The Populism of the Empire and the Multitude
This theoretical study aims to contribute to the literature dealing with populism
from a transnational perspective. I will apply the post-structuralist concept of
Empire and Multitude developed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri to
theorize transnational populism. This is not the usual way of thinking about
populism, because there are several internal debates and tensions between
Hardt/Negri and Laclau/Mouffe (Hardt, Negri: 2017). Although there are
very important trends (Kioupkiolis, Katsambekis: 2014; Kioupkiolis: 2014)
in the critical literature to reconcile the populist and post-hegemonic tendencies
as the hegemony of the multitude. This study relies on these tendencies. In the
first part I am investigating the nature of the neoliberal world order as the
Empire in the context of hegemony and populism. As it has been analysed
in the first part of this paper, with the crisis of liberal democracy we have
entered the era of populist democracy and there is a fierce struggle between
the left and the right to define and maintain the core nature of democracy.
It will be argued in the third part that right-wing nationalist populism can
be seen as a manifestation of populism in the context of the Empire. I will
emphasize the multitude as a counter-populist concept compared to the Empire.
In the fourth part I put forward that the multitude as an empty signifier can
achieve some reconciliation between Laclau/Mouffe and Hard/Negri. I will
also argue that transnational populism needs to have its transnational political
subject which should be based on the multitude reinterpreted in populist context
