Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy
| Published date | 01 March 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00184 |
| Author | Margaret Canovan |
| Date | 01 March 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Trust the People! Populism and the Two
Faces of Democracy
MARGARET CANOVAN*
Keele University
Populism, understood as an appeal to `the people' against both the established
structure of power and the dominant ideas and values, should not be dismissed as a
pathological form of politics of no interest to the political theorist,for its democratic
pretensions raise important issues. Adapting Michael Oakeshott's distinction
between `the politics of faith' and `the politics of scepticism', the paper oers an
analysis of democracy in terms of two opposing faces, one `pragmatic' and the other
`redemptive', and argues that it is the inescapable tension between them that makes
populism a perennial possibility.
The populist movements that have in the past decade burst into mainstream
politics in many Western democracies are usually treated as pathological
symptoms requiring sociological explanation.1They are not seen as phenomena
that challenge our understanding of democracy, and democratic theorists who
are committed to increased popular participation in politics pay little or no
attention to populist attempts to mobilize the grass roots. While this disdain
may be understandable, it is too hasty. Populists see themselves as true
democrats, voicing popular grievances and opinions systematically ignored by
governments, mainstream parties and the media. Many of them favour `direct
democracy' ± political decision making by referendum and popular initiative.
Their professed aim is to cash in democracy's promise of power to the people.
This paper will argue that we cannot aord to brush these claims aside, and that
re¯ections on populism's disturbing recurrence in established democracies can
help us to a better understanding of democracy's complexities. The reason is
that the sources of populism lie not only in the social context that supplies the
grievances of any particular movement, but are to be found in tensions at the
heart of democracy. I shall suggest that democracy as we know it has two
faces ± a `redemptive' and a `pragmatic' face ± and that their coexistence is a
#Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 CowleyRoad, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Political Studies (1999), XLVII, 2±16
* I am grateful for critical comments made when ancestors of this paper were delivered at
seminars at the Universities of Manchester, Westminster, Birmingham and Sheeld, and at the
ECPR Joint Workshops in Bern. I am more particularly indebted to my colleagues John Horton
and Andrew Dobson, and to this journal's referees for their comments on previous drafts of the
present paper.
1H-G Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (Houndmills, Macmillan, 1994),
p. 4. The movements Betz covers are the Front National, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Lega
Nord, the Vlaams Blok, the Swiss Autopartei and Tessin League, the German Republikaner, the
Danish and Norwegian Progress Parties, and Sweden's New Democracy. Other recent phenomena
that are populist in the sense used in this article include Alberta's Reform Party, PaulineHanson's
One Nation Party in Australia and the US presidential bids by Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan.
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