The (discursive) limits of (left) populism

Yannis Stavrakakis
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

As far as the study of (left) populism is concerned, Political Discourse The-

ory has been largely associated with a novel and challenging take on pop-
ulist politics, first emerging in Laclau’s work in the 1970s and preoccupying
Laclau, Mouffe and their co-travellers continuously since then. What has
not been adequately articulated yet is what would be the limits of (left) pop-
ulism as a political strategy from a discursive perspective. This short paper
aims at remedying this lacuna in the relevant literature indicating certain
ways forward for the discursive analysis of populism. The argument oper-
ates both at a theoretical and conceptual level as well as at the level of his-
torical, empirical analysis.

Keywords: populism, discourse, limits, democracy, sovereignty, power,

nationalism, leadership, left

1. Introduction

Populism undoubtedly constitutes one of the most hotly debated issues in our
contemporary public sphere(s). Indeed the concept is utilized to describe a host
of heterogeneous, if not contradictory, phenomena; from Donald Trump and the
European far right to Bernie Sanders and a variety of leftist alternatives to neolib-
eral globalization in many areas of the world, from Southern Europe to Latin
America. This creates considerable confusion. In the words of Nadia Urbinati,
‘[p]opulism is the name of a global phenomenon whose definitional precarious-
ness is proverbial’ (Urbinati 2018). Here, a discursive perspective, mainly drawing
on the Essex School, has been largely associated with a challenging take on pop-
ulist politics that conceives of populism as a discursive strategy operative in the
register of the political. This perspective, emerging in Laclau’s work already from
the 1970s (Laclau 1977) and culminating in his 2005 tour de force, On Populist Rea-
son (Laclau 2005), has introduced the prospect of arriving, more or less, at a con-
sensus dispelling confusion as far as the identification of populism is concerned

https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20047.sta | Published online: 16 December 2020

Journal of Language and Politics 20:1 (2021), pp. 162–177. issn 1569-2159 | e‑issn 1569-9862
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
 The (discursive) limits of (left) populism 163

(see, in this respect, Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014, 122; Stavrakakis and Jäger
2018).
A discursive perspective involves bracketing the pejorative definitions of pop-
ulism that, since the work of Richard Hofstadter in the 1950s (see Stavrakakis
2017a), have plagued populism research, often reducing it to a mere tool in the
ideological warfare deployed by global elites on excluded – and, as a result, often
radicalized and politically mobilized – popular sectors throughout the world. It
focuses, instead, on the formal discursive mechanisms (on practices of interpel-
lation) through which particular patterns of signification intervene in political
antagonism drawing political frontiers that offer oppositional points of identifica-
tion, thus shaping new political identities (articulated around ‘the people’) with
hegemonic pretensions. Within societies marked by multiple divisions, inequali-
ties and polarizations, populism indicates a discursive practice that aims at creat-
ing links between excluded and suffering political agents (individuals and groups)
in order to empower them in their struggle to redress the said exclusion. In that
sense, we have populism when salience is gained by discourses that are articulated
around ‘the people’ as central political subject demanding incorporation in the
political community, restoring dignity and equality, honoring the liberal democ-
ratic constitutional commitment to ‘popular sovereignty’.
Hence, so-called people-centrism is the first formal criterion for the discursive
identification of populism. At the same time, the aforementioned populist
agency – which performatively creates a politically potent people out of a series
of heterogeneous movements and activities, a multitude – employs a dichotomic,
antagonistic representation of the socio-political field. The latter is divided
between Us and Them, the people and the establishment, the 99% and the 1%.
This anti-elitism constitutes the second formal criterion for a rigorous identifi-
cation of populism. These two criteria – people-centrism and anti-elitism – are
today accepted by most accounts of populism, providing a clear indication of the
attention discursive perspectives have enjoyed within the field. Many implications
follow from this; one of the most important is that, although this pattern of signi-
fication can acquire many different articulations at the ideological level involving
antithetical ideational contents, the populist canon is usually oppositional, mainly
anti-systemic and often left-wing – and this is corroborated by historical and com-
parative analysis. At any rate, this type of (left) populism constitutes the focus
of this article – ironically, this is also the type of populism that has received less
attention in academic research. The latter is mostly preoccupied by a euro-centric
and rather misplaced focus on (far) right populism, which, in most cases, utilizes
certain populist discursive repertoires in order to put forward nationalist, nativist
and outright authoritarian political platforms.
164 Yannis Stavrakakis

Having stressed the importance of moving beyond the bias of one-sided, pejo-
rative stereotypes, and having very briefly presented the core of an alternative,
formal, discursive approach (also see Stavrakakis 2017b for a more detailed pre-
sentation), we can now address a related and thoroughly significant issue that has
not been given the attention it deserves within discursive analyses of populism.
In particular, what has not been adequately researched is what would be the lim-
its of (left) populism as a political strategy from a discursive perspective. That
is to say, we can safely infer that a populist discursive practice can create links
between diverse and initially unconnected social demands thus creating the nec-
essary strategic unification that is crystallized around an often dynamic popular
subject, potentially able to force social and political change ‘in the name of the
people’. The ensuing populist articulation can often win elections. However, is a
populist discursive framing enough to ensure a productive as well as empower-
ing term in government? In addition, within the negative ontology framework the
Essex School employs, the ensuing equivalence depends on the polarizing antag-
onism between ‘the people’ and the force that is seen as frustrating such popular
demands: the government, the elite, the establishment, the power block. Yet, what
are the side-effects or the political risks involved in the adoption of such a pop-
ulist political strategy?

2. Discursive fluidity in political antagonism: When the left is not

populist enough

These questions are important to the extent that the constitutive sliding of signifi-
cation ultimately means that the discursive task of representing populist demands
and desires for empowerment can be assumed by a variety of antithetical political
forces, that is to say, these demands can be grafted onto a variety of political plat-
forms, serving as distinct surfaces of inscription for the public unfolding of a
populist sensibility. This is why the signifier ‘populism’ is seen as capable of sus-
taining many different significations, both democratic and anti-democratic, socio-
centric and ethno-centric, serious and grotesque, responsible and irresponsible.
In other words, populist discourses and their affective investment – shaping a
variety of movements and mobilizations – emerge at the intersection of the nec-
essary and the impossible, that is to say in historical conjunctures in which the
political par excellence makes its presence clearly felt. Populism is not an anom-
aly or an asynchronism that will go away precisely because representative systems
promise something – present in most liberal constitutions – which is systemati-
cally neglected as our societies follow a post-democratic direction (Crouch 2004).
 The (discursive) limits of (left) populism 165

In particular, the repetitive/periodic failure to achieve and practice a certain

degree of ‘popular sovereignty’ thus leads to cycles of popular discontent fuelled
by the emergence of a series of unsatisfied social and political demands that even-
tually trigger populist projects ostensibly aiming at redressing the said failure.
Such projects are discursively articulated ‘in the name of the people’ – utilizing
the grammar of political modernity – aiming at a political change that seems
impossible within a political system that has elevated elite rule into a position of
dominance (often under the guise of technocratic management and meritocracy).
This explains why, in contrast to a widespread euro-centric public wisdom, most
populism(s) in history, the populist canon, have been egalitarian or even left-
wing. Yet, given the fluidity of political antagonism and the contingency of polit-
ical struggles, how exactly this ‘people’ and its adversary, the ‘elite’, are eventually
conceived in a dynamic historical context, is bound to remain an open question
leading to different types of populism, left-wing and right-wing, democratic and
authoritarian, representing the ‘people’ as underdog or as nation, as an excluded
sector that deserves to be empowered and acquire a voice and equal rights within
the political community or as a victim to be salvaged by a new authoritarian, iden-
titarian elite.
This fluidity is bound to create certain problems for political classifications
and marks the place where the first potential limits of populist political projects
seem to emerge. The latter can indeed acquire different forms. In some cases,
political antagonism can gradually force an arguably left populist political dis-
course (like that of Corbyn in the UK, for example, which pitted ‘the many against
the few’ in a paradigmatic populist move) to endorse positions (like the Labour
policy on BREXIT) that seem to ‘betray’ the popular will (as it has been previ-
ously registered in the referendum) in order to position itself against a right-wing
appropriation of the latter. As it turns out, this constitutes a ‘mortal sin’ for a pop-
ulist project, which is bound to be severely punished electorally if it is perceived
to be going against the same popular will that animated it initially, if it is seen as
ignoring what it was supposed to represent in the first place. In such cases, what
is often perceived as a failure of a left populist strategy is, in fact, an inability to be
consistently populist, a failure to be populist enough.
Additional limits are created through the ‘success’ of populist projects in
getting in government and through the ever-present struggle with anti-populist
forces. We know that a populist discursive strategy can be very effective in win-
ning an election victory; however, how does government performance affect pop-
ulist political forces, especially given the continuing attacks by anti-populist forces
and the constitutive oppositional nature of populist articulations? In the following
paragraphs we will first deal with the limits of populism in power (which seem to
166 Yannis Stavrakakis

be shared by other non-populist political projects as well) before addressing the

issue of its alleged ‘inherent’ limitations.

3. The limits of populism in government

Obviously populist projects are not panaceas, albeit they usually represent gen-
uine political grievances resulting from the failure of institutional forces to hon-
our their promise to deliver ‘popular sovereignty’ in practice. In fact, one can
point to a number of limitations they can face.
For a start, even when a populist strategy proves to be electorally victorious, it
cannot guarantee the continuous hegemony of the political agent employing it. A
deep and lengthy – obviously not, in any sense, eternal – hegemony would require
additional tools and resources including some sort of technical expertise, creative
spirit as far as institutional design is concerned (something which is not given
in advance since, as Machiavelli has long ago pointed out, the primary popular
desire is defined negatively: to get rid of oppression), and a high degree of politi-
cal diligence combined with a strong democratic ethos in thwarting anti-populist
obstacles without sacrificing the aim of popular empowerment. Populist volun-
tarism is never enough.
The inability to somehow deal effectively with such anti-populist obstacles
can lead to two diametrically opposite dangers: (a) To a co-optation of any demo-
cratic radicalism pertaining to a populist force by succumbing to the established
(elitist) values and the pre-existing post-democratic institutions of a society; (b)
To a resistance to be co-opted, taking the form of increased authoritarian rule.
What is lost in both cases is the ultimate commitment of populism to democratic
popular sovereignty. Let us briefly discuss these dangers one by one.
In the first case we are dealing with the implicit conditioning of a populist
force by pre-existing features of a given political culture. Despite their radical
rhetoric, very often (left) populist projects are overdetermined by such features
and prove to be unable to push forward genuine democratic renewal. They grad-
ually get absorbed by so-called ‘democratic elitism’ and, trapped within the ten-
sions of representation, fail to facilitate further democratization. They function as
outlets for the abreaction/relief of popular discontent, without managing to sub-
stantially advance popular self-government. Having to face strong anti-populist
values that have infiltrated a given political system or powerful anti-populist
forces active at the national or supra-national level, they fail to push through com-
prehensive processes of substantive collective emancipation, especially as far as
democratizing the party, legal and media systems is concerned. Notwithstanding
its many achievements, the Greek case of the SYRIZA government has partly been
 The (discursive) limits of (left) populism 167

affected by such limitations, especially if one takes into account the systemic con-
straints set by the euro-zone and the crypto-colonial attachment of many Greeks
to so-called European values and Europeanization (see Stavrakakis 2016 for a
more detailed analysis).
Even when a populist government manages to achieve many of its goals and
stays in power for a series of continuous re-elections, introducing quite consider-
able changes advancing the socio-economic position and the political incorpora-
tion of popular sectors, reversing the downward social mobility of crisis-ridden
middle classes and raising the impoverished standards of life of the lower classes
(the cases of Argentina and Venezuela are quite instructive), two limitations are
gradually revealed. Populism often becomes a victim of its own success: the sat-
isfaction of previously unsatisfied demands and the difficulties in sustaining a
high level of popular engagement while in government produces a demobiliza-
tion thwarting further democratization. In addition, and most importantly, pop-
ulists in power very often fail to impact considerably on the modes of production
and the psycho-social framing of consumption conditioning the majority of social
identities. In Venezuela, for example, social change seems to have been premised
on the utilization of revenue from the high petroleum prices; when the latter
started to suffer, the Chavista movement failed to offer any real alternatives. In
Argentina, many years of heterodox populist rule has managed to restore the pre-
crisis status of the fallen middle classes and to advance the lower classes. But when
these classes felt again some stability and security, they started desiring in the old
consumerist way (over-valuing the free international movement of capital, going
after imported goods with a vengeance, etc.) opening up the fragile Argentinian
economy to the forces of neoliberal globalization that led, once more, to a very
deep crisis and another intervention by the IMF under Macri. In other words,
notwithstanding the many advances it achieved, contemporary left-wing Pero-
nism got trapped in a ‘nostalgic’ or ‘mimetic’ psycho-social overdetermination of
desire reproducing types of identity relying on globalized capitalism, and thus
benefitting, in the long run, political forces that represented a return to neolib-
eral ‘normality’ (president Macri). In the words of ex-president of Uruguay Pepe
Mujica, although leftist Latin American governments dealt with relative success
with the problem of poverty, they did this in a way that transformed the poor
into consumers and not citizens (Bahiana 2019). Needless to say, such shortcom-
ings point to a broader limitation affecting left strategy in the 21st century and
the passage to post-capitalist alternatives. On the other hand, popular empower-
ment cannot neglect consumption – beyond consumerism – as a register in which
equality must also operate.
In the second case, that of increased authoritarian rule, another scenario is
usually at play. While attempting to avoid such co-optation, a populist govern-
168 Yannis Stavrakakis

ment comes up against determined and strong, anti-pluralist animosity from the
established elites, economic and political, national and international, and opts
to retaliate in a way that eventually and equally puts in danger democracy itself.
This is far from surprising given Nancy Bermeo’s observation that most often
than not ‘it seems that democracies do not break down unless political elites
deliberately destroy them’ (Bermeo 2003, 254). Here, of course, we should also
include cases of populist leaders, who, when in power, attempt to consolidate their
hold with patently anti-democratic means even without any provocation – this
is usually something that a pre-existing, leader-centric political culture permits.
In Venezuela, for example, in addition to the failure to introduce new modes of
sustainable economic activity, a pernicious polarization, mainly triggered by the
anti-democratic initiatives of anti-populist forces, local and international (of par-
ticular note is the 2002 coup against president Chavez that seems to have triggered
his subsequent ‘radicalization’), has eventually escalated into a situation of virtual
civil war in which populists and anti-populists often antagonize each other to win
the trophy of the most anti-pluralist political force.
At any rate, the ideological direction of a populist mobilization remains
potentially open, to the extent that it can acquire many different forms. Nobody
can guarantee in advance that an invocation of ‘the people’ will not be hijacked by
far right rhetoric. In addition, very often, systemic and mainstream forces them-
selves can assume a populist rhetorical style, further complicating the trope of
political antagonism(s).
Yet, most of the aforementioned limits seem to follow from the difficulties
emerging during a term in office – for the reasons we have singled out, it is often
difficult to implement a populist radical imaginary or combine populist priori-
ties with a governmental rationale. Indeed some follow from the inability of pop-
ulist forces to break with a pre-existing political culture or socio-economic frame
(overdetermining the identities of producers and consumers in a given context) or
to handle anti-populist attacks in a way protecting or furthering democracy (the
latter is often unavoidable when pernicious polarization ensues). In other words,
they do not seem to be inherent to a populist discursive logic. Such choreogra-
phies of over-determination, exo-determination and co-optation can affect, more
or less, all political forces when they come up against similar challenges within
particular historical contexts. Yet, and this is a more crucial line of questioning,
are there any other dangers that could be seen as inherent to a populist framing of
political antagonism? To the populist political strategy itself ?
 The (discursive) limits of (left) populism 169

4. Populism’s inherent limit?

In recent literature, a further argument is put forward that deals with the kernel
of populist identification itself, with the type of bond populism seems to cultivate
with its discursive nodal points, for example with the idea of ‘the people’ and
its adversary, ‘the elite’. It is common-place in mainstream liberal literature, for
instance, to argue that populism endorses a purified, idealized, moralistic signi-
fication of ‘the people’: populism pits ‘the pure people’ against the ‘corrupt elite’
(Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017, 6, emphasis added). Performing such a moraliza-
tion, populism ends up becoming a potential or even a ‘clear and present’ danger
for democracy; the latter is argued by Müller, for whom populism is inherently
anti-pluralist because of its monist idealization of one segment of the population
(Müller 2016, 3).
The anti-democratic dangers involved in populist discourse idealizing the
One, pure and unified, people, is also stressed by analysts who acknowledge that
populism emerges in conjunctures where the ‘social contract’ that stabilized the
previous hegemonic order (most often liberal democracy) is broken due to a deep
crisis and by the concomitant inability of systemic political agents to resolve the
crisis in a way honoring the principle of ‘popular sovereignty’. When the neolib-
eral mutation of liberal democracy is sliding into authoritarianism, writes psy-
choanalyst Reginald Blanchet, it is to be expected that some form of popular
discontent – even rage – is likely to emerge (Blanchet 2019, 30). In such contexts,
‘populism’ becomes the index, not merely the signifier, but the naturalized myth
(see Barthes 2012) that established forces utilize to discredit any critical voice and
any oppositional force, which is summarily denounced as ‘populist’. It is obvious
that a critical analysis is required to deconstruct this myth that puts in danger
even a minimal invocation of ‘popular sovereignty’ and ultimately legitimizes the
ordoliberal prioritization of market sovereignty.
At the same time, going against a double blackmail, critical discourse theory
must obviously take into account the dangerous trope that populist articulations
acquire in certain contexts (mostly in Europe). Having in mind the French case
of the Front national, Blanchet rigorously castigates this dangerous direction in
which ‘the people’ as One is essentialized and becomes another equally natural-
ized index of imaginary fullness (national, traditional, cultural, etc.) disavowing
the inherent division(s) of the social (Blanchet 2019, 31).
The problems resulting from such essentialism are familiar to political theory
and philosophy. On the one hand, we are familiar with the idealization of ‘the
people’ and the mystical union established between people and leader in Schmitt
as well as between people and nation, people and land, in Heidegger (Siniosoglou
2018, 194–5, 215). On the other hand, we are aware that instead of establishing
170 Yannis Stavrakakis

such a mystical union or restoring the imaginary fullness of the One, modern
democracy entails a constitutive tension, a central ambiguity, the recognition and
institutionalization of a disharmony (see Stavrakakis 1999 for a comprehensive
elaboration, from where I am briefly recasting some points). Claude Lefort has
cogently shown that democracy involves a form of society in which a general con-
tradiction comes to the fore (Lefort 1988, 15). If before the democratic revolution
the prince is the embodiment, the incarnate of power, the unprecedented result
of the democratic revolution is that ‘the locus of power becomes an empty place’
(Lefort 1988, 17).
Does that entail that all populism is inherently undemocratic? Is all populism
against division and in favour of restoring an exclusionary and totalistic, omnipo-
tent One? What I would like to develop in the remaining part of this text, is the
argument that here we should sharply distinguish between two (ideal)types, not
only encouraging the first and avoiding the second, but also continuously guard-
ing against the ever-present danger of the first mutating into the second:
– a democratic, inclusionary, form of populism that, honouring the principle
of ‘popular sovereignty’, (a) reintroduces a recognition of social division and
political antagonism against all the (neo)liberal fantasies of the end of history,
of the TINA dogma, and (b) in order to create a credible and potent alterna-
tive political subject of change, must facilitate a strategic (vertical) unification
between oppositional forces and subjects, without eliminating their (horizon-
tal) multiplicity and without reducing ‘the people’ to any single essence or to
the absolute power of a leader.
– An undemocratic, exclusionary, form of populism, which, investing on the
mystical priority of the leader as a new incarnate of power, eliminates multi-
plicity and division by reducing ‘the people’ to an essential, mythical feature
(usually, but not exclusively, race, nation, etc.), of which the leader becomes
the only authentic expression.
For a start, the fact that democracy destroys the organic unity of the ancien régime
does not mean that there is no need for unity any more. It only means that this
unity is not given a priori but can only be the result of political hegemonic strug-
gle. Unity and power cannot be co-substantial with a certain limited political force
or person. Thus democratic unity is constituted on the basis of recognizing divi-
sion (Lefort 1988, 18).
In fact, democracy simultaneously has to face two dangers, as Alain Touraine
cogently puts it: democracy can be destroyed either from above, by authoritarian
power, by the lure of the One, or from below, ‘through chaos, violence and civil war’
(Touraine 1994, 2), by a particularism that denies the possibility of any (partial)
 The (discursive) limits of (left) populism 171

process of unification whatsoever. What is foreclosed here is the existence of a third

possibility:

Between the logic of complete identity and that of pure difference, the experience
of democracy should consist of the recognition of the multiplicity of social logics
along with the necessity of their articulation. But this articulation should be con-
stantly re-created and renegotiated, and there is no final point at which a balance
will be definitely achieved. (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 188)

This is exactly the purpose of a democratic populism: registering the One in a

divided form, the strategic in-between aiming at resolving the tension between an
essentialized – potentially authoritarian – One and a debilitating fragmentation
leading either to political chaos or to a situation that is easily manageable by supe-
rior establishment forces.
In addition, most liberal approaches fail to acknowledge that the danger of a
potentially undemocratic One does not emerge with populism; it is already here
in the guise of anti-populist imaginaries claiming to incarnate a unidirectional
(capitalist) modernization process ending history and politics, and instituting a
rigid post-democratic order excluding various sections of the population. In most
cases, (left) populism registers issues of social and economic inequality and exclu-
sion and reintroduces pluralism, political antagonism and contestation. Obvi-
ously, in order to do so in an effective manner, it needs to create links between
disparate forces, transforming a relatively impotent multitude into a potent politi-
cal subject, ‘the people’. In most cases, in the global populist canon, this process of
strategic unification does not put in danger representative institutions nor does it
lead to authoritarian outcomes. Why? Because a unification based on the recogni-
tion of division – a division against a potent established adversary, but also against
the background of a myriad of divisions within the multitude itself – does not nec-
essarily entail imaginary unity; and, furthermore, because such (vertical) unifi-
cation has to be predicated upon a recognition of the ever-present (horizontal)
fragmentation of the social and a tortuous negotiation between its constituent ele-
ments, which is irreducible.
Is this the case with all populist movements? Of course not! There are particu-
lar conditions under which one can imagine an anti-democratic mutation of such
a strategy – even in cases where everything starts in a predominantly egalitarian
manner (left-wing populism). For a start, such mutations are inherent in politics
and signification itself – and this does not exclusively apply to populist discourse,
but to all social and political significations. For example, the essentialization of
reason can lead to a catastrophic instrumental rationality, but this does not dele-
gitimize reason itself. Likewise, the identification of liberalism with democracy
172 Yannis Stavrakakis

can eventually legitimize post-democratic outcomes; not to mention versions of

militant atheism that can lead to a new exclusionary zealotism.

5. Concluding remarks

‘Contemporary populism is not the product of some malevolent force but of the
very model of democracy, representative and constitutional, that stabilized our
societies after World War II’ writes Nadia Urbinati (2018). What are the condi-
tions under which such mutations can endanger this democratic core of populism
risking a ‘disfigurement’ of democracy – again a concept introduced by Urbinati –
in the process of opposing the prior disfigurement introduced by the reduction of
liberal democracy to a post-democratic version of ‘managed democracy’ (Wolin
2008)? I would like, in conclusion, to highlight two dangers that can operate in
such a way:
– The danger of reductionism. This prospect ensues when the construction of
the people is not attempted through political articulation but through the
reduction of ‘the people’ to a strong imaginary ideal that introduces the idea
of a (pre-existing) essential-natural unity. In this case, the signifier ‘the people’,
which in populism proper operates as a signifier without a fixed signified, per-
mitting the performative inclusion of all potentially excluded popular sectors,
including immigrants – with the exception of the forces that have endangered
democracy in the first place –, becomes reduced to a mythical (naturalized)
transcendental signified (race, nation, blood, etc.), severely restricting such
democratic openness. Indeed it is debatable to what extent the latter reduc-
tionist strategy should be called ‘populist’ at all (see Stavrakakis et al 2017;
on the conceptual difference between populism and nationalism, also see De
Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017).
– The danger of somatic incarnation. Such a reductionism is usually accompa-
nied by a mystical conceptualization of leadership, highlighting not the name
of the leader or the principles of equality and strategic unification he/she can
potentially represent as a catalyst of effective political mobilization overde-
termined by a democratic ethos, but his/hers direct representation of the
aforementioned essentialized signified. In such cases, “populist leaders use
this anti-establishment imagery in order to ask the people to identify with
them, and moreover to believe that their faith in the populist leader will work
for their emancipation by avenging them against the other part or parts of
the populace – more importantly, that the leaders will do this job for them”
(Roberts in Urbinati 2018).
 The (discursive) limits of (left) populism 173

Both these dangers are, once more, due to the innovative character of modern
democracy: ‘To put it in terms suggested by Lefort, the reference to power as an
“empty place”, as an absent centre that is ostensibly the defining feature of demo-
cratic societies, does not get rid of the carnal or corporeal dimension of repre-
sentation’ (Santner 2011, 5). In other words, the need for a mythical reference to
a sublime substance, which stages an anchoring on a somatic real, does not evap-
orate as we pass from kings (with their two bodies – see Kantorowicz 1997) to
people as source of sovereignty. This passage towards popular sovereignty dis-
lodges the fantasy of an abstract sovereignty rooted however in the flesh of the
One monarch. Where exactly is this new popular sovereignty rooted (Santner
2011, xv)? The problem seems to be inherent to representation: popular sover-
eignty ‘can never absolve itself of its own ultimate groundlessness – its lack of an
anchoring point in the real – the normative pressures it generates for its members,
[…] are always in excess of what could ever be satisfied’ (Santner 2011, xxi). This
is exactly where the lure of the nation, of blood and race, seems to emerge: ‘One
of the key factors in perpetuating the semantics of the body politic in modernity
was the attempt to locate, in the wake of the French Revolution, the new source
of legitimate political membership in the concept of the national community, a
political collectivity united by the fact of birth and so by way of a kind of somatic
distinction or dignitas’ (Santner 2011, 30). This is probably how ‘[t]he flesh of the
social bond found its new locus of representational corporeality in the national
community’ (Santner 2011, 50). In this process, ‘the people’ becomes reduced to
the nation through a mythical naturalization: ‘To be enjoyed in the full and com-
plex sense of that word, membership in the polity required a form of “naturaliza-
tion” that could, however, no longer be secured by reference to the pompous body
of the king and the dynamics of his representational corporeality; the passage
from early modern subject to modern citizen was thus supplemented, from the
beginning, by the qualification of national identity’ (Santner 2011, 51). This reduc-
tion constitutes the kernel of right-wing or national-populism (although invoca-
tions of the ‘nation’ can also take anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and other forms);
rather of an essentialist nationalism that hijacks the vocabulary of popular sover-
eignty.
Yet, ‘the people’ cannot be reduced to ‘the nation’, there is always an excess
marking this sliding to the extent that ‘the people’ can also signify ‘the wretched,
the oppressed, and the defeated’ (Agamben in Santner 2011, 55), that is to say the
excluded part produced out of this naturalization. This re-introduces a ‘funda-
mental division’ to the extent that ‘the people’ brings with it a fundamental para-
dox: ‘It is what cannot be included in the whole of which it is part and what
cannot belong to the set in which it is always already included’ (Agamben in
Santner 2011, 55). Against the ‘direct representation’ (Urbinati 2018) of the people
174 Yannis Stavrakakis

as nation that a nationalist leader assumes, opening the door to many authori-
tarian dangers, a democratic populism facilitates a process of strategic unification
that remains indebted to a constant re-negotiation of inclusion and popular incor-
poration, thwarting any fantasies of total incarnation in the body of the leader
itself. A difficult balancing act, but a necessary one for all those that desire to find
a way forward beyond elitist anti-populism and xenophobic nationalism.
In order to encourage the cultivation of such a democratic populism and
avoid a slide towards caesarist rule:

a populist leader should act as a “vanishing mediator” […] Such a leader should
function, in other words, as an agent of transformations that will eventually
require him or her to withdraw. Otherwise, a strong, charismatic leadership that
perpetuates itself will prevent the people from gaining autonomy […].
(Stavrakakis et al. 2016, 54)

Machiavelli offers a concrete example of such civic leadership:

Camillus, Rome’s frequently appointed supreme magistrate, gained unprece-

dented trust and authority from the Roman people by accepting their decision to
exile him, by faithfully returning to the city during a dire crisis when they sum-
moned him back, and, on numerous subsequent occasions, by eagerly relinquish-
ing command once he’d fulfilled his designated assignments (D I.29, III.1, III.30).
(McCormick 2019, 410)

Some contemporary populist leaders have been trying to follow such a course.
Notice, for example, how Argentinian ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirch-
ner has not only accepted defeat in 2015, but has also stepped aside into a second
role, proposing the moderate Alberto Fernández as the left populist presidential
candidate for the victorious 2019 elections – what remained intact was, in this
interesting case, the name of the leader!1 By contrast, in other cases – like the
one of Evo Morales in Bolivia – the inability to create a new generation of leaders
through popular empowerment has put in danger a progressive, democratic
course for the country adding a veneer of legitimacy to what eventually evolved as
a reactionary coup: ‘The more centralized the party [MAS] became, the less likely
new leaders were to emerge and carry the mantle forward. […] Morales’ refusal to
pass the torch [ignoring a relevant 2016 referendum on presidential term limits]
may have doomed his leadership’ (Anria and Roberts 2019).
Last but not least, this model of leadership entails a continuous negotiation
between vertical and horizontal political processes. Both seem to be integral

1. Although, it is, of course, possible to understand the significance of this gesture in less favor-
able colors, indicating a moderation of radicalism, see Mosquera 2019.
 The (discursive) limits of (left) populism 175

to a sustainable democratic populist logic, something that Laclau himself has

acknowledged in his latest works:

The horizontal dimension of autonomy will be incapable, left to itself, of bringing

about long-term historical change if it is not complemented by the vertical
dimension of ‘hegemony’ – that is, a radical transformation of the state. Auton-
omy left to itself leads, sooner or later, to the exhaustion and the dispersion of the
movements of protest. But hegemony not accompanied by mass action at the level
of civil society leads to a bureaucratism that will be easily colonized by the cor-
porative power of the forces of the status quo. To advance both in the directions
of autonomy and hegemony is the real challenge to those who aim for a democ-
ratic future […]. (Laclau 2014, 9)

Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to Paula Biglieri, Benjamin De Cleen and Chantal Mouffe for their invalu-
able comments on an earlier draft.

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 The (discursive) limits of (left) populism 177

Address for correspondence

Yannis Stavrakakis
School of Political Sciences
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
University Campus
Thessaloniki 54124
Greece
yanstavr@polsci.auth.gr

Biographical notes

Yannis Stavrakakis studied political science in Athens and discourse analysis at Essex and is
currently Professor of Political Discourse Analysis at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
He is the author of Lacan and the Political (Routledge, 1999) and The Lacanian Left (SUNY
Press, 2007) and co-editor of Discourse Theory and Political Analysis (Manchester University
Press, 2000). He has been Principal Investigator of the international project POPULISMUS,
researching populist discourse and democracy: www.populismus.gr
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5682-7547

Publication history

Date received: 29 October 2019

Date accepted: 5 November 2020
Published online: 16 December 2020
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