Anti-Populism and Pluralism: A Comparative Analysis

民粹主义将“人民”与“精英”对立起来，经常被视为当代自由民主面临的最大挑战之一。也就是说，由于它被认为与自由民主的多元化不相容，政治权力应该广泛传播的理解，反映了政治共同体的多样性，并防止权力积聚在太少的手中。为了应对民粹主义的崛起，一些政治、学术和媒体精英开始占据“反民粹主义”的立场，以捍卫多元主义免受民粹主义挑战者的影响。然而，这些精英们自己也被指责破坏多元主义，因为他们将异议边缘化，并妖魔化那些挑战新自由主义治理的人。这位博士通过分析精英反民粹主义话语，从不同的国家背景，评估当前对民粹主义的敌对反应，因为它们在促进多元主义反对民粹主义经常被指控的专制倾向方面的功效，理论上，这位博士还代表了对多元主义的自由主义理解是否足以推进他们声称要捍卫的民主多元性的调查，或者其他激进民主的替代方案是否提供了更令人满意和更强大的概念。了解主流行为体对民粹主义挑战者的反应的有效性，对于确保自由民主得到有力捍卫至关重要，因为在这种背景下，它已经被极右翼的全球崛起大大破坏了。

Populism, which posits 'the people' against 'the elite' is often labelled as one of the greatest contemporary challenges to liberal democracy. Namely, because of its supposed incompatibility with liberal-democratic pluralism, the understanding that political power should be widely diffused, reflecting the diversity of the political community and preventing power from accumulating in too few hands. In response to the rise of populism, a number of political, academic, and media elites have come to occupy an 'anti-populist' position, so as to defend pluralism from populist challengers. Such elites, however, have themselves beenaccused of undermining pluralism through their supposed marginalisation of dissent and demonisation of those who challenge neoliberal governance. This PhD appraises the current adversarial responses to populism through an analysis of elite anti-populist discourses, from different national contexts, for their efficacy in promoting pluralism against populism's oft alleged authoritarian tendencies, Theoretically, this PhD also represents an inquiry into whether liberal understandings of pluralism are sufficient in advancing the democratic plurality that they claim to defend, or whether other radical-democratic alternatives offer amore satisfying and robust conception. Understanding the efficacy of the responses of mainstream actors to populist challengers is central to ensuring that liberal democracy is robustly defended, in a context in which it has already been greatly destabilised by the global rise of the far-right.