Crises of Representation and Populist Challenges to Liberal Democracy

Abstract

In recent years, populist leaders, movements, and parties have posed formidable challenges to liberal democracy in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. These challenges are rooted in representational crises: in particular, party systems and their diminishing capacity to integrate and represent broad popular constituencies in the democratic arena. To understand these institutional failures, it is essential to explore the changing patterns of partisan competition and representation under the constraints of market globalization and the social fragmentation which it has produced. These constraints create openings for populist contenders to politicize economic insecurities and cultural resentments, in opposition to traditional political establishments.