La sfida populista alla ragione pubblica

The idea of public reason has been recently adopted to justify the role of political parties within democratic systems. Since this framework assumes a liberal interpretation of democracy that has been recently challenged by the populist upsurge this paper will evaluate if Rawlsian public reason can address this challenge. My analysis will show that populism cannot be effectively criticized from a liberal-perspective but it needed to be addressed from a strictly democratic point of view so as to point out that populism does not embody any democratic ideals.