Populist Democracy

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To discover the correlation between populism and authoritarianism (against liberal democracy), two points need to be discussed: 1) the institutional settings under populist regime, and 2) how populist institutions are correlated with authoritarianism, instead of democracy.
Based on Berlin’s understanding of populism as a political means to sustain positive liberty, Riker further distinguishes the populist and liberal democracy as two forms of democracy, and points out the ineradicable correlations between populist democracy and authoritarianism, while liberal democracy may not survive in populist regime.
In Riker’s context, the profound difference between populist democracy and liberal democracy is the interpretation of voting. Liberal view …show more content…

For liberal institution, as a threat to rulers, it merely requires regular elections that would lead to possible rejection to rulers. However, for populist institution, to implement the “general will” generated from voting, the institutions should be able to rapidly facilitate decisions to embody popular decisions, and therefore it could execute swift changes in response to the popular sovereignty (Riker, 1982).
This answers the first question, about the differences between populist and liberal institutions. The next step is to the second question, about the correlation between populist institution and authoritarianism.
Riker argues the main threat to democracy in populism is the exceptional ability of ruler to subvert elections (Riker, 1982). Constitutional checks and balances on rulers are effective restraints on democratic despotism. However, because the populist institution requires swift changes to implement popular decisions, constitutional constrains would retard this process, which is therefore not populistically tolerable (Riker, 1982). As a result, populist institution requires the elimination of constitutional checks, which makes democratic elections fragile and vulnerable. Without sufficient restraints, to stay in power, rulers could prohibit elections they might lose, which leads to authoritarianism. Admittedly, such connection is not absolute. However, the empirical regularity of the emergence of authoritarianism within populist regime suggests that this could be the profound theoretical reason for the failure of populist democracy (Riker,

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