نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی

نویسنده

• محسن عباس زاده مرزبالی

استادیار علوم سیاسی، دانشگاه مازندران، بابلسر، ایران

چکیده

خیزش‌های پوپولیستی، به‌عنوان یکی از نمایان‌ترین جلوه‌های حیات سیاسی در سال‌های اخیر، از «بحران بازنمایی» به معنای مؤثر نبودن سازوکارهای نهادی موجود برای نمایندگی مطالبات مردم حکایت دارند. در شرایطی که رویکردهای لیبرال دموکراتیک در مواجهه با این وضعیت، خطر «توده‌ای شدن» دموکراسی‌ها و ظهور نسخه‌های جدید اقتدارگرایی را هشدار می‌دهند، رویکردهای رادیکال دموکراتیک آن را امکانی برای بازسازی دموکراسی در نظر می‌گیرند. پرسش این است که چه متغیرهایی را می‌توان در ارزیابی متعارض از پیامدهای پوپولیسم برای دموکراسی تعیین‌کننده دانست؟ پژوهش حاضر بر این مفروض بنا می‌شود که ارزیابی‌های متعارض از تأثیر پوپولیسم بر دموکراسی تابعی از نوع نگرش به رکن محوری مقوم دموکراسی (حاکمیت قانون یا اراده عمومی؟) و نوع تلقی از پوپولیسم (روش حکمرانی یا جنبش بر سازنده اراده جمعی؟) است. با لحاظ مفروضه‌های بنیادین دو رویکرد دموکراتیک متعارض (لیبرال و رادیکال)، فرضیه پژوهش حاضر این است که پیامدهای پوپولیسم برای دموکراسی را می‌توان تابعی از «نوع برهم‌کنش چند متغیر» دانست: 1) محتوای گفتمان پوپولیستی (مفصل‌بندی برابری طلبانه یا تمایز طلبانه مطالبات متکثر؟)، 2) بستر ظهور پوپولیسم (ساختار دموکراتیک یا اقتدارگرا؟)، 3) استراتژی متقابل بازیگران سیاسی اپوزیسیون و پوزیسیون (اتصال یا انفصال میان سیاست خیابانی و نظام نهادی؟). در توجیه این فرضیه، مقاله حاضر در قالب یک چارچوب نظری ترکیبی امکانات رویکردهای لیبرال و رادیکال به دموکراسی را به کار می‌گیرد. نتیجه آن‌که پوپولیسم، به‌منزله سایه همیشگی دموکراسی نمایندگی، با توسل به انگاره «حاکمیت مردم» حاوی امکان‌های متعارضی در تضعیف یا ارتقای دموکراسی است: از رادیکالیسم عقیم منتهی به اقتدارگرایی تا اصلاح‌طلبی رادیکال حامل فرصت احیا دموکراسی.

کلیدواژه‌ها

• بحران نمایندگی
• مطالبه
• مردم
• ایدئولوژی میزبان
• جنبش

عنوان مقاله [English]

Janus-faced Populism: De-democratization or Democratization of Democracy?

نویسنده [English]

• Mohsen Abbaszadeh Marzbali

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran

چکیده [English]

As one of the most visible aspects of political life in recent years, the populist rises imply the ‘crisis of representation’ that means the existing institutional mechanism of representative democracy is ineffective in representing the variety of social demands. While this situation, according to the liberal democratic approach, warns of the revival of mass society and new versions of authoritarianism, the radical democratic approach considers it a possibility to retrieve democracy.
 
Which variables determine the contending evaluations of the impact of populism on democracy? The present paper presupposes that the contending evaluations are driven by different conceptions of the principal constituent of democracy (rule of law or general will?) and the populism entity (a manner of governance or a movement constructing collective will?). Given the postulates of the contending democratic theories (liberal and radical), the paper hypothesizes that evaluating the effects of populism on democracy depends on the way of interaction of some variables: a) the content of the populist discourse (egalitarian articulation of plural demands or discriminatory one?); b) the context in which the populist movement arises (democratic structure of opportunity or authoritarian one?) c) the mutual strategy of political actors whether from opposition or in position ones (the connection between street politics and institutional one or disconnection?). Taking advantage of the contending democratic theories (liberal and radical) in a combinative theoretical framework, the paper attempts to justify the hypothesis by highlighting the fact that both democratic theories are built on one aspect of the conception of democratic order.
 
Marking the elements such as individual subjectivity, rationality, the rule of law, pluralism, etc. as characteristics of democratic order, a liberal democratic approach considers populist popular and exclusionary (i.e., determined by populists’ particular definition of the people) orientation as a threat to democracy. It is because such orientation restricts public debates and leads to weakening democratic institutions, the opposition’s rights, and the plurality of society. On the contrary, the radical democratic approach points to the significance of the populist mobilization for the democratization of status quo democracies owing to re-politicization of the issues neglected by the sovereign elite, provided that to articulate accumulated demands around a democratic egalitarian nodal point. Such evaluation emanates from the fact that this approach identifies democracy with collective subjectivity, general will, participation, and so on.
 
It seems that a non-paradoxical and justifiable reference to both the above-mentioned approach in an analysis of the effect of populism on democracy entails taking their different concentrations into account. It means ‘populism-in-power’ (as a way of governance) puts the structural foundations of democracy in danger and facilitates the emergence of authoritarianism due to its anti-institutionalism, anti-pluralism, and tendency to mass politics. It is whilst, in the status of ‘opposition’ (a mobilizing movement), populism might be an opportunity to revive democratic politics. This argument resorts to the action of constructing a new collective will, in populist strategies of mobilizations, which reveals shortages of representative systems such as the monopoly of a minority, technocratic elitism, and so on. Nevertheless, the actualization of the progressive effects of the populist movements on democracy depends heavily on the interaction of variables which are as follows.  
 

a) If the populist discourse articulates accumulated social demands around a democratic egalitarian will, then the populist moment (as the moment of crisis in a representative democracy) can be of progressive connotations for democracy-deepening. Conversely, discriminatory articulation (like racist or class populism) paves the way for authoritarianism. Hence in terms of democratization and de-democratization, various populisms can be imagined; ranging from democratic populism to authoritarian, leftist to far-right.

 

b)  Realization of the above-mentioned progressive version of populism depends on the ‘democratic structure of political opportunity’. The possibility of mobilization by democratic egalitarian populism is only imaginable where the rules of the democratic competition are guaranteed. In other words, if there is no equal and fair opportunity to declare the policies in electoral campaigns and implement them after taking into power, then there can be just governmental types of populism that mobilize the mass for advocating governmental policies and decisions. Here, populism appears in its authoritarian face in a mass society.

 

c) The third variable is the strategy that political actors of both realms, movement, and institution, in a political structure adapt. If the populist movement ties its street activism with institutional bargaining (e.g. by resorting to parliamentary parties) and, mutually, the government opens up the policy-making input to populist demands (rather than rejecting them), then the rise of a democratic egalitarian populist movement might result in democracy- deepening. Otherwise, populism can bring about some contending de-democratizing mass mobilizations, whether in the shape of authoritarian up-to-down governmental populism or fruitless gross-root radical populism.

 
In brief, the paper maintains that by vindicating ‘popular sovereignty’, populism has double-edged effects in terms of weakening or strengthening democracy; ranging from an infertile radicalism leading to authoritarianism to radical reformism containing the possibility of retrieval of democracy. Hence democratic theory needs to develop an order that balances the rule of law and public will as two sides of democracy. It calls for a new social contract based on a balanced relationship between specialism and democratic responsibility. To reach such a situation, more inclusive politics should be targeted by current-day democracies. The key, however, is hearing the demands of populist advocators rather than populist leaders’ programs.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

• Demand
• The Crisis of Representation
• People
• Host Ideology
• Movement