Populism or pragmatism? Two ways of understanding political articulation*

Should we consider the Yellow Vests, the Indignados Movement, or the Movimento delle Sardine to be purely populist movements? Are there alternative models of explanation that encompass features specific to the emergence and development of these movements? And should we look to left‐wing populism as the source of much‐needed democratic renewal in times of political and social regression? Or can we find alternatives to populism that represent a more promising base for the future of democracy? This paper aims to address these questions by providing a pragmatist, John Dewey‐based answer, as an alternative to Ernesto Laclau's populist approach to the emergence of what the latter calls “popular identities.”1 We base our response on a mutual dialogue made possible by socio‐ontological premises common to the two authors—more specifically, by the central role played by the notion of “articulation” in each approach.