Social Redarchy and Populism

“The word is half of the one who says it and half of the one who hears it”

Michel de Montaigne

According to all the polls published, next Sunday’s general elections will once again confirm the growing rise of emerging parties in our political system. Practically all polls confirm that citizens continue to reject the two-party system and the political landscape that lies ahead is, without a doubt, more complex, uncertain and unpredictable than the previous one. What has encouraged me to open today’s conversation is the fact that despite the endless debates in the media about 26J, there is no agreement whatsoever on the nature of the phenomenon and the causes of its growing appeal to a significant part of the population.

My objective is to draw attention to the importance of social rearchy in the populist phenomenon. Networks establish an alternative order in a hyperconnected society and traditional models of political confrontation have become obsolete, to the extent that they are incapable of interacting with the new social reality. The recognition of the redarquía as a new social order is key to understanding the emergence of populism, its challenges and opportunities, and the implications that new ways of doing politics have on our coexistence and on the regeneration of democracy

Social rearchy as a new order

Throughout history, social movements have been, and continue to be, the levers of social change. In a connected world of accelerating change, these movements are promoted and disseminated through the new means of social communication, and are representative of a new form of collective action emerging in the network society.

These new social movements are examples of social rearchy and have in common a deep distrust in the traditional institutions and political parties that govern society, adopting different forms, values and beliefs according to the specific needs of the cause that gave them the reason to exist. and ultimately they seek to access power and transform a social order that they consider unjust and unsustainable.

A fundamental difference of the new parties that have picked up their messages and slogans, such as “they do not represent us”, “together we can”, is that they are not programmatic like traditional political parties. Their organizations, far from hierarchies and “traditional apparatuses”, are open and participatory networked structures, which collectively question the objectives to be achieved and the most appropriate messages for citizen mobilization. Their demands are multiple and emotional, they do not follow a specific program, as Pablo Iglesias likes to say: “Podemos is not a political party with its own interests, but an instrument in the hands of change”

Their avowed ultimate goal is to change the values of society and change the state of affairs that they consider unjust. And its starting point is a political antagonism different from the traditional one, of “right” and “left”. Its discursive logic polarizes the space between the “people” and the dominant elites, the “caste.” Its leaders seek to come to power to change the current status quo, and mobilize their followers by appealing to the constant struggle of “those from below” versus “those from above” as an instrument to reinforce collective identity and transmit their ideals to society.

The social reshuffle after the last municipal elections is a reality in our country. Nearly seven million Spanish citizens are residents of capitals whose town halls have been called the “city councils of change”. The candidacies of popular unity that took the impetus of social movements and citizen platforms won in five large capitals (Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza, Santiago de Compostela and La Coruña. And in Valencia, the third largest Spanish city, a mayor from Compromís governs in coalition.

Populism as a new way of doing politics

I find interesting as a starting point to understand the impact on politics of the new social movements, the proposal of Ernesto Laclau, in his book The populist reason, in the sense of “rescuing the phenomenon of populism from its marginal place within the social sciences and thinking of it not as a degraded form of democracy but as a type of government that allows the democratic bases of society to be broadened.” His approaches are particularly relevant in the context of Spain, since in the words of Pablo Iglesias, the Argentine political theorist, he is the intellectual father of Iñigo Errejon, responsible for the design of the electoral strategy of Podemos.

Populism, according to Laclau, is a way of constructing the political based on specific identities or social demands. “When the popular masses that had been excluded are incorporated into the political arena, forms of leadership appear that are not orthodox from the liberal democratic point of view, such as populism. But populism, far from being an obstacle, guarantees democracy, preventing it from becoming a mere administration of the public.”

The declared objective of populism as a way of doing politics is to give the people back the voice that has been confiscated by the extractive elites or the “caste” in terms of Podemos. The strategy of “them” against “us” is the essence of this new way of doing politics. In other words, populist discourse maintains that the people have been victims of a corrupt elite that has hijacked the popular will. The problem is that the “people” can be built in very different ways and not all of them go in a progressive direction. In fact, it is the populist leader who determines who is a people and who is caste. In several European countries this aspiration to recover sovereignty has been captured by right-wing populist parties that have managed to build the people through a xenophobic discourse that excludes immigrants, and in Catalonia, for example, the pro-independence parties want to build a people whose voice demands a Catalan republic that is limited to defending the interests of those considered sovereignists.

But, regardless of the problematic forms that some of these movements may take, it is important to recognize that they are based on legitimate democratic aspirations. Social exclusion, the loss of collective identity, and insecurity in the face of a globalized world are the engines of populism. So, in a connected society, populism as a form of mass mobilization around shared aspirations is here to stay. As a social phenomenon, its disappearance is unlikely as long as there are large majorities of citizens who live in extreme situations, excluded from the distribution of wealth, and who legitimately seek to improve their situation.

Populism as a leadership style

Flavia Freidenberg, in her book The populist temptation. A Path to Power in America He proposes to approach populism as a “leadership style”, understood as “the direct, personalistic and paternalistic relationship between leader and follower, in which the leader does not recognize organizational or institutional mediations, speaks in the name of the people and discursively strengthens their opposition to “the others”. The populist leader seeks to change and refound the dominant status quo; where followers are convinced of the extraordinary qualities of the leader and believe that thanks to them and/or the clientelist exchange they have with him they will be able to improve their personal situation or that of the collective. The populist politician thus pretends to be the only one who represents the voice of all the people.

These leaders, as has been the case with Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. they have some characteristics in their way of doing politics that differentiate them from the politicians who had governed until that moment. Of these characteristics, there are two that are novel: a) the way in which they stand as an alternative to traditional actors, with a clear intention of changing the political system; and b) the fact that they manage to articulate a plural coalition of social sectors that gives them legitimacy and opens the possibility of implementing projects of change, on the basis of a democracy of majorities.

The problem with this type of leadership, as Flavia analyzes very well in her book, is that all these leaders in practice have been ambivalently related to democracy. On the one hand, they have used elections as a plebiscite instrument and have legitimized their projects at the ballot box on repeated occasions, using state resources and clientelistic networks. But on the other, they have been responsible for multiple attacks on the institutions of democracy and the arbitrary exercise of power.

The necessary rescue of political parties

A connected society poses particularly complex challenges; challenges that traditional political parties are incapable of solving. And this is so, to a large extent, because their structures and models of government are based on a hierarchical model that ignores both the demands and the current possibilities of participation, collaboration and involvement of citizens in politics. From their fundamental point of view, as machines of power, the apparatuses of political parties tend to overvalue legacy and previous experiences at the expense of innovation and the adaptability of their structures to new challenges.

It is not true that there are no real alternatives to our political system. The problem is that there is no political will to do what needs to be done, which are not small “reforms” in the political parties or minor changes in their governing bodies, but a true reinvention of our institutions as a whole based on new values such as transparency, openness and citizen participation. necessary to recover lost credibility and reconnect with real society.

Reality shows us every day that the current hierarchical structures have a very high cost in terms of transparency, initiative, creativity and commitment. Every day it is more evident that we need to rescue our political parties from their current “apparatuses” to make them more open, participatory and transparent; to transform them into new parties capable of connecting with the new social reality and providing a collective response – the only possible one – to the new challenges. This response necessarily involves the regeneration of the political class and the improvement of the quality of public debate.

The only way to prevent the emergence of populist parties is the reinvention of traditional political parties, seriously damaged by cases of corruption, clientelism and institutional deterioration, not as apparatuses of power representative of the will of their voters, but as true platforms of political action capable of opposing populism with specific responses to the democratic aspirations of the people and channeling them towards a defense based on new values such as transparency, openness and citizen participation, necessary to recover lost credibility and reconnect with real society.