What is Populism?

Abstract

Chapter 1 begins with a concise overview of the ways earlier scholars have examined populism during consecutive waves of research on the topic, and goes on to expose common conceptual and methodological errors—such as obscuring the genus, overemphasizing essentialism while overlooking ontology, concept stretching, the incertitude about negative poles, and the difficulties with concept operationalization—before setting out to elaborate a truly minimal definition that can sufficiently account for the comparative study of modern populism. The chapter ends with a presentation of the book’s overall framework of analysis, which condenses the main methodological tools—such as indicators, variables, and concept properties—to be used later on during theory-building.