Populism, Regenerationism and Democracy

Abstract

This work develops a critical dialog with Ernesto Laclau’s theory of hegemony and his conceptualization of populism. Firstly, it argues that the impurity that characterizes the logics of hegemony leads us to conceiving political identities as hybrid solidarities, of superposed borders. This is a different image from Laclau’s exclusive identities. Classic Latin-American populisms have constituted a particular mechanism, among others, of solving the tensions between the representation of a part and the representation of the whole community. Laclau’s identification between politics and populism becomes problematic. Consequently, populism cannot be reduced to an antagonistic dichotomization of the community. The regeneration of the actors involved in a populist practice will thus occupy a central place in the characterization of this political phenomenon.