In order to work towards these outlined goals, the book is structured to introduce you to the core definitional debates at play in the literature on populism, before moving on to central normative and ideological debates about populism’s relationship to other core concepts in political theory. It proceeds as follows.
Chapter 2, ‘What Is Populism?’, outlines the key approaches to populism in the academic literature: the ideational approach, which views populism as a distinct ideology or worldview; the strategic approach, which sees it as an electoral strategy or mode of organisation; and the discursive–performative approach, which sees it as a type of discourse or performance. The chapter outlines the key authors associated with each of these approaches and the key definitions and arguments they use, then considers the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. It also traces the historical roots of each approach, paying attention to its intellectual lineage, and takes stock of what is theoretically and methodologically specific to each. Arguing that all central approaches pivot on the distinction between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, it nonetheless highlights the important epistemological and normative differences that underlie each approach. These differences have tended to remain underexplored in debates about the various conceptual camps in the contemporary literature.
The following three chapters explore populism’s relationship to other key ‘isms’ at the core of debates in contemporary political theory: nationalism, nativism, socialism and liberalism. Chapter 3 addresses the relationship between populism, nationalism and nativism, which are commonly conflated in the academic literature or treated as synonymous terms in popular discussions. However, this chapter argues that populism and nationalism, while both drawing on the key signifier ‘the people’, adopt different characterisations of ‘the people’ and ultimately target different enemies. To explore this situation, the chapter examines how right- and left-wing populists draw on nationalism in distinct ways: it argues that left-wing populists tend to use a civic form of nationalism, whereas right-wing populists tend to use an ethnic one – or what might better be understood as nativism. In making this argument, the chapter also examines cases of populism that do not fit into the ‘national’ box – including municipal and regional subtypes of populism at a subnational level (e.g. the cases of Toronto’s mayor, Rob Ford, and of Lega Nord (Northern League) in Italy) and international and transnational populism at a supranational level (e.g. the cooperation between populists in Europe and Latin America, and the transnational populist case of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025) – and shows that the association between nationalism and populism, or even between populism and the national, is far from automatic.
Chapter 4 turns to the sometimes overlooked relationship between populism and socialism. While nationalism and nativism have often taken precedence when it comes to understanding populism (owing to their association with the European populist radical right and with figures like Trump, who have received the greatest amount of media attention devoted to the phenomenon), socialism has an equally vexed and important relationship with populism. Prominent populist figures on the left of the political spectrum – for example Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa in Latin America, Bernie Sanders in the United States, and parties such as Syriza and Podemos in Europe or the Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa – have all advocated some form of ‘twenty-first-century socialism’ in their platforms. This chapter investigates the conceptual overlaps between populism and socialism and examines how they are combined empirically in these cases from across the globe. It also looks into why and where populism and socialism go their separate ways, exploring the tensions between populism’s ‘the people versus the elite’ division and the more explicit class structure of socialism, and the differing status of ‘the people’ under both political projects. Finally, it considers contemporary arguments about embracing the strategy of ‘left populism’ as a way of moving beyond socialism or social democracy advocated by the likes of Mouffe (2018) and Laclau (2005a), and ponders over whether these arguments hold water at a time when the left-wing populist moment seems to be waning.
Chapter 5 examines the relationship between populism and liberalism. Against widespread claims that populism is always illiberal, this chapter argues that the reality is far more complex, as right-wing populists increasingly reconfigure liberal tropes for their own purposes – for example, they claim to oppose more open immigration policies or cultural diversity in order to protect gender and sexual equality – and left-wing populists in Europe and the Americas often maintain a commitment to pluralism in their conception of ‘the people’. Exploring the ways in which populists engage with, exploit and deploy various tenets of liberalism while undermining others to a serious degree, the chapter shows that the binary between populism and liberalism is far from impermeable and that questions of liberalism, pluralism and heterogeneity raise important questions about how we seek to define and identify cases of populism in the contemporary political landscape.
The final chapter addresses perhaps the key question that still remains at the core of popular and academic debates about populism: is populism, ultimately, a good or a bad thing for democracy? The chapter shows that the answer to this question really depends on what subtype of democracy one favours: a liberal democrat will probably see populism as a threat to the very functioning of democracy insofar as closing down the space for plural understandings of ‘the people’ and the recognition of legitimate opposition is concerned, while a radical democrat will see it as opening up a space for the reconstitution of ‘the people’ in an otherwise moribund post-democratic environment. Contrasting these positions, the chapter argues that both sides also have a distinct view of the potentiality of populism, liberals seeing populism as a precursor to authoritarianism, whereas for radical democrats left-wing populism leads to a truly radical and plural political order. The chapter examines the problems with these views – particularly the increasing tendency to conflate the phenomena of authoritarianism and populism on the liberal side and the worrying propensity to ignore the problematic effects of positioning the leader as central to populism on the radical side – and how these can lead to a selective interpretation of populism’s democratic or anti-democratic credentials.
And so, by the end of this book, you should have a much better of idea of
what populism ‘is’ and what is at stake in debates over its meaning;
the key conceptual and normative drivers behind different schools of thought on populism;
how populism interacts with other key isms in the contemporary political landscape – especially nationalism, nativism, socialism and liberalism; and
how different visions of democracy underlie whether populism is seen as a threat or as a corrective to democratic politics.
Most importantly, you will see that, when it comes to populism, theory cannot be neatly separated from practice. While we all know that famous figures such as Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Juan Perón, Hugo Chávez and Rodrigo Duterte are often labelled ‘populists’, we cannot dig any deeper or gain any insight into what this means without considering the theoretical and conceptual debates behind the label. This is not merely an academic question: how we label and understand political leaders, parties and movements matters, because such labels can have significant effects on how we judge the legitimacy and validity of their bearers’ political claims. For example, whether a party is seen as ‘mainstream’ or ‘populist’ can have important ramifications for its acceptability as a coalition partner by other parties, while whether a leader is seen as ‘populist’ or not is often used as shorthand for where that leader falls in terms of respect for the democratic rules of the game. In short, there is a lot wrapped up in the seemingly simple term ‘populism’.