to
contribute to the conceptual side of the debate on the relationship between democracy and
populism, and secondarily to the locus of populism within democracies discussion.
Both democracy and populism are contested and highly loaded concepts. However, the
reason for the contestation over their nature is different. While populism is rarely positively
embraced and is for the most part used to signify the ideology, political style, or policies of
political adversaries, democracy, as Dunn (2005: 13) puts it, has an “extraordinary presence,”
and democrat is a term that is often used by political groups to self-identify. I attempt to mini-
mize challenges presented by the “elusive” concept of populism by using a definition of the
concept as “a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into
two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’” (Mudde,
2004: 543; also see: Canovan, 2002; Stanley, 2008). In line with this definition, I consider
populism’s vision of democracy as the reflection of the popular will in politics,3 or as making
the popular will preponderant. This understanding of populism allows for theoretically sin-
gling out the political regime implications of the phenomenon, although empirically, populist
movements, parties, or leaders combine this thin-centered ideology with different right- or
left-wing ideologies that may have a specific impact on political regimes themselves. More
importantly, I try to avoid the pitfalls associated with studying the democracy side of this
relationship, by making use of depictions of modern democracy as a particular set of institu-
tions and practices that in their totality form a mixed regime or mixed constitution/govern-
ment—a regime that combines democratic and oligarchic elements (following Manin, 1997;
also see: Hansen, 2010; Pasquino, 2009; Ranciere, 2006).
On the relationship of populism and democracy, there are accounts that interpret pop-
ulism as democratic, potentially democratic, or ambivalent about democracy.4 However,
a significant portion of the theoretical studies on this relationship see populism as a poten-
tially authoritarian force. There are several conceptual links offered by these studies, for
example, Urbinati (1998) emphasizes that populism revokes the mediation of political
institutions, and upholds an organic notion of the body politic; Abts and Rummens (2007:
115) maintain that populist logic closes the empty space of democracy “in favor of a ficti-
tious image of the people as a homogeneous and sovereign political body”; Espejo (2015:
61) argues that “populists reject any limits on their claims to embody the will of the peo-
ple”; and Muller (2016) focuses on populists’ anti-pluralism, and their sole claim to rep-
resent the people. This article, predicated on a conceptualization of modern democracy as
a mixed regime, supports the theoretical literature that sees populism as a potentially
authoritarian force, offering a missing perspective to connect theoretical arguments to the
concrete democratic institutions.
After describing the procedures and mechanics of the modern liberal constitutional rep-
resentative government (hereafter, modern democracy), I proceed, following Manin’s
(1997) study on representative government, by reconstructing modern democracy as a
system with a coherent internal logic combining both democratic and oligarchic (non-
democratic) aspects, in spite of the fact that it has developed through history incrementally.
The particularity of this mixed regime we call modern democracy is that in its political
institutional framework, specific institutions, rules, and practices (e.g. checks and bal-
ances, elections) are often both suppressing and enabling the democracy simultaneously.
Consequentially, I emphasize that it is faulty to assign the quality of being democratic to
particular mechanisms, institutions, or rules (elections, majority rule) and of being
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