Koenraad Abts

Populism versus Democracy

This article provides a comparative conceptual analysis of the logic of populism and the logic of (constitutional) democracy. Populism is defined as a thin-centered ideology which advocates the sovereign rule of the people as a homogeneous body. The logic of this ideology is further developed in reference to the work of Carl Schmitt and is shown to generate all the characteristics typically ascribed to populism. The logic of democracy is analyzed on the basis of the work of Claude Lefort and defined as a regime in which the locus of power remains an empty place. This analysis replaces the widespread model of constitutional democracy as a paradoxical combination of a constitutional and a democratic pillar. This two-pillar model fails to appreciate the internal coherence and some of the main features of the (constitutional) democratic logic. Thereby, the two-pillar approach gives rise to an understanding of populism as continuous with the democratic promise of constitutional democracy. In contrast, our analysis explains populism as the closure of the empty place of democracy. This highlights the antagonistic discontinuity between the logic of populism and the logic of democracy.

Defending Democracy: The Concentric Containment of Political Extremism

In this article we develop a concentric containment policy for dealing with political extremism starting from the deliberative model of democracy. This model of democracy is particularly well suited because it overcomes the traditional opposition between procedural and substantive views of democracy. On the procedural side, deliberative democracy emphasises the importance of tracking all the relevant concerns of citizens in the public sphere, whereas, on the substantive side, it stresses the need for an adequate filtering which guarantees the compatibility of actual policies with the core values of liberty and equality. The twofold requirement of tracking and filtering translates into a guideline of decreasing tolerance towards extremist organisations as they approach the centres of formal ***decision-making power. We argue that the resulting containment policy, which listens to extremist voters and simultaneously puts unremitting civilising pressure on extremist parties, is not only desirable from a normative point of view; as shown by the empirical findings concerning the successes and failures of actual containment strategies, the twofold concentric approach, including, if necessary, a cordon sanitaire around the extremist party, might also turn out to be the most effective one.

Sources of Euroscepticism: Utilitarian Interest, Social Distrust, National Identity and Institutional Distrust

This article attempts to analyse and improve the individual-level approaches to the study of public Euroscepticism in Belgium. In recent literature, three approaches focusing on instrumental, cultural and political cues can be distinguished. First, the utilitarian approach associates Euroscepticism with economic interests. Second, the cultural approach draws on cultural attitudes and affective identities. Third, the political approach associates support for European integration with political efficacy and institutional trust. Drawing upon Belgian data from the IntUne Project 2007, some interesting conclusions about the sources of Euroscepticism can be derived. The results show that negative evaluations of the egocentric benefits of European membership, social distrust in European fellow citizens and institutional distrust in the EU are the most important determinants of Euroscepticism, while education, national attachment, exclusive identity, actor-oriented distrust, and political inefficacy have a smaller, but significant impact. The popular theses of the objective losers and subjective losers of Europeanization are largely rejected. Only low educated people are more sceptical about Europe, whereas workers have a more positive attitude towards Europe.

Response Styles and the Rural–Urban Divide

This article investigates the effect of the rural–urban divide on mean response styles (RSs) and their relationships with the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents. It uses the Representative Indicator Response Style Means and Covariance Structure (RIRSMACS) method and data from Guyana—a developing country in the Caribbean. The rural–urban divide affects substantial mean RSs differentials, and it moderates both their relationships with and the explanatory power of the respondents’ sociodemographic characteristics. Within-country research is therefore subject to substantial rural–urban RSs bias, and it is hence imperative that researchers control RSs in such studies. Previous research findings should also be reexamined with RSs controlled. In addition, joint modeling of culture, RSs, and their sociodemographic predictors may clarify some of the conflicting results about their effects in the cross-cultural research literature.

Measurement Invariance, Response Styles, and Rural–Urban Measurement Comparability

This article investigates the effect of response styles (RSs) on rural–urban measurement comparability in Guyana. It uses the representative indicators response styles means and covariance structure (RIRSMACS) model and finds that traditional measurement invariance (MI) tests provide inadequate assurance of the absence of rural–urban measurement bias when RSs are not controlled. Even when MI is achieved, RSs can still differentially affect measurements and substantive results between rural and urban regions. In addition, a lack of MI may be at least partially due to RSs bias, but MI may also be due to RSs. Therefore, adjustments for RSs are necessary and researchers should be cautious about pooling data across rural and urban areas without controlling RSs.