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Introduction: The Crowd in the History of Political Thought—Visions of the People
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2023
Abstract
The article introduces the second part of a symposium, “The Crowd in the History of Political Thought,” which is being published as a two-part special issue, and which explores visions of the role of the people and populism in the writings of past thinkers. The articles in this second part are by European scholars with disparate interests and approaches to the history of political thought. Populism proves difficult to define, partly because populist politicians evince different understandings of “the people” and the purpose of government. The liberal, democratic, and national visions of “the people” can be harmonious but can also become disharmonious. Untangling them by exploring how thinkers in the history of political thought distinguished between crowds and peoples can help us to better understand the ideological dynamics of our moment. Articles on Hobbes and Spinoza offer disparate accounts of the differences between peoples and crowds. Herder, by contrast, helps us understand the political self-determination of peoples, while Schmitt and Arendt offer rival visions of the tensions between democratic and liberal principles.
- Type
- Introduction
- Information
- The Review of Politics , Volume 85 , Special Issue 4: Part II of The Crowd in the History of Political Thought: A Symposium on Populism , Fall 2023 , pp. 443 - 449
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The University of Notre Dame
References
1 We would like to thank the editorial team of the Review of Politics, and especially Kelli B. Brown, for their outstanding professionalism in facilitating this double special issue.
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7 Taggart distinguishes between the “secondary features” that different populisms adopt from other ideologies and a common core. Cf. Taggart, Paul, “Populism and ‘Unpolitics,’” in Populism and the Crisis of Democracy, vol. 1, ed. Fitzi, Gregor, Mackert, Juergen, and Turner, Bryan (London: Routledge, 2019), 79–87Google Scholar.
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9 Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 6.
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11 Manent, Pierre, “Populist Demagogy and the Fanaticism of the Center,” American Affairs 1, no. 2 (2017): 10–11Google Scholar. Like Manent, Canovan has linked populism to a reaction against the so-called vanguardist assumptions of our political culture, while Chantal Delsol claims that contemporary populism represents an angry response to the allegedly “idiotic” character of the preference for one's own community. See Canovan, Margaret, “Populism for Political Theorists?,” Journal of Political Ideologies 9, no. 3 (2004): 241–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Delsol, Chantal, Populisme: Les demeurés de l'histoire (Paris: Éditions du Rocher, 2015)Google Scholar.