Populism in Western Democracies : A View from France
Résumé
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, and their assent dispensed with, by ruling elites in the name of a presumed higher moral good, or directives from unelected faraway power centres (VI). The root cause of the malaise that has set in is the ascent of individualism and relaxation of citizenship norms from the 1960s onwards, which has led to a situation where authority and power are questioned or feared, and political leadership becomes weak. Now reduced to a managerial role, it takes to accommodating activists and militants, delegates policy-making to independent, nonpartisan authorities, expert committees or international organizations, and thus becomes unresponsive to the will of majorities, which (because they had hitherto been passive) it does not fear to ignore or manipulate. In reaction, majorities first went through a phase of apathy (which saw abstention rise), then started resorting to protest votes. Elite deafness or impotence has eventually led to a third stage, in which majorities are now abruptly reasserting their power and demanding a reaffirmation of citizenship. The current surge of populism bluntly informs us that the outer limits of the master-trend initiated in the 1960s have now been reached. Seen in that light, "civic" populism is a response to a deactivation of democracy rather than a threat to it (VII). Systems of representative democracy, put in place over two centuries when the masses were uneducated, are not aging well now that average education have considerably increased and majorities want to make themselves heard. Should that demand be ignored, the problem raised would become structural-and more acute : institutional reform in the direction of redefining the relationships between elites and grassroots, majority and minorities, is thus in order-the sooner the better (VIII).
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