Populism as a critique of the idea and practice of contemporary political representation. Prolegomena

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to present populism primarily as a concept of political representation. The starting point is an attempt to compare the proposed interpretation of populism with others that classify this phenomenon as i.e. ideology or (political) discourse. It is pointed out that the concept of populism as a type of political representation allows to describe this phenomenon in a precise way and not reduce its internal diversity. However, presenting populism as one of the form of political representation serves, above all, to show in a more complete and nuanced way the critical dimension of populism aimed primarily at contemporary democracies and especially at the liberal-democratic understanding of the principle of democratic representation.