Abstract

SILVA, André Luiz da; KRITSCH, Raquel  and  PARRA TEIXEIRA, Raniery. Populism and democracy crisis: popular sovereignty in dispute. Rev. Urug. Cienc. Polít. [online]. 2023, vol.32, n.2, pp.145-168.  Epub Dec 01, 2023. ISSN 0797-9789.  https://doi.org/10.26851/rucp.32.2.6.

Processes from different origins and dimensions -institutional, economic, political and social- expose questions about the quality of democracies and their normative foundations, marking the so-called «democracy crisis». On the axis of political processes, especially in relation to the construction of collective subjects and their representation in democratic contexts, populism has been mobilized as an important explanatory key and different diagnoses have been offered about it: on the one hand, there are those who interpret it as a dimension of politics and they bet on its ability to radicalize democracies, as seen in the theories of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe; on the other hand, there is the interpretation that populism alters the nature of democracies, above all, disfiguring it by disputing its distinctive normative elements, as in Nadia Urbinati's analysis. Both positions, however, resume the notion of popular sovereignty, disputing the role of populism in the constitution of (new) forms of political mobilization and activation of different collective identities in current political conflicts. This article seeks to take up such interpretations to problematize this aspect of the complex relationship between populism and democracy.

Keywords : Populism; democracy; democratic political theory; popular sovereignty; political conflicts.

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