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- Title
Against instantaneous democracy.
- Authors
Professor, Ming-Sung Kuo Associate
- Abstract
This article aims to shed new light on the state of populism by looking beyond the substance of recent populist movements to examine their form. I argue that new populism, which is characterized by instantaneousness and simultaneity made possible by social media and other communications technologies, betrays a pathology of instantaneous democracy in its pursuit of unmediated politics at the expense of democratic representation and deliberation. To show how new populism poses a fundamental challenge to constitutional democracy, I first bring the unnoticed double structure of articulated politics at the heart of constitutional democracy to the fore: the structural articulation of distinct stages of decision-making in the multistage process of constitutional governance and that of formal constitutionalized powers and unformed public opinions. As the double structural articulation assumes a temporal gap, first, between each stage of formal decision-making, and, second, between opinion-formation and policy-making, I then discuss how this assumed temporal gap is being virtually obliterated amidst the wave of new populism, shaking the structure of articulated politics to its foundations. In response, I suggest that democratic learning, aided by tactics of judicial deceleration before the figuring out of a grand strategy, is critical in combating new populism.
- Subjects
UNITED States; DEMOCRACY; POPULISM; TELECOMMUNICATION; DECISION making; PUBLIC opinion
- Publication
International Journal of Constitutional Law, 2019, Vol 17, Issue 2, p554
- ISSN
1474-2640
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/icon/moz029