Populist sensibilities before ‘populism’: populism’s historic predecessors

Populism’s history is intimately linked to the consolidation of liberal-representative governments, whose incompleteness it points out from different perspectives. However, a populist sensibility runs through history ever since the birth of democratic and republican ideas. This chapter particularly highlights three historical moments within this sequence: popular activities in the Athenian polis and republican Rome; plebeian revolts in the modern era, which brought into play a popular sense of justice; the first popular movements advocating ‘people’s rights’, such as the Levellers (seventeenth century), the Jacobins (eighteenth century) and the Chartists (nineteenth century). A comparison between these three movements will demonstrate that their common populist sensibility involves a radical and utopian conception of democracy, opposed to another vision (consolidated in liberal-representative governments), which emphasizes the competence of an elite to govern on behalf of the people.