The paradox of antipopulism: the reproduction of populist logic in antipopulist strategies

The relevance of the study is determined by the increasing influence of populism on constitutional democracies and by the need to assess not only the threats it creates for the rule of law, but also the risks that arise in the process of legal counteraction to it. The article examines a situation in which antipopulist strategies aimed at protecting the democratic order may reproduce populist logic through the division of political space into “defenders of democracy” and “enemies of democracy”, the moralization of conflict, the delegitimation of opponents, the selective application of law, and the justification of departures from procedures by political expediency. The purpose of the study is the theoretical and legal conceptualization of the paradox of antipopulism and the determination of criteria that make it possible to distinguish the legitimate constitutional self-defense of democracy from practices that themselves acquire populist features. To achieve this purpose, the dialectical, systemic, formal-legal, comparative-legal methods and the method of legal modelling were used. The obtained results consist in establishing that the lawfulness of an antipopulist response depends not on its severity, but on the preservation of political pluralism, procedural justice, the generality of legal norms, judicial control, and the inadmissibility of assessing a political actor as a threat outside the analysis of its specific actions. It is proved that effective counteraction to populism must be directed at facts of specific violations of legal procedures, pressure on independent institutions, or undermining of the electoral process, and not at the moral removal of a particular political force or its supporters from the democratic field. It is substantiated that populism cannot automatically be regarded as a state of exception, since such a position opens the way to the normalization of extraordinary practices and the transformation of law into an instrument of political result. The practical value of the study lies in the possibility of using the proposed criteria to assess legislative, judicial, administrative, and discursive mechanisms of responding to populist challenges, as well as to prevent the transformation of the defense of democracy into a form of politically motivated restriction of rights, freedoms, and political competition.

constitutional order; populism; popular sovereignty; rule of law; militant democracy; political pluralism; restriction of political rights