Baume, S., & Papadopoulos, Y. (2024). Why do populists scorn compromises (and how do they live with them)? Journal of Political Ideologies, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2024.2382441
ABSTRACT
Both political theorists and scholars working on populism with an ideational approach have frequently noted that populists are averse to compromise. However, the negative relationship between populism and compromise has not been analyzed in detail. In this paper, we offer a comprehensive account of the reasons behind this oft-repeated conflict between populist narratives and the practice of compromise, disentangling the various dimensions of such incompatibility and exploring their connections. We rely on theoretical and empirical research on populism, supplemented by illustrative examples and references to political theory with an anti-pluralist coloration and the opponents thereof. We compare populist objections with Baume and Papadopoulos’s typology of objections to political compromises. We demonstrate that populist objections only partly overlap with those inventoried in the typology, notably along the moral and antagonistic dimensions, while the populist claim that compromises denature the unmediated expression of the popular will has not been considered before. Through an exploratory case study, we further reflect on how populists justify compromises when they are in power, notwithstanding their ideological reluctances. Our paper enriches the study of the ideational elements of populism while advancing research on the perception of compromises in democratic politics.