Brexit, the NHS and the double-edged sword of populism: Contributor to agonistic democracy or vehicle of ressentiment?

Manuel Hensmans and Bommel van

ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: In this paper we argue that mature political democracies require an agonistic form of populism in order to function. Agonistic populism counters technocratic apathy and instrumental reductionism and provides democracies with discursive legitimacy for the expression of antagonisms. We draw on the exemplary case of Brexit to show how the long-term suppression of English populism by an all-conquering British imperial discourse, and the hegemony of technocratic solutions in Europe, transformed populism’s potentially virtuous agonistic effects into an often anachronistic, toxic and ill-directed ressentiment against the European Union. We call upon management scholars to focus on how popular ressentiment can be used as a force for good in two ways: (1) by contributing agonistically to an alternative, emotionally founded discourse about England, the European Union and a new popular civilizational project that could bind them; and (2) by inducing the creation of collective moral categories embraced across the elite/non-elite divide in the image of the post-World War II National Health Service.

Keywords: Agonism; antagonism; Brexit; Chantal Mouffe; Ernesto Laclau; NHS; populism; ressentiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12-01
Note: SCOPUS: ar.j
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in: Organization (2019)

Downloads: (external link)
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/291153/4/1350508419855699.pdf Full text for the whole work, or for a work part (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/291153

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... lb.ac.be:2013/291153

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().