1st Edition
The Dark Side of Podemos? Carl Schmitt and Contemporary Progressive Populism
Chapter 1: The Schmitt-Podemos connection
Chapter 2: Podemos’ encounter with Schmitt
Chapter 3: Divergent presents
Chapter 4: Imagining the political past
Chapter 5: Imagining the political future
Chapter 6: Tensions within
Biography
Josh Booth is a Teaching Associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, UK
Patrick Baert is Professor of Social Theory at the University of Cambridge, UK
In this intriguing narrative in political theory, Booth and Baert trace the multi-layered and often surprising connections between the conservative philosophy of the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt and the progressive populism of Podemos. In the process they consider the analogies between Weimar Germany and contemporary Spain, General Franco’s regime and the warm reception for Schmitt’s views on power, the political, the "exception", and decisionism. In tracing the connections between the Podemos leadership and Schmitt’s critique of liberalism and parliamentary democracy, they also describe the profound crisis within the European Union between Germany and its underdeveloped periphery.
A tour de force, the authors develop a compelling historical sociology of ideas and expose the ambiguities of populism as appealing to extreme right and left politics , and simultaneously dissolving this political division.
Bryan S. Turner ACU (Melbourne) and Potsdam University Germany
