This talk explores the relationship between constitutionalism and populism in conceptual terms. We often tend to conceive populism and constitutionalism as being antithetical but the relationship between them should not be seen in terms of mutual exclusion and perfect opposition. Indeed, it is possible to say that populism frequently relies on concepts and categories belonging to the language of constitutionalism (majority, democracy, people), trying to reshape them to offer a sort of constitutional counter-narrative. We know that populists struggle with constitutionalism understood as a set of techniques aiming at limiting (and shaping) political power but this does not exclude that populists may seek to exploit constitutions for their own purposes. As Mudde argued, populists tend to have an opportunistic approach to constitutionalism. But how do the populists—particularly the governing populists—approach the categories of constitutional law? In this talk, I shall deal with this question by relying on two concepts: mimetism and parasitism.
Giuseppe Martinico is Full Professor of Comparative Public law at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa. Prior to joining the Scuola Sant'Anna, he was García Pelayo Fellow at the Centro de EstudiosPoliticos y Constitucionales (CEPC), Madrid and Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence.
The talk is available on the CEU Democracy Institute's Facebook page.
