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Populism and the Politics of Rights: The Dual Attack on Representative Democracy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Rainer Knopff
Rainer Knopff
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
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Abstract

In Canada as elsewhere, representative democracy is under attack by both populists and rights advocates. The populist challenge comes mainly from Preston Manning's wing of the Reform party. The rights-based challenge is grounded on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These two challenges are different in obvious ways, but from the point of view of representative government—and ultimately of liberal democratic constitutionalism—what they have in common outweighs their differences. What they have in common is the appeal to a mystical being or icon beyond ordinary politics. In effect, the People or Rights become what God was to pre-liberal theocratic politics: a transpolitical trump on ordinary political division, a way of placing opponents “beyond the pale,” a demand for unattainable purity in public life and policy. While bills of rights and populism appear to flow, respectively, from the liberalism and the democracy of liberal democracy, they are, in fact, vehicles for precisely the kind of politics liberal democracy was designed to overcome. Representative government, not populism or entrenched rights, was at the heart of the “new science of politics” designed to make liberal democracy possible. Representative institutions, properly arranged in a system of checks and balances, were a way of blending liberalism with democracy, giving each its due, but indirectly, so that neither would be taken to self-destructive extremes. Populism and the judicialized politics of rights threaten to dissolve this salutary blend, at the cost of liberal democratic constitutionalism.

Résumé

Au Canada comme ailleurs, la démocratic représentative subit les attaques à la fois des populistes et des défenseurs des droits. Le défi populiste provient principalement de l'aile repréentée par Preston Manning au sein du Parti réformiste. Le défit articulé sur les droits est issu de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés. Ces deux défis diffèrent de manière évidente, mais en regard du gouvernement représentatif (et en définitive du constitutionnalisme démocratique libéral), ce qu'ils ont en commun l'emportent sur leurs différences. Ils partagent un appel à un être mystique ou à une icone qui dépasse la politique ordinaire. En effet, le « peuple » et les « droits » deviennent ce qu'était Dieu à la politique théocratique pré-libérale: un atout transpolitique sur les divisions politiques ordinaires, une façon de mettre ses opposant à l' « index », une exigence de pureté inatteignable dans la vie publique et politique. Si les chartes des droits et le populisme semblent découler respectivement du libéralisme et de la démocratie libérale qu'ils étaient censés surmonter, c'est le gouvernement représentatif, non pas le populisme ou les droits enchâssée, qui était au coeur de la « nouvelle science politique » conçue pour rendre possible la démocratie libérale. Les institutions représentatives, bien agencées dans un système d'équilibre des pouvoirs, étaient un moyen de réconcilier le libéralisme et la dèmocratic, de rendre indirectement justice à chacun pour qu'aucun ne soit porté à des extrêmes autodestructeurs. Le populisme et la politique des droits « judiciarisés » menacent de dissoudre cet amalgame salutaire au prix du constitutionnalisme démocratique libéral.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 1998 , pp. 683 - 705
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1998

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References

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