A Critique of Yascha Mounk’s Understanding of Populism and Democracy

Yascha Mounk argues in his analysis of the nature of populism in its relationship with liberal democracy that populism is both democratic and illiberal. Populism for him seeks to express the frustration of the people and to undermine liberal institutions. This paper argues that Mounk’s analysis is marred by ambiguities that vitiate his argument. The first ambiguity concerns the nature of the political struggle. On the one hand, Mounk analyses a vertically antagonistic populist political struggle which is hegemonic. On the other hand, he presents a horizontal democratic struggle that recognises the constitutive diversities of a liberal democratic system. The second ambiguity concerns Mounk’s analysis of the coherence of liberal democracy as a political regime. On the one hand, Mounk emphasises its paradoxical nature in the sense that there is a tension between the liberal and the democratic pillars of constitutional democracy. On the other hand, he recognises that the two constitutive dimensions are inalienable and indispensable values in a democracy. The irreconcilable viewpoints, in his analysis, present a problem of how to forge a coherent analysis of his argument. Hence, this paper underscores that any plausible account of what makes populism a threat to democracy must consider the nature of the liberal democratic struggle and how populism fits into this struggle. Ultimately, the paper argues that Claude Lefort’s notion that the locus of power is an empty place not only serves as a valid critique of Mounk but also provides a better insight into the true nature of populism which seeks to fill up this ‘empty place’ of power, thereby constituting a threat to the very essence of democracy.