Pouvoir politique et puissance populaire

Political authority and popular power.  The article aims at identifying the deep roots of populism in the divide between political authority and popular power. Whereas political authority finds its legitimacy in the modern imaginary, characterized by the rational order of the State and the design of the social, popular power finds its foundation in the social underground flows linked to the new modalities of being-together. The social effervescence generated by people’s barbaric power allows us to discern those processes of change which, despite their dangerous ambivalence and heterogeneity, are re-establishing the political imaginary.