*with Benjamin Moffitt, Australian Catholic University
Although the nature and definition of populism are a source of considerable disagreement, there seems to be a minimal consensus by now that populism poses some kind of threat to liberal democracy, and that we therefore ought to act in defense of the latter. In searching for appropriate responses, however, most scholars draw from strategies for combatting anti-democrats or violent extremists, without considering the important conceptual differences between populism to these other phenomena. Compared to these phenomena, populism's relation to democracy is much more ambiguous, because of its peculiar conception of representation that can be both exclusive and inclusive. We argue that at least two models of democratic defense – the militant and the procedural– are ill-suited for responding to populism precisely because they were initially conceived as responses to non-ambiguous antidemocratic phenomena. By contrast, a third – social – model of democratic defense better addresses the deeper structural causes of populism. We conclude that, instead of debating whether to exclude or include populists, the best response is to antagonize them over the structural conditions that have fueled their success.
