Populism is currently one of the most studied socio-political topics. However, no shared definition is present at the moment. Fortunately, common features are emerging in recent studies, so that the possibility to devise a comprehensive concept of populism does not seem illusory anymore. In this article I evaluate whether an ontological determination of the concept is conceivable, according to a critical and dynamical perspective. This means that epistemological questions are considered as fundamental, and ontology looks at dynamical systems theories in (...) order to conceptually organize the outcomes of scientific researches. Taking advantage of ontological and system theoretic categories, I try to delineate some not obvious issues in the current approaches to populism. (shrink)

This article argues that populism, both in its left-wing and right-wing versions, is a social pathology in the sense contemporary critical theorists give to it. As such, it suffers from a disconnect between first order political practices and the reflexive grasp of the meaning of those practices. This disconnect is due to populists’ ideal of freedom, which they understand as authentic self-expression of ‘the People’, rejecting the need for mediating instances such as parties, parliaments or epistemic actors. When enacted in (...) political practices and institutions, this ideal creates the conditions for undermining different forms of political freedom, including populist’s own ideal of collective self-expression, which they erode by fostering expressive domination. This all makes populism a self- defeating political ideology and bad candidate for advancing democracy in times of crisis. The article ends with a consideration of the advantages of this view compared to existing approaches to populism. (shrink)