People and Authority: How to go from Populism to Popularism

Abstract

The article sets the objective of considering the terms “people” and “authority” in a Christian perspective, with special reference to the
theoretical perspective of the Italian sociologist and political theorist Luigi Sturzo. Recognizing that the sharing of their concerns by a leader “to be in the midst of the people” can assume different, sometimes contradictory, meanings. The author analyzes the possible meanings of the notion “people” in the classical and “populist” traditions, and that of “popularism,” a political theory born from Sturzo”™s attempt to place within a historical context the principles of the Social Teachings of the Church. To make clear the relationship and differences between “populism” and “popularism,” the author introduces the concept of “political authority” developed by Sturzo, which, to the problem of a “we rationality”, opposes a “concrete rationality of the self,” the “unifying transcendent” principle, capable of going beyond immediate self-interest to make one”™s own the reasons of the other.