Pop­ulist Twists and the Dan­gers for Democracy

Guest Lec­ture by Paula Diehl

Paula Diehl’s work engages with com­plex­i­ties of pop­ulism as a flu­id and mul­ti­di­men­sion­al phe­nom­e­non. In her nuanced and rig­or­ous analy­sis, she looks into the ide­o­log­i­cal, com­mu­ni­ca­tion­al and organ­i­sa­tion­al dimen­sions of pop­ulism that allow to detect tem­po­ral shifts. For her, pop­ulism is not nec­es­sar­i­ly author­i­tar­i­an, but its spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics can entail severe dan­gers for democracy.

Draw­ing on her notion of “pop­ulist twists”, this lec­ture will explore the ways in which pop­ulism reshapes the polit­i­cal land­scape by trans­form­ing the rela­tion­ship between lead­ers, their fol­low­ers, and demo­c­ra­t­ic norms. It will focus on the actu­al mech­a­nisms that dis­tort demo­c­ra­t­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion illus­trat­ing the ways in which pop­ulist actors eclipse the ten­sions between account­abil­i­ty and autho­riza­tion, between hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal pow­er, by using notions of equal­i­ty, pop­u­lar sov­er­eign­ty and dis/​trust. Hence, the lec­ture high­lights the ambiva­lent rela­tion­ship to democ­ra­cy that pop­ulism relies on and helps us not only to under­stand the role of inher­ent con­tra­dic­tions, but also the work­ings of far-right ide­ol­o­gy, dis­course and prac­tice today.

Paula Diehl is Pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal The­o­ry, His­to­ry of Ideas, and Polit­i­cal Cul­ture and direc­tor of the Inter­na­tion­al Pop­ulism Research Net­work at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kiel. Her research focus­es on polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, polit­i­cal imag­i­nar­ies, and pop­ulism. Recent pub­li­ca­tions include the edit­ed vol­ume The Com­plex­i­ty of Pop­ulism (co-edit­ed with Brigitte Bar­getz, 2024) and a spe­cial issue on pop­ulism, con­cepts and meth­ods for Poli­ty (co-edit­ed with Tim Weber, 2022).