Populism and Civil Society: The

Challenge to Constitutional Democracy

Andrew Arato
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Populism and Civil Society
 Populism and Civil
Society
The Challenge to Constitutional Democracy

A N D R EW A R AT O A N D J E A N L . C O H E N

1
 3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Arato, Andrew, author. | Cohen, Jean L., author.
Title: Populism and civil society : the challenge to constitutional democracy /
by Andrew Arato and Jean L. Cohen.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021031185 (print) | LCCN 2021031186 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197526590 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197526583 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780197526606 (updf) | ISBN 9780197526613 (epub) | ISBN 9780197526620 (oso)
Subjects: LCSH: Populism. | Civil society. | Political culture.
Classification: LCC JC 423.A6845 2021 (print) | LCC JC423 (ebook) |
DDC 320.56/62—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031185
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DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197526583.001.0001

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 Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments  vii

Introduction: Defining Populism  1
What Is Populism? How to Define the Phenomenon  2
What Is Populism: Immanent Critique  4
What Is Populism: Construction of the Ideal Type  7
Different Populisms: Mobilization, Party, Government, and Regime  14
The Plan of the Book  17
1. Populism: Why and Why Now?  25
The Long Term: The Fundamental Contradiction of
Modern Democracy  29
The Middle Term: Deficits of Representation  32
The Short Term: Bait and Switch, Populist Supply, and Media Strategies  39
The Turn to Mobilization  46
Populism and the Media  48
2. Populism as Mobilization and as a Party  53
Social Movements: Their Logic and Limits  56
Political Parties and Their Transformation  62
Populist Mobilization, Its Dynamics and Tensions: The Cases  68
Mobilization by or with Parties  70
Mobilization by a Government or a Chief Executive  73
Mobilization from below in Civil Society  74
Movement Parties and the Movementization of Parties  85
Populist Logic: Implications for Populist Parties and Democratic
Party Systems  89
The Pars Pro Toto Logic and the Relapse into Factionalism  90
The Friend–​Enemy Political Logic and Affective Polarization  93
The Anti-​Establishment Stance and the Permanent
Movementization of Anti-​Party Parties  100
Conclusion  102
3. Populist Governments and Their Logic  107
Democracy Revisited  110
Populism in Government: Democracy Enhancing or Eviscerating?  122
Populist Government I: Qualified Authoritarianism?  130
The Threshold Issue  134
Populist Government II: Illiberal Democracy?  138
  The Concept of Illiberal Democracy  139
  The Populist Hybrid Regime  145
vi Contents

4. Populism and Constitutionalism  153

Introduction  153
Contesting the Balance between Popular Sovereignty
and Constitutionalism  156
Version 1. Popular Constitutionalism and Populism in Opposition  156
Version 2: Movements and Governments in Populist
Constitutional Replacement  160
Version 3: Constitution Replacement Dominated by Executives:
Peru and Hungary  165
Version 4: Constitutional Politics via Amendment and
Court Packing: Turkey and Poland  169
The Version after: Populist Treatment of New Constitutions  173
Is There a Populist Constitutionalism?  175
Inherited Constitutionalism  178
A New Balance?  178
Constitutional Instrumentalism?  179
Abusive Constitutionalism  179
Political Constitutionalism as Norm?  181
Constitutionalism of the Constituent Power  183
5. Alternatives to Populism  185
Popular, Plural, and Constitutionalist Democracy vs.
Populist Democratic Monism  186
The Popular vs. the Populist  186
Popular Sovereignty  187
From “Thin Ideology” to the Norms of Democracy  190
Toward a New Political Narrative  191
The Constituent Power, Democratic Constitutionalism,
and Consensus Democracy  195
Rescuing (Some of) the Host Ideologies  201
The Welfare Deficit and the Renewal of Social Democracy  202
The Cultural Gap: Status Deficits and the Renewal of Social Solidarity  209
Civil Society and a Dualistic Strategy  214

Notes  221
Bibliography  277
Index  295
 Preface and Acknowledgments

This book was written in 2020—​one of the worst years in our history. A global
health crisis comparable only to the deadly flu pandemic a century ago, a se-
vere economic downturn seriously exacerbating extreme inequality the likes
of which has also not been seen in Western industrialized countries since the
American “gilded age,” and the rise of authoritarian (most of them) populists to
power globally, including in some supposedly consolidated democracies, were
bad enough. Making everything worse was the brazen attempt of a sitting US
president to deny the results of a free and fair election which he lost, through the
technique of the “big lie,” declaring that the election was riddled with fraud, that
he won by a “landslide” (he lost by 7 million votes and a large electoral college
defeat), and then exerting pressure on impartial officials in the states to “find him
votes” and on courts to find in his favor—​i.e., to enable the commission of actual
(and not just falsely claimed) fraud. The culmination came very early in 2021 (on
January 6), when the defeated, lame duck, president fomented an insurrection
to block the peaceful transfer of power, by inviting an armed mob to attack the
Capitol building. That mob penetrated into the halls of Congress and threatened
the lives of congressional representatives, senators, and the vice president. Five
people died in the melee. They interrupted the certification of the election of in-
coming President Biden, a constitutionally mandated but normally pedestrian
process. Happily they failed. The Capitol was cleared of the insurrectionists, and
Biden was indeed certified as the next president of the United States that very
night. But the damage to our democracy was done. Many used to think that such
things as self-​coups or “autogolpes” and armed challenges to elections happen
somewhere else, not in long-​consolidated democracies, and certainly not in the
United States—​the imagined beacon of the peaceful transition of power and
governments. We had better think again and very hard.
That is what this book seeks to do. We take the contemporary challenge of
populism to democracy very seriously, even though we situate this challenge
within instead of outside the democratic imaginary. We realize that what is
needed is analytical clarity, cogent theoretical analysis, political prudence, and
good judgment, but also deep commitment to fighting the populist challenge—​a
fight that can only be won by expanding, not simply restoring, democracy and
justice in our societies. We now know that “it”—​undermining of democracy and
social justice—​can indeed happen here, and everywhere. The goal of this book is
to make a small contribution to help ensure that this challenge does not succeed.
viii Preface and Acknowledgments

To be sure, the preparatory work and earlier versions of some of the chapters
were done well before 2020. Indeed in that respect the book was long in the
making. But because we were both on leave during much of 2020 we were able to
complete the manuscript during this fateful year in somewhat peaceful (and yes
privileged) isolation from the tumult around us. Nevertheless we of course felt,
and still do, deep tension and anxiety for the future caused not only by the pan-
demic but also by the disastrous political developments that have undermined
democracy, East and West, North and South. The contrast with the period in
which we wrote and published our first joint book project, Civil Society and
Political Theory, couldn’t be greater.1 Having participated in the “new social
movements” of the 1960s and 1970s and in the challenge to “really existing” com-
munist dictatorships in Soviet-​type societies in Eastern Europe, it seemed then
that the democratization of democracy (in the United States and the West gener-
ally) and the transition to democracy in the Eastern authoritarian regimes was on
the agenda, thanks to civil society led movements and processes in both arenas.
Thus, we made an attempt to analyze and foster this project, looking to both the
East and the West, in our book. Despite the crisis of welfare states in the 1980s,
the embrace of neo-​liberalism by right-​wing and even some left-​wing parties,
the increased difficulty of maintaining or expanding social democracy in a con-
text of hyper-​globalization, the achievements regarding democratization and
social justice that challenged inequality and destabilized illegitimate social hier-
archies were real. Hence, our optimism and hope, not without reason or founda-
tion. Indeed, there were many successes: the end of the imperialist venture of the
Vietnam war, civil rights improvements, greater equality for women, and even
the rise of green parties in the West; and the fall of Soviet type communism, the
dismantling of the Soviet empire (aka the Soviet Union) in the East, culminating
in autonomy and what looked like transitions to democracy in many of the coun-
tries in Central Eastern Europe. We did not believe in any “end of history” but we
could assume real progress all the same.
Today, the context couldn’t be more different. We write during the culmina-
tion and the aftermath of four years of a right-​wing populist US presidency that
engaged in constant norm breaking regarding democratic procedure and lib-
eral constitutionalism. Propaganda techniques were repeatedly used that openly
rejected truth, engaged in falsehood, and fostered white nationalism and militia
style resistance to the opposition deemed “the enemy” culminating in the insur-
rection against Congress. We are left with images of a Capitol first desecrated
by white supremacist mobs and then surrounded by armed troops that locked
down our capital city in order to ensure a safe inauguration of President Biden.
The fact that so many believed the lies and still seem to support their perpetrator,
indeed his capture of the Republican party (even if the outcome is still unclear),
is deeply disturbing and must be analyzed. Things are hardly more encouraging
 Preface and Acknowledgments ix

with regard to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Instead of further
democratization, in most of the former Soviet empire we have the survival or
emergence of hybrid forms of regimes with a tendency to become fully author-
itarian. Russia and some of the former republics of the USSR are in the lead. In
parts of Central and Eastern Europe, real progress in democratization is being
eviscerated and basically destroyed by populist governments, most obviously in
the case of Hungary, but also in Poland. On the periphery of Europe, in Turkey,
President Erdogan surpasses even the Hungarian Orbán in the undermining of
democracy. In India, a country previously in the vanguard of democratic consti-
tutionalism, a populist prime minister and his party are challenging impressive
historical achievements in the name of ethno-​religious nationalism. And yet, at
the same time, the outcome of the 2020 US election, an event with obvious inter-
national significance, indicates that constitutional democracy can hold and even
recover in the face of populist challenge.
We write this book to try to understand the logic of populism (in its left and
right versions), its link to authoritarianism despite its democratic pretensions
and concessions to liberal democracy, and the underlying causes for its cur-
rent successes in coming to power. We also write it in search of democratic
alternatives, very much needed today. The US drama helps renew our hope that
with enough civil society pressure for greater social justice, and more democ-
racy, with the help of actors in political society (parties) who insist on the observ-
ance of democratic and constitutionalist norms, and with the help of impartial
civil servants in the judiciary and in the state administrations whose professional
integrity and commitment to their oaths of office matter more than politics and
enable them to resist political pressure, democracy can be preserved and democ-
ratized: made more inclusive and responsive to the unmet needs and demands
of groups. But given the severity of the existing threats, optimism is uncalled for.
It will take a great deal of cogent analysis, political prudence, courage, and hard
work to fend off the irresponsible firebrands and political opportunists fueling
the populist threat, on all sides of the political spectrum. For us, two conclusions
follow. First, it is possible to defend democracy, as the new democratic civil and
political society actors have shown in the case of the United States, as has the
impressive integrity of many involved in the legal and administrative systems of
“the state” and the states. And second, defeats of the populist challenge, with its
authoritarian logic, cannot be secure without seriously addressing the democ-
racy, welfare, and cultural deficits of really existing liberal democracies.
We wish to acknowledge and thank those who have helped us bring this work
to fruition. The two authors extensively discussed all of the chapters of this book
before and after drafts were written. As a result, they were extensively revised. We
both are fully responsible for each of the claims, arguments, and conclusions in
the book.
x Preface and Acknowledgments

We received support for this project, individually and jointly by more people
than we can possibly mention here.
Andrew Arato wishes to thank New School colleagues and especially grad-
uate students who have supported him, both domestic and international, and
from whom he is learned a lot concerning all aspects of this topic. I learned a
great deal from the work of older students, now professors, in the area of populist
studies: Carlos de la Torre, Nicolas Lynch, Alberto Olvera, Enrique Peruzzotti,
Martin Plot, Margarita Palacios, Claudia Heiss, and Nicolas Figureoa. De la
Torre was especially kind to include me in two edited volumes: The Promise
and Perils of Populism (2015); and, my article co-​authored with Jean L. Cohen
on “Civil Society, Populism and Religion” in the Routledge Handbook of Global
Populism (2019). In recent years it was from young scholars in particular, from
Mexico, Argentina, Turkey, Iran, and India, like Melissa Amezcua, Emanuel
Guerisoli, Nuri Can Akin, Bahareh Ebne Alian, Arya Vaghayenegar, and
Udeepta Chakravarty that I have learned the most. Among the faculty I would
single out Richard Bernstein, Dmitri Nikulin, Andreas Kalyvas, Federico
Finchelstein, Chiara Bottici, Omri Boehm, Benoit Challand, Carlos Forment, Eli
Zaretsky, and provocative debating partner Nancy Fraser for their support. As
to institutions, and their leaders, I am especially grateful to Hector Raul Solis
Gadea, rector at the University of Guadalajara for repeatedly inviting me to the
Guadalajara Book Fair and to the Center of Social Sciences (2013–​2014) he led,
along with Jochen Kemner and the CALAS program at the same university and
in Costa Rica in 2018 and 2019, who have given me a fellowship and invited me
to lecture. I am grateful to Michael Ignatieff and Zoltán Miklósi for inviting me
for three lectures at the Central European University in Budapest, 2018, 2019,
and 2021, and similarly Paul Blokker and Gábor Attila Tóth at the University
of Trento. I thank Gábor Halmai for twice sponsoring me, the second time as
a senior Fernand Braudel fellow, at the European University Institute (EUI) in
Florence, and allowing me to learn from him in matters constitutional. Finally,
I thank Silvia von Steinsdorff and Ertug Tombus for inviting me to a conference
at Humboldt University in Berlin in 2018 and the organizers at the Center for the
Humanities and Social Change at the same university who invited me as a vis-
iting fellow during the summer of 2019.
Jean L. Cohen would like to thank Columbia University for its generous leave
policy enabling her to research and write this book. I would also like to thank
the European University Institute for awarding me a Fernand Braudel Senior
Fellowship in 2020 for which I prepared several lectures on populism despite the
fact that due to the pandemic I was unable to go to Florence, Italy, to deliver the
talks. As I write, the plan is to do so in May 2021, if possible. I am grateful to Rahel
Jaeggi for inviting me to be a senior fellow at the Center for the Humanities and
Social Change, at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, during the summer of
 Preface and Acknowledgments xi

2019, where I delivered lectures and participated in panels on populism in addi-

tion to teaching in the summer school. Of course, I am grateful to my students
who have participated in my courses on populism over the past five years. Their
insights and the high level of discussion that always occurs in both graduate and
undergraduate courses at Columbia helped me clarify my own ideas. The same
is true of the conferences where I lectured both abroad and in the United States
Again I thank Columbia University for sponsoring several conferences
I organized and lectured in on populism. These include the 2017 conference on
populism and religion I co-​organized with Alexander Stille, for which I thank
the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL), the School of
Journalism and the Department of Political Science; the journal Constellations
25th Anniversary Conference Democracy in an Age of Crisis: (co-​organized by
myself, Andreas Kalyvas, and Amy Allen) for which I also thank the Columbia
University Department of Political Science, and the Center for Critical Theory
at Columbia Law School and The New School, for co-​sponsoring. Amongst the
many conferences to which I was invited to speak on populism I would like to
thank the organizers of the 2019 panel on populism and religion at Sciences
Po in Paris (Julie Saada and Astrid von Busekist); the organizers of the 2019
CSPT (Conference for the Study of Political Thought), “Parties, Partisans and
Movements,” held at Yale University for including me amongst the paper givers;
Ertug Tombus, Jan Werner Muller, Anna Bettin Kaiser, and Sylvia von Steinsdorff
for inviting me to speak on populism and the politics of resentment at the 2018
conference at Humboldt University in Berlin; Andreas Kalyvas for inviting me to
speak on the panel “Populism” at The New School in 2017; and Artemy Magun
of the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, for inviting me to the con-
ference Civil Society in the XXI Century in Spring 2017, held at the Smolny
Institute, Petersburg, where I spoke on populism, civil society, and religion.
The introduction of this book draws on Andrew Arato, “Political theology
and populism,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 80.1 (2013) and our
joint article “Civil Society, Populism and Religion,” Constellations 24.3 (2017).
Chapters 1 and 4 draw on Andrew Arato’s “Populism, Constitutional Courts,
and Civil Society,” in C. Landfried ed., Judicial Power. How Constitutional Courts
Affect Political Transformations (2019) and “How We Got Here? Transition
Failures, Their Causes and the Populist Interest in the Constitution,” Philosophy
& Social Criticism 45.9–​10 (2019). Chapter 2 draws on Jean L. Cohen’s “Hollow
Parties and their Movement-​ization: The Populist Conundrum,” Philosophy and
Social Criticism 45.9–​10 (2019). The introduction and Chapter 5 also draw on
Jean L. Cohen’s “Populism and the Politics of Resentment,” Jus Cogens 1.1 (2019).
Chapter 3 draws on her “What’s Wrong with the Normative Theory (and the
Actual Practice) of Left Populism,” Constellations, 26.3 (2019).
 Introduction: Defining Populism

Why publish another book on contemporary populism in an already increas-

ingly crowded scholarly field? As authors of several works on civil society, au-
thoritarian regimes, sovereignty, and democratization, we believe that on many
relevant issues we have new things to say, with more grounding theoretically
than most works on the subject. Indeed, we think that the tradition of critical
theory is not yet represented in the growing literature on contemporary pop-
ulism, amazingly enough given the early interest in authoritarian forms of the
founders of the critical theory tradition, and the later important work of the
second generation concerning the public sphere and the changing structure of
capitalism. We aim to fill this gap. More importantly, most existing works have
paid little attention to the subject of democratic alternatives to populist politics.
At best, many have assumed or even argued that the only alternative is to defend
liberal democracy as it is or to return to this form as it was. Others like Ernesto
Laclau, much more questionably, strongly imply, if never fully claim, that the al-
ternative must be a complete replacement of liberal dimensions of representative
democracy. We agree with neither of these options. All our chapters will be con-
cerned with the problem of the democratization of democracy1 and several will
consider alternatives under headings such as the expansion of the political role
of civil society and the reconstruction of social democracy. As critical theorists,
we believe that liberal democracy is by its nature an unfinished and incomplete
project. Accordingly, the contemporary halting or even reversal of its democratic
expansion plays a key role in opening the terrain to populist challenge in its var-
ious forms.
Thus the political reasons for writing our book are distinct. We doubt that,
even in the relatively short run, liberal democracy can be successfully defended
by a conservative relation to its contemporary forms, i.e., based on a desired
return to liberal parliamentarism or presidentialism as they were in the past.
Almost everywhere these are under strain, whether because of internal oligar-
chic tendencies of representative systems, the decline of party representation, or
strong external constraints, due to globalized capitalism, on the ability of dem-
ocratic states to deliver improvements of social welfare or equal life chances to
populations.2 We also do not believe that populism in any of its forms can suc-
cessfully address what we will call three deficits: those of democracy, welfare,
and social solidarity. We will argue, and hopefully show, that the very logic of
2 Populism and Civil Society

populism, as we define it and as it exists today in both left and right variants,
points to political authoritarianism and inconsistent, arbitrary, poorly thought
out, or clientelistic economic and social policies even where, empirically, various
tendencies, including populism’s organizational forms that we will note, produce
countervailing tendencies.3 Furthermore, as in the case of liberal democracy that
we wish to defend through its further democratization, we do not wish to deny
that contemporary populism has a point that should be taken seriously. This we
see in its critical dimension, especially in the early phase when populism is a
movement in civil society. Thus our attitude to both liberal democracy and pop-
ulism is that of immanent criticism:4 in one case we wish to defend the counter-
factual norms against existing forms of institutionalization and in the other the
critical dimension against strong authoritarian tendencies that are almost always
fully evident when populism achieves political power. Our perspective therefore
is to learn from the crises of liberal democracy, of which populism is perhaps the
most important if not the only symptom, and to begin to outline alternatives to
both liberal conservatism (represented even by many recent forms of social de-
mocracy) and populist authoritarianism.
This introduction consists of five sections. First, we will consider the method-
ological tools needed to define the phenomenon of populism. Next, we generate
a preliminary definition of the topos through an immanent critique of Ernest’s
Laclau’s theory of the same. This will be followed by an attempted correction of
the first results through ideal typical construction using three empirically de-
rived criteria: reliance on elections, orientation to constitutional politics, and
the utilization of “host ideologies” that are present in virtually all contemporary
populisms if they become politically relevant or successful. After having pro-
duced an expanded middle-​range definition, that in our view leads to the dis-
tinct populist logic, we consider four organization forms populism can take that
should not be seen as an inevitable stage model: mobilization, party, govern-
ment, and regime. We end the introduction with our plan for the five chapters
of the book.

What Is Populism? How to Define the Phenomenon

Almost everyone acknowledges that populism is a contested and often polemical

concept and given the many historical and now ideological forms that have been
listed under this term, the great difficulty involved in coming up with a definition
that includes neither too much nor too little. There is today a certain conver-
gence among attempts to minimally identify the phenomenon, but this in itself
does not produce sufficient conceptual clarity.
 Introduction 3

In previous writings, we have relied on two methodologies to help define

populism: immanent critique and ideal typical construction. As for the first,
following above all Marx’s critique of political economy, we select the best af-
firmative or ideological theory of a social phenomenon and try to use its main
components to develop a new theory that both uncovers dimensions suppressed
by the original (“defetishization”) or confronts their normative assumptions with
their false realization (“immanent critique of ideology”). Here we have an easier
time than Marx, since in his case there were many significant theories of the
emerging capitalist economy among which he had to choose the best, according
to his judgment and background historical knowledge. In our case populism,
whether of the right or the left, seems to have lacked many significant affirma-
tive theorists.5 Fortunately, Ernesto Laclau’s work,6 and the related but different
studies of Margaret Canovan and Chantal Mouffe, fill this theoretical or ideolog-
ical lacuna.
It is important for us, insofar as we have always been very critical of popu-
lism in light of its supposed authoritarian tendencies, that Laclau, Mouffe, and
Canovan all affirm populist politics, if in three different ways, as a significant
radical democratic alternative. Our study too is committed to the values of dem-
ocratic politics, and we study populism with the background assumption, based
on cases, that it represents a challenge and even a danger to these very values.
We do not however wish to presuppose authoritarianism on a definitional level.
Building our definition on elements derived from Ernesto Laclau first and fore-
most, should protect us against the charge of tautology based on normative
commitments. Only if our critical treatment can uncover, on the level of ar-
gumentation, the presence of an authoritarian logic that can be demonstrated
in terms of most relevant cases, will we be justified in rejecting the democratic
claims these authors repeatedly make.
Especially Laclau and Mouffe, but also Canovan, open themselves to a critique
resembling defetishization, by systematically suppressing the key dimension of
populism in governmental power, which must be recovered to understand the
telos or “the logic” of the phenomenon better and more deeply. When this is
done, the way is open to the critique of ideology. The democratic norms of pop-
ulist theorists, which seem to be implicit in their critique of really existing liberal
democracies, can and should be confronted with the strongly authoritarian ten-
dencies of populist governments and regimes, already decipherable in populist
movements.
The second methodological move we undertake is more dependent on Max
Weber than Karl Marx. Like Weber, we do not endorse Marx’s Hegelian confi-
dence in grasping the essence of the phenomenon in a relatively few develop-
mental elements. Aided by the historical experience of many cases, and their best
4 Populism and Civil Society

recent analyses, we can both re-​emphasize those elements from the criticized
ideologies that yield a coherent picture of the phenomenon and add to them if
it turns out that the immanent criticism of populist theory and ideology left out
important dimensions of the phenomenon. Such omissions are likely because
Laclau, being mainly a philosopher, has neglected social scientific as well as his-
torical treatments of the phenomenon.7 The resulting combination then must
again be tested against both theoretical explorations of origins and causes, as well
as the history and tendencies of significant contemporary phenomena often re-
ferred to as “populist.”
We know, as did Weber, that empirical cases cannot be understood at all
without the construction of ideal typical concepts of interpretation, but also
that historical experience will rarely fully correspond to the conceptual type.
Nevertheless, we do not believe that the selection of cases so interpreted can
take place in a value-​free manner. For us, the value that guides our effort is a
commitment to political democracy, to liberal democracy as a developmental
form, leading us to select those cases where this value has become an impor-
tant stake in the struggle, whether electoral or on the level of opposing social
movements in civil society. It is this relation to value (Weber’s Wertbeziehung)
combined with historical knowledge of different contexts that will be essential
if the set of types we construct is not to have so few elements as to include too
many cases8 and thus risk losing the distinction between populist and popular
politics, nor too many and thus exclude important ones where democracy is
under challenge.

What Is Populism: Immanent Critique

Everyone will agree with the statement that populism is a political phenomenon.
Yet how to distinguish it from other political projects? The literature seems to
suggest four types of answers: as a strategy, as a style, as a set of organized ideas,
or as a discourse, in each version leading to a political logic, whether authori-
tarian or democratic in the view of specific analysts.9 Immanent critique is meth-
odologically linked to discourses, and it is here that we must therefore begin. It
is discursive elements that are stressed by Laclau and the so-​called Essex School.
Following Laclau, we must understand discourse as involving both language and
action, the predominance of one or the other depending on context and populist
actors. We note that populists can but often do not call themselves by this name,
and can self-​define according to other ideological borrowings (such host ideolo-
gies are discussed further later in the chapter).
 Introduction 5

Our critique of Laclau’s text and its theoretical foundations in the work of Carl
Schmitt has been carried out elsewhere,10 thus here we can restrict ourselves to
the list of the main elements of populism derived from Laclau’s and partially
Canovan’s complementary work:

1. An appeal to popular sovereignty as the fundamental norm violated by ex-

isting institutions whether liberal democratic or authoritarian.11
2. The rhetorical or ideologically thin construction of the empty signifier of
the people in such a way as to construct chains of imagined “equivalence”
among a wide heterogeneity of demands, grievances, and constituencies.12
3. The symbolic representation13 of the whole of this construct by a mobi-
lized part.14
4. The embodiment even of this part in a single charismatic leader, with
whom the mobilized part of the population has a highly emotional
relationship.15
5. The construction of a friend–​enemy dichotomy16 (“the frontier of antag-
onism”17) between the people so defined and its “other” that is seen as the
establishment in power along with its beneficiaries and allies, both internal
and external.18
6. The insistence on a strong notion of politics or “the political” along with a
disinterest in mere “ordinary” politics or policy; this understanding of pol-
itics, often articulated in terms of the constituent (vs. “constituted”) power,
is based on will rather than social process as rationally understood.

We should stress from the outset, that each of these elements may and do ap-
pear in other political projects. It is the combination that is populist, in Laclau’s
understanding, and, as we will try to show, authoritarian in its logic.19 He has
strong though hardly incontrovertible arguments linking the six dimensions.
Popular sovereignty (element 1) as the fundamental norm cannot be politi-
cally relevant without the construction first and identification second of the
subject whose sovereignty is at stake, “the people.” Given societal plurality and
heterogeneity, the subject can be only discursively constructed, by a rhetorical
chain that equalizes various demands and injuries, a chain of equivalences (el-
ement 2). Mere rhetoric focusing on equality is however too weak to unify “the
friend” without the simultaneous construction (and “demonization”) of the
antagonist, “the enemy,” and of “the frontier of antagonism” (element 5). Only
then by a combination of inclusion and exclusion can the subject, the genuine
people, be identified. By its very nature given prior heterogeneity and new an-
tagonism it will only be a part of the population (element 3). Even that part
will be too large to speak and to act in a unified manner spontaneously. Thus
6 Populism and Civil Society

embodiment in a leader is needed (element 4), a single one if disunity is not to

re-​appear in a collegium on top, and a charismatic one if it is to be able to gain
recognition from “the bottom,” the mobilized grassroots of the part. Finally,
fundamental antagonism is not only to enemy actors but to the system created
and dominated by them, often called “the establishment.” Thus (element 6),
the stress on the political (le politique), the foundational, or the constituent
power follows from the rest, dominated by the imagery of the united people
led by and embodied in a charismatic leader. Admittedly, it does not follow
that populists should be as disinterested in ordinary politics (la politique) as is
Laclau, but if so interested it would have to be for instrumental reasons. But it
does follow that the constituent power should not be a one-​time act exhausted
by a constitution, but a permanent possibility often exercised even under a new
constitution.20
It is important for theoretical reasons to stress the combination of the elem-
ents in the definition. In our view some of them can exist apart from populism
under alternative interpretations. Meeting one or two of the criteria here, like the
related stresses on popular sovereignty (1) and the constituent power (6), may be
positive characteristics of democratic politics in other respects strongly opposed
to populism, charismatic embodiment, and friend–​enemy antagonism. Almost
all versions of constitutional democracy allow and even promote popular (vs.
populist) leadership and leave room for the constituent power of citizens, which
can however be exercised in highly democratic ways involving pluralism and
self-​limitation.21 Even the very common discourse referring to “the people”
(2) can be harmless or rhetorically productive if understood as a plurality rather
than a unified subject. It is its being combined with (3), (4), and (5), represen-
tation of the whole by a part, embodiment in a charismatic leader, and friend–​
enemy relations that leads to the populist interpretation of these dimensions,
which are capable of alternative democratic interpretations.
Probably, many relevant cases will miss one of the elements: (1) and (6) are
the most likely candidates, based on empirical experience, though some argue
that charismatic leadership can also be dispensed with.22 It is the combination
of (3) part for the whole dialectic, (4) embodiment, and (5) friend–​enemy jux-
taposition that is most central, and for some it may be enough for a “minimal
definition”23 usable for today’s main cases. But, logically, they need the scaf-
folding of a “thin ideology” rooted in the deep-​seated imaginary of the dem-
ocratic age to be persuasive, and, at the very least when radically challenging
the existing system, the idea of re-​foundation or appeal to the constituent
power is almost always implied.24 Certainly the logic of populism is inherent
in this combination. There is however also the question of which elements are
stressed in a given case, and this will vary depending in particular on whether
 Introduction 7

the examined phase of populism is that of a movement, government, or regime.

Thus element 1, leading to a critique of existing democracies, will be strongest
in the movement phase, while the insistence on foundation and re-​foundation
may be the strongest when a populist government encounters or discovers the
need to form a new regime.

What Is Populism: Construction of the Ideal Type

Even if the six elements derived from Laclau have internal relations more
common to structural analyses, they also yield an ideal typical construction.
As such they raise two methodological questions from the point of view of em-
pirical social science: are there too many elements here to include all relevant
cases today and in history, and conversely are there very important regularities
that are not yet included? The first objection represents the point of view of Cas
Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, who strongly advocate a minimal definition,25
and is implicitly present in many interpreters own attempts, whether they stress
discourse, ideology, or strategy as the key to populism. These interpreters are
not entirely wrong, a construct with too many components would include too
few cases, tendentially only a single historical case.26 Social science, unlike his-
toriography, needs to be comparative and must analyze both the similarities and
differences of many cases. At the same time, there are strong theoretical and
normative-​political objections to the proposal of minimalism. By excluding
the leader embodying the whole and the part/​whole problem, Mudde and
Kaltwasser neglect the deep internal connection of these elements to what they
stress, namely to fundamental antagonism and speaking in the name of the ge-
neral will. Furthermore, too few criteria would necessarily lead to the inclusion
of too many cases, thus compromising the important differences between what
has been called pre-​populism, classical, and contemporary forms. More impor-
tantly, on the level of politics many grassroots democratic forms would be in-
cluded, thus losing the possibility of distinguishing between the popular and the
populist. Yes, it may be necessary to distinguish (if possible) within populisms of
grassroots vs. top down origins,27 but even then it takes a consideration of other
criteria beyond what minimalism can provide to discover the different and even
contrary logics between populism from below and non-​populist democratic
mobilizations in civil society.28
This brings us to the second possible objection to some definitions, namely
of leaving out too much that may be fundamental. Here alternative minimalist
explanations speak against one another, and necessarily so. Since some focus on
discourse generally or ideology and even style more narrowly, while others on
8 Populism and Civil Society

strategy and practice, we have the right to ask whether any of these dimensions
should be neglected by either side, and why a combination of discourse, ideology,
style, strategy, and logic should not be preferable. This is also an objection against
Laclau and our list of elements derived from him, because even if his notion of
discourse includes practice, it does not include strategy of coming to power.29 All
politics whether “normal” or “extraordinary” (“the political”)30 has a strategic
dimension, aiming at the weakening of the hold of rivals on power and/​or dis-
placing them. The strategic dimension of populism has been defined variously.
According to Kurt Weyland, populism is best defined “as a political strategy
through which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government power based
on direct, unmediated, un-​institutionalized support from a large number of
mostly unorganized followers.”31 This too is a fairly minimal definition, whose
most important component is mobilization in the service of attaining or keeping
power. Yet, by excluding this dimension, the question of populism installed
in power does not even come up for Laclau, strangely enough, in spite of his
documented interest in advising and supporting populists in power, whether the
Kirchners or Chavez.32 The strategic dimension will be important for us in three
forms of power: party, government, and regime.33 Yet, minimal definitions based
on strategy or insistence on style34 may occlude the difference between populism
and other political forms: fascism in the case of strategy and mass cultural de-
mocracy in the case of (media) style. Thus advocates of the strategic conception,
like Kenneth Roberts, criticize minimalist self-​limitation for blurring the dis-
tinction between populism and other forms of social and political mobilization.
His own definition (or one of them) of populism as an “appeal to popular sover-
eignty where political authority is widely deemed to be detached, unrepresent-
ative or unaccountable to the common people”35 is itself fairly minimal even if
complemented elsewhere by focusing on mobilization achieved through an anti-​
elite, anti-​establishment discourse. Nevertheless, the introduction of versions of
the strategic conception in a field dominated by discursive and ideational models
points us well beyond any version of minimalism.36
Thus the second objection, applicable to our own scheme derived from
Laclau, of leaving out too much, can only be answered by a full survey of the
literature that we cannot undertake, given its exponential growth even as we
write. So we focus on two additions, both related to the strategic dimension,
that at the very least can be seen as ultimately instrumental.37 One is the elec-
toral aspect linked also to constitutional politics, the other is the need for what
has been called host ideologies. Together these allow the differentiation of pop-
ulism from authoritarian doctrines of the past (and possibly the future). The
stress on host ideologies will also help to conceptualize the internal differences
among populisms.
 Introduction 9

Undoubtedly, the insistence of contemporary populisms on competitive

elections as roads to power and as a practice in power is one key element and
sign that differentiates these from classical forms of authoritarian politics. While
it may be possible to derive the electoral demand from the notion of popular
sovereignty, we have to stress that the latter notion together with charismatic em-
bodiment, friend–​enemy relations, and part–​whole representation (that could
take symbolic rather than accountable forms) may do without electoral claims
and justifications. Laclau indeed adopts the notion of symbolic representation
from Hanna Pitkin’s list and nowhere stresses leaders exposing themselves to
tests (Manin’s “retrospective judgment”), or in her language “giving account.”38
Nevertheless, Federico Finchelstein is right, along with several others, in claiming
that the major distinction of populism from fascism since Peron at least lies in
this dimension.39 In his historical reconstruction, Finchelstein rightly attributes
populist self-​differentiation to the strong post–​World War II international taboos
against fascist extreme violence. Thus, according to him, leaders and parties with
clearly fascist origins, like Peron in Argentina and the Front National in France,
were able to redefine themselves in more benign terms by insisting on replacing
(at least partially!) collective violence by electoral competition.
The stress on the importance of elections for populism in acquiring and staying
in power, should be complemented by an even more surprising insistence on
constitutional politics, whether in the form of writing, amending, or interpreting
written constitutions. The stress is surprising, given the great emphasis of
populists on popular sovereignty, embodied in a leader or a government, and the
general hostility to constitutional restraints and limitations. It is however logi-
cally clear that elections with some competitive elements, even referenda, require
prior rules for their procedures, even if they may be violated in practice. Such
rules presuppose constitutions at least in the minimal sense that can be provided
by statutes or executive decrees. In general however the legitimacy of elections
and referenda, both domestic and international, requires written constitutional
and (materially constitutional!) electoral rules also under populist governments.
Here the difference to fascism is most striking,40 but populists are also very dif-
ferent from communist regimes to whom constitutions were a mere façade,
hiding rather than revealing the actual maps of power.41 Populist constitutions
are real power maps, “nominal constitutions” with the proviso that ultimately
they leave a great deal of discretionary space to the popular will embodied in the
government that can easily change or by-​pass the formal rules in either emergen-
cies or episodes of constitution amending or replacement.
Populism need not break with all the characteristics of fascism, but there
must be a break that has visible marks or characteristics. Constitutional poli-
tics represents one such visible break. As we have seen, Finchelstein stresses the
10 Populism and Civil Society

rejection of extreme violence as complementary to the affirmation of elections,

in principle non-​violent forms of attaining and keeping power. Given the his-
tory of communist state terrorism and repression and the reduction of elections
to empty rituals, the same can be said, in our view, concerning the difference
with communism. The shift goes both ways. We need to understand the two
“totalitarian” forms as different from populisms in spite of their anticipations
of several of the dimensions of the conception we rely on: charismatic leader-
ship, friend–​enemy relations, part–​whole dialectic, and the implicit though not
explicit reliance on constituent power. Yes, even their forms of discourse often
sounded very populist indeed, as can be explicitly seen in the case of Mao.42
The fiction of the nation could be said to be a substitute for that of the people
and class could be explicitly complemented by references to the working people,
sometimes just “the people.”43 Both fascism and communism have used elec-
toral competition and tactics under the protections of inherited constitutions
before coming to power, which however always involved revolutionary or re-
gime changing results if not legal ruptures. Yet populisms too often claim to
have come to power in “legal” revolutions (Orbán’s revolution of the voting
booth; Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution) a term that is also relevant to the rise
of Mussolini and Hitler to power.44 While in the case of the Communists rev-
olutionary breaks or coups d’état were required, if we can speak of coups in the
populist victories, these are generally hidden by formal rule following or at least
validation by apex courts (Peron and Fujimori represent exceptions). What is
important here however is that both fascism and communism, once in power,
completely eliminate genuine electoral competition. Populisms on the other
hand not only maintain, almost without exception, the institution of at least
partially competitive elections but have in many cases dramatically increased
their frequency in several forms, ordinary and extraordinary, including but not
limited to plebiscites and referenda.45
Not only possibly reluctant rejections of fascism and communism or
concessions to liberal democracy are involved. Here the reference to a par-
ticular interpretation of popular sovereignty, in terms of embodiment of the
people’s will in the leader, may be helpful. As Max Weber has insisted, charisma
is a highly vulnerable form of legitimacy, but can be shored up under modern
conditions by plebiscitary acclamation that represents a sort of asymmetric dia-
logue between leaders and followers. Coupled with popular sovereignty claims,
the followers have to be expanded to a sufficiently large number to be able to
plausibly speak in the name of the people. Even demonstrations have limits in
terms of numbers. Here is the origin and reason of the populist preference for
plebiscites and referenda, where a numerical popular majority can be achieved.
Populisms are always majoritarian, as they have to be in divided and plural
societies where there is neither unity nor a single voice of the people.46 Yet
 Introduction 11

populisms are also monist insofar as the people and their will is perforce unified
and embodied in a leader (charismatic or not) who incarnates their supposed
unity. Elections, even ordinary ones, are the solution to the apparent contradic-
tion. They turn the voice of the majority, however structured, into plebiscites
on individual leaders, rather than votes on alternative programs or past per-
formance, allowing those leaders to claim their identity with the people and
their will.47 Populism in other words does not abolish but decisively transforms
elections.
There is of course a risk. Completely free and fair elections can be lost, even by
a popular and charismatic leader, as Indira Gandhi found out in 1977 against her
expectations. There are however ways to diminish the risk, by limiting competing
parties, reducing the freedom of the press, attacking civil society institutions,
manipulating electoral rules to produce incumbent advantage, controlling elec-
toral commissions and eliminating exit polling, and even (as in Turkey recently)
changing the constitution from a parliamentary to a presidential one, since di-
rect elections of the head of state and government increases the plebiscitary di-
mension. While all populist incumbents engage in some of these tactics, it may
be difficult to find the threshold where elections are no longer competitive. Even
the term competitive authoritarianism refers to such a hybrid situation, with the
genus being authoritarian, and the differentia competitive.48 What is certain is
that populism, whether emerging from below, or much more likely from above,49
seeks to develop and maintain what has been called “plebiscitary linkage” at the
expense of genuine political competition that is however difficult to eliminate,
because plebiscitary legitimacy itself requires constant testing and refurbishing.
It is however generally easier to prevail in elections than to produce the results
that plebiscitary leaders almost always promise, generally without the ability to
deliver. Elections thus can be ways of avoiding rather than testing accountability.
Therefore, stress on competitive elections, absent in the neo-​Bolshevik vision of
Laclau, but present in the work of Mouffe, should be added to the criteria devel-
oped here, as the seventh defining feature.50
Thus while historically and at times biographically related (e.g., in the cases of
Peron and Le Pen), once in power populism and fascism and populism and com-
munism can be differentiated most visibly by the electoral criterion. Given that
all these political forms can use elections to come to power, even more impor-
tant in our view is the ideological difference. In our definition the construction
of a chain of equivalence reliant on embodiment and intense antagonism yields
only what has been called a “thin ideology.”51 Fascism and communism possess
well-​developed, “thick” ideologies linked to normative visions of the good so-
ciety, philosophies of history, sociological strata, and geo-​political threats. Here
lies one reason for their mobilizational potential in their movement phase that
is not compromised by lost elections, nor does it require elections at all in the
12 Populism and Civil Society

governmental phase. The asymmetrical dialogue between leader and led is not
only charismatic but also ideological. Populism, to compensate, not only needs
electoral success but, as it has been well shown by Mudde and Kaltwasser, ideo-
logical alliances, host ideologies, without however transforming itself into purely
ideological movement or ideocratic rule. Being able to flexibly draw on host
ideologies, switching between them, even eclectically combining them is an im-
portant advantage of populist leaders and politics.
The conception of host ideologies also helps us differentiate among
populisms, those on the left, the right, and even those that deny the distinction
and eclectically draw on both traditions. Left and right populisms can of course
be distinguished under our criterion 5, according to who is defined as the
enemy: the country’s elites (“establishment”; oligarchy) only or also an under-​
class, racial, religious, ethnic, or immigrant. But to exclude any of the latter
from the people is difficult to justify under an empty signifier, constructed by
a chain of supposed equivalences, in other words a thin ideology. Thus the idea
of a host ideology is an important contribution to both the internal differenti-
ation of populisms and the understanding of their motivational power.52 Here
too the historical link to fascism and authoritarian socialism again becomes ev-
ident, since ethno or cultural nationalism on the right and state socialism on
the left are the most important host ideologies, at least so far. But these are not
the only hosts possible. Religion too can play this role, mostly on the right, but
sometimes on the left,53 and as Chantal Mouffe’s recent work reveals, so can
imaginably liberal democracy understood as an ideology, rather than a set of
political procedures or even the enactment of enforceable civil or social rights.54
Social democracy and neo-​liberalism too can become hosts as we have seen in
Latin America after World War II, for the first, and in the 1990s for the second.
As these examples indicate, there are always possible tensions between host and
parasite, most obvious in the case of populist attempts to rely on liberal democ-
racy, which lead to serious internal contradictions with the whole ideal type
derived from Laclau.55
The need to rely on host ideologies, some of which are evidently well devel-
oped and “thick,” does not vitiate the consequences of ideological thinness.
Assuming that there is always a need for a host, something Laclau does not ex-
plicitly admit, he is very clear,56 clearer than most populists, that it is relatively
easy to “float” in effect from one host to another. This is his very important theory
of the floating signifier that asserts the instability of a name like “the people” or
“the revolution” or even “the nation” allowing political shifts from one political
leadership to another, from one construction of the enemy to another, as his
example of the relation of communist electorate to the supporters of the Front
National in France (renamed in June 2018 as the Rassemblement Nationale by
 Introduction 13

Marine le Pen) indicates. Populism has no developed normative theory, no phi-

losophy of history, no strong sociological anchoring in a class, and thus Laclau is
forced to imply that it will be highly contingent factors like charisma and rhetoric
(and perhaps the psychology of disappointment?) that will decide whether there
is floating or not in societies where there are many actual or potential political
actors. If his intention in developing the notion of the floating signifier was to
promote floating from right to left, or to block the reverse, he conspicuously fails
to provide a theory for how either is to be accomplished.
We are ready to present a second version of our ideal typical definition of
populism, the first having been the result of our immanent critique of Laclau’s
reconstruction of the populist construct of the people. Here that version is
supplemented by three key additions: the stress on a common strategic dimen-
sion, the inclusion of the need for host ideologies, and the need for electoral self-​
justification. Accordingly, in a somewhat reduced version:

1. Populism is a strategy of political mobilization for attaining or retaining,

or at the very least strongly influencing, governmental power, by an
appeal to popular sovereignty as the fundamental norm said to be vio-
lated by existing or previous institutions whether liberal democratic or
authoritarian;
2. By the rhetorical or ideologically thin construction of the empty signifier of
the people in such a way as to construct “chains” of imagined “equivalence”
among a wide heterogeneity of demands, grievances, and constituencies—​
to succeed, reliance on almost any available “thick” ideology as “host,”
whether nationalism, socialism, religion or neo-​liberalism is required.
3. By the symbolic representation of the whole of “the people” by a mobi-
lized part.
4. By the embodiment even of this part, typically in a single charismatic leader
with whom the mobilized part of the population has a highly emotional re-
lationship and interaction.
5. By the construction of a friend–​enemy dichotomy57 (“the frontier of an-
tagonism”58) between the people so defined and its “other” seen as the es-
tablishment in power along with its beneficiaries and allies, internal and
external.59
6. By insistence on a strong notion of politics, or “the political,” and a disin-
terest in mere “ordinary” politics or policy, which understanding of poli-
tics, often articulated in terms of the constituent (vs. “constituted”) power,
is based on will rather than social process as rationally understood.
7. By valorizing and maintaining electoral competition (elections, referenda,
plebiscites) or its plausible appearance.
14 Populism and Civil Society

Different Populisms: Mobilization,

Party, Government, and Regime

The ideal typical definition cannot disguise the existence of different populisms
as revealed by the “attaining or retaining” of element 1, the variety of possible
host ideologies of 2, the possibility of different types (and number) of enemies
in 5, and the difference between competitive elections and their appearance in
7. The most common differentiation in the literature is between populism of the
left and the right, which pertains to two issues: the choice of enemy and that of
a host ideology. Being left or right in terms of one of these criteria however does
not automatically imply the other, and we have now seen in France for example
a populism with two enemies, the “elite” and the immigrant subalterns, com-
bined with a strong defense of the welfare state at least as far as “genuine French”
citizens are concerned. Alberto Fujimori’s populism, conversely, combined a
neo-​liberal economic strategy with appeals to the people including and even es-
pecially subaltern strata. Moreover, the fact of “floating” stressed by Laclau, the
claim of many populists of being beyond traditional political distinctions, and
the common eclectic borrowings from both traditions makes grouping between
left and right populisms very difficult, if politically almost unavoidable.
There are important interpreters who attempt to differentiate various
populisms on the bases of origins: mobilization from below and mobilization
from above.60 Even if we add a third possible origin, the in-​between level of po-
litical parties, there are problems also with this form of making the distinction.
First, there is a debate on whether genuine populism should include both or all
three forms. We think it should include both forms of mobilization, as long as
the main criteria of our definition, its discursive and strategic dimensions are
satisfied. But, more importantly, if the distinction between left and right has be-
come difficult in the case of many populisms, the same is true for the question
of origins: whether a populism emerges from the grassroots or from a power
position above. While there may be cases of pure mobilization from either below
or, more commonly, above, in most significant cases both will be involved. One
might imagine a sequence between initial mobilization from below, followed by
expansion led by parties, governments, or both. The sequence then would be
movement (or: mobilization), party, government, and regime.61 A movement
would then come first, followed by party formation, and then assuming electoral
victory, a populist government. Finally, only a populist government is in the po-
sition to create a new regime while keeping the populist discourse, first a hybrid
one and then, at least potentially, an outright authoritarian regime, possibly in
new historical forms.
In reality the process can start from above or from the in-​between level.
An initial, independent movement stage rarely emerges, while mobilization
 Introduction 15

resembling movement forms can be created by an already existing party, as with

the FN or now RN in France and FIDESZ in Hungary, or by a government, as
in the case of Chavismo in Venezuela. This is why we now prefer to speak about
populism as mobilization rather than movement. We do not dismiss the pos-
sibility of genuine self-​mobilization from below, but insist that this “stage” can
be skipped altogether. More rarely, the same can be said about even a party, at
least in presidential settings like Peru and Ecuador, where a charismatic figure
could win election without a genuine, organized party. And, assuming coming to
power through rupture like a coup d’état, a party or a movement leader can im-
mediately begin the construction of a hybrid populist regime without having to
put up with the conflicts of other branches and constitutional safeguards.
In a word, origins help us to understand the nature and specific type of the
populist challenge but do not provide clear enough distinction among forms of
populism. But they do fortunately call our attention to the different organiza-
tional forms that give us better clues to the logic of differentiation. A grassroots
movement or even a mobilization that resembles its forms are different from
an electorally organized party, and the possession of one or another power of
government in a liberal democratic regime is different from the occupation of
all power institutions in hybrid and authoritarian regimes. A movement type
of organization that even mobilization from above often mimics is a relatively
loose network of mobilized or mobilizable individuals, who may participate
for heterogeneous reasons. Whether emerging from below or created from
above, movements can have very different components ideologically and nor-
matively. What unites them are rhetorics or narratives that always involve op-
position to an antagonist whether itself a movement, a party, or a government.
All populism involves a critique of established political forms, but this crit-
ical dimension especially of liberal democracy (or: oligarchy) is particularly
strong in populist mobilization. We leave political parties and their definition
for later discussion, but note here only the obvious dimensions of greater or-
ganizational coherence, the maintenance of greater discursive uniformity than
movements, and in particular the defining role of strategy for attaining power,
generally through elections but possibly in preparation for a coup or a “rev-
olution.” The strategic orientation that is more important than the discursive
one for parties, is even more in focus when populists achieve governmental
power. If this is achieved in elections under a given constitution, populist
governments have to try to control and defeat other inherited branches and
institutions of guarantee. As long as some kind of even partially competitive
elections are retained for the legitimating of mobilizing purposes, we can speak
of governmental forms of populism. This as we will see can take two forms: “in”
government vs. “the” government.62 If only the executive is fully captured, as in
the United States in most of the Trump era, populism is only “in” government,
16 Populism and Civil Society

though according to its unitary definition of the embodied people will contest
or try to capture other governmental branches. Such conquest can be achieved
whether by electing a new (usually constituent) assembly as in Venezuela and
Ecuador, court packing as in Poland, or the combination of these methods as
in Hungary and Turkey. However the result is achieved, we can speak of popu-
lism as “the” government. At this point, the threshold is in the process of being
crossed from a democratic to a hybrid populist political system. But only when
the (originally) populist government can no longer lose an election,63 when no
fundamental rights are respected, and no political alternatives can be articu-
lated at all, can we speak of a shift to an authoritarian regime, generally also a
hybrid one in the sense of retaining elections and documentary constitutions
on the purely formal level.
We have already said that despite the logic and even empirical examples of
a sequence among these four forms, we are not postulating a stage model.
Empirically at least, stages can be both reversed or skipped in our understanding
of the many relevant cases. The sequence of mobilization or movement, party,
“in” government, “the” government, and regime, is at best a logical one. Given
populist discourse, and especially the stress on the unity of the people and its
uncompromising hostility to an enemy, a populist mobilization even from below
logically implies becoming a party, the party, the government, and the govern-
ment a regime. The individual stages as we said may be followed or skipped or fail
to be realized. But even in the latter case, such simple logical relations between
the forms hide essential continuities, or the combination of replacement with the
preservation of the other forms. A movement, especially when organized from
above, can already have a core of a proto-​party within its ranks, trying to stim-
ulate greater organizational integrity, hierarchy, and discursive homogeneity.
Populist parties, as we will show in ­chapter 2, are typically movement parties
that organize activist members and voters according to looser hierarchical links
and greater ideological freedom than the party’s core or vanguard. The latter
is already an anticipation of the government executive within most parties.
Populist governments, even when they come to power without a genuine party,
try to create such an organization as well as to maintain or even create the move-
ment, but generally controlled and directed from above. Interestingly, the di-
mension critical of previous political forms, dominant for populist movements,
is maintained not only for populist parties in opposition, but even populist
governments that often blame previous administrations, or hidden powers like
the now famous “deep state,” for their inevitable failures. Thus movement and
party forms are maintained for populist governments for electoral, justificatory,
and legitimating purposes. Only with populist regimes that have crossed the
threshold to an authoritarian regime can this logic of cancellation–​preservation
be possibly suspended. Yet, there is no current case of a consolidated populist
 Introduction 17

regime that has broken its continuity with populism as the government. With
these considerations in mind, our book stresses organizational forms of popu-
lism and their relationships to one another. We will show both that each of these
forms has a somewhat different relationship to the normative problems of de-
mocracy, democratization, and the possibility that populism in all its forms ulti-
mately signifies an authoritarian turn that must and can be resisted.

The Plan of the Book

We have addressed the difficulties surrounding the contested concept of pop-

ulism, explicated our methodology, and provided a working definition of the
phenomenon in this introduction. We turn next, in ­chapter 1, to the question
of how we got here. Populism is, first and foremost, a response to the political
contradictions of modern constitutional democracy (i.e., of representative gov-
ernment), but we maintain that populisms do and indeed must respond to some
combination of cultural and economic deficits, resorting to various host ideolo-
gies in order to do so. Populist projects are thus co-​terminus with modern de-
mocracy, emerging and re-​emerging intermittently, at times generating large
mobilizations and gaining access to power. At other times however, populists fail
to garner real support or to enter government. Thus it is important to ask why
populist movements and parties are so prevalent and so successful in the con-
temporary period. Accordingly, we proceed in c­ hapter 1, “Why and Why Now?”
by analyzing three time frames for assessing the long term (structural phe-
nomena), middle term (crisis tendencies), and short term (contextual) factors
that constitute the political opportunity structure for populist mobilizations to
emerge and succeed (or fail). And we focus on three levels of “contradiction”
in modernity, political, cultural, and economic, approaching populist mobiliza-
tion in terms of “supply” and “demand” with respect to existing grievances and
frames for articulating them.64
We argue that on the long-​term, structural level, there is a permanent opening
in modern democracy for populism to emerge thanks to the inevitable tension
between projects to realize and concretize both popular sovereignty and con-
stitutionalism. Since representative democracy can always be made more dem-
ocratic, more inclusive, more just, populism’s point of entry is in the gaps, the
slowness, and the possible reversals in the dynamic of democratization. The se-
ductiveness of populist politics lies in claims by political entrepreneurs that they
can close the gaps through direct representation, full inclusion of the “authentic
people,” and the return of their sovereignty to them. They gain support for their
imagined rejection of limits to the democratic people’s will, rhetorically pit-
ting popular sovereignty against constitutionalism. The medium term pertains
18 Populism and Civil Society

to crisis tendencies, which may also have structural causes but are always
manifested in specific conjunctures and on multiple levels: political, cultural, and
economic. We argue that populist rhetoric and mobilization respond to but also
help produce these crises. Capitalizing on the “demand” based on perceptions
of mal-​representation, lack of solidarity with certain social strata fearing and/​or
enduring status decline, and welfare shortfalls, populist rhetoric radicalizes the
deficits through a discourse that relies on the friend–​enemy frame. This allows
populist political entrepreneurs to “supply” an identity for each pole, to polarize
the population, and to mobilize the “friend” component against the “enemy”—​
the so-​called establishment and its beneficiaries.
While the demand for populist politics should be addressed in terms of
middle-​term potentials for crises, the supply formula pertains most aptly to
short-​term phenomena that convert tendencies into actual crises and conflicts.
Here we look especially at the bait and switch strategies of parties with left-​
wing traditions (social democratic or economic populist) that join cartel-​like
arrangements once in government and switch over to structural adjustment and
austerity policies, thereby opening the door to populist critiques. Bait and switch
politics of parties in government can be represented as the loss of supply for a
demand that is still salient in the population, thus opening the “market niche”
for new parties articulating economic populism and an anti-​establishment rhet-
oric of betrayal, while supplying populist frames for articulating and exacer-
bating cultural, social, political, and economic deficits, anxieties, and cleavages.
We address the problem of distinguishing between demand and supply in popu-
list mobilization, rejecting both voluntarism and essentialism regarding societal
cleavages and antagonisms. The chapter ends with a look at populist use of the
media (old and new) for mobilization purposes in civil society. Populists seem
to excel at using the advanced forms of technology like the internet and social
media to their advantage. They make use of all media from print to television
and talk radio, but they are especially skillful in using the internet and social
media along with capitalizing on changes in older forms such as the emergence
of 24-​hour cable TV “news” networks. The decentralized structure both of cable
television and especially the internet allows for differentiated strategies of ap-
peal to different audiences. These can be extreme, radical, and even violent ap-
peals to part of the base but also more moderate appeals to traditional activists
who are disaffected by established parties on the right or the left. The general
mediatization of politics, the creation of segmented audiences, and the speed of
the new communication technologies facilitate manipulation and the spread of
fake news and untruths, while enabling populists to undermine trust in author-
itative news sources. Indeed the mediatization of politics generally favors popu-
list mobilization. Although all parties make use of old and new media, their use
by populists is especially important for their claims to embody the will of the
 Introduction 19

people, via direct participation in older plebiscitary forms or in populist digital

platform and networked parties.
At issue is not only the rhetoric or the plausibility and seductiveness of the
narratives offered, but also the dynamics produced by anti-​establishment, popu-
list movements and parties seeking to fill the available political space. Chapter 2,
“Populism as Mobilization and as a Party,” focuses on those dynamics by ana-
lyzing the distinctive logic of populist movements and, especially, parties. Our
specific concern is the impact of successful populist parties on party systems,
on other parties, and on the political norms and practices of political competi-
tion and cooperation in democratic polities. We argue that, despite being situ-
ated within the democratic imaginary, the populist worldview and logic involve
the creation of a specific form of anti-​establishment, anti-​party party and a mode
of party politics that undermines instead of enhancing democracy. We articu-
late the relevant features of the populist worldview and the way it impacts the
type of movements and parties that populists form (anti-​party, catchall, move-
ment parties), and how they operate in the party system generally. It is our thesis
that populists perforce develop a specific type of movement party that typically
presents itself as an anti-​party party that intentionally blurs the distinct logics
of social movements and political parties—​the logic of influence and of power
respectively. Thanks to the populist worldview and logic, parties in government
while remaining populist cannot (and will not) deescalate their movement style
rhetoric, tactics, or posturing, nor do they renounce outbidding and demoniza-
tion of the opposition. This makes compromise impossible and responsible gov-
ernance very unlikely. While populists did not invent the movement party type,
or cause the hollowing out and movementization of parties generally—​trends
we analyze—​they exacerbate these trends. Indeed their version of the movement
party has distinctive features and dynamics.
After analyzing the distinct logic of social movements and political parties we
look into the development of movement and party forms and analyze the pre-
ferred populist party form—​the movement-​party—​and the distinct dynamics of
the populist version of this. We then show how particular features of the populist
worldview and logic, that we have stressed in our definitions, lead toward the de-
velopment of a new kind of anti-​system party and party dynamics deleterious to
democratic party systems.
We identify and discuss four specific dynamics that populism unleashes with
regard to political organization: the re-​factionalization of political parties fol-
lowing from the pars pro toto logic; the friend–​enemy conception of politics
fostering a form of severe affective political polarization; the anti-​establishment
stance turning populist parties into a distinctive type of catch-​all movement
party instigating the movementization of populist parties generally; and fi-
nally, once in government, the anti–​status quo orientation of populist parties
20 Populism and Civil Society

undergirding their willingness to eviscerate democratic norms, constitutionalist

principles, the rule of law, and minority rights if these are deemed antithetical to
the requirements of enacting the will of the sovereign people. We address the first
three dynamics in c­ hapter 2 and turn to the fourth in c­ hapter 3.
Chapter 3, “Populist Governments and Their Logic,” focuses on populism in
power. While many have noted that populists in government tend to eviscerate
constitutional democracy, few have paid attention to the different phases or
stages of populism in power or to their distinctive dynamics. Nor has there been
adequate analysis of whether populists in government generate regime change
and how to characterize the shifts and nature of the regime(s) they morph into.
Chapter 3 aims to do just that, focusing on the arrival into and exercise of power
by populists in democratic regimes. We argue that once they enter government,
populist politicians, if they remain populist, ultimately tend toward regime
change, in three stages. To see this, we must distinguish analytically (and empir-
ically) between populism “in” government and populism as “the” government.
The former, the first stage, entails the presence in and control by populists of
at least one institutional branch of government, most commonly the executive.
We situate this stage within the democratic regime type, noting however, that
populists in government constantly engage in a process of hybridization, i.e.,
mixing authoritarian practices and norms into formally democratic institutions,
and we describe these processes. But here hybridization refers to the government
and the strategies and processes populists unleash to reshape the norms of polit-
ical competition and governance within a democratic regime.
The second stage, populism as “the government,” involves the control by a
populist leadership of all or most of the key governmental institutions: the ex-
ecutive, the legislature, and the courts, including the highest courts. Our thesis
is that populism has an authoritarian logic, one that moves toward, quickly or
slowly, a distinctive hybrid political form once populists become the govern-
ment that we call the populist hybrid regime. This hybrid combines democratic
and constitutional forms with authoritarian practices undermining democratic
norms so extensively that it should no longer to be classified as a democratic re-
gime. Populism as “the” government should be seen neither as a constitutional
democracy nor as an authoritarian dictatorship: it is a hybrid regime borrowing
formal (but never entirely formal!) elements from the first and many (but never
all) actual practices from the second. Finally, we raise the question of whether
populist authoritarianism can lead to a second shift or transition from the pop-
ulist hybrid over to a full-​fledged populist authoritarian regime. We discuss this
possible third stage and what it would entail, arguing that it would no longer be
populist (except in rhetoric) but rather tantamount to a dictatorship in which
elections are a sham and constitutions no longer limit the exercise of power, es-
pecially executive.
 Introduction 21

We are aware that the transition between the three types of regime—​
democratic to hybrid to authoritarian—​raises important threshold issues. We
argue that the transitions can be slow, involving incremental hybridization pro-
cesses, but that at some point quantity turns into quality and regime change
does occur. We thus construct ideal types of each regime (democratic, populist
hybrid, and dictatorship) in order to facilitate the assessment of empirical cases
with respect to the degrees of realization of the authoritarian logic inherent
in populism and the two thresholds mentioned earlier. To that end we return
again to the concept of democracy and clarify its procedures, principles, norms,
prerequisites, internal dynamics, and tensions in order to pinpoint how popu-
list government derogates from it while maintaining its outward forms and pro-
cesses. We analyze the dynamics and process by which populist governments
eviscerate, or “hybridize,” democracy by mixing it with authoritarian practices
and norms. We intervene in the comparative politics literature on hybrid
regimes, adopting the concept of hybrid regime and refining it so that it
becomes clear, unlike in existing taxonomies, a genuinely hybrid regime cannot
be situated as a subtype either under democratic regimes (qualified democracy)
or under authoritarian regimes (qualified authoritarianism). We engage most
directly and critically with the theories of delegative and illiberal democracy in
the former taxonomy and competitive authoritarianism in the latter. We think
that it matters how populist governments are classified, because the dynamics of
each stage are distinct as are the possible forms of resistance to them (discussed
in ­chapter 5). It is crucial to avoid two classificatory mistakes: those that serve
to legitimate what are really no longer democratic regimes, as the concept “il-
liberal democracy” tends to do, and those that too quickly classify populist
governments as authoritarian regimes, as the term competitive authoritari-
anism does, losing the specificity of the dynamics, contradictions, constraints
and possibilities in such hybrids. Finally we argue that the threshold to dicta-
torship (possible but not inevitable) can be crossed resulting in another regime
change, although this step is still rare in the contemporary period (Putin’s Russia
and Maduro’s Venezuela today). Conceptually we maintain that this threshold
is crossed when the will of the populist executive or better, the prerogative state,
systematically trumps legal and constitutional norms (the normative state);
renders democratic elections a mere sham (the populist ruler cannot lose); and
uses the remnants of constitutionalist institutions and the constitution itself to
map out, and possibly even partially conceal, but in no way limit the pinnacles
of power.
Chapter 4, “Populist Constitutional Politics,” turns to the theoretical issues,
definitional and causal, involved in the fraught relationship between popu-
lism and constitutionalism. After having discussed in ­chapter 3 the ways in
which populists “in” and as “the” government hybridize democracy through
22 Populism and Civil Society

discriminatory legalism, by packing apex courts and by altering or replacing

constitutions, it is worth looking more closely at the relationship between pop-
ulism and constitutionalism. It has become standard for analysts to assume an
inherent tension or even contradiction between populism and liberal constitu-
tionalism. But is constitutionalism identical to the liberal variant? And does pop-
ulism conflict with constitutionalism tout court? The answer to these questions
is complex, conceptually and empirically. After all populists “in” and as “the”
government pay enormous attention to constitutions, seeking in appearance to
“rebalance” the main dimensions of constitutional democracy, rather than reject
constitutionalism altogether.
We argue that the long-​term foundation at the heart of the populist project lies
the fundamental tension within constitutional democracy itself, between pop-
ular sovereignty and constitutionalism, a tension that can be both reduced or
exploited. Unlike classical authoritarians, populists “in” but especially as “the”
government purport to resolve that tension rather than abolishing it altogether.
In so doing they invariably attack the institutions and safeguards of liberal con-
stitutionalism, but simultaneously exhibit great interest in constitutions and con-
stitutional courts, at times writing new constitutions or amending existing ones.
However, populist constitutional change is hardly tantamount to improvement
in the quality of constitutionalism, even if in some instances it seems to formally
provide more participation and to involve “the people” more directly in con-
stitutional politics. Populism (especially but not only in opposition) has some-
times been represented as endorsing “popular” or “political” constitutionalism
by targeting the “counter-​majoritarian” institutions of “liberal constitutions” that
they allege unfairly entrench “elites” or establishment power to the detriment of
the will of popular majorities. We scrutinize this relationship and the possible
overlaps between popular and populist “constitutionalism” in the dimension of
the critique of the liberal or legal type. A key thesis of this chapter is that the
result of such efforts is not only authoritarian deformation or hybridization of
inherited constitutional democracy, but also the renewal and exacerbation of the
very tension between popular sovereignty and constitutionalism. That tension
could disappear only with the step from a populist hybrid regime to a new au-
thoritarian one. What is clear is that populist parties and leaders in opposition
and then in power engage in constitutional politics by challenging the legitimacy
of constitutional courts. They also use formal efforts to replace or amend existing
constitutions or capture apex courts along with informal strategies to effect con-
stitutional change, typically blurring the distinction between ordinary and con-
stitutional politics.
We discuss four versions of populist constitutional politics that seek to contest
or “rebalance” the relation between popular sovereignty and constitutionalism in
the democratic regimes populists inherit: the constitutional politics of populist
 Introduction 23

movement parties before they enter power (in opposition); the combination of
populist movements with populists in government pushing for constitutional
change; constitutional replacement and/​or change through amendment and
court packing when populists control and are “the government.” As we show in
detail by looking at the relevant cases, none of these strategies resolve the tension
between populism and constitutionalism although all of them undermine both
constitutionalism and democracy. Indeed, it is an interesting question which
method of constitutional politics serves the purposes of populist authoritari-
anism best: replacement, amendment, or court capture.
Finally, c­ hapter 5 seriously considers “Alternatives to Populism.” Since we are
interested in a forward-​looking democratic alternative rather than mere restora-
tion, and insofar as we reject forms of revolutionary overthrow that themselves
lead in authoritarian directions, we start by systematically distinguishing “pop-
ular” and “populist.” We do this by showing that popular sovereignty, chains of
equivalence, leadership, political conflict, and even the constituent power can
be given radically different democratic interpretations than what is relied on by
populists. We also wish to rescue some, though certainly not all, host ideologies
from populism, in particular socialism in the sense of social democracy and na-
tionalism in the name of valorizing different levels of collective identity including
patriotism. In search of a strategy, we return to the dualistic one proposed by our
Civil Society and Political Theory. This means re-​establishing democratic rela-
tions of influence between the levels of civil and political society. The retrieval
of the pluralist form of the movement level and the reconstruction of the po-
litical form of the party will be important steps in this effort. We maintain that
the goals of a political alternative based on the values of freedom, equality, and
solidarity can be the same irrespective of the given form of populist politics. But
we also recognize that whether populism is a mobilized force of opposition, a
strong party capable of winning elections, a dominant force “in” or of “the” gov-
ernment, or even a new regime, the dualistic strategies will have to vary accord-
ingly. In the movement stage the emphasis would have to be not only on building
a democratic movement but re-​establishing pluralistic relations with other forms
of mobilization some of which may alas have populist elements. In the party
stage (whether prior or posterior to grassroots mobilization) the choice will
again emerge for democratic movements whether to form a political party or re-​
enforce an existing one. But in either case rebuilding the party on the ground is
a sine qua non for strengthening democratic party politics. When populism is in
government, but not yet the government, we argue that supports should be given
to branches of power that remain independent within the separation or division
of powers. The effort now however is primarily electoral. Even that becomes dif-
ficult when populism is “the” government and especially when it is a new re-
gime. Fortunately, we will be able to argue that, as we have seen in the 1970s, 80s,
24 Populism and Civil Society

and early 90s, even authoritarian regimes are vulnerable to dualistic strategies
on both domestic and international levels. We end with a brief reminder of how
post-​revolutionary radicalism has been and can be again successful especially
given the predictable inability of populist governments and regimes to solve the
problems that facilitated their rise to power.
 1
Populism: Why and Why Now?

It would be difficult to deny that populism has become a radical, widely present
political challenge today, contesting and often attaining governmental power.
There have been anticipations before in modern history, for example in the
French Revolution,1 later agrarian movements in Russia, the United States in the
late 19th century, and Eastern Europe. Also, the phenomenon has been present
in Latin America throughout the 20th century. Thus the question “why” must
be asked about modernity as such. But given the contemporary proliferation of
populist politics, the question “why now” is equally interesting theoretically, and
is for us politically more important.
Fortunately, to begin to answer these two questions, we can rely on Gino
Germani’s pioneering work, which, despite its faults and methodological biases,
is analytically pathbreaking. Germani very usefully distinguishes between
long, middle, and short-​term levels of causation and applies these to identify
Argentine populism and to distinguish it from Italian Fascism, placing both
within the genus of modern authoritarianism.2 For the common long-​term
cause he identifies “the structural tension inherent in all modern society between
growing secularization, and the necessity of maintaining a minimal prescrip-
tive central nucleus sufficient for integration.” Accordingly, the middle-​term
causality has to do with the stage of modernization of given contexts. Fascist
“counter-​mobilization” is thus supposed to be a response against mobilized
forces of already modern societies, whereas populism emerges during difficult
modernization processes. Thus, in the short term, fascism is seen as “counter-​
mobilization” of middle and rural strata where “primary mobilization” (political
inclusion in parties and unions) of industrial and working classes has already
taken place. On the contrary, he understands populism as a form of primary
mobilization where the effective inclusion and party representation of urban
subalterns has not taken place, or has not succeeded.
We cannot accept most of the substance of this sophisticated conception, tied
not only to culturally oriented functionalism, a somewhat rigid modernization
theory, as well as the dominant Argentine–​Italian comparison behind it all that
applies primarily to older Latin American populisms.3 But we do want to use the
three-​level model of explanation, focusing on what has been called the “demand
side” primarily on the second level, and the “supply side” on the third.4
26 Populism and Civil Society

As to the first level, the long term, we also do not wish to follow Germani in
substituting a cultural reductionism for the neo-​Marxist economic one. Instead,
we will postulate three fundamental levels of contradiction of modernity: cul-
tural, economic, and political. Each plays a role for all modern challenges to
democratic politics, but the primary significance of different contradictions is
central for the three options of nationalism, state socialism, and populism.5 For
the cultural contradiction we will follow Germani, but given the significance of
many forms of authoritarianism in both secular and religious societies, we will
substitute for secularization the destruction of traditional or conventional forms
of life, identity, status, sources of meaning, and solidarity, as well as the difficulty
for some groups to accept or embrace new post-​conventional norms and iden-
tities.6 We see this problem area as the source of fundamental cultural tensions
and status anxieties.7
Ever since Max Weber’s famous essay on the topic, social theorists have un-
derstood that status hierarchies are important in every society. They entail
inequalities in social honor, esteem, and prestige that attach to groups and vary
independently. Nevertheless, they influence and are influenced by class positions
and situations of political power.8 Status hierarchies are based on normative or-
ders, typically generalized across a shared societal and cultural context. They are
relatively durable, insofar as status groups tend to coalesce around a distinctive
style of life, generating both status conventions and particular social identities
and solidarities.9 Certainly, understanding the effects of social status differentials
among social groups is crucial for comprehending some of the mechanisms be-
hind intractable patterns of inequalities in a society.10
It is also the case that substantial cultural, structural, and institutional change
can generate shifts in the sociocultural and normative frameworks that deter-
mine the sources of prestige, esteem, and social honor in a society.11 The long
term “cultural contradiction” of modernity lies in the paradox that cultural
shifts are endemic and typically involve the increasing sophistication, general-
ization, and reflexivity of cultural values that allow for the emergence of alter-
native normative status orders. The latter may be more universalistic, inclusive,
and open to individual mobility than the former status order, thereby under-
mining rigid social hierarchies. But they also but also entail the decline in status
of those tied to traditional ways of life and displaced normative orders. Shifts
in cultural frameworks may overturn a society’s generalized normative status
order such that the apparently stable social status formerly enjoyed by a social
group is undermined.12 This generates a “fear of falling” that gets exacerbated
especially when cultural and normative shifts enhance the social status and re-
spect accorded to formerly denigrated groups.13 While it is not possible to regen-
erate the old sources of meaning, community, forms of life, and normative orders
 Populism: Why and Why Now? 27

undermined by long-​term cultural (and other) trends, the risk of anomie, se-
vere culture clashes, and deep societal polarization in the context of middle-​term
crises of solidarity, as we will see, are especially high. Such long-​term change
implies status losses for some groups, which in crisis context can lead to suscepti-
bility to populist mobilization.14
For the economic contradiction we are still able to follow Marx, who un-
derstood the capitalist epoch to have generated enormous material wealth
compared to all previous societies, but at the paradoxical cost of new forms of
poverty, domination, inequality, and economic irrationality. Finally, on the polit-
ical level, we see the key contradiction as that between the norms of democratic
self-​government and the continued (or renewed) low levels of inclusion and par-
ticipation in, and responsiveness of, political systems.
It would seem obvious, that where nationalism as the search for “imagined
community”15 could be seen as one important response to the cultural loss of
shared meaning, solidarity, and status, socialism’s key target is and has always
been the irrational organization of wealth and welfare. Nevertheless, nationalists
can and have often targeted the nation’s loss of political autonomy and material
wealth to the benefit of competitors. As the category of alienation has shown,
socialists too are concerned with loss of solidarity and meaning. Moreover, their
affinity to direct democracy indicates deep interest in the political contradiction
of capitalist democracy. Nevertheless, just as nationalists consider the achieve-
ment or preservation or even extension of the nation state to be the key to not
only community but wealth and autonomy as well, for socialists fundamental
economic transformation has always remained primary.
Here we can consider only the formally similar case of populism, and we
will argue that in all its versions it is ultimately or primarily a response to the
political contradiction of modern democracy, or more exactly representative
government.16 This can be seen in various forms: the tension between prin-
ciples of popular sovereignty and constitutionalism, the gap between formal
democratic participation and genuine responsiveness and accountability of
representatives, or the gap between formal incorporation in political systems
of subaltern strata, and the absence of civil and social rights that could make
their political rights viable and practicable.17 But we will also maintain that on
the level of host ideologies, different populisms do and probably must respond
(or pretend to respond) to some combination or selection of economic and
cultural “deficits.”
Moving on to the middle range level of causality, that we wish to understand
less in terms of modernization and its possible stages and more in terms of a
crisis theory applicable to societies on different levels of development. Here
we will argue that first and foremost crisis potentials or long-​term deficits of
28 Populism and Civil Society

representation and electoral and party systems have played especially important
roles. We accept Germani’s thesis that a crisis of representation and therefore
populism are possible where something has gone wrong with primary mobiliza-
tion. But that failure can no longer be seen only as the absence of organization or
atomization of “available masses.” Not only is populism possible for previously
well-​organized urban industrial strata, but the thesis should be rejected also for
both the very large informal sectors that have shown significant levels of orga-
nization and rational action and for rural organized or disorganized workers.18
Where there is a potential crisis or a long-​term deficit of representation, it is the
organized rather than the atomized who believe themselves to be un-​or under-
represented, generally with reason.
We do not wish to reduce the middle term only to its political dimension.
There is no question that the economic shocks stressed by interpreters such as
Dani Rodrik and cultural shifts depicted by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris
play a significant role in exacerbating political crisis tendencies or deficits. In
other words: democracy, welfare, and status/​meaning/​solidarity deficits in-
teract.19 Radical socialist and fascist answers to these dilemmas are possible, but
populism is the answer only where the political deficit of representation is very
much salient. It is on the level of host ideologies that different populists will em-
phasize the welfare or status deficits, or their combinations, depending on the
context with its specific structure of challenges and grievances.
Finally in the short term, along with Germani but re-​interpreting the con-
cept, we will not neglect political mobilization. It is this that turns crisis poten-
tial into full blown political crises. As the many analysts note pointing to “bait
and switch”20 logics on the part of existing parties that “normalize” themselves
during elections or in governmental power, re-​mobilization rather than pri-
mary or counter-​mobilization of the relevant strata becomes possible assuming
new supplies of alternatives.21 Such a “supply” cannot be assumed to be always
available. It will depend variously on grassroots expression of grievances, in-
ternational transmission of ideas, available leaderships outside or even within
parties, whether offered from above or constructed from below, the construc-
tion of plausible narratives combining democracy deficits with those of welfare
and/​or status, and, increasingly, media strategies. Here again the relationship of
economic and cultural changes and pathologies to political representation will
be important. The possible relevance of a host ideology will in part depend on
the salience of either economic or cultural factors within a crisis or long-​term
deficit complex. But, we stress, the populist response to the combination of
deficits is first and foremost political, focusing on identification with a leader or
leadership.22
 Populism: Why and Why Now? 29

The Long Term: The Fundamental Contradiction of

Modern Democracy

What else did even Sieyès do but simply put the sovereignty of the na-
tion into the place which has been vacated by the sovereign king?
—​Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (1963) p.156

Putting “the nation” or “the people” in the place of the sovereign monarch has
been full of contradictions from the beginning. As Edmund Morgan has so con-
vincingly shown,23 the physical body of the people, unlike the king’s, could not
be easily found or even unambiguously identified. All that was available was
the abstraction, a fiction he called it. Or as Claude Lefort put it even earlier, “at
the moment when popular sovereignty is assumed to manifest itself, when the
people is assumed to actualize itself by expressing its will, that social interde-
pendence breaks down.”24 According to Lefort, in the modern concept of the
people “[n]‌umber replaces substance” and what is left sociologically is a “pure
diversity of individuals.”25 His point is that when compared to the people, as the
organized third estate of the old regime, the people of universal suffrage become
not only anonymous but also disorganized. One could derive the temptation for
populism in the democratic age from this state of affairs alone, as Morgan as well
as Francois Furet have been inclined to do so.26 Yet the problem goes even deeper.
In its struggle against absolutism, modern democracy begins with two funda-
mental ideas rather than popular sovereignty alone. The second is constitution-
alism, inherited from the medieval past.27 To an advocate like Thomas Paine, the
two ideas are complementary and mutually necessary. Yet they are, and always
have been, also in serious conflict.28 We believe the ultimate roots of populism
are to be located in the fundamental tension between popular sovereignty and
constitutionalism.29
Both constitutionalism and popular sovereignty were directed against the
king’s sovereignty, but where one sought to limit and circumscribe that status, the
other claimed to replace it. Two fundamental dilemmas followed. Sovereignty
has been traditionally interpreted as the absence of legal limits, as being above
and beyond at least human law. Yet, just at the moment the people were supposed
to become sovereign they were to be deprived of exactly that sovereignty as it
was previously defined (Bodin’s legibus solutus) by constitutional limitations.
Starting with constitutionalism, as an idea of limitation of all legitimate power,
the problem was analogous. Just at the moment government was supposed to
become limited, a new legibus solutus was identified in “the people,” to be placed
above and beyond the constitution. As the various experiments of the European
revolutions have shown from the beginning through the 20th century, the two
anti-​absolutist ideas could lead to very different politics: limited monarchy and
30 Populism and Civil Society

systems of checks and balances on the one side and the glorification of insurrec-
tion and even democratic dictatorship on the other.30
Three additional ideas were supposed to come to the rescue: representa-
tion, the constituent power, and fundamental rights. The first was to diminish
the absolutist danger inherent in popular sovereignty, the second addressed the
elitist danger inherent within constitutionalism, while the third was to mediate
between them since constitutionally guaranteed rights would make each cit-
izen a part of the sovereign. All of these provisions were strongly advocated by
participants in the democratic revolutions. Representation, originally medieval
as Rousseau critically noted, was supposed to make the absent sovereign present
without the dangers to constitutional government. It was not only that a room
could hold representatives as against the people as a whole, or that representa-
tives could be actually found, and identified or selected. More importantly, repre-
sentation, whether medieval or modern, has always presupposed elections under
constitutional regulation and limitation.31 Any legitimate process of choosing
representatives presupposes rules that are materially, if not necessarily formally,
constitutional. Since elections generally assume fixed terms, re-​election is itself
a limitation for incumbents or at least their supporters. Even more importantly,
though it has been sometimes claimed that elected representatives embodied the
people and could do all that the people could do,32 the reality of their difference
and separate corporate status was impossible to ignore especially when parlia-
mentary and public opinion diverged. If “elective aristocracy” was the mediation
between popular sovereignty and governmental authority, as Bernard Manin
claims,33 it was a constitutionalist device by its nature even if not in some histor-
ical settings.34
Undoubtedly, representative government as a form of popular sovereignty is
based on a fiction. Elective aristocracy however is very real, and seems to mean
the triumph of constitutionalism over democracy. There have been two strate-
gies to diminish the fiction and turn it into a counterfactual norm. The first and
most obvious is democratization as a process.35 Representation, whether in
England, France, or the United States begins with restrictions of the franchise.
Its expansion, involving removal of property requirements, establishing women’s
suffrage, reducing age limits, and giving voting rights to all regardless of race,
religion, or origin were important steps. So was the introduction of elections for
more offices, especially those of local and regional governments. Most impor-
tant perhaps have been the institutionalization of fundamental rights. In other
words, the modern constitution itself has always had the potential to diminish
the contradiction between democratic norm and elected aristocracy. The fully
developed forms of civil, political, and social rights36 establish the status equality
of representatives and represented. Together the three forms of rights guarantee
not only the formal but also the material possibility of participation. Even as the
 Populism: Why and Why Now? 31

popular sovereign remains a deus absconditus, each citizen is supposed to be

fully part of that hidden or fictional actor, in theory superior to the represen-
tative body. Most important in the rights complex are the provisions providing
for participation outside of legislatures: public communication, association, and
assembly.37
The focus of democratization on inclusion and rights converges with the
second form of bringing the fiction closer to reality, what P. Rosanvallon called
counter-​democracy. Accordingly, representative government can be made le-
gitimate not only through “liberal” limits on the activity of representatives, but
even more through the “democratic” exercise of monitoring, critique, and even
resistance on the part of public opinion and civil associations.38 To be sure de-
mocratization and counter-​democracy can run into the limits of constitutions
and the power of those given authority under them. In order for democratization
of representation to work, constitutions must therefore be open to their own im-
provement. Paradoxically, this is not identical to having “flexible” constitutions
as understood in the British tradition, surrendering overwhelming power to
elected representatives, yielding parliamentary rather than popular sover-
eignty.39 But neither is a constitution rigidly closed off to change compatible with
either the operation of counter-​democratic institutions or long-​term democra-
tization. The revolutionary distinction between the constituent and the consti-
tuted powers suggests rigidity in normal and greater flexibility in extraordinary
circumstances as long as the power to make and design constitutions is suitably
differentiated from that of the regular representatives. Just as representation
implies the interpretation of popular sovereignty through constitutionalism, the
idea of the constituent power implies the penetration of constitutionalism by
popular sovereignty.
The tensions between constitutionalism and popular sovereignty do not dis-
appear through their inter-​penetration, as indicated by questions concerning
the possible limitations of even the constituent power. All we can say is that
they can be managed to make sure that the norm of popular sovereignty is
not reduced to a mere fiction.40 In other words, political processes linked to
the operation of civil society–​based counter-​democracy are essential in pre-
serving the difference between counterfactual norm and fiction. Two kinds of
processes are involved, one defensive or liberal and the other pro-​active and
radically democratic. The first involves constitutionalist resistance (i.e., de-
fense of a democratic constitution) against attempts at usurpation by political
powers, elected or even unelected. The second is more important. It potentially
involves projects of democratization and even constitutional change. Both re-
spond to potential crises or deficits of representation, the first to usurpation
and the second to constitutional rigidification. But when they fail, there is an-
other category of response: populism.41
32 Populism and Civil Society

The Middle Term: Deficits of Representation

Crises of representation in several distinct forms, each expressed on the level of

party systems, have been proposed as causes of populist challenge and at times
success.42 We agree but with several reservations.43 First, we restrict the mode
of explanation to the middle term. As already argued, the long-​term foundation
for populist challenge lies in the inherent tension between popular sovereignty
and constitutionalism, as it is reproduced within each dimension, between rep-
resentative and participatory democracy, between constituted and constituent
powers, and between formal rights and their genuine realization in the form of
social autonomy.
Certainly, constitutional democracy is not always in political crisis. Crises
can be avoided by democratization that can take the form of constituent pro-
cesses under constitutional safeguards. But, as de La Torre argues, we should see
populism as a living temptation in the age of democracy, and not only in Latin
America.44 While exacerbated in extraordinary moments called crises, popu-
lism is also present under normal political circumstances, responding to long-​
term contradictions. Accordingly, it is better in the middle term to speak about
structural deficits and leave the idea of crisis in the fully developed sense to the
short term.
Second, while we do believe that the context for populist challenge is first and
foremost political, we do not think that serious crisis potentials emerge because
of political, i.e., democracy, deficits alone. Either the economy (welfare deficit)
or culture (status losses, resulting in solidarity and meaning deficits) or their
combination can be the source of grievances for the potential political crisis
tendency to become sufficiently serious or salient to motivate people to rally to
the populist cause. The availability of ideologies plays an important role in the-
matizing economic and cultural grievances, and these can become “hosts” for
populist challenges. Thus, it is at least plausible to argue that significant cultural
change, such as from material to post-​material value systems, enable challenges
to inequalities and discrimination tied to group identities or characteristics
(e.g., race, gender, religion, ethnicity), when they conflict with the general prin-
ciples of justice, merit, and opportunity that undergird modern societies self-​
understanding. But such challenges, when taken up by movements and endorsed
by establishment elites, can trigger a “cultural backlash” amongst those groups
who experience or fear relative status loss in shifting cultural and normative
contexts.45 Indeed this is especially likely when cultural shifts occur in the con-
text of decline in the traditional material sources of self-​respect and group based
political influence.46
For the current context in the United States for example, several authors pin-
point the shifts in cultural frameworks that can generate new normative and
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Early Quaker
education in Pennsylvania
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Title: Early Quaker education in Pennsylvania

Author: Thomas Woody

Release date: December 10, 2023 [eBook #72371]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Teachers college, Columbia

university, 1920

Credits: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
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by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY

QUAKER EDUCATION IN PENNSYLVANIA ***
MAP OF SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA SHOWING LOCATION OF
PRINCIPAL MEETINGS

EARLY QUAKER EDUCATION

IN PENNSYLVANIA

By
THOMAS WOODY, Ph.D.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION. No. 105

Published by
Teachers College, Columbia University
NEW YORK CITY
1920

Copyright, 1920, by Thomas Woody

 PREFACE
The purpose of this monograph is to present to the students of
education, especially to those interested in the historical phase of it,
some materials relating to education among the Quakers in
Pennsylvania previous to 1800. Since the greater part of the source
material on the subject is almost inaccessible, it has been thought
desirable to incorporate in this work many reports on schools, such
as may be convenient references for others who are interested in the
early educational history of Pennsylvania.
The manuscript records which furnish the most direct light on this
study are found in various depositories in southeastern
Pennsylvania. Those that have been preserved and made
accessible to the writer have been examined by him in person. With
the exception of a few cases, the minutes of the preparative
meetings have not been well kept; hence, that source of information
is very limited.
If this work possesses merit, it is by reason of the coöperation of
many men and women. I am obligated to the members of the Society
of Friends who, as custodians of records, have been instrumental in
forwarding the investigation. It is also a great pleasure to
acknowledge the friendly encouragement and assistance given by
Albert Cook Myers, of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I wish
also to thank Professor Paul Monroe for the initial encouragement
and continued interest during the progress of the investigation.
T. W.
Teachers College, New York
July 11, 1917
 CONTENTS
I Origin of the Quakers 1-13
II Meeting Organization: Its Connection with
Education 14-25
III Educational Ideals of the Quakers 26-40
IV Education in Philadelphia 41-84
V Schools of Bucks County 85-104
VI Schools of Montgomery County 105-121
VII Schools of Chester County 122-146
VIII Schools of Delaware County 147-166
IX School Support, Organization, and Curriculum 167-203
X Masters and Mistresses 204-227
XI Education of Negroes and Indians 228-267
XII Conclusion 268-271
Bibliography 272-282
Abbreviations 283
Index 285-287
EARLY QUAKER EDUCATION
IN PENNSYLVANIA
 CHAPTER I
ORIGIN OF THE QUAKERS

Reforms, discoveries and inventions are, at the [Sidenote: An

outset, conceived by individual minds; seldom, if essential in
ever, are they the simultaneous product of several. leaders]
The original connection is seen and made by an
individual, and afterwards may be accepted by his fellows, who may
appropriate the new idea to themselves and make its applications
manifold. The novel idea or relationship, once seen, thoroughly
comprehended and expressed becomes either the common property
of many, extending far afield from its original source, or is rejected
because it fails to prove attractive to human interests or necessary
for the satisfaction of human needs. By this means changes are
wrought in a group or society of individuals, and the belief or the
contribution of one individual becomes the faith or the possession of
a nation. The meaning of the above statement is at once made clear
by mere mention of a few names, such as Luther, Bacon, Pestalozzi,
Confucius, Whitefield, Gœthe and Fox. It is with the ideas and the
formally stated doctrines of the last mentioned that we are in this
connection chiefly concerned.
In a study of education among the Quakers it is [Sidenote: Brief
desirable, if not absolutely imperative, to go back to study of Quaker
the origin of the society and note, at least in part, beliefs necessary]
the tenets of the society and the reasons for its
foundation. For this purpose the best materials are to be found in the
life and works of George Fox, the founder of the Society of Quakers.
It would, perhaps, be unnecessary at present to make any
considerable study of beliefs or tenets, if it were not for the fact that,
in times past, some of the expressions of their belief have been
misconstrued. For instance, reference may be made here to the so-
called doctrine of inner light which was promulgated by George Fox
at the very beginning of his work in 1647.[1] It will be of advantage to
first sketch briefly the early life of this exponent of Quakerism.
George Fox was born July, 1624 (old style), at [Sidenote: Fox’s
Drayton-in-the-clay,[2] in Leicestershire, England. youth and early
education]
His father, Christopher Fox, otherwise known as
“Righteous Christer,” was a weaver by trade and “an honest man.”
His mother, he says, was of the stock of martyrs.[3]
His earliest life was spent in the home of his parents, under whose
tutelage he received a careful religious training. He says of himself
that he was unusually grave for a youth of his age and that his
thought constantly turned to subjects of religious nature. This
characteristic religious disposition, noticed by his mother, was the
cause of a more indulgent attitude toward him than was granted the
other children in the family, especially in regard to their religious
instruction. Of his school education we have but a meagre account;
according to Sewell, his only education was received in the home
and consisted of the bare necessaries such as reading and writing.[4]
The essence of his religious education seems to be adequately
summarized in his own words as follows:

The Lord taught me to be faithful in all things, and to act

faithfully two ways, viz., inwardly to God, and outwardly to
man; and to keep to yea and nay in all things.[5]

As he advanced in years some of his people, being aware of his

religious tendencies, would gladly have had him enter the
priesthood, but others dissenting, he was placed with a man who
was a shoemaker, grazier and dealer in wool.[6] In this employment
he seems to have given much satisfaction to his employer, and, as
for himself, he too enjoyed the work of shepherd, affording, as it did,
ample opportunity for close communion with nature and limiting his
connections with the corrupt society of mankind, from which he
sought to free himself.[7]
 About the age of nineteen, his dissatisfaction [Sidenote:
with the world and the people about him caused Beginning of his
him to leave his relations and acquaintances and to travels]
seek out a more lonely existence in some place
where he was quite unknown. This decision being made, he
journeyed “at the command of God,” first to Lutterworth,
Northampton, Newport-Pagnell, and came finally, in 1644, to Barnet.
During these days he was often in great despair and questioned
whether he had done rightly in leaving his parents and friends. In
these periods of misgiving he consulted often with priests concerning
his condition and sought thereby a remedy, which, however, he did
not find. Driven by sheer desperation he continued to travel, and,
after leaving Barnet, came to London where he remained for a short
time only, having come now to a decision that he should return again
to the home of his parents.[8]
The return to his native village, however, was no [Sidenote: His
cure for his mental ill, though his conscience was return home]
thereby somewhat stilled. He continued his visits to
various priests, especially one Nathaniel Stevens, with whom he was
wont to argue religious questions, and who, after Fox had
enunciated certain beliefs, which will be mentioned later, became
one of his most cruel persecutors.[9] Each succeeding experience
with the priests was but a repetition of a former and it became clear
to him that they saw nothing but the externals of his condition and
had not the power to penetrate to the innermost complexities of his
situation. According to his view their recommendations met only the
demands of the ecclesiastics; his need was genuine and he was
enabled to see the narrow limitations which hamper the activity of
one man who attempts to parcel out salvation to another.
George Fox was now in his twenty-second year. [Sidenote: Three
It is pertinent that mention be made at this place of of Fox’s
three fundamental beliefs or principles, whose conclusions;
fundamental]
truth, up to this time, had made itself manifest in his
mind. The second of these is the one which, being so often
misquoted, has become the basis for the belief on the part of many,
that the Society was opposed to education.
 1. And the Lord opened to me that, if all were believers,
then they were all born of God, and passed from death unto
life, and that none were true believers but such; and though
others said they were believers, yet they were not.
2. The Lord opened unto me, that being bred at Oxford or
Cambridge was not enough to fit and qualify men to be
ministers of Christ; and I wondered at it, because it was the
common belief of the people.
3. At another time it was opened to me, that God, who
made the world, did not dwell in temples made with hands....
But the Lord showed me clearly that he did not dwell in these
temples which men had commanded and set up, but in
people’s hearts; for both Stephen and the apostle Paul bore
testimony that he did not dwell in temples made with hands,
not even in that which he had once commanded to be built,
since he put an end to it; but that his people were his temple,
and he dwelt in them.[10]

These doctrines which he began to promulgate in 1647 were

recognized as fundamental, and their influence is plainly to be seen
in the organization and discipline of the society which finally resulted.
[11]

It may well be mentioned here that though these [Sidenote: But not
tenets were incorporated in the foundation untried]
principles of the Quakers, they were by no means
new, in the sense that they had never been accepted, in part, at
least, by any other group of people. J. Brown, writing concerning the
Quakers, states that Caspar Schwenkfeld, a Silesian of high birth,
had promulgated the same doctrines of inner light, direct revelation
and the inadequacy of the sacraments at least two centuries before
the time of Fox in England.[12] The dispersion of Schwenkfeld’s
adherents in 1547 led to the spread of their doctrines outside of
Silesia, being embraced by a part of the Mennonite Church of
Amsterdam, whence their entrance was made into England, and
found acceptance in the minds of the Quakers.[13] This view is held
also by other students of Quaker history,[14] and the similarity of
doctrine is clearly seen in the statement of the Mennonite creed, as
given by B. L. Wicks, a student of Mennonite history.[15] Further, it is
known that some of the earliest preachers among Quakers went to
Amsterdam and vicinity and found there a kindly reception by a part
of the people, making converts among both the Baptists[16] and the
Mennonites.[17] An instance of their kindly attitude toward Quakers
and also of the recognition given their belief on the part of the
Quakers, is shown in the account by Thomas Chalkley, concerning
his journey of some nine hundred miles in Holland, Friesland and
Germany.[18]
[Sidenote: Kindly
As I have had great peace and satisfaction in reception given to
my travels in Holland and Germany, so, for Quaker ministers]
inciting others under the like exercise, I may
truly say that there is encouragement for faithful ministers to
labor in the work of the gospel. I know not that I ever met with
more tenderness and openness in people than in those parts
of the world. There is a great people whom they call
Mennonites, who are very near to truth, and the fields are
white unto the harvest among divers of them, spiritually
speaking.[19]

At Kriegsheim in the Palatinate Quaker exhorters like Ames and

Rolfe, who had been sent out by the direction of George Fox, 1657,
succeeded in winning converts among the Mennonites, though they
were received unfavorably by the magistrates who fined those who
offered to give them any entertainment.[20] It is from this same
district that both Quakers and Mennonites made their voluntary
departure and came to settle in Pennsylvania. Their prompt attention
to school affairs on their first arrival is very similar to that of the
Quakers, though in their case it was often the work of the laity, and
not through the church organization.[21]
A still more extensive missionary journey was [Sidenote:
undertaken at a later date, 1677, by several Journey of Fox,
Quakers, among them Fox, Penn, Furly, Barclay Penn, Furly,
and Keith. They visited Brill, Leyden and Haarlem Barclay and Keith]
where they held meetings, preaching to both
Quakers and Mennonites.[22] The tour continued up into the Rhine
region where Penn and his party came into touch with members of
the Pietist group. It is doubtless true that this journey and the
impression which was made by Penn must have played an important
part a few years later when he opened his colony to settlers on the
well known liberal principles.
In the presentation of the foregoing material it has been pointed
out: (1) how the doctrines of the Quakers were rapidly spread
broadcast by the itinerant preachers; and (2) that there was a great
similarity between Quaker and Mennonite in doctrine and belief.
The work of spreading the new gospel, as [Sidenote:
instanced by the work of Ames and Rolfe in 1657, Increased number
was carried rapidly forward; as early as 1654, of ministers]
seven years after George Fox had begun to [Sidenote: The
preach, he had enlisted the services of some sixty number of
preachers who travelled continually up and down adherents
estimated]
the country.[23] Such a number of leaders bespeaks
a considerable following, though we have no record of a census of
the followers made during Fox’s lifetime. Brown is apparently willing
to accept Barclay’s statement that by 1675 they numbered ten
thousand in London and by the end of the century, sixty thousand.
[24] It does not seem that this is too large an estimate. It can be
estimated from the work of Besse on Sufferings that between 1650
and 1689 there were approximately fifteen thousand individual cases
of “sufferings.”[25] Since his work is compiled from “authentic
records” it may be considered to be fairly accurate, though the
errors, if any, would likely be to make the number too small rather
than too large. As a matter of fact his collection includes some cases
between 1689 and 1700, but the vast majority of them are from the
period above stated. Certainly we must suppose that if such a large
number actually came under the hand of English tolerance, then the
total number of adherents very probably equalled or exceeded the
estimate previously mentioned. Whatever objection may be made to
the accuracy of these figures they may certainly be taken as fairly
indicative of the growth of the sect; for that purpose they are
intended.
Just as the church discipline and organization [Sidenote: Fox’s
are traceable to the hand of Fox, so also is the doctrine the basis
attitude on educational affairs. It has been said that in their
educational
the doctrine of the inner light made all education practice]
unnecessary, and this perverted idea has doubtless
possessed even some members of Quakers to the extent that they
came to regard learning as an instrument of Satan, a thing to be
carefully avoided. However true this statement may have been of
some members of the group, it certainly is not representative of the
belief and practice of the Quakers as a whole. Some of the more
ignorant may have interpreted the inner light to mean just that thing;
but it is certainly true that such an idea was never expressed by
George Fox, nor did it become the accepted belief of the
organization, as is shown by their practices. The actual practice,
educational, among Quakers is to be followed in this monograph. A
later chapter will be devoted to a consideration of the views on
education held by various individuals who have left some tangible
monuments to their beliefs. In the present chapter, however, it is
intended to indicate merely the position assumed by Fox in regard to
the question at the outset of his labors.
As has been previously mentioned (page 2) George Fox had the
advantage of only a limited education. Opposition to the higher
education, if he exhibited such, might find an explanation in this fact,
assuming that not having shared its delights and advantages, he
chose to deprecate it altogether. From a study of his utterances and
his actions throughout his career it seems, however, that the facts
point rather to a true appreciation rather than deprecation of
education. The evidence appears to support, in a very satisfactory
manner, the following points:
[Sidenote: Fox’s
1. That he placed a great emphasis on moral educational
and religious training. creed]
 2. Education should be of practical value; apprenticeship
education recommended.
3. That the establishment of schools was believed to be
necessary.
4. The objection to classical training was its inadequacy to
prepare for a minister of the gospel.
5. That the scope of education was not limited to Quakers
alone, nor even to the Whites, but should include also
Negroes, Indians and the poorer classes of society as well as
the rich. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to a
brief consideration of the foregoing statements.

First, in regard to moral and religious instruction, it seems hardly

necessary to do more than state simply that he did urge moral
education at all times. His whole life being permeated with the desire
to propagate his newly founded society, it certainly is to be expected
that he would recommend and insist on instruction of that nature. If
proof be desired, however, it may be found in statements made from
time to time, which are quoted below. The system of moral education
based on the utterances of Fox was chiefly a prohibitory one, and it
might well be questioned whether the result would not be passive
rather than active virtues.
[Sidenote:
... in warning such as kept public houses for Prohibitions,
entertainment, that they should not let people moral, social and
have more drink than would do them good; and educational]
in testifying against their wakes and feasts, May games,
sports, plays and shows, which trained up people to vanity
and looseness and led them from the fear of God: ... in fairs
also, and in markets I was made to declare against their
deceitful merchandise, cheating and cozening; warning all to
deal justly, to speak the truth, to let their yea be yea and their
nay be nay: ... I was moved also to cry against all sorts of
music, and against the mountebanks playing tricks on their
stages, for they burdened the pure life and stained the
 people’s mind to vanity. I was much exercised, too, with
schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, warning them to teach
their children sobriety in the fear of the Lord, that they might
not be nursed and trained up in lightness, vanity and
wantonness. Likewise I was made to warn masters and
mistresses, fathers and mothers in private families, to take
care that their children and servants might be trained up in the
fear of the Lord; and that they themselves should be therein
examples and patterns of sobriety and virtue to them.[26]
I was to bring them off from all the world’s fellowship and
prayings and singings, which stood in forms without power: ...
[27]

These prohibitions and many others that were [Sidenote: Kept

enunciated from time to time in his speaking and prominent place
writing, were to be in time a part of the discipline of in the church]
the organization, and were as religiously imposed
on all members as the ardor of the meeting and the difficulty of the
task would permit. The cases coming up before the monthly
meetings for discipline are largely composed of infringements of the
regulations, which grew out of Fox’s recommendations. These are,
without question, of very ascetic nature. One instance which
illustrates the incorporation of these ideals in the discipline of the
organization may be cited in this connection.

All Friends, train up your children in the fear of God; and as

they are capable, they may be instructed and kept employed
in some lawful calling; that they may be diligent, serving the
Lord in the things that are good; that none may live idle and
be destroyers of the creation, and thereby become
burdensome to others, and to the just witness in themselves.
[28]

Second, the emphasis placed on the values to [Sidenote:

be derived from a practical education, to be gotten, Apprenticeship
to a large degree, through a careful system of education
apprenticing the children of members to people, recommended]
members if possible, who would also be careful in
regard to their moral instruction, is unmistakable. The practice as
recommended, indicated below, became the general rule in Quaker
communities, as is adequately evidenced in the meeting records. In
this connection, however, it should be kept in mind that
apprenticeship education could be legally enforced.
Being in London, it came upon me to write to Friends throughout
the nation, about putting out poor children to trades. Wherefore I
sent the following epistle to the quarterly meetings of friends in all
counties:

My Dear Friends,
Let every quarterly meeting make inquiry through all the
monthly and other meetings, to know all Friends that are
widows, or others that have children fit to put out to
apprenticeship; so that once a quarter you may set forth an
apprentice from your quarterly meeting; and so you may set
forth four in a year in each county, or more, if there be
occasion. This apprentice, when out of his time, may help his
father or mother, and support the family that is decayed; and
in so doing all may come to live comfortably. This being done
in your quarterly meetings you will have knowledge through
the county in the monthly and particular meetings, of masters
fit for them, and of such trades as their parents or the children
are most inclinable to. Thus, being placed out with Friends,
they may be trained up in truth; and by this means in the
wisdom of God, you may preserve Friends’ children in the
truth, and enable them to be strength and help to their
families, and nurses, and preservers of their relations in their
ancient days.... For in the country you know, you may set forth
an apprentice for a little to several trades, as bricklayers,
masons, carpenters, wheelwrights, ploughwrights, tailors,
tanners, curriers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, nailers, butchers,
weavers of linen and woolen stuffs and serges, etc., and you
 may do well to have a stock in your quarterly meetings for that
purpose. All that is given by any Friends at their decease
(except it be given to some particular use, person or meeting)
may be brought to the public stock for that purpose. This will
be the way for the preserving of many that are poor among
you, and it will be the way of making up poor families. In
several counties it is practised already. Some quarterlies set
forth two apprentices; and sometimes the children of others
that are laid on the parish. You may bind them for fewer or
more years, according to their capacities....[29]
G. F.
London, 1st of 11th month, 1669.

The following lines, taken from the meeting records, are sufficient
proof of the working out of this recommendation concerning
apprenticeship education.
[Sidenote: And
It is agreed and concluded upon by this executed in
meeting, that the meeting take care of all various meetings]
Friends’ children that are left as orphans and
unsettled, to inspect and see that all such be taken care of
and settled in the best and suitablest manner, according to
their capacity, that thereby they may discharge their duty and
all such be eased by taking such due care.[30]

Third, the establishment of schools was believed to be necessary;

for a proof of this attitude may be cited his action in regard to the
establishment of schools at Waltham and Shacklewell.
[Sidenote:
Then returning towards London by Waltham, I Establishment of
advised the setting up of a school there for school advised]
teaching boys; and also a girls’ school at
Shacklewell, for instructing them in whatsoever things were
civil and useful.[31]