Against instantaneous democracy

Kuo, Ming-Sung ^[1]
1. [1] University of Warwick
  
  University of Warwick
  
  Reino Unido
Localización: International journal of constitutional law, ISSN 1474-2640, Vol. 17, Nº. 2, 2019, págs. 554-575
Idioma: inglés
Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)

Resumen
- 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.