Stijn van Kessel
Mattia Zulianello and Petra Guasti are right to point out that populism is too often conflated with nativist politics or seen as a feature of radical left and right-wing parties only. Nonetheless, Stijn van Kessel argues that populism is not equally compatible with any host ideology Read more
Michael Hameleers
When facts are disputed and experts delegitimised, the term 'populism' may apply to truths and to untruths. Michael Hameleers argues that populist ideas are often strategically communicated to emphasise a divide between congruent truths and incongruent lies. This only serves to emphasise the idea of a divide between ordinary people and corrupt political elites Read more
Sorina Soare
Sorina Soare rebuts the commonly held idea that all populist parties are unstructured organisations, exclusively dependent on their leaders’ communication skills. In Romania, through initiatives such as the creation of a mobile hospital, the populist party has been able to forge stable territorial linkages with diverse groups of voters Read more
Ildiko Otova
Bulgaria recently celebrated the 80th anniversary of the State rescuing 48,000 Jews from deportation and death in Nazi concentration camps. On the surface, this reads like a nation-affirming narrative. But Ildiko Otova argues that the celebrations were merely another attempt to construct a mythology of Holocaust denial Read more
Kirk Hawkins
Populism is a chronic condition rather than a recent phenomenon writes Kirk Hawkins. When we recognise the historical roots of populism, we can manage this challenge to liberal democracy Read more
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 Read more
Masaru Nishikawa
Japanese media and academics continue to link populism with specific political positions. Yet studies show that this is not the case. Masaru Nishikawa raises the fundamental question of whether populism exists in Japan Read more
Marcel Lewandowsky
Marcel Lewandowsky argues that much research on populism suffers from that a contextual blind spot: it overlooks the broad variety of illiberal attitudes of which populism is only one variant. Here, he calls for more research on this ‘invisible coalition’ of illiberal attitudes Read more
