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Carl Schmitt and the Political Theology of Populism

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Between Theory and Practice: Essays on Criticism and Crises of Democracy

Part of the book series: Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century ((CDC))

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Abstract

This chapter examines Carl Schmitt’s theory of democracy in light of Max Weber’s concept of charismatic rule. It is argued that Schmitt’s crypto-theological understanding of democracy, which assimilates political leadership into prophetic authority, implies an expressive or identitarian conception of democratic community. The latter is at odds with a genuinely democratic understanding of popular consent and liable to provide ideological cover for authoritarian corruptions of democracy. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that a political theology that resembles Schmitt’s forms the ideological basis of contemporary populist interpretations of the democratic ideal. It is therefore wrong to regard populism as only being directed against liberal democracy. Populist ideology and political practice, rather, are inimical to democracy per se.

This chapter incorporates some material from Vinx (2021a).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For instance, Hume (1994, p. 16): ‘Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore on opinion that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular’.

  2. 2.

    When I speak of ‘legitimating effect’, I use the term in Weber’s descriptive sense: elections have legitimating effect if citizens, as a matter of social fact, regard the winner to be entitled to rule. Whether that indicates that the ruler’s claim is justified from a normative point of view is another matter, of course.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Lars Vinx

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  1. Lars Vinx
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Correspondence to Lars Vinx .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Contemporary History and Political Science, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Eerik Lagerspetz

  2. University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Oili Pulkkinen

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Vinx, L. (2023). Carl Schmitt and the Political Theology of Populism. In: Lagerspetz, E., Pulkkinen, O. (eds) Between Theory and Practice: Essays on Criticism and Crises of Democracy. Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41397-1_6

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