The Global Rise of Populism

Populism: a deflationary view

“…Of course one can invoke general causes to explain this apparent wave, and such general causation seems to give the wave itself some kind of salience (Moffitt, 2016). The most obvious causal factors are those associated with globalization.…”

Populism as Democratization’s Nemesis: The Politics of Regime Hybridization

“…In many national contexts, populism is being normalized into an exercise of governmental power. We consequently need to broaden the predominant conceptual emphasis on the ideological, discursive (De la Torre 2014;Kazin 1995;Hawkins 2010) and dramaturgical (Moffit 2016;Ostigy 2009) resources that populist leaders or movements mobilize to either denounce the status quo or to access power (Weyland 2001) to include the analysis of populism as a governmental exercise. While the former perspectives shed important light on the conditions that give birth to populism movements and the strategies they unfold to challenge the political order, the reality of populism as government requires the expansion of our conceptual and analytical toolbox to better understand the logic and outcomes that guide populism as an exercise of power.…”

Prohibiting the people: Populism, procedure and the rhetoric of democratic desire

“…Critics hasten to denounce the illiberal, ethnocentric, and often authoritarian impulses of populist leaders and their followers (e.g., Packer, ); supporters defend the egalitarian, authentically democratic potential of direct political engagement by “the people themselves” (Kramer, ) . This public debate on the virtues and vices of “the populist explosion” (Judis, ; Moffitt, ) mobilizes many of the same tropes as its academic counterpart (Mudde, ; Müller, ). And in both cases, collective ambivalence over populism reflects the same underlying dilemma: if democracy is “rule by the people,” isn't populism its purest manifestation?…”

“…Scholars who analyze the rhetoric of appeals to the People draw on Ernesto Laclau's () ontological definition of populism as the inherently discursive logic of politics as such. Both also rely on conceptions of populism as a discrete political style, as articulated by Michael Kazin (), Frank Ankersmit (), and Benjamin Moffitt ().…”