This book is about how democracy should – and, just as importantly, should not – recognize the people. The debate over the meaning and value of populism is essentially a debate over this question. Around the world, voters turn to populism because of the way in which it promises to respect the people.Footnote ¹ Supporters of populism feel resentment at the alleged disrespect displayed by the political and cultural “elite.” They claim that their society does not properly recognize their standing as “the people.” Populism provides the recognition that many people feel they have lost or never attained. In short, populism is about recognition of the people.

Since democracy is supposed to be a form of society in which citizens mutually respect one another as equal participants, we should not be surprised – nor necessarily regret – that people feel resentment when society shows contempt or disregard for their identity, way of life, and political opinions. Still, in the face of the rise of populism, we must acknowledge that not all struggles for recognition promote what I call democratic respect.

While struggles for recognition have been central to the progress of modern democracy, to broader inclusion and more equality, current conflicts over recognition and respect often threaten rather than deepen or widen democracy. Populism, with its demand for the recognition of the people, often seems to come into conflict with democratic norms. Why is that so? To answer this question, Democratic Respect analyzes the meaning and validity of different kinds of demand for recognition, as well as their connection to democratic ideals. “Recognition of the people” can mean many different things, and these different meanings connect to different interpretations of democracy. Thus, the debate over the meaning and value of populism is a debate both over how best to understand democracy and over what kind of recognition democratic citizens owe one another.

Political scientists and sociologists typically understand the resentment of supporters of populism as purely emotional and unconnected to facts and principles. This book argues instead that we should approach populist resentment as part of a struggle for recognition based on distinctively moral experiences that depend on factual beliefs and normative judgments. When people feel disrespected, it is because they believe certain principles regarding how they ought to be treated have been violated. Thus, their feelings are what I call principle-dependent and can be objects of moral evaluation. This approach entails that we take people’s resentments seriously as demands for recognition that we should assess on their merits. Are they demands that we should heed in a democracy understood as a society of free and equal participants? Not all demands for recognition raised in contemporary politics are rooted in democratic norms, and this book examines their important moral and democratic differences. In particular, it promotes a notion of democratic respect that helps us to answer questions concerning what citizens owe to each other and what constitutes unreasonable demands for recognition in a democracy.

People can achieve recognition in different settings, but today the struggle for respect and esteem seems to have turned to politics as its primary arena in many countries around the world. Complex social, cultural, and economic developments connected to globalization, migration, the dismantling of manufacturing, growing automation, financial capitalism, increased economic inequality, the weakening of political parties, and changes in cultural values have changed people’s roles, obligations, and rights, as well as the distribution of material resources and access to political influence.Footnote ² As a result, many people have lost their formerly secure feelings of identity and status, and they are increasingly turning their frustration at their loss toward the political system by supporting populist parties and leaders. This reaction might seem irrational, and to be a craving for mere symbolic self-affirmation where in fact something more substantial and complex is at stake. However, in the struggle for recognition, material, social, and cultural needs and demands are always intertwined.Footnote ³ The problem, this book argues, is not that people engage in struggles for recognition, or that they turn this struggle toward the political arena. This may in fact be a very democratic way of dealing with these issues. It becomes a problem only when the struggle for recognition takes undemocratic forms. But when is that the case? The question for normative democratic theory is what kind of recognition and respect people can demand in political interaction with their fellow citizens and from the government.

As should already be clear, I do not regard struggles for recognition as limited to questions of identity and culture. Thus, in the notion of “struggle for recognition” I include both struggles for the recognition of particular identities and the more universalist politics of respect for dignity. Indeed, the difference between these kinds of recognition will be central to my argument. Moreover, the book’s focus on populism as a form of struggle for recognition is not an indication that populism is caused by cultural as opposed to economic factors. Finally, my argument does not assume that recognition is always a good thing, or that all deficits of recognition are bad or wrong.Footnote ⁴ Nor do I assume that struggles for recognition are necessarily struggles for equality. Indeed, my analysis of populist struggles for recognition shows that the latter can protect existing status hierarchies or create new ones.

The question of what kind of recognition populism supplies to the people connects to the question of how populists understand democracy. And the question of which demands for recognition are democratically legitimate depends on what we think is the normatively best way to understand democracy. Thus, we need to discuss and assess the populist understanding of democracy and its alternatives. This book regards populism as advocating a distinct conception of democracy, and it assumes that part of the appeal of this conception of democracy lies in how it claims to recognize the people. In addition, I accept the common idea that the norm of equal respect is central to the meaning and justification of democracy. However, while I take it that most of us can agree that recognition is central to democracy – not only to its meaning and justification, but also to its practice and development – we often use this notion in confusing and unclear ways. Thus, the book analyzes and discusses a variety of demands for recognition and distinguishes between associated concepts such as esteem, respect, honor, status, and solidarity.

What is theoretically and philosophically interesting about populism is that in many ways it looks essentially democratic, and that it claims to be committed to core democratic principles such as majority rule and popular sovereignty. The populist conception of democracy is actually close to the understanding of democracy that we find not only among many ordinary people, but also among many political scientists.Footnote ⁵ Moreover, the populist demand for recognition of the people sounds like an essentially democratic demand. Therefore, I think that the rise of populism challenges every democratically minded person to reflect on exactly how we understand our democratic ideals, institutions, and practices. Is not democracy defined by majority rule and responsiveness to the people’s preferences? Does this not mean that democracy should recognize the people? And does it not imply that populism has the true and best understanding of democracy? The answers to these questions are by no means easy or straightforward.

This book argues that while equal respect is central to democracy, not all nominal demands for recognition and respect are compatible with democratic equality. Populist politicians, for example, make both valid and invalid demands for recognition and respect on behalf of their supporters, and it is important for our understanding and practice of democracy that we become better at distinguishing between these demands. In particular, the type of respect that democracy requires should not be confused with esteem for one’s merits or identity, but must consist in respect for one’s status. Moreover, when the demand is for respect for one’s status, the democratic requirement is that this claim should be for one’s status as a free and equal participant in society (“democratic respect”), not as a superior (aristocratic “honor respect”).

It is a core idea of the book that democratic respect requires that citizens, as a rule, relate to one another through what I call a “participant attitude,” rather than an observer attitude. Participants view one another as free and mutually accountable parts of a shared community, while observers see others as “cases” to be explained and manipulated to achieve desirable consequences. In a democracy, we should consider each other not as cases in need of treatment, but as free, equal, and responsible persons who make mutual claims, which we should consider on their merits rather than as expressions of alien causes. Democratic Respect promotes the participant attitude both as an approach in political theory and as central to a democratic ethos among citizens. The book’s approach to resentment draws on Peter Strawson’s notion of the participant attitude, while the discussion of democratic respect is inspired by Kant’s practical philosophy as well as contemporary theories of recognition, respect, and democracy.

This book is written by a political theorist, and political theorists tend to think ideas matter. That is why we write about them and try to counter bad ideas with what we take to be better ideas. As Isaiah Berlin said in his inaugural professorial address at the University of Oxford, it is crucial that “those who have been trained to think critically about ideas” attend to them, because otherwise ideas may “acquire an unchecked momentum and irresistible power over multitudes of men that may grow too violent to be affected by rational criticism.”Footnote ⁶ Indeed, this book is motivated by the fear that populism as a set of ideas will acquire unchecked momentum and attain power over millions of people around the world, as well as by the conviction that those of us who are trained to think critically about ideas have an obligation to understand the ideas behind the populist momentum and counter them to the extent we find this justified.

Political ideas shape political culture, and democracy depends on the shape of society’s political culture. Ideas about what democracy is and requires of citizens have the power to change the political culture and thereby to transform or even undermine democracy.Footnote ⁷ There are good reasons to think that populism is changing the political culture in many countries around the world in a way that is transforming how we understand and engage in democracy.Footnote ⁸ It is incumbent on everyone, and especially those trained to analyze and assess ideas, to reflect on and discuss the populist ideas that are changing how we understand and hence practice democracy. The point of the kind of normative political theory represented in this book is not to tell people what to do, but to contribute to the common reflection on democratic ideals and how we institutionalize and practice them. In particular, the aim of this book is to consider how best to understand and practice the fundamental attitude of what I call democratic respect.

It is crucial that political theory and philosophy show modesty in an investigation such as this. We should not expect to be able to provide principles, much less some kind of algorithm, from which we can immediately derive determinate answers to actual cases. Kantian theory is sometimes caricatured as if this were its aim, but this is a misunderstanding.Footnote ⁹ For Kantians, to treat philosophy as an authority that thinks for others violates the fundamental meaning of enlightenment and would be a form of disrespect for people’s capacities to think and decide for themselves. Moreover, for Kant and many neo-Kantians, enlightenment and learning depend on what Kant called “the public use of reason” and what contemporary political theorists refer to as public deliberation.Footnote ¹⁰ Thus, the purpose of my analysis and discussion is not to substitute for the public deliberation of citizens, but rather to contribute to it. I hope to offer some concepts and distinctions that will help us to see more clearly what the relevant considerations are, and to what we should pay special attention in contemporary cases of demands for recognition of the people. The notion of democratic respect that this book develops should therefore not be understood as a formula that can or should be applied in a dogmatic fashion; it should rather be seen as a basic attitude through which democratic citizens should perceive one another.Footnote ¹¹

In this book, I argue that the notion of democratic respect can show populism and its demand for recognition to be less democratic than they appear. For those who might insist that populism simply has a different conception of democracy, I hope the following chapters will show that in terms of recognition of individual citizens, populism advances a less compelling conception of democracy than one committed to the notion of democratic respect advanced in this book. However, the fact that my critical evaluation of populism and its demands for recognition is mainly negative does not mean that I find contemporary liberal democracies to be flawless – far from it. Nor does it mean that I find all populist demands for recognition to be undemocratic or populism’s diagnosis of contemporary democracies to be wrongheaded in all respects. Contemporary democracies do suffer from a misrecognition of and lack of respect for certain members of society. Contemporary democracies do suffer from oligarchic tendencies and elite dominance. Contemporary democracies do need to recognize and be more responsive to the demands of ordinary people. Thus, we can and should learn something from the current rise of populism and listen to its demands for recognition. However, we need to be more discerning regarding exactly what these demands consist in, when they help to deepen democracy, and when they rely on ideas that are inconsistent with equal respect for all citizens.

I.1 Populism as a Set of Claims

Democratic Respect is interested in what makes populism appealing to many people. Populism has been on the rise in many countries around the world in the last few decades, and we need to understand not only the causes of this rise but also the reasons people might have for supporting populist parties and politicians. A study of reasons differs from a study of causes in that it focuses not on the factual and explanatory question of what actually makes people think or do something (vote for or support a populist party), but on the arguments and justifications that people give – or could give – for thinking and doing what they think and do. Moreover, while we cannot argue with causes as such, we can evaluate reasons and, when needed, counter them with better reasons.

I should stress that to assume that people have reasons for their beliefs and actions, as my approach does, does not imply that they have good reasons. I investigate people’s reasons for supporting populism precisely in order to consider their validity. Thus, the aim of this book is to study not only what reasons people may have for supporting populist parties, but also whether they have good, democratic reasons for doing so.

It is important to keep in mind this purpose of the book – assessing the validity of the reasons people may have for supporting populism – when we turn to the question of how best to understand and define populism. How best to define a concept depends on the purpose of the study. Definitions are not true or false, but more or less useful for the purpose at hand.Footnote ¹² Among political scientists who study the causes and effects of populism, there has been much discussion about the difficulties of pinning down the meaning and definition of populism. While these discussions and attempts to find the best definition of populism inform this study, it is important to emphasize that the most appropriate or useful definition of populism for my study might not be the same as for studies with a different purpose. Moreover, recently there seems to have been some convergence in the academic literature on the key features of populism.

While definitions are not true or false per se, it is important for the relevance of this book that my definition of populism should capture or be applicable to the group of parties and politicians that are commonly referred to as “populist,” such as Hugo Chávez, the Five Star Movement, the Law and Justice party, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Podemos, Viktor Orbán, Matteo Salvini, Geert Wilders, and Donald Trump. I am mainly concerned with contemporary populist parties and less with historical cases such as the US People’s Party. We can assess whether it is true that these figures or parties are populist, as I define the term, or to what degree they fit the definition. However, it is absolutely crucial to emphasize that the discussion this book aims to raise is not whether this is that characterization truly captures the essence of populism. Rather, the discussion I want to raise concerns the meaning and validity of a number of claims that can be and often are associated with an ideal typical understanding of populism.

The corollary of being interested in people’s reasons for supporting populism is to approach populism as making a set of claims. To claim something is to assert the truth or rightness of something (see Chapter 3). Thus, I view populism as asserting the truth and rightness of a set of both empirical and normative propositions. Moreover, I assume that people support populism because they find these propositional claims valid. The reasons people think they have – or that we may reconstruct them as having – for supporting populism correspond to the claims made by populist politicians. It is this nexus of reasons and claims that I analyze and discuss in this book. Understanding populism as making claims and as something people follow for reasons is part of my participant attitude approach. When people view each other through a participant attitude, they see one another as making claims and acting for reasons, rather than looking for causes that operate behind their backs.

Notice that I am neither claiming that supporters of populism always have the reasons I discuss or that these reasons are what cause support for populism. My aim is to understand and assess – from the perspective of democratic principles of freedom, equality, and respect – the kinds of reason people might have for supporting populism and the claims populists make. While the book aims to discuss the claims of populism and the possible reasons or justifications for believing these claims, the issue of causes is by no means irrelevant for our investigation. My discussion of recognition is prompted by and relies on empirical studies that indicate that the desire for recognition is part of the causal explanation for the rise of populism. Indeed, what follows is grounded in a sustained engagement with empirical research on populism and its supporters, and I hope to show how philosophical analysis and empirical research can enrich one another. Nevertheless, the primary question for our discussion is not the factual one regarding whether the desire for recognition actually explains the support for populism, but rather the normative question of whether the kind of recognition that populism supplies gives people good, democratic reasons for supporting it.

Thus, the idea is that if we are interested in people’s reasons for supporting populism, we should define populism in terms of the characteristic claims populists make. However, we need to be more precise here to avoid misunderstanding. It might be said that many people support populism not because they believe in its claims, but because they are attracted to its effects. There is nothing wrong about saying that a person has reason to support or promote a movement or party not because they agree with the content of its claims, but because they think it will have good consequences. For example, if you think that politics needs to be “shaken up” or moved away from the center, this may be a reason to vote for a radical or extremist party, even if you do not agree with its ideology. However, this is not the type of reason I am interested in. I am interested in the types of reason people might have for believing in the content of what populists claim, and not only in its effects. My reason for this focus is the conviction that populism spreads a set of distinct ideas or claims about the very meaning and value of politics and democracy that needs to be properly understood on its merits and countered if found wanting.

Understanding populism as a set of distinctive claims stands in contrast to the often-heard proposition that populism has no substantive content but is a style, a set of rhetorical resources, or a logic of articulation that can be equally used for all ideological purposes.Footnote ¹³ It also stands in contrast to the idea that populism’s appeal is only emotional. While later chapters explain why we should see the appeal of populism in terms not only of emotions but also of principles (or more precisely, why the appeal to emotions is mediated by principles), here I emphasize the idea that populism is also characterized by a commitment to some principled positions. While it is true that populists can be found across the political spectrum, from left to right and even in the center, this does not mean that being populist does not carry with it some empirical and normative commitments of its own.Footnote ¹⁴ Being a populist socialist is not the same ideological position as being a non-populist socialist, being a populist conservative is not the same as being a non-populist conservative, and so on with the other traditional ideologies to which populism can be attached. The adjectival “populist” brings some additional empirical beliefs and normative commitments to the “host ideology.”Footnote ¹⁵ Moreover, even if the claims and principles of populism are somewhat vague and flexible, they are neither without content nor without effect on how we understand and practice democracy. The language we use to speak about politics and political relations – for example, the way in which we speak of “the people” and political opponents – affects our political culture and transforms political practice.Footnote ¹⁶

To view populism as a set of empirical and normative claims falls within an ideational approach and entails regarding populism as a kind of ideology. Understanding populism as an ideology is the most common approach in comparative politics and is mainly associated with the influential definition of populism suggested by Cas Mudde, which sees it as “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.”Footnote ¹⁷ According to Mudde, populism is not a full or thick ideology like liberalism or socialism, but a “thin” or “thin centered” ideology. Whereas a thick ideology speaks to a broad menu of social, economic, and institutional issues, Mudde suggests that the thin ideology of populism includes a narrower and more restricted set of core ideas and concepts.Footnote ¹⁸

While I agree that populism shares some of the characteristics of an ideology, I would like to stress two points. First, calling populism an ideology may be misleading. It might make readers assume that it can be placed on a left-right scale, or that it is defined by its policy positions. But to view populism in that way makes it impossible to see what is shared by all populist movements and parties, which can be found across the traditional left-right political spectrum. Second, the idea that populism is a thin ideology disregards what I take to be unique about populism, namely that the claims that define populism are not just fewer in number than those made by traditional ideologies; they are also a different kind of claim, or their focus is different. The characteristic claims of populism are about the circumstances and logic of politics, and about the requirements of democratic legitimacy, rather than about policy positions.Footnote ¹⁹ So the reader should keep these two points in mind when subsequent chapters refer to populism as an ideology.

This book, then, understands populism in terms of the claims it makes, because this will provide us with the opportunity to consider the reasons people might have for supporting populism. Some might respond to this approach by arguing that what matters is not what populists say but what they do. Moreover, it might be argued that what populists do often contradicts what they say. For example, populists claim that they give all the power to the people, but in fact they delegate it to a leader.Footnote ²⁰ This is the basis of Kurt Weyland’s political-strategic approach to populism and his criticism of discursive and ideological – or ideational – approaches to populism.Footnote ²¹ However, the focus on populism’s claims need not entail an exclusive focus on what populists say. We can also read claims out of what populists do. Moreover, whereas Weyland postulates an opportunistic disconnect between populist politicians’ self-depictions and their actions, I want to investigate the possibility of finding a connection between their expressed ideas and their practice. So, whereas Weyland criticizes ideational approaches for emphasizing the idea of popular sovereignty and therefore neglecting the fact that populism is a top-down strategy of personalistic leadership,Footnote ²² I ask instead whether the populist conception of popular sovereignty might not entail or in some other way lead to a form of leader-centrism. Thus, I see it as a populist claim that a strong, unconstrained leader is compatible with or even required by the ideal of popular sovereignty.

I do not want to suggest that the actions of populist politicians are always consistent with populist ideas and rhetoric. That would be an outrageous claim. Nevertheless, this book examines how both the rhetoric and the actions of populist actors can be combined in a set of claims that can be seen as defining populism. If we want to consider the reasons people have for supporting populism in the sense explained above, we must consider populism as raising some kind of claim about what is true and false, right and wrong, good and evil. Note here that my approach requires that we try to understand what populism means by “popular sovereignty” and other core ideas, rather than straightaway applying our own understanding of these to the actions of populists. Thus, it might be that personalistic leadership is incompatible with our (or Weyland’s) understanding of popular sovereignty and popular empowerment, but this does not mean that it is incompatible with a populist interpretation of these ideas. This point in no way entails an uncritical approach to populism, as Weyland fearsFootnote ²³; rather, it requires a critical engagement not just with the actions of populist politicians, but also with how those actions are connected to and justified by their ideas. Only in this way can our analysis of populism contribute to a discussion of competing interpretations of core democratic principles, rather than merely applying predefined democratic ideals to populist practice.

So what are the distinctive claims of populism? I submit that the claims of populism centrally concern three issues: (1) the circumstances of politics, (2) the logic of politics, and the (3) requirements of democratic legitimacy. In what follows, I explain these three notions and order the claims of populism accordingly.Footnote ²⁴

The circumstances of politics concern the basic elements of society, its divisions and/or unity, as well as the basic motives of political actors, which in combination make politics necessary and possible.Footnote ²⁵ The first five claims constitute populism’s view of the circumstances of politics.

1. 1. The basic elements of society are “the people” and “the elite” (rather than a plurality of individuals and groups).

2. 2. The two camps are unified and exclusive identity groups (rather than internally divided and overlapping groups).

3. 3. The relationship between the people and the elite is characterized by a fundamental and all-encompassing antagonism.Footnote ²⁶

4. 4. The division between the people and the elite is moral and Manichean, and the people is in the right.Footnote ²⁷

5. 5. Social divisions are products of self-interest, corruption, and group identity (rather than disagreements in good faith).Footnote ²⁸

The logic of politics concerns the core elements, dynamics, and aims of politics. Three claims are central to populism’s understanding of the logic of politics:

1. 6. Politics is an all-or-nothing battle with complete losers and complete winners (rather than a matter of accommodation, or a game where victory is always partial).Footnote ²⁹

2. 7. Politics is about will and decision (rather than reason and deliberation).Footnote ³⁰

3. 8. Politics is centrally about the unmediated, noninstitutional mobilization of the people.Footnote ³¹

Democratic legitimacy concerns what makes the exercise of political power acceptable. The final six claims relate to the populist view of legitimacy:

1. 9. Only a part of the total population is really the people or the demos that should rule.Footnote ³²

2. 10. The people have a common will that can be identified independently of political procedures and institutions.Footnote ³³

3. 11. The will of the people should be expressed immediately and directly in political decisions, with no accommodation of opponents and no constraints.Footnote ³⁴

4. 12. Democracy should recognize and restore the privileged standing of the people.Footnote ³⁵

5. 13. The people can have only one legitimate representative, and opposition to this representative is suspect and illegitimate.Footnote ³⁶

6. 14. The will of the people can be represented by and embodied in a leader who identifies with the people.Footnote ³⁷

I compiled this list of claims from a broad range of empirical, conceptual, and normative literature on populism, and in this way I have ensured that it overlaps and engages with what other researchers call “populism.” Next, I settled on these fourteen claims as the most relevant for the normative discussion of democracy and recognition that this book engages in. Thus, I think most scholars will agree that these claims are often made (explicitly or implicitly) by what the academic literature normally designates as populist politicians.

The aim of this book is to consider the meaning, appeal, and validity of these claims (and their elaborations in later chapters), both individually and in combination. Hence, my contention is not that all populist parties make all of these claims, but only that these claims are often made by populist politicians in word and deed, and that they therefore are worth exploring as part of a discussion of the potential reasons for supporting populism. Of course, this raises the issue of what the threshold for calling someone a “populist” is. How many of the claims must a party or politician make in order to qualify as populist? Populists come in degrees, and how populist a party or politician is can be seen in terms of how many of these claims they make and how strongly they formulate them. Unfortunately, I cannot come closer than saying that I would not call anyone a populist who did not show in word or deed that they believed in most of these claims. None of the claims on its own makes one a populist; only the combination of most of them does so. Be that as it may, the contribution of this book is not classifying parties, but rather to consider the meaning and validity of a number of claims about recognition and democracy that are often raised by populists and their supporters.

If I were to give a one-sentence definition, I would say that populism is a set of claims centered around the antagonism between the people and the elite as the fundamental circumstance of politics, the logic politics as an all-or-nothing battle, and democratic legitimacy as a question of the recognition of a part of the people as the only true people.

Finally, I should mention that I have focused on the claims that make populism a distinctive interpretation of democratic politics, and not on what distinguishes it from ideologies that do not claim to be democratic, such as fascism.Footnote ³⁸ Populism, for example, importantly regards the holding of elections as required for political legitimacy, which fascism does not.Footnote ³⁹ It is central for my purposes in this book that populists claim to be the true democrats. They routinely claim that the regime in which they operate is not fully democratic and needs to be democratized by giving power back to the people.Footnote ⁴⁰ As I have emphasized, my approach is to take this claim seriously and consider its meaning, appeal, and validity. At least part of the appeal of populism is that it wears the democratic mantle and that populist leaders claim to embody and implement the people’s will.Footnote ⁴¹ Moreover, the appeal of populism is connected to the kind of recognition it promises to the people. When we acknowledge this, we have occasion to engage in a discussion of whether and to what extent people have democratic reasons of respect for accepting or supporting the claims of populism.

I.2 Overview of the Book

Beyond this Introduction, Democratic Respect is divided into six chapters. The starting point for Chapter 1 is empirical studies showing that feelings of misrecognition can explain much of the support for populism, and that these feelings drive the populist politics of resentment. While I accept and draw on the insight that the quest for recognition propels populism, I take issue with the literature that suggests that feelings of misrecognition and resentment are unconnected to facts and principles. Drawing on Axel Honneth’s recognition theory, Peter Strawson’s discussion of resentment, and John Rawls’s idea of principle-dependent feelings, I argue instead that we should interpret the populist politics of resentment as a struggle for recognition based on distinctive moral experiences that are intimately connected to factual and normative beliefs. Resentment is based on the feeling that one is regarded and treated wrongly by other people, and it is an incipient demand to be regarded and treated differently. Thus, Chapter 1 provides an approach to populism and the politics of resentment that does not reduce them to ordinary citizens’ unthinking or automatic emotional reactions or political entrepreneurs’ manipulations of people. The proposed approach entails that we presume what I call a “participant attitude,” which means that we take people’s demands for recognition seriously by considering them on their merits, that is, by considering the factual and normative beliefs that give rise to the demands. Democratic respect does not require that we accept all demands equally, but it does require that we genuinely consider the validity of the claims people make on one another, rather than regarding them with an observer attitude as pathological cases in need of treatment.

While Chapter 1 sets out how to approach demands for recognition, Chapters 2 to 4 distinguish and evaluate different kinds of demand for recognition made by supporters of populism and found (explicitly and implicitly) in the claims of populism. If we can associate populist resentment with experiences of the violation of moral principles, we can ask which principles populist demands for recognition are based on, and whether they are valid democratic principles.

The aim of Chapter 2 is to distinguish between different kinds of demand for recognition and to assess their validity in light of fundamental democratic principles. Both of these tasks are missing from the existing literature on populism and recognition, which does not distinguish clearly between issues of recognition, respect, esteem, honor, dignity, and status, and thus cannot discuss their different normative implications. While “equal respect” is central to democracy on most accounts, it is important to acknowledge that not all demands for recognition are demands for equal respect. In particular, the type of respect that citizens and the government must display in democracies should not be confused with esteem for people’s merits, identity, or way of life, but must consist in respect for citizens’ status as citizens. Demanding and granting esteem for particular traits or ways of life, as populists do, is incompatible with a pluralistic society of free and equal persons. Further, it is crucial that we distinguish on the one hand between the notion of respect for status, understood in egalitarian terms as respect for the equal standing of all citizens or all human beings (democratic “dignity respect”), and the notion of respect for one’s status as a superior (aristocratic “honor respect”) on the other hand. Chapter 2 shows how demands for respect among populists tend toward the inegalitarian idea of “honor respect.”

Although I argue that a democracy is a society of equality of respect and cannot supply equal esteem for everyone, I acknowledge that inequality of esteem can still pose a moral and democratic problem. This is because inequality of esteem under some conditions can convert into inequality of respect. Therefore, the second part of Chapter 2 argues that democratic respect depends on a form of solidarity that counteracts the ever-present danger that inequality of esteem might transform into inequality of respect. When inequality of esteem takes a form and reaches a degree that threatens the ideal of equal respect, there is a moral requirement to act in solidarity with those who struggle to be respected as equal participants in society. Acting in solidarity requires first that we aim to change the social circumstances that give rise to forms of inequality of esteem that turn into inequality of respect, and second that we only express disesteem and disagreement with vulnerable members of society in ways that simultaneously make clear that their way of life has a legitimate place in society and that they can participate in public life on equal terms with everyone else.

Chapter 3 turns from the quest for recognition among supporters of populism to the kind of demand for recognition that is inherent to populism as an ideology and a political logic. At the core of populism are the claims that only a part of the people is really the people and that the only legitimate option is to take sides with this part against the rest. I argue that populism so understood entails a unique claim for recognition, which sets it at odds with the ideal of respect for the equal standing of every last individual person. The populist claim for recognition arises from a totalizing framing of political conflict, according to which one can and should understand one uniform group in society – “the people” – to be the worst-off group for all political purposes. The populist claim for recognition is an exclusionary claim: We are something that you are not, that is, “the people.” In contrast, I argue that in order to show equal respect for everyone, as well as solidaristic concern for diverse marginalized groups, it is imperative to focus on particular struggles for recognition and discuss who actually suffers the greatest injustice in each case separately. Moreover, it is the populist claim for recognition that explains its opposition to the deliberative aspect of politics, which stresses the importance of mutual critique and learning among citizens.

Chapter 3 goes on to contrast the populist claim for recognition with the kind of respect that Joel Feinberg argues is expressed in and through “the activity of claim-making” that is characteristic of a society with individual rights. The issue of rights is central to the discussion of populism, both because some populist politicians claim that we can have democracy without rights, and because some theorists of populism accept that illiberal democracy is essentially democratic. Going beyond Feinberg and with reference to Habermas, I argue that whether or not equal rights provide for respect and self-respect depends on how we as a society understand rights and how we practice the claim-making involved in having rights. In order to regard rights as establishing relationships of mutual respect, rather than as mere means to individual ends, we must adopt the participant attitude. Only by accepting the primacy of the participant attitude can rights struggles contribute to democratic respect.

The question of what kind of recognition populism supplies to the people connects to the question of how populists understand and practice “democracy.” Chapter 4 examines and disputes the widespread assumption that populism is committed to a procedural conception of democracy that rejects all substantive standards and restraints on popular decision-making. I argue that populism cannot be regarded as essentially democratic and fully committed to the procedural aspect of democracy while it is only against constitutional constraints. Indeed, the fault I find with populism in terms of democratic respect is not that its understanding of democracy lacks substantive constraints on popular decision-making, but that it fails to appreciate the procedural value of democracy. In addition, populists have a very limited understanding of democratic procedures, focusing on aggregative mechanisms such as referendums and elections, while I argue for a more expansive understanding of democratic procedures that includes free opinion formation, activism, and deliberation in civil and political society.

This Introduction began with the claim that the debate over the meaning and value of populism is essentially a debate over how democracy should recognize the people. In this connection, Chapter 4 distinguishes between three different kinds of “democratic” recognition: (1) procedural respect, which demands that every citizen has an equal standing in political processes and procedures; (2) outcome respect, which demands that political outcomes should correspond to the people’s opinions; and (3) identification recognition, which demands identification between the political leader and a homogenized people. I propose that the populist understanding of democracy fails to appreciate the importance of procedural respect, while it promotes outcome respect and identification recognition. The ideal of securing respect for the people through correspondence between public policy and people’s opinions is incompatible with the circumstance of disagreement, which characterizes a free society, and leader-people identification has equally anti-pluralistic implications.

Chapter 5 focuses on how different democratic decision procedures – voting, majority rule, compromise, consensus, and public deliberation – relate to claims for recognition and democratic respect. Populism has its own interpretation and evaluation of these decision procedures and challenges us to explain and defend our view of them. Thus, the chapter proceeds by contrasting populist understandings and uses of different decision procedures with my democratic respect understanding of these. Populism is commonly seen as characterized by its adherence to the democratic principles of popular sovereignty and majority rule, and as only against liberal constraints on the will of the people as expressed by the majority. This chapter challenges that view of populism. First, among populism’s claims we do not find a defense of majority rule that connects it to the sovereignty of all members of society, as we do, for example, in Rousseau. Second, if we understand majority rule as a principle that should regulate democratic decision-making over time, we will see that populists are not true majoritarians.

Populism claims to accept majority rule while completely rejecting the intrinsic value of compromise, another central feature of democratic decision-making. The second part of Chapter 5 discusses compromise as an attitude one can take when making decisions with one’s fellow citizens. Populists regard compromise as a form of betrayal, weakness, and defeat, while I defend it as an important aspect of democratic respect. In the literature, there is a tendency to focus on the bad consequences of the refusal to compromise. By contrast, I argue that the rejection of compromise can also be wrong in itself. Political theorists have discussed whether the value of compromise is merely pragmatic or whether there can also be principled reasons for compromise. Populism’s principled rejection of compromise shows why our defense of this practice must be principled and not merely pragmatic. Under certain conditions, the politics of compromise can be an important expression of democratic respect. The last part of the chapter connects the spirit of compromise to the notion of solidarity sketched in Chapter 2. I argue that compromise can be seen as a form of solidaristic inclusion of people with whom one profoundly disagrees.

Whereas the first five chapters of the book discuss the extent to which populist demands for recognition and populist ideas of democracy can be justified in light of the ideal of democratic respect, Chapter 6 considers the possibility that even if populism is in tension with our best conceptions of democracy and respect, it might nevertheless correct the deficiencies of actually existing democracy. The starting point of the chapter is that current democracies have many faults and are in need of correction. The chapter considers whether it is permissible to promote populism if it can correct some of the deficiencies of democracy. Thus, my question is not whether populist parties can correct democracy, as this question might be posed by an external observer. Instead, I adopt the participant attitude and ask whether we, or anyone, as fellow participants in democracy can endorse and promote populism because it has positive effects on a non-populist understanding of democracy. Applying the publicity condition first suggested by Kant and later expounded by Rawls, I argue that we cannot. We cannot publicly both endorse populism and say we do so because it improves democracy understood in non-populist terms. The publicity condition rules out the possibility of promoting one set of ideas (populism) for the sake of another set of ideas (non-populist democracy). The argument for promoting populism for the sake of non-populist ends cannot be made in public without frustrating those very ends.