Citizen’s parliaments on a mass scale in the form of digital democracy and online referenda. On a small scale in the form of citizen juries and local town halls are essential to combating populism. Democratic projects empower the people themselves, rather than asking them to entrust their political power to a fallible intermediary - or, worse yet, upset the entire political, cultural and economic landscape of their country by using a referendum on a complex issue as a protest vote against the status quo. The Rise of Naïve Realists: Populism as a Political Strategy on a Transition to Representative Regime Change Public Lecture - RL Vol XI No CCCXIV MMXVIII Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD Professor of Public Policy & Sustainable Institutional Reforms https://addisababa.academia.edu/CostyCostantinos Populism, nationalism and state-run authoritarianism would soon be on the rise, Once one strips] away the extraneous accidents and technology, you are left with only a limited number of social moods, which tend to recur in a fixed order. [...] Forests need periodic fires; rivers need periodic floods. Societies, too. Neil Howe & William Strauss - Fourth Turning Theory The notion of naïve expediency has been invoked as the first mark of political transition processes to point to certain conceptual shortcomings in current perspectives on democratic reforms. A process which often spawns an attendant rhetorical over simplification of difficult concepts, this socialisation is disabling as a method of both grasping democratic ideas and rules in all their openness and complexity, and making the ideas tractable to transparent and sustainable institutional practice. Germany’s outgoing President used his final major address to emphasise the importance of a resilient democracy and robust security policy. He warned that liberal democracy and the political and normative project of the West is under fire. It was widely assumed that the main challenge to the liberal order would come chiefly from rising powers such as China and Russia, but recent developments suggest that it is collapsing from within. The emergence of illiberal democracy and new forms of populism is in large part due to failures of democratic leadership and the failure to establish a genuine “culture of democracy” to undergird formal democratic institutions. Populists claim to be the only legitimate representatives of “the people” but this notion is inherently undemocratic since no nation is a homogenous entity. The underlying view is that rising populism on the right and the left, both in the United States and in Europe, is a straightforward consequence of globalisation and its unwanted effects: lost jobs and stagnant middle-class incomes but bad economics is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for bad politics. Populism is a “permanent shadow” on representative democracy. Populism is not just about taking power from the system, it is about taking power from the people as well. Populists claim to represent the popular will when in fact they are only attempting to win votes. Populism is an expression of power downwards from those who already have political power onto the people. A populist takes over popular ideas, appropriating the will of the people in order to progress their political career and gain more power. Anybody seeking to win votes is populist to some degree. Populism is inherent to representative democracy. This does not mean all politicians are motivated by naked self-interest or that we should bin representative democracy. To start saving representative democracy from populism, we must have means of popular recall, so that we can vote out populists who mislead the public during election cycles. Our systems and constitutions are merely the best products of their time. Key words: naïve realism, populism, democracy, populists,