COSMOPOLITANISM AND POPULISM:

FROM INCOMPATIBILITY TO CONVERGENCE, AND BACK

TAMARA CĂRĂUȘ

Abstract: Cosmopolitanism and populism are opposing concepts: populism usually sees
persons as embedded in national or ethnic communities, while the core idea shared by all
cosmopolitan views is that all human beings belong to a single community and the ultimate units
of moral concern are individual human beings, not particular forms of human associations.
However, the paradigm of conceiving both cosmopolitanism and populism is changing. Authors
discover the promise and relevance of populism, while within the political theory of
cosmopolitanism there are calls towards ‘roots’, as in the concept of rooted or vernacular
cosmopolitanisms. In this new theoretical context, the incompatibility between populism and
cosmopolitanism is weakening, points of convergence between two concepts start becoming
visible. This paper examines the confluences between populism and cosmopolitanism, and
assesses the limits of this convergence. Thus, the first section of the paper examines the main
features of populism, seen mostly from the perspective of populism as a pathology. The second
section examines the proposals to see populism as part of emancipatory politics, showing that this
perspective of conceiving populism is compatible with cosmopolitanism. The third section
identifies the populist emancipatory elements in a cosmopolitan discourse and action, while the
fourth section examines the possible criticism of cosmopolitan populism, pointing that most of the
criticism of populism in the state context is not valid for populism in a cosmopolitan context. The
conclusion shows that a cosmopolitan populism is not part of a vision of cosmopolitanism as
eternal peace and global consensus, but of a contestatory and agonistic cosmopolitanism.
Keywords: cosmopolitanism, populism, emancipatory politics, global protests.

Introduction

Cosmopolitanism and populism are opposing concepts. From a standard

perspective in political theory and from the perspective of public debates, the
incompatibility of populism and cosmopolitanism is evident – populism usually
sees persons as embedded in national or ethnic communities, while the core idea
shared by all cosmopolitan views is that all human beings belong to a single
community and the ultimate units of moral concern are individual human
beings, not states or particular forms of human associations. Also, populism is
xenophobic and local, while cosmopolitanism is universalist and global.
Similarly, populism is an anti-elitist manifestation, while cosmopolitanism is
seen as an elitist phenomenon, as the privilege of elites.
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Currently, both populism and cosmopolitanism are considered opposite

responses to globalisation. Globalisation is considered one of the main causes of
the recent rise of extreme right populism in Europe (Cuperus, 2007; Mudde,
2004; 2015). The new right-wing politics that emerged in the last decades is
called populist because it claims to represent ‘the people’ and to defend
national, cultural or ethnic identity against ‘outsiders’ or external influences that
increase in the condition of globalisation, global neo-liberalism, mass migration,
the destruction of national borders. In this sense, populism at least in Europe is
directly connected to xenophobic, racist or far-right parties and political
ideologies (Cuperus, 2007). Populism is also conceived to be an expression of
euro scepticism as expressed by the Brexit vote, and earlier by no-vote in the
French and Dutch referenda on the European Constitution. Cosmopolitanism is
the opposite response to the phenomena of globalization, but not because highly
educated academic, cultural and the managerial elites are beneficiaries of
globalisation. Globalization creates conditions for cosmopolitization of the
world, in the sense that it removes borders and barriers in communication, and
creates a high level of interconnectedness, confirming the Kantian observation
that what happens in one part of the world affects the whole world, and makes
us more reflexive of our common fate and humanity. However, globalisation is
only a condition of cosmopolitanism, there are some other phenomena that are
also global but without being cosmopolitan, such as terrorism or warfare. Thus,
cosmopolitanism is as well a response to globalization but in a way that does
not presuppose a retreat within the local or national boundaries, but tackling the
global problems on the global stage, with common efforts, and for the benefits
of all, as in the theories of global justice or global democracy, which design a
just world for all human beings regardless of their particular belonging.
However, within the field of political theory the paradigm of conceiving
both cosmopolitanism and populism is changing. Authors discover the promise
and relevance of populism and even its normative dimension, while within the
political theory of cosmopolitanism there are calls towards ‘roots’, or to the
vernacular, ethnical and patriotic dimensions, like in notion of rooted,
vernacular, patriotic cosmopolitanism and other ‘situated’ cosmopolitanisms. In
this context, the incompatibility between populism and cosmopolitanism is
weakening, points of convergences between two concepts start becoming visible
to the extent that the question “Is a cosmopolitan populism possible?” can be
plausible formulated. However, how much intersection and confluence can be
there without conflating the distinctiveness of both phenomena and concepts?
The aim of this paper is exactly to examine the confluences between populism
and cosmopolitanism that the recent development of the concepts in political
science advanced, and at the same time to assess the limits of this convergence.
Thus, the first section of the paper examines the authors’ recent attempts to
arrive at a definition of populism, seen mostly from the perspective of populism
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as a pathology. The second section examines the proposals to see populism

as part of emancipatory politics, showing that this perspective of conceiving
populism is compatible with cosmopolitanism. The third section identifies
the populist emancipatory elements in a cosmopolitan discourse and action,
while the fourth section examines the possible criticism of cosmopolitan
populism, mainly by pointing that most of the criticism of populism in the
state context is not valid for populism in a cosmopolitan context. The
conclusion shows that a cosmopolitan populism is not part of a vision of
cosmopolitanism as eternal peace and global consensus, but of a
contestatory and agonistic cosmopolitanism.

Populism: the Difficulties of a Definition

Arriving at a definition of populism is a challenge for political theorists

(Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013). Beside the fact that populism qualifies as an
essentially contest concept, and as a concept with a normative ambiguity
(Kaltwasser, 2012), populism could qualify as the most emotional topic of
political theory. As Mueller observes, in no other area of political thought it is
so easy and so acceptable to treat political phenomena as forms of pathology,
deviations, illusion, disfigurements or even disease: liberal critics of populism
are habitually suspected of demophobia; populists are accused of being driven
by resentment or even by paranoia (Mueller, 2014: 484). For these reasons, this
paper will not operate with a definition of populism and will not propose one,
but will enumerate briefly the main features of populism present in different
attempts to define it or to describe it as an empirical phenomenon.
It has been noted that all manifestations of populism are based on the
moral distinction between ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’, and these
two notions are taken as the sufficient and necessary criteria for defining
populism and for categorizing a phenomenon as ‘populist’ by most of the
scholars of populism (Canovan, 1999; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013). The same
major division, but which considers the elite to be pure and the people as
corrupt, is the distinctive features of theories with an elitist intent. The moral
distinction should not be taken as an accurate or objective one. It is a
“moralistic imagination of politics”, where the people is “a morally pure and
fully unified, but ultimately fictional, people” (Mueller, 2014: 485). In other
words, the people is not what appears as the people in its empirical context of
the current nation state; as Lefort put it first, and Mueller reiterates, “the people
must be extracted from within the people” (Lefort, 1988: 88; Mueller, 2014).
The moralistic distinction has rather negative consequences – it does not
leave room for nuances and difference. Populism sees both groups, the people
and the elite, as essentially homogeneous, i.e. without fundamental internal
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divisions, and since the essence of the division between the two groups is
thought to be moral, other differences are irrelevant. So, authors are almost
unanimous in pointing out that populism does not show respect for diversity and
pluralism (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013; Urbinati, 2014; Rosanvallon 2008).
Populist disrespect of pluralism is explained mainly by the view of the people as
a subject with a unitary will and consciousness, and of rivals as enemies of our
‘virtuous’ people (de la Torre; 2015). The populism’s opposition to pluralism is
determining its authoritarian tendencies, as scholars of populism stressed
(Finchelstein, 2014; Fieschi 2004).
Relation with democracy is crucial for defining populism, however, the
relation is viewed differently by different scholars. A category of approaches,
and probably the most prevalent or visible one, considers populism is a negation
of democracy, given its authoritarian tendencies and lack of respect for
pluralism. This perspective views populism as pathology, as a democratic malaise,
as a social disease threatening democracy (Urbinati 2014; Rosanvanllon, 2008).
For example, Rosanvallon maintains that populism is “an inverse perversion of
the ideals and procedures of democracy” (Rosanvanllon 2008: 25). Populism
appeals to the ‘immature’ masses aiming to release their social passions and
thereby threatening to tear society apart and even to cancel democracy itself,
that is, populism “may open the door to an exit from democracy if successful”
(Urbinati, 2014: 133). This scholarly approach of populism is closer to the
public debate on populism, since it is commonly analysed as a pathological
phenomenon. But pathology might be only the ‘enlightened’ gaze of the scholar
or the public commentator, as the other category of approaches argue.
This category and strand of analysis considers that there is an intrinsic
democratic principle in the language of populism (Canovan, 1999; Laclau,
2005; Savrakakis, 2014). The main claims of this perspective concern the
assumption that if ‘the people’ is the sovereign, nothing should constrain its
will; if democracy means rule by ‘the people’, no experts, religious authorities
or foreign powers take decisions that violate popular sovereignty. For example,
for Canovan, populism is a legitimate member of the democratic club.
Populism, understood as an appeal to ‘the people’ against both the established
structure of power and the dominant ideas and values, has a ‘redemptive’
dimension of democracy that makes populism a perennial possibility (Canovan,
1999). The approach of authors who see populism as intrinsic to the logic of
democracy, like Lacalu’s or Savrakakis’ approaches, will be examined in the
next section. Here we can add that even the authors who do not see in populism
an emancipatory potential, admit that “there is some truth in the claims
advanced by those who adhere to the populist set of ideas” (Kaltwasser, 2013).
Populism is not just a reaction against power structures but an appeal to a
recognized authority, which has mainly a legitimating role. Populists claim
legitimacy on the grounds that they speak for the people, and the resource of
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legitimacy is what makes populism an inevitable possibility and even gives to it

a certain attractiveness for those endorsing a populist set of ideas.
A third group of scholars claim populism is neither the essence nor
the negation of democracy. Depending on the socio-political context, it can
operate as both a corrective for and a threat to democracy, as Mudde and
Kaltwasser argue (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013). According to these authors,
populism can be both inclusionary and exclusionary. Populism is inclusionary
when it puts forward an egalitarian agenda, represents the excluded groups, and
is a source for the renewal of democratic institutions. Empirically, most of these
inclusionary types of populism have been taking place in Latin America
(Kaltwasser, 2014; Finchelstein, 2014). Populism is exclusionary when it claims
to represent ‘the people’ by the institutional framework of representative
democracy and by opposing diversity and pluralism and relying on charismatic
leaders. From this distinction it follows that we need to look for the inclusionary
varieties of populism and avoid the exclusionary, but this might not be an easy
task, because it requires skills to identify the form of populism in spite of its
“chameleonic character” (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013: 153). This means that
populism can be left-wing or right-wing, organized in top-down or bottom-up
fashion, rely on strong leaders or be even leaderless (Mudde & Kaltwasser,
2013:153). Greece is regarded as a paradigmatic case illustrating the diversity of
populism, because here austerity policies promoted by the EU have facilitated
the electoral rise of both leftist populism and rightist populism (Katsambekis &
Stavrakakis, 2013). Thus, populism rarely exists in a pure form, in the sense that
most populist actors combine it with another ideology, and it is aptly called
“host ideology” (Mudde, 2015) for different political claims, acting like a taste
and flavour enhancing for different ideologies.
A version of the pathology perspective views populism as “a symptom of
what might be wrong with democracy or, more likely, liberalism” (Mueller,
2014: 481), and as a reminder of “some of the broken promises of democracy”
(Mueller, 2014: 491). Mueller points out that populism is an undemocratic
response to the undemocratic tendencies of technocracy and a more general
distrust laying at the foundations of the European post-war order. So, populism
is a symptom, and a problematic response, to the actual lack of true citizen’s
participation, a recurrent temporal response to the predominance of elites
(Mueller, 2014; Arditi, 2010; 2015). The view of populism as a “symptom”
could be the most minimal definition of populism, and a neutral and approach of
populism as phenomenon, but it implies nevertheless a position that is closer to
the pathological view on populism.
As the scholars of populism have noted, the analysis of the relationship
between populism and democracy depends to a great extent on normative
assumptions and preconceptions of how democracy should function
(Finchelstein, 2014). Even more, the impact of populism on democracy is less
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an empirical question and more a theoretical issue, which is answered mostly by

speculations deriving from an ideal standpoint of how democracy should be.
Thus, while authors who adhere to the model of liberal democracy usually see
populism as a pathology, scholars who sympathize with the notion of radical
democracy tend to think of populism as a positive force that strengthens
political representation (Finchelstein, 2014). The authors advancing a radical
approach of democracy view populism positively, and the next section turns to
these approaches.

The Promise of Emancipatory Populism

Among the authors who advance a radical approach of democracy and

view populism positively, Ernesto Laclau, is the most sophisticated theorist of
populism in recent times. Laclau argued that all politics is about the creation of
popular identities through conflict, and that populism is about the formation of
political subjects: “constructing a people is the main task of radical politics,”
populism being not a type of movement but the political logic itself (Lacalu,
2005: 85).
Laclau puts his entire theory of empty floating signifiers at work for
producing a new theory of populism and to displace conventional, pejorative
meanings of populism. The argument on empty signifiers is structured around
the following steps. In a system of differences, the condition of signification /
meaning is to grasp the system’s totality. However, to grasp that totality
conceptually, we have to grasp its limits, that is, to differentiate it from
something other than itself. This other provides the outside that allows us to
constitute the totality. All differences in a system are equivalent to each other in
their common rejection of the “constitutive outside”. The differential and the
equivalential logics subvert each other permanently and, instead of the totality,
there is only this tension. Totality is a failed totality, both impossible because of
the tension and necessary, because without some kind of closure, however
precarious it might be, there would be no signification or identity. Laclau’s
argument is therefore that one element, without ceasing to be a particular
difference, assumes to be the representation of totality and universality. In this
way, the element is split between the particularity which it still is and the more
universal signification which it attempts to stand for. The operation of taking
up, by a particularity, of an incommensurable universal signification is a
hegemonic one (1996:43). Because this embodied totality or universality is an
impossible object, the hegemonic identity becomes something of the order of an
empty signifier (Laclau, 1996:40-45; 2005: 69-71). Laclau uses, in different
texts, the example of Solidarnosc movement in Poland in order to explain the
genesis and function of empty signifiers (Laclau, 2008). In the beginning, the
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symbols and demands were only the demands of a group of workers in Gdansk,
but given the fact that these symbols and demands took place in a terrain in
which several other demands were equally frustrated, they became the symbols
of a wider social movement. The demands of workers from the shipyard in
Gdansk assumed the function of representing the whole. These demands are
empty signifiers, because, if the signifier is going to represent the totality of a
chain, it has to abandon its relationship with the particular demand from which
it originated, and it has to represent a vast array of demands which are in an
equivalential relationship. So, the empty signifier is less a particularity and
more and more a universal. The production of empty signifiers is a dimension of
the hegemonic relation. The creation of empty signifiers is followed by the
tendency, usually expressed by a counter-hegemony, to reduce each demand to
its own particularity so that this equivalential effect is weakened or annulled.
These two tendencies – the tendency toward universalization through the production
of empty signifiers and the tendency towards the particularization of demands –
create a tension that is the very terrain in which the political is constructed.
In his book On Populist Reason (2005), Laclau applied this theory to
populism. Thus, the main elements of his theory of populism are easy
recognizable: when a series of social demands cannot be met up by the existing
institutional channels, they become unsatisfied demands that enter into a
relationship of equivalence or solidarity with one another. These demands
crystallize around common symbols and are endorsed by some leaders who
address the frustrated groups. The equivalential chain created by the unsatisfied
demands generates a process of popular identification that constructs a counter-
hegemony, or “the people” as a collective actor. The counter hegemony of the
newly created people confronts the existing regime, that is, the existing
hegemony, aiming to change it. Thus, Laclau’s populism depends on the
antagonistic relation between hegemony and counter-hegemony, restated as that
between the regime and the people. The most crucial aspect of this account of
populism is that the people is temporary – it depends on the political frontier of
antagonism: “the destiny of populism is strictly related to the destiny of the
political frontier or antagonism – if the frontier collapses the people
disintegrate” (Lacau, 2005: 89). Thus, a radical consequence of this argument is
that people does not pre-exist its articulation and is created anew in each
articulation of populism. And even articulated, the people exists mainly as “an
absent fullness” (Laclau 2005, 85), because it is based on a hegemonic
construction where “a certain particularity which assumes the role of an
impossible universality,” (115-6; also 226). This implies that it is possible to
articulate different people, including a cosmopolitan one.
Populism for Laclau is a normative model to be endorsed. He used
examples of Latin American populism, especially in countries such as a
Venezuela and Argentina, to ground his argument. Nevertheless, the criticism of
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Laclau’s account of populism is extensive and concerns every aspect of his

theory. Authors argued that it extends the meaning of populism to such an
extent that the term appears to lose all analytical value in understanding the
particular phenomena which share characteristics that are not simply explained
by the nature of political struggle in general (Mueller, 2014:483). Other authors
have seen in Laclau’s account of populism a political theology: “the people as a
whole is a transcendent God, it is never present or visible in its full universality
and completion. It is an absent or a hidden God” (Arato 2013:167), while others
accused him of not seeing the democratic disfigurations that populism
engenders (Urbinati, 2014). As well, the rewriting of his theory of hegemony in
terms of populism was not enthusiastically accepted (Arditi, 2010). The
mixtures of all elements of his previous theory – empty and floating signifiers,
the Lacanian constitutive lack, the petit object a, the distinction between naming
and concepts, and the primacy of representation – are not necessarily relevant
for explaining populism (Arditi, 2010, 488-497). Finally, other scholars were
surprised by the contrast between Laclau’s accounts on parliamentarism, open
discussion and pluralism in his work as a scholar and public intellectual and his
thought of populism which involves the principle of incarnation, dual embodiment
(by the people and the leader) and what he sees as the need for vertical
leaderships in the context of friend-enemy relations (Finchelstein, 2014: 475).
Nevertheless, Laclau is the founder of a school of thought that
understands populism as the ultimate agent of democratization, and exactly this
approach of populism has convergences with cosmopolitanism. Laclau and his
school of interpretation generally focus on the populist left, which tends to be
presented in Laclau as the true form of populism. For these scholars, populism
is a structurally defining element of systemic calls for equality and against
domination: populism leads to political emancipation. These authors show that
the tendency to demonize populism is highly problematic, often betraying
unproblematized assumptions about the normative dimensions of liberal
democracy. Thus, is crucial not to amalgamate the very idea of a democratic
people with the image of the “dangerous crowd” (Rancière, 2011).
From this perspective, a call for emancipatory populism is considered a
way of revitalising the EU politics. Balibar famously acknowledged that to
shake the lethargy of a decaying political construction in the EU:

“we need something like a European populism, a simultaneous movement or a peaceful

insurrection of popular masses who will be voicing their anger as victims of the crisis
against its authors and beneficiaries, and calling for a control “from below” over the
secret bargaining and occult deals made by markets, banks, and states... There is in fact no
other name with which we can call a becoming political of the people. I agree that it can
lead to other catastrophes, which is why we need strong constitutional rules to be
observed, and, above all, why the European arena needs the re-emergence of political
forces that would introduce a culture of uncompromising democratic ideals and imaginary
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into this “post-national” populism. But the risk is greater if nationalism prevails in
whichever form” (Balibar, 2010).

The emancipatory post-national populism resonates with a potential

cosmopolitan populism, and to a certain degree are identical, as the next section
will argue. Similarly, for Yannis Stavrakakis it seems very difficult to imagine
democratic politics without populism: “the articulation of a progressive
populism may be the most responsible thing one could imagine?’; “apart from
being inevitable, populism could also be desirable” (Savrakakis, 2014: 515).
So, what is still common between traditional approaches of
cosmopolitanism as pathology or at least as a symptom and the approach of a
progressive cosmopolitanism? Why and how can these two different approaches
still be called legitimately approaches of populism? The common features are
formal and structural: 1. both assume the existence of a people; 2. both refer to
the difference between elite and the people; 3. both view the people as the most
authentic and legitimate political agency. A crucial difference is that unlike the
traditional account of populism, the insights of emancipatory populism assume
that the people” is never one with itself. The people does not exist before its
articulation, we have to think of popular sovereignty as a dynamic and open-
ended process rather than a fixed and unified will of the people (Ochoa Espejo,
2011; Arditi, 2015), and this finding has crucial consequences for conceiving a
cosmopolitan people. The three features common to both accounts of populism
will allow mapping a possible cosmopolitan populism.

Cosmopolitanism and Populism: Some Convergences

From the perspective of an emancipatory, progressive populism at least

two types of calls to the people could be identified in the recent approaches of
cosmopolitanism: one in theoretical framework, as expressed by the calls for a
“rooted cosmopolitanism”, and another coming from actions with a
cosmopolitan potential from the bottom up.
In the last two decades the study of cosmopolitanism flourished,
prompted by the increasing globalization which requires normative views on
how interact in a just and equal manner in the condition of increased
interconnectedness and interdependences. Beside the revival of Kantian
cosmopolitanisms (Pogge, 2002; Archibugi, 2011), some other new approaches
of cosmopolitanism have been advanced, such as ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’
(Cohen, 1992), ‘cosmopolitan patriotism’ (Appiah, 1997), ‘anchored
cosmopolitanism’ (Dallmayr, 2003), ‘embedded’ (Erksine, 2008), ‘situated’
(Baynes, 2007) and ‘statist cosmopolitanism’ (Ypi, 2012). Advanced under
somewhat oxymoronic expressions, the concepts attempt to be a conciliatory
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approach to local attachments and universal obligation. The authors advancing

these concepts assume that cosmopolitanism is an abstract affirmation of the
equal moral value of all human agents, and find the corresponding duty to treat
all equally too demanding. These approaches question and ‘counteract’ the
alleged abstract dryness and moral demands of cosmopolitanism and claim that
the demands of rootedness and of equal cosmopolitan regard can coexist
smoothly. This clusters of oxymoronic cosmopolitanism claims to redefine both
the nation and cosmopolitanism: for example, it retains universal moral duty
while avoiding commitment to a global state and to homogenous global
practices, and asks the nation-state to renounce claims to excusive loyalty, blind
moral allegiance and patriotism, the state and nations being constrained by
commitments to universal norms, for example of human rights (Kymlicka &
Walker, 2012). Rooted cosmopolitanism thus seems an appealing notion
because of the implicit virtue of moderation and its epistemic and motivational
realism (Weinstock, 2012). Another cluster of apparently oxymoronic
cosmopolitanism questions the ‘West’ when authors focus on cosmopolitanism
to examine ‘cosmopolitan ethnicity’ (Webner, 2002), ‘working-class
cosmopolitanism’ (Webner, 1999)’, or to elaborate the nuances of ‘vernacular
cosmopolitanism’ (Bhabha, 1996). Vernacular cosmopolitanism in its different
hypostases engages with the sense in which cosmopolitanism remains a term
too closely associated with the rhetoric of former imperial colonizers and elites
(Mignolo, 2000). It points to the dialectics of two sets of values and practices,
examining how local, parochial, rooted and culturally specific loyalties may
coexist with translocal, transnational, transcendent, elitist, enlightened,
universalist and modernist ones, the true cosmopolitan being in between. A
strength of vernacular cosmopolitanism is its historical situatedness, Sheldon
Pollock’s work examining the cosmopolitan and the vernacular comparatively
and historically in an exemplary manner, and axiomatically rejecting the narrow
European analytical and temporal frameworks usually thought to contain them
(Pollock, 2000).
So what justifies the examination of these theoretical approaches under
the title of populism? And how can a theoretical approach be legitimately
considered populist, be it emancipatory populism? To start with the second
question, we have to say that a cosmopolitan theory is not only a theoretical
stance but also a cosmopolitan stance as a way of theorists’ positioning in the
world. In addition, as a rule, the approaches above which end by advancing an
oxymoronic concept, refer to concrete cases of persons and communities. As
well, cosmopolitanism has different sources, and the theoretical approaches of
cosmopolitanism is one of them. The need of the authors writing about
cosmopolitanism to take into account the patriotic, vernacular, statist, and other
situated dimension of cosmopolitanism, is not without relevance. This is done
by criticising the elitist, universalist, European, Western appropriation of
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cosmopolitanism, and concomitantly to make it more real and connected to the

actually existing and living persons. Here we have the structural features of both
accounts of cosmopolitanism: the assumption of the existence of a people, and
the difference between elite and the people; the view of the people as the most
authentic and legitimate political agency of cosmopolitanism. It should be noted
that while these accounts cannot be called populist in traditional sense, they share
with traditional populism the moralistic dimension – they view cosmopolitanism
as elitist and distant, and people as authentic, real and the only possible agent of
cosmopolitanization – and also they take the people as given, existing before the
articulation of a discourse with a populist potential. Apart from this, the situated
cosmopolitanisms pertain more to the emancipatory type of populism. In other
words, the aim of this appeal to the people in its vernacular and local
manifestation is to make cosmopolitanism more real, to reclaim it from the
elites, to bring it closer to the life of everyday persons. In other words, all this
situated cosmopolitanisms, although theoretical in their essence, appear as an
effort of validating the very idea of cosmopolitanism and making it popular and
supported by different persons through the world. And this aim qualifies the
situated cosmopolitanism as an instance of cosmopolitan populism.
Intersections of the logics of cosmopolitanism and populism can be
identified in the protests and anti-globalisation movements which are a source
and instantiations of cosmopolitanism. As was specified in the introduction,
globalization involves universality and the elimination of national borders,
which technically is a crucial condition of cosmopolitanism. However, as
Santos warns, globalization should not be taken as a spontaneous, automatic,
unavoidable and irreversible process which advances according to an inner logic
and dynamism. It operates as well through power and is mainly the hegemonic
type of globalization, also called neoliberal, top-down globalization or
globalization from above, and as a sets of social relationships, globalization
involves conflicts and winners and losers. The dominant discourse on
globalization is the history of the winners, told by the winners (Santos, 2006:
393-395). Santos identifies a second mode of production of globalization,
calling it insurgent cosmopolitanism. It consists of the transnationally organized
resistance against the unequal exchanges produced or intensified by globalized
localisms and localized globalisms. This resistance is organized through
local/global linkages between social organizations and movements representing
those classes and social groups victimized by hegemonic globalization and
united in concrete struggles against exclusion, subordinate inclusion, destruction
of livelihoods and ecological destruction, political oppression, or cultural
suppression, etc. (Santos 2006:397). They take advantage of the possibilities of
transnational interaction created by the information technology and
communications and from the reduction of travel costs. According to Santos,
insurgent cosmopolitan activities include solidarity among social movements
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94

and progressive NGOs, but mainly the most significant events of protests of
alter-globalisation, such as the confrontations surrounding the World Trade
Organization meeting in Seattle on 30 November 1999, or the activities of the
World Social Forum which is for him the most accomplished manifestation of
insurgent cosmopolitanism (Santos, 2006: 397-398).
The cosmopolitanism of protest movements has been explored from a
new perspective (e.g. Cărăuș & Pârvu, 2014; 2016), showing that the
cosmopolitanism emerging in the protests is a practice and an action, not a
comprehensive philosophical world view applied to the globalized world.
Further, it is an action from below, not from above. The cosmopolitan
articulations within grass roots movements and protests around the world are
more plausible than the elite-driven accounts of Kantian cosmopolitanism from
above which usually require a benevolent state power that has to make the
cosmopolitan restructuring of the world. As a practice from the bottom up, the
protests create cosmopolitan forms of solidarity and collective agency to the
extent that they address common global problems and struggle for
implementation of the perennial cosmopolitan aims of equality and inclusion of
all in a common world (Cărăuș & Pârvu, 2016).
The cosmopolitanism of the global protests, as well as Santos’ insurgent
cosmopolitanism, illustrate more or less directly the features of populism
specified above: the difference between globalization from above and from the
bottom up, the slightly moralised view of the difference between elite
globalisation and globalisation from the bellow; those from below being the
authentic and legitimated agency in the global arena; and the most interesting
and novel aspect, there is an assumption of the existence of transnational forces
that act in solidarity, which can be viewed as an articulation of a global people.
For example, the Zapatista movement’s discourses implied a rhetoric of the
‘corrupt’ globalization from above, and of the ‘pure’ globalization from the
bottom, as follow:

“This is a world war of the powerful who want to turn the planet into a private club that
reserves the right to refuse admission. […] All of us are given the option of being inside
this zone, but only as servants. Or we can remain outside of the world, outside of life.…
We have no reason to obey and accept this choice between living as servants or dying. We
can build a new path ... It is necessary because on it depends the future of humanity.”
(EZLN, 1996).

Further, Zapatistas’ appeal to all those who face globalisation as

oppression sounds as an unambiguous appeal towards the coagulation of a
cosmopolitan emancipatory populism. The Zapatistas’ struggle took place in a
local context but the appeal was addressed to “Brothers and Sisters of Asia,
Africa, Oceania, Europe and America”, like in the opening ceremony of the
First Intercontinental Meeting for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, held in
COSMOPOLITANISM AND POPULISM: FROM INCOMPATIBILITY TO CONVERGENCE, AND BACK
95

Chiapas, Mexico, On July 27, 1996. The impetus for Zapatista’s rebellion was
the economic reforms introduced by the Mexican government that were
preparing Mexico for integration into the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), a free-trade pact linking Mexico, the United States, and
Canada (Khasnabish, 2010). The Zapatistas argued that NAFTA and land
reform – especially privatization of communal farms – would lead to further
impoverishment of the population. Zapatistas staged their first rebellion on 1
January 1994, the day NAFTA went into effect, in Chiapas, the southernmost
Mexican state, to protest against economic policies that would affect Mexico’s
indigenous population. The movement continued to stage high-profile
demonstrations and political programs, with different outcomes in their
confrontations with the Mexican government and military (Khasnabish, 2010).
This protest, specific and apparently rather local in its configuration, appealed
to all oppressed from all over the world. The diversity of those facing
globalization as oppression is not an obstacle for a common struggle:

“We are the same simple and ordinary men and women that are repeated in all races,
painted in all colours, speak in all languages and live in all places. […] Today, thousands
of small worlds from the five continents are attempting a beginning here, in the mountains
of Southeastern Mexico, the beginning of the construction of a new and good world, that
is, a world which admits all these worlds” (EZLN, 1996).

In Laclau’s terms, this declaration contains a chain of differences which

become equivalent to each other in their common rejection of the concentration
of wealth, the proliferation of power and inequalities and the destruction of
earth. By this equivalence a cosmopolitan people is articulated which is called
to take action and to remedy the situation and solve the global problems in a
just, egalitarian and inclusive manner. Without reserve this articulation can be
considered an exemplary stance of an emancipatory populism, which as Stavrakakis
argued is not only necessary but also desirable (Stavrakakis, 2014: 515).
Another example of cosmopolitan emancipatory populism created through an
equivalent relation of signifiers, managing to construct an equivalential chain,
can be found in the World Social Forum’s “Call of Social Movements” held in
Porto Alegre in 2002, where the participants, who identify as “social
movements from all around the world”, state:

“We are diverse – women and men, adults and youth, indigenous people, rural and urban,
workers and unemployed homeless, the elderly, students, migrants, professionals, people
of every creed, colour and sexual orientation. The expression of this diversity is our
strength and the basis of our unity. We are a global solidarity movement, united in our
determination to fight against the concentration of wealth, the proliferation of power and
inequalities and the destruction of our earth. We are living and constructing alternative
systems, and using creative ways to promote them. We are building a large alliance from
our struggle and resistance against a system based on sexism, racism and violence, which
 TAMARA CĂRĂUȘ
96

privileges the interests of capital and patriarchy over the needs and aspiration of people”
(WSF, 2002: 625).

This reference to a diversity of groups from all over the world to unite in
a struggle against global inequality can be regarded as well as a call to a
cosmopolitan people. As argued above, the main insight of Laclau’s account on
populism is that the people is never given. It is processual and always in
construction according to the new chain of equivalence articulated in a context
or another. The ‘people’ is not necessarily a natural/primordial entity pre-existing
to the emancipatory populist articulations of claims. But if ‘the people’ is
constructed and processual, a cosmopolitan construction and identification with a
potential ‘cosmopolitan people’ is not impossible and inconceivable. The main
argument of the impossibility of a cosmopolitan people, and of cosmopolitanism
in general, is that there can be no ‘people’ which is only inclusive, all peoples have
limits and so can always be turned against outsiders. Since cosmopolitanism by
definition has to include everyone, mapping a cosmopolitan ‘people’ by
excluding other – ‘them’ – appears as a contradictory gesture. Probably, this
brings us back to the discussion on the distinction ‘us –them’ in context of
cosmopolitanism. But, the ‘them’ of cosmopolitanism could be not necessarily
another planet, but our planet in the scenario we do not stop the global warming,
neoliberal globalisations or other threats etc. (Abizadeh, 2005)
Thus, the appeals to rooted and vernacular cosmopolitanisms, and the
cosmopolitanism from the bottom up of the global protests credibly demonstrate
that it is plausible to outline a cosmopolitan emancipatory populism. It is an
alternative to hegemonic, neoliberal, top-down globalization; probably the only
one capable to address properly the global problems and inequalities. The
cosmopolitan emancipatory populism appears necessary because without
endorsement of universal common values by the most of the persons living in
the world, it would be impossible to have a legitimated global politics.
According to Zizek, “any political regime needs a supplementary ‘populist’
level of self-legitimization” (Zizek, 2006) and, as we can see, cosmopolitanism,
although not yet apolitical regime, but only as political theory, will benefit from
a populist legitimation. The role of populism in the global context and in the
state context might not be structurally different – both are needed to legitimate
the political action and decision. But does this mean that emancipatory
cosmopolitan populism does not bring something new? Populism, as a host
ideology, was and is used to justify and legitimate whatever claim and ideology,
so does it just host another ideology, this time a global one, and perhaps a
riskier and more dangerous one?
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97

Populism in a (Nation) State versus Cosmopolitan Populism

On the contrary, this paper assumes that cosmopolitan emancipatory

populism is structurally different from the populism in a national/state context.
To make more visible this difference and to make visible the novelty of a
cosmopolitan populism, this section argues that most of criticism addressed to
populism within a nation state does not hold and is not valid for populism in a
global context.
Zizek warns us to resist the “populist temptation”, for several well
founded reasons, including the fact that populism’s basic gesture is to refuse to
confront the complexity of the situation, to reduce it to a clear struggle with a
pseudo-concrete “enemy” figure, such as “Brussels bureaucracy” or illegal
immigrants that steel our jobs. “Populism” is thus by definition a negative
phenomenon, a “phenomenon grounded in a refusal, even an implicit admission
of impotence” (Zizek, 2006). Also according to Zizek, for populists, the people
continues to exist, the people's existence is guaranteed by its constitutive
exception, by the externalization of the Enemy into an obstacle. All these are
valid criticisms of populism in the context of the nation-state, however, there is
a structural difference between populism in a nation state and a cosmopolitan
populism, which makes this criticism pointless in a cosmopolitan context.
Firstly, populist cosmopolitanism cannot be a refusal of complexity – on the
contrary, it is possible only after understanding the complexity of global
problems and our involvement in creating these problems, like global warming,
and also finding solution for global problems cannot be a simplistic task.
Cosmopolitanism was always criticised because of its demandingness (Miller,
1999), and one pre-condition of cosmopolitanism was a rather demanding
restructuring of our world view, a ‘conversion’, from a local national set of
values to more universal ones. Thus, the appeal to a cosmopolitan people and
the answer to that appeal involve complex processes of transformation, described
as generative, transformational and institutional process (Delanty, 2014), thus
cosmopolitan populism cannot be a simplistic approach. Furthermore, it cannot
be an expression of impotence, but on the contrary of strong willingness to
change the world, sometimes ‘without taking the power’ (Holloway, 2002) or to
fight for ‘another world’ that for cosmopolitan oriented global protests is
possible (WSF, 2002). Similarly, within the horizon of nation state, the people,
although constructed, is still viewed as natural, as “an empirically verifiable
number”, within given borders – although the democratic theory has been
struggling with the apparent indeterminacy of the people for some time
(Mueller, 2014: 491). But the world/global people does not exist, and to
articulate it is not a facile task, but nevertheless not an impossible one. The
cosmopolitan people does not exist, it is constructed/postulated anew every time
an event of solidarity is expressed transitionally.
 TAMARA CĂRĂUȘ
98

Another structural difference that should be noted between populism in a

state context and in a transnational context refers to their relation to
globalization, as already mentioned in the introduction to this paper. Populist
movements with a right wing orientation oppose globalisation, and are mainly
caused by globalization, but, at least in Europe, they are normally not associated
with the anti-globalisation ‘movement’. The explanation is not necessarily the
fact that anti-globalization movement is left-wing, although it is considered as
such, but the fact that it is born in a transnational way. A right wing transnational
populism is inconceivable, because this would require to abandon the basic
notion of ‘our people’. Surely, a collaboration of right wing populists is not impossible,
but from the perspective of nation, populists collaborating with one another in a
struggle of ‘taking our country back’ from the global interconnectedness. In other
words, even their collaboration would consist in reaffirming the borders. An
anti-globalization emancipatory populism, in order to be constituted, implies
firstly the transgression of borders. Thus, nation-state populism and emancipatory
cosmopolitan populism move in different directions and with different sets of
objectives, and should be treated as radically different phenomena.
There is another structural difference that should be mentioned here.
Urbinati warns not to treat populism as the same as “popular movements”. For
her, the Occupy Wall Street slogan “We are the 99%” fits inside the formal
sketch of populist discourse as polarization between the many and the few and
contestation of representative institutions. Yet, it does not fit with populism
because it is headless and not organized to conquer political power at the
governmental level. So, she differentiates between populism and “a popular
movement that has a populist rhetoric (i.e., polarization and anti-representative
discourse)” but which “is not yet populism” (Urbinati, 2014: 129). She sees here
a populist rhetoric but not yet populism because a social movement wants to
resist becoming an elected entity, and wants to keep elected officials
accountable and under scrutiny, and this is the case of a popular movement of
contestation and protest like Occupy Wall Street. But when a movement with a
populist rhetoric wants instead to occupy the representative institutions and win
the majority in order to model the entire society to its ideology, this is a populist
movement. (Urbinati, 2014: 130). While this could be a valid observation for
the nation state populism it is not the case of a cosmopolitan populism or
cosmopolitan appeal to the people – here populism might be inaugural of
democracy on the global scale, and could work as a democratising power. The
emancipatory cosmopolitanism in the global arena does not aim to conquer an
institution and to model it according to its worldview, not only because there is
not such institution to occupy, but also because this is not the aim of
constituting a cosmopolitan populism, based firstly on an experience of
transformation and restructuring of the world view.
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99

Concluding Remarks:
Towards a Self-Reflexive Cosmopolitan Populism?

However, there is a criticism that can be equally plausibly addressed to

cosmopolitanism in the context of nation-state and in the global context.
Scholars of populism have called our attention to the affinities between
populism and totalitarianism because of populism’s profound antipathy to
pluralism, dissent, minority views (Mueller, 2014; Zizek, 2006). As well, some
others argued that the European and global post-war liberal-democratic order
was cemented in anti-fascist foundations, so the rise of the contemporary
populism, especially in Europe faces the danger of “becoming fascist again”
(Finchelstein, 2014: 473), and thus totalitarian, or at least totalising.
Cosmopolitanism as well involves some risks, as critics or even sympathizers of
cosmopolitanism have noticed that cosmopolitanism “runs the constant risk of
transmuting from an inspiring vision into an inviolable doctrine of universal
salvation. In this way, cosmopolitanism could be yet another threatening
modernist ideology of human betterment – a new political religion of immutable
truth” (Hayden 2013:196), pointing to the “oppressiveness of abstracted
universalism” (Harvey 2009: 80) and seeing in cosmopolitanism a new
totalizing grand narrative. Commentators have pointed out, as well, that
“cosmopolitanism might turn into an ideology” (Cavallar 2011:1) facilitating or
rationalizing a kind of “cosmopolitan crusade” (Hayden 2013: 195). Similarly,
cosmopolitan initiatives conceived of and created by a counter-hegemonic
character can later come to assume hegemonic characteristics. Even more, the
progressive or counter-hegemonic character of the populist cosmopolitan
coalitions cannot be taken for granted, as Santos admits of insurgent
cosmopolitanism (Santos, 2006: 397).
Most of the approaches within the recent revival of cosmopolitanism
admit that the will for universalization is generally accompanied by side-effects,
such as exclusion, oppression and violence and address the question of how a
theory of cosmopolitanism is possible in conditions of pluralism and assumed
differences. Thus, cosmopolitan is not conceived anymore as a global consensus
or an eternal peace, it is more an agonistic and contestatory practice which does
not allow the place of universality to be occupied once for all (Ingram, 2013;
Cărăuș, 2015, 2016). For example, the proliferation of the new, even though
oxymoronic, definitions of cosmopolitanism is possible exactly through the
contestation of the previous definition of cosmopolitanism. New approaches of
cosmopolitanism tend to reduce the cosmopolitan alleged universality to its own
Western particularity so that this equivalential effect is weakened, the place of
the universal is made vacant once again and a new cosmopolitan empty signifier
will attempt to fill it. New cosmopolitanisms counteract the hegemony of traditional
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100

cosmopolitanism, rejecting its alleged moral dryness and the Western/European

analytical frameworks usually thought as structuring cosmopolitanism.
Concomitantly, populism as re-though by Laclau has the resources to
avoid the effects of totalization. The logic of empty signifiers is a thinking of
the impossible totalization and universality. In Laclau’s approach the universal
has no content of its own, but is an absent fullness. The universal can only
emerge out of the particular, because it is only the negation of a particular
content that transforms that content in the symbol of a universality transcending
it. The empty universal discloses its own contingency and makes room for
contestation of all other universals. The empty place of the universal does not
stop challenging the current grounds of the society in the name of another (more
just and equal) world that seems possible, and in this way an instance of
emancipatory populism can be and has to be contested by another more just and
equal articulation. This means that those who share its objectives have to show a
constant self-reflection, self-reflexion being the very way of becoming cosmopolitan,
because in the current global condition problems affect all persons from all over
the world and make us more reflexive of our common fate and humanity.

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