Articles by Maurits Meijers

May 28, 2025

🔮 According to populists, who are ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’?

Maurits Meijers

Populist rhetoric often pits a virtuous people against a corrupt elite. But when populist leaders invoke these definitions, do they always mean the same thing? Maurits Meijers, Robert A. Huber, and Andrej Zaslove explore the role of ideology in such definitions, shedding light on why populism remains a powerful political force

🔮 Populist citizens do not reject liberal democracy

Maurits Meijers

Maurits Meijers and Andrej Zaslove address the ‘myth’ that populist beliefs among citizens are harmful for liberal democracy. Using insights from recent research, they argue that highly populist citizens are not more likely than other citizens to reject the principles of liberal democracy

Maurits Meijers

Associate Professor of Political Representation, Department of Political Science, Radboud University, Nijmegen

Until August 2023, Maurits was a Visiting Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Montreal, where he held the Canada Research Chair in Electoral Democracy.

He was also a Visiting Researcher at Montreal's Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship.

Maurits holds a PhD in Political Science (summa cum laude) from the Hertie School in Berlin.

His research focuses on questions pertaining to political representation and the competition between political parties.

Maurits' work has been published in academic journals including the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, West European Politics, and Party Politics.

He is also co-initiator of the Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA).

In 2019, Maurits received a VENI grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for the research project 'Credible’ or ‘Capricious’? The Reputational Cost of Party Policy Change.

In 2020, he was awarded an Early Career Award from the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences).

www.mauritsmeijers.eu

@MauritsMeijers

@mauritsmeijers.bsky.social

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