Are there populist constitutional heuristics? Some tentative answers, and their implications for a research project

This article engages with the research agenda of the CLEAR project by questioning whether contemporary populist and sovereigntist movements articulate a genuine alternative model of constitutionalism and the rule of law. It argues that populist constitutional discourse does not generate novel conceptual categories, but instead advances a constitutional counter-narrative based on the instrumental reinterpretation of established constitutional concepts. Drawing on comparative constitutional analysis and theories of autocratic legalism and abusive constitutional borrowing, the paper shows how notions such as sovereignty, democracy, and majority rule are strategically simplified and hollowed out. In this perspective, populism exploits the cognitive and normative complexity of the rule of law highlighted by CLEAR, not to replace it, but to subordinate it to decisionist logics. The article concludes that the key analytical task lies in contrasting the normative density of the rule of law with its populist distortions rather than in searching for an autonomous populist constitutional theory.