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Document Details : Title: Tussen hamer en aambeeld Subtitle: Democratie in tijden van neoliberalisme en populisme Author(s): RUMMENS, Stefan , BRAECKMAN, Antoon Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie Volume: 83 Issue: 2 Date: 2021 Pages: 185-216 DOI: 10.2143/TVF.83.2.3289683 Abstract : In this article, we analyze how neoliberalism and populism relate to liberal democracy and to what extent they constitute a threat for this regime. In the first section, we draw on Claude Lefort to show that in liberal democracy the community of citizens is seen as a unity-in-diversity that does justice to both individual autonomy and the intersubjective connectedness with our fellow citizens. From this perspective, neoliberalism and populism appear as mutually mirroring pathological derailments of liberal democracy. More specifically, in the second section, we analyze populism as a regime the ontology of which casts the people as a homogeneous collectivity and thus as a unity-without-diversity. In the third section, we make use of the work of Michel Foucault to show how in neoliberalism the political community disintegrates into a pure diversity of competing individuals. In the final section we examine the mutually reinforcing dynamics of populism and neoliberalism. Populism manifests itself as a reaction to the desocializing and depoliticizing effect of the neoliberal regime, while neoliberal depoliticization is further enhanced and symbolically strengthened by populist success. The victim in this story is liberal democracy, which in its struggle with neoliberalism and populism finds itself between the devil and the deep blue sea. For this reason, we conclude by pointing to forms of resistance that could perhaps turn the populist and neoliberal tide and bring about a ‘new start’ for liberal democracy. |
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