Populisms in Democracies Under the Post-truth Pressure: Giving New Life to Public Debate or Blurring It?

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to explore some debates that underlie the perception that we are inhabiting a post-truth context, in relation to the spread of populist movements and leaders that are challenging our understandings of democracy. To do that, first, following the work of authors like Pierre Rosanvallon and Nadia Urbinati, I reflect on the common traits of contemporary populism, despite its important cultural, ideological, and contextual differences. For these authors, populism involves an understanding of democracy that takes it to its limits and has authoritarian traits. Secondly, I assess the claim that we are living in a post-truth context, highlighting the different approaches to ‘post-truth’ and their political implications. This is related to the debate about facts and opinions and the way we envision the epistemic character of democratic politics. Third, I conclude that populism, understood as an alternative model of democracy, damages some of the core elements of liberal democracies, disregarding forms of complex representation of intermediary bodies and their role in the formation of better decisions, which is one of the sources of democracy’s legitimacy.

Introduction

The objective of this chapter is to explore some debates that underlie the perception that we are inhabiting a post-truth context, in relation to the spread of populist movements and leaders that are challenging our understandings of democracy. To do that, first, following the work of authors like Pierre Rosanvallon and Nadia Urbinati, I reflect on the common traits of contemporary populism, despite its important cultural, ideological, and contextual differences. For these authors, populism involves an understanding of democracy that takes it to its limits and has authoritarian traits. Secondly, I assess the claim that we are living in a post-truth context, highlighting the different approaches to ‘post-truth’ and their political implications. This is related to the debate about facts and opinions and the way we envision the epistemic character of democratic politics. And the key point is the acceptance (or denial) of the normative content and presumption of rationality of the outcomes of democratic procedures approached from a systemic perspective. Third, I conclude that populism, understood as an alternative model of democracy, damages some of the core elements of liberal democracies, disregarding forms of complex representation of intermediary bodies and their role in the formation of better decisions, which is one of the sources of democracy’s legitimacy. In this sense, one of the principal traits of populism is the distrust of intermediary bodies, which has an impact on the social and political status of scientific knowledge and the relative weight it should have in political decisions. This has become a very relevant topic, as there is a prevalent perception that the extension of populist views and styles of politics is transforming the role and functioning of the political public sphere and its relations with institutions. These changes—disruption, polarization, fragmentation—challenge the liberal democratic imaginary that is related to a way of producing scientific knowledge and using it in the justification of political decisions in the context of deep socioeconomic structural changes. I contrast populist claims with those of authors adopting a systemic view of democratic deliberation to redescribe the idea of the public sphere in contemporary democracies, as well as its proper relations with representative institutions.

Exploring the Populist Vision of Democracy

Over the last decades, the academic focus on populism has generated a contested and quite confusing panorama of different conceptualizations, methodological approaches, and typologies, giving place to sometimes contradictory assessments of its influence on contemporary democracies (for a summary, see Gidron & Bonikowski, 2013). This has led some theorists to insist on its core minimum elements—the fracture between the elites and the people—despite other differences, opening its meaning to include various phenomena that lead to new differentiations and comparisons (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2018); to abandon the idea of articulating an uncontestable definition of the concept or its intrinsic elements and to put the focus on the specific anti-democratic policies developed when populist leaders and parties reach power (Urbinati, 2019); or to conclude that it is a specific contemporary ideology that defends a different model of democracy that takes the elements of liberal democracy to their limits (Rosanvallon, 2021). This is important to highlight, as the way we conceptualize populism has important implications for the normative criteria used to identify the populist phenomena (actors, behaviors, and regimes), to describe and compare them, and, most crucially, to assess their impact on democracy.

The contemporary rise of populist leaders and political movements is explained as a response to a perceived crisis of democracy (Moffitt, 2015). Like demagogues of ancient democracies, they appear when there are problems of democratic legitimacy (Urbinati, 2019). Populists are then seen as providing an answer to internal tensions inherent to democracies (Canovan, 1999; Rosanvallon, 2021), but there is a wide debate about the impact they have on them. All the assessments are conditioned by the selected approach to analyzing the phenomena. If we consider populism a political style that is performed across a variety of political and cultural contexts (Moffitt & Tormey, 2014), it seems to be a natural adaptation to recent developments of democratic politics trying to adjust to new, deep structural changes, and their impact on democracy would depend more on other considerations than the populist elements (such as their left–right ideological position or their respect for some basic values). But as Moffitt and Tormey (2014, p. 391) point out, all politicians in any democracy speak in the name of ‘the people’ at some point, and many of them use the populist style without being populists (as their example of Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ shows). Other approaches that consider it a discourse or a soft ideology (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwaser, 2018) embrace too many cases and experiences, diluting the normative and explicative force of the term and being ambivalent about its final positive or negative impact on democracy. That is why, as a contemporary ideology that defends an alternative (real) form of democracy, the assessment of their transformations of the institutions of democracy changes in an important way. Adopting this perspective, let us also think about some connections with a post-truth context and their challenges to contemporary democracy.

The perspective of analysis is based on a consideration of populism as an ideology in the terms stated by Rosanvallon (2021), which connects with Urbinati’s (2019) proposal to leave aside the description of the concept and to focus on populist regimes and the ways they change democratic institutions. Otherwise, we risk diluting the essence of populism—as many emergent parties or movements adopt a populist language or are designated as populist in a pejorative sense. In Pierre Rosanvallon's (2021) view, the common substratum that gives rise to populism is the failure of democracy to resolve its own contradictions in its attempts to institute a society of equals. That involves defining a People and articulating its sovereignty, as well as the basic norms of equal justice. Although the common core of populism seems to provide a certain answer to these questions (Gidron & Bonikowski, 2013; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017), it does so in very different historical and contextual manifestations. In this sense, Rosanvallon (2021) stresses that contemporary populisms grow because there is a populist culture that fosters them. Precisely, they offer a simplistic answer to problems generated by deep structural changes that have taken place in society and the economy, translating into a conception of politics that tries to avoid complexity. As a reaction, always stressing their critical momentum, populists provide solutions to structural transformations generated by digital culture and the economic system. Those transformations have promoted a radical individualization of identities, which works against an adequate articulation of a People and the general interest. This has been socially reflected in the loss of meaning of the categories that previously articulated democratic politics (i.e., social class), as well as in the plurality and fragmentation of the new ones.

We must conclude, then, that these developments merely exacerbate the internal tensions of democracy: the impossibility of representing people’s sovereignty (objectively, as a unity) and of defining effective channels to express its authentic will. These tensions are periodically appeased by the different ways of understanding political representation, developing new ways of envisaging both institutional (decentralization, descriptive elements on electoral systems, non-elected institutions) and social (civil society, media, interest groups) representations (Saward, 2010). But even if we consider that these new modes of representation are a democratic improvement, more attuned to the complex reality of our societies, these tensions they claim to address are an ineliminable trait of democratic systems. Contemporary populism is thus defined by its assumption of an intolerable tension between elites and the people seen as a failure of representation. It is there where conceptions of representation are understood as direct representation through a leader (embodiment) and appeals to the direct participation of ordinary citizens (use of referendums, role as an audience) irrupt. For both Rosanvallon and Urbinati, an assumption of these common elements involves a different understanding of democracy.¹ Contemporary populists affirm a specific form of (real, more authentic) democracy different from the one identified with liberal democracy.² That is the reason why, contrary to many mainstream interpretations, Rosanvallon (2021) concludes that present-day populism is an ideology (and not a ‘thin’ one) that provides an alternative form of democracy, unique to the twenty-first century. This new form is one that is prone to degenerate into its authoritarian version, what Rosanvallon calls a ‘democratorship.’ Populism would be placed alongside two other ideal-types: the ‘minimalist’ (based on elections, as described by Schumpeter or Popper—often equated with liberal democracy) and the ‘essentialist’ (the one defended as ‘real democracy’, that aims to achieve a communal social order, of a radical or Marxist inspiration). All of them would still belong to the democratic family, providing a different internal balance of their core elements, but in a way that makes them prone to degenerate into oligarchical (minimalist) and totalitarian (essentialist) regimes, or, in the case of populism, what he calls a ‘democratorship’ (its authoritarian possibility) (Rosanvallon, 2021, p. 100).

The core element of the populist ideal type is a monistic vision of representation that sidelines the representative character of intermediate bodies (parties, experts, associations, public administration, control agencies, tribunals, etc.), stresses the moral damage caused by elites and increases political polarization (Urbinati, 2014, 2019), having serious implications for contemporary democracies. The danger is fully perceived when populist parties and leaders achieve power, as they distort representative institutions and challenge the separation that defines a democracy between will (institutional) and opinion (public debate), as well as their mutual influences (Urbinati, 2019). Instead of accepting the complexity and the many sites of institutional representation and the social forms of representation implicit in the idea of the public sphere and its institutional connections (Habermas, 1996; Rosanvallon , 2008; Saward, 2010), populists try to solve problems through an appeal to the real (good) majority. In doing so, they directly link personal leadership with an audience through digital media, and use propaganda and communication to dismiss the opposition. They do not seek inclusive deliberation among a plurality of different perspectives, with many actors participating in a systemic way, but instead stress the symbolic dimension of representation (Pitkin, 1967) through an appeal to emotional identifications conducted with a rhetorical intimidatory style of politics.

Rosanvallon (2021) identifies five common traits of the populist attack on intermediate bodies based on this sharp division between the ordinary people and the elite. He points out that this anti-elitism involves a generalized suspicion of the knowledge provided by the actors incorporated into their definition of the elite (it can be technocrats, political parties, institutional bodies, the media, or international organizations). Against their expertise, there is a vindication of common sense that is attributed to the (majority of) ordinary citizens. These elites are thus considered enemies and as obstacles to solving the crisis. To overcome them, political compromise is rejected—a position that leads to extreme polarization. On the contrary, this fight against the enemies is understood as a justification for using lies and manipulating information to make it fit the basic narrative. Finally, the populist vindication of a direct form of representation focuses on its symbolic dimension (‘standing for’, based on emotional identifications to the detriment of other dimensions of the concept [see Pitkin, 1967]), stressing passions and emotional connections to probe the authenticity of the representative link, as well as expressing responsiveness toward citizens. Although these claims of directness are far from being something new, in the present context, their plausibility is evidenced by their relations with the audience through digital media, which are of invaluable assistance in bypassing intermediaries.

That explains why contemporary populists—understood in this way—feel comfortable with what has been designated as a post-truth context, as it allows them to exert a powerful influence that reinforces their claims. Post-truth has been rather vaguely and popularly defined as a social and political context where citizens’ opinions are mainly influenced by emotions and personal beliefs rather than by ‘qualified’ information and expertise that circulates through a process of public debate. Populisms have not generated this context—they are its outcome in a sense—but they nonetheless contribute towards the emergence of a new political culture which is damaging to democracies.

Post-truth Regimes? Facts, Knowledge, and Public Debate in Democracy

Nevertheless, this definition of post-truth does not reflect the polemics taking place under this label, as the way we understand and use the concept is also controversial. Its attributed meanings and common uses presuppose that it is interchangeable with other concepts, such as ‘fake news’, disinformation, or conspiracy theories, without taking into consideration that they all involve different theoretical and political debates. In this sense, we can see how reflection on post-truth involves such complex issues as: the meaning of truth; the production of scientific knowledge; the political effect of relativism present in critical or postmodern theories; the relationship between science and politics; and the epistemic character of democracy. But they are also related to more ordinary moral and political questions, such as the strategic use of conscious lies to justify political decisions or to frame political narratives that influence citizens’ preferences and public opinion formation.

The novelty of present-day concerns with truth seems to rely on a growing social acceptance that different ‘truths’ can coexist in the social body, which is related to what has been considered a ‘post-factual’ context. But it is more than that. The term also refers to a real situation where (scientifically validated) facts no longer have any particular influence on the shaping of public opinions or on debates taking place in the public sphere. This is often connected with having some leaders and parties in power that ignore facts when it comes to defending their policies.

Nevertheless, there are many other considerations when it comes to assessing the impact of ‘post-truth’. As Farkas and Schou (2018) point out, the spread of ‘fake news’ corresponds to polemics taking place in politics as the result of specific developments of digital capitalism that are challenging the functioning of our democracies (the role of the big tech companies that monopolize the digital world); how right-wing populist politicians use media to spread lies and criticize journalists; or how mainstream journalism is unable to fulfill the ethical standards and normative considerations attributed to our democracies (competition from social media, the lack of financing, and the marketization of news). These factors all raise important questions that demand reflection on the essence of our democracies and how their institutions and procedures connect scientific knowledge, opinion, and political decision, in a way that generates (or not) epistemic content.

But what all these polemics highlight are the deep transformations experienced by our world—cultural changes affecting individuals, society, and politics—that are already having an impact on the functioning of democratic systems. For some, they validate the end of a coherent system of knowledge and politics that reflects the liberal heritage of the Enlightenment, involving a change in an epistemological paradigm that is at the base of the conception of our democratic systems. For others, these transformations require the redescription of some institutions and new regulations to support and try to make effective the normative principles that constitute the core of the democratic system (Trenz, 2024).

Facts and Opinion in Democratic Politics

Therefore, current controversies have produced a rich philosophical debate arising from a concern with the rejection of appeals to rational considerations in political life, equating politics with opinions detached from any conception of truth or rationality. Indeed, it has become a common practice of some politicians and movements to question the legitimacy of scientific truths without argumentation about their validity, presenting their claims as ‘alternative facts’.

This debate is a continuation of twentieth-century themes, with some authors asserting that postmodern theories have paved the way to this post-truth situation (D’Ancona, 2017).³ Denying the possibility of rationality, truthfulness, or objectivity in knowledge, they have stressed its relation to specific ideologies or regimes of power, justifying the belief that as all truth claims are politicized, they all have the same validity.

In this theoretical landscape, the pejorative use of the term post-truth is vindicated as a way of reclaiming a special status (truthfulness) for some species of facts. In distinguishing scientific, factual, or moral facts—that have their own methods of validation—what is stressed is that some factual truths cannot be considered mere opinions that avoid being subjected to a common procedure of justification/validation. These statements involve, firstly, an analysis of the relations between facts and truth, and, secondly, of how facts acquire a political meaning and inform politics, specifically in a democratic system that has expected of its institutions a search for truthfulness (Habermas, 1996) understood as a regulatory idea.

As part of the theoretical debate on post-truth as well as the institutional responses to it, the focus is then on what we can consider ‘factual truths’ and how they should be interpreted. It reflects on the scope and influence of emotions and interpretations on the recognition of some facts, and the attribution of meaning to them. From this perspective, there is a new reading of authors like Arendt, Habermas, pragmatists like Rorty, or Foucault (Newman, 2023) using their reflections on knowledge and power to vindicate some idea of truthfulness. And this revisitation of their theoretical proposals confirms that present debate also rests—as those that influenced their thoughts—on the role given to reason, argumentation, and justification in politics.

That is why references to the work of Hannah Arendt have become very popular in affirming a type of factuality independent of opinions or political deliberations. She conceived the existence of factual truth as the only base to generate an antidote to the totalitarian experience of creating a closed, alternative reality (as the suppression of identities in the Soviet regime showed), or the abusive spread of lies from those in power (the US government during the Vietnam war). And these examples are very persuasive to those who see parallels with some populist governments today who exhibit authoritarian characteristics.

Nevertheless, with her emphasis on the existence of factual truths that have a different character than opinions, she was not affirming the authority of ‘objective facts’ equated with a direct description of reality. She was also a critic of a technocratic vision of politics conceived as an application of scientific knowledge to problem-solving. All her work was a vindication of a collective form of acting politically, where scientific and factual truths have a place, but decisions are based on a political judgment that generates public opinions. Coming from a generation traumatized by totalitarianism and in a polarized political context, she tried to defend the freedom to choose political goals as a collective enterprise of those sharing a common world.

To explain the terms of the present debate, we need to share her concern to defend a form of factual truth from the manipulations of power—for example in the crude elimination of persons under the totalitarian Nazism and Soviet Union regimes, but also in the lies and coverups of governments in democratic societies.

Described in a simplistic way, Arendt considers that there are different types of truths—mathematic, scientific, or philosophical (rational)—but also what she refers to as factual truths, those belonging to the domain of history or justice—that should be differentiated from opinions (they do not depend on the agreement with others). Factual truths rest on evidence provided by testimonies as records, documents, witnesses, and their validity is supported by a common shared world (Arendt, 1993, p. 243). It is the work of academia, the press and scientific experts to protect them, but at the same time they can also be disputed, generating disagreements. In this sense, the meaning of factual truth is also open to debate, but in Arendt’s view, the debate presupposes the veracity of facts. And this core of factuality preserves the common world we share. From this assumption, what follows is that we may try to persuade each other over the meaning of a certain fact, but the assertion of a fact draws a limitation to what is subject to persuasion, which is the properly political form of judgment (which has no cognitive validation) (Burdman, 2018, p. 491).

The conclusion is that the opposite of factual truths are not opinions, but deliberate falsehood or lies—acknowledging that there are different types of facts with different ways of asserting their validity. The liars present their statements as if they were their opinions, without defending their validity. From this perspective, recognizing that all governments use lies, journalists, academics, and the judiciary have a role in uncovering them. But the danger does not come from mere governmental or social lies; the threat is the systematic erosion of the truths, which destroys the public realm, making democratic life impossible. In this conception, there are (common) values, procedures, and actors that are the gatekeepers in charge of the fight against those lies. In constitutional states, the judiciary, higher learning institutions, and academics are the ones that establish criteria of truthfulness, but also give meaning to facts. In this regard, Arendt (1993, p. 261) stresses the special role of historians in establishing and defending factual truths, but also of journalists in their daily news reporting. That is why they need to be independent and protected from power. But at the same time, their duty forces them to follow ethical standards of veracity and fact-checking.

As has been argued, the danger comes when lies are embraced by the community. In this situation of mass manipulation of truth and opinion, of ‘organized lying’ (Arendt, 1993, p. 231) there can be a rewriting of history and a change of mentality that would be reflected in governmental policies. And here Arendt attributes an exceptional function to the truthtellers: those who are outside the political realm and act with objectivity; a position that is understood as based on intellectual integrity—free from self-interest—and a passion for curiosity.

Nevertheless, the use of these factual truths as a basis of opinion is a political act. That is why Arendt considers legitimate the political action of some ethnic and social groups in their fight for public recognition of certain facts. This weakens her radical defense of factual truth as such, except maybe where those facts really constitute part of the common world. It is the fight for meaning that has a political impact, and this implies insisting on its public acceptance.

Precisely what postmodern critiques stress is that even the recognition of facts involves mediation and is therefore embroiled in power relations. There are institutional networks that select factual truths and thus determine what is accepted in a hegemonic interpretive context. As Zerilli (2020) stresses in her interpretation of Arendt, there are systems of power, such as patriarchy, racism, colonialism, that obstruct the public acceptance of some factual truths as such. And this acceptance is key to having an influence on political judgment and action, as it gives them a weight in public opinion formation, voting, or public policy decision-making.

Arendt’s conclusion is that politics is based on political judgments that use some scientific and factual truths in the formation of public opinion constructed through persuasion. But she considers that there are other standards to assess the quality of opinions. Following Kant, she believes that our thinking is discursive, and matters of opinion depend on agreement and consent. That means that opinions should be formed through an open discussion, where all sides are taken into consideration, and decision is guided by an impartial generalization (judgment that presupposes adopting an ‘enlarged mentality’). And this perspective is the one embodied in the practices of liberal democracy.

But there are other approaches to the issue of objectivity in politics. Arendt (1993, p. 240) referred to the doubts of scientists and philosophers over the possibility of the existence of any fact independent of its interpretation; the inevitability of selection within the chaotic world of events, and their dependence on the limited perspective of a narrative that gives them a sense (meaning). One of these authors assuming such doubts was Max Weber. He allows us to reflect on this relationship between knowledge and politics, giving democratic institutions (with their epicenter on representative parliaments) a role as knowledge providers, as they are intended to generate debate and political judgment. With his critique of rationalism and recognition of value pluralism, Weber discarded both epistemic positions, those that understand politics as an objective problem-solving activity through the correct application of empirical knowledge, and those utopian visions disconnected from reality.

In his essay ‘The ‘Objectivity’ of knowledge in social science and social policy’, Weber ([1904] 2004) defended the idea that there is no possible direct access to an empirical historical reality through the production of data without criteria. Knowledge is always a process of reducing complexity, and these criteria to interpret data are provided by an articulation of what he theorized as ideal-types. And Weber also stressed that all knowledge consists of a special kind of shared power, and is therefore part of political struggle (Palonen, 2017, p. 50). He assumes a type of rhetorical perspectivism, a view of knowledge as the competition between different points of view. This perspectivism is reflected in how scientific knowledge is produced, based on academic debates providing argumentation, but also in political knowledge and the role of political judgment in decision-making.

This vision of knowledge production, therefore, is what gives initial support to parliamentary institutions—following a perspective common to the liberal tradition (Arias-Maldonado, 2020). Parliamentary procedural debates, in which the arguments ‘for and against’ the proposals are publicly analyzed from different perspectives, are the mechanism for generating better political decisions that take into account the general interest.

In ‘Politics as Vocation’ Weber ([1919] 2015) insists that one of the qualities of the politician is to have a sense of reality. Decisions in politics must be based on knowledge—established through scientific and public debate—that sheds light on its foundations and contributes to advance its consequences and implications. But that knowledge cannot help to decide between goals and foundations. This is so because Weber assumes value pluralism as an (inevitable) distinguishing feature of modernity, insisting that political action, which constitutes one of the spheres of society, cannot be governed by absolute principles. He stresses that the ideals that should guide political action are plural and can clash (in a context of the amorality of the modern State); that the world is the sphere of moral irrationality (as opposed to rationalist views), because good can be derived from evil and vice versa; and that politics is a struggle for power, and exercising it produces consequences that are beyond the ends and motivations of its agents. But participants in politics must responsibly assume the worst possible outcomes, with a potential to use violence to impose those decisions, if necessary. Hence the difficult duty of politicians who face these constraints and who, unlike bureaucrats, take sides and respond to their actions.

Weber's position reflected a concern with the growing bureaucratization of modern societies. Against it, he insisted on the need to articulate a political space with its own features that would avoid bureaucratic domination.

Inspired by Weber, Palonen (2018, p. 214) points out that to adopt a post-truth perspective implies the consideration that academic and political disputes are just a matter of competing opinions, which require arbitrary choices. On his view, the problem regarding the paradigmatic case, so often cited in the literature, of Trump’s advisers lying about the size of the crowd at his Presidential inauguration in 2017, is not that they have normalized the use of alternative facts. It is, rather, that these advisers rejected any debate about validity of the sources of such a claim (i.e. discussing different methodologies for counting the audience numbers) or its interpretation. On the contrary, they simply doubled down on their claim without feeling obliged to produce any kind of evidence (thus assuming an authoritarian position). Referring to Weber, Palonen considers that there are supra-political criteria to assess the political judgments of political activity. They can be criticized in the name of science, as unworthy, or for its undesirable consequences.

But in Weber’s approach, there is little place for the other dimension of democracies, as it focuses on politicians and the parliament, thus giving his position an elitist taint. Instead, in the work of Arendt—but more developed in Habermas and authors defending a deliberative perspective—there is an emphasis on the key role played by the political public sphere. As has been said, Arendt gives an important role to truthtellers that expose and denounce governmental lies, and to certain institutions, like the judiciary, that attempt to hold them to account. But she also mentions the academy and journalists, who play an important role in ordinary and extraordinary politics. All of them should be independent, but also adhere to certain ethical principles, such as impartiality and intellectual integrity.

The Epistemic Content of Democracies

Arendt’s separation of cognition and argumentation is what Habermas, in his impressive work, tried to reverse. This is from the perspective of a systemic view of democracy, conceived as a deliberative system that justifies its epistemic content attribution.

This conceptualization is grounded on the actual historical practices that constitute the core of liberal democracies; it is not a form of ideal-thinking (Habermas, 2022, p. 147). These practices have generated a normative content and involve certain presuppositions that are assumed by citizens, and which influence their behavior. For Habermas, constitutional states (liberal democracies) are envisioned as the cooperative search of deliberating citizens to find solutions to solve political problems, which is reflected in its basic institutions.⁴ Institutional legitimacy is thus based on the democratic processes that allow citizens to participate in the articulation of political opinions and a common will that is public, inclusive, and that is presumed to produce reasonable outcomes. It is normatively conceived as an inclusive space for the discursive clarification of competing claims to truth and the generalization of interests.

This conception of deliberation is achieved by the system, which has to fulfill three functions: to raise relevant issues, granting proper information and generating valid interpretations; to discursively process such contributions, providing proper arguments for and against; and to generate rationally motivated responses that would permit procedurally correct decisions. In this system, the function of the political public sphere is to guarantee a plurality of considered public opinions, that should be taken into consideration by political institutions. Their plurality is what guarantees inclusion and satisfies the requirements of a plural society. Nevertheless, there are intermediaries—for instance, the media—that have the special role of articulating interpretations out of the different and competing visions of the world and validating it as generally rationally accepted (Habermas, 2006). This role of the press and the media to provide valid interpretations requires it to follow some cognitive standards of judgments without which there can be neither the objectivity of the world of facts nor the identity and commonality of our intersubjectively shared world. But they have to construct these considered opinions out of the claims, knowledge, and information provided by the plurality of actors that participate in the public sphere as well (Habermas, 2006).

The public sphere, then, represents the arena where—based on science and other sources of information—political opinions are constructed through the mediation of many different actors. And all these actors are subject to some (specific but different) ethical standards demanded by deliberation. In the political public sphere—in a field that needs to be independent of power—we find academics, activists, intellectuals, and journalists. They are responsible for the control of political lies, but they have also to follow an ethical code for acting publicly, as per Arendt’s reflections. Consequently, they are responsible for identifying and taking care of scientific and factual truths, but they also participate in its attribution of meaning, influencing, and articulating public opinion(s).

In the context of our concern for post-truth, in one of his latest works Habermas (2022) identified as the most problematic trend today the disruption of the public sphere generated by digital media. These platforms have altered the role of journalism as a mediator that is subjected to the normative requirement of generating systemic deliberation. The digital challenges may be the biggest menace to its function: to construct relevant and effective plural public opinions.

Habermas’ understanding of the present disruption of national public sphere presupposes (Habermas, 2022, p. 159) that they are introducing a new (libertarian and corporate dominated) pattern of communication that erodes the integrating power of the communicative contexts provided by television, press, and the radio. The new social media have facilitated the dissemination of fake news and conspiracy theories, increasing mistrust in truth (and politics) and encouraging the retreat to echo-chambers. And that involves a challenge of the (permanently contested, but real) presumption that there is an (intersubjectively shared despite competing interpretations) image of the world considered to be objective and accepted by everyone as normal and valid.

What is problematic is not being able to consider the public sphere ‘an inclusive space for possible discursive clarification of competing claims to truth and generalization of interests’ (Habermas, 2022, p. 166). This infrastructure is damaged when citizens no longer pay attention to relevant issues; or when it does not facilitate the formation of qualitatively filtered competing public opinions. But the qualitative standards to measure it are not the ‘objectivity’ of certain facts or the common identity of our intersubjective shared world.

Habermas thus considers a constitutional imperative to maintain a media structure that ensures the inclusive character of the public sphere and the deliberative character of opinions and the political will. And that justifies institutional intervention and regulations, that nevertheless are intended to guarantee their independence.

But in Habermas’ opinion (2022) the public sphere fulfills an essential but limited function—to define public opinion(s) helping citizens’ will formation and to prepare institutional agendas. Deliberation has to be approached from a systemic perspective, as its basic goals (inclusion, deliberation) can only be (partially) realized, and in the representative bodies of parliamentary lawmaking (Habermas, 2022, p. 150).

When we connect the focus on post-truth with democratic theory, we have to accept that political decisions cannot be just based on opinions. Decisions should be oriented towards finding common solutions to problems, based on the best information available. And there are different points of access for scientific, academic, and journalistic information, through experts who identify facts, but also contribute to their meaning.

As Christiano (2012, p. 43) points out, experts have different roles in democratic deliberation. They debate theories that support the adoption of some policies or their rejection, acting as an external filter for systemic deliberation. This process of filtering allows the articulation of public opinions, facilitating the choices of politicians, decision-makers, and citizens. From this perspective, the legitimation of political decisions depends on their recognition as acceptable by the community of experts. Politicians then choose to act on some of them, without being experts themselves, but with the conviction that they will produce the best policies, and also with the knowledge that they are responsible for its consequences. In a context of political and value pluralism, expertise is not so important in choosing goals but in helping to develop policies and laws. And there exists an overlapping expertise that avoids the domination of a specialized knowledge that benefits particular social groups.

This consideration of facts and expert knowledge, nevertheless, is made in a context where there is always a political fight for the recognition of certain facts and interpretations, in a context of ineliminable complexity and indeterminacy (Christiano, 2012, p. 45). In this sense, the public sphere is also the realm where social groups and movements challenge facts and their social and political meaning, submitting them to public scrutiny and debate.

That is the reason why in order to analyze post-truth and disinformation narratives and solutions, a systemic perspective that goes beyond the idea of the public sphere is needed. These digital and political transformations are also having an impact on the institutional processes of collective decision-making. For example, there have been changes in the institutionalization of spaces for citizen participation in a governance narrative—for instance the creation of deliberative mini-publics (Dryzek & Niemeyer, 2010; Fishkin, 2019; Smith, 2009)—or the design of new processes or public institutions contributing to feed legitimate debate, including experts in policy-making (Rosanvallon, 2018).

Nevertheless, if we consider that the normative requirements of deliberation can no longer be met in a democratic system, there is a risk that consensus will break down. But this reference to consensus should not be understood as a goal pursued in each step of deliberation, but as their presupposition, as expressed in constitutional norms (Habermas, 2022). In a context of deep value pluralism, these are the principles of the common world that support the assumptions that characterize the functioning of the public sphere, and which are under threat due to recent structural changes in the post-truth context.

Modern democratic institutions recognize that (any type of) truth is never final and rests on an assumption of factual, moral, and political pluralism. This is expressed in the idea of political representation, locating parliament at the center of the institutions; but it also assumes other forms of complex representations and equilibriums (the mediators) and their connections with a public sphere that is not colonized by institutions. The paradox is that the function of the system is to search for truth, assuming that is always provisional and open to debate (Arias-Maldonado, 2020). As Urbinati (2014) points out, democracy incorporates a distinction between opinion and will, and this gives the citizen the right to judge without the requirement of having expertise in a specific area. That is why the system provides a network of institutions and mediators that present the best knowledge in the search of some truths, which, nevertheless, are used in shaping political decision-making but which do not determine it as such.

Digital and Cultural Changes and the Rise of Populisms

Although there are many reinterpretations of these authors and their impact on present debates on post-truth, to approach the interconnections with contemporary populism we need to introduce another point. It is how democracies have incorporated these philosophical debates as presumptions expressed about its principles and procedures, and why contemporary populisms are contributing (or not) to the erosion of democracy with their style of politics and the institutional changes they make when they achieve power. This requires us also to reflect on the cultural changes that are taking place in our societies and how they are challenging our democratic systems.

Some authors are taking these problems seriously, but are rather skeptical about the possibility of addressing them through reforms or increasing regulation. Structural changes produced by digitalization have generated a ‘global platform economy and society’ that has altered the cultural context (Schlesinger, 2020, p. 1550; Van Dijck, 2021). As a result, these changes have increased distrust in cultural mediators (Harsin, 2023, p. 11) and promoted a type of communication that adopts the form of infotainment and self-promotion that has already had an impact on power relations. From this perspective, the debate on post-truth just shows how these new technologies erase the possibility of using scientific knowledge in political decision-making (plurality of epistemologies, disappearance of the common world) but also how they are changing systemic deliberation. These changes would be the real problem for democracies—not just the manipulation of information—and affect how citizens and their leaders act and think politically. It is something that facilitates the dominance of emotions over rationality in politics (Schlesinger, 2020, p. 1551).

This is clearly related to the way we understand political representation and how the crisis of representation is conceptualized. As Harsin (2023) states, the concern over post-truth refers to the production of knowledge and how it is related to politics. But in our democratic systems it also raises the question of who are the mediators that provide the knowledge in processes of political decision-making. It is not just a mistrust in political parties, but in scientific experts, educators, and journalists. From this perspective, Harsin (2023, p. 4) argues that post-truth is ‘the sign of a widespread social mistrust that is the product of an extended feeling of deception.’

These digital changes have already generated a broad change in social relations that has had an impact on the democratic model. The context of the attention economy, celebrity culture, infotainment, etc. has consolidated in politics a model of audience democracy (Manin, 1997). As Urbinati (2014, p. 214; 2019, p. 44) has insisted, these structural changes have pushed us toward a new historical stage of representative government: audience democracy, in which populist movements and leaders find themselves very comfortable (Urbinati, 2019, 47). Internet and social media—which broadcasts instantaneous coverage of leaders’ speeches and decisions—creates the impression of an immediate democracy. Citizens can visualize politics, control, and give opinions on, what politicians do (surveillance/transparency); they can articulate their opinions in private and also bypass mediators to find information (DIY journalism). But it is a type of voyeuristic and emotional form of political engagement, bereft of any real commitment to long-term projects.

Therefore, the diagnoses of the crisis are diverse. Is it a crisis of liberal society, linked to a specific model of democracy and science, as some advance?

For Farkas and Schou (2019), post-truth does reflect a crisis of democracy: of its representative institutions; of its link to a neoliberal economic regime (power structure); of the cultural infrastructure, produced by digitalization, that supports it; of its presupposition of the possibility to domesticate politics into a form of governance; and of its interconnected technocratic liberal dream. And this is the normative model that populist politics wants to go beyond; here they invoke Laclau and Mouffe.

This is also Waisbord’s (2018) opinion, when he affirms that what is at stake is the crisis of the modern project of disciplinary knowledge based on the scientific model. This ‘technocratic utopia’ implies an acceptance of scientific rationality—as opposed to ideology—as the basis for institutional authority, as well as, for example, what counts as professional journalism. But digital technologies have favored what he considers are counter-epistemic communities, that defend disconnection from science and from traditional ways of providing information with a disregard of gate keepers. In his opinion (Waisbord, 2018, p. 1872), truth as intersubjective agreement on conditions for the production of knowledge is only possible when publics share the same epistemology. And what we have now is, first, a strong anti-neoliberal stance: a regime of power that questions rationality and objectivity. Against the reign of technocrats, it vindicates the freedom of the political. But this is linked with a certain suspicion of liberal democratic regimes, that, paradoxically, is assumed by both the radical right as well as by some anti-globalization movements.

Present concerns about post-truth, therefore, are not the mere continuation of a theoretical conversation. In recent crises, we have witnessed the annoying contestation of assumed scientific facts in order to support political narratives and political decisions by some leaders and movements that use populist strategies.

This mistrust of scientific knowledge as the justification for political decisions has been exacerbated in the recent successive crisis by an appeal to ‘objectivity’, that did not allow for alternatives to be considered: for instance, the use of economic orthodoxy to justify austerity policies; the use of scientific evidence during the COVID crisis; and the role played by ‘non-political’ global institutions and actors (such as the IMF, ECB, OMS). The dominance of technocratic knowledge over politics, in the name of ‘objectivity’, has reinforced the populist disgust toward epistocratic elites.

Post-truth fears do not reflect just the problem of fake news or misinformation (this is just a partial way to approach them). There is a wider reflection on how facts are being put in an interpretive context that claims public recognition (Harsin, in this volume). But that takes place amidst an upsurge of populist politics that discards normal procedures of validation, argumentation, and avoids debate—thus refusing to recognize the legitimacy of other positions.

Their lies—whether considered as ‘alternative’ truths or not—as well as the extension of conspiracy theories, have a serious impact on democracy. This is connected with the question of the way digital platforms are helping to amplify and consolidate these narratives. They are altering the traditional way of understanding the validity of scientific knowledge (questioning some types of expertise), the construction of public opinions (questioning the mediation of the press), and the systemic representative political decision-making (rejecting political parties as well as other types of institutional or social mediators).

Many authors (see Speed & Mannion, 2017) have pointed out that although populism incorporates an element of anti-intellectual delegitimization, as all political decision-makers do, it relies on those experts who provide a point of view that coincides with its presuppositions, considering others part of the elite. The risk is that demagogic politicians tend to delegitimize expert knowledge, lie and try to monopolize democratic institutions. They do so within a conspiratorial monistic discourse, less inclined to accept evidence-based policies, which poses a risk to achieving certain ends (Lockie, 2017).

In this context, post-truth politics has produced fertile soil to spread doubts about what counts as facts, but also and more importantly, about the use of scientific authority to ground political decisions. At the same time, the rejection of those intermediate figures has also promoted a growing distrust of institutions and a retreat to narratives that correspond to ideological positions. The question is to evaluate if the ‘common world’ (Arendt, Habermas), that allows us to be part of a collective enterprise that can be governed democratically, is in danger or does not exist anymore—according to a certain dystopic mood that is generating public anxiety (Harsin, 2023, 15–16; Trenz, 2024).

These changes have been expressed symbolically as a crisis of representation. They have altered the forms, actors, and procedures that structure traditional forms of representation (institutional and non-institutional), favoring the spread of discourses, strategies, and styles of politics considered populist.

What characterizes contemporary societies is the creation of a complex network of forms of representation (Rosanvallon, 2008; Saward, 2010; Urbinati, 2014) that generates a process of systemic deliberation in democracies. It requires diffuse connections between the formation of public opinion and the institutional decision, in which we can find different opportunities for expert knowledge. And it is this complexity that populism tries to supersede.

As we have stated, the different and variegated uses of the term populism give place to different assessments of its impact on democracy. When we consider them as political strategies or discourses, they seem to adapt well to democracies once we have accepted that they already have experienced irreversible structural challenges. It then would be a question of using language and performances to fit in the context of audience democracies, offering a redescription of representation and political action that tries to keep the normative requirements that still count as legitimate in the mind of citizens. Seen from this perspective, populisms can be useful in rethinking and strengthening democracy. They can serve as an impetus to introduce changes in institutions and legislation, reinforcing the normative standards of liberal democracies. These standards are never fully realized in practice, but they institutionalize change as an ineliminable trait, after the debate about its convenience, making democracies very resilient (Trenz, 2024).

Nevertheless, if we consider contemporary populisms as presenting an alternative idea of democracy that weakens the role of mediators and uses new technologies to legitimize direct links with the unified People, we see it from a different perspective. The risk of their monistic view of politics and their exclusion of the enemy is to organize what Arendt considered a ‘system of lies’, of the type that can erode the common understanding that makes democracy possible.

Conclusion

To be aware of these threats, we can go back to Rosanvallon’s description of populism as an ideology that thinks democracy from the perspective of the existence of a sharp division between the elite and the (ordinary) People. This binary division of society into two parts, and its unified, totalizing form of representation, turns intermediate bodies into objects of suspicion and enemies of the (good) People. The assumption of this radical split is both a product of a culture that favors it—as the technology that facilitates a (real) direct relation of the leader with the citizens without intermediaries—and, at the same time, the confirmation of the rightness of the proposed view of democratic legitimacy.

From the perspective of post-truth concerns, there is a clear link with the recent populist upsurge, which is its product and cause at the same time. Populists disregard the knowledge provided by the elite, which can be defined in terms of technocrats, political parties, institutional bodies, the media, international organizations, etc. Against their expertise, there is a vindication of a common sense attributed to the (majoritarian) ordinary citizens. It challenges the methods and sources used to validate scientific knowledge (as the example of the vaccines during the COVID) as well as its application in policy-making. And that includes the denial of the special role of some institutions (i.e. Central Banks, committees of experts, international organizations, parliaments) and actors (experts, academics, journalists, activists, interest groups) which are part of the normative expectations of the democratic system in its aim to generate deliberation.

Those considered elites are thus named as enemies and envisioned as an obstacle in solving the crisis. Hence, the politics of compromise is rejected, political polarization is intensified, and genuine debate and the recognition of a pluralism of views and positions, as the normative requirements of democracy, are abandoned.

The situation of crisis, but also the moral content of the political antagonism (the good against the corrupt), contributes to justifying the strategic use of lies and the manipulation of information to fit with the populist narrative.

Finally, the populist vindication of a direct form of representation focuses on its symbolic dimension (Pitkin, 1967), stressing passions and emotional connections to probe the authenticity of the representative link and responsiveness toward citizens. In the present context, the plausibility of this directness is based on the relationship with the audience through digital media, bypassing intermediaries.

Populists change the division of labor that normally takes place in the public sphere as well as its connections with the political. From this perspective, there is an alteration of public debate as a result of the political strategies (Moffitt, 2015) pursued by populist movements, parties, or leaders, which challenge the very notion of the public sphere. But there is another alteration caused by the institutional changes they seek, as they reinforce the executive power through a control or dismantling of independent institutional agencies, tribunals, and public administration. While this is usually theorized in terms of a tension with the rule of law central to liberal democracies, approached from the perspective of representation, this is seen as a strategy to eliminate intermediary bodies and to concentrate power in the hands of the leader, whose representative character is understood as an embodiment of the popular will.

But we have to go back to Rosanvallon and Urbinati and their perception that the common core of populism involves a rejection of what is more democratic: a complex and depersonalized view of representation, with electoral/non-electoral institutional social forms of representing citizens—something that contributes to generating public debate. Public opinions and institutional decisions offer a place for scientific knowledge and factual truths, using Arendtian categories, that nevertheless do not constitute the only basis for decisions. At the same time, plurality guarantees—as in scientific debate—that these facts are taken into consideration.

For some, the battle is lost, and the changes seem to require new political forms; for others, liberal democracies have shown their resilience through a permanent adaption to the new changes, using those normative common principles and values found in contemporary democracies. And vindicating systemic deliberation in liberal democracies might be an answer to a post-truth scenario.