Left-Wing Populism: The Politics Of The People [1st Edition] 1839092068, 9781839092060, 1839092033, 9781839092039, 183909205X, 9781839092053

This book conceptualizes left-wing populism as a combination of the populist impetus of expanding representation, throug

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Left-Wing Populism: The Politics Of The People [1st Edition]
 1839092068, 9781839092060, 1839092033, 9781839092039, 183909205X, 9781839092053

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Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
LEFT-WING POPULISM......Page 2
Endorsements......Page 3
LEFT-WING POPULISM: The Politics of the People......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
CONTENTS......Page 6
ABOUT THE AUTHOR......Page 8
Why Left-Wing Populism?......Page 10
The Populist Moment......Page 13
Defining Left-wing Populism......Page 17
1. The Left-Wing Populist Wave in Europe......Page 22
1.1 From Latin America to Europe......Page 25
1.2 European Left-wing Populism: Main Features......Page 28
1.2.1 Alternative to Social Democracy......Page 29
1.2.2 Alternative to Right-wing Populism......Page 30
1.2.3 Center-left Wing Populism......Page 32
1.2.4 Charismatic Leadership......Page 33
1.2.5 Movement Parties......Page 35
1.3 Between Socialism and Populism......Page 36
2. The People and Popular Sovereignty......Page 42
2.1 The People and the Elite......Page 43
2.2 Popular Sovereignty......Page 48
2.3 Neoliberal Globalization......Page 52
3. Class and Migration......Page 56
3.1 Working Class and the Plebs......Page 58
3.2 The Precariat and the Populist Interpellation......Page 63
3.3 Inclusionary and Exclusionary Populism......Page 67
3.4 Workers and Migrant (Workers)......Page 69
4. Nationalism and Patriotism......Page 74
4.1 National Sovereignty......Page 76
4.2 Patriotism......Page 80
4.3 Independence......Page 87
5. Institutions and Republicanism......Page 90
5.1 We the Republic......Page 93
5.2 Citizens and the People......Page 96
5.3 Republicanism with or without Populism......Page 100
5.4.1 Agonistic Republicanism......Page 103
5.4.2 Minimal Populism......Page 105
5.4.3 Republican Objectivity......Page 106
6. Sovereignism and Transnationalism......Page 108
6.1 The Populist vs Cosmopolitan Dichotomy......Page 111
6.2 The Limits of National Sovereignty......Page 113
6.3 International Sovereignism......Page 114
6.4 Transnationalism......Page 119
Five Dilemmas of Left-Wing Populism......Page 124
To Win or Not to Win?......Page 126
Power as Knowledge or Power as Power?......Page 127
Movement or Personal Parties?......Page 129
National or Transnational?......Page 130
Left-wing Populism or Back to the Left?......Page 132
REFERENCES......Page 134
INDEX......Page 158

Citation preview

LEFT-WING POPULISM

´ What is Left populism? In this book, Oscar Garc´ıa Agust´ın analyzes the Left populist movements of the last decade, showing how Left populism provides a distinct language and strategy for the European Left, distinguishing it from both right-wing populism and from the old Left. The book covers political topics such as migration, nationalism, and sovereignty, and analyzes the organizational challenges that a Left populist movement faces. Left-Wing Populism: The Politics of the People offers the first systematic book-length account of Left populism. It should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in the future of the Left. Lasse Thomassen, Queen Mary University of London and University of Copenhagen

The last few decades were marked by the crisis of neoliberalism and the rise of populist politics but despite the spilled ink few have managed to explain with clarity this conjuncture. The author manages to do exactly that: not only does he dispel with a lot of misconception about populism but he also offers a fascinating mapping of the trajectory of left populism and an inspiring blueprint for future politics. Dr Marina Prentoulis, University of East Anglia, UK

LEFT-WING POPULISM The Politics of the People ´ OSCAR GARC ´IA AGUST ´IN Aalborg University, Denmark

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India Malaysia – China

Emerald Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2020 ´ © 2020 Oscar Garc´ıa Agust´ın Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-83909-206-0 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-83909-203-9 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-83909-205-3 (Epub)

CONTENTS About the Author

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Why Left-Wing Populism?

1

1. The Left-Wing Populist Wave in Europe

13

2. The People and Popular Sovereignty

33

3. Class and Migration

47

4. Nationalism and Patriotism

65

5. Institutions and Republicanism

81

6. Sovereignism and Transnationalism

99

Five Dilemmas of Left-Wing Populism

115

References

125

Index

149

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

´ Oscar Garc´ıa Agust´ın is Associate Professor at the Department of Culture and Learning at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is head of the DEMOS (Democracy, Migration, and Movements) research group. He works on populism, social movements, and migration. With Christian Ydesen he has coedited the book Post-Crisis Perspectives: The Common and its Powers (Peter Lang, 2013), and with Martin Bak Jørgensen he has coedited Politics of Dissent (2015, Peter Lang) and Solidarity without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society (Pluto Press, 2016). Together with Marco Briziarelli he has coedited Podemos and the New Political Cycle. Left-Wing Populism and AntiEstablishment Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). He is author of Sociology of Discourse: From Institutions to Social Change (John Benjamins, 2015) and coauthor together with Martin Bak Jørgensen of Solidarity and the “Refugee Crisis” in Europe (Palgrave Pivot, 2018).

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WHY LEFT-WING POPULISM?

It is becoming a kind of commonplace that every piece of writing on populism starts by questioning the usefulness of the term due to its vague and ambiguous meaning, both in academia and in the public and political debate. Not only that, its use frequently is pejorative and applied to discredit those who are portrayed as populist. Not many politicians define themselves as populists but rather hurry to call their adversaries populists instead. Although the concept is rejected, due to its inability to explain the political reality, it paradoxically continues to generate more and more articles and books and be the object of reflection. Populism accounts sometimes for a general and common phenomenon, being global and affecting both the left and the right, and other times a common but differentiated phenomenon for left and right. The focus on the similarities between right- and leftwing populism has not contributed to clarifying the term but instead to increasing the negative view that some authors or politicians, belonging to the left spectrum, have on populism as a progressive political project. They wonder why they should talk about left-wing populism when there is an extended agreement that populism is something bad. All in all, populism provokes, in general, a dual rejection: from mainstream politics and from left politics.

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The main controversy awoken by populism is what can be summarized as its alleged opposition to liberal democracy. From this perspective, there is no distinction between right and left, given that both sides question the essence of liberal democracy: the representative system and the constitutional and institutional realm. For this reason, populism is accused of being a threat to democracy while mainstream parties react to safeguard the pillars of the democratic system. From a left perspective, populism is regarded with skepticism since it would imply abandoning the emancipatory project of the left as well as the attempt to change the neoliberal system. The liberal position leaves intact any critique of the representative, and the crisis of the values on which it is grounded, and makes it even difficult to imagine any other alternative to it (Ranci`ere, 2016). The demands for political change and more democracy, coming from civil society and social movements, barely have the option to resonate in the political system. The socialist position is linked with the crisis of the left, more specifically the radical left, to forge its own ideological project, which has been in crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, and reveals its need to be reconsidered after the crisis of the neoliberal system in 2008. The crisis has not led to a spectacular expansion of the political space of the radical left. This book is no exception to the genre on populism and starts with the acknowledgment of the ambiguity and vagueness intrinsic to the concept. However, I believe that it is still useful and necessary to think about populism and its implication in current politics. Specifically, it can be fruitful to reflect on and analyze populism from its ideological position, in this case from the left, rather than conceptualizing populism as an overall phenomenon across ideologies. I am not arguing that there are no similarities, because there are, but the differences are significant and can be explained by the parties

Why Left-Wing Populism?

3

belonging to the left or right axis. In other words, the populist articulation differs substantially if it is made from the left or the right. Thus, the objective of this book is to conceptualize and analyze left-wing populism as a political project developed from the left which embraces populism. Left-wing populism cannot imply that we can identify “pure” forms of populism or that populism is the only component defining the left. Yannis Stavrakakis (2017) points out that populism involves a series of contradictory articulations that imply a plurality of populist hybrids where what is at stake is the specific profile of the populism emerging within a context. Hybridity itself is a feature shared by all forms of populism (Zienkowski & Breeze, 2019), and this is applicable to the varieties of the left too. It would be wrong to look at the populist turn of radical parties as the total assumption of the populist logic instead of as the coexistence of populist and radical forms and traditions. The focus on (hybrid) left-wing populism highlights the importance of taking diverse sociopolitical contexts into account in order to understand how populism is embedded within different left-wing traditions. Therefore, addressing the specificities of left-wing populism can contribute to understanding the recent emergence or development of the left and the existence of multiple and valuable debates on the alternatives to neoliberalism, the multicultural societies, or the role of the nation in globalization times. Left-wing populism is not a “pure” or fixed concept, or an unproblematic one, but it is necessary to grasp the multiple debates and crossroads faced by the left in searching for its own identity. The reflections on left-wing populism draw mainly on the European situation, particularly after the crisis of 2008 with focus on the political parties which embraced, more or less explicitly, left-wing populism (or a form of left politics distinguishable from the radical left and close to some

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populist features), and on the political and academic debates generated around the populist strategy. It does not mean that we should ignore the previous experiences of the Latin American left-wing populism given its influence both theoretically and politically. It would also be na¨ıve not to mention that the main interest in populism, despite having existed before, has been provoked by phenomena like the Brexit and the electoral victory of Donald Trump. I will refer to the far right and (radical) right wing indistinctly, although I am aware of the differences and the variety of positions around it. Focusing on left-wing populism, it is pertinent to explain, first of all, the emergence of the “populist moment” and later the definition of left-wing populism as a political phenomenon.

THE POPULIST MOMENT Before the economic crisis, the idea of the populist Zeitgeist was used to explain the emergence of contemporary populism, both from the left and right, in Europe. In the beginning of the 2000s, Cas Mudde (2004) referred to the causes of the populist Zeitgeist and pointed to some perceptions, rather than facts, on the increasing corruption of the elites and the separation between “the people” and “the elite.” This trend was not only attributable to the right wing but also to the left. Luke March and Cas Mudde talked about “social populism” to characterize parties whose “ideological stance echoes democratic socialism’s acceptance of parliamentary democracy and rejection of capitalism” (2005, p. 35). While doctrine principles and the “correct” class politics still define these parties as radical left, the openness to egalitarianism and “proletarian” anti-elitism connects with populism, as well as supplementing class analysis with other identity issues,

Why Left-Wing Populism?

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including those associated with the right as ethnic or national sentiment. It is important to notice that the shift from radical left to populist left wing is, to some extent, a tendency preexisting the crisis of 2008. Indeed, there is a continuity along left-wing populism before and after the crisis, even if it is true that the crisis of representation and the popular movements and social protests increased after 2008 and set the agenda and the priorities for left-wing parties. In short, even when the radical right-wing populism was dominant, the radical left was already embracing some populist principles. Without pretending to offer a comprehensive description of the populist moment (intensified in the aftermath of the crisis but existing before), these elements are important to understanding the left-wing turn to populism. All of them are about the decreasing capacity of representativeness by political parties. While the first two elements emphasize the production of common interests between parties and other economic actors, leaving out the demands of the people, the third one points to a way of strengthening both participation and representativeness. • Party system crisis: The cartelization of political parties (Katz & Mair, 2018) provokes the disappearance of differences between parties. Since they are funded by the state, they reproduce the same pattern of behavior. Politicians preserve their own interests, and that is why parties collaborate among each other. The cartel parties stop representing the demands of the electorate, and the extra-parliamentary party organization loses rele¨ vance (Muller, 2000). Peter Mair warns that the definition of democracy is leaving out its emphasis on popular sovereignty and the consequence of that would be “a kind of democracy without the demos at its centre” (2013, p. 9).

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• Corruption: Cas Mudde in his definition of populism opposes the “pure people” against the “corrupt elite.” The application of “pure” to “the people” is questionable, but the characterization of “the elite” as “corrupt” requires a more detailed definition of what corruption is. The notion of “dependence corruption,” coined by Lawrence Lessig (2011), can be useful to such a definition. According to him, the main problem of the government is the dependency of the economic interests, its funders. Corruption is not about violating the criminal laws but about the dependency that highlights how political parties in government rule for the economic elites. Moreover, this reinforces the idea that the pattern of interaction underlying such a dependency is unbreakable and consequently avoidable. Corruption is relational in the sense that it entails bad governance (the government not expressing the will of the people) and lost trust (declining participation of the people due to their lack of faith in democratic processes). • Political movements: It would be erroneous to consider social revolts and protests, which increased enormously in response to the implementation of austerity politics, as a risk instead of a necessity, argues Jan Hoby (2013). He claims that what distinguishes both perceptions (movements as risk or necessity) is the way in which social revolts are handled politically in terms of organization, leadership, vision, and strategy. Incorporating the antiestablishment rhetoric to articulate their discourses and experimental and horizontal ways of organizing, some social movements have transformed into political parties or, at least, movements and parties are interrelated. As a consequence, some organizational innovations are introduced such as the blurred distinction between members and non-members, alternative funding means, direct citizen engagement (social media and

Why Left-Wing Populism?

7

digital tools), and mobilization of citizens (Klaukka, Van der Staak, & Valladares, 2017). The crisis of representation leaves the question of finding satisfactory means of participation and engagement open. These three features show an overall picture of how the crisis of representation is fundamental to approaching the populist moment and the reason why left-wing parties are embracing populism or populist strategies. However, the main issue at stake is if populism is the main feature for the novelty responses coming from the left and the right. In other words, is populism the central political axis (“the people” vs “the elite,” the bottom vs the top) of the political dispute? If so, what happens with the traditional left-right axis? Chantal Mouffe advocates for the “populist moment” as a conjuncture in which both the left and the right adopt a populist strategy. Mouffe defines the “populist moment” as “the expression of resistances against the postdemocratic condition brought by 30 years of neoliberal hegemony” (2018, p. 79). The crisis of neoliberalism would allow fostering a new hegemonic formation which could develop into more democratic or authoritarian politics. The expectations from a left-wing perspective are, obviously, to deepen democracy, but the association of “populism” with authoritarianism is frequent in the public and academic debate. It is not surprising that the predominance of “populism” to elaborate a left project bothers some leftist authors. They think that “populism” mitigates the political importance of the left and moves it to an ´ ambivalent and less ideological place. Eric Fassin (2018a), for example, criticizes that left-wing populism is replacing the ideological conflict between left and right with one between “the people” and “the elite.” Fassin (2018b) does not see the point in reversing the “stigma” of populism or in labeling a political project as left-wing populism, implying it has something in common with right-wing populism; he refuses to accept that.

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I share Fassin’s concern about the political implications of erasing the left–right axis. There is, indeed, an intentionality in equating all types of populism regardless of their context or ideology. The left–right conflict is replaced with the opposition between liberalism (as democracy) and populism (as illiberalism) and produces paradoxically a political frontier separating which options are democratic and which are not (Agust´ın & Briziarelli, 2018a). The distinction between liberalism and populism hides intentionally the important differences between left- and right-wing populism and how the “populist moment,” using Mouffe’s concept, enables the generation of opposed political options. Judith Butler (2017) summarizes quite straightforwardly how pointless it is to compare both kinds of populism: Right-wing populism can lead to fascism, while left-wing populism must lead to radical democracy. Thus, left-wing populism must be seen, primarily, from the perspective of the left and, complementarily, from the way in which populism is embedded and contributes to redefining the practices of the left. There are elements, related to the populist tradition, such as participation or the inclusion of excluded groups, which are valuable in themselves for the left. A similar exercise could be done with the far-right parties or center-right parties who incorporate populist strategies or styles as part of their political repertoires. As mentioned above, my intention is to deepen what is characteristic of leftwing populism as a political phenomenon, specifically as developed in the aftermath of the economic crisis in Europe.

DEFINING LEFT-WING POPULISM One of the main reasons to keep the distinction between left and right and not replace it completely with other distinctions like “the people” vs “the elite” or populism vs

Why Left-Wing Populism?

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cosmopolitanism is basically that the left and right axis, despite being challenged, is still dominant, and useful to understanding political differences, I would add. The parliamentary systems in Europe are still organized by the division between left and right blocs. The complexities experienced in recent years to obtain majorities sufficient to form government coalitions or the complex electoral composition with vote transfer from left to right and vice versa have not eroded the logics of left and right. This does not imply that the ideological differences are significant (concretely between center-right and center-left) but that populism (or liberalism) has not displaced the left and right axis as the main way of organizing politics. In the cases in which a great coalition between center-left and center-right has occurred, like in Germany, it is due to the de-ideologization of politics rather than creating a huge liberal group to combat far-right populism. The case of Sweden in which a coalition was made to keep the far right out of government is an exception, and the division between left and right was determinant, as proven by the fact that the possibility of a great coalition between the two major center-left and center-right parties was not an option and ideological differences mattered. It would be too simplistic to reduce left-wing populism to the alternative or the opposition to right-wing populism, since its critique is mainly aimed at the parties of the establishment and the neoliberal policies carried out by liberal and social democratic parties in government. Luke March (2007) characterizes the left-wing populists by assuming the centrality of the “moral people” versus “corrupt elite” as essential. Nonetheless, I think this definition does not capture the relevant opposition between neoliberalism and democracy as a key feature for left-wing populism. I suggest we look back to the cycle of social protests of 2011 to account for how the opposition between democracy and neoliberalism was forged.

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In her analysis of the Spanish indignados or 15M movement, Cristina Flesher Fominaya (2015) refers to the “democratic turn” which connects the critique of the economic and political elites with the demand for more democracy (the complaint against systematic political corruption, lack of transparency, and the need for “real” democracy). Albeit using obviously different means than social movements, left-wing populism shares the same concerns regarding democracy. Beyond the deployed features such as the charismatic leader or unmediated communication, left-wing populism adds the axis democracy vs neoliberalism to the existing one of left vs right. Left-wing populism is defined as the combination of the populist impetus of expanding representation (through the appeal to “the people” against the elites) and higher participation and of the left tradition to promote equality and social justice. This definition synthesizes the democratic claims which could not differ more from far-right populism and egalitarianism as the main principle characteristic of the left. The “democratic turn” can also be applied to show how the rejection of neoliberalism is conceived in a larger framework than the economic (and the subsequent fight for equality as redistribution) and takes the form of democratic claims for changes in the political system, in opposition to the economic and political elites. There are two aspects which call for further clarification: Participation is as important as the opposition between “the people” and “the elites” is. If doing politics for and by the people is to make sense, representation should be complemented with means of participation. Social justice projects a wider meaning to equality than the economic, since many struggles related to other issues such as gender, migration, environment, or human rights have become part of the left agenda. This definition unfolds along three characteristics: transversality, inclusiveness, and participation. If the political

Why Left-Wing Populism?

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demands and proposals aim to reach a social majority, they need to be transversal, that is, framed or articulated in a broad sense that often exceeds the traditional left vs right ideological positions. The appellation to “the people” favors such a transversal move but can enter into contradiction with ideological frames deployed traditionally by the left. If the intention is to increase representativeness through the articulation of “the people,” left-wing populism needs to be inclusive not only of the groups that do not feel represented (or feel excluded) but also to guarantee the plurality of those who are represented. Although populism is presented as incompatible with pluralism, the truth is that left-wing populism, in general, advocates for plurality and diversity in society, as the left has usually done. Finally, left-wing populism must be participatory to ensure the inclusion of people in the deliberation processes, organizational debates, and policy-making. The development of the party form as participatory structures is a pending debt for the left parties, and it is still uncertain that left-wing populism is going to be the final solution to overcoming vertical and centralized organizational forms. Left-wing populism is, in this regard, not an opportunistic or useless label to mislead the radical left from the right socialist or anticapitalist path. It is not the reverse of rightwing populism either. However, the definition per se does not solve the shortcomings or concerns raised by the practices of left-wing populist parties. Having a pejorative impression of populism overlooks its contribution to developing a left project in the present conjuncture; having an idealized vision of left-wing populism without assessing some of its contradictions would ignore the concerns awoken by the existing political realities. The turn to vertical organizations and strong leaderships and the adoption of social democratic politics as the main proposal to change the economic system are some of the practices that reveal the difficulties of democratizing

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institutions and producing an alternative to neoliberalism. The combination of theoretical reflection and empirical analysis is needed to assess the potentials presented by left-wing populism, as well as its contribution to the left, and political outcomes. Since not many parties are fond of being called “populist,” due to its pejorative implications in the public debate, left-wing populism is used, following Mouffe, as an analytical tool. While the “populist moment” can be related to the crisis of hegemony in which people do not believe the dominant neoliberal narratives anymore, the reaction of counterhegemonic forces remains still open (Fraser, 2019). There are no reasons to dismiss left-wing populism as one option to forge an alternative to neoliberalism. Left-wing populism cannot be considered a risk or a problem but neither “the solution” (Gerbaudo, 2016). It would be a mistake to reduce populism to an ideology beyond left and right as well as it would be wrong to embrace it as if it was the only option to redefine the left. Actually, left-wing populism should be combined with other ideas, reflections, phenomena, or traditions from the left and not exclusively for the left. This combination would shed light on the potentials and limitations of a left-wing populism. In the following chapters, I address some of these issues (class, migration, cosmopolitanism, patriotism, republicanism, transnationalism) to engage in the main debates provoked by left-wing populism.

1 THE LEFT-WING POPULIST WAVE IN EUROPE

Although the populist turn from left parties in Europe can be traced back several years, the window of opportunity opened ¨ up by the post-2008 left-wing populist moment (Jager, 2019) sharply strengthens that tendency. The combination of economic and political crises made it possible for radical left-wing parties to expand their electoral support. Those parties assumed a populist appeal (March & Keith, 2016) combining the popular disaffection toward political leaders with the rejection of austerity politics. In the beginning of 2015, leftwing populism reached its peak. Syriza won the elections in Greece, and Podemos was leading some polls in Spain and pursued to be the alternative to the government of the conservative Popular Party. The political environment was permeated by the irruption of a new generation of politicians, contrary to the establishment parties, and the creation of a new political space (adding the bottom vs top approach to the traditional left vs right wing) which traditional parties should learn how to address. It became quite evident that populism was not a far-right wing phenomenon in Europe anymore and

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the option of a progressive populism shook the political stage. Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen capture the political vibrations of that moment and the impression that left-wing populism could introduce an alternative path to be followed by the European left: Three days before the election, on 22 January, a big Syriza rally in Athens was addressed not only by the leader, Alexis Tsipras, but also by the leader of the Spanish Podemos party, Pablo Iglesias. Both represent a new discourse putting democracy, participation and the rights of the people at the centre of their rhetoric. They speak neither in the name of invisible market forces nor in the name of particular classes. They do not claim to represent only particular groups – the unemployed, students, workers, women, and so on – instead they speak in the name of the people. This is what makes them populist, and this is what infuriates other parties, both right and left. (Prentoulis & Thomassen, 2015) Luke March and Daniel Keith (2016) comment that times of crisis usually do not benefit the left because the voters opt for the safety and stability attributed to right-wing parties and shun any type of “radicalism.” Moreover, the left tends to emphasize the ideological content and programs and lack the focus on identities and people’s emotions, which is the political terrain of the right and far-right parties. The strong ideological identity of the radical left hinders larger identifications, despite the general disenchantment with the mainstream political parties. The populist appellation offers a different way of dealing with the crisis by embracing a more pragmatic approach and by enabling the creation of a new political space through the sharp distinction between “the

The Left-Wing Populist Wave in Europe

15

people” and “the elite,” the transversal and across-classes project, the mitigated ideological factor, the introduction of a less militant language, and the openness to discussing controversial left topics such as patriotism. Populism became then part of the left-wing parties’ strategies, values, and sometimes organizational form but did not replace the core left principles or identity. There is not a single party which can be characterized as purely populist. Both the national context and the internal dynamics within each party are important to understanding the differences between left-wing populist parties. Furthermore, the transnational dimension should not be ignored. The mutual inspiration between these parties, the contact between their leaders, and the shared atmosphere of struggling against a common enemy, incarnated especially until 2015 by the Troika, have contributed to developing a common ground for a European left-wing populism. There are, indeed, four moments which define the left-wing populist practices in Europe and the scope and influence achieved during the 2011–2019 period: • The electoral victory of Syriza in January 2015 in Greece, completing the move from a marginal radical left party to a mass popular party; • The spectacular irruption and growth of Podemos in Spain in 2014 as a brand-new political party connected with the previous anti-austerity and pro-radical democracy social movements; • The good electoral results obtained by France Insoumise (Unbowed France) in 2017 after a tight competition. The main adversaries were the extreme center by Emmanuel Macron’s new party En Marche! and the right-wing populism by Marine Le Pen;

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• Jeremy Corbyn became the new leader of the Labour Party in 2015, supported by the activists of Momentum and defeating the establishment within the party. These parties present commonalities but also their own specificities as left-wing populist, including different degrees of populism which have been somewhat debated in the case of Corbyn. Other radical left parties (following here Luke March’s term) adopted left-wing populism with more or less success: from parties increasing their parliamentary representation, e.g., Red-Green Alliance (RGA) in Denmark, to those who obtained low electoral support, such as Razem (Together) and LIVRE in Portugal, highly influenced by Podemos. However, until now mainly those four parties (Syriza, Podemos, France Insoumise, and Corbyn’s Labour) have steered the course for left-wing populism in Europe. The case of DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement) as transnational left-wing populism should be added to the list as a step toward developing populism beyond national borders. Finally, left-wing populism exists at the municipal (like Ada ´ Madrid, Colau in Barcelona) and regional levels (with Mas the party established by the founder of Podemos, Iñigo ´ in Madrid). I will present some of the main features Errejon, of European left-wing populism, but before it is necessary to refer briefly to Latin American left-wing populism because it has been very influential in Europe and represents the attempt to develop populism in government, and not just in opposition.

1.1 FROM LATIN AMERICA TO EUROPE When left-wing populism in Europe gained visibility, the cycle of the progressive governments in Latin America was in crisis

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and the new right was on their way to take power. The Latin American experience was interesting because left-wing populism was developed while Europe witnessed the emergence of right-wing populism, and populism was only associated with nationalism and xenophobia. Furthermore, left-wing populism went beyond protest and became parties in government, including a wide ideological diversity from radical to pragmatic or center-left. In this regard, populism was understood as a progressive force to expand the demos and radicalize democracy and aimed to govern, not resigned to be a mere symptom of outrage or discontent without any institutional translation. When analyzing the causes of the emergence of left-wing populism in Latin America, some characteristics looked quite akin to postcrisis Europe: the economic crisis (and the role played by international organizations), the crisis of representation, de-ideologization, electoral volatility, and the indifference or lack of trust of people in party politics (Roberts, 2012). However, the political translation from one continent to another is quite complicated. Parties like Syriza, Podemos, and France Insoumise mirrored the populist governments in Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, or Argentina. The connections have been particularly close in the case of Podemos and of M´elenchon. Besides the political contacts and inspiration, the intellectual exchange has also been crucial. Left-wing populism in Europe expected to learn from the journey from opposition to government as made in Latin America. The main aspect adopted by the European left-wing ´ populism is the hegemonic operation depicted by Alvaro Garc´ıa Linera, the Bolivian vice president, as the transformation of the social majority into political majority (Schavelzon & Webber, 2018). The populist appellation was identified as an efficient way of articulating social demands and obtaining a sufficient electoral majority.

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Three differences have impeded reaching a similar electoral success. The first is the existence of multiparty and two-party systems (or two-party systems in transition to multiparty ones) instead of presidential systems where the president possesses more power. In the French case, M´elenchon’s party, despite the good results, was still the fourth most voted force and could not make it to the second electoral round. The second is the stronger institutional and constitutional framework in Europe which would make it difficult to see constituent processes like those of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador when new constitutions were enacted by constituent assemblies. The possibilities of legislative change look more modest in Europe and limited probably to reforms of the preexisting order. Finally, the progressive cycle in Latin America had a regional dimension in which new regional organizations such as ALBA, UNASUR, and CELAC were promoted to develop regional interdependency and political autonomy and enhance an international platform for the progressive governments. In Europe, the international cooperation happens within the EU and the lack of left-wing governments, with the exception of Syriza, does not contribute at all to imagining a different kind of regional cooperation. Nor is there a strong conflictual relation with an external country, as it happens in Latin America with the United States. The Latin American roots of the European left-wing populism are relevant, despite happening in different spaces and times, but the connection with governments from Latin America has been used as an easy tool by the media to discredit left-wing parties. Podemos has often been accused of working for dictatorships and trying to import the Bolivarian model to ´ Spain. The current situation in Venezuela under Nicolas Maduro’s government has frequently been used in the media to illustrate which disastrous consequences populism would have in Spain. The European politicians have not been capable of

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projecting a more critical approach to the Latin American experience. The focus on the hegemonic articulation to gain political power or some measures like the negotiation of the debt might have led to the lack of critical considerations regarding issues such as the predominant role of the leader, the difficulties for populism in the government to articulate and respond to new democratic demands (Mazzolini, 2015) or the reduction of any form of participation to the plebiscite. The Latin American legacy has also been discussed between those who warn against the devastating consequences of left-wing populism in Latin America (Rovira, 2018) and those who advocate for a more complex debate without generalizations (Wolff, 2018). In any case, although the conditions of both types of left-wing populism are different and they cannot reproduce the same trajectories, it is important to notice the relevance played by Latin American left-wing populism as a project for social majorities with less ideological footprint. From the experience of parties like Podemos, it is clear that they bring to Spain some refreshing and original modes of reformulating left politics but also some of the most problematic ones, like reducing the political struggle to the hegemonic one and the combination of the socialist and national popular. These aspects have hindered the exploration of other paths such as cosmopolitanism and transnationalism (Cava, 2015), barely weighed by the European left-wing populism.

1.2 EUROPEAN LEFT-WING POPULISM: MAIN FEATURES Based on the experiences of the main left-wing populist parties, there are a series of features which cannot be applied to all the populist practices but which nonetheless point to a new political direction. I consider these five characteristics ― although

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more can be added ― to be useful to understanding the extent of left-wing populism in Europe: the response to the crisis of social democracy; the close relation with social movements and activists and the experimental forms of party organization; the positioning toward right-wing populism; the possibility of a populism from the center-left and not exclusively from the radical left; and the central role attributed to political leadership.

1.2.1 Alternative to Social Democracy Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) dominated the political stage in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but later, say Yannis Stavrakakis and Giorgos Katsambekis (2014), the party moved during the 1990s “from populism to modernization.” The demands for non-privileged and the defense of popular sovereignty and national independence against the establishment were abandoned, and PASOK gradually embraced neoliberalism. It exemplifies the overall shift in Europe from social democracy to social liberalism whose major representative was Tony Blair and his Third Way. The Greek party system was a polarized twoparty system where the center-left PASOK and the center-right New Democracy (ND) rotated and ended up collaborating after 2011 (Kioupkiolis & Katsambekis, 2018). The victory of Syriza entailed the end of years of the two-party system, and the term “Pasokization” (Douzinas, 2017) entered the international political lexicon to designate the collapse of the social democratic party Pasok. Based on the crisis of social democracy in Europe, left-wing populism developed the idea of Pasokization applicable to other countries. Yanis Varoufakis (2016a) warned that the best option for Podemos in Spain was to manage to rise from third to second place and push the Socialist Party to a similar situation to the one of PASOK or the Socialist Party in France.

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The possibility of social democratic parties ending as an irrelevant electoral force would provide the opportunity to shape a left-wing populism for the majority. Being still a radical left party but undertaking a transversal and expansive electoral strategy, left-wing populism aspired to occupy and redefine the position of the social democracy. Although some social democratic parties lost electoral support and their centrality within the party system, like in Greece and France, the social democracy has proven to have a consolidated electoral basis and has returned to the government as in Denmark and Spain. In other countries, the disastrous electoral results of social democracy have not led to a left-wing breakthrough, as it happened with the extraordinary results by the Greens in the Netherlands and the social democratic downturn. The failure of the hypothesis of Pasokization (leftwing parties becoming the first or second most voted political force) reduced the ambitions pursued by left-wing parties to be capable of defeating the “parties of the establishment” like left-wing populism did in Latin America.

1.2.2 Alternative to Right-wing Populism The decline of social democratic parties in some countries invited to explore electoral terrains beyond those, more marginalized, expected for the radical left. However, there is an important factor to take into account. Besides the loss of electoral support by social democracy, the far right, embracing right-wing populism, has become, in some countries, a remarkable political force through the combination of antimigration and xenophobic attitudes and the reference to the lack of security suffered by the “losers of globalization” or the working class. France Insoumise has dealt with the complicated panorama of distinguishing itself from the declining social democracy and right-wing populism

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and, at the same time, appealing to their voters or former voters. Moreover, Macron reacted quite quickly to the crisis of the center-left and center-right and settled his own personalized party (Rahat & Kenig, 2018) and competed electorally with a more flexible, participatory, and vertical platform in contrast to the traditional parties. The situation of France thus illustrates the increasing personalization of politics. Jean-Luc M´elenchon was member of the Socialist Party from 1976 and was Minister of Vocational Education (2000–2002) in the government of Lionel Jospin. He left the party and launched the Left Party, was candidate for the Left Front in 2012, and ran for the France Insoumise in 2017. He is a career politician, coming from mainstream politics, and always on the left-wing of the Socialist Party (Marli`ere, 2019). Since the shift from Left Front to France Insoumise, M´elenchon abandoned strong ideological left identities and decided to compete within the axes bottom vs top and old vs ´ new politics instead of the left vs top opposition (Fernandez´ Vazquez, 2019). The irony, highlighted by Philippe Marli`ere (2017), is that sociologically M´elenchon’s electorate is leftwing and their vote is a class vote against the right and extreme right. This shows how the axis left vs right is still sociologically relevant, although the populist discourse can appeal to disenchanted or abstention voters. The main issue at stake is whether left-wing populism is the alternative to rightwing populism. The best option for M´elenchon is to reach the two-candidate round and compete with Le Pen (Lichfield, 2018). The possibilities of defeating a moderate candidate, like Macron, look quite remote. The opposition between leftand right-wing populism, even in the case of the presidential system where the options are better, fosters the opposition extreme vs moderate and blurs the left vs right or bottom vs top confrontation. Therefore, it would be wrong to reduce left-wing populism to the contention of the right-wing

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populism or the appropriation of their tools. Some social democratic parties have already incorporated some of the right-wing populism visions and values on migration (Agust´ın & Jørgensen, 2019), and that can hardly lead to an alternative. Left-wing populism is a response to the crisis of representation and an attempt to expand the demos (and obviously the electoral basis), whose project is anchored in the left when appealing, at the same time, to larger constituencies that do not necessarily identify themselves with the left.

1.2.3 Center-left Wing Populism Left-wing populism is usually applied to parties placed on the radical left, but the question of whether it can be expanded to the center-left and how is relevant to address. The immediate reaction would be positive since populism is present in varying degrees in all kinds of politics (Hansen, 2017), and center-left parties are not an exception. The issue is rather how populist center-left parties are and can become; which features they integrate; and how they relate to other left-wing populisms. The use of populism can be quite temporarily limited to ´ certain political conjunctures. The example of Pedro Sanchez (Agust´ın & Briziarelli, 2018b) from the Spanish social democratic party illustrates not only how the populist strategy was deployed to defeat the internal establishment within the Socialist Party and winning the general secretary seat but also how he later returned to more traditional discourses and strategies characteristic of the social democratic party. ´ Sanchez was inspired by Jeremy Corbyn who has provoked the discussion about a center-left populism. On the one hand, Corbyn was supported by Momentum, self-defined as “a peoplepowered, grassroots movement working to transform Britain in the interests of the many, not the few” (n.d.). Momentum

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connects with the idea of movement party promoting participation and doing politics from below. On the other hand, Corbyn has targeted austerity politics as responsible for the crisis and divided the political conflict between the few and the many. Doreen Massey made a populist reading of Corbyn, in line with Laclau, as signifier for a “whole range of pent-up demands” (2015, p. 10). Corbyn’s first speech of the 2017 General Election reflected the division between “the people” and “the establishment” and the fixation of a chain of equivalences: But of course, they [the media and the establishment] do not want us to win. Because when we win it is the people, not the powerful, who win. The nurse, the teacher, the small trader, the builder, the office worker, the student, the carer win. We all win. (Corbyn, 2017) However, Luke March (2017) recalls that Labour is not a populist or antiestablishment party and the majority of the party’s MPs would not support such a position. Furthermore, Corbyn tends to project the image of a pragmatic candidate who aspires to rule the government, especially on his TV appearances. Therefore, it is limited how populist the centerleft can be due to the party structure, their history, and tradition, while the pragmatic position to keep the centeroriented voters prevails. That said, left-wing populist aspects can be identified within some social democratic parties like the Labour Party. 1.2.4 Charismatic Leadership Leadership is a controversial matter for left-wing populism. The Latin American legacy has already showed the problems derived from the accumulation of power around the leader. Leadership went beyond the party and affected the government

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depending on the figure of the president. Latin American populism provokes legitimate concerns about the concentration of power and the displacement of institutional checks and balances. Nonetheless, the government of Syriza does not match that description at all, and the function of the leader is limited to internal party dynamics. Actually, the pragmatic turn undertaken by Tsipras showed the intention to adapt the preexisting institutional and economic order instead of undoing it. It is true that it is not a necessary condition for left-wing populism to rely on a strong leader, and more horizontal versions of left-wing populism have been developed diminishing the dependency on the leader and emphasizing party inclusion, deliberation, and participation. Pablo Gerbaudo proposes “citizenism” as a type of anarcho-populism, “a populism for an individualized and digital era” (2017, p. 17); and Alberto Moreiras (2018) claims a transversal and posthegemonic version, contrary to verticalism and the antidemocratic implications derived from the notion of hegemony. Despite the horizontalist approaches, the conceptualization of Laclau has been dominant, and nowadays politics, regardless of the ideological position, reinforces the role of the leader. The leader is considered an empty signifier to articulate the chain of equivalences, and the equation between charismatic leadership and authoritarianism is refused (Mouffe, 2018). The unsatisfied demands are articulated and visualized through party leaders, but there is no guarantee that the leader can fulfill them. Looking at the strongest cases of left-wing populism, Alexis Tsipras and Pablo Iglesias have impersonated their own respective parties, although they were not originally personalized parties. Even Podemos, quite attached to Iglesias, tried a collective multilevel (national and municipal) leadership before becoming strongly centralized around Iglesias. France Insoumise is even more dependent on M´elenchon’s leadership since the platform was created to

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promote his candidacy, and the populist turn by Labour is mainly based on the figure of Corbyn as new party leader. All in all, charismatic leaders have been a main feature of the leftwing practices. They have been capable of competing with other parties and enabling identification with new sectors of the population. However, the increasing verticality, the loss of internal plurality, and the difficulties to imagine the future of the parties with a new leader cast doubt on the convenience for the left-wing parties of relying on the charismatic leader.

1.2.5 Movement Par ties The social mobilizations of the square movements in 2011 found a political path in the left-wing parties. It is clear in the case of Podemos and the 15M movement as well as Initiative for Democratic Socialism and the Maribor protests in Slovenia. Syriza engaged with the “Aganaktismenoi” and participated in the protests in the streets. These parties articulated social indignation politically and incorporated a selfidentification of the party as a “democratic” organization that emanates from the cycle of protests (Agust´ın & Jørgensen, 2016a). The claim for democratization, opening to people’s participation and the rejection of the functioning of traditional (cartel) parties, created the expectation of a new type of party organization and of channeling the linkages with civil society. The notion of movement parties is, indeed, associated with left-wing populist parties, and others less leftist like Five Star Movement, as a combination of horizontal (stemming from social movements) and vertical (characteristic of political parties) structures. Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen (forthcoming) suggest that movement parties claim to represent citizens through more horizontalist and participatory structures, given that they are parties of civil society (not of

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the state) and of the people (opposed to the elites). For that reason, they react against cartelization and connect with the innovative party forms pursued by left-wing populism. Podemos was emblematic in its foundation through the creation of c´ırculos (circles), reminiscing spontaneous assemblies, and the introduction of amateur forms of doing politics. This situation changed soon, and the structure of the party turned out to be compatible with a strong vertical leadership. The loss of engagement and participation within the party has kept the hierarchical structure intact. France Insoumise is quite similar. It describes itself as a decentralized network instead of being a party, and it aimed to create participatory online platforms and develop a horizontalist structure (Hamburger, 2018). However, the combination of horizontality at the local level and lack of national structure favors the vertical control by the leadership. Left-wing populism has swung from being a mass party to a catch-all one without showing a determined way of building up a new type of party. The call for participation and mobilization, although without a strong sense of class belonging, links them with mass parties, but the attempt to expand the electoral basis and appeal to a transversal constituency echoes the logic of catch-all parties. This tension is far from being resolved yet, although the organizational form of movement parties, revealing already some contradictions, offers an interesting path to explore.

1.3 BETWEEN SOCIALISM AND POPULISM Populism is not the only dimension of left-wing populist parties and sometimes not even the dominant one. Populism is one element of the multifaceted identities (March, 2017). The antiestablishment discourse, the appellation to larger groups of the population (not belonging to a certain class and without

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referring to strong ideological terms), and the search for new means of participation have been assumed by the parties considered left-wing populist. Syriza, Podemos, and France Insoumise have embraced populism and elaborated it from a left-wing perspective but not as the only element and not always to the same degree and intensity, depending on the strategy and the political conjuncture. In other words, some parties have opened up to moving beyond the traditional space assigned to the radical left, while others have maintained the predominance of the socialist identity. Even so, the former ones are still anchored in the left spectrum and the latter have adopted populist aspects. Left-wing populism, as mentioned earlier, is an analytical tool rather than a label for parties’ self-identification. In their typology of radical left parties, Luke March and Daniel Keith (2016) distinguish between democratic socialist parties and populist socialist parties. Although sharing similar ideologies, the populist socialist parties deploy the populist division between “the people” and “the elite” in an antagonistic relationship. Among these parties, one finds the Socialist Party (the Netherlands), the Scottish Socialist Party, the Left (Germany), and Sinn F´ein (Ireland). The intensification of the populist strategy blurs partly this distinction, and some of the preexisting and recent parties belonging to the first category move to the second or, at least, to a space in-between. The Left in Slovenia and the RGA in Denmark are some of these parties that can be labeled left-wing populist but combine a strong socialist identity with a populist discourse and horizontal participation. The origins of the Left in Slovenia are quite similar to the ones of Podemos. The 2012–2013 protests began in Maribor, the second largest city in the country, which led to the mayor stepping down in December 2012. The protests had an antiestablishment orientation against the political and economic

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elites and challenged the dominant narrative of the elite-led transition from the authoritarian regime to representative democracy (Toplisek & Thomassen, 2017). As a consequence, Initiative for Democratic Socialism (IDS) was established in 2014 with a decentralized and open organizational form aimed to complement the struggle in the streets with the one in official institutions (Kirn, 2014). The vocation to be a movement party entails the recognition of the dimension top vs bottom, characteristic of social movements, but the left vs right axis is preponderant. The crisis cannot be reduced to the economic crisis because it is, in reality, a crisis of democracy. Institutions, policies, and economy must be democratized, and direct democracy is claimed as the main strategy. The spirit of IDS is captured in the hybrid form of parties acting within the institutional arena and movements not aiming to seize power: We believe that the struggle for democratic socialism must necessarily make use of both types of strategies: those that work from below and are abolishing the existing social relations, and those that are changing the policies from above inside the institutionalised sphere of the political system. (Initiative for Democratic Socialism, 2013) IDS decided to enter a coalition with the Democratic Labour Party and the Party for the Sustainable Development of Slovenia as United Left, dissolved in 2017 with the establishment of the Left (Levica) by IDS and the Party for the Sustainable Development of Slovenia as United Left. Alen Toplisek (2019) singles out that the Left can evolve in two different trajectories: maintaining ideological clarity close to their original principles or embracing a more determined populist appeal. The Left’s programs point to reformist pragmatism, rather than revolutionary idealism, but the Marxist language and analysis are still dominant. It is

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interesting to see if the combination of strong socialism and light populism will endure or if populism will gain a more determined position. The RGA is, on the contrary, neither a recent party (it was established in 1989) nor springing from social mobilizations, although it has always been a grassroots party involving social and political activism. The party grew from 2.2% in 2007 to 7.8% in 2015 and was the biggest party left of the Social Democrats. The RGA initiated a left-wing turn, captured in the program of principles in 2013–2014, as a result of a collective leadership and the incorporation of a new generation of politicians. In the program, the RGA subscribes to socialist principles but adopts, at the same time, a more pragmatic line (abandoning some anticapitalist values) and a clear anti-elite stance (Agust´ın, 2019a). The social democratic party has been, and still is, the largest party from the “red bloc,” but the RGA contemplated the possibility, before the 2019 elections, of surpassing the Social Democrats by gathering the votes from the parties to the left of the latter (The Alternative, Socialist People’s Party, and the RGA). The hypothesis proved to be wrong, and the RGA was not even the most voted party left of the Social Democrats. Despite that, the turning point was that the RGA moved away from being a mere protest party or a left appendix of social democracy. The attempt to develop a political identity, independent of the relation with social democracy, was already expressed in the program of principles through the cooperation with popular movements and the shaping of a majority. The political campaign “Community works” (Fælleskab fungerer), launched in 2016, illustrates how the RGA shapes a collective identity (“community”), developed historically from social struggles and their achievements for society (parental leave, women’s right to vote, eight-hour workday, pension, etc.). Community (rather than “the people”) is a conflictual

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subject in which “the many” have obtained their rights against the interests of the few. Thus, collectivity cannot be mistaken with a cultural or essentialist identity (Agust´ın, 2019b). Pelle Dragsted (Thorup, 2014) from RGA reveals that the left wing has focused too much on portraying an image of the “enemy” and less on elaborating narratives opposing “We” to “They.” In this regard, populism is productively used to narrate the antagonism between “We” and “They” by embracing a less ideologized discourse. The reformulation of the “We” is complemented with the critique of the elites, including politicians. The leader of the RGA, Pernille Skipper, as well as other left-wing populists, highlights that the RGA politicians act for the people’s interests in opposition to the politicians who belong to and support the elite: “We can create a society where the struggle with the elite and increasing inequality does not mean hatred. We can create change. Especially if we don’t leave politics to those who hold the soft seats at Christiansborg [the Danish Parliament]” (Skipper, 2016). The Left in Slovenia and the RGA in Denmark show how in different contexts both parties combine the defense of socialist principles with the assumption of a populist strategy. As grassroots parties, the mechanisms of participation and internal democracy coexist with a tendency toward stronger or centralized leadership. In any case, it becomes evident that in the left-wing parties where a socialist identity remains strong, populism usually indicates a more moderate or pragmatic approach than the one from traditional radical left parties. In other words, the search for representing the social majority provokes a less ideological standpoint as well as programs and parliamentarian attitudes orientated to support left governments or pass progressive politics.

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2 THE PEOPLE AND POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY

“The people” as political subject is without any doubt the core of populism, as well as the most controversial aspect due to the difficulty in finding a precise and shared understanding of who “the people” are. It does not help so much that “the people” is opposed to “the establishment” or “the elite” because those concepts are broad too and changeable according to the context. Despite differences in their way of defining “the people” and of doing politics, populism as the politics of the people is the central feature used to equate rightand left-wing populism as part of the same populist wave; as a sort of common phenomenon against liberal democracy. Even assuming that there is one way of defining “the people” as the key component of left-wing populism, there are several intertwined issues that cause self-reflection and critique about who “the people” are and which type of political project can be grounded in that understanding of “the people.” Probably, the most controversial aspect is that “the people” displaces the concept of “class,” the distinguishing mark of the left. It would empty the emancipatory project of the left and move it

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to a kind of “identity politics” where class struggle is missing. This concern is not the only one. The definition of “the people” tends to collide with other concepts like the nation or migration when delimiting who is part of the people or not. I will address these issues later. In the following, I focus on the category of “the people,” and probably the core-defining element of left-wing populism: Popular sovereignty which operates within the logics of the nation-state and of the transnational spaces. Popular sovereignty contributes to establishing a legitimacy which makes left-wing populism distinguishable from mainstream parties and the far right.

2.1 THE PEOPLE AND THE ELITE Peter Bloom, in a piece on populism, concludes that modern politics is not about a struggle between left- and right-wing populism but a “race to define and expand who the ‘people’ are and what they can achieve together” (2018). I consider this reflection a good starting point given that conceptualizations such as “pure people” obscure that the appellation to “the people” is rather an attempt to expand political engagement and give voice and recognition to underrepresented and marginalized groups. “The people” and “the elite” are named through different signifiers depending on the context: the Labour Party’s vision for “a country that works for the many, not just the privileged few”; Podemos in its origins shaking the political divisions by depicting the conflict between “the people” and “the caste”; or before that, the famous “we are the 99 percent” claimed by the Occupy Wall Street movement in opposition to the “richest 1 percent.” In all these cases, “the people” takes different forms (signifiers) adapted to the actors and contexts and, most importantly, it gives form to the political and social conflict.

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John Judis (2016) emphasizes that what defines populism is, indeed, the conflictual relation between “the people” and “the elite” rather than their exact referents. The process of naming (saying who “the enemy” is and consequently who “the people” are) establishes the relation between the form (the people as signifier) and the content (the people as signified) (Panizza, 2005). Therefore, the discursive approach developed by Ernesto Laclau and the Essex School has insisted on the fact that “the people” is an antagonistic construction. “The people” reflects different political conjunctures and strategies, and it would be na¨ıve to expect that “the people” is not changeable, and refers continually to the same groups and claims, and that “the people” is the only signifier used to refer to those groups. As mentioned above, “the 99 percent,” “the many” are other signifiers, but also references to “citizens” or “nationals” can work as signifiers for “the people” in certain contexts. As Benjamin De Cleen and Yannis Stavrakakis present, the relation between two opposed groups is formulated in terms of legitimacy: Populism is a dichotomic discourse in which “the people” are juxtaposed to “the elite” along the lines of a down/up antagonism in which “the people” is discursively constructed as a large powerless group through opposition to “the elite” conceived as a small and illegitimately powerful group. Populist politics thus claim to represent “the people” against an “elite” that frustrates their legitimate demands, and presents these demands as expressions of the will of “the people.” (De Cleen & Stavrakakis, 2017) According to Judis, left-wing populism is dyadic (the bottom and middle against the top), while right-wing populism is triadic and adds a third group (it could be migrants, Islamists, etc.) so it “looks upward, but also down upon an out group”

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(2016, p. 15). Actually, populism works as a two-dimensional discourse (Brubaker, 2017, 2019) which combines a vertical dimension (power relations, the top vs down dimension) and the horizontal one (the inside-outside). This can be applied to both left- and right-wing populism, but very differently. One can say that the top/down antagonism is the main divide which characterizes populism. However, the vertical dimension intersects with the horizontal one since, for instance, the elite actors are perceived as outsiders too, e.g., how M´elenchon portrays Germany as enemy of the French people’s interests. Following Rogers Brubaker (2017), in the vertical dimension, “the people” are defined in opposition to economic, political, and cultural elites; in the horizontal dimension, “the people” are bounded collectivity, based on the contrast between “inside” and “outside.” Left-wing populism opposes vertically to the economic and political elites vs the ordinary people and horizontally to the supranational and global elites (the outsiders) whose interests oppose those of “the people,” frequently understood as a national community. It can be the EU institutions, the Troika, or transnational companies such as Amazon or Google. It is important to notice that right-wing populism uses a vertical dimension to present their conflicts against the cultural elites and prolong the vertical line when they oppose those at the bottom (immigrants, Muslims, refugees). There is not only an insider/ outsider dimension (nationals vs aliens) but also a vertical one ` vis-a-vis those who have or are perceived to have a lower status. Panizza (2005) points out that the act of naming entails the relation between “the people” as signifier and signified. It means that there is no sociological referent for “the people” because it is a discursive construction. In this regard, particularly for left-wing populism, Laclau’s (2005) conceptualization of populism as a series of chains of equivalences

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has been very influential. “The people,” “the majority,” the figure of the leader can work as an empty signifier, meaning a signifier whose content is empty so several groups, from different positions, could identify themselves with it (Thomassen, 2016). When diverse demands made by particular groups (the logic of difference) become unsatisfied, it is possible to ally all these demands: firstly, against the institutions, the government, or the entities which are provoking that those demands are disregarded and secondly, one of the signifiers can take up the position of empty signifier and represent the chain as a whole. Thus, sectorial particularism is transformed into general demands, inscribed in the chain of equivalence and creating a link between them (Keucheyan, 2015). Lasse Thomassen remarks that it is a synecdochal operation which is performative: There is no preexisting reality or subject, but rather it “is the creation of a chain of equivalence and the representation of the collective identity through the empty signifier that together constitute that identity” (Thomassen, 2016, p. 167). Populism, or the construction of “the people,” is the articulation of heterogeneous demands through the logic of equivalence, the consequence of which is the fixation of the populist frontier dividing the social between “the people” and “the elite.” Laclau and Mouffe consider necessary the figure of the leader, as signifier, to represent the unity of the heterogeneous demands. This thought has been very influential in the way left-wing populism has used the leaders as empty signifiers to articulate the people’s demands. I mentioned before how that is problematic: The leader cannot fulfill the satisfied demands, and the leader is still a leader, a politician with power within and outside the political organization. The leader tends to act within a different logic (the logic of power), which is not the same as the logic of the people and can end up implementing vertical structures without any kind of checks and balances;

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maybe only the plebiscite. As happens with the function of the leader, the idea of “the people” is quite controversial. “The people,” sound the critiques, would be homogeneous as a result of the unifying operation through the logic of equivalence. Mouffe has already highlighted the misunderstanding between equivalence and identity. It is wrong to conceive that all the particular identities are erased and the result is a sole homogeneous identity. The equivalence is applied to the heterogeneity of social demands without affecting the particular and differentiated internal identities of the group. If the goal is to expand who “the people” are, it would not make sense that “the people” preexisted (before being named) or that plurality would be reduced to unity. Rather the contrary, it is about increasing plurality. The designation of the adversary is what determines the configuration of the collective will. There are a couple of interesting consequences to consider: Changing the adversary would imply changing who “the people” are; and achieving some of the demands could alter the chain of equivalence through a different empty signifier or articulation. There is, in principle, nothing that points automatically to authoritarianism, to an essentialist notion of “the people,” or to the imposition of the will of a homogeneous group. “The people” as a group preserve their differences, and the convergence of social demands does not have to be confused with the unity into one single identity. Plurality is not denied then. However, there are a couple of aspects which are important to notice about the populist logic. Laclau succeeds, in my opinion, in expanding who “the people” are; he suggests indeed that the construction of the people is the essential condition for the existence of democracy. What is missed, as a consequence of his conceptualization based on discursive articulation, is what “the people” can achieve together: What kind of solidarity relations and social and political practices emerge? How do

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social claims, from feminism to environmentalism or from pensioners’ rights to students demanding free and better education, shape a populist project? It can be expected that the claims (and the heterogeneity of actors behind them) push toward a progressive agenda, but is it always like that? My second concern is about the attention paid to “the people.” Populists are accused of appropriating democracy through naming themselves “the real people,” while the others would be antidemocratic. However, less attention is dedicated to the construction of “the elite.” The division and simplification by the populist frontier obscure how the polarized groups (“the people” and “the elite”) are porous and how “the elite” can appropriate or satisfy, at least partly, some of the social claims. Furthermore, the elites are also heterogeneous, and although reduced to a common category by being named as adversary, they retain their capacity to act at different levels and upon different actors. The power of mediation, reorientation, or manipulation by the elites must not be under´ Moron, ´ estimated (Anton 2015)—nor that populists in government or in parliament come closer to the interaction of the elites if they are not directly becoming part of those elites.

2.2 POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY The claim for popular sovereignty is one of the main features of left-wing populism. The vivid emphasis on popular sovereignty has two reasons: a general reflection on democracy and the need for offering an alternative to the existing order (economic, political, institutional). Chantal Mouffe (2019) makes a similar distinction when she claims that two levels must be distinguished: The regime, the liberal democratic institutions, consisting of the articulation between political liberalism and the democratic values of equality and popular

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sovereignty and hegemony, which is the level of interpretation and institutionalization of that regime. Nowadays, a notion of democracy is becoming dominant where the popular component (the demos) is missing. Peter Mair refers to the distinction between “constitutional democracy” and “popular democracy.” The former highlights “the need for checks and balances across institutions and entails government for the people,” and the latter “emphasizes the role of the ordinary citizen and mass participation, and entails government by the people” (2013, p. 10, my italics). The recovery of popular sovereignty reestablishes the link between constitutional and popular democracy and places popular sovereignty as constituent for democracy rather than a marginalized component or even a threat to democracy. On the other hand, popular hegemony is used as response to the professionalization of politics and neoliberal globalization. In both cases, the rule by the people is displaced by politicians and experts or by transnational economic enterprises and institutions. The reclamation for popular sovereignty, as formulated by left-wing populism, does not aim to replace constitutional power with popular power but instead a wider definition of democracy which includes constitutional and popular democracy. In this sense, the main value of popular sovereignty is that it enables the questioning of the constituted order and opens up the possibility of creating constituent spaces (Retamozo, 2017). In praxis, the scope of those constituent spaces can vary substantially. While the Latin American left-wing populism showed examples of constituent processes leading to a new constitution, in Europe the situation is quite different. Despite the claims for a constituent process made by Podemos, assuming the demands by the 15M movement, they evolved toward a more modest goal and aspire to constitutional reforms. M´elenchon advocates for the Sixth Republic and a new constitution, but he does not count

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on a majority to undertake such a project. However, the movement for the Sixth Republic is experiencing relative success in mobilizing people. The impetus for recovering popular sovereignty in Europe denotes that it does not represent a disruptive movement against the existing constitutional and institutional order. What is important here is that sovereignty is not conceived as a coercive power but as constituent power capable of constituting something different and being attached to an emancipatory project. As Andreas Kalyvas (2005) says, the sovereign act takes place outside the existing constitutional order in order to redefine it. If the constituent power stemmed from the preexisting constitution, it would be constituted power and not constituent power. The principles of participation and inclusion are immanent to the constituent act of the political community. The constituent moments are exceptional, and they depend on the degree of inclusion of the different actors and the success of the constituent act, that is, their efficiency to create a new constitutional document (Kalyvas, 2005). The ruled, and not the rulers, must participate in the constituent act. If not, it would be an imposition rather than a constituent act in which a part decides illegitimately for the whole. The social division introduced by populism through popular sovereignty is posed as a tension between populism and democracy instead of between popular and constitutional democracy. “The people” as plebs (the subaltern and marginalized groups) are a part of the political community which assumes the position of the whole community when they claim to be sovereign and capable of reshaping the instituted order. The synecdochal operation constituting a new political order, Francisco Panizza (2008) points out, entails then the transformation of the plebs into demos. There is a transition process from being nobody, excluded from the social order, to representing the whole community. The key is how to define who the

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legitimate members of the demos are, how sovereignty is exerted, and what the constitutive outside is (Panizza, 2008). Therefore, popular sovereignty implies also an exclusion; this time not of the marginalized or subaltern but of the elites. Here it is important to pay attention to the articulation of liberal institutions and democratic values (or between constitutional and popular democracy) and whether the operation of becoming “the people” is expansive and increases inclusiveness. Moreover, it must be assessed how such an articulation relates to the preexisting institutional and democratic order (whether equality, plurality, and sovereignty are reinforced or not). As mentioned above, the particular interpretation of institutionalization does not derive, at least so far, from cases of constituent processes; contrary to what happened in some countries in Latin America. A better reading than the one confronting populism against democracy acknowledges the political and social spaces opened by the invocation of popular sovereignty and its questioning of the instituted order. This is inconvenient for liberalism (Retamozo, 2017) and republicanism which, from a defense of existing institutions, warn against the risk of authoritarian paths, but refuse any possible democratization process originated by the questioning of those institutions. Gianpaolo Baiocchi (2018) sees the risk of sovereignty being the “general will” attributed by a part instead of the “will of all.” Sovereignty can easily be used to cement a partial view of the world. He suggests that sovereignty must be a process, more than an end state, where both the “We” and sovereignty are open to reinvention. It would be a mistake to emphasize only one side (the “We” or the sovereign). The rule (being sovereign) and the demos (“the people”) must work together: “the We placing a check on Sovereignty, while Sovereignty gives the We more meaning” (2018, p. 20). This notion of popular sovereignty as an ongoing process, recognizing the

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tensions between the demos and the sovereign, “the people” and the institutions, is useful to politicize the issues ignored by liberal democracy because it “radicalizes the meaning of democracy, insisting on the idea of the people as an egalitarian collective and the people’s rule as a broad mandate to bring about social transformation” (Baiocchi, 2018, p. 23). Baiocchi refers mainly to a historical bloc, where social movements are a leading force, so the situation is more complex in the case of populist parties. However, similar dynamics can be applied. Not all the left-wing parties connect with mass mobilizations or stem from social protests, but all of them develop a discursive articulation and mechanism of participation to foster the identification between “the people” and the party. It would be quite difficult to imagine sovereignty as process if political parties were disconnected from social movements and mobilizations. The reality shows, in any case, that such a connection is complicated and adds different levels of tensions between movements and parties.

2.3 NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION When reclaiming popular sovereignty, left-wing populism faces a kind of paradox. On one side, sovereignty is in crisis and has been gradually transferred to transnational forces; on the other, the traditional terrain of sovereignty is still the nation-state. Thus, left-wing populism contests neoliberal globalization and claims for a form of popular sovereignty which is exchangeable with national or state sovereignty. Popular sovereignty assumes the value of the defense of the capacity of self-decision by nation-states. This position generates confusion comparing with other claims, particularly from the far right, which apparently pursue the same goal. Recovering the horizontal dimension of populism, the far

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right triumphs electorally due to the xenophobic and antiimmigrant discourse where there is an ethnic and class frontier between the insider and outsider. Left-wing populism, on the contrary, identifies the economic elites and the European Union as the main responsible party for the impoverishing situation of the people. These conceptions of who are not part of “the people” could not differ more. The uneven geographical development of the EU, materialized in the Center and North with stronger economy and the South suffering from austerity politics (Gros, 2016), depicts the existence of two totally different types of populism. However, the defense of sovereignty continues to generate confusion and contributes to making both types of populisms comparable. Referring to the “losers of globalization” has not been very helpful either since it includes a vast range of people from xenophobic groups who perceive immigrants as a threat to activists against austerity politics and global capitalism. The claim for popular sovereignty must be observed in the light of the articulation of “the people” and of “the elite.” Jon Azkune Torres (2016) stresses that sovereignty articulates the relationship between political community and the state. His point is similar to the one expressed above on the constituent and the constituted, but he draws on the work of Enrique Dussel (2008). Power contains the primary power of the political community (potential) which gives rise to the delegation of the exercise of power through institutions and representatives (potestas). The separation between the two types of power, says Azkune, is possible due to sovereignty which articulates the community and the government. At the level of articulation (of hegemony, in Mouffe’s terms), the differences with the far right, but also with the center-left and right, become obvious. Popular sovereignty is not culturally or historically grounded (i.e., not related to national identity then) but a political claim for a government for and by the

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people. Bringing back the power of decision to the people must not necessarily imply (although often it does) the return to the nation-state, but a reaction against the privatization of sovereignty by transnational economic elites and against the professionalization of politics, not interested in transforming the common will into common good (Taylor, 2019). Regina Queiroz (2017) singles out that neoliberalism, and “There Is No Alternative” (TINA) as the maxim it relies on, promotes a publicity (openness and transparency) without public, neither a populus or demos. Thus, neoliberalism precludes the possibility of “the people” as sovereign legislator. This can be applied to the EU. Besides the problems attributed to its lack of legitimacy or democratic deficit, it is important to expose the lack of accountability or transparency from the perspective of the “sovereign people” and not exclusively from the nation-states’ perspective. Placing the discussion on left-wing populism and popular sovereignty at this level could scale-up the discussion from the national to the transnational level. That is what Yanis Varoufakis does with his proposal for democratizing Europe, including transparency in decision-making as one of the first measures. I will retake the discussion between the transnational and international levels in a later chapter. I am now interested in underlining that regaining popular sovereignty does not need to be restricted to the nation-state and can introduce a transnational or international agenda, which questions the instituted order, global neoliberalism and, specifically, the EU. This articulation of sovereignty (the relation between the ruled and the rulers) does not have anything in common with that of the far right. Pernille Skipper, leader of the Danish Red-Green Alliance, adopts the populist logic by opposing “ordinary people” with “EU elites,” in her case to justify the need for leaving the EU. She illustrates how the need for popular sovereignty is due to the

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existing conflict between “the elite” and “the people” at the global level, instead of conceiving globalization as only a conflict between the transnational forces and the national state: “Globalization does not work for ordinary people. It works for the elite” (Skipper, 2017). There are, however, stances from the left that still look at national sovereignty as the only solution to neoliberal politics. Takis Fotopoulos (2015), for example, criticizes the way in which Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain address the EU framework. According to him, both parties do not question the EU and are incapable of leading a project for the victims of globalization. The recovery of national sovereignty would be the right option by merging social and national liberation. The main problem of this kind of position is that the only solution is placed at the national level, and the articulation of sovereignty, the political community, and the governors, is limited to the national levels. This is a consequence of the traditional association between popular sovereignty and nation-state as well as ignoring how sovereignty has been reshaped through globalization. It sounds quite strange that the only way to offer solutions to the “victims of globalization” is social and national liberalization. This suggestion barely touches the issue of globalization and attributes an excessive emancipatory power to the national framework and to the national identity attached to it. In order to make the notion of popular sovereignty or sovereign people productive, it must be associated with the acknowledgment of different scales and how sovereignty is exerted. I am not referring only to national and transnational or international scales, but also to the local scale. The challenge is how to articulate all these scales to provide a satisfactory alternative to global neoliberalism. In this sense, popular sovereignty is not reducible to national or state sovereignty, and the political community (“the people”) is not the same as national community, as will be discussed later.

3 CLASS AND MIGRATION

In an article answering the question if left-wing populism is ¨ the solution, Anton Jager and Arthur Borriello (2019) conclude remarking that left-wing populism, in contrast to “a moribund old left”, has taken stock of the new political and economic situation after 30 years of neoliberalism and “trimmed its sails to the wind”. This happens, they add, precisely when the organized working class, the main collective actor of social change in the twentieth century, remains extremely disorganized. This reflection draws attention to the fact that populism so far has not been capable of reorganizing the working class, or, at least, to offer a platform in which such a reorganization could happen. Actually, one of the main sticking points between left-wing populism and the socialist or radical-left wing is about the political subject of social change, being the working class or “the people”. The disagreement goes beyond organization and affects the shaping of the collective identity for the left project. Whilst left-wing populists are skeptical about class-based analysis and class-struggle discourse, radical left-wingers are wary of the absence of labor and capital conflicts as well as class struggles when talking about “the people”. 47

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The importance of the working class is, in any case, indisputable. Paradoxically enough, class-based interpretations of the rise of populism have been used to account for the switch of working-class voters (normally portrayed as white male workers) from progressive positions, especially social democracy, to the populist-right wing. This phenomenon was prominent after Donald Trump’s electoral victory but it was already present in Europe in the countries where the populistright wing already had significant electoral support. However, the rise of left-wing populism is framed from the perspective of the disenchantment and the fragmentation of the middle class. The latent questions are, on the one hand, if left-wing populism could regain the vote of the working class (now allegedly attracted by right-wing populism), and, on the other, if leftwing populism entails the abandonment of the working class and class struggle as the core of the left ideology. In the first case, the assumption is that populism is, above all, the strategy deployed by the far right to gain the workers’ support, and in the second, that left-wing populism is a moderate, de-ideologized, middle-class project. The idea of regaining the working class (in competition with the radical right-wing populism or from a socialist or radical-left position) should not be detached from class composition, or in other words, which kind of working class we are talking about. In this regard, the class dimension is linked to migration (and other dimensions, such as gender) so it is crucial to consider if class struggles include the migrants’ claims (as the workers they are, indeed) or if they exclude them. Although the debate affects all of the left, the inclusionary vs exclusionary conceptualization of populism can help to assess how left-wing populism articulates class and migration within a larger and multi-class populist project. In principle, “working class” and “the people” should constitute open identities whereby migrants are included when sharing

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the same economic system of exploitation or belonging to the same group opposed to the privileged elite. Nonetheless, that is not always the case, and some contradictions appear in the formation of an inclusive collective subject.

3.1 WORKING CLASS AND THE PLEBS The space created by the decreasing organizational and electoral force of communist parties and the social-liberal turn undertaken by social democrats, together with the concerns about sovereignty in the contexts of the EU, was expanded in the aftermath of the economic crisis. Left-wing populism made it clear then that nowadays the conflict was between “the people” and “the elite”, expressed through a less ideological discourse whereby left-wing populist parties “downplay Marxist ideological purity and present themselves as the vox populi, not just the vanguard of the proletariat, which may cause them to toy with non-traditional identity concerns” (March, 2007, p. 67). Besides replacing the proletariat as vanguard, the working class lost centrality as subject of change due to the multiclass character of left-wing populism. ´ In a report on the working class in Spain, Alberto Garzon (2019), leader of the United Left (IU), compares the strategies of the liberal party Ciudadanos and Podemos and classifies both as catch-all parties. He perceives similarities between the social democracy from the beginning of the twentieth century and the current left-wing populism which appeals to “the people” and not to “the working class”. This strategy pro´ the loss of class awareness in the vokes, according to Garzon, working class. Nevertheless, when the vote of the working ´ unveils that their vote is less leftist class is analyzed, Garzon than the one from the sociocultural professionals who vote ´ shows the Podemos. The report, and the vision of Garzon,

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challenge for the left: The working class does not vote necessarily for the left (and surely not for the radical left) whilst the absence of a “class appellation” generates decreasing class awareness. In my opinion, left-wing populism’s difficulties in attracting the working-class vote are insufficiently explained from a discursive perspective (the “populist appellation”), since it has more to do with the dissatisfaction of workers, trade unions’ role, their traditional relation with social democratic parties, and how their perception of their own identity and interests is in the globalized world. There is no guarantee that a “class appellation” would activate the working-class awareness and even less regain their vote. There are stronger critiques of left-wing populism which pinpoint that, besides replacing the “working class” with “the people” as political subject, the core problem to be solved and overcome is the disregard for social struggles and class conflict. Massimo Modonesi (2016) refers to the correlation of class forces in a historical moment between the dominant class and the subaltern classes. Left-wing populism in Europe is for him a defensive move against the dominant class, which still maintains the initiative and is offensive. Despite their good intentions, Modonesi interprets left-wing populism as a lesser evil and part of the process of dismantling the left, even in the places where class warfare comes out like Greece and Spain. The scope of the critique is slightly different and points to the unequal structures and the asymmetric struggle between the dominant class and subaltern classes. The question is not the articulation of “the people”, which does not necessarily exclude existing class struggles or the working class, but rather dimming the power of unequal structures which hinder the promotion of progressive social agendas or of economic redistribution. Left-wing populism exposes one of its weaknesses when it is not able to fulfill its

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electoral promises and must moderate its ambitions and proposals due to its insufficient force in relation to the dominant classes. In any case, I insist, it is not a matter of transforming “the people” into the collective subject of change instead of the working class. The problem is ignoring the power structures behind “the elites” and their capacity to constrain and neutralize the “politics of the people”. The claim of “the people” as political subject is neither per se a replacement for the “working class” or abandoning the logic of class struggles, although it implies their modification. The fragmentation of class, due to the multiplicity of social struggles and the vanishing conditions associated with industrial workers, makes it quite difficult for the working class, the proletariat, to continue as the leading emancipatory subject. The populist logic enables a larger articulation of the collective subject through the chain of equivalences when preserving the verticality of the economic and social conflicts. “The people” as plebs means “common people”, or a part excluded from political society, in contrast to a constituted part of society (populus) (Vatter, 2012). Ernesto Laclau (2010) uses this distinction where populus is the totality of the community and plebs are those at the bottom. The plebs, a partiality within the community, aims through a hegemonic operation to incarnate the totality of the community. The conflict is thus vertical and characterized by the struggle of those who are excluded from becoming the legitimate populus (Petitjean, 2014). Class identity rather than disappearing is embedded within other social struggles resulting in a new hegemonic formation around “the people” vs “the elite” ´ (2014), founder of Podemos, dichotomy. Iñigo Errejon considered the 15M or indignados movement, prior to Podemos, as a plebeian irruption which altered the common sense and enabled the establishment of a new political frontier in which “the people” were not represented by “the elites”.

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This frontier surpassed the left- vs right-wing metaphors and required thus a different political articulation. “The people” as plebs implies that the new political conflict cannot be articulated through a traditional leftist discourse. The diminishing role of the working class is subsumed within the assertion of the vertical axis established by the plebeian mobilization. The problem is located in the reduction of the conflict to the communicative and discursive field. In other words, “the people” as plebs rephrases the vertical conflict against the elite by the articulation of the demands from the working class together with the ones from other groups. However, the materiality of the plebs, from the point of view of domination and organizing resistance, remains ignored (Sztulwark, 2019). On the other hand, the discursive construction of “the elite” could be problematic. The construction of “the people” is made in opposition to the common enemy, named as “the elite”. As occurs with “the people”, it is not expected that we would be able to identify the sociological referents of “the elite”. The emancipation of the working class was, according to Marx, to abolish all the classes and should be led by the working class; this is only possible if solidarity relations between workers are developed. The emancipation of “the people” depends on the satisfaction of their heterogeneous social demands in their antagonistic relation with “the elite”. Instead of solidarity relations, what is needed is the articulation of those struggles. The final goal is that plebs incarnates the totality of “the people” as populus without abolishing the differences between “the people” and “the elite” because such a distinction is by the way the reason for the existence of “the people”. I miss also in the category of “the people” the possibility to apply Nicos Poulantzas’ (Seymour, 2012) distinction between

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“class determination” (the objective situation of class within productive relations) and “class position” (the orientation of members of a class within the class struggle). Although there is space for subjective positions within the articulation of “the people”, it is not possible to explain why members of the working class can align with groups contrary to their interest. In other words, how someone belonging to “the people” can align with other groups who belong to other discursive formations of “the people” or directly to the elite. Coming back to the materiality of the plebs, the discursive construction of “the people” does not always contribute to throw light on the organization of the popular classes: How the groups have organized themselves to elaborate their demands and how they can organize together. The logic of articulation favors that left-wing populism can lead a political project from above without necessarily counting on social groups or using the existing ways of organizing and resisting. I am not saying that articulation is not valuable, because it is, but that more attention should be paid to practices and organization forms. Talking about “the people” and not (or not only) about working class should lead to the question of its adequacy in building up a left project. As mentioned, it is common to read that the working class, “the losers of globalization”, has abandoned the left parties since they feel that the system is rigged against them and the mainstream parties do not answer to their concerns (Jackson, 2019). In this context, left-wing populism offers the possibility of uniting the majority of the working people. The main difference in relation to a class approach is that the working class is united around common demands such as public education, healthcare, equality, nondiscrimination, or more democracy. The articulation of the demands and not the identity is what allows for the expansion of the collective subject beyond the working class. “The

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people” can actually contribute to envisioning a new working class, capable of incorporating other groups. Nancy Fraser speculates about that: If the left hopes to revive the idea of working class as the leading force within a new counterhegemonic bloc, we will have to envision that class in a new way – intersectionally, if you will ― as not restricted to the white, straight, male, majority-ethnicity, manufacturing and mining workers, but as encompassing all of these other occupations ― paid and unpaid ― and as massively encompassing immigrants, women and people of color. (Fraser, 2019, pp. 62–63) The idea of exploring an “intersectional populism” is quite intriguing to connect the heterogeneity of demands and social groups against diverse kinds of domination. “The people” should not be used to erase differences and similarly does not aim to replace the category of class but to expand it and articulate it in an intersectional manner.

3.2 THE PRECARIAT AND THE POPULIST INTERPELLATION Besides highlighting that class is articulated, and has not vanished, together with other struggles as part of “the people”, it is still relevant to explore the connections between left-wing people and the capitalist system of (re)production. Socioeconomic and technological changes have provoked the transformation of work: increasing flexibility, fragmentation, and temporality of labor, as well as the predominance of knowledge, affect, communication, and information to create value; and relegating the waged labor time to a non-central

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position (Brunet & Pizzi, 2012). The change of paradigm to the postindustrial era or post-Fordism is changing class composition and causing a social dualization between stable and precarious (contingent jobs, working poor, structurally unemployed) workers (Quintana, 2005). This duality is at the core of the definition of the precariat, a neologism combining “precarity” and “proletariat”, as “class-in-the-making” by Guy Standing (2011). In his conceptualization, Standing presents from the beginning elements inviting to a populist reading of it. Class structure, as a result of neoliberal globalization, consists of seven groups. At the top is the elite, composed by a tiny number of super rich, corresponding to the 1%. The vertical conflict and the identification of the elite as the group at the top show that populism and Standing’s approach have something in common. However, to Standing the elite is not defined in relation to “the people” but from their position in the class structure and by their own accumulated privileges. The other groups are the salariat, proficians, the old working class, the precariat, the unemployed, and the lumpenproletariat. Another element, which connects Standing with populism, is his evocation of the global precariat, a group without any anchor of stability and perceived as “a new dangerous class”. The risk would be that they give their voices and money to political platforms and a “monster” will come to life. The new class is dangerous, “partly because its insecurities induce the bitterness, ill-health, and anger that can be the fodder of right-wing populism. But it is also dangerous in the progressive sense that many in it reject old center-left and center-right politics” (Standing, 2018). The call for action by Standing is motivated to avoid the move to right-wing populism rather than to develop a leftwing populism. It is worth noticing that Standing’s framework is global neoliberalism whilst left-wing populism is mainly concerned with the nation-state.

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Standing singles out three characteristics of the precariat: They have no occupational identity or narrative to give to their lives (provoking existential insecurity); its structure of social income relies largely on money wages, without nonwage benefits, rights-based state benefits or informal community benefits; and they are losing acquired rights (cultural, civil, social, economic, and political). Insecurity, inequality, and lack of rights thus become the common features shared by the precariat. Furthermore, the precariat is split into three factions: atavists, nostalgics, and progressives. I find the first one of special relevance. Standing refers to the “atavists” as those who have fallen from old working class and hence lack the support of community. They “look backwards, feeling deprived of a real or imagined past. Not having much education, they listen to populist sirens who play on their fears and blame ‘the other’ ― migrants, refugees, foreigners, or some other group easily demonized” (Standing, 2016). In sum, there are two separated groups: the precariat, divided into three categories, on the one hand, and the working class, on the other. The class supporting right-wing populism would not be the working class but one faction of the precariat derived from the working class. At this point, it is questionable that the precariat constitutes a class and it is also surprising that the precarity processes boosted by neoliberal policies are limited to a class rather than being a cross-class phenomenon. The precariat is mainly defined as a negative class (Seymour, 2012), i.e. it is what it is not: not proletariat, not working class, not salariat. Precarity is affecting many classes and social groups from the working class to academics or well-educated young people. Instead of looking at the precariat as a new and separate class (Jørgensen, 2016), it could be more productive to frame it as a way of connecting classes and of responding to the postFordist changes. The precariat comes quite close to “the

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people”, albeit it emphasizes more the material conditions for the emergence of a heterogeneity of social struggles which share a common enemy: neoliberal or austerity policies. Richard Seymour claims rightly that “the precariat” works as a kind of populist interpellation through dividing society into the “power bloc” (the elites according to Standing’s class structure) and the rest. Seymour notes that precarity can be part of a system of articulations unifying, through the chain of equivalence, those affected by it and in struggle against the power bloc. The working class would be still determinant, since it is suffering from precarity, but in alliance with other social groups. The precariat/populist interpellation should contribute to forging a radical majority against neoliberalism. Using a similar argument, Owen Jones (2016) advocates for a left-wing populism to connect the left with the unreached and to develop a discourse which resonates with the increasing diversity within the working class. The populist interpellation of the precariat opens up a space to strengthen the class dimension of populism and anchor it within the economic system of production. Seymour (2017) highlights that saying “we are all precarious” does not imply being proud of being exploited and subordinated or of living with fear but the declared intention to fight. “The people” as plebs should capture that spirit, and the pride of being “the people” should express the rejection of the politics of the elites and not the supposedly pride of belonging to a national or cultural community (in opposition to outsiders). The point made by Standing should not be forgotten either. Insecurity and fear of the uncertain future is affecting all the classes because of precarity. The left wing should address this issue. A last but not least important aspect is that Standing is dealing with the precariat as the global class and it demands global solutions; some of them, like basic income, change the left schemas of finding solutions within the traditional angle of

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the welfare state. Precarity is an increasing economic and social process. Given that left-wing populism is still mainly attached to welfare politics and close to social democratic socioeconomic programs, the precariat should predictably contribute to pushing it into other directions.

3.3 INCLUSIONARY AND EXCLUSIONARY POPULISM Against the impression that all the populisms are the same, Cas Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2012) make a valuable distinction between inclusionary and exclusionary populism. Populism in Europe was, at that moment, exclusive, while the Latin American one was inclusive. This divergence is explained by the definition of the actors who belong to “the people”, in antagonistic relation with “the elite”, and by their ideology (left or right); albeit both are against liberal democracy. Inclusion and exclusion are characterized through three dimensions: material (redistribution), political (political participation and public contestation), and symbolic (the boundaries separating the “We” and “They”). Furthermore, Mudde and Rovira add that the inclusionary and exclusionary distinction is also due to the stronger socioeconomic dimension (including the poor) and the predominant sociocultural dimension (excluding the “aliens”) in Europe. The socioeconomic component became more relevant in Europe in the aftermath of the economic crisis, and the formation of an inclusionary populism rose, although there were preexisting left-wing populist parties like The Left in Germany and the Socialist Party in the Netherlands. Comparing the varieties of inclusionary populism (Syriza, Podemos, and the Five Star Movement, FSM) in Europe, Nuria Font, Paolo Grazziano and Myrto Tsakatika (2019) show that there are diverse types of inclusionary populism and that Syriza and Podemos “are

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clearly inclusionary along the material and political dimensions, although less explicitly inclusionary along the symbolic one” (Font, Grazziano & Tsakatika, 2019, p. 16). The FSM, maybe not surprisingly, assumes a more ambivalent position. The authors raise an interesting discussion about the adequacy of assessing populism in terms of inclusionary and exclusionary dimensions instead of the left- and right-wing division which would not reflect the complexities introduced by the new axis. Moreover, inclusionary and exclusionary categories are gradational and not binary, since they are opposite poles on a continuum and not different types of populism. I think that it is still pertinent to maintain the leftvs right-wing division but applying the gradual categories of inclusionary and exclusionary populism into this. In other words, before concluding that left-wing populism (or just the left) is inclusionary and right-wing populism is exclusionary, a more productive approach will be to assess how inclusionary left-wing populist parties are. For instance, the material dimension applied to exclusionary populism is explained by their defense of welfare chauvinism: the protection of the nationals (the insiders) and exclusion of the immigrants (the outsiders). The reality proves to be complicated when the defense of the working class is made in conflict with the rights of immigrants and refugees. Left and populist left-wing parties can be inclusionary to different degrees depending on the extent to which they give priority to preserving working-class rights, they avoid expressing a clear position, or they embrace positive attitudes toward reception and integration. ´ Angel Rivero (2018), who is not persuaded at all by the “fuzzy distinction” between left- and right-wing populism, is critical regarding the identification of Southern (i.e. left-wing populism) as inclusionary and Northern (i.e. right-wing populism) as exclusionary. He uses the examples of M´elenchon as strongly favorable toward restrictions on

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immigration and opposed to the arrival of refugees to France and of Corbyn’s silence on immigration and European integration. Although the geographical division North vs South Europe is useful to understand the uneven economic development in the EU, it cannot determine automatically a type of one-sided populism (left or right). Left- and right-wing populism coexist in Northern and Southern countries, and exclusionary attitudes, albeit associated with the far right, can also be found on the left. As just mentioned, the degree of inclusiveness can vary within left-wing parties. Nonetheless, I do not find it feasible that a left-wing populist party takes on a fully exclusionary position. There are contradictions, as those mentioned by Rivero, which are connected to the definition of who “the people” are and, specifically, how the categories of class and migration are integrated.

3.4 WORKERS AND MIGRANT (WORKERS) In an interview, Gerrit Voerman (2015) reflects on the inclusionary and exclusionary distinction separating the Socialist Party from right-wing populism in the Netherlands. He emphasizes that the key question is who belongs to “the people” and who does not. Whilst Geert Wilders’ view is based on ethnicity and national identity, the Socialist Party is less defined: “the people”, “the common man”, or the “man in the street”. This appreciation can be extended to the general distinction between left- and right-wing populism in Europe. “The people” in left-wing populism is, in general, inclusive or, at least, open to including immigrants and refugees since they are also indeed “people”. Podemos and Syriza have expressed positive attitudes to migrants and refugees. Grigoris Markou (2017) points out that Alexis Tsipras’ discourse, before and after the elections of September 2015,

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presents an inclusionary articulation of “the people” by appealing to all democratic citizens, the working class, the unemployed, leftists, and immigrants. This happens at the domestic level, but also at the European level. Tsipras challenged the anti-immigration logic of the EU. Nonetheless, the degree of inclusiveness can change, depending on how explicit the references to migrants or refugees are, or can even move to more exclusionary positions. I mentioned above the controversial position of M´elenchon or the ambiguity of Corbyn but there are more worrying cases like the group Get Up (Aufstehen), emerged from a faction of The Left in Germany (see below). In countries where the far right is gaining power and has successfully influenced the public debate and policies on migration and integration, the temptation of embracing the far-right discourse is enormous. The most paradigmatic example is Denmark. After denying their social-liberal turn, the Social Democrats undertook a comeback to their roots. Housing Minister Kaare Dybvad (2017) gave a populist touch to the new social democracy whereby social democracy should fight for real equality for “the popular Denmark” and rebel against the tyranny of the “creative class”, using the category of Richard Florida. Combined with this opposition between the creative (the elite) and the working class, the Social Democrats toughened their discourse against migration. To regain the vote of the working and lower classes, Mattias Tesfaye, Minister of Integration, operates under the following premise: Class struggle is migration politics, or, in other words, the well-being of the Danish workers can only be ensured through tougher migration policies (Agust´ın & Jørgensen, 2019). The result is a new social democracy, attending to the concerns of the (national) working-class and welfare state policies, while accepting exclusionary migration and integration policies.

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My point is that there is an increasing degree of exclusiveness that is affecting mainstream parties but also left-wing populism. The risk of interpreting left-wing populism as a response to right-wing populism, and by that overtaking their position on migration, is quite high. The left deals with the dilemmas of offering security and protection to the working class and of regaining their vote. In 2018 Sahra Wagenknecht, the parliamentary chair of The Left in Germany, launched the non-party movement Get Up. The idea is to create a space of convergence open to Social Democrats and the Greens. Despite their discreet impact, the initiative represents a populist attempt, inspired by the gilets jaunes, France Insoumise and Momentum, to counter German right-wing ¨ Deutschland, and aims to appeal populism, Alternative fur to the discontented voters (Beppler-Spahl, 2019), mainly the working class. The movement’s proposal combines welfare politics with the assertion of the national identity and the need to regulate migration. The main focus on redistribution policies within the logic of national welfare state makes the question of who must be the beneficiary the central question and creates a competition between workers and immigrants. Furthermore, Get Up takes for granted that there is a given class instead of being constituted through social struggles (Alabao, 2018). The same happens with the “populist interpellation” of the precariat and can be applied to this case. The division between working class and immigrants hides the conditions of immigrants as workers who share the same labor market and system of exploitation. The enemy of the working class is not the immigrants then. The problem cannot only be attributed to Get Up since it has also affected trade unions when the defense of national workers is understood in opposition to immigrants, accused of worsening labor conditions. The assertion of a national identity (and exclusive national interests) instead of a class

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identity (and common class interests) hinders strengthening social bonds and solidarity relations (Agust´ın & Jørgensen, 2016b). In populist terms, “the people” is reduced to ethnos, a cultural community, and the plebs loses its capacity to articulate vertically the struggles between the subaltern classes and the elite. I would still maintain that left-wing populism is inclusionary but cases are diverse and different degrees of inclusiveness can be found. The increasing nationalism and restrictive migration and integration policies coming from the far right are influencing the left which feels tempted to abandon inclusionary policies. Left-wing populism should not imply refusing the value of class (supposedly replaced by “the people”), but class should not be mystified as “the real people” within the national identity framework. “The people” as inclusionary should give place to class and migration, exploring the intersections, and not articulating them as antagonistic or incompatible categories.

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4 NATIONALISM AND PATRIOTISM

The strong tie between nationalism and populism is quite evident, and in the case of radical right-wing populism often closely related. A homogeneous and exclusionary ethnic community is presented as “the people” in right-wing populism. On the other hand, the connections between leftwing populism and nationalism are less obvious if the main defining feature is the division between “the people” and “the elite”. However, there are some elements that make it necessary at least to consider the relation between left-wing populism and nationalism. “The people” are, above all, a national community, and the defense of the popular sovereignty takes place within the nation-state borders. The importance of emotions and affect to constitute collective identities contributes to overlapping appeals to “the people” and the national community, since the nation entails a considerable amount of symbols which reinforce the sense of belonging. I do not consider nationalism to be characteristic of left-wing populism, but, that said, populism as a nationalpopular project, mainly developed from a nation-state, cannot avoid the national issue and attempt to generate a

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national framework, grounded in the demand for popular sovereignty. The conceptualization of populism and nationalism as types of discourse offers a sharp distinction (Katsambekis & Stavrakakis, 2017): They appeal to different subjects (the people and the nation) which oppose (or align with) different others (the establishment, other nations or ethnicities). The relation between subjects likewise differs: top vs bottom in the case of populism, and in vs out in the case of nationalism. Thus, the relation between subjects refers to the inclusionary vs exclusionary division. We can differentiate between populism and nationalism, as well as between left- and right-wing populism where the position of right-wing populism coincides with the nationalist position. For this reason, radical rightwing populism is depicted as “ethno-traditional nationalism” (Bonikowski, Halikiopoulou, Kaufmann, & Rooduijn, 2019), aimed to protect the traditional ethnic character of the nation. Minorities are tolerated since they are minorities and not a “majority minority” which “threatens” the traditions and values of the nation. The ethnic-civic distinction is applicable to left- and right-wing populism. Since left-wing populism is inclusive, it is however associated with the civil version of nationalism. Right-wing populism, on the contrary, is defined as ethnic populism due to the exclusionary conception of who “the people” are, corresponding with the national community. In the following I want to examine three challenges for left-wing populism. The first one is the crucial aspect of sovereignty, and the almost exchangeable uses of popular and national sovereignty. The second is the generation of a new type of patriotism to differentiate itself from nationalism. The last one is separatism or, in other words, the will of the people to self-determination and claim for an independent state.

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4.1 NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY The appeal to sovereignty signals confusion about the differences between right- and left-wing populism, on the one hand, and between national and popular sovereignty, on the other. Later I will address in more detail the intersections between popular and national sovereignty in the international context, but for now I refer to the convergence of populism and nationalism around sovereignty, albeit the meaning given to sovereignty and the political projects must be clearly differentiated. As mentioned above, the claim for popular sovereignty emerges as the need to emphasize popular democracy (government by the people), since constitutional democracy (government for the people, checks and balances) is the predominant, and almost exclusive, understanding of democracy. Popular sovereignty should contribute to reestablishing the link between constitutional and popular democracy. This notion of sovereignty can hardly be confused with the nationalist one. The problem is that both left-wing populism and nationalism (as well as right-wing populism) share the project of reclaiming sovereignty. Aristotle Kallis makes an interesting point when identifying a political alliance between populism and sovereignism on the basis of “respatializing power”. According to Kallis, power has been moved from the people and becomes more distant from the community and delegated to external forces. Nation-state would be the only way out to avoid the consequences of neoliberal globalization, and right- and left-wing populism would converge around nation-statism (Kallis, 2018). The consequences of equating populism and nationalism are, however, troubling. Firstly, the different subjects in which political power should reside (“the people” or “the nation”, as well as which people) are sidelined. Secondly, their references to sovereignty are different as well. Rogers Brubaker stresses

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that historically populism and nationalism have developed different conceptualizations of sovereignty. Populism appeals to a restorative sovereignty, because “the people as sovereign demos seek to restore to ‘the people’ the rightful place granted them by democratic theory”. Nationalism uses a transformative appeal to the sovereignty of “the nation” to redraw “the macro-political map and altering the boundaries of political units” (Brubaker, 2017, 2019, pp. 7–8). The re-shaping of sovereignty nowadays makes this distinction between restorative and transformative blur, says Brubaker. Nationalism aims to restore “ownership” of the polity to the nation while populism wants to restore power to “the people”, but the distinction between populism and nationalism still matters. Nationalism implies a constitutive reference within the global frame of reference, given that humanity is divided into distinct nations. Left-wing populism’s constitutive reference is, on the other hand, inequality and asymmetrical distribution of power (Brubaker, 2017, 2019). Therefore it is so relevant who the sovereign people are in the case of populism. The radical right-wing populism limits “the people” to natives, placing the focus on immigration and national sovereignty. For nationalists, although references to the people, as members of the national community, can be deployed, the nation is the main source of sovereignty. Moreover, “the nation” and “the people” are two types of “imagined communities”: National community is an image of community over time, and “the people” presents an image of community over space (Yack, 2001). While national community depicts a community preceding and surviving the current community, “the people” address the state’s coercive authority in a specific moment. In this regard, populism and nationalism’s appeals to sovereignty entail re-spatializing power, but it is not only a spatialized category. Nationalism and right-wing populism introduce a dimension over time because the community they

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“imagine” is national. The legitimacy argued to claim sovereignty could not be more distinct from the one used by left-wing populism. Kallis discusses the symbolic performance of “sovereignty at the border”. Right- and left-wing populism would share the borders of existing nation-states as a meeting point. They have different reasons: borders as defense against neoliberal economics (left-wing populism) and borders as filter to protect the continuity of the nationally bounded community (right-wing populism). Kallis (2018) claims that the reinvention of the border of the nation-states becomes the marker of redeemed sovereignty. Even when there is a return to the nation-state, I would say that left-wing populist appeals for sovereignty are more complicated. There is no single position within sovereignism, from its fierce defense to higher openness, and debate about transnationalism is emerging, albeit timidly, as an alternative. There is no doubt that left-wing populism targets mainly domestic politics and lacks a developed international framework. In any event, I would prefer to place the issues of sovereignty and the border within the process of transformation of sovereignty. Saskia Sassen (1996) highlights the intertwined dynamics whereby economic and institutional spaces de-nationalize and immigration politics re-nationalize. Borders (and their control) for capital, information, services thus differ from the borders for migrants and refugees. The critique of left-wing populism would refer to the belief in regaining political sovereignty when economy has been denationalized by neoliberal globalization. This critique is on point and is one of the main challenges to address in a satisfactory manner. However, the type of borders is essential to differentiate left- and right-wing populism. The borders missed by left-wing populism are those which would control financial and economic capital. The borders for right-wing populism consist basically of controlling migration. Attending

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to the relation between borders and sovereignty, the distinction between left- and right-wing populism is much clearer. It cannot be said that both share the recovery of sovereignty as a sort of common project. In this case, right-wing populism shares with right governments, and some from the center-left, the illusion of controlling borders and fixing the sovereign territory. The “crisis of refugees” in Europe in 2015 was an unequivocal sign of the return of the territorial borders as a way of preserving national sovereignty. The reactions from left-wing populism in Greece and Spain diverged from this conception of re-nationalizing immigration politics. This is connected with an inclusive understanding of “the people” but also with sovereignty (or the loss hereof) perceived in economic rather than migratory terms. Another important discrepancy between left-wing populism and nationalism is that sovereignty is not only limited to the nation-state. Particularly, Podemos has explored new definitions of sovereignty beyond the unity of the nation, as expression of the national sovereignty. Although the goal is to regain sovereignty, the notion of sovereignty is adapted to the complexity of the regional model. The idea of plurinationality in Spain cannot be adopted by the Spanish nationalism and adds a new level to the transformation of sovereignty within nation-states. Xavier Dom`enech, former member of Catalonia in Common (the Catalan branch of Podemos), talks about multi-level sovereignties and proposes that full sovereignty can only be achieved when these sovereignties are freely shared. The debate on shared sovereignties should entail the acceptance of plurinationality and the territorial model. Although Dom`enech (2017) refers to the nation-state, his argumentation is based on the acknowledgement of several demoi at different levels. The idea of “shared sovereignties” is applied to the different levels of sovereignty within the state instead of scaling-up beyond the state which could also be an option.

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This debate, which cannot be expanded to all left-wing populisms, shows more nuanced notions of sovereignty than the one attached to the nation-state. As it occurs with the comparison between left- and rightwing populism based on the allusions to “the people” and “the elite”, the appeal to sovereignty is not a sufficient element to equate the goal of populism and nationalism. This does not mean that left-wing populism has been capable of developing an efficient project to deal with the transformation of sovereignty, but its attempt is far away from corresponding with the claims and objectives of nationalism and radical rightwing populism.

4.2 PATRIOTISM In line with the claim for popular sovereignty, left-wing populism has drawn the attention to the need for articulation of a national political project. The appeal to patriotism has been received from the left not without controversies due to the shift from the left agenda to topics tightly attached to the right. Patriotism is not always sharply distinguishable from nationalism and can, in fact, lead to blurring the left vs right division and replace it with the globalist vs nationalist one. One good example was the elections in France in 2017. The competition between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron was framed as the struggle between globalism (or cosmopolitanism) vs patriotism. It was Le Pen who in the beginning of the campaign stated that the division is no longer between left and right but between patriots and globalists, concretely the financial globalization and the Islamist globalization helping each other (Alerta Digital, 2017). M´elenchon, after a campaign to reinvent patriotism, was trapped in the dilemma of expressing his intention to vote for Macron,

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implying support for neoliberalism, or Le Pen, which would be read as a new patriotic bloc. Within this lack of margins to a left vs right conflict, he did not favor any of the candidates. However, the “homeland” is too relevant to be left in the hands of the radical right. At least, that was the conclusion reached by Macron who, after winning the first round, showed his will to join all the patriots against the “threat of ´ nationalism” (La Razon, 2017). Macron introduces the distinction between patriotism and nationalism to reclaim the civic tradition in opposition to the ethnic one and makes clear that (civic) patriotism also belongs to the politics of the centeroriented parties. Patriotism is not an easy matter for liberalism due to the emotional implications between individuals and their homeland. Populism should be more capable of addressing patriotism because it dismantles the reason vs emotion divide and embraces emotions as essential to strengthening political engagement and contributing to identity formation (Cossarini & Vallesp´ın, 2019). However, when comparing nationalism and patriotism, republicanism objectifies loyalty as emotional adhesion to the state or homeland and to its political institution. The nationalist loyalty is related to the people, meaning the ethnonational group (Rosales, 1997). While liberalism struggles to objectivise loyalty to the institutions and presents a sort of rationalised emotion to eschew the comparison with nationalism, populism requires building up the institutional loyalty in order to place it in a gray area together with nationalism. Patchen Markell (2000) refers to the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism as a “strategy of redirection”. Civic nationalism offers to satisfy identification through loyalty to liberal democratic principles and not to the belonging to a pre-political community, as ethnic nationalism does. Thus, liberals do not need to address the affective dimension of politics, and citizens’ engagement is grounded in

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the constitutional and institutional framework. The strategy of redirection revolves around rendering “affect safe for liberal democracies by redirecting our attachment and sentiment from one subset of objects (the ‘ethnic’) to another set of objects (the ‘civic’)” (Markell, 2000, p. 39). I claim that left-wing populism likewise deploys a strategy of redirection. Patriotism represents an attempt to combine the affectual dimension of politics and loyalty to “the people” with loyalty to democratic institutions. I would like to emphasize that appealing to “democratic” institutions is not casual. It aims to change the existing institutions to serve more adequately to the people’s interests. Liberalism and republicanism try to solve the problem of affect by directing affect to universal normative principles. Left-wing populism, on the other hand, does not consider political affect a problem but it redirects affect to improve democratic institutions through the appeal to popular sovereignty, instead of reinforcing the sentiment of belonging to a pre-existing community. As a framework for the left, patriotism can work unevenly depending on the political traditions. It was applied in Latin America, with a progressive conception of homeland, in France, very attached to the republican tradition, as well as in Greece, and in Spain. Nonetheless, the language of patriotism is not easily adopted by the left, and the political contexts can facilitate or hinder its use. Cases like Spain, with certain hostility toward talk about the nation or the homeland from the left perspective, show that sometimes the context is assessed and assumed adequately by the political actors. The line between patriotism and nationalism can be quite thin. The adoption of a national-popular strategy and of patriotism does not help to clarify such a confusion. The political practices do not do so either. Cas Mudde (2017) remarks that Syriza continued governing with the independent Greeks (ANEL) in the term after the Memorandum instead of

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opting for other parties. He explains that choice by the fact that Syriza, as patriotic left, is more patriotic than left. However, it is not common that the patriotic dimension prevails over the left one and would be reason enough to erase the ideological separation between left and right. There are no other cases like this one (the Catalan situation is much more complex) and, as Jacopo Custodi (2017) points out, Tsipras’ patriotism did not evolve to an ethnical nationalist position and nor has it been anti-immigrant or Eurosceptic. France Insoumise illustrates the case of a reflective and nuanced development of patriotism as part of the political strategy of left-wing populism. The self-proclaimed intention of being a political instrument to construct the Sixth Republic to reach power requires a wide majority. France Insoumise does not appeal to the majority from ideological left standpoints but from a populist logic where the patriot sentiment shapes solidarity relations and affect within the political community. Raquel Garrido, national spokesperson for France Insoumise, claims that patriotism should not be confused with nationalism and anchors the homeland in the Republic: We are patriotic, not nationalist. Patriotism is love for one’s own, while nationalism involves hatred for others. In fact, according to the literary and political definitions, that is the difference. The far right is nationalist. We are patriotic. And patriotism is an empathy, an affect towards one’s compatriots. We really think that, insofar as our nation has been a civic nation since the French Revolution, it is not defined by any religion or skin color or even language, it is universal. Our homeland [patrie] is republican (Garrido, 2017). France Insoumise’s patriotism connects with the republican French tradition. In consequence, Garrido also pinpoints

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universalism, inherited from the Enlightenment, and popular sovereignty. She also adds that historically national sovereignty in France has been intertwined with popular sovereignty, reflecting the people’s political power. The far right, on the contrary, poses a narrower scope for sovereignty, limited only to national sovereignty. The recovery of national symbols, as the flag or the national anthem, in detriment of left-wing symbols, during the 2017 electoral campaign supported this idea of constituting a popularnational-republican project and provoked suspicion among the left. The focus on sovereignism, especially national sovereignty, increases in the international context with the antagonism against Germany and the EU. Podemos develops a different type of patriotism due to the lack of a republican tradition and the existence of peripheral nationalisms. Podemos’ attempt to articulate a national-popular project is deliberately elaborated as an alternative to nationalism: In relation to the Spanish (centralized) nationalism, Podemos suggests a plurinational state recognizing the existing diversity; and regarding peripheral nationalism, it guarantees a high degree of autonomy, including the right to decide in the case of Catalonia. The balance between these two types of nationalism is quite intricate, and Podemos lacks a strong national infrastructure, since it cooperates with other regional parties, and its position on sovereignty and independence has often been characterised as ambivalent. Homeland in Podemos is attached in its first years to populism as expressed by the idea of “homeland is the people”. In this sense, the defense of the homeland implies the defense of “the ordinary people”. Homeland reflects the populist divide. Homeland is identified with “the people”, but those who are against the interests of “the people” are betraying the homeland. The corrupt

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politicians, the ones responsible for privatising the public service, or those who destroy public education or force the young generations to leave Spain, are betraying their homeland. Patriotism is rooted in populist antagonism but relies on guaranteeing social protection, security and welfare to the people. Pablo Iglesias portrays the patriots in the following lines: They [the patriots] wake up early to go to work or to look for a job. The real patriots care about their people […] To us the fatherland is the people. To us defending the fatherland is to defend that there are public hospitals, public schools, having the best services. The fatherland should be more like its people and less like its elites (Iglesias, 2016). The resulting homeland, or the nation, is not based on the ethnical community; instead institutions and the constitution, which was strongly questioned (particularly in the first years of Podemos), can become the ground for patriotism. The strategy of redirection of Podemos is about directing loyalty to welfare institutions, incarnating the interests of the common will. Comparing with France Insoumise, the universal dimension is missed and the conflictual dimension prevails in Podemos’ articulation of the homeland. A similar articulation is used by Tsipras when in the debate on the constitutional reform, he claimed: “The Greek people surged to power through their stand and their activism against austerity policies and in demand of greater democracy, and also with their vote in the electoral contests of 2015.” Tsipras continued and attributed the representation of “the people” to his own party. The leader of New Democracy, then in the opposition, is portrayed as contrary to the interests of “the people”: “The Greek people did not come to the fore only to withdraw again

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after four years, Mr Mitsotakis” (Konstandaras, 2019). Patriotism generates new loyalties from the left and appeals to civic values (universal or welfare-related) but it also works as political divider between those who represent “the people” and those who do not. I want to conclude with a final note on patriotism. The expanding frameworks to account for the diverse economic, political and social dynamics demand new conceptualisations. From left-wing populism, the articulation of patriotism is among the proposed solutions. Clara Ramas (2018) sharpens this approach by proposing a “democratic patriotism” under the following premises: Patriotism is not the same as right-wing ethno-centrism, and democracy is not the same as cosmopolitan left. Ramas, in line with the point of view of Garrido presented above, looks at patriotism as sovereign since the national and the popular coincide. The goal is to create a community of belonging against the wild powers of the free market to offer security, solidarity and protection. The nation-states become the space to recompose the community’s social bonds from a feminist, ecologist and non-xenophobic perspective. Thus, left-wing populism can fill patriotism, as formulated by Ramas, with progressive content. Contrary to the initial impression, patriotism does not deepen an emotional or anti-institutional dimension but demands the development of affect and identity formation within an institutional framework. Despite the reaction against neoliberal globalization and the offer of security in times of uncertainty, patriotism is at its best a project to develop politics within the nation-state but insufficient to deal with the global economy. The alliances of (patriotic) states defended by sovereignism cannot address some of these global issues, and transnationalism is underdeveloped or in the hands of elite institutions.

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4.3 INDEPENDENCE Although it cannot be considered left-wing populism, I would like to add some reflections about independence. The referendums are a moment of direct participation by the people who can influence the political route. The Scottish referendum for independence and Brexit are recent examples which have been associated with populism, probably as an expression of dislike towards some of the preferences or the final result in the Brexit vote. The referendum of the 1st of October 2017 in Catalonia is different because the call for the referendum was banned by the Spanish state, and despite the repression there was a strong political and social mobilisation and the consultation was affected under such unusual circumstances. The Catalan referendum has been analyzed as part of a larger international trend termed “referendums from below”: “[R]eferendums that are no longer devices used by institutional actors to retrospectively legitimize technocratic decisions but are rather, participatory processes generated by grassroots mobilisations which pre-date the actual vote by years of civil society agitation” (Connor, della Porta, Subirats Ribas, & Portos, 2017). The combination of participation and mobilization with the expression of popular will vs technocratic decisions explains the reason why populism turns to referendums as political means. It also explains why referendums are susceptible of provoking populist moments. Maybe it would be more precise to talk about “populist events” due to their short duration as well as their capacity to transgress mainstream narratives and offer a new frame to interpret those events. This is the case of the October 1 referendum where independence became a matter of democracy rather than of nationalism. The goal of pro-independence parties is to create a new nation-state and their main claim is, consequently, national

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sovereignty, i.e. the recognition of the Catalan nation as state. The period of conservative nationalism ended in 2016 with the coalition between the center-left and center-right. The referendum strengthened the already ongoing alliance between pro-independence parties and civil society and originated a populist event in which the appeal to popular sovereignty was dominant. The reflection of the existing institutions and legal framework, fixed by the Spanish state, was made in the name of the will of the people. The national and the popular were thus interconnected. The conflict is between the Spanish state (the oppressor) and the Catalan people (the oppressed). Despite the emphasis on the Catalan people and popular sovereignty, it is a peculiar populism in which the divide between “the elites” and “the people” is not quite clear, since it is rather between Catalonia and the Spanish state. There were no political actors either who took a populist position from the right or the left. The media accusations against the Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, for being an authoritarian populist referred to his constant disobedience of the Spanish law, culminating with the unilateral declaration of independence. The political situation certainly blurred the left- vs rightwing axis. This could contribute to shaping a left-wing populism in Catalonia by the articulation of “the people” against the Catalan “elites” (Juber´ıas & P´erez, 2017). However, the polarisation caused by the populist event between pro-independence and pro-union groups hindered such a possibility. In fact, Podemos in Catalonia experienced severe difficulties in positioning itself politically in relation to independence. The claim for shared sovereignty or the right to decide was unsatisfactory for the independent side and too close to independence for the unionist bloc. The referendum as populist event caused transversal and cross-ideological alliances and framed the Catalan conflict as the struggle for

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democracy, based on popular sovereignty. The overlapping national frames (Catalan people vs Spanish state) became an obstacle to a populist, or national-popular, articulation. The wish for independence, relying on national sovereignty, was contested by the state through police repression the day of the referendum and by tough legal measures later, on the one hand, and through the reinforcement of Spanish nationalism, on the other.

5 INSTITUTIONS AND REPUBLICANISM

When Luis Alegre aspired to be elected as General Secretary for Madrid, then-secretary for Political and Social Analysis of Podemos Carolina Bescansa (in R´ıos, 2015) responded to the critical voices against Alegre, the official candidate. When she referred to the divisions generated by the different candidatures (the official and the anti-capitalist), she claimed that there were two versions Podemoses, one to win and another one to protest. The former aimed to win in order to change things whilst the latter was oriented toward the field of social protests. This early tension in Podemos captures the disagreements regarding the goal of a movement-party, rooted in social protests and becoming a parliamentary force with ambition to govern. There is a dual shift here: from social protest to political party; and from protest party to governmental or coalition party. Protest becomes institutional in the first case, concretely in organizational form, and institutionalized in the second, embedded within the structures of power and the parliament. When becoming a party is avoided, the action is performed from the logics of the social movements;

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when avoiding to take on government responsibilities, the party can remain a protest party. Left-wing populism pursues becoming a party but remaining still connected to the movements and to govern but without becoming a traditional party. The contradictions are obvious and require deep reflection. In the following, I focus on the institutionalization of left-wing parties by looking at the debate (or lack hereof) between populism and republicanism. The distinction between social movement and political party is used by some authors to distinguish between “popular” and “populist”. Nadia Urbinati (2013) notes that some movements invoke the same kind of discourse as populism. The separation between the 99% and the 1% and the contestation of representative institutions are constituting elements of populism. Acknowledging the fluidity between social movements and political parties (the movement-parties are the best example of this), Urbinati explains that they share the populist rhetoric but only political parties can be characterized as populist. Movements articulate a polarizing and anti-representative discourse but they want to preserve their autonomy from the political and electoral system. Occupy Wall Street or the Spanish indignados are, according to her, “popular” movements of contestation and protest. The movement turns populist when it “wants instead to occupy the representative institutions and win the majority in order to model the entire society to its ideology” (2013, p. 139). The shift from movement to government coincides with the one from popular to populist. Urbinati adds that organizing a narrative (polarizing the masses) and a charismatic leadership are the main populist means to conquer the government. Without following a populist strategy, the popular movements remain “a sacrosanct movement of protest and contestation against a trend in society that betrays some basic democratic principles, and in particular equality” (2013, p. 139). The

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distinction is relevant for Urbinati to show that movements are compatible with representative democracy, since it is wellaccepted that civil society critiques the existing institutions. Populism, on the other hand, cannot be fulfilled within representative institutions, because it pursues to make the opinion of the majority identical to the authority of the sovereign state. In sum, she points to an authoritarian drift of populism in contrast to pluralism corresponding to social movements. Returning to Bescansa’s words, the debate is substantially different. Podemos could become an example of a populist project to take power, also according to Urbinati’s criteria (“the people” vs “the establishment” and vertical leadership). The transformation from movement to party shows already contradictions around organization and internal plurality, as well as around the objective of Podemos to gain institutional power. I consider it erroneous to think that the party would impose its ideology by replacing the principles of representative democracy. The immediate reason to refuse that thought is the unlikelihood of Podemos obtaining absolute majority in the parliament to govern without other parties. This is a practical reason but there is also another important objection: Left-wing populist parties are not only populist since a diversity of projects converge within them. I have already emphasized that left-wing populism entails, above all, a left project. Another political tradition, important from the institutional perspective, is republicanism. Populist and republican values and principles can coexist, albeit with tensions. Bescansa, quite pragmatically, reveals that there are differences between “the popular” (the party acting as a movement) and “the populist”, as well as between “the populist” (appealing to the people) and “the republican” (assuming the institutional and constitutional framework).

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I am not arguing that populism and republicanism have a harmonic relation; the same happens with the popular and the populist. The European context does not offer conditions for the type of populism described by Urbinati, given that the insurrectional processes (the popular or the populist) must be understood within the ones of institutionalization (the republican). When Podemos started to express their will to become part of a coalition government, or before supporting the social democratic government, the republican turn of Podemos became quite evident. M´elenchon, as expected from the French tradition, combines the appellations to “the people” with those to the Republic. His call for the Sixth Republic illustrates the importance of redefining the Republic that incarnates the will of the people. However, the famous episode in which M´elenchon reacted against the investigations for campaign finance fraud and faced an officer and shouted, “I am the Republic!” projects a worrying impersonation of politics and appropriation of institutions. There are, I insist, tensions rather than contradictions, since left-wing populism can hardly evolve to an authoritarian scenario to impose their ideology. Therefore, there is a need for reflecting on the connections between populism and republicanism both in the consideration of the political subject (“the people” and “the citizens”), the translation of the social majority (“the many”) into electoral majorities, the fight against domination and the explorative models of improving representation and participation.

5.1 WE THE REPUBLIC Populism and republicanism are usually seen as incompatible. The main reason is that populism tends to be conceived as an anti-institutional movement whose objective is to dismantle

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liberal democracy and all means of institutional representation. From populist theory and practice, there is a kinder invitation to dialogue with republicanism due to the limitations perceived in populism, but from the republican side it is difficult to find a similar acknowledgment of a valuable contribution coming from populism. Philip Pettit (1997), one of the most important neo-republican authors, states that republicanism offers an alternative to liberalism and populism. He is, indeed, more receptive toward liberalism, since some of its values are integrated within his principle of freedom as non-domination, but totally contrary to populism and its way of understanding the relation between citizens and institutions and democratic means. Populism “represents the people in their collective presence as master and the state as servant”, whilst republicanism considers “the people as trustor, both individually and collectively, and sees the state as trustee” (Pettit, 1997, p. 8). “The people”, from the populist perspective, would only require something from state representatives when they think that it is convenient. On the other hand, for republicanism, the people trust the state because it is capable of guaranteeing non-arbitrary rule. Besides, Pettit strongly refuses the democratic means deployed by populism, which are not just those of representative democracy, particularly assemblies and plebiscites. It is important to notice that participation for Pettit and other republicans is subordinated to fostering liberty rather than being a democratic value in itself. Pettit is in favor of participation, meaning deliberation, of civil society and proposes that democracy is contestable. Contestation is, obviously, not the same as conflictual because the conditions and institutional basis for contestation must be fixed. The process of contestation, in opposition to populism, is “not one that necessarily involves majority decision-making. There is no suggestion that the people in some collective incarnation,

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or via some collective representation, are voluntaristically supreme” (1997, p. 201). Republicanism, at least in its position closer to social democracy, is not completely opposed to neoliberalism. Pettit (2008) recognizes that the republican social project is better drafted than the economic one. Contrary to the right, social democracy promotes the “social state”. Pettit, who inspired the politics of the Spanish president Jos´e Luis Rodr´ıguez Zapatero, was surprised by the impact of the economic crisis in Spain and the indignados and 15M mobilizations. He admitted the lack of attention that he had paid to the economic dimension as well as his optimism about the international financial system (and its reliability to enable the Spanish government to provide economic welfare) and about the membership of the Eurozone. Pettit (2011) perceived two risks to the republican project: Neoliberalism and populism, whose simplistic approaches consist of the liberation of the power of the market (neoliberalism) and the reassertion of the collective will of the people (populism). Besides suggesting more market regulation to mitigate neoliberalism, it is quite relevant that Pettit is concerned about how to channel the 15M movement by improving the institutional design. He is skeptical about the populist rhetoric by the indignados (claiming to give voice to the popular demands and mistrusting the political representatives). Contestation must happen within institutional means, and the relevance of social movements to promote social change is thus missed in Pettit’s approach. The demands for more democracy and participation point to an institutional crisis and lack of legitimacy of existing representative institutions. It would be more productive (Agust´ın, 2018) to think of populism in how to connect those demands with the institutional framework instead of looking at populism as a threat emanating from the economic crisis. The challenge is to reconcile the dimension of

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populism (conflictual division between “the elite” and “the people”), popular participation and republicanism (rule of law, distribution of power, constitutionalism). Such an attempt requires, on the one hand, admitting to the crisis of representative institutions and assessing the potential of leftwing populism to contribute to solving that crisis; and, on the other, recognizing the limitations of populism to develop itself as an institutional and constitutional project without entering into dialogue with the existing institutions and constitutions. Following Lawrence Lessig (2011), what is at stake is how to maintain the potential of “We”, as a people, when “We”, as a republic, have lost this potential. “We”, as a people, can play an important role here to recover “We” as a republic.

5.2 CITIZENS AND THE PEOPLE Luis Alegre (2018), former General Secretary for Madrid, recalls that Podemos in its origins was defined as “a platform for popular and citizens’ empowerment” as proof of the coexistence of the populist and republican “souls”. Podemos was, indeed, presented as an instrument to recover “our sovereignty” and as a force for the citizens to recover efficiently the democratic control over “our institutions” and “our destinies” (Podemos, 2014, p. 7). This coexistence is important not as much as a nominal issue (if the articulation of the signifier “the people” or “citizen” defines a discourse as populist or republican), but rather to explore how they are intertwined. Populist ideas like popular sovereignty and the questioning of the capacity of representation of existing institutions are consequent with improving control of institutions and means to express the will of the people. M´elenchon, who agrees that sovereignty is the link and the motor of “the people” to institutionalize their own laws,

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highlights the need of a constitution as a result of a constituent assembly (in Flenady, 2014). The constituent process remains still an ideal goal. Podemos initially claimed for a constituent process but later adopted a more pragmatic approach and asked for constitutional reforms. The intention is, in any case, to find institutional means to channel popular means. Pettit’s notion of populism as the people as master and the state as servant must be nuanced with his notion of republicanism whereby the people are the trustor and the state is the trustee. From a left-wing perspective, institutions must be put at the service of the people. Therefore, it could be concluded that the people are the master and the state is the servant but I would not simplify it in that way. Being at the service of the people implies, consequently with the populist logic, an antagonism with those who use the institutions in their own interest. It is, in reality, a complaint about the appropriation of the uses of institutions by those whose interests do not correspond with the common will. “The people” are not mere trustor due to the reasons to mistrust the representative institutions. I find the notion of “critical trust” by Donatella della Porta (2012) quite useful in this regard. Although della Porta refers to social movements, she explains that critical trust is created in conflict, singling out the shortcomings of representative democracy. By organizing distrust, critical trust can be useful to give the citizens the opportunity to participate in decisional processes so social movements can bring their ideas into political discussion. Critical trust entails a potential to reconstruct political trust instead of being a frontal attack against representative institutions and liberal democracy in general. Left-wing populism contributes thus to restoring trust in institutions, expanding representativeness and serving the interests of the people, and to exploring other democratic forms such as deliberation and participation. The emphasis on “the people” as sovereign (as master, Pettit would say)

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becomes the basis to recompose and redefine the relation between “the people” and the state as trustor and trustee. It is difficult to imagine how institutions by themselves could restore the lost trust. The crisis of parliamentarism illustrates how one of the main representative institutions is at a crossroads. Before Syriza won the elections, parliamentarism already showed signs of exhaustion. Besides diminishing turnout in the elections and the low level of public trust toward parliaments or MPs, parliamentary autonomy was questioned. Although its autonomy is bound to the constitutional division of powers, the parliamentary public image and connection to citizens were seriously damaged (Sigalas & Blavoukos, 2014). The elitist image projected by MPs, defending the interest of economic powers or directly their own interests, compromised citizens’ trust in the parliament. The situation was worse due to the loss of autonomy of the Greek parliament, whose action depended on satisfying the international economic demands. Representative democracy is criticized in this case because of abandoning the interests of the citizens and benefiting, instead, the financial powers and international institutions. Far from rejecting the institutions or the constitution, “[p]acts for the Euro and stability, imposed in exchange for loans, are considered as anti-constitutional forms of blackmail, depriving citizens of their sovereignty” (della Porta, 2012, p. 317). As Alegre (2018) notes, the detachment from parliamentarism can lead to antiparliamentarism and to rejecting all types of politics as public deliberation, but it can also be used to claim the core values of parliamentarism against those who act as usurpers. Critical trust points in the second direction. The combination of populism and republicanism within left-wing populism does the same. The revitalization of the parliament, the encouragement of political participation and engagement of

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the constitutional reforms should boost the republican framework. The formation of a constituent assembly to elaborate a new constitution is more ambivalent and depends on how such a constituent process would be developed. Another thing is, as happened in Greece, that the renewed trust in the parliament and more concretely in the Syriza government collided with the lack of autonomy of the Greek parliament and the acceptance to sign the Third Memorandum. In any case, “the people” must not replace the laws. The point made by left-wing populism is to increase democratic control and democratize institutions. As mentioned, institutions cannot always be changed from within, and critical trust, provided primarily from social movements, creates a wider social framework to discuss political alternatives. Social movements cannot reform the political system by themselves, and search for political interlocutors contributes to restoring citizens’ trust. Podemos has included the division of powers and the independence of the judicial power in its relation to the executive power. This is quite important in order to prevent the centralization or personalization of power arisen from the populist dependence on the leader as unifier for social demands. The lack of division of power could be more dramatic if populism in power prolongs the identification of the leader as the only one capable of fulfilling social demands. Sara Carreño (2017), former MP for Podemos, points out that it is law (not the people) which controls power: “Rule of law needs not only laws elaborated by the Parliament, which is democratically elected, but also that those norms are applied to all the citizens and, specifically, to the political power.” According to Carreño, cutbacks in social policies put the constitutional system at risk since social rights and well-being are being threatened. The defense of the Constitution, in this sense, requires the democratization of institutions. In the

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electoral campaign of 2019, Pablo Iglesias used the Spanish Constitution to prove that social demands could be fulfilled only by the application of the existing legislation.

5.3 REPUBLICANISM WITH OR WITHOUT POPULISM Chantal Mouffe (2019) reflects on how Podemos originally framed their project as “assault of the heaven” and how that was caused by a misunderstanding of the populist strategy. The antagonism between “the caste” and “the people”, deployed to win the elections, was based, says Mouffe, on the assumption that the populist strategy was a “war of maneuver”. When they realized that winning the elections promptly was not possible, some leaders of Podemos considered that the populist strategy had failed and they explored other options. They did not realize, concludes Mouffe, that the populist strategy is a war of position. When Podemos accepted in 2015 that they would become a parliamentary force and the government was a remote possibility, their leaders brought two options into the debate: A stronger left-ideological turn (position taken mainly by Iglesias after the alliance with United Left) and republicanism, adopted from different factions of the party and at different moments. On the one hand, the recognition of the failure of “the assault” politics as war of maneuver led Podemos to a political situation in which doing politics happens within and in tension with the existing institutional and constitutional framework. In agreement with Mouffe, this type of politics must be seen as war of positions and the coexistence of populism and republicanism. Podemos reacted quickly, albeit more or less accurately, to the changing political panorama. When the party embraced republicanism, it was a consequence of the political conjuncture (as the party hesitated between supporting the social democratic party and

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becoming an opposition party) and of the internal struggles ´ the main defender of the within the party. Iñigo Errejon, populist strategy, was the first one to approach republicanism. Iglesias followed the same move with slight differences and ´ out of the party, the kind of republicanism later, with Errejon was conditioned by the wish of Podemos to be part of a coalition government in 2019. Iglesias (2015) launched the idea of “trench warfare” to emphasize the importance of ideological victories made during the phase of the war of maneuver. To him, there are three elements to notice: despite the diminishing role of the populist strategy, populism (preserving the “popular unity” against the elite) is still relevant; the institutional work entails a new rhythm and strategy in which the protests of the streets lose significance in terms of gaining power; and the “trench” obtains a certain sense of resistance against the neoliberal offensive. The main problem is that Podemos was gradually abandoning populism as well as, to some extent, the connection with street protests as political driver. Podemos has become an institutional alternative to social democracy and republicanism within populism. Due to the lack of “popular unity” against the elite, such an alternative sounds ambivalent. In 2017, once the “constituent process” was considered unrealistic, Iglesias grounded the republican values in two pillars: republic (in opposition to the “right-wing monarchic bloc”) and plurinationality. The former reintroduces the traditional axis between the left, associated with the Second Republic, and the right. Podemos was reluctant about such a debate due to its ideological character and the risk of losing transversal appeal. Podemos’ leadership clarified that Podemos’ republicanism is not about evoking the Second Republic: We defend another idea of Spain, with republican values. The republic is not the foundation of the

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project. Republicanism is. That is, defending the public sector, the dignity of a social state. Fraternity, decentralization and a plurinational state as opposed to the “uninational idea” of Spain (Riveiro, 2017). If the first republican turn by Podemos responded to the parliamentary strategy, the second one adapts to the “Catalan crisis” to offer an institutional solution, beyond the one suggested by the unionist parties, where the position of the monarch is associated with the interests of the right wing. There is no trace here of populist strategy. The new division is between monarchist and the republican bloc. The interesting distinction between republic and republicanism goes unnoticed because the antagonism between monarchic and republican blocs prevails in ideological terms (right vs left). When Iglesias deepened his defense of “republican values”, he had in mind the formation of a coalition government between PSOE and Podemos. He kept distinguishing between two conflicts: The social and the territorial which should be addressed from a republican perspective. Republicanism is related to politics (although he mentioned a series of social claims and “the people” as a synonym for “social majorities”) and to hegemony: In Spain, to talk about republicanism since the 19th century is to draw out a series of signifiers that are unquestionable and hegemonic which the term “democracy” refers to. To talk about republicanism in Spain is to talk about the extension of the right to vote, […] about development and progress, […] about regeneration as opposed to corruption, […] about social justice, […] about progress for women, although limited. […] It is to talk about an institutional framework at the service of the social majorities, at the service of the people (Iglesias, 2019).

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It is excessive to conclude that Podemos’ republicanism rejects populism since institutions must serve social majorities and “the people” (the people as master) and not the dominant classes, but the hegemonic articulation is totally different and based on signifiers such as “progress” or “regeneration”. In a similar way as occurred with the populist strategy, Podemos offers the impression that theoretical approaches adapt to the political conjectures in order to find a quick solution but reject them when the conjuncture changes.

5.4 THEORIZING REPUBLICAN POPULISM The experience of left-wing populist parties has been accompanied by important theoretical debates about the relation between populism and republicanism. There is a coincidence regarding the convenience of conceptualization of populism in dialogue with republicanism; in some cases republicanism becomes the way of taming populism. I introduce very briefly the writings, grounded in the European context, of Chantal ´ Mouffe, Jos´e Luis Villacañas and Carlos Fernandez Liria. Similar reflections searching for theoretical convergence between populism and republicanism have been made in Latin America (Coronel & Cadahia, 2018). 5.4.1 Agonistic Republicanism There is no doubt that Chantal Mouffe has been the most relevant voice in defining left-wing populism based in the specificities of the European conjuncture. Mouffe (2018) defines her own understanding of politics as “radical reformism”, a position in-between “pure reformism” and “revolutionary politics”, due to the combination of the legitimacy of the principles of liberal democracy and the attempt

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to implement a different hegemonic formation. It is a third way implying the possibility of change, not provoked through rupture, and an alternative to economic neoliberalism. This position connects with the project of “radical democracy”, formulated by Laclau and Mouffe, and their understanding of the hegemonic struggle as a war of position. Despite being quite close to the theory on populism by Ernesto Laclau, Mouffe presents substantial differences, especially her emphasis on the institutional linkage of populism. Mouffe points out that the goal is not the establishment of a “populist regime”. This statement should be enough to remove the concerns about the authoritarian nature of populism. To Mouffe, left-wing populism is not even opposed to liberal or representative democracy but rather complementary. She prioritizes the creation of a hegemonic formation in which “democracy” would be the hegemonic signifier to articulate diverse struggles around. The idea of recovering and deepening democracy is compatible, and not against, liberal institutions. In this regard, institutions should be more representative. The problem does not relate to representation but to the lack of it (the lack of agonism, in Mouffe’s terms) which deprives citizens of their voice. Contrary to other diagnoses, Mouffe does not believe that there is a crisis of representative democracy per se; there is a crisis of post-democracy, meaning the absence of agonistic confrontation. There is no solution outside representative democracy, and the engagement with the state and representative institutions must be strengthened in order to transform them. Institutions play the role of institutionalizing social conflicts and antagonism. That is the reason I label Mouffe’s approach “agonistic republicanism”, since institutions tame and channel social antagonism (the populist articulation around the antagonistic relation between “the people” and “the elite”) and transform it into agonism (where pluralism is recognized as well as the

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difference and legitimate positions taken by the adversaries). The discursive construction of the collective will, “the people”, is not homogeneous and does not result in a uniform identity. The populist frontier enables the creation of “We” and “They” whilst institutions acknowledge the plurality which is not eradicated before, given that the differences remain active within “the people”. 5.4.2 Minimal Populism With the brief book Populism, Jos´e Luis Villacañas (2015) managed to influence Podemos, concretely in the circle around ´ Iñigo Errejon, through his critique of populism from a republican perspective. Instead of rejecting populism as a philosophical and political phenomenon, his proposal is that republicanism would be “the way of channeling the populist movement, the populist politization, toward the strengthening of structures, institutions, which are in conditions to make us strong against the neoliberal agenda” (Villacañas, 2016a). In other words, he aims to republicanize (meaning minimize) the populist impact and to revitalize institutions to counteract neoliberalism. This approach is actually quite close to Mouffe’s but Villacañas does not consider populism an alternative to neoliberalism. Republicanism would be the antidote against the populist threat and the inequality provoked by neoliberalism. Villacañas presents a dichotomy between populism and republicanism and there is no democratic translation of populism into institutions. There would be two models of representation: the division of powers (republicanism) and personalization (populism). Therefore, populism is anti-institutional and does not accept political normalization, given that populism relies on unsatisfied demands, the existing establishment and the need to keep “the people” mobilized. The critique of personalization is relevant

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as are two potential risks: centralizing power to reflect the capacity attributed to the leader to solve the people’s unsatisfied demands, and the use of the institutional framework to perpetuate leadership in power. In these cases, the division of power and mechanisms of control should be required. Republicanism plays here an important role to control centralized and personalized power. However, republicanism does not always address the unequal economic structures, despite Villacañas (2016b) rightly sustaining that the real core of domination relies on the economic structure. The “minimal populism” defended by Villacañas ends up being close to Mouffe’s “radical reformism”. The difference is that “minimal populism” implies a weaker impetus to challenge and renew the representative institutions. 5.4.3 Republican Objectivity Carlos Fern´andez Liria (2016) is an influential Spanish philosopher for some of the founders of Podemos. He wrote the book In Defense of Populism, which, despite the title, is rather a defense of republicanism and the recognition of some of the mistakes made by the Marxist tradition (mainly its rejections of the modern state and the rule of law; i.e. the achievements of the Enlightenment). Populism is saluted, in cooperation with republicanism, as a way of challenging the principles of the radical left and embracing institutional politics, including the state and the law. Because capitalism deprives institutions of their democratic potential, the function of populism would be to recover such a potential. Populism is not anti-institutional, as Villacañas considers it, but aims to recover institutions. Leftwing populism should contribute to reshaping the distinction between “We” vs “They”. Liria believes that the “We” vs “They” dichotomy should structure republicanism and is applicable to institutions, rather than to the people. According

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to Liria, “They” are the group whose goal is to destroy institutions; “We”, on the other hand, become the “conservatives” who want to maintain the things that deserve to be maintained such as public schools, a public healthcare system, the right to retirement and to housing, and so on. Thus, being revolutionary would mean being conservative and reformist (of the emancipatory and democratic potential of institutions). Leftwing populism is necessary, so the existing conflict between “We” vs “They” can be channeled institutionally to reclaim the democratic function of the modern state and law which relies on the principle of “republican objectivity”. The possibility of producing objectivity in the political world must be realized through a system of balances between powers and the articulation of institutions. This would create a space for reasoning. Left-wing populism should adapt their project to the defense of the republican objectivity. The defense of populism becomes the defense of republicanism. Objectivity means that laws rule and not the people. In the rule of law, any change must be made in accordance with the law (and not through arbitrary decisions). This “introduces a distancing of the people from itself; a distancing that makes people think it over twice, so to say, or, in the end, to reason” (Liria, 2016, p. 111). Law is above people, and any change made by the people should be carried out through reasoning. Sharing also a position similar to “radical reformism”, the principle of objectivity establishes the framework for connecting the people’s demands with the reform of the institutional order. All in all, the three approaches to republicanism and populisms (two of them from an explicitly left-wing populist position) agree with the need to search for a constitutional and institutional realm to develop populism. It leads to a reformist path, rather than an institutional breakthrough, to renew liberal and representative institutions and to build an alternative to neoliberalism.

6 SOVEREIGNISM AND TRANSNATIONALISM

James Bohman presents in a very simple way the main challenge of states in times of globalization: They are “too big to generate the loyalty and legitimacy needed for a demanding democratic ideal, and too small to solve a myriad of social problems” (2010, p. 3). Proposals in both directions fail to grasp such complexity. From a state perspective, communitarians are in favor of renewing the social consensus through a democratic ethos, and participatory democrats advocate for decentralization; from a cosmopolitan perspective, the supranational level is considered the only one to solve the existing global issues from human rights to global warming or terrorism. This distinction is quite relevant since it reflects the dual challenge for left-wing populism: the claim for sovereignty and the articulation of “the people” as a political subject. Popular sovereignty is one of the main features of left-wing populism but, placed in international settings, the differences between popular and national or state sovereignty blur as well as the difference between “the people” and “the nationals”, or “the national people”, if preferred. Not without

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reason, sovereignism, or the defense of sovereignty, has been highlighted as the main common characteristic for both leftand right-wing populism (Verstrynge, 2017). The European Union (EU) is conceived as a neoliberal project, and consequently the rejection of neoliberalism entails the rejection of the EU in the claim of the nation-state to be sovereign. This double rejection implies that “the people” are reduced, at the European level, to the aggregation of “national peoples” whilst a collective European program is missed, given that the priority is to recover national sovereignty from Brussels. The already complex relationship between demos and ethnos (Stavrakakis, Andreadis, & Katsambekis, 2017) is intensified when “the people” and “the nation” apparently become the same. Coming closer to the notion of people-asnation poses the risk of a culturalized notion of the people. “The people” as ethos entails its conceptualization as “a collectivist entity, based on culture, ethnicity, race or generally on blood” (Akkerman, 2003, p. 151) whereby a cultural community should precede the political community. The identification of “the people” with democracy, the people-asdemos (De Cleen, 2017) should be enough to move away from the culturalized version of “the people” as ethos, accurately attributed to right-wing populism, and develop a progressive project. The bottom vs top axis, reflecting a power and hierarchical position, is deployed to characterize the antagonistic relation with the political and economic European elites. There is, however, a problem when the distinction between left-wing populism and nationalism moves to an international setting: If “the people” are articulated as democracy or the people-as-demos, the main question here is which demos can be articulated at the European level and how to relate it with the singular demos existing at the national level? This question has no easy answer. The alternatives differ from the belief of “the people” as sovereign within the nation-state to the

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possibility to transnationalize “the people” across borders. I name these two options: International sovereignism, which has been the dominant one so far, and transnationalism. Despite acknowledging the predominance of nation-states, international sovereignism advocates for addressing global issues at the international level. Transnationalism does not consider the national arena as the central one and attempts instead to explore transnational connections and ways of governance. Before addressing the articulation of the people at the EU level, it is important to clarify that the transnational dimension makes it evident that there is no single demos, a political unity already organized democratically. Bohman notes that the idea of demos “requires a delimited political community of citizens, consisting of all those and only those who are full citizens and thus both authors and subjects of the law” (2010, p. 29). Thus, when democracy takes place transnationally, it happens differently from the nation-state. Within the nation-state, the political authority appeals to a singular demos or unified “will of the people”; in the transnational space, says Bohman, the demos becomes insufficient. There must be a shift from the demos to demoi. The subject, demoi, is plural and not singular like the demos. It is true that the same can happen within nation-states but at the transnational level a different issue arises: the necessity or not of a sovereign for each of the plural demoi. The lessons we can learn from Bohman are very useful to understanding that the objective is neither to shape a unified global demos nor to create a new centralized power of some sovereign. These reflections point to some of the problems faced by leftwing populism in its attempt to promote (popular or national) sovereignty as its main goal (instead of searching for alternative ways of global governance or transnational politics) or in its attempt to shape a collective subject as an

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ensemble of national demos (instead of recognizing the complexity of the demoi and their implications beyond representation).

6.1 THE POPULIST VS COSMOPOLITAN DICHOTOMY The relation between globalization and nationalism was explained in the 1990s as two intertwined opposites in a causal relationship: Nationalism was triggered and reinforced as counterreaction against globalization (Sabanadze, 2010). Particularism in its multiple forms (nationalism, religion, ethnicity) has since then been labeled part of identity politics and a source of conflict “challenging the stability of the postCold War international system and mounting backlash against ideational, normative and material influences of globalization” (Sabanadze, 2010, p. 15). Populism is now called upon, together with nationalism, to occupy this space, and the dichotomy between populism and cosmopolitanism gains terrain as explanation for current political conflicts. Cristobal Rovira (2017), for instance, concludes from the French, Dutch, and US elections that the left vs right axis is losing its validity while the tension between populism and cosmopolitanism is becoming predominant. The opposition to right-wing populism does not come from the left, according to Rovira, but from cosmopolitans. Populism is portrayed as the flip side of cosmopolitanism (Costas, 2016a) and a reaction against the previous social democratic and conservative governments. These governments from both center-left and right did not fulfill their promises, and the benefits of globalization were unequally distributed. Thus, the separation between the winners and losers of globalization was shaped (Costas, 2016b), and populism emerged. The demands are legitimate but the solutions are characterized as wrong. Especially after

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the victory of Trump, populism as a global phenomenon becomes one sole populism and the difference between left and right wing turns to be irrelevant (Benegas, 2019). Without denying the importance of the populist/nationalist vs cosmopolitan dimension on the complex ideological map, it is quite problematic to simplify the political conflict to this axis. Firstly, as mentioned, it blurs the distinction between left- and right-wing populism, and more generally between left and right. Secondly, cosmopolitanism is associated with values such as free market, pro-migrant policies, or international cooperation which transform the acceptance of cosmopolitanism into the assumption of free market and, more or less moderate, global neoliberalism as the only option. Finally, it reduces any use of cosmopolitanism to its identification with the global elite whilst it obstructs an international perspective for left-wing populism. This is an important issue at stake. If the winners of the globalization are the cosmopolitans, the global elite, the working class ends up being the national working class or an anti-cosmopolitan one. There is no trace left of working class’ internationalism when it is depicted as nationalist or coinciding with national interests. Nancy Fraser (2016, 2017) contributes to shedding light on this matter. She interprets Trump’s victory as the result of a confrontation between “progressive neoliberalism”, the convergence of emancipatory projects and financialization, and “reactionary populism”. The solution would be to develop a “progressive populism”, the combination of emancipation and social protection. The point is not to abandon the emancipatory struggles (feminism, migration, diversity) and adopt a reactionary and nationalized version of “the people” but rather to explore a cosmopolitanism from below. Moreover, republicanism can embrace cosmopolitanism when trying to settle transnational institutions, but left-wing

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populism is trapped within the national-popular collective will where the focus is on the national. As Juan Dal Maso (2019) points out, the heterogeneity of the people cannot be reduced to a homogeneous national community. Rather, the “national sentiment” must be articulated to conform to a new cosmopolitanism. In other words, the national is one scale, and probably still the most important one, but far from being the only one. Actually, the local scale is already plurinational, and cosmopolitanism can be shaped from local and national realities without being abstract or empty. In this regard, the articulation of a political subject remains pending as well as the reshaping of transnational institutions. From left-wing positions this task has been developed in different directions.

6.2 THE LIMITS OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY The need to explore an alternative to national solutions emerges paradoxically from the first and last electoral victory of a left-wing populist party, Syriza, and its incapability in government to fulfill a radical reformist program. Contrary to his announced intentions, Alexis Tsipras accepted austerity measures imposed by the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund), and the intention of leading a solidary and equalitarian project against the neoliberal Europe vanished. The support of the Greek population via the referendum against the bailout conditions imposed by the Troika was in vain, and the international solidarity, like the Oxi movement, witnessed how neoliberalism reigned still as the only paradigm within the EU. The fact that one sole country was not able to alter the EU politics reveals the weakness of national sovereignty as the only place to do politics, even though “real” national sovereignty is the main populist demand. Left-wing populism

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reacted by scaling up and trying to build international coalitions or transnational movements. An additional paradox is that Syriza was excluded from both projects. Despite being a member of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) in the European Parliament, Syriza incarnated the surrender to neoliberalism and thus the impossibility of articulating an alternative to the existing EU. Leaders close to Syriza then like Pablo Iglesias, who used the Syriza government as inspiration for Spain, and specially Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek Minister of Finance, were involved in different projects, Plan B and Diem25 (Democracy in Movement 2025), in which the recovery of national sovereignty and the generation of a transnational movement were promoted. The two initiatives have so far been the major political attempts to address the international or transnational arena from a leftwing populist perspective.

6.3 INTERNATIONAL SOVEREIGNISM Plan B started as a public declaration and has ensured continuity through annual summits. Due to the elections for the European Parliament in 2019 several parties involved in Plan B decided to join forces as the political movement “Now the People!” in order to push a European agenda. During all this time, the initiative has been characterized by the diversity of actors participating in it and by combining the critique of neoliberalism and the defense of sovereignty. Plan B was launched in 2015 through a joint statement signed by wellknown figures from the left: Oskar Lafontaine (former Die Linke leader in Germany), Stefano Fassina (Italian deputy and economist), Jean-Luc M´elenchon (then leader of the French Left Front), Zoe Konstantopoulou (former deputy and parliamentary speaker in Greece), and Yanis Varoufakis who

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soon distanced himself from it and put his efforts into developing DiEM25. From the beginning the initiative has been led by political leaders and includes political goals (renegotiation of the European Treaties, accountability for the Eurogroup, denouncement of the political interference of the European Central Bank), but the need to cooperate with civil society and European social movements against austerity policies is acknowledged. The statement defines the struggle for a democratic Europe, in opposition to the EU, and creates a division between the powers that be and the majority of Europeans. Besides the discursive opposition between us and them, the initiative pursues to promote deliberation: Our Plan A for a democratic Europe, backed with a Plan B which shows the powers-that-be that they cannot terrorise us into submission, is inclusive and aims at appealing to the majority of Europeans. This demands a high level of preparation. Debate will strengthen its technical elements. (Plan B, 2015) Nonetheless, the transnational connection was insufficiently developed. The declared intention of creating local working groups was not carried out. Plan B already aimed to shape an alternative to the GUE/NGL, manifesting their disagreements with the internal dynamics of the group and concretely with the role played by Syriza and Die Linke, so the European Parliament was not the platform to elaborate such a transnational discussion. Therefore, Plan B favors mainly annual summits (France in 2016, Spain in 2016, Denmark in 2016, Portugal in 2017, Greece in 2018, and Sweden in 2019) where members of civil society, politicians, and intellectuals meet. These forums have barely concretized the character of Plan B, which was not defined in advance. There is indeed no common position between the main actors of Plan B. France Insoumise leads a very critical position against the EU,

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together with the traditional Eurosceptic left from Denmark and Sweden, whilst Podemos and Left Bloc are more ambivalent and do not reject the EU entirely. Jean-Luc M´elenchon very explicitly frames Plan B as the application of “our program” against the will of the European Commission. He summarizes the strategy in three points: One: we will apply our program. Two: we will negotiate to ensure that European regulations allow it. This is what we call the ‘Plan A.’ But three: if Europe refuses, we will apply our programme anyway, along with those who think like we do. This is what we call the ‘Plan B’. (M´elenchon, 2018) In this version, national sovereignty prevails (what citizens decide within their nation-states) and the problem is Brussels treaties. If those treaties cannot be abandoned within the EU framework, the only option consists of acting unilaterally and maybe leaving the EU. Plan B prioritizes the national arena and it is structured around it. The invitation to civil society and social movements becomes quite limited since the initiative is led by political parties, and the idea of representation, rather than participation, becomes dominant. Actually, at the summit in Copenhagen, despite not counting on many participants, the extension of Plan B was emphasized since the left parties present represented a remarkable number of people (meaning voters in this case) in Europe. The goal of Plan B reinforces the importance of national representativeness in order to be feasible. Pablo Bustinduy, then in Podemos, recognized that it was necessary to win national elections and accumulate material power before concentrating their efforts on a debate about how to reform Europe (Bonet, 2018). The return to the nation-state and international cooperation are consequently the main features of Plan B. People’s sovereignty is expressed through their nation-states, and international

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cooperation should help to respect the will of the people. The chief obstacle for Plan B is that the main field of battle is not just sovereignty but winning the national elections so the governments can represent the will of the people. However, left-wing parties, with the exception of Syriza that is not part of the Plan B, are not involved in the national governments so cooperation between governments is not feasible yet. Furthermore, EU politics are not a priority at all and a common European project is barely outlined. Plan B is a reflection on how left-wing populism is gaining momentum at the European level and moving away from the marginalized place occupied by the radical left in the European Parliament (Bonet, 2018) but without formulating an alternative European project and appealing to a collection of national demos, instead of the demoi. The EP elections in 2019 made Plan B crystallize into the alliance “Now the People” launched in 2018. It is an interesting geographical alliance connecting Southern European (France Insoumise from France, Podemos from Spain, Left Bloc from Portugal) and the Nordic countries (Red-Green Alliance from Denmark, Left Party from Sweden, and Left Alliance from Finland). Although the underlying idea of international cooperation and solidarity beyond the EU remains intact, the electoral platform is used to address transnational issues which cannot be resolved at the national arena and require international solutions, such as climate change, tax havens, or social dumping. Deepening the Lisbon declaration “Our Europe, for and by the people!” of Plan B, the alliance articulates a populist discourse through the division between the European elites and “the people”. The enemies are capitalism, as the cause of the climate crisis, the EU elites, the co-existence of economic and political interests behind the increasing precarity and inequality, and racism and xenophobia, incarnated by the radical right. It is a political conflict against extremism (Iglesias,

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Martins, M´elenchon, & Søndergaard, 2018): both from the center (Macron) and the right (Salvini). The international alliances aim then to save Europe from political extremism and economic neoliberalism: “We are willing to do something that the EU-elite is both unable and unwilling to do: offer real solutions to face the problems caused by liberal policies built against peoples” (Now the People!, 2019a). “The people” are here people-as-demos, since it is a democratic battle against the EU elites, and the plural form, “peoples”, is deployed to reflect the plurality of demos. This plurality is sometimes clearly multinational, as the sum of national people, but also intersectional, referring to refugees, women, and LGTBI communities. There is, indeed, a claim for rights which can transcend the national borders (and correspond to the demoi) beyond the mere defense of sovereignty attached to the national demos. Being nationally rooted, the Lisbon declaration “For a citizen revolution in Europe” opens up, at least, the logics of the international-popular: We call on the peoples of Europe to unite on the task of building an international, popular and democratic political movement to organize the defense of our rights and the sovereignty of our peoples in front of an old, unfair and failed order that is taking us right to the catastrophe. (Now the People!, 2019b) The electoral moment created the possibility of organizing across nation-states and adding to the transnational agenda a progressive vision of issues which go beyond the control of nation-states. The ambiguity about the position toward the EU (a lexit or not) lingers. The attempt to cater to majorities from a populist left-wing angle has not contributed to increasing the electoral results. On the contrary, the European left is even more fragmented. The other initiative, DiEM25, contributes likewise to that division.

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6.4 TRANSNATIONALISM A few months after “A Plan B in Europe”, DiEM25 was launched in Berlin. Although the overlap of participants and political diagnoses made both initiatives look quite similar, the differences emerged soon and their respective evolution deepened their incompatibility. The DiEM25 manifesto highlights that the political subject, “we, the peoples of Europe”, is going to bring change forward in Europe so that the people “regain control over our Europe from unaccountable ‘technocrats’, complicit politicians and shadowy institutions” (DiEM25, 2016). The antagonistic relation between the EU powers that be and the power of the peoples grounds a populist discourse (Panayotu, 2017) at the transnational level (aspiring to appeal to the demoi rather than forming a homogenized European demos). DiEM25’s conception of people-as-demos cannot be fulfilled in the national space and “constantly endeavours to construct a transnational political space and become a transnational force able to offer democratic change in Europe” (De Cleen, Moffitt, Panayotu, & Stavrakakis, 2019, p. 17). The transnational call for a way of organizing was evident in the first stage of DiEM25, where social movements and the atmosphere created by the cycle of protests of 2011 were the main inspiration for DiEM25. As expressed by Sre´cko Horvat, one of their founders: At the moment, DiEM25 is not a party, nor an organisation or think tank. We consider the conventional model of political parties obsolete. Rather than build at a national level and then expand to Europe, we are turning that process upside down and starting a movement at an international level, but taking into consideration existing movements and grassroots at national, regional and local level. (Horvat, quoted in Oltermann, 2016)

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DiEM25 wanted to differentiate itself from other projects in two aspects: overcoming the traditional party form, by assuming a more fluent one, and moving beyond the national arena as the core space to do politics (Agust´ın, 2017). The movement began as international and pursued to connect with existing local and national movements. DiEM25 can be labeled transnational populism in the sense that it articulates “the people”, or “the peoples” as a transnational political subject, on the one hand, and it promotes a transnational and participatory organizational form, on the other. In both cases, the challenge lies in how to address the national scale. Comparing with Plan B, DiEM25 presents a well-elaborated and coherent discourse. The many voices expressed in the Plan B forums do not contribute to delivering a unified discourse due to the differences between their participants. DiEM25 has, however, a more centralized source of enunciation and its articulation is made by very few people. Actually, DiEM25 is basically personalized in their leader, Varoufakis, who reproduces some of the dynamics of left-wing populism but at the transnational level. The organizational dimension has proved to be very complicated. The initial idea was to use DiEM25 as a transnational movement capable of articulating existing local movements within. John Malamatinas (2016) from Blockupy recalled in an open letter to Varoufakis that transnational movements and activists existed already and wondered why he did not speak with these movements before launching DiEM25. Therefore, it can be said that DiEM25 has been more efficient in being involved in social struggles than in connecting them as part of a common movement. Varoufakis (2016b) is, besides, critical of the predominance of the national level to raise an alternative to the neoliberal EU. He refers to Gramsci to stress that rebellion can happen in towns and regions. Connecting people’s struggles and the progressive

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politics of city councils with a transnational movement could shape a counter-hegemonic project not restricted to the nation-state framework. When DiEM25 decided to participate in the EP elections, the omission of the national level became impossible. Despite maintaining the transnational dimension, mutating from transnational network (DiEM25) to transnational party (European Spring), the party had to deal with the existing electoral dynamics, led by national parties from the member states, and the limited scope of EU, still nationalized and characterized by the domestic agenda and interests from each country. The novelty of launching a common European agenda to all the members of the coalition European Spring entails a significant shift in the way of understanding European politics and the transnational dimension as a dimension in itself and not as the aggregation of national politics. Infrequent moves, challenging the national logic of politics behind EU elections, were made like Yanis Varoufakis being the head of the electoral list in Germany. Moreover, DiEM25 expressed their will to continue being a movement and not becoming a traditional party. However, the coalition, named MeRA25 (The European Realistic Disobedience Front), was forged in cooperation with national parties assuming DiEM25’s European New Deal. G´en´eration-s (France), Razem (Poland), Alternativet (Denmark), DemA (Italy), MeRA25 (Greece), Demokratie in Europa (Germany), Der Wandel (Austria), Actua (Spain), and Livre (Portugal) joined in. These parties are, after all, rooted in national politics, with their own ` internal history and dynamics and positioning vis-a-vis other left parties. The assumption of the DiEM25 program proved to be inadequate to change the perception of those parties as national parties. It is noteworthy that the parties are not especially relevant electorally in their respective countries, and that reality remained the same after the elections. The

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difficulties experienced by DiEM25 in articulating existing local networks evolved in MeRA25 as the impossibility to attract major left parties to the transnational political alliance. Apparently, the transnational project faces its main challenge in being rooted into local and national realities. In any case, the plan for the European Spring is consequent with the project formulated by DiEM25 and highlights some of the aspects which make it distinguishable from Plan B: A transnational left-wing project which combines the power of “the peoples” with the proposal for a European constitution to replace the existing treaties. As a result of this combination, DiEM25 incorporates populist (the power of “the peoples”) and republican (a new constitution) elements and, due to their position against the radical right and skepticism about nationalism, embraces cosmopolitanism too. In the following lines, Varoufakis’ words are almost prefigurative about what kind of politics the left should carry out and in which space it should happen: To show voters that there is an alternative, even within the rules designed by the establishment to further the interests of the top 1%. No one expects the EU institutions to adopt our proposals, least of all us. All we want is for voters to see what could be done, instead of what is being done, so that they can see through the establishment without turning to the xenophobic right. This is the only way the left can escape its confines and build a broad progressive coalition. (Varoufakis, 2019) “The people” (meaning here “the voters”) are necessary to change the institutions, since change is not going to happen from the institutions themselves. The enemy is not only the 1%, the establishment, but also the xenophobic right. In response to that, DiEM25 develops a cosmopolitan discourse,

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and solidary politics towards refugees becomes one of their main objectives. The space for the transnational left would be: the opposition to the establishment (combining populism and republicanism) and to the radical right (assuming cosmopolitanism). The critique is extensive to nationalism and the fence of national borders made by the left. David Adler (2019), DiEM25’s Coordinating Collective, denounces the inopportune and dangerous boundaries redefined by the left-wing leaders like Sahra Wagenknecht, Jean-Luc M´elenchon, and Jeremy Corbyn. Against them, DiEM25 advocates for supporting open borders. The confrontation with the European “left nationalists”, as Adler calls them, reflects the tension between sovereignism and transnationalism and reproduces the opposition between nationalism and cosmopolitanism as axis for the political conflict. The nationalist vs cosmopolitan dichotomy is not deployed to replace the left vs right but to deepen the differences between the already fragmented left, split between multiple “unity projects” (Balhorn, 2019), and signals the impossibility so far to overcome fragmentation both at the national and the transnational level.

FIVE DILEMMAS OF LEFT-WING POPULISM

In his speech to the Labor Party Conference in Brighton in 2018, Jeremy Corbyn declared: “We are now the political mainstream. Our manifesto and our policies are popular because that is what most people in our country actually want, not what they’re told they should want” (Corbyn, 2018). Of course, that is easier to say from the Labour Party, where voters voted for Corbyn or for the party (or both), than stemming from the radical left. Nonetheless, Corbyn was capable of consolidating his leadership after having been elected in 2015 and reached the best electoral results for the party since 1997. Thus, there are good reasons to claim that Corbyn and Corbynism abandoned a marginalized space to be at the core of national politics. Becoming mainstream is related to the capacity of influencing and changing the political rules while the main characteristic idea of the party is having a project which reflects what “most people” want, in opposition to what “they are told they should want.” I believe that such a statement summarizes the contribution and, at the same time, the inherent dilemma of European leftwing populism. On the one hand, becoming mainstream implies changing the political rules but also adapting to them and, not least, to the electoral logic. On the other hand, leading a popular project entails capturing what “the

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people” want but also to translate it into concrete politics, which must be presented and discussed in the public and institutional spheres. In a very short period of time, left-wing populism managed to create the sense of a possible change in Europe. The convergence of several parties aiming to develop a “politics of the people” forged the environment. Even though the disappointment provoked by the Syriza government already showed weakness for left-wing populism as a project to govern, the good electoral results of Podemos, the emergence of new municipalism as progressive local politics from below, the progressive impact of Corbyn and Momentum in the Labour Party and the creation of France Insoumise expanded the increasing development of left-wing populist politics. The EU elections in 2019, however, reflected a quite different panorama due to the poor results obtained by left-wing populist parties as a consequence of the multiple problems they experienced. The Brexit and the Catalan situation did not favor the development of left politics through a social agenda based on equality and social justice. The political conjuncture seems to point to the end of the populist moment, at least as the moment, for the left. Social democratic parties are back in power in some countries, the center parties are framed as the best solution against the tumultuous politics of populists and nationalists, and the far right gains more influence and imposes the debate on immigration and integration as the central one in each country. The focus on climate change, although incorporated in the left-wing populist programs, can benefit Green parties as the alternative, rather than the populist ones. The most worrying aspect is the lack of a left project in this context which can aspire to become mainstream and to represent the majority, as was the goal of left-wing populism from the beginning.

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TO WIN OR NOT TO WIN? Syriza proved for the first time in Europe that the radical left could win the elections. This is an important achievement for left-wing populism and entails a substantial change in the mentality of the radical left. It was not about representing the critical or protest voices in parliaments anymore, or about being the political force which takes up the space left of the social democracy (aiming to support a social democratic government at best). The model of Syriza is a model aimed to win the elections just like the Latin American models which preceded it. When a left-wing party wins the elections (and so far only Syriza has achieved that), uncertainty is waiting: Which kind of politics would be implemented, which kind of (radical) economic and political change, and which relations would the government have with other political parties and the economic elites that they had condemned before? It is not only about which program to apply but about the applicability of such a program. Syriza ended up replacing PASOK and becoming a new center-left party. Tsipras maintained the populist discourse (“the people” against “the elites”) and, at the same time, gained political credit, also in the EU, as a pragmatic politician. The situation is not any better if left-wing populist parties do not win the elections. Podemos has come to a crossroads due to the loss of electoral support and the recovery of the social democratic party as the biggest force on the left. Podemos needs to negotiate with the social democratic party (considered not a long time ago a party of the establishment) to reach a coalition government. The political profile of Podemos has been vanishing since the ambition was first to win the elections and later to become part of the government. When these aspirations are not met, Podemos loses its purpose and its space in the political arena.

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Winning (Syriza) or not (Podemos, France Insoumise), leftwing populism lacks a long-term alternative to shape a project for the majority or, at least, to assess the conditions or possibilities to condition the political agenda on a wide range of issues such as political participation, economic redistribution, climate, feminism, immigration, and refugee policies. The political approach in absolute terms of winning or not has led to the adaptation to the center or to the difficulties to play a significant political role. In the latter case, the situation could push parties like Podemos and France Insoumise toward the traditional marginal positions occupied by the left.

POWER AS KNOWLEDGE OR POWER AS POWER? I borrow the title from the famous scene from the series Game of Thrones. Lord Petyr “Littlefinger” explains to Cersei Lannister that “power is knowledge,” letting her know that he is aware of her affair with her brother. Lannister orders her men to kill him and show him the supremacy of using brute power. She concludes, contrary to “Littlefinger,” that “power is power.” Left-wing populism, based on populist and discourse theory by Laclau and Mouffe, has placed hegemony as the main strategic political goal. In opposition to neoliberal hegemony, the articulation of different chains of equivalences (the heterogeneous social demands) around “the people” or the leader symbolizing those demands aims to create a new common sense and a new ´ defines hegemony as a type of power hegemony. Iñigo Errejon which works through a game of openness and closure: It cannot be totally open because the political project would blur, and it cannot be completely closed either or it would lose the capacity of seducing or bringing together the society around the project ´ Thomassen, & Stavrakakis, 2016). The main charac(Errejon, teristic of hegemony is thus instability.

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From a left perspective, the hegemonic strategy consists of opening the project to include a wider number of social groups or, in other words, to favor the identification of a greater number of individuals or groups than those who already define themselves as leftist. On the other hand, there is a risk of emptying the ideological content of the party (becoming a catch-all party, adapting its profile to what is perceived as the interests of the voters). The populist appeal to “the people,” as a larger subject than the working class, in antagonistic relation with “the elite,” aims to articulate a new hegemony. The cultural struggles, changing the dominant frames and implementing a new political common sense, contribute to the hegemonic formation. This is when the idea of the political and economic elites responsible for worsening the conditions of the ordinary people opens up the possibility of a popular political alternative. It is difficult not to acknowledge the discursive abilities of left-wing populism to contest the neoliberal narrative frames or to articulate popular sovereignty around the need for a new Republic or welfare. The populist articulation has seriously challenged the neoliberal common sense. However, as the knowledge of power by “Littlefinger,” left-wing populism has focused on hegemony as consent (based on Gramsci or post-structural theory) but has underestimated the coercive side of power, namely the power is power. The appellation to popular sovereignty and the call for a referendum in Greece are so far the most serious warnings about the limitations of hegemony not involving the existing power structures. The assertiveness of the people’s will and involvement and participation were not enough to counteract the powers-that-be. It is clearly a problem that left-wing populism lacked a determined political and economic program, but also that the adverse economic powers and conditions to make any reformist or radical change possible were not properly assessed. This limitation, as well as the

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strong reaction from the establishment, has conditioned leftwing populism which has shown difficulties in reacting and taking the initiative in such situations.

MOVEMENT OR PERSONAL PARTIES? The cycle of social protests from 2011 evidenced the crisis of representation and people’s mistrust toward politicians. When new parties emerged such as Podemos, Five Star Movement, Initiative for Democratic Socialism or, partly, Syriza, the possibility of exploring new ways of participation and political engagement within parties stayed open. DiEM25 was also established, at the transnational scale, as a mix of movement and think tank and embraced later the party form. The notion of movement-party captures such incipient dynamics. Presented as a hybrid organization between movement and party ´ (della Porta, Fernandez, Kouki, & Mosca, 2017), movementparties have overlapping memberships (social activists moving to the arena of party competition, combining horizontal and vertical structures, moving between institutional parliamentary politics, and extra-institutional mobilization). The populist emphasis on leadership and non-mediated relation has not been very productive to develop the movement-party as a transversal organization, meaning a combination of horizontality and verticality. It is difficult not to perceive movement-parties as a transitional phase toward verticalized and personalized structures. The organizational movement structure has actually proved to be fragile and susceptible to becoming appropriated by the leadership. It is difficult to imagine Syriza without Tspiras, Podemos without Iglesias or France Insoumise without M´elenchon. Even worse, it is difficult to imagine the survival of these parties without these leaders.

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Left-wing parties have shown innovation and solvency during the electoral campaigns where the collective creativity and mobilization have distinguished them from traditional parties. One of the challenges is to move away from the state of perpetual elections as the best way of mobilizing the party, because there is also a limit as to how much we can expect of people’s engagement in the same kind of processes. Podemos’ initiative of c´ırculos (circles) was interesting to translate social assemblies into politics but the party did not succeed in integrating such semi-formal structures within the party or in giving them a function as deliberative units. Curiously, the Labour Party, a historic and mainstream party, has been capable of benefiting from the movement-party organizational model. Besides the self-organized group Momentum to support Corbyn’s candidature, the launch of community-organizing teams (Foster, 2019) to work locally with the communities and to come closer to the ordinary voters prompts a different way of conceiving parties as organizational forms. The point is not to have a leaderless party but having a stronger political structure which enhances internal checks and balances, and finding the equilibrium between the parliamentary group, the party (the formal and informal structures), and civil society. If the initial horizontal forms were complicated to manage, a well-defined structure, including clear functions assigned to the formal and informal relations, should contribute to moving toward a transversal organization and avoid the vertical trap, and consequently personalization of the party.

NATIONAL OR TRANSNATIONAL? Left-wing populism moves through a paradox. The appeal for popular sovereignty is a consequence of the lack of democracy and the claim for participation or for being heard with the aim

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of bringing politics closer to the people. Populist parties target the elites within the nation-state framework but also the transnational elites, when the scope is more international, like in the cases of the European Union, or transnational companies. However, they pursue to reach sovereignty by regaining control and power at the national level. There is no doubt that political empowerment or people’s participation (popular sovereignty) can be reinforced within the national framework and influence the state and the legislation. The limitation lies in how to recover the national sovereignty which has been appropriated by transnational powers. When populism, embedded in electoral politics, is anchored in national politics, it is quite difficult to address the loss of sovereignty, now transformed and transposed to other arenas. Popular sovereignty should not be reduced to national sovereignty since the idea of shared sovereignty through multilevel governance better reflects the existing reality. Multilevel does not connect only the national and transnational scale but also the local. If governance is more contentious at the European level and more cooperative at the municipal level, that is a different issue. Left-wing populist imaginaries to transform the common sense and foster a hegemonic articulation have mainly been national. David Featherstone and Lazaros Karaliotas point out that “the nation is not an inevitable geographical imaginary through which populism is necessarily articulated” (2019, p. 43). Despite the difficulties, transnational left-wing populism, or a multi-scalar left-wing populism, needs further elaboration to move beyond the idea of international cooperation as the confluence of national interests. In fact, deepening the transnational connections and scaling-up populism cannot be considered as abandoning the national arena but rather as the possibility to contest other levels of governance and articulate global responses. It is not a debate

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between patriotism and cosmopolitanism, since “the people” in an inclusionary sense are already part of transnational practices. The “good sense” generated trans-locally by civil society during the “crisis of the refugees” in 2015 illustrates how transnational cooperation and articulation can shape a culture of hospitality in contrast with the hostile politics promoted by nation-states and the EU. The universalism inherent to patriotism can easily assume that cosmopolitan impetus from below. DiEM25 has attempted to connect the local and global levels disregarding the national. Plan B has aimed to come back to the national. If popular sovereignty is not constrained to the borders of the nation-state, the issue would be how to move through all the scales and contest neoliberalism through them (without ignoring that spaces like the cities are already affected by transnational dynamics).

LEFT-WING POPULISM OR BACK TO THE LEFT? If the populist moment is over, what is the next move for the left? I will distinguish between the populist moment as political conjuncture and populism as a political project to articulate political conflict and increase people’s participation. The populist moment can facilitate the emergence of populist parties. In the second case, populism does not vanish and is integrated more or less explicitly as response to liberal democracy and assumes different features according to the historical and political moment. The fact that there were leftwing populist parties before the crisis of 2008 in Europe, not to mention the relevance of the Latin American governments, proved that they do not depend on the economic crisis but can be seen as a response to the larger crisis of the radical parties, de-ideologization, disaffection in politics, etc. Regarding the first phenomenon (the end of the populist

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momentum), it can be applied more clearly to left-wing populism rather than to right-wing populism. Right-wing populism is still politically vigorous, threatening the parties of the establishment and conditioning the public and political debate, especially around migration. This fact cannot be ignored. It does not imply that left-wing populism should be the reverse of right-wing populism but rather that left parties, in whatever form, would compete with far-right parties and center-left and right parties trying to recover their centrality in leading the political way. The main problem with left-wing populism would be that some of the issues it is supposed to address would remain without a satisfactory solution. If the organizational form is not a solution to decreasing party membership, if the principles and practices are not sufficient to counteract the declining participation rates, if the party ends up being perceived as “yet another party” belonging to the political class, the general disaffection would continue. Left-wing populism would not have lost its momentum but the opportunity of doing politics differently. If the left moves to “socialism” or “democratic socialism” to articulate a progressive project, it would be wrong not to start from the left-wing populist lessons and the challenges they faced. The risk for the factions of the left distancing themselves from left-wing populism would result in deepening fragmentation and moving away from a progressive alternative for the majorities and from becoming the politics of the people.

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INDEX Creative class, 61 Crisis of refugees, 70

Agonistic republicanism, 94–96 Alegre, Luis, 81, 87 Ambiguity, 2, 61, 109 Blair, Tony, 20 Bloom, Peter, 34 Catalan conflict, 79 Catalan referendum, 78 Center-left wing populism, 23–24 Centralization, 90 “Citizenism,” 25 Ciudadanos, 49 Civic nationalism, 72 Civil society, 2, 26, 85, 107, 123 Class determination, 52 position, 53 working class, 48 Colau, Adu, 16 Community works, 30 Constitutional democracy, 40, 41, 67 Corbyn, Jeremy, 16, 23, 26, 60, 114, 115, 121 Corruption, 6, 10

Democratic patriotism, 77 DiEM25, 110, 111, 113–114, 120, 123 Disruptive movement, 41 Dom`enech, Xavier, 70 Dragsted, Pelle, 31 Dybvad, Kaare, 61 Elite people, 34–39 En Marche, 15 Environmentalism, 39 Equivalence, 38, 25, 37, 38, 57 ´ Iñigo, 16 Errejon, European Spring, 112 European Union (EU), 44, 100, 122 European United Left/ Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL), 105 Exclusionary populism, 58–60 Fassina, Stefano, 105 F´ein, Sinn, 28

149

150

Five Star Movement, 58, 120 France Insoumise, 15, 16, 22, 27, 106, 120 Garrido, Raquel, 74 ´ Alberto, 49 Garzon, Greek population, 104 Hegemonic articulation, 19, 94, 122 Identity politics, 34, 102 Iglesias, Pablo, 25 Inclusionary populism, 58–60, 63 Independence, 20, 78–80, 90 Indignados movement, 10, 51 Initiative for Democratic Socialism (IDS), 26, 29 Institutionalization political party, 82 social movement, 82 Intersectional populism, 54 Konstantopoulou, Zoe, 17, 18, 105 Labor Party Conference, 115 Labour Party, 16, 29 Lafontaine, Oskar, 105 Leadership, 6, 20, 24–25, 27, 115, 120 Left Alliance, 108 Left Bloc, 107 Left Party, 108

Index

Left-wing populism ambiguity, 2 charismatic leadership, 24–26 class, 47–63 contemporary populism, 4 definition, 8–12 dilemmas, 115–124 Europe, 13–31 features, 19–20 Latin America, 16–19 liberal position, 2 migration, 47–63 movement parties, 26–27 multi-scalar, 122 populist moment, 4–8 social democracy, 20–21 Liberal democracy, 2 ´ Linera, Alvaro Garc´ıa, 17 Losers of globalization, 21, 44, 53, 102 LIVRE, 16 ´ 18 Maduro, Nicolas, Manipulation, 39 ´ Madrid, 16 Mas Mediation, 39 M´elenchon, Jean-Luc, 17, 18, 22, 105 MeRA25 (The European Realistic Disobedience Front), 112 Migrants, 56, 60–63, 69 Minimal populism, 96–97

Index

15M movement, 10, 26, 86 Momentum, 16, 23, 62, 116, 121, 124 Movement parties, 26–27, 81, 120, 121 Multi-scalar left-wing populism, 122 National community, 68 Nationalism, 67–71 Nationalist loyalty, 72 National liberalization, 46 National sovereignty, 46, 66–71, 75, 104–105, 122 Neoliberal globalization, 40, 43–46, 69 Neoliberalism, 3, 9, 12, 45, 86, 96, 103 Neoliberal politics, 46 New Democracy (ND), 20 “Now the People,” 108 Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), 20 Parliamentarism, 89 Party for the Sustainable Development of Slovenia, 29 Party system crisis, 5 Patriotism, 15, 65–80, 123 Pen, Le, 22 People citizens, 87–91 elites, 4, 10, 34–39, 108, 122

151

Personalization, 22, 90, 96, 121 Personal parties/movement, 120–121 Podemos, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 26, 28, 40, 49, 51, 75, 76, 84, 88, 92, 93, 107, 116, 117, 120 Political community, 41, 44, 46, 74, 101 Political movements, 6–7 Political participation, 58, 89, 118 Popular democracy, 40, 67 Popular Party, 13 Popular sovereignty definition, 39–43 Europe, 41 neoliberal globalization, 43–46 people, 33–46 Populist interpellation, 54–58, 62 Power, 19, 41, 67, 83, 90, 118–120 Power bloc, 57 Precarity, 54–58, 108 Prentoulis, Marina, 14 Puigdemont, Carles, 79 Radicalism, 14 Razem, 16 Red-Green Alliance (RGA), 16, 30, 45, 108 Reorientation, 39

Index

152

Republicanism agonistic republicanism, 94–96 citizens, 87–91 contestation, 86 decision-making, 85 minimal populism, 96–97 objectivity, 97–98 parliamentarism, 89 populism, 91–94 “social state,” 86 Spanish government, 86 Respatializing power, 67 Right-wing populism, 5, 8, 21–23, 34–36, 65–66, 100, 124 ´ Sanchez, Pedro, 23 Scottish Socialist Party, 28 Self-proclaimed intention, 74 Self-reflection, 33 Shared sovereignties, 70 Sixth Republic, 40, 84 Skipper, Pernille, 31, 45 Social Democrats, 30, 61 Social division, 41 Socialism, 4, 27–31, 120, 124 Socialist Party, 20, 22, 28, 60 Social liberalization, 46 Social mobilizations, 26–27, 30 Social transformation, 43

Sovereignism cosmopolitan dichotomy, 102–104 demos, 101 European Union (EU), 100 international sovereignism, 101, 105–109 national sovereignty, 104–105 Spanish indignados, 10 Syriza, 13, 15, 18, 25, 46, 74, 104, 105, 117, 120 Tesfaye, Mattias, 61 “There Is No Alternative” (TINA), 45 Third Way, 20 Thomassen, Lasse, 14 Trade unions, 50 Transnationalism companies, 36 DiEM25, 111, 113–114 MeRA25, 113 national, 121–123 Trump, Donald, 4, 48 Tsipras, Alexis, 25 Two-dimensional discourse, 36 United Left (IU), 49 Varoufakis, Yanis, 105 Victims of globalization, 46 Wagenknecht, Sahra, 62 Workers, 48, 55, 60–63

Index

Working class class-based interpretations, 47, 48 plebs, 49–54, 57, 63

153

Zapatero, Jos´e Luis Rodr´ıguez, 86 Zeitgeist, 4

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