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Recent years have seen an explosion in literature on populism, much of it stressing the tense relationship between populist democracy and liberal

Populist radical right democracy 151 democracy (e.g. M´eny & Surel 2002a; Taggart 2000; Canovan 1999). A core element of populist democracy is the belief that the volont´e g´en´erale should be implemented without any restrictions. Nothing is more impor-tant than the general will of the people. This applies not only to politicians and political institutions like parties, parliament and governments, but also to laws and even to the constitution.

As populism is essentially a monist ideology, it is inherently opposed to division and pluralism. In Europe’s democracies, which are first and foremost party democracies (Gallagher et al. 2005), the main tar-gets are established political parties. In line with the populist radical right’s revisionist rather than revolutionary creed, Haider stated, obvi-ously before his party entered the Austrian government, “there exists no alternative to democracy, but there very well exist alternatives to the ruling parties” (Probst 2003: 120). The populist radical right does not merely want to change the players, however; they also want to change some rules of the game. The Spanish DN has expressed in extreme terms, and poor English, what most (larger) populist radical right par-ties voice more moderately: “The big parpar-ties monopoly over political life is to be broken . . . Same opportunities for every party. Creation of new ways of political representation to enhance the existents. Referen-dum and popular initiative to hold elections must be promoted” (DN n.d.). In essence, populist democracy is based upon three key features:

plebiscitary politics, personalization of power, and primacy of the political.

6.4.1 Plebiscitary politics

One of the crucial claims of the populist radical right is expressed by Le Pen’s mantra “rendre la parole au peuple” (return the word to the peo-ple). According to all populist radical right parties, with the temporary exception of those in government, the contemporary political system in their country is not really democratic. They claim that the political elite (in the singular) controls all power through the system of representative government and the practice of cartelization. Only through the introduc-tion of elements of plebiscitary democracy can power be given (back) to

“the people.”

Plebiscitarianism is one of many ideological approaches to democratic repre-sentation. It purports to radically curtail the distortion and mediation of citizen preferences by compromised political organizations, offering to substitute direct connections between the people and the policies or social results they seek. These direct connections are the recall, the initiative and the referendum. (Barney &

Laycock 1999: 318)

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The most popular instrument of plebiscitary democracy is the referen-dum. Virtually all populist radical right parties call for its introduction or increased use. While matters pertaining to national sovereignty in partic-ular are considered to be legitimized only through referendums, notably with regard to European integration, most parties want every major (and sometimes even minor) decision to be potentially scrutinized by “the voice of the people.” The Bulgarian Ataka even created an objective, numerical cut-off point: issues that concern at least 10 percent of the people could be subject to a referendum (Ataka 2005).

Many parties will go a step further and support (the introduction of) a people’s initiative, i.e. a bottom-up version of the referendum. Being fundamentally suspicious of the political elites, they want the power to decide upon the use of the referendum to lie with the people, not with the government or parliament. In essence, the parties want the people to have the right to call for a referendum on practically any issue. They see the people’s initiative as “a construction kit for detours around cor-rupt policy intersections, clogged and fouled by parties and organized interests” (Barney & Laycock 1999: 319).

The formal requirements of these initiatives tend to be set quite low, although many parties do not go into details in their discussion of them.

One of the exceptions is the British BNP, which has developed a radical bottom-up model.

Accordingly, we propose as a vital check and balance on the political class the introduction of Citizens’ Initiative Referenda on the Swiss model. Under this, individual citizens only have to collect the requisite number of electors’ signatures on any given petition – the wording of which they decide themselves – in order to compel either the local or national government to hold a referendum on the subject.

If passed by between 50%–66% [sic] of those voting, such a referendum result would in turn trigger a full-scale council/parliamentary debate on the subject, with heavy moral pressure on the politicians to follow the wishes of the majority.

If passed by more than 66% of those voting, however, the result of such a refer-endum would automatically be binding on the authorities, who would have no choice but to accept the will of the people and enact their wishes as law. (BNP 2005)

In countries that already allow for referendums, populist radical right parties have been active initiators. This is true most notably for the Swiss SVP; leader Blocher even founded a separate movement to mobi-lize around referendums, the Aktionsgemeinschaft f ¨ur eine unabh¨angige und neutrale Schweiz (Action Society for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland, AUNS). Similarly, the Austrian FP ¨O launched

Populist radical right democracy 153 a series of people’s initiatives, each designed to highlight one of its core issues:

party patronage and privileges (1987), the ‘foreigners question’ (1993), and the public broadcasting system, which the FP ¨O portrays as a domain of the SP ¨O and OVP (1989). The FP ¨¨ O promoted its third core issue, its anti-EU stand, in two initiatives (both 1997) which followed the obligatory constitutional referendum on allowing Austria’s accession to the EU . . . With the exception of the public broadcasting system, all the FP ¨O’s initiative issues struck a responsive chord in the mass public. (M ¨uller 1999: 311)

Some parties also support some form of recall. The FP ¨O, for instance, argues that “[p]remature removal from office either of the federal pres-ident, [or] provincial governors or mayors should be possible in a refer-endum after a qualified initiative from the relevant parliament or munic-ipality” (FP ¨O 1997: 17). And the Bulgarian Ataka wants to create the possibility of the recall of MPs who do not do what they promise, based on a petition of voters (Ataka 2005).

There seems to be some regional variation with regard to support for plebiscitary democratic initiatives within the populist radical right party family. While nearly all family members in the West, including extra-European territories, put the introduction and the use of these measures at the center of their propaganda, and base much of their political argu-mentation on plebiscitarianism, there are various Eastern parties that do not put much emphasis on it (e.g. LPR, Slovak SNS). However, as is so often the case, the intra-European divide is not complete; parties like Ataka, MI ´EP, and PRM do support plebiscitary initiatives, and for those like the NS and SPR-RS ˇC they are even quite central to their program.

6.4.2 Personalization of power

While there is an element of truth in the statement “direct democracy and populism meet in their fundamental aversion of the principle of repre-sentation and intermediate bodies” (Puhle 2003: 26), this does not mean they are inherently at odds with liberal democracy. Moreover, rather than being against representation per se, populists are primarily against repre-sentation by the wrong people, i.e. “the corrupt elite” (Mudde 2004).

Because of the intrinsic monism of populism, any form of political plu-ralism is treated with suspicion. This is also the basis of its aversion to intermediate bodies, which are generally seen as artificial divisions or representatives of “special interests.” The monism of the populist radi-cal right is particularly visible in its radi-call for a more personalized politiradi-cal system.

Most populist radical right parties call for an increase of the powers of the main political figure in their system, be it the president (e.g. EK, FN,

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NS, REP) or the premier (e.g. CD, LN). Some parties even call for the introduction of a (super)presidential system, in which the president cen-tralizes and personalizes the vox populi (e.g. HSP, KPN, LPR, SPR-RS ˇC).

Not all populist radical right parties are well versed in political systems.

The Czech Republicans called for the introduction of a directly elected president with more powers, which they presented as “a presidential sys-tem like in France” (SPR-RS ˇC 1999).

However, a party like the FP ¨O calls for the popular election of “provin-cial governors or mayors as well as administrative heads of the relevant territorial legal entities,” on the one hand, but wants “to enhance the National Assembly vis-`a-vis the executive,” on the other (FP ¨O 1997:

16–17). Regarding the latter, the party demands the introduction of the parliament’s right to elect the cabinet and to have an effective no confi-dence vote, as well as the abolition of “governmental legislation.”

6.4.3 Primacy of the political

A key notion of populist democracy is the primacy of the political. As elaborated in chapter 5, for the populist radical right party family, politics clearly has primacy over the economy. However, in the populist ideology the will of the people cannot be limited by anything, not even the law.

“From the populist point of view, legalism and the rule of law hinder the full realization of the rule of the people” (Blokker 2005: 382).

There are some clear examples of European populists expressing this opinion. For example, Andrzej Lepper, leader of the social populist Samoobrona, has stated forcefully: “If the law works against people and generally accepted notions of legality then it isn’t law. The only thing to do is to break it for the sake of the majority” (in Maryniak 2002: 103).

Similarly, FI leader and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has regu-larly questioned the authority of the Milan judges (“red robes”) to convict him, arguing that they represented no one, whereas he himself was the voice of the people (e.g. Ruscino 2002). A somewhat similar argument has been used by leaders of the Belgian VB; after gaining another elec-toral victory a few months after its conviction for inciting racial hatred, the party proclaimed that it had been “convicted by a Belgian judge, acquitted by the Flemish voter” (my italics).⁵

However, with the exception of some slogans, the subordination of the judiciary to the will of the people does not feature in much of the official party literature. Most parties rather stress the importance of a politically independent judiciary; in most cases the populist radical right

5 Note also that the reference is to a Belgian judge, yet to the Flemish voter.

Populist radical right democracy 155 faces a fairly hostile political environment and it believes that the judiciary is controlled by its political opponents. Yet, once in power the populist radical right has been less supportive of this independence. In fact, they have strongly criticized unfavorable judicial rulings and tried to curtail the judiciary’s independence and power by introducing new laws or by appointing partisan judges (e.g. Kelley 2004; Ruscino 2002).

6.5 Populist radical right democracy vs. liberal democracy