Keywords

1 Introduction

In Europe, talk of populism has been systematically related to the right. However, the American continent offers a contrasting landscape, where populism has taken on diverse ideological forms, with the relatively recent wave of Latin American populisms labelled ‘pink tide’ offering a prime example of left-oriented subjects capturing state power. Nonetheless, the landscape has evolved, as evidenced by the rise of left-wing populist forces like SYRIZA in Greece and Podemos in Spain since the mid-2010s, albeit remaining a smaller phenomenon compared to their right-wing counterparts. Be it left or right, populism has in both cases been analysed in terms of its origins as well as in terms of its democratic implications. Although exceptions exist (notably Laclau 2005a), the prevailing scholarly criterion is that populism is a ‘style of governance that attempts to circumvent the rule of law and democratic norms in favour of centralized authority and limited political freedom’ (Bonikowski 2017: 189–190).

While this may be more evident in the case of right-wing populism given its inherently exclusionary nature and its homogenous way of casting the people (Mudde et al. 2013), the case of left populism requires a more nuanced picture. This chapter seeks to evaluate the correlation between left populism and the rule of law. This evaluation is facilitated through a comparative analysis of two instances where left populism was in power. The purpose is to contribute to a more refined theoretical understanding of the interplay between these two concepts. The first case pertains to Alexis Tsipras’ tenure as the only fully realized instance of left populism in Europe, spanning from 2015 to 2019. The second case involves Rafael Correa's presidency in Ecuador, representing a left populist regime in Latin America, which lasted from 2007 to 2017. Specifically, this text endeavours to comprehend the impact of left populism on the rule of law and seeks to determine whether the erosion of the rule of law can be attributed to populism or other factors. To achieve this understanding, the comparative approach proves invaluable as it allows for the identification of additional conditioning elements at play.

The paper presents a problematisation of the all too often characterisation of populism as necessarily representing the ultimate threat to the rule of law. In order to do so, it initially offers two words of caution on the definition of the notions at stake here, namely populism and rule of law. In the case of populism, the ideational approach that has been much in vogue in populism studies is contrasted with the discursive take, which may be a better proxy to treat the phenomenon. As for the rule of law, a number of different approaches is summarised, with the choice of the functional one as the most suited to conduct an empirical research more heedful to contingency and context. The text then moves to a one by one assessment of the above-mentioned study cases, followed by a discussion that firstly considers the existing literature on the relationship between populism and liberal-democracy, and then compares and contrasts the two contexts, finally offering some new clues as to the relationship between left populism and the rule of law. A brief conclusion finally wraps up the main findings of the present contribution.

2 A Word of Caution: What is Populism?

Virtually all contemporary perspectives on populism would concur with Margaret Canovan's observation that populism, in any form, involves an appeal to the people and carries inherent anti-elitist characteristics (Canovan 1981: 294). However, such approaches still differ in defining the specificities of populism. An exhaustive account of the scholarly debates on the meaning of populism goes beyond the purpose of the present text. For heuristic purposes, the discussion will thus be limited to challenging some of the tenets underlying the ideational approach, which has most forcefully been propounded by Cas Mudde and that has informed much of the contemporary debates on populism and its implications. In a much-cited quote, the Belgian political scientist defines populism as a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ and the ‘corrupt elite,’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté general (general will) of the people (Mudde 2004: 243)

The ideational approach thus treats populism as an ideology, although one with a restricted core, which makes it necessarily reliant on some other ‘thick’ ideology, giving rise to a variety of possible combinations. Yet, all populisms display a marked tendency to construct collective subjects–both the people and its opponent, i.e. the elites–as homogeneous and in moral terms. Moralism is indeed considered as ‘the essence of the populist division’ (Mudde 2017a: 29). As aptly analysed by Katsambekis (2022: 59), by attributing a fixed set of ideas (however thin), populism becomes a predictor of the actions of a given political actor. In other words, this way of intending populism lends itself to an either-or, binary formula: a political subject is or is not populist and, as a consequence, it has or it has not those ‘populist attitudes’, which this approach has as intrinsically inimical to the rule of law and democratic procedures. In this view, populism in fact ‘fundamentally rejects the notions of pluralism and, therefore, minority rights as well as the “institutional guarantees” that should protect them’ (Mudde et al. 2017: 81). In so doing however, most left populist subjects would be excluded from the definition of populism, as they do not conform to the homogeneity/anti-pluralist/moralist thesis, paradoxically even actors that ideational scholars are elsewhere willing to catalogue as populist (Katsambekis 2022: 60).

Various alternative ways to intend populism exist that allow for circumventing this limitation. One is offered by the discursive approach, most noticeably spearheaded by Laclau. The crucial point to emphasise here is that populism is not tied to a specific ideology or content, but rather to the construction of a political subject. As democratic politics inherently revolves around this aspect, populism becomes synonymous with politics itself (Laclau 2005b: 47), with the further and crucial implication that, rather than a binary taxonomy, populism is to be treated as a gradational property. Specifically, three elements composing the nitty–gritty of this all-pervading ‘logic’ of the political deserve to be mentioned. Firstly, populism entails the erection of an internal, antagonistic frontier that divides the social in two camps. Secondly, such a frontier comes about through the creation of a chain between unmet demands–which thereby become ‘equivalent’–at the hands of a political subject that imputes the power-holders or some other enemy to systematically frustrate them. Finally, an element that Laclau has as an ‘empty signifier’ and typically though not always necessarily represented by the leader, occupies a privileged position within the new constellation, insofar as it gives coherence to the emerging totality (Laclau 2005b: 43–44). The concept of the empty signifier pertains to a symbol, demand, or mere label that effectively undertakes the task of structuring the collective group of people who align themselves with it. This is achieved by disassociating from its initial intended meaning and encompassing a diverse spectrum of distinct demands. Consequently, the empty signifier serves as a representation for the entire collective, embodying an evocative uniqueness that imparts cohesion to an inherently diverse assemblage (Laclau, 2005a: 100).

It follows that, per se, the construction of a ‘people’ does not tell us a priori much about any normative and ideological disposition, thus making the compatibility with a liberal-democratic framework and the rule of law–including the presence of homogenising and moralistic tendencies–entirely contingent upon the single populist instantiation. The bottom-line of this line of reasoning is that only a case-by-case empirical analysis can fully reveal the extent to which liberal-democratic norms are upheld or overturned (Katsambekis 2022: 62). This does not simply imply the ascertainment of whether a populist subject is left-wing or right-wing, with the automatic equation that the former is compatible with liberal-democratic canons based on its non-homogenous and non-moralistic character, and the latter is instead always illiberal. While right-wing populism may be more predisposed to overlook liberal-democratic norms–although this may flow more from its collusion with nativism than from populism (De Cleen et al. 2018: 654)–some left populisms have in actual fact also shown profound disregard for such procedures (see Mazzolini 2021; 2022a, b; Kioupkiolis 2016; Stavrakakis et al. 2016). A discursive approach, if rigorously applied, can thus help to carry out more bias-free empirical assessments (but without the pretension that normativity is entirely eliminable from academic discourse), while avoiding grand generalisations of little analytical import. This is why comparative analyses like the one conducted in this text can at best illustrate how two specific experiences have fared, giving us some clues on how left populism may relate to the rule of law, but by no means can draw definitive conclusions that admit no further justification or proof. By factoring in populism as a political logic, contextual elements such as political culture, goals, personalities, history and external influences, as well as sheer and imponderable contingency, take up a much more prominent role than allowed by the ideational approach.

One more important caveat is necessary, however. It cannot be overlooked that two of the three basic elements defining populism in the discursive approach, namely antagonism and personalisation, if taken to an extreme, may be problematic with respect to the rule of law. If antagonism reaches the point that adversaries are treated as illegitimate actors that need to be purged from the community, it follows that the use of institutions may turn out to be instrumental, erratic (Villacañas 2015: 114) and, in the last instance, authoritarian. Similarly, the cult of personality that often develops around a leader contradicts the establishment of impersonal and universalistic institutions. This does not automatically mean that anything that is labelled as populist goes in the direction of doing away with the rule of law and modern democratic procedures. As stated above, it is all a question of degree and, in addition, of the articulation of populism with other traditions. In this sense, the compatibility between populism and the rule of law is given by the relations that the former contextually establishes with other logics that are also constitutive of democratic systems, thereby making it necessary to evaluate such features on a case-by-case basis (Panizza 2008: 92).

3 Another Word of Caution: What is the Rule of Law?

Political scientists and theorists, especially those concerned with populism, tend to take the rule of law as a given, without providing any form of problematisation of the notion. In a recent book dedicated to the transformations that populism provokes to democracy, Urbinati defines it in an endnote as ‘protection from state abuse to individual citizens and different groups in society’, further adding that people are bound to obey laws that somehow contributed in making (2019: 228). Similarly, Jan Werner Müller suggests that it is a mechanism pertaining to the liberal repertoire which protects democracy from the dangers posed by political contenders exhibiting a ‘winner-take-all’ mentality (2016: 51). But these are–although unsatisfactory–exceptions, as rarely does one stumble upon a more precise definition of the rule of law in the populism studies literature.

Some help can come from legal theory where the notion has come under more intense scrutiny. In a recent article, Lacey (2019) summarises four broad approaches to the rule of law. Let us have a look at them at once. The first one, associated with the work of Raz (1979), can be defined as a formal or ‘thin’ conception. The focus falls here on a set of strictly procedural values, such as clarity, non-retroactivity, publicity, universality of reach, possibility of compliance and congruence between expressed law and official enforcement (Lacey 2019: 81). Secondly, the rule of law has been cashed out as not just formal constraints, but also as the instauration of interpersonal attitudes (Waldron 2011). This approach carries a more normative import, as agents are to be advised in advance of legal norms so that they can adjust their behaviour accordingly and are also to be given the chance to speak and be heard in a neutral tribunal (Lacey 2019: 82). As for the third approach, the rule of law is defined in even more ‘thick’ or ‘substantive’ terms to the point that it becomes coterminous with the institutional arrangements typical of liberal-democracy: constitutionalism, separation of powers and a system checks and balances, human rights and judicial review (Tamanaha 2004). The underlying principle is that unless oriented towards ‘mutually respectful, agency-recognising association’ (Lacey 2019: 82), the rule of law can well serve oppressive agendas and become a mere ‘abusive legalism’ (Landau 2013). Finally, in the ‘functional’ or ‘teleological’ approach, the rule of law has been defined not by reference to form or content, but ‘as a set of ideals and arrangements oriented to tempering power’ as well as ‘enabling and strengthening power, not least by enhancing its legitimacy’ (Lacey 2019: 82). One of the chief aims of this approach is that of factoring in sociology (Krygier 2009), which translates into a contextualist look at the rule of law. In other words, the content of the rule of law will be dependent upon time and space, and hence be influenced by contingent cultural, institutional and political conditions (Lacey 2019: 83). In this way, ‘use’ is heeded over ‘meaning’, thus spurring ‘questions about the preconditions under which particular conceptions of, or dispositions towards, the rule of law are likely to take hold’ (Lacey 2007: 1214).

In a similar vein, Adis Merdzanovic and Kalypso Nicolaidis disaggregate their approach to the rule of law into four different levels, represented by the ‘law on the books’, the institutions of justice, and most crucially, the politics and the power structures at play, and the underlying socio-cultural realities (Merdzanovic & Nicolaidis, 2021: 301–2). The last two play a crucial role, as they evidence that the rule of law amounts to much more than a set of legal dispositions and their application. Revealingly, the third level also entails that ‘[i]f the challenges come from outside the state system, i.e. from oligarchic structures, state structures need to be strengthened’ (301). The fourth level, in particular, emphasises that the sustainability of the rule of law depends on the micro-level citizen behaviour, establishing the priority of cultural change in order to guarantee its durability and embeddedness, and moving away from the notion that it should solely be the domain of experts, thereby shedding its elitist character (302). Consistently, and reinforcing the idea that the rule of law is not a monolithic concept, the authors also assert that it should be tailored to accommodate national traditions, recognising the potential variations in essential legal aspects like the role of rights, the state-law relationship, and the sovereignty of parliament (303).

It seems that, coherently with the choice of adopting a more nuanced and gradational way to intend populism such as the discursive approach, the ‘functional’ approach to the rule of law can best capture the importance of contingency in socio-political analysis. In particular, this understanding invites us to take with a pinch of salt the employment of the notion of the rule of law as a strict benchmark against which to assess liberal-democratic performance. The changing contours of the rule law are in fact dependent upon prerequisites that vary greatly from country to country and which cannot be possibly attributed to a single political actor irrupting into the political scenario. This does not mean that the assessment of advancements or regressions in relation to the rule of law cannot be performed, but this has to be made against a backdrop where the local political culture, recent history and institutional settings are fully integrated into the equation. Another advantage of this approach is represented by a double understanding of the notion. Here power is not just to be tempered in order to avoid its potential abuses but also enabled, strengthened and legitimised. Although potentially (and, as we shall see, at times also concretely) in tension, these two faces should ideally work in tandem. If the state does not dispose of the sufficient means and capillary power and is not unanimously recognised as being the ultimate authority within the national territory, it follows that abuses of all sorts may take place and that the application of existing laws, norms and dispositions may be fluctuating and ephemeral. The very notion of modern citizenship is predicated upon fully working and widely accepted institutions capable of delivering a minimum array of services for subjects to flourish and enjoy their rights.

4 The Greek Case: Tsipras in Power

Alexis Tsipras came to power in 2015 as the leader of Syriza, a party which initially started off in 2001 as a coalition of organisations of the radical left. Syriza achieved significant results from 2008 onwards, but it was only by successfully positioning itself as the political interlocutor of the 2011 Syntagma Square protests against austerity measures that it attained full electoral prominence. The issue of popular sovereignty being stripped off by international institutions with negative repercussions on the well-being of the bulk of the population acquired such a salience that Syriza finished second in the 2012 Parliamentary elections and first in the 2014 European elections. At that point, it was only a short step to winning the next Parliamentary elections that were held in advance in January 2015. However, in order to become Prime Minister and govern, Tsipras needed the help of a small right-wing Euro-sceptic party, ANEL, thus ushering in a peculiar governing populist coalition.

Two periods in government can be distinguished: the first few months from January to August 2015, and the remaining period in office until 2019 upon confirmation at another round of early Parliamentary elections. The former, which Katsambekis defines as defiant voluntarism (2019: 35), was chiefly characterised by the airing of the country’s rejection of the austerity measures and the symbolic recognition of their grievances. However, the intense round of negotiations with the European institutions bore no fruit and in the summer 2015 Tsipras unexpectedly decided to let the Greeks have a say on the last bailout programme containing harsh economic measures. Despite (or perhaps precisely due to) the resounding victory of the NO vote with 61% support, Greece faced blackmail from the European Central Bank when emergency liquidity provision to Greek banks was halted, effectively threatening the country with expulsion from the Eurozone. Tsipras and his government were unprepared to accept this scenario and had not made any concrete preparations for it. In a matter of weeks, Tsipras was forced to sign a new memorandum that presented worse terms than the ones the Greeks had voted against. After the September 2015 snap elections called by Tsipras, his last mandate up to 2019 was characterised by the implementation of a ‘parallel programme’ that was meant to temper the effects of austerity measures on the most vulnerable social sectors. The most harmful consequences on such segments were in fact avoided, but the outcomes were less rosy than the ones presented by Syriza’s government (Prentoulis 2021: 114–15). In addition, the Greek executive attempted to shift its attention to other issues, such as the fight on corruption, civil rights and the resolution of the historical dispute with Macedonia over its official name (now turned into Northern Macedonia).

Coming back to our core questions, how populist was Syriza and how did it fare institutionally? As analysed by different scholars, the signifier ‘the people’ and the us-them polarisation occupied a privileged position in Syriza’s discourse, even after September 2015, although this populist tension was more pronounced during electoral campaigns than while in office, and the construction of the adversaries also showed some minor variations over time (Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014; Markou 2021: 183–86). However, its initially radical position was considerably softened to the point that ‘SYRIZA was transformed into a center-left party that continued to embrace a strong populist rhetoric’ (Markou 2021: 192). This had an antecedent in Greek history, as the social-democratic Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) also displayed marked populist tendencies in the past, to the point that Syriza could be even considered the replacement of PASOK (Mudde 2017b: 4; see also Pappas 2020: 59).

However, it would be far-fetched to state that the rule of law was significantly trampled by Syriza’s government. For one thing, Greek liberal-democracy has always been an ill-functioning one (Mudde 2017a: 15), with clientelism dating back to the nineteenth century (Prentoulis 2021: 111). Even Pappas, whose take on Syriza tends to be harsher than that of other commentators who are equally averse to populism, has to admit that ‘staffing the state with party loyalists was hardly a new trend in Greek politics’ (2020: 62). Aslanidis and Rovira Kaltwasser put it bluntly: ‘[t]aking into account Greece’s traditionally poor record of upholding liberal democratic standards generally associated with Western values, no qualitative change can be detected in 2015’ (2016: 1083). If anything, it was the power of big media along and its collusion with mainstream parties, often referred to as diaploki (Aslanidis & Rovira Kaltwasser 2016: 1084; Prentoulis 2021: 117–18), as well as the inefficient and hostile bureaucracy with vested interests of its own opposing any social transformation fostered by the left (Prentoulis 2021: 114, 116; Karaliotas 2021: 505) that posed more threats to the rule of law.

Mudde himself has described Tsipras as a ‘committed liberal democrat’ (2017b: 51), not to mention the roots of Syrza in Euro-communism (Karaliotas 2021: 503). Such a political genealogy is important insofar as it signals that Syriza is fully embedded in that cultural transformation of the radical left that made fidelity towards democratic institutions as one of its hallmarks. This may not necessarily entail a full adherence to the rule of law in its thick sense but still indicates a clear-cut move away from any vanguardist and revolutionary position. Moreover, it is to be noted that while a strong culture regarding the independence of institutions is not fully developed nor perceived as particularly important by the Greek average citizen (Aslanidis et al. 2016: 1083)–which invites for a more prudent and pondered judgement of any government’s actions–the aspiration of ‘being European’ remains strong and widespread. This creates a cultural barrier that prevents any authoritarian excess from being tolerated by the population.

The deeds of Tsipras’ administration thus attest that the rule of law did not suffer from any serious deterioration if the Greek context is seriously considered. While the characterisation of political adversaries as ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘collaborationist’ initially put forward by Syriza created anxieties among mainstream parties that an authoritarian drift was lurking just around the corner, in actual fact no sign of persecution or intimidation ever emerged. This is contrasted by the autocratic logic followed by the previous, technocratic government of ND leader Antonis Samaras (Karaliotas 2021: 501). In this sense, it could be argued that Syriza’s populism was more oriented towards an agonistic understanding of political conflict than an antagonistic one (Mouffe 2000). Examples abound. Prokopis Pavlopoulos, a conservative politician of New Democracy (ND), was elected as president of the republic with the decisive parliamentary support of Syriza in March 2015. Following the dramatic events of summer 2015, a more constructive atmosphere between parties took hold, with the new caretaker President of ND Vaggelis Meimaarakis maintaining an overall relaxed relationship with Tsipras (Aslanidis and Rovira Kaltwasser 2016: 1084). The change of the electoral law promoted by Syriza by which the 50-seat bonus was scrapped and which Pappas hurriedly lists among its shady deeds (2020: 62–3) can hardly be classified as a populist move, let alone an authoritarian one, as it enhances proportional representation, which is normally a terrain that deflects vertical aspirations. Finally, if we intend the rule of law not just as an instrument aimed at tempering power, but also at enhancing the legitimacy of institutions, it is not strained to say that in this respect the politics of Tsipras’ government was possibly much more observant of the rule of law than that of its predecessors. Syriza was precisely after the strengthening of the State after years of progressive institutional dismantlement with the aim of pulling the country out of the conditions of extreme economic and social hardship, stimulating consumer spending, reactivating the production cycle and combating unemployment (Damiani 2020: 104).

5 The Ecuadorian Case: Correa in Power

Rafael Correa became president of Ecuador in January 2007 following a brief stint as Minister for the Economy in the interim government of Alfredo Palacio. During this period, he gained significant visibility by implementing several progressive decisions, notably concerning the socially-informed allocation of oil revenues that surpassed the estimated budgeted price. Additionally, he garnered attention through his vocal criticism of the neoliberal economic model. After resigning, he launched a new political movement, PAIS Alliance, which brought together under his own leadership some well-known figures in left-wing intellectual and political circles, as well as pre-existing political groups. His 2006 electoral campaign, concluded with a comfortable win in the run-off against banana tycoon Álvaro Noboa, was predicated on two main themes. On the one hand, he targeted the moral bankruptcy of the political class, deemed responsible for the degeneracy of state institutions; on the other, he took issues with the humiliation of the fatherland (patria) as a consequence of the implementation of elite-driven economic policies that advantaged the few to the detriment of the many (Conaghan 2011: 265). In actual fact, the signifier patria, invested in a quasi-religious language, acquired central importance owing to its polysemic implications (Burbano de Lara 2015: 24). The potential for such a discourse to gain traction was facilitated by the articulation of various demands that emerged during a prolonged period of political, economic, and social turmoil, with the 1998–99 economic crisis and the subsequent adoption of the dollar as the national currency playing a significant role (Mazzolini 2016: 28–30).

Correa enjoyed nearly unchallenged electoral dominance for a decade until the rise of his chosen successor, Lenín Moreno, in 2017 (surprisingly, Moreno's tenure represented a complete departure from Correa's legacy, leading to political persecution through lawfare directed at Correa and his former core leading group, driven by Moreno himself). In a nutshell, after the aforementioned elections, Correa initiated a constituent processes, which culminated in a new Carta Magna approved through a referendum in 2008. He then called early elections in 2009, which he won in the first round, a feat which he repeated in 2013. As I argued elsewhere (Mazzolini 2021), three broad periods of his administration can be devised. The first one consisted of an open and felicitous dialogue with the existing grievances and social movements in society, as hinted above. The second one commenced with the inauguration of the Constituent Assembly. During this period, several divisions surfaced within the governing coalition, but they did not yet pose a significant challenge to Correa's authority. Specifically, the introduction of new governance pressures and constraints imposed by the political economy made it challenging to uphold all the demands that were initially put forward. Consequently, a significant divide emerged between the indigenous/environmentalist constituency and Correa's neo-developmentalism, leading to the eventual split of the former from the governing coalition. Correa’s 2013 re-election heralded the third and final period in which the deterioration of the economic situation brought about ‘cracks in the ‘consumption pact’ that united middle and popular sectors with business sectors, in the previous ten years of bonanza’ (Ortiz Crespo 2016).

Unlike Tsipras, Correa managed to implement bold institutional and social reforms, even though questions over their durability and stability emerged in the light of the swift and relatively easy U-turn carried out by Moreno (Mazzolini 2022a, b). His rule has been largely credited with achieving significant gains in terms of health care and education as well as in infrastructure building and protection of national production. This had palpable effects on the reduction of poverty and wealth redistribution. Such outcomes were achieved through the coordinated efforts of the newly established National Planning and Development Secretariat (SENPLADES) in steering State actions towards developmental and social welfare objectives. The government, with a newly reconfigured executive architecture, took proactive steps to strengthen institutions by expanding the public sector and appointing numerous experts. This strategic move resulted in a significant increase in infrastructural power and autonomy, successfully reversing the effects of the neoliberal era. Yet, that of Correa was a populist practice through and through. Despite the enlargement and redesign of the State, Correa’s style remained highly confrontational, to the point that de la Torre (2013) characterised his rule as ‘technocratic populism’. The polarisation never gave signs of reducing over time; if anything, it reached new peaks during his last years in office. The centrality of his figure also became more pronounced over time, as his strong leadership progressively cancelled any residue of shared direction of the process (Crespo 2016). This type of development finds in the local caudillista political culture fertile ground: the word of the leader is apodictic and no other figure can obscure his supremacy. This culture does not work unilaterally: caudillismo is not exclusively attributable to the domineering attitude of the leader, but also to an environment that accepts and legitimises this political dynamic.

Similarly to Greece, but at a much more pronounced level, Ecuador’s historical records in terms of state observance of the rule of law are not particularly outstanding. This episode can give a flavour of the context: ‘Ecuador's democratically-elected president León Febrés Cordero deployed army tanks outside the Supreme Court in 1985 when the Court was deliberating on politically sensitive cases, only to withdraw the tanks when the courts bended to his political goals’ (Prillaman 2000: 33). León Febrés Cordero is not typically defined as a populist in the literature, although his authoritarian tendencies are well recognised (see de la Torre 2000). This is quite revealing of a more general trend of disregard towards the rule of law and democratic procedures that does not necessarily pertain to populism. This is not true just from the point of view of the power-holders but also at the level of the electorate’s preferences (Basabe-Serrano and Martínez 2014: 166), as epitomised by the motto ‘roba pero hace obras’ (he steals but gets works done).

If we turn our gaze to Correa’s deeds, two considerations are to be advanced. In terms of tempering power, his rule cannot be said to have deviated much from the norm. Correa packed nominally independent institutions with loyalists, launched severe and often exaggerated media and judicial attacks against political adversaries, adopted a pro domo mea interpretation of the law and often interfered in judicial decisions (Basabe-Serrano and Martínez 2014; Torre and Lemos 2016). However, his liberal critics all too often fail to consider the broad context and set a threshold for assessing such matters that is misplaced if the Ecuadorian political reality and culture are thoroughly considered. Moreover, when evaluating certain deeds such as Correa’s new media law that allegedly curtailed the freedom of expression, they entirely eschew the oligarchic character of Ecuadorian society. This does not imply turning a blind eye on certain excesses that took place in the design and, most especially, in the application of this law, but these need to be considered against the background of a highly unjust society, where the mass generation of information was controlled by specific groups with particular interests. This line of reasoning can be readily extended to other spheres as well.

What the liberal critics also overlook–and this is the second reflection–is the legitimacy that, notwithstanding their intermittently erratic and factionalist character, institutions acquired during Correa’s years. The reversal of the state dismantlement carried out during the neoliberal era, with positive consequences in terms of rebuilding public institutions, extending services and strengthening the foundations for true citizenship (Clark and García 2019: 240) enhanced its infrastructural power, which Michael Mann has as ‘the institutional capability to exercise control and implement policy choices within the territory it claims to govern’ (Mann 1986: 4). All in all, Correa’s populism has had mixed records regarding the rule of law. Achievements in state building and autonomy have come at the cost of accountability, as the former two tend to go along with the centralisation of power, which goes against the making of governmental action more transparent and universalistic (Bowen 2015: 48).

6 (Left) Populism and the Rule of Law

Populism has often been treated either as outrightly authoritarian or as conducive to undemocratic outcomes. Takes thus vary from ‘[d]ictatorship is one of the foundations of modern populism’ (Finchelstein 2016: 229), to softer but hardly more illuminating claims according to which populists, if they reach power, will ‘engage in occupying the state, mass clientelism and corruption, and the suppression of anything like a critical civil society’ (Müller 2016: 102). Standing somewhere in between are prophecies that see populism as ‘a prelude to autocratic rule’ with the further step that ‘it is easy for illiberal rulers to make the transition from populism to dictatorship’ (Mounk 2018: 35). Some theorists working on democratic theory emphasise that populism’s illiberalism is ipso facto a threat to democracy, as the liberal protections are vital in order to uphold a real democracy (Rummens 2017; Urbinati 2019). However, such universalisations ignore that, in actual fact, ‘many populist leaders and parties have managed to avoid becoming totalitarians, extremists or authoritarians, and have functioned within democratic party systems, both outside and inside the halls of power’ (Malkopoulou and Moffitt 2023: 4).

Other formulations tend instead to lay bare the intrinsicality of populism to liberal-democracy. Even Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2012) hold that the implications of populism for democracy vary consistently. In their view, populism is not necessarily anti-democratic: ‘[w]hile it is true that the solutions offered by populist forces to those democratic dilemmas are controversial, the question about the impact of populism on democracy should be answered first and foremost empirically rather than based on normative and/or theoretical arguments’ (Rovira Kaltwasser 2014: 483). While recognising the oft-problematic relationship with the liberal component of liberal-democracy, the representation and mobilisation of marginalised groups, increased accountability and revitalisation of public opinion and social movements, are listed among the potential positive effects of populism (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012: 21). Populism thus becomes ‘both a corrective and a threat to democracy’ (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser 2012: 16). Within the realm of political theory, an analogous take is put forward by Canovan and Benjamin Arditi. Drawing on the work of Michael Oakeshott who differentiates a politics of faith from a politics of scepticism, Canovan claims that democracy presents two different but interdependent faces: one redemptive–amounting to the ideal of popular power and sovereignty–, the other pragmatic–consisting of the maintenance of peace and stability through institutions (Canovan 1999: 9–10). It is when a too wider gap opens up between the two, i.e. when democracy excessively slides towards its pragmatic side at the expense of the redemptive one, that populism makes its appearance. In this sense, Canovan argues that populism follows democracy like a shadow (1999: 10). Arditi complements Canovan's take by suggesting that populism is better understood in terms of a spectre rather than a shadow. Accordingly, the notion of spectre upheld by Jacques Derrida suggests both visitation and something that can haunt us (Arditi 2004: 141). The spectral logic, in other words, allows for the latent possibility of populism that, while accompanying democracy, may also threaten it. In a similar vein, Francisco Panizza also proposes a balanced picture of the relationship between populism and democracy. Accordingly, ‘populism is neither the highest form of democracy nor its enemy, but a mirror in which democracy can contemplate itself, warts and all, and find out what it is about and what it is lacking’ (Panizza 2005: 30).

However, as we have seen above, it would be a mistake to conflate the rule of law with liberal-democratic institutions. Of course, neither are they entirely unrelated. But the functional approach cautions against establishing a too strict nexus in the name of both context and a bidimensional understanding of the rule of law, which factors in both power abuses and its legitimacy. Although sitting at different points of an imaginary liberal-democratic scale, neither Greece nor Ecuador were fully functioning liberal-democracies before they both underwent left populist experiments in recent years. Now, from the point of view of tempering power abuses, it can be argued that Tsipras’ populism fared better than that of Correa. Two types of factors account for this. On the one hand, as explained above, populism is not a monolith and manifests itself in different degrees. Correa displayed a much more antagonistic thrust than Tsipras and his populism was articulated with other politico-cultural elements, among which caudillismo stands out, that favoured a markedly top-down relationship between leader and masses at the expense of socio-political intermediaries. The political tradition of Syriza rested instead on Euro-communism, which is in principle much more inclined to pay respect to liberal-democratic institutions, not to mention that its very electoral boom was predicated on the dialogue with other social bodies. On the other, external conditioning should also be integrated into the picture. Despite its dollarised economy, Ecuador experienced astonishing growth rates during the first years of Correa in power which permitted a certain budgetary largesse. This may account for a certain autonomy to pursue a more fully-fledged antagonism with an influence on the arbitrariness in which state power was exercised vis-à-vis political adversaries (although the reverse did not take place once the economic situation worsened, but this may in turn be counter-explained in terms of path-dependency within the broad political context, but also within the very trajectory of Correa’s executive). On the contrary, Greece underwent a harsh economic period once Syriza came to power and, as a result, the polarisation on which Tsipras’ left populism was predicated was blunted by the intervention of the troika. And yet this does not automatically mean that, had he had more a larger room for economic manoeuvre, political power would have been deployed more decisively against opponents. Be it as it may, while this comparison between Greece and Ecuador holds true in absolute terms, deeds should be considered relatively, against a national backdrop. In this sense, both have by and large been in line with their recent past as no clear advancement or a regression can be said to have taken place.

The other facet concerning the rule of law, i.e. the enhancement of institutional legitimacy, should also be looked at carefully. In this respect, while both populist practices were intended to restore a certain centrality of the state and reverse its spiralling unpopularity, only Correa managed to undertake some bold steps in that direction. This can be easily explained by reference to the different economic and juridical contexts in which the two countries were enmeshed. However, the institutionality built by Correa presented some contradictory aspects. In fact, the increase in infrastructural power of the state went along an oft-erratic behaviour of the institutions (that over time diminished their renewed legitimacy) and a scarce cultural work concerning the development of new institutional habits and customs, which sabotaged the possibility of entrenching such changes in the long run (see Mazzolini 2022a, b). But for the sake of our current argument, it is not possible not to admit that, in the Ecuadorian context, the institutional reform was momentous. The same did not take place in Greece. In spite of harbouring similar goals, Tsipras’ government could not pursue a programme of this kind given the ruthless external interferences and the practically nil bargaining power he had in the international arena amid the debt crisis that hit his country.

Finally, we should take note of the fact that in countries with an oligarchic concentration of wealth and where the democratic component of liberal-democracy has not fully developed, the two facets of the rule of law may in practice find themselves in antithesis. Given the presence of powerful economic actors that dispose of a vast array of means to maintain their privilege over the rest of the population, being in government is often not enough to pursue a political programme of wealth redistribution and democratic incorporation of the historically neglected sectors of society–thus leading to the temptation of circumventing liberal constraints. As often put by Syriza’s leading members, ‘being in government does not necessarily mean that one has the power’. Enhancing the solidity of the state may thus be in contrast with the objective of tempering power and a fair application of existing laws. Once again, however, this is entirely contingent upon given situations, and any assessment needs to pay sufficient heed to the empirical reality under analysis.

7 Conclusion

This paper has scrutinised the relationship between left populism and the rule of law by reference to two cases: Tsipras’ rule in Greece and Correa’s one in Ecuador. The analysis conducted here, however, has eschewed the all too conventional conclusion that has populism as intrinsically inimical to the rule of law. A more balanced picture emerges if one challenges the problematic ways in which both notions have been cast in the literature. In the first place, populism as cashed out in the ideational approach proposes a binary understanding that is little attentive to nuances, and specifically to the different ways and degrees in which populist practices manifest themselves. The discursive approach to populism permits instead to avoid certain generalisations, such as the tendency to attribute some unchangeable attitudes to the actors that embody the phenomenon. Its way of framing populism is thus much more sensitive to contingency and context, and in particular to the articulations that, case by case, populism establishes with other cultural and political elements. As for the rule of law, drawing on legal theory debates, the functional approach is selected as the most suitable one to conduct empirical research. This is so because, by preferring use over meaning, it also shows attention for contingency and context, while also understanding the rule of law in its two dimensions, that is the tempering of power in order to avoid abuses, but also its strengthening in the name of an efficacious and meaningful application of laws.

Such notions have then been operationalised in the concrete analysis of the two left populist cases. Both have emerged as a result of deep crises, which were in turn politicised through an articulation of existing grievances, the polarisation of the social in two camps and the emergence of a leader functioning as the target of heterogeneous passionate investments. These developments occurred within the context of a program embracing socialist principles, striving for redistribution, and emphasising the role of the state. Historically, the two countries presented important shortcomings in terms of the rule of law, with reference to both its faces, although Greece was arguably placed in a better position.

However, beyond such similarities, remarkable differences existed. In the first place, populist polarisation and personalisation were much more pronounced in Ecuador, also as a result of the caudillista culture in which it was imbued, as opposed to the Euro-communist tradition characterising Syriza. Secondly, such experiments took place in different economic conjunctures: Greece was a debt-ridden country under the tutelage of international institutions, while Ecuador was undergoing a period of expansion thanks to the buoyant prices of primary commodities. Finally, Ecuador managed to implement striking social and institutional reforms, which Greece was impeded from undertaking because of the international context. In this sense, and despite various limitations, the legitimacy of the institutions in Ecuador was fortified by the left populist experience as opposed to what happened under Syriza’s government. If we move our gaze to the mitigation of power, Ecuador did worse in absolute terms than Greece, although a contextual look may help to put things in perspective and grasp the existence of a conditioning pattern-dependency in both countries.

All in all, the conclusion according to which populism necessarily trumps the rule of law is unwarranted, at least in the case of left populism. This does not mean that, if taken to an extreme, it is entirely unproblematic insofar as tempering power is concerned. However, the first thing to bear in mind here is that populism is a gradational property: a subject may be more or less populist and may display important changes over time. Moreover, populism comes articulated with different traditions that maintain different attitudes vis-à-vis the rule of law and liberal-democratic procedures. Other elements impinge upon such a behaviour, such as economic and juridical constraints, as well as the presence of oligarchic tendencies that may pose extra-political obstructions to legitimate aspirations of social change and thus induce left populists to circumvent certain institutional forms of control of power. From the point of view of the strength and credibility of institutions, left populism seems aimed at reconstructing state institutions after the neoliberal period did away with much of their capacities and legitimacy. The outcome of such efforts is dependent upon the existence of room for manoeuvre, i.e. the economic margins and a favourable international context, but is also threatened by the sometimes erratic and whimsical behaviour if populist polarisation is not tamed. In this sense, the two faces of the rule of law may in certain cases be at odds and sabotage each other: the necessity to strengthen power may cause abuses of power, but these may in turn erode its legitimacy.