Populism: Democracy's Pharmakon?

This is the version recently submitted for publication (October 2017) – I’ll upload the proofs as they become available. In the meantime academia folks comments always v welcome. Enjoy. Populism: Democracy’s Pharmakon? Versions of this paper have been read at the Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Political Theory; a workshop on Populism hosted by the University of Canberra; the Department of Politics and IR, Monash University and at a panel on populism at the Australian Political Studies Association Annual Conference. I am grateful for the many helpful comments received and for written comments from Ben Moffitt. Simon Tormey University of Sydney, Australia Simon Tormey is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney. He is the author of numerous books and articles including Agnes Heller: Socialism, Autonomy and the Postmodern (2001), Anti-Capitalism (2004 and 2013), Key Thinkers from Critical Theory to Post-Marxism (2006) and The End of Representative Politics (2015). His most recent book, co-authored, is Refiguring Democracy: The Spanish Laboratory (2017). Correspondence: The University of Sydney, A26-R.C. Mills Building, Australia Phone: +61 2 9863 2079 Email: simon.tormey@sydney.edu.au  Populism: Democracy’s Pharmakon? Abstract: This paper seeks to resolve one of the key tensions in the literature on populism: whether populism is a threat to democracy or the best means of renewing and deepening democracy. The author argues that rather than defining populism in terms of certain definite outcomes, we should view populism as a symptom of crisis, and one capable of producing a variety of possible effects, some positive and some negative. The argument is pursued in terms of highlighting certain shortcomings in terms of the dominant approaches to the issue, and also through exploring recent Spanish politics, which has seen an increase in various kinds of populist parties and movements. The renewal of democracy in Spain is offered as an example of how populist initiatives can have beneficial outcomes, as well as detrimental ones. Key words: Populism, democracy, Spain, representation, activism, participation. Since the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in 2016 the concept of populism has received huge attention in academic circles as well as amongst the public (Moffitt 2016; Müller 2016; Goodhart 2017). A term that seemed to be squabbled over by specialists working on relatively obscure American political parties, intellectual movements in late nineteenth century Russia and the “Caudillo” dominated politics of Latin America has become of interest for anyone who shares an interest in contemporary political developments. One of the most striking features of debates over how to define the term is the apparent lack of an agreed or settled consensus over the principal features differentiating populism from other kinds of political phenomena. Lacking the self ascriptive properties of terms like socialism and conservatism populism is one used to describe others, and particularly movements and parties that seem to threaten democracy or lie outside the mainstream (Canovan 1981). Consequently the atmosphere surrounding the term is negative and contentious. This would be unproblematic at one level were this negative connotation to be shared by all the commentary on the topic. However, there is at least one important and influential contribution to the debate, that of Ernesto Laclau. He (and his many interlocutors) sees populism in more positive terms. Indeed in his own account populism is a strategy or “logic” that all those seeking to renew and deepen democracy need positively to embrace. (Laclau 2005, 117). So a feature of the debate over the meaning of populism is not only the lack of settled definition, it is the lack of basic agreement over whether populism is a bad thing to be combated, opposed, resisted, or by contrast something to be promoted, even celebrated as constituting no less than the ‘logic’ of politics. Commentators, aware of the normative consequences that flow from an appropriate definition of the term (resistance / promotion), are locked in pungent debate giving rise to a minor publishing industry. The stakes are unusually high in this war of position. I think framing populism as either negative or positive is in some important sense unsatisfactory. Mainstream commentary is surely justified in seeing populism as a departure from ordinary or normal politics. Populists often feel the need to act upon democracy, and this is often why it is seen as a threat to democracy. But this is moving too quickly. It disregards the origins of populism in crisis, and in particular in the breakdown of trust between elites and the people, which may give rise to legitimate concerns concerning the efficacy of democratic representation. On the other hand, populism is not without certain risks. Precisely because populism represents a break from “normal” politics and the steady pendulum movement so familiar in advanced democracies (centre right to centre left and back again) it introduces an element of the unknown or contingent into political life. Now whilst previous commentary has touched on the “ambivalent” quality of populism, it has so far rarely tried to think this ambivalence through in a way that fully captures what this contingency means for democratic politics (Mény and Surel 2002; Kaltwasser 2012). We need I think to go further and embrace not just the ambivalence of populism, but the very different outcomes that can be produced by it. But how can we think populism in this multifaceted fashion? The possibility of a concept embodying contradictory possibilities is explored in a notable essay by Jacques Derrida on Plato’s Phaedrus (Derrida 2016) . Here Derrida offers extended commentary on the Greek term Pharmakon from which we derive the terms pharmacology and pharmacy. Pharmakon referred to a powerful substance intended to make someone better, but which might just end up killing him or her. This sense of Pharmakon as both a poison and a cure was intrinsic to the meaning of the term. Whether it is one or the other depended on dosage, context, receptivity of the body to the toxin, and so forth. Perhaps the body will live; perhaps it will die. Life and death, good outcomes as well as bad, were fully acknowledged in its use. Intrinsic to the concept of the Pharmakon is, as Derrida relates, uncertainty or contingency – the unknowability of an outcome based on the properties of the substance in question. As my comments above indicate, I think the concept of populism could be usefully framed in similar terms. Seeing populism exclusively as something bad, a “threat” to democracy, seems overblown. But equally the notion that populism is sufficiently without risk to be embraced by those interesting in extending and deepening democracy doesn’t help us understand the specificity of populism as a response to a particular set of issues under very particular historical conditions. Thinking of populism as intrinsically linked to crisis, and thus to an event whose outcome is in question, offers a different and perhaps more productive perspective. It also captures the “undecidability” that Derrida urged us to embrace in terms of our thinking about the political field more generally (Derrida 1994). To show this I will pursue the argument in two ways: firstly through engaging with the interpretations of populism outlined above. Secondly, through discussion of recent politics in Spain which will in turn highlight the benefit of seeing populism as containing both negative and positive possibilities. Understanding Populism take 1 Notwithstanding the overwhelming impression one gets from the literature of a lack of agreement over what constitutes populism, the similarities in approach greatly outweigh the differences in interpretation, certainly as far as mainstream political science literature is concerned (Canovan 1981; Taggart 2000; Müller 2016; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). To take a few obvious points of agreement, nearly every commentator agrees that the particular quality of populist rhetoric is the distinction between the corrupt or inefficient elites and "the people”, who are in turn regarded as the guardians of common sense. They agree that this rhetoric is often expressed in terms of brusque disregard for the norms of regular political debate, that populists are prone to “bad manners” (Moffitt 2016). Populists delight in causing offence, creating chaos and uncertainty, as well as highlighting and dramatising crisis in whatever form it appears - economic failure, immigration, the threat to the nation from globalization and so forth. Populism is seen as a departure from “normal” politics, or politics as this has been experienced over the past half century. Populists do not care for the usual distinctions that we associate with left/right politics, and indeed often conflate or confuse issues that would usually be held apart if regular politics was functioning. Populism is usually associated with a charismatic or dominant leader who in turn claims to be able to interpret or understand the needs, interests, hopes and fears of the people, which in turn is seen as the subject of politics. The people cannot therefore be divided from itself, but rather has to be spoken of in terms of a single homogenous entity. Populism is therefore a “monist” stance, as Jan Werner-Muller puts it. Populists cannot tolerate the idea of constitutive differences of position or opinion that is in turn the very bedrock of Western liberal democracy and the party system that underpins it (Müller 2016). There are differences within mainstream political sciences approaches concerning which of these factors is more important or a better basis for assessing to what degree any particular movement, party or leader is or is not populist. Whatever those differences, however, mainstream opinion tends to converge on the view that populism is a threat to democracy. There are few pluses, and an awful lot of minuses as they survey current political developments across the US, Western Europe, Russia and many other parts of the world besides. How could it not be when its own rhetoric and discourse is so at odds with that inherited approach associated with the party political system? Populism take 2 The above approach is queried at least implicitly in the work of Ernesto Laclau, a hugely influential figure in terms of the development of critical approaches to the study of politics generally and populism in particular. Laclau’s interest in populism reflects his own background growing up in Argentina and thence as a chronicler of politics in the Latin American region where populism and the “caudillo” leader is a familiar part of the landscape. It also reflects his political commitments, which can be summarised in terms of the widening and deepening of democracy, or "radical democracy" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Tormey and Townshend 2006). The key insight Laclau brings to the study of populism is that the appeal to “the people” as the subject of politics is intrinsic to political claim making no matter what the ideological basis of the claims are, and no matter where those making the claims sit in relation to power and authority (Howarth 2014). In order to be successful, parties, movements, leaders need “hegemony”. In plain language this means creating a coalition or “chains of equivalence” amongst those who, because of differences of opinions, needs and interests might never come together in common cause. Hegemony is established through appealing to “the people”, the generality, with in turn “the people’ recognizing itself in the claims being advanced in its name. Politicians do it all the time, though the exact phrasing may change. They may appeal to the “battlers", to "ordinary men and women”, "honest citizens”, “common sense”. All this amounts to the same: seeking to generate support amongst the widest possible constituency in order to advance to power, and once there to maintain it (Laclau 2005, 118). So the claim that it is the appeal to “the people” that distinguishes populism from other kinds of political discourse makes little sense as far as Laclau is concerned. It is equivalent to saying that some kinds of politics are interested in power and influence, but others are not. It is on this basis that he can advance the claim that populism is not a distinct or idiosyncratic ideology or phenomenon, but “synonymous” with politics as that is presently understood and practiced (Arditi 2007). Nor does he think that the desirability of an effective or “charismatic” leader is something attributable only to particular kinds of political initiative. On the contrary, the clear articulation of an attractive position that will in turn establish hegemony for a particular cause or movement is best done by a leader figure, someone with whom even the least politically literate elements of the population can identify (Laclau 2005, 99). In an era when all politics is mediated, having a leader with a clear and consistent message is not merely desirable, but essential for political success (Simons 2011). In sum, the qualities that mainstream commentary assigns to idiosyncratic “populist” movements, is regarded by Laclau as common, if not universal, features of politics under contemporary conditions. By extension, populism cannot be regarded as a threat to democracy. Populism is democracy or democratic politics. As becomes a constant refrain not only in his own work, but also in the work of his interlocutors such as Chantal Mouffe, progressives - to whom much of this analysis is directed - need to put aside their hostility to "the people" as subject of politics, and their distaste for leaders and leaderships in a false quest for non or post-representative styles of politics (Errejon, Mouffe et al. 2016). To put the same matter differently, populism is the political logic of those interested in winning power. The right understands this well; the left somewhat less so it seems. What is obvious even from this abbreviated account is that there would seem to be a significant cleavage in the literature between those who suggest that populism is a danger to democracy, and those who suggest that populism is intrinsic to democracy. One side suggests populism is a departure from normal politics, the other suggests on the contrary that normal politics is populist. One suggests populism has to be combated or at least contained, the other suggests that it should be embraced, not least by progressives in their struggles to deepen existing democratic institutions and practices. Populism as Pharmakon On the face of it then, we are confronted by incompatible accounts of populism, which in turn implies that we have to choose between them, and in turn between accounts that stress either that populism is negative for democracy, or a positive. However I don't think this is a helpful way of thinking about the issue. Are we really sure there is a fundamental difference concerning what populism is here? Or does the difference pertain to how politics functions, and for whom? Consider the key elements: appeals to "the people”; identification of the key societal cleavage as one between the people and the elites; the centrality of a leader articulating what the claims of the people are; a style or approach that sees politics as antagonistic (or “agonistic” if we prefer Mouffe’s refinement); politics as a struggle for domination or “hegemony”. On it goes. There are many points of commonality and contact between these seemingly opposed positions. So why does it seem to be difficult to reach agreement or consensus on what many would regard as the key issue confronting any of us interested in populism: whether and to what extent it is a threat or a menace to democracy? What becomes obvious in reviewing the literature is that much depends on one’s stance in relation to the liberal democratic, and indeed capitalist, status quo. Mainstream commentary is informed by the view that the various features just articulated represent a threat to politics as that is understood under liberal democratic conditions. Liberal democracy is or should be regarded as the highest form of political development, and thus the norms that underpin it have to be defended against styles or forms of politics that seem to threaten it. So to take the obvious example, an appeal to “the people” as the subject of politics presupposes that what unites those occupying a particular territory is more significant than what divides them. This offends against the idea that under modern conditions there can be no homogenous “people”, but merely aggregations of individuals united by different interests, identities and ideologies in turn necessitating a variety of political parties to articulate those differences (Tormey 2015, ch. 3). Whereas liberal democracy is built upon an understanding of human society that is pluralist, populism exhibits the “monist” assumption that the people is a singular entity that can be represented (Müller 2016). The people possesses a “general will” that must be spoken for by the omniscient populist leader (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). In short, populism’s embrace of “the people” is anti-democratic. So far, so unexceptional, certainly as far as the mainstream literature is concerned. However, we need to pause for a moment to think through the issues raised by this key distinction between pluralist forms of politics on the one hand and monist or populist forms on the other. Firstly, whether current political distinctions and forms of differentiation strike one as “pluralist" is surely more a question of where one is positioned relative to the kinds of power relationship one finds in liberal democratic states than something we need to take at face value. For many citizens the differentiation represented by the traditional left/right axis will no doubt be of primary import. Few taxpayers are after all indifferent to what happens “in their name”. However looked at from the vantage point of the unemployed, new migrants, of indigenous peoples, of the excluded and marginalised parts of the population, the distinction may well seem more “academic" than substantive. To those at the margin, the neatly suited toothy figure in the red tie may well sound the same (as well as looking the same) as the neatly suited toothy figure in the blue tie, notwithstanding those differences of ideology and stance that animate the political commentariat. It is, however, not just those at the margins of political life who feel that our democracies are somewhat less pluralistic than the rosy picture presented by the chroniclers of populism contend. Much educated commentary laments the passing of real contestation in favour of the view that liberal democracy exhibits what we might term a decorative non-functional form of pluralism. The "end of ideology” thesis has been rehashed more or less constantly since the 1950s, and the view of liberal-democratic politics as “one-dimensional” has long since outgrown its neo-Marxian connotations to become part of mainstream commentary on the “illusion” of pluralism (Dean 2009). Nor is it just critics of pluralism who document the decline of genuine debate within and amongst political elites. Far from it: the idea of a governing consensus surviving the rotation of elites through “cartel” parties or parties in broad agreement on the fundamental objectives of governance is mainstream thinking amongst political scientists (Mair 2013). Some lament the passing of the “post war consensus” that dominated the politics of many democracies from the Second World War to the crisis of the welfare state in the middle of the 1970s. More recently, consensus politics has been fingered as a key factor in the growing disillusionment with politics. The view that liberal democracy can be characterised as “pluralist” long ago gave way to despair at the absence of real debate, real contestation and real politics at the heart of our democratic systems (Hay 2007; Rosanvallon 2008; Keane 2009; Wolin 2017). Even if we accept the utility of the distinction between pluralist and monist forms of politics, it is not clear why monist positions necessarily represent a threat to democracy. As I think Laclau justifiably argues, every party or movement interested in seeking power needs “hegemony”, and to pursue that they need to appeal to “the people” (or some proxy term for the generality). This is how elections in democracies work. Successful parties are parties that are able to speak to the broadest constituency, win the most votes and secure the most seats. One doesn’t get very far by appealing to one section of the population, or by alienating large sections of the voting public by addressing only a sectional interest or identity. So to follow Laclau’s argument, successful parties are generally led by “monists”, or by those who are able to transcend the particularistic or sectional interests which may actually lie beneath the parties pitch in order to appeal to “the people". Normal politics is on this reading “monist”, and since normal politics is no threat to democracy, it follows that “monism” would appear to be little threat either. What may represent a threat to democracy is when, as Mouffe argues, competing visions are so framed as to regard political opponents as enemies rather than as legitimate opponents, or, in her language, when agonistic politics turns into forms of antagonistic politics that cannot countenance the presence of an opposition (Mouffe 1993). Is this to say then that we should agree with Laclau and Mouffe that populism is a “political logic” that describes how claims are made and identities constructed under contemporary conditions? As my comments above indicate, I think they offer some valuable correctives to the mainstream understanding of populism as incipient threat based on an appeal to "the people”. Appeal to the “the people” is an everyday device used by most politicians. It also expresses what is distinctive about democratic politics: that it proceeds from an understanding that the people are sovereign – or the subject of politics. On the other hand, by flattening out distinctions between kinds or styles of politics as Laclau does, we lose the specificity of populism, and thus its utility for describing or explaining distinct political phenomena. If populism is very largely “synonymous” with politics, then why do we need different terms for the same activity (Laclau 2005, 154)? There must be something different, something distinctive about populist politics as opposed to other kinds of politics for the term to have utility. So what is that different or distinctive element? I think the answer is contained in the opening of this piece. In general we associate populism with a rupture to normal politics, or politics as we understand that within the frame of advanced democracies. Populism cannot be “normal politics”. It is not the politics of left against right, of the pendulum swing from centre left to centre right, and back again. It is not the humdrum “business as usual” politics of Merkel, Clinton, Turnbull, Hollande. Populism is what we call forms of politics that puts the value of “business as usual” in question. It is a politics that arises out of a sense of crisis – in turn feeding the idea that democracy is not working, that it is afflicted with disillusionment, alienation and disengagement. What all of this is pointing towards is that we need to think about populism as much in terms of a temporal moment or “event” as a political concept jostling amongst other concepts in the lexicon of politics. Discussing populism in isolation from the conditions that give rise to it leads us back into the maze of definitional discussions of a kind familiar in populism studies, of whether this American party looks like that Russian peasant movement, and so on. Examining the issue within the specific frame of the crisis of democracy anchors populism in the key problematic that animates recent discussion: why populist parties and movements are on the rise. It is for this reason that I propose we think about populism as analogous to the Pharmakon: a phenomenon that is both a product of democracy, but which also acts upon democracy in ways that may be negative or positive. Let me illustrate this latter point in connection with recent developments in Spain. Pharmakon Spanish style As well as the literature cited, this section relies on materials gathered during fieldwork in Spain between 2013 and 2016, particularly conversations with activists involved in the initiatives discussed. I am very grateful for their asistance and for Ramon Feenstra for facilitating the meetings and providing translations where required. A fuller account of these findings and the underpinning methodology of the fieldwork can be found in Feenstra et al (2017). Spain was of course deeply affected by the global financial crisis of 2007 and ensuing recession. Banks collapsed, investments withered, houses were repossessed, and unemployment rose to levels not seen since the interwar period (Castells 2012; Charnock, Purcell et al. 2012). Faced with a collapse in public finances, Zapatero’s socialist government enacted the austerity measures that became familiar throughout western Europe and beyond. Waves of protest and marches followed, culminating in a twitter call out to occupy the public spaces of Spain’s towns and cities. On 15th May 2011 over 6 million citizens heeded the call in an action that became known as #15M after the date on which it was held. Squares and public buildings were occupied by Los Indignados in every major city and town across the country. The occupations went on in some instances for weeks and even months as citizens sought to generate sufficient clamour to force the government to change direction (Castaneda 2012; Castells 2012; Tormey 2015). As became apparent to protesters over the weeks and months that followed, occupations and noisy protests, though highly effective in terms of mobilising many of the more active parts of the population, got little traction with those holding power. Many previously “horizontal" or disaffiliated activists came to the conclusion that the best way to rattle the elites would be to create their own political parties and seek election to public office. Some 500 or so new political parties were quickly cobbled together over the next few months and years, some with local or regional aims, but others with grander ambitions (Tormey and Feenstra 2015). The most prominent of this latter group was Podemos (We Can) created by a group of Madrid-based academics in late 2013. Taking their cue from Latin American populist movements, and indeed the work of Laclau and Mouffe, they decided to build a political party that would remain true to the participatory inheritance of #15M but also develop a strong anti-austerity, anti-elite message for the electorate more broadly (Errejon, Mouffe et al. 2016). This was to be achieved through leveraging Pablo Iglesias’s high public profile in the traditional media with the use of new media to create real and virtual assemblies based on Chavez’s circlos initiatives in Venezuela (Casero-Ripollés, Feenstra et al. 2016; Kioupkiolis 2016; Ramiro and Gomez 2017). Notwithstanding limited resources and little time for extensive organisation, Podemos stunned commentators by polling 8% of the popular vote in the May 2014 elections to the European Parliament. This guaranteed them 5 MEPs, and a useful platform on which to develop their “counter-hegemonic” strategy to win power in Spain, and then to link up with like-minded parties such as Syriza in Greece to create a pan-European progressive left bloc. Matters have not, however, turned out quite as well as Podemos’ supporters expected. Momentum has ebbed, leaving Podemos unable to get past the low 20% mark in the general elections of 2015 and 2016. Notwithstanding Podemos’ difficulties at the national level, the #15M inspired realignment of progressive forces has had more success at the sub-national level. Without the organisational means to fight on so many different electoral fronts, Podemos decided that it would not present candidates for the 2015 regional and municipal elections. This opened the space for a rather different constellation of political forces identifying with #15M to make advances. Ad hoc citizen platforms were created under the banner of “Ganemos” (Let’s win – “Guanyem” in Catalan). The platforms stressed that they were “confluences”, or alliances between initiatives and movements which for the most part retained their autonomy and sense of purpose. There was no ambition here to create a new political party of a Podemos type. Rather activists sought to remain close to the “dis-organised” ethos of #15M to prepare the ground for electoral advance (Feenstra 2015). Notwithstanding a legacy of scepticism towards leader centred politics as the basis for advancing claims, activists involved in these initiatives recognized that fighting elections requires clearly identifiable leaders to articulate the message. Thus each platform sought out a figurehead who embodied the values and aspirations represented by the initiative but who were also associated, paradoxically, with the anti- or post-representative ethos of #15M. These tensions are fully explored in the documentary Alcaldessa (2016) directed by Pau Faus which follows the lead up to the Municpal elections of 2015 in Barcelona, including video diaries by Ada Colau. See http://www.alcaldessa.com/en/. The Barcelona platform, which became known as Barcelona en Comu (Barcelona Together), persuaded Ada Colau, the highly respected spokesperson for PAH (The platform against mortgage evictions), to become their candidate for mayor. Ganemos Madrid, which similarly underwent mutation to became Ahora Madrid (Madrid Now), convinced former communist judge Manuela Carmena to become their candidate for mayor in the municipal elections (Ordóñez, Feenstra et al. 2017). On 24th May 2015, or #24M, both these figures, as well as a number of others in major towns such as Bilbao and Zaragoza, overcame considerable odds to win their respective contests. This was particularly notable in the case of Carmena given the conservative stranglehold over Madrid, which had been led by the centre-right Partido Popular for over 20 years. So why did these initiatives succeed where Podemos failed? Tempting though it is to contrast the success of Ganemos with the self-limiting appeal of Podemos’s strategy, the complex situation on the ground militates against a reductive “Podemos wrong, Ganemos right” reading. Many members of Podemos were involved in campaigning for Ganemos initiatives and vice versa. More to the point, the latter succeeded not because they turned their back on populism. On the contrary they followed Podemos’s lead in stressing the way in which citizens had been let down by the political establishment, or La Casta. They repeatedly emphasised their status as “outsiders” uncontaminated by recent history of political failure. They spoke of the need to reform the system so that "the people” could be heard, and indeed participate in governance directly. They did so by focusing in their campaigns on highly articulate and charismatic leaders whose images were projected across their respective cities by savvy campaigners who understood the importance of connection to the broader electorate. Where they appear to have surpassed Podemos is through creating bonds of trust with electorates weary of the machinations, clientelism and croneyism many Spaniards associated with party politics. How did they manage that? A key factor was undoubtedly the personality and backgrounds of Carmena and Colau themselves. Both of them were identified as political outsiders with strong connections to social movements and campaigns fighting against injustice. Carmena had been a left progressive judge in the Franco era, and Colau had come to the public eye as a street protester preventing the eviction of poor people from their repossessed properties, a role that much to the irritation of Spanish elites earned her the EU’s Citizens Prize in 2013. Both were on public record stating that they were uninterested in running for office. Neither had a history of seeking power or privilege. Both live in modest neighbourhoods amongst friends and relatives only agreeing to run for office on condition that they would be allowed to continue to live as before, turning their back on the considerable glamour and glitz that attends mayoral status in these major cities. They were not party political figures, heading up well established electoral machines, but first and foremost exemplary individuals who shared the electorates’ mistrust of politics and the elites. The contrast between Colau and Carmena on the one hand and Iglesias and the Podemos group on the other is interesting from the point of view of understanding these dynamics. Iglesias enjoys the limelight, is a frequent contributor to television programs, and speaks with all the self-confidence of an experienced public speaker. The pony tail and cultivated insouciance may betoken a figure uninterested in power, but this is belied by the actions of the Podemos leadership group which bickers away in a manner familiar from the history of radical left parties. Similarly, whilst Podemos has tried to maintain the trappings of a bottom up political initiative with Bolivarian circles, social media facilitated assemblies and suchlike, it is closer in form to the professionalised parties of the organised left than the somewhat ramshackle temporary organisations that brought Carmena and Colau to power. Whilst the latter have now consolidated into more formal organisations, they still see themselves as “confluences”, or “movements of movements” with constituent organisations maintaining a high degree of autonomy. It is this “anti-political” makeshift quality that seems to have appealed to citizens wearied by the inheritance of party political clientelism and corruption. It also helped keep on board the very many activists fearful of entering into “vertical” electoral politics on grounds that it would institutionalised oppositional or street politics and lead to a cult of personality of those successful in getting elected as mayors. The difference in discursive strategies deployed by these figures is also noteworthy. Where Iglesias and Podemos unselfconsciously mobilise the trope of “the people” behind their “counter hegemonic” political cause, Colau and Carmena, are noticeably wary of grand narratives or broad brush appeals that may come across as arrogance. Their approach stresses the difficulty of speaking for the people as an undifferentiated whole, and the danger of representatives drowning out the voices of the citizens themselves. Their discourse mirrors the organisational form that brought them to power: complex, shifting, uncertain, a confluence of ideas constructed for the purpose of representing the unrepresented. Their discourse manifests a double shift: “the People cannot be represented; but it must be represented. Someone must speak for the People”. It is a discourse that therefore remains populist at some level. However this is populism being reflexive - or perhaps apologetic - about itself, not least due to the strongly anti-representational nature of #15M and the continuing fear amongst those identifying with #15M that it will at some stage be taken hostage emblematically by those with nefarious purposes in mind. It is a kind of “post-populism” that is aware of the perils and risks of taking power “in the name of the People”, as well as the opportunity presented by a particular moment when faith in elites is at a low ebb. It is still early days for these initiatives. Some of them will no doubt whither, or run out of energy. But others may succeed on their own terms, that is in terms of seeking to make their cities a little more “liveable”, cleaner, less corrupt, with better resources for the least well off. Some of them may make an impact in wider terms. Indeed some of them already have. Spain is not the same country as it was in 2011. Large scale citizen insurrections against the system have given way to experiments in political organisation. New parties have been formed. New leaders who enjoy the confidence of significant parts of the electorates have emerged. Interest in and expectations about politics, governance, democracy have reawakened. Much of the suspicion concerning organized politics, electoral politics and indeed representative politics that manifested itself in #15M has lifted (Feenstra, Tormey et al. 2017). Of course there are still risks, and it is possible that an unhelpful nudge from somewhere, the economy, secessionism, terrorism, may reverse the trend. But the risks here are not posed by populism, but by exogenous factors or latent features of the inherited political order. As this brief vignette of recent Spanish politics shows, there is always a context for populism. If we lift populism out of this context then it becomes all too easy either to dismiss populism as a threat or a danger to democracy, or equally just a “logic” that helps us to understand how politics work in general terms. If we pay attention to the context, we can see how it is that populist strategies and positions can make sense even to those whose political sensibilities might make them hostile towards or fearful about "leader centred politics” and grandiose sounding appeals to “the people”. We might also see that under certain circumstances, populism can be an aid to the renewal of democracy, and not just abstractly or through posing the question of how “the “people” can be represented; but concretely, through reconnecting those who represent with those who are represented, through revitalizing the party system, and through deepening and rendering more authentic (Real Democracia Ya!) the very pluralism that populism is said to threaten. Conclusion This is a brief paper, and I’ve tried to cover a lot of ground. Nonetheless my suggestion is that the two principal ways of approaching populism are perhaps a little too flat or reductive to be able to capture what many of us find interesting about populism. This is that latterly populism has emerged out of the crisis of democracy, promising “hope” or redemption whilst utilizing tools and techniques that seem more redolent of non-democratic or authoritarian styles of politics. The dominant approach to populism stresses that these promises invariably disguise darker intent, usually in the form of the political ambition of a dominant leader. By presenting him or herself as a saviour of the people, he or she poses a threat to the pluralistic culture of liberal democracy. We are presented with the return of simple solutions to complex issues, the scapegoating of enemies real or imagined, and intolerance towards democratic civic culture. Populism threatens to sweep away this culture and replace it with a leadership cult. There are no doubt populisms of this kind, but I as I have sought to show I don’t think it is intrinsic to the character of populism for it to present a threat to democracy. Appeals to "the people” as the subject of politics are, as Laclau argues, largely unexceptional under contemporary conditions. Nor is there something necessarily threatening about differentiating between the interests of “elites” and those of "the people”. In the wake of global financial crisis, recession, growing inequality, inaction over climate change, migration, war and so forth faith in the wisdom of technocratic elites is at a low ebb, and perhaps justifiably so. Nor is it particularly useful to identify leader based politics as of especial concern. Political scientists long ago argued that contemporary politics was characterized by the “presidentialisation” of politics, which is a polite way of saying that leaders count and parties count less (Poguntke and Webb 2007). Indeed we are continually told that the success of a political party, and indeed organisations more generally, is down to good leadership. Effective, authentic leaders are highly prized and rightly feted whether in business or in politics. One of the more interesting facets of the Spanish case is the gradual acceptance by horizontal and dis-affiliated activists of the need for leaders in order to get traction with citizens. If populism is at least in part a performative approach or style of politics, then it is one that even street activists have realised they need have someone perform in order reach beyond their narrower constituencies. At the same time that performance is not self-limiting, and one of the more obvious lessons of the Spanish case is that anti-political populist leaders like Colau and Carmena can successfully mobilise citizens behind progressive causes. Whilst this analysis may align in certain ways with Laclau’s approach to populism as the "logic" of contemporary politics, I feel his approach is less helpful for understanding the specificity of the historical moment we are in. Our interest in populism has arisen under very particular conditions. Populism cannot be reduced to all kinds and styles of democratic politics. Rather it has to be understood as one kind of politics, one approach amongst other approaches, whether technocratic or elitist – or indeed “horizontal” and leaderless. Whether it succeeds or fails is dependent on a multiplicity of variables. As we have seen in the Spanish example, one particular kind of populism may succeed, whereas another may stutter or fail. Why one succeeds and one fails is partly a question of the particular individuals involved, but also a question of how well a particular message resonates, for what particular ends, with which constituency. In an environment where trust is in short supply, those who can build rapport, understanding, connection with citizens may succeed; where others with a similar message may fail. What I have tried to show through the Spanish case is that it is at the least difficult to judge the threat or impact of populism on democracy on a prima facie basis, that is on the basis of certain characteristics or properties that some parties or movements evince. Populism is one kind of response to a crisis. I don't think we can tell on the basis of its characteristics whether a given populist initiative or intervention will succeed or fail. My suggestion in this paper is that we therefore seek to incorporate a certain contingency or uncertainty into our thinking about populism. Derrida’s discussion of the Pharmakon, a substance that depending on dosage and receptivity of the body, may cure or kill, is I think a useful trope for unpacking this contemporary puzzle. 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