Representing the People: Laclau as a Theorist of Representation

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  • Lasse Thomassen
Going beyond conventional conceptions of political representation, Ernesto Laclau takes representation to be a general category and not just limited to formal political institutions, and he takes representation to be performative in that it also brings about what is represented. This article examines the implications of this conceptualization of representation for Laclau’s theory of populism. Laclau takes populism to be exemplary of his conception of representation because populism is a discourse that brings into being what it claims to represent: the people. This is important for current debates about populism and the crisis of democratic institutions, whether domestic or international. I show how our conceptions of representation inform how we think about populism and liberal democracy, and specifically about populism as a threat to liberal democracy at the domestic or global level. I show this in the context of a reading of Jan-Werner Müller’s influential critique of populism.
Original languageEnglish
Article number10
JournalNew Political Science
Volume41
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)329-344
ISSN0739-3148
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

ID: 225998176