The People’s Two Bodies: An Alternative Perspective on Populism and Elitism

• Date: 01 December 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912918768891
• Author: Alin Fumurescu
• Published date: 01 December 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912918768891

Political Research Quarterly

2018, Vol. 71(4) 842 –853

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912918768891

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Article

In their recent book, Democracy for Realists, Christopher

Achen and Larry Bartels argue that the credibility of

“folk theory” of democracy, according to which people

rule either directly or indirectly, through their representa-

tives, “has been severely undercut by a growing body of

scientific evidence” (Achen and Bartels 2016, 11).

Backed by a wealth of recent studies, the authors make a

worrisome claim: None of the two main theories of dem-

ocratic governance, namely, the populist and the elitist,

can sustain empirical inspection. Voters do not control

public policy, neither directly, through referenda and pop-

ular consultations, nor indirectly, by prospectively choos-

ing or retrospectively rewarding leaders that attend to

their wishes. Bluntly put, “conventional thinking about

democracy has collapsed in the face of modern social-

scientific research,” yet “scholars . . . persist uneasily in

their schizophrenia, recognizing the power of the critical

arguments but hoping without hope that those arguments

can somehow be discredited or evaded . . .” (Achen and

Bartels 2016, 12, emphases added).

Even more recently, Daniel Caramani launched, from

a different perspective, an equally concerning warning:

The representation model of party democracy is under

attack from two sides—the populist and the elitist/tech-

nocratic. Politicians are accused (by the populists) of

being either too detached from the people or (by the tech-

nocrats) too willing to please them regardless of the con-

sequences. According to Caramani, populism and

technocracy share the “homogenous and organic vision

of the people,” “a non-pluralistic view of society and

politics.” As a result,

both forms believe in an “external” interest [of the people],

detached from the specific group interests and their

aggregation. . . . For populism, the general interest can be

identified through the will of the people. For technocracy,

the general interest can be identified through rational

speculation and scientific procedures. (Caramani 2017, 62,

emphases added)

The undertones of Achen and Bartel’s book and

Caramani’s article might be different, but both—and

these are only two recent examples from a growing pool

of scholarly literature concerned with this topic—point in

the same direction: the crisis that democracies have to

face is related to conflicting understandings of “the peo-

ple” (e.g., Bickerton and Accetti 2015; Urbinati 2014).

Absent this clarification, the concept of popular sover-

eignty, central to any democratic system, remains an

empty one, explaining everything and nothing. Not sur-

prising, in Achen and Bartel’s view, “the ideal of popular

sovereignty plays much the same role in contemporary

democratic ideology that the divine right of kings played

in the monarchical era.” “The doctrine of ‘The King’s

Two Bodies’ . . . provided useful leeway for understand-

ing and accommodating the fact that mortal rulers were

often less than divine in bearing and behavior.” A similar

rationale applies to the contemporary understanding of

768891PRQXXX10.1177/1065912918768891Political Research QuarterlyFumurescu

research-article2018

1University of Houston, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Alin Fumurescu, 6211 Portal Dr., Houston, TX 77096, USA.

Email: afumurescu@uh.edu

The People’s Two Bodies: An Alternative

Perspective on Populism and Elitism

Alin Fumurescu1

Abstract

Inspired by the late medieval doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies, the idea of the People’s Two Bodies has been so far

used lightly by scholars, mostly to point out a supposed contradiction in our shared assumptions about “the people.”

The essay argues that the People’s Two Bodies paradigm is more than a mere linguistic artifice, proving useful for

dealing with the pitfalls of elitism and populism while taking advantage of both approaches. It shows that the dual

understanding of “the people,” both as a multitude and as a corporate whole, enjoys actually a long pedigree in the

history of political thought. As such, the paradigm of the People’s Two Bodies helps address some of the major

theoretical and practical challenges that liberal democracies are facing today.

Keywords

people’s two bodies, Puritans, social compact, political compact, populism, elitism