Basic parameters, manifestations and options of conceptualization and practice of populism in the world at the end of the 20th century.

The article analyzes the supporting parameters, manifestations and options of conceptualization and practice of populism in the world, in particular in its various parts and in general, in the second half and at the end of the 20th century. The author states that populism began to diversify, but at the same time to be theorized and to acquire doctrinal outlines since the middle of the 20th century. The manifestation of this was that the conceptualization and empiricism of populism began to acquire signs of tendentious and recurring processes. Given these, the essence of populism in the dynamics of the second half of the 20th century is analyzed on the example of Europe as well as North and South America and so on. On this basis, it is argued that the understanding of populism has not become consolidated, unified and unilateral one in the second half – in the late 20th century. Firstly, populism can be a characteristic of both democratic and non-democratic (hybrid and autocratic ones) political regimes that determines its different orientation and vector. Secondly, populism can be perceived as both a negative and a positive socio-political phenomenon, although classically it is typically supposed to be a threat to democracy. Thirdly, populism depends in its interpretation not only on the part of the world, but also on the country, and therefore it should always be considered contextually. Fourthly, populism can be caused by very different reasons, but socio-economic fac- tors are less frequently its causes than political factors. However, populism in the second half of the 20th century generally began to be doctrinalized and typologized based on a combination of several basic parameters and criteria that are traditionally reduced to confrontation and mobilization of the struggle between the “people” and the “oligarchy”/”elite”.