TY  - JOUR
TI  - Rethinking Populism: Peak democracy, liquid identity and the performance of sovereignty
AB  - Despite the burgeoning literature on right-wing populism, there is still considerable uncertainty about its causes, its impact on liberal democracies and about promising counter-strategies. Inspired by recent suggestions that (1) the emancipatory left has made a significant contribution to the proliferation of the populist right; and (2) populist movements, rather than challenging the established socio-political order, in fact stabilize and further entrench its logic, this article argues that an adequate understanding of the populist phenomenon necessitates a radical shift of perspective: beyond the democratic and emancipatory norms, which still govern most of the relevant literature. Approaching its subject matter via democratic theory and modernization theory, it undertakes a reassessment of the triangular relationship between modernity, democracy and populism. It finds that the latter is not helpfully conceptualized as anti-modernist or anti-democratic but should, instead, be regarded as a predictable feature of the form of politics distinctive of today’s third modernity.
DO  - https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431017754057
SP  - 1
EP  - 21
UR  - http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1368431017754057
PY  - 2018-01-01
JO  - European Journal of Social Theory
AU  - Blühdorn, Ingolfur 
AU  - Butzlaff, Felix 
ER -