Month: September 2021

An Q&A session with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) about populism, and more. We discuss about the spatiotemporal dimensions of this phenomenon; the relationship of modern populism to liberal democracy, of which it is the polar opposite; the difference between populist and nativist parties; the importance of charismatic leadership for the populist success; and the ways in which contemporary liberal democracy may face the populist menace. Most of those topics have been covered in previous work of mine, especially in my book Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis. Hope you will enjoy the interview. For more interviews of mine related to populism, you may want to read or listen here, here, and here.

Q Your research underlines the necessity of the clarification of the basic concepts and exposes the conceptual and methodological errors in populism literature. To begin with, how do you outline the common problems within the growing literature on populism?

A The literature on populism has grown fast but also in a haphazard way. As a result, the concept of populism is being stretched to a breaking point. It was several decades ago that Margaret Canovan, among others, warned that, the more flexible this concept would become, the more tempted political scientists and others would be to label “populist” anything that doesn’t fit into previously established categories. This is what has actually happened. Today, “populism” is everywhere and almost everything is “populist.”

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