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Abstract
Populism has been on the rise for some time in Europe now, and its rise has been one of the key concerns of Peter Mair. He has linked it to the increasing erosion of the representative function of European party systems. The spectre that haunted him was ‘partyless democracy’, a democratic regime where parties had lost their representative function, which opened the door for unmediated populist protest. While largely sharing his interpretation of the overall structural trends giving rise to the populist challenges in Western Europe, the article is critical of the static character of his assessment. It suggests that there are three forms of ‘protest populism’, all of which may eventually end up transforming the West European party systems in the name of the new structuring conflicts that characterise contemporary European societies. In addition, it proposes to extend the scope of Peter’s argument to the less established democracies of Central and Eastern Europe.
Notes
1. Similarly, Mény and Surel (Citation2000: 181) identify three elements at the core of populist ideology: (a) the people constitutes the foundation of the community, (b) its superior legitimacy is flouted by some actors or processes, which has to be denounced, and (c) the people’s place in society has to be re-established.
2. Arditi (Citation2003: 22) speaks of ‘a joint presence without representation’ to characterise the immediate presence of both the people and the leader.
3. It provides a triple simplification (Rosanvallon Citation2011: 6–7): (a) a political simplification by considering the people as an obvious subject; (b) a procedural simplification by maintaining that the established elites are corrupt and that the only real form of democracy is the direct appeal to the people; and (c) a structural simplification by maintaining that the social cohesion of society is provided by an identity, usually defined in negative terms, and not by the quality of the social relations.
4. See interview with Beppe Grillo, NZZ, No. 113, Wednesday, 16 May 2012, 9.