The Construction of Sovereignty and Populism as Challenges for Representative Democracy

Abstract

After decades of Europeanisation, which blurred the lines between nation states and national identities, recent years have seen an advent of claims to national sovereignty. These calls are made predominantly, but not exclusively, by populist parties on the radical ends of the political spectrum. They claim that their nation and its people are in need of restoring their sovereignty, which needs to be recovered from ‘sinister’ elites and harmful outsiders. Overcoming the ‘sinister’ elites is often connected with a call to scale back parts of representative democracy or of national policy paradigms, thus challenging the existing political regimes. These interrelated claims are not only made by these political elites but also seem to fall onto fruitful soil among voters, which show similar attitudes and connected policy preferences. But how are these claims constructed? Are they the same among voters and parties? And how do they interact? Based on both single country and comparative studies as well as a variation of methodological approaches, the papers in this panel investigate the salience and construction of sovereignty and populist democratic claims in party supply and voter demand as well as the various interplays. They, thus, contribute to the discussion regarding the effects of new and old forms of radicalism on liberal representative democracies.