On Trumpism, or the End of American Exceptionalism

This papers uses Trumpism to illustrate populism in power. It analyses it in its rhetorical style; in its propaganda, tropes, and ideology; and finally in its aims and achievements. It shows how the representative construction of the people is rhetorical and is independent of social classes and traditional ideologies. The paper argues that populist democracy is the name of a new form of representative government that is based on two phenomena: a direct relation between the leader and those in society whom the leader defines as the «right» or «good» people; and the superlative authority of the audience. Its immediate targets are the «obstacles» to the development of those phenomena: intermediary opinion-making bodies, such as parties; established media; and institutionalized systems for monitoring and controlling political power. Populist leaders compete with other political actors with regard to the representation of the people and use electoral victory in order to prove that «the people» they represent is the «right» people and deserves to rule for its own good. The result of these positive and negative actions delineates the physiognomy of populism in power as a «majority» that is tainted by an undisguised —indeed, an enthusiastic— politics of radical partiality: the institutions are used in the interested of the «winning» part against the other

The Joined Destiny of Migration and European Citizenship

In this paper I try to unpack the nest of issues that recent waves of migrations bring to the floor and show how immigration plays a crucial role in the making or unmaking democratic citizenship in post-national Europe. Although recurrent terrorist attacks make harder and harder for many opinion-makers and ordinary citizens to associate immigration with positive opportunity for European citizenship, the paper argues that the right to free movement and of emigration is embedded in the nucleus of principles and ideals that makes for European citizenship since the Treaty of Rome. Subsequently, the paper introduces the category of statelessness and uses it to tackle the problem of the legal and political evolution furthered by the practice of rights within the horizon that is defined by the ideal of a European post-national citizenship. Refugees and immigrants are interpreted as a challenge and an opportunity in the spirit of Hannah Arendt’s intuition that citizenship brings to the floor an unsolvable paradox between the human and the political. The conclusion of the paper argues that stateless people—the migrants—personify this paradox as they can be the locus of a new political practice that signals an incipient form of citizenship, truly disconnected from the nation as the European citizenship aspires to be. The denial of many civil and political rights to undocumented immigrants and the detention of thousands of migrants in the camps located at the peripheries of Europe contrast radically with the community of rights that Europe has sought to be since its inception

The Joined Destiny of Migration and European Citizenship

In this paper I try to unpack the nest of issues that recent waves of migrations bring to the floor and show how immigration plays a crucial role in the making or unmaking democratic citizenship in post-national Europe. Although recurrent terrorist attacks make harder and harder for many opinion-makers and ordinary citizens to associate immigration with positive opportunity for European citizenship, the paper argues that the right to free movement and of emigration is embedded in the nucleus of principles and ideals that makes for European citizenship since the Treaty of Rome. Subsequently, the paper introduces the category of statelessness and uses it to tackle the problem of the legal and political evolution furthered by the practice of rights within the horizon that is defined by the ideal of a European post-national citizenship. Refugees and immigrants are interpreted as a challenge and an opportunity in the spirit of Hannah Arendt’s intuition that citizenship brings to the floor an unsolvable paradox between the human and the political. The conclusion of the paper argues that stateless people—the migrants—personify this paradox as they can be the locus of a new political practice that signals an incipient form of citizenship, truly disconnected from the nation as the European citizenship aspires to be. The denial of many civil and political rights to undocumented immigrants and the detention of thousands of migrants in the camps located at the peripheries of Europe contrast radically with the community of rights that Europe has sought to be since its inception

Roundtable on Epistemic Democracy and its Critics

On September 3, 2015, the Political Epistemology/Ideas, Knowledge, and Politics section of the American Political Science Association sponsored a roundtable on epistemic democracy as part of the APSA’s annual meetings. Chairing the roundtable was Daniel Viehoff, Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield. The other participants were Jack Knight, Department of Political Science and the Law School, Duke University; Hélène Landemore, Department of Political Science, Yale University; and Nadia Urbinati, Department of Political Science, Columbia University. We thank the participants for permission to republish their remarks, which they edited for clarity after the fact