Seminar in Political Thought: Democracy, Civil Society, and Populism

This seminar will analyze the relationship of democracy and civil society to populism.  The first section will compare and contrast democratic legitimacy, political theology and civil religion.  We then turn to the relation of civil and political society to populism.  Civil society is the terrain on which populist movements emerge. But what is the difference, if any, between populist and other social movements and types of mobilization? Is populism intrinsic to or antithetical to modern pluralistic civil society? Similar questions arise regarding political parties and populism and we will address these as well. The third part of the seminar turns to the concept and different conceptions of populism in contemporary political theory.  Why do populist movements arise and do they threaten or revitalize democratic political systems.? Does the distinction between right and left populism make sense?  Finally, in the last section we will broach the issue of the relation of populism to religion. These make strange bedfellows but contemporary populists rely on religious tropes and invoke religious and civil religious identities alongside democratic legitimacy.  We will analyze to what extent contemporary populist movements and leaders rely on religious rhetoric, and support and why they do so. Among the authors we will read are Ackerman, Blumenberg, Bockenforde, Canovan, Cohen and Arato, Laclau, Lefort, Manin, Moffit, Mudde, Rosanvallon, Schmitt and Zizek