%0 Journal Article
%T Rethinking Populism: Peak democracy, liquid identity and the performance of sovereignty
%A Felix Butzlaff
%A Ingolfur Bl¨¹hdorn
%J European Journal of Social Theory
%@ 1461-7137
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1368431017754057
%X 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
%K liquid identity
%K peak democracy
%K politics of exclusion
%K second-order emancipation
%K simulative politics
%K third modernity
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1368431017754057