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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2021
The plebiscitarian leader’s legitimacy is based on the tenets of populism: the people versus an elite opposition, and the promise that this time the government will follow the will of the authentic people. The primacy of popular will turns the regime against the self-constraining institutions of democracy. Populism as a movement and ideology is based on exclusion. Its anti-institutionalism and rejection of political mediation is contrary to democracy as rational decision-making. This rough democracy is deprived of its constitutional protection against the arbitrariness of the genuine will of genuine people. With this point of departure, the natural choice of the leader is to turn plebiscitarian. The leader claims that there is a direct relation between government and people. “The people,” as a concept used by populists is highly problematic for constitutional culture, even if the collective action of citizens (in specific circumstances) forms a bulwark of the constitutional system and the people’s properly institutionalized action plays an indispensable role in the system of modern checks and balances.
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