Decolonizing Populism Theory: Ecological Crisis, Informal Governance, and Democratic Claims in the Global South

This commentary by Dr. Oludele Solaja advances a compelling decolonial critique of populism by relocating its analytical center from ideology to material life. It argues that, in the Global South, democratic breakdown is experienced less through electoral conflict than through ecological failure—flooding, waste accumulation, and infrastructural neglect. In this context, environmental crisis becomes a language of political judgment and a site of democratic contestation. The study highlights how citizens respond by improvising governance, producing forms of “everyday sovereignty” that reconfigure legitimacy around performance rather than formal institutions. By foregrounding environmental citizenship and survival politics, the article calls for a fundamental rethinking of populism theory, emphasizing the material genesis of antagonism and the centrality of ecology in shaping contemporary democratic claims.

By Dr. Oludele Solaja

When Ecology Becomes Politics

Democratic anxiety is being defined by populism everywhere today. With elections becoming increasingly polarized, institutions increasingly distrusted, and elites denigrated by citizens hungry for clear moral answers in an age of uncertainty, contemporary populism theory increasingly defines the crisis of democracy in terms of ideological confrontation between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite.” Influential concepts such as those of Cas Mudde and Ernesto Laclau define this process in terms of party politics, electoral struggles, and discursive clashes, strongly grounded in European experience. The rise of democratic contestation globally necessitates a reassessment of these ideas.

Citizens in many parts of the Global South do not often frame political resentment first and foremost in terms of party politics, immigrant threats or nationalist appeals. For them the crisis of democracy often occurs when streets become inundated, waste accumulates, sanitation collapses, water becomes polluted, food prices spike and the everyday fragility of survival in urban space defines the state’s responsiveness. Citizens experience this failure of government less as a constitutional crisis and more as a systematic material breakdown, turning ecology into language for political dissent.

This is a crucial insight because democratic legitimacy is increasingly negotiated in terms of environmental realities. When storm drainage becomes a source of flooding and waste management failures prevent sanitation, ordinary people perceive these as evidence of the abandonment of the populace, or of their lives being deprivileged by governing authorities. Such environmental breakdown becomes a source of moral judgment, casting doubt upon the moral authority of political elites.

The work of a growing body of scholars is showing that climate and ecological crisis is reframing populist narratives not only through established ideological distinctions. Some argue that the ideational framework of climate populism theory has already failed because it cannot accommodate the varied ways in which ecological grievance leads to different kinds of articulation across various institutions.

The implications are vast: the study of populism cannot be separated from the ecological reality with which it is increasingly tied.

Why Existing Theory Is Not Enough

The existing literature assumes that populist actors are largely capable of mobilizing symbolic opposition against rulers within relatively functioning institutions. In weak democracies the institutional framework is precarious, and the state can be rhetorically present, but materially absent. This creates a unique political terrain.

When institutions routinely fail to provide sanitation, safety and infrastructure, anti-elite discourse emerges less as a battle of ideologies and more as a concrete test of the performance of the state and democratic governance. Citizens criticize rulers not just for corruption, but because roads are impassable, waste remains undeposited and water and electricity do not function properly.

This kind of anti-elite sentiment, in this situation, does not always constitute a threat to democracy. Instead, it constitutes claims to practical citizenship. This is the point at which a decolonial critique must be introduced, for in weak democracies in the Global South the language of populism increasingly derives from everyday experience with ecological neglect.

Environmental Degradation as Democratic Testament

In places of rapid urbanization such as Lagos, Nigeria, environmental crisis has become the defining public face of democratic strain. Repeated flooding, collapsing drainage, rising sea levels, escalating waste accumulation and the spread of disease have increasingly defined the political experiences of urban inhabitants. A recent analysis of flood vulnerability in Lagos highlights how poor waste management, inadequate urban planning enforcement and a lack of community participation continue to undermine efforts to respond to climate risks, despite multiple state interventions. This demonstrates not simply administrative shortcomings, but a failure to provide unequal protection.

Environmental risk in Lagos and elsewhere is socially and materially distributed. Informally governed settlements and the poor suffer greater and more repeated ecological risks than more affluent neighborhoods, yet it is precisely these vulnerable communities that receive slower and poorer infrastructural responses from authorities. Ecology thus becomes a language of inequality and injustice.

The impact of class and settlement vulnerability on flood exposure is reflected in recent studies of urban spatial inequality in Lagos, demonstrating that environmental insecurity is inextricably linked to democratic exclusion. Ecological collapse thus acquires symbolic power: floodwaters signify state abandonment, waste streams become markers of inequality, and infrastructural failures translate into tangible accusations of undemocratic neglect. Citizens may not explicitly define these dynamics as “populist” framework, but the underlying logic is clearly so—a confrontation between the common people and a distant, selectively responsive, and morally indifferent government.

Informal Governance and Everyday Sovereignty

People rarely wait patiently when their formal institutions persistently fail. They improvise governance. Communities organize the cleaning of drainage ditches, youth groups coordinate waste disposal, street vendors pay for sanitation services, religious networks provide disaster relief, and neighborhood committees enforce rules that sustain survival infrastructures. This is not merely emergency survival; it is also a form of practice that demonstrates effective political authority.

This may be understood as everyday sovereignty: the transfer of legitimacy and power from a failing formal state to individuals and organizations that produce concrete solutions to community needs. In weak democracies, citizens increasingly trust those who demonstrate competence in managing crises to produce political order, rather than those who hold office but fail to deliver. This has profound democratic implications. Authority is no longer legitimized primarily by institutions but is increasingly validated by performance. Recent research in Lagos on struggles against displacement-driven urban restructuring shows how communities develop collective strategies to resist state interventions, contest policies, and articulate claims to political belonging as formal governance proves exclusionary.

This demonstrates a radical redistribution of democratic legitimacy from the state to citizens and communities. Waste itself, more than anything else, has become one of the most significant symbolic sites of democratic breakdown. It is immediate, material, accumulating, and unevenly distributed—settling where and when political neglect occurs and public disorder emerges. The prolonged presence of waste in public space signifies delayed state intervention, while its concentrated accumulation in poorer neighborhoods clearly articulates unequal treatment of citizens.

Waste thus emerges as a public inscription of political relations, where the accumulation and persistence of material residue represent not merely sanitation problems but a testament to the priorities governments set in service provision. This sense of abandonment and differentiated citizenship—captured in narratives such as “we contribute but are not protected” or “they rule but do not care”—mirrors populist discourse: the citizenry versus a distant state and ruling elites. Waste has therefore become not only a material problem but also a democratic issue, constituting a core site of political struggle over resource access and state responsibility. It demonstrates that environmental sociology and populist studies must engage more closely to account for the material genesis of antagonism—the very foundation of populism.

A Decolonial Perspective: Three Shifts Required in Populism Studies

For a theory of populism to be decolonized, it needs to abandon some established ideas:

i) Instead of viewing populism as an ideology of the people versus corrupt elites, a material approach to governance can frame political resentment. This recognizes that in fragile democracies, such feelings emerge not from abstract ideas of morality but from tangible experiences of infrastructural failure.

ii) The electoral arena needs to be widened to include the daily life of neighborhood politics, where claims to citizenship are made on the basis of practical survival mechanisms, not solely through party-led contests.

iii) Instead of a detached analysis of the “people,” the concept of environmental citizenship becomes crucial to understanding populism, as citizens engage in political struggle as part of a struggle over their own survival in an ecological context that increasingly determines who has rights and who has a claim to care.

These adjustments do not necessarily invalidate previous research in the field. Rather, they enable populism studies to engage with phenomena that extend far beyond what has until recently been considered “the political.” Increasingly, the theory of populism itself is being reshaped by the recognition of ecological dynamics; this process has arguably already begun in Europe, where ecological movements are contributing to new populist formations. The Global South, however, reveals an even more radical potential, because for its citizens, ecology is often not merely about ideology but about survival itself.

Why Now Is the Critical Moment

Democratic theory needs to acknowledge that political legitimacy is increasingly tied to how effectively the state responds to ecological challenges. In Europe, political disillusionment is fueled by the climate crisis, and the perceived indifference of governments only intensifies citizens’ perceptions of exclusion and corruption. The implications of populist struggles for the state’s capacity and functioning—at both local and international levels—are becoming evident worldwide. The effects are even more pronounced in weaker states, where democratic buffers are less robust and citizens may prioritize life-sustaining functions over procedural norms in demanding effective governance. This underscores that managing drainage systems, coastal defenses, and waste management can no longer be treated as peripheral issues.

Conclusion: Democracy Is Now Being Judged by Its Performance on Ecology

A decolonized approach to the theory of populism must address how it plays out on the ground in contexts where people navigate the daily crises of floods, waste, and uncertain service provision, and where ordinary survival politics are becoming increasingly central struggles that often define the state’s legitimacy in their eyes. It is no longer sufficient for democratic theorists to focus solely on elections and parliamentary institutions when seeking to understand the challenges confronting the globe. The crisis of democracy and the rise of populism in the Global South are, in many respects, a testament to the critical role of ecological and environmental realities in mediating and generating political conflict and claims in everyday life.