Modern political discourse is haunted by a warning word: populism.

Whenever citizens question institutional authority, challenge constitutional interpretation, or demand a greater voice in defining justice, a familiar response appears: beware the mob. Beware emotional politics. Beware the irrational multitude.

This warning presents itself as prudence. In reality, it often functions as something else: a myth of governance — a narrative that protects concentrated interpretive power by portraying public judgment as inherently dangerous.

To understand why, we must examine not only populism, but law itself — and the subtle ways in which authority redefines its relationship to it.

Law is not merely a body of rules. It is a relationship between power and restraint. Across political systems, this relationship tends to assume three recurring forms.

In its classical form — from constitutional liberalism to natural law traditions — law exists to limit power. Rulers are bound by the same norms as citizens. Constitutional interpretation is structured to prevent concentration. Legitimacy arises because authority accepts constraint.

In this state, law generates reverence rather than fear. Citizens obey not only because sanctions exist, but because rules appear reciprocal and morally intelligible.

In the second state, law remains elaborate, codified, and technically sophisticated. Procedures function. Courts operate. Yet its orientation shifts.

Law is no longer primarily a boundary on power; it becomes a technique of governance.

Interpretive authority gradually centralizes. Constitutional provisions remain, but their meaning becomes elastic. The question ceases to be “What limits power?” and becomes “How can law optimize power’s operation?”

Here we encounter what is often called “constitutional suspension without abolition.” The constitution exists, but its constraining force thins. Its interpretation converges with executive interest.

Legality persists; restraint weakens.

In the third state, law becomes symbolic performance. Severe statutes, moralized rhetoric, and exemplary enforcement communicate authority rather than arbitrate disputes.

Law does not merely regulate society; it dramatizes hierarchy.

Fear replaces reverence. Compliance becomes strategic rather than internalized. The legal system survives — but as architecture of distance, not mutual obligation.

The transition between these states is often justified through a recurring narrative: the danger of populism.

“Masses are irrational.”
“Public emotion destabilizes order.”
“Complex governance requires expertise.”

These claims carry an implicit anthropology: ordinary citizens lack the capacity for sober judgment, while professional elites possess superior rationality.

Yet this framing hides a structural move. By defining public participation as inherently risky, it elevates concentrated interpretive authority as necessary. It transforms exclusion into responsibility.

The fear of populism, then, does not merely describe a danger. It performs a political function: it secures interpretive monopoly.

Modern governance increasingly legitimizes itself through expertise — legal expertise, economic modeling, scientific administration.

Expertise is indispensable in complex societies. The problem arises when expertise expands from analysis to definition — when it claims not only to advise on reality, but to define what counts as reality.

At that point, expertise becomes sovereign.

To control interpretation is to control political meaning. When ruling institutions monopolize:

• the interpretation of constitutional text,

• the classification of emergencies,

• the measurement of risk,

• the language of necessity,

they do more than govern — they define the horizon of the possible.

History offers numerous examples of “scientific” or “professional” governance rationalizing grave injustice. Highly trained jurists have legalized exclusion. Economists have justified austerity regimes that devastate populations. Technocratic planners have restructured societies without meaningful consent. Bureaucratic efficiency has coexisted with moral catastrophe.

The danger does not lie in knowledge itself. It lies in the fusion of knowledge and unchallengeable authority.

The common framing presents a stark choice:

• Either we trust expert rule,

• Or we descend into populist chaos.

This is a false binary.

It assumes that the public lacks moral judgment, while experts possess it in refined form. Yet ordinary citizens routinely demonstrate durable moral intuitions:

• a sense of proportionality,

• an aversion to cruelty,

• sensitivity to humiliation and arbitrariness,

• a demand for reciprocity.

These are not trivial capacities. They are the foundations of natural justice.

When elites invoke “populist danger” to silence these intuitions, they are not defending rationality; they are defending interpretive dominance.

Suppose, for argument’s sake, that citizens are indeed easily manipulated. Two possibilities follow.

Either:

1. Civic education has failed to cultivate public judgment.

Or:

1. Civic education was never designed to cultivate autonomous judgment, but rather compliance.

Neither conclusion justifies further concentration of interpretive authority. Both implicate the existing order.

To declare the public incapable is not a neutral observation. It is a structural indictment — either of institutional education or of institutional intention.

Populist movements can destabilize. They can simplify complex issues. They can mobilize emotion.

But their errors are often visible, contestable, and reversible.

Professionalized power, by contrast, operates through procedure, abstraction, and normalization. When it errs, it does so systemically. It embeds decisions into administrative frameworks. It converts exceptional measures into permanent architecture.

The gravest historical injustices were rarely carried out by mobs alone. They were codified, administered, and justified by experts who believed themselves rational.

The danger, therefore, is not expertise per se, but expertise insulated from contestation.

The deeper issue is interpretive sovereignty.

Who defines what counts as crisis?
Who decides when exception becomes normal?
Who interprets constitutional boundaries?

When these powers converge within a narrow elite, law shifts from boundary to instrument, from instrument to display.

Resisting this shift does not require romanticizing populism. It requires rejecting the myth that public judgment is inherently inferior.

A healthy legal order does not eliminate expertise. It subjects expertise to public reason.

It does not abolish authority. It renders authority answerable.

It does not dissolve sovereignty into chaos. It pluralizes interpretation.

The erosion of law rarely announces itself dramatically. It occurs when:

• emergency language becomes routine,

• interpretive authority becomes unquestionable,

• criticism is dismissed as irrational,

• public moral intuition is pathologized as populist.

At that point, law still exists. Courts function. Statutes multiply. Procedures operate.

But restraint has thinned.

And when restraint thins, legitimacy follows.

The real question, then, is not whether populism is dangerous.

It is whether the greater danger lies in a political order that teaches citizens to distrust their own moral judgment while trusting unquestioningly those who claim exclusive authority to define reality.

When that monopoly hardens, law no longer stands above power.

It stands within it.

And once law serves power more than it restrains it, the transition is complete.

Political power is often imagined in visible forms: armies, police, courts, executives. Yet beneath these instruments lies a quieter force — interpretation.

Before power acts, it names.
Before it regulates, it defines.
Before it enforces, it describes reality.

Who decides what counts as a crisis?
Who determines whether a situation is “normal” or “exceptional”?
Who classifies dissent as disagreement — or as disorder?
Who interprets constitutional language when its meaning is contested?

These acts of definition are not secondary to power. They are power.

Sovereignty does not begin with coercion. It begins with the authority to describe the world in binding terms.

When a governing elite monopolizes interpretation, it monopolizes the structure of possibility itself. If it defines economic instability as emergency, emergency measures follow. If it defines security as paramount, liberties become conditional. If it defines public sentiment as populist irrationality, exclusion becomes prudence.

Control over interpretation precedes control over law.
Control over law precedes control over life.

This is why debates over expertise, populism, and constitutional authority converge on a single axis: Who has the final word?

A legal system may retain courts, statutes, and procedures. But if the power to define reality — to declare exception, necessity, risk, or rationality — rests with a narrow and unchallengeable authority, then sovereignty has already been consolidated.

Law can restrain power only if interpretation itself is contestable.

If interpretation is immune to contestation, law remains — but sovereignty has shifted.

And so the question that lingers beneath every system of governance is not merely who rules, but:

Who defines what is real?

Modern political discourse is haunted by a warning word: populism.

Whenever citizens question institutional authority, challenge constitutional interpretation, or demand a greater voice in defining justice, a familiar response appears: beware the mob. Beware emotional politics. Beware the irrational multitude.

This warning presents itself as prudence. In reality, it often functions as something else: a myth of governance — a narrative that protects concentrated interpretive power by portraying public judgment as inherently dangerous.

To understand why, we must examine not only populism, but law itself — and the subtle ways in which authority redefines its relationship to it.

Law is not merely a body of rules. It is a relationship between power and restraint. Across political systems, this relationship tends to assume three recurring forms.

In its classical form — from constitutional liberalism to natural law traditions — law exists to limit power. Rulers are bound by the same norms as citizens. Constitutional interpretation is structured to prevent concentration. Legitimacy arises because authority accepts constraint.

In this state, law generates reverence rather than fear. Citizens obey not only because sanctions exist, but because rules appear reciprocal and morally intelligible.

In the second state, law remains elaborate, codified, and technically sophisticated. Procedures function. Courts operate. Yet its orientation shifts.

Law is no longer primarily a boundary on power; it becomes a technique of governance.

Interpretive authority gradually centralizes. Constitutional provisions remain, but their meaning becomes elastic. The question ceases to be “What limits power?” and becomes “How can law optimize power’s operation?”

Here we encounter what is often called “constitutional suspension without abolition.” The constitution exists, but its constraining force thins. Its interpretation converges with executive interest.

Legality persists; restraint weakens.

In the third state, law becomes symbolic performance. Severe statutes, moralized rhetoric, and exemplary enforcement communicate authority rather than arbitrate disputes.

Law does not merely regulate society; it dramatizes hierarchy.

Fear replaces reverence. Compliance becomes strategic rather than internalized. The legal system survives — but as architecture of distance, not mutual obligation.

The transition between these states is often justified through a recurring narrative: the danger of populism.

“Masses are irrational.”
“Public emotion destabilizes order.”
“Complex governance requires expertise.”

These claims carry an implicit anthropology: ordinary citizens lack the capacity for sober judgment, while professional elites possess superior rationality.

Yet this framing hides a structural move. By defining public participation as inherently risky, it elevates concentrated interpretive authority as necessary. It transforms exclusion into responsibility.

The fear of populism, then, does not merely describe a danger. It performs a political function: it secures interpretive monopoly.

Modern governance increasingly legitimizes itself through expertise — legal expertise, economic modeling, scientific administration.

Expertise is indispensable in complex societies. The problem arises when expertise expands from analysis to definition — when it claims not only to advise on reality, but to define what counts as reality.

At that point, expertise becomes sovereign.

To control interpretation is to control political meaning. When ruling institutions monopolize:

• the interpretation of constitutional text,

• the classification of emergencies,

• the measurement of risk,

• the language of necessity,

they do more than govern — they define the horizon of the possible.

History offers numerous examples of “scientific” or “professional” governance rationalizing grave injustice. Highly trained jurists have legalized exclusion. Economists have justified austerity regimes that devastate populations. Technocratic planners have restructured societies without meaningful consent. Bureaucratic efficiency has coexisted with moral catastrophe.

The danger does not lie in knowledge itself. It lies in the fusion of knowledge and unchallengeable authority.

The common framing presents a stark choice:

• Either we trust expert rule,

• Or we descend into populist chaos.

This is a false binary.

It assumes that the public lacks moral judgment, while experts possess it in refined form. Yet ordinary citizens routinely demonstrate durable moral intuitions:

• a sense of proportionality,

• an aversion to cruelty,

• sensitivity to humiliation and arbitrariness,

• a demand for reciprocity.

These are not trivial capacities. They are the foundations of natural justice.

When elites invoke “populist danger” to silence these intuitions, they are not defending rationality; they are defending interpretive dominance.

Suppose, for argument’s sake, that citizens are indeed easily manipulated. Two possibilities follow.

Either:

1. Civic education has failed to cultivate public judgment.

Or:

1. Civic education was never designed to cultivate autonomous judgment, but rather compliance.

Neither conclusion justifies further concentration of interpretive authority. Both implicate the existing order.

To declare the public incapable is not a neutral observation. It is a structural indictment — either of institutional education or of institutional intention.

Populist movements can destabilize. They can simplify complex issues. They can mobilize emotion.

But their errors are often visible, contestable, and reversible.

Professionalized power, by contrast, operates through procedure, abstraction, and normalization. When it errs, it does so systemically. It embeds decisions into administrative frameworks. It converts exceptional measures into permanent architecture.

The gravest historical injustices were rarely carried out by mobs alone. They were codified, administered, and justified by experts who believed themselves rational.

The danger, therefore, is not expertise per se, but expertise insulated from contestation.

The deeper issue is interpretive sovereignty.

Who defines what counts as crisis?
Who decides when exception becomes normal?
Who interprets constitutional boundaries?

When these powers converge within a narrow elite, law shifts from boundary to instrument, from instrument to display.

Resisting this shift does not require romanticizing populism. It requires rejecting the myth that public judgment is inherently inferior.

A healthy legal order does not eliminate expertise. It subjects expertise to public reason.

It does not abolish authority. It renders authority answerable.

It does not dissolve sovereignty into chaos. It pluralizes interpretation.

The erosion of law rarely announces itself dramatically. It occurs when:

• emergency language becomes routine,

• interpretive authority becomes unquestionable,

• criticism is dismissed as irrational,

• public moral intuition is pathologized as populist.

At that point, law still exists. Courts function. Statutes multiply. Procedures operate.

But restraint has thinned.

And when restraint thins, legitimacy follows.

The real question, then, is not whether populism is dangerous.

It is whether the greater danger lies in a political order that teaches citizens to distrust their own moral judgment while trusting unquestioningly those who claim exclusive authority to define reality.

When that monopoly hardens, law no longer stands above power.

It stands within it.

And once law serves power more than it restrains it, the transition is complete.

Political power is often imagined in visible forms: armies, police, courts, executives. Yet beneath these instruments lies a quieter force — interpretation.

Before power acts, it names.
Before it regulates, it defines.
Before it enforces, it describes reality.

Who decides what counts as a crisis?
Who determines whether a situation is “normal” or “exceptional”?
Who classifies dissent as disagreement — or as disorder?
Who interprets constitutional language when its meaning is contested?

These acts of definition are not secondary to power. They are power.

Sovereignty does not begin with coercion. It begins with the authority to describe the world in binding terms.

When a governing elite monopolizes interpretation, it monopolizes the structure of possibility itself. If it defines economic instability as emergency, emergency measures follow. If it defines security as paramount, liberties become conditional. If it defines public sentiment as populist irrationality, exclusion becomes prudence.

Control over interpretation precedes control over law.
Control over law precedes control over life.

This is why debates over expertise, populism, and constitutional authority converge on a single axis: Who has the final word?

A legal system may retain courts, statutes, and procedures. But if the power to define reality — to declare exception, necessity, risk, or rationality — rests with a narrow and unchallengeable authority, then sovereignty has already been consolidated.

Law can restrain power only if interpretation itself is contestable.

If interpretation is immune to contestation, law remains — but sovereignty has shifted.

And so the question that lingers beneath every system of governance is not merely who rules, but:

Who defines what is real?