We live in a time of autocratization.
Why?
-Limiting opportunities for popular participation, with restriction to voting, freedom of speech, academic freedom.
-Politicization of independent institutions -judicial system, universities and cultural life, public service media.
-Politicization of democratic rules of the game: delegitimizing the political opposition, less opportunities for media and the public to examine and hold politicians accountable. Refusal to acknowledge the democratic rules of the game.
-Representative democracy is liberal democracy
-Liberal democracy is. political system that enables popular rule and protects the people from public rule.
-Constitutionalism: limited and regulated public power -rule of law, independent judiciary and higher law.
-Tensions between liberal and democratic principles, two types of discontent.
-Dissatisfaction with liberal protections -more democracy
-Dissatisfaction with democratic rule -more liberal protection
Populism rejects the liberal element in representative democracy -constitutionalism-. Populism is impatient with constitutional constraints, checks and balances, independent judiciary and the rule of law.
Populism is hostile to pluralism, org. independent media, and a plurality of religious, cultural and ethnic opinions.
Chantal Mouffe’s defense of populism: rep. dem. includes both liberal and democratic logics, but in recent times, the liberal logic has become hegemonic. Pop. sovereignty is obsolete. Populism is the only political movement that takes the democratic logic seriously and that seeks to re establish popular sovereignty.
The will of the people
Majority opinion reflected in policy and law. Mechanisms for its realization:
-Through direct democracy -like referendums
-Through representative democracy: make representatives responsive to public opinion
-Through other mechanisms: replace elections to parliament with random selected citizens (citizens assembly) or use opinion polling to determine policy decisions.
Weale’s critique of the will of the people, 3 arguments:
-Undermines representative democracy
-The people and the electorate is arbitrary and it has no single will
-The will of the people cannot be reliably identified.
-Rival understanding of the relationship between democracy and the will of the people
-Government depends on public opinion
-Government should satisfy public opinion.