Minimal Term of Populism

Modern Populism: Research Advances, Conceptual and Methodological Pit
falls, and the Minimal Definition
Modern Populism: Research Advances, Conceptual and

Methodological Pitfalls, and the Minimal Definition
Takis S. Pappas
Subject: Qualitative Political Methodology, Quantitative Political Methodology
Online Publication Date: Mar 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.17
Summary and Keywords
Populism is one of the most dynamic fields of comparative political research. Although its
study began in earnest only in the late 1960s, it has since developed through four distinct
waves of scholarship, each pertaining to distinct empirical phenomena and with specific
methodological and theoretical priorities. Today, the field is in need of a comprehensive
general theory that will be able to capture the phenomenon specifically within the con
text of our contemporary democracies. This, however, requires our breaking away from
recurring conceptual and methodological errors and, above all, a consensus about the
minimal definition of populism.
All in all, the study of populism has been plagued by 10 drawbacks: (1) unspecified empir
ical universe, (2) lack of historical and cultural context specificity, (3) essentialism, (4)
conceptual stretching, (5) unclear negative pole, (6) degreeism, (7) defective observable-
measurable indicators, (8) a neglect of micromechanisms, (9) poor data and inattention to
crucial cases, and (10) normative indeterminacy. Most, if not all, of the foregoing method
ological errors are cured if we define, and study, modern populism simply as “democratic
illiberalism,” which also opens the door to understanding the malfunctioning and patholo
gies of our modern-day liberal representative democracies.
Keywords: Populism, illiberalism, liberal democracy, minimal definition, methodology, essentialism, conceptual
stretching, negative pole, degreeism, normative (in)determinacy
Introduction
Although still relatively young, the study of comparative populism has made big strides in
recent decades and is currently one of the most thriving areas of academic research. It
remains, however, beset by several methodological shortcomings that not only have so far
impeded a general agreement on what exactly constitutes this phenomenon but also frus
trate its further systematic research, let alone the building of a general theory that will be
relevant in grasping populism precisely in the context of contemporary liberal democracy.
Part of the problem arises from our insistence on trying to understand the various forms
of populism that have developed at various times and various places in the world in an in
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clusive, catch-all way. This article takes a different approach. It is explicitly concerned
with modern populism, that is, the occurrences of this phenomenon in post–World War
Two democracies around the world, which is qualitatively different from populisms in ei
ther predemocratic or nondemocratic political settings. Such an approach is expected to
help define our concept in a concise way, cure past methodological shortcomings, and
make possible new advances in the comparative study of populism.
This article offers a synopsis of previous scientific breakthroughs in the study of pop
ulism, points to common conceptual and methodological pitfalls, and proposes a novel un
derstanding of modern populism. More specifically, the first section briefly canvasses the
history of the concept of populism and shows how various scholars have at times tried to
understand the various instances of the phenomenon; the second section exhibits several
recurring methodological fallacies in the study of populism and shows how each of them
may obstruct comparative research; and the third section puts forward a truly minimal
definition of modern-day populism that renders the concept amenable to empirical inves
tigation and well suited to underpin a general theory on populism. In a separate Appen
dix, the various other major definitions of populism have also been assembled for compar
ative review.
Research Advances
The systematic study of populism began only in the late 1960s, but during subsequent
decades there emerged at least four distinct waves, or “generations,” of scholarship on
this phenomenon, each corresponding to a particular time period and research agenda. In
this section, I provide a concise overview of the hitherto scholarly efforts to seize
populism(s). Emphasis is placed particularly on each wave’s research intension and aims,
the empirical cases observed, and the scholarly gains but also some inconveniences en
countered.
The Pioneers
The earliest wave of studies on populism originated in a conference held in 1967 at the
London School of Economics, during which a multidisciplinary cohort of scholars explicit
ly set out to define the phenomenon.1 The publication of the conference proceedings in
book form (Ionescu & Gellner, 1969) thus effectively marks the beginning of the first
wave of scholarship on populism, which then expanded into the 1970s and early 1980s.
As several scholars were able to notice at the time, many rulers of newly independent na
tions around the globe had eagerly embraced populism as their chief mode of political ac
tion. Populism was seen to “bob up everywhere, but in many and contradictory
shapes” (Ionescu & Gellner, 1969, p. 1; all quotations in this paragraph are from the in
troductory chapter to the cited book). The phenomenon was detected in pluralist political
systems but also in communist states, where “strong currents seem to move in a populist
direction;” it was observed in new, modern nations, as well as in older, premodern ones,
where its manifestations included “the droolings of Tolstoy over muzhiks, the rationaliza
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tions of Eastern European resentments against alien traders, and the slogans in terms of
which rulers of new nations legitimate themselves and subvert liberal institutions.” On
this realization, the question arose about whether populism has “any underlying unity” or
whether one name covers “a multitude of unconnected tendencies.” Unfortunately, that
early cohort of scholars was unable to reach a unanimous verdict—which is probably why
their volume lacks a concluding chapter that would sum up findings and extract conclu
sions. And so conceptual ambiguity about populism became inherent in its empirical and
theoretical study.
What prevented that early cohort of scholars from clearly defining populism and reaching
solid conclusions of its ubiquitous appearance in so many and so different spatiotemporal
environments? The obvious reason was the great extension of the concept without a prior
organization of its intension. Those early-day scholars saw populism everywhere, but they
hardly reflected on its ontology, nor did they care to distinguish between the many differ
ent historical and political contexts within which populism seemed capable of emerging.
“There can be no doubt,” they wrote, “about the importance of populism. But no one is
quite clear just what it is” (Ionescu & Gellner, 1969, p. 1; emphases in original). As late as
the early 1980s, a major scholar still conceived populism to be “a bewildering variety of
phenomena” ranging from techniques of direct democracy, such as referenda, to agrarian
movements and authoritarian regimes (Canovan, 1981).
Thus, without a clear concept in mind, the early research on populism looked, indeed, like
a “fishing expedition without adequate nets” (Sartori, 1970, p. 1039). The catch was im
pressive as it included premodern movements, such as the Narodniki in imperial Russia;
nondemocratic regimes, such as Latin America’s postwar autocracies; interwar peasant
movements in Eastern Europe and the Balkans; and anti-capitalist and anti-colonial move
ments in Africa. Interestingly enough, no significant traces of populism were found in the
advanced Western democracies. Those who studied Europe, for instance, were just able
to discern “a kind of proto-populism in the English Peasants’ Revolt and the Jacqueries of
the fourteenth century, or in the Bundschuh and the peasant wars of the
Reformation” (MacRae, 1969, p. 154). Canovan (1981) predominantly focused her re
search interest on either predemocratic agrarian or nondemocratic—and certainly anti-
liberal—political populisms (e.g., the populisms expounded by Juan Perón and Huey Long
in Argentina and the United States, respectively; the reactionary populism of George Wal
lace; and Swiss-style direct-democracy populism).
In sum, the earliest wave of studies on populism sensitized scholars to the importance of
this phenomenon and put the study of populism firmly into the agenda of comparative
politics. At the same time, however, it failed to provide a commonly agreed-upon defini
tion of populism, causing instead significant conceptual stretching and empirical confu
sion, which still persist.
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Classical Populism
A second massive wave of interest in the study of populism began developing during the
1970s and 1980s, mostly by Latin American scholars. Unlike the European pioneers, who
aimed at definitions, this group of students on populism was primarily concerned with the
socio-economic determinants of mass political movements that developed contemporane
ously in their respective countries. As put by one of the most important representatives of
the group, their aim was to explain “the conditions under which the political participation
of the lower classes is channeled through a populist movement” (Germani, 1978, p. 95).
In the end, there developed within the group two distinct approaches, one associated
with modernization theory and another with structural Marxism. For the adherents of
modernization theory, on the one hand, populism was a means to incorporate into politics
the newly mobilized urban working and middle classes that emerged after the breakdown
of oligarchic politics and the postwar transition of those countries to capitalism and
modernity (Collier, 1979; Drake, 1982; Germani, Di Tella & Ianni, 1973; Malloy, 1977). For
the adherents of Marxism and the dependency school, on the other hand, populism was a
multiclass political movement corresponding to the stage of import substitution industri
alization (ISI) (see Cardoso & Faletto, 1979; O’Donnell, 1973). According to this interpre
tation, “the statist and nationalist policies of ISI allowed populist leaders to build cross-
class alliances between urban labor, the middle sectors, and domestic
industrialists” (Roberts, 1995, p. 85). Their differences apart, however, both approaches
saw populism as specific to historical and political circumstances of development in the
world semi-periphery and “agreed on the importance of defining it in social terms, rooted
in relations of production and market conditions” (Jansen, 2011, p. 79).
Having thus organized their research intension (i.e., populism as a means for mobilization
in particular circumstances), the authors belonging in this wave had no problem selecting
their cases, which mostly included countries in Latin America but, occasionally, other
countries of the semi-periphery, such as Greece (Mouzelis, 1985). The high-profile cases
were, of course, those of Argentina under General Juan Perón (Di Tella, 1990; Germani,
1978; Horowitz, 1999; James, 1988), Brazil under dictator Getúlio Vargas (Conniff, 1981,
1999A; French, 1989; Wolfe, 1994), and Mexico under Lázaro Cárdenas (Basurto, 1999;
Knight, 1990, 1994). There were also some lower-profile cases (like, for instance, those of
Haya de la Torre in Peru, Gualberto Villaroel in Bolivia, Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala, or
Eliécer Gaitán in Colombia) that “may have been shorter-lived or less consequential than
those of Perón, Vargas, and Cárdenas, but a theory of populist mobilization suggests that
they share many meaningful similarities with such high-profile cases” (Jansen, 2011: pp.
88–89).
Despite its relatively good match between concept intension and research extension, the
problem with this wave of scholarship on populism has been its lack of comparability po
tential. In other words, it could only be used to explain authoritarian populist movements
falling within the specific socio-economic context of Latin America during ISI and, per
haps, some other countries in the world semi-periphery. As all the cases studied have
been either authoritarian regimes or outright dictatorships, this perception of populism
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could have no traveling capacity beyond these particular cases. So, the argument that
populism “often becomes a mass movement only in societies where typical Western Euro
pean leftist ideologies of the working class fail to develop into mass parties” (Germani,
1978, p. 88) openly suggests that the lessons from Latin American “classical” populism
cannot be easily utilized in the study of populism in liberal democratic contexts. Still, this
specific literature has yielded significant gains as it sensitized us to at least two impor
tant features of populism during its emergence phase: first, its mass movement charac
ter; and, second, the role of individual agency and, more specifically, the importance of
“charismatic” leadership (e.g., de la Torre, 2000; Dix, 1978).
Neoliberal Populism
The eventual exhaustion of import substitution strategies in Latin America eroded the ma
terial foundations of state-based populism and led to the social demobilization of those ac
tors “whose economic interests had defined traditional populist agendas” (Conniff,
1999B; Roberts, 1995, p. 82). And yet, despite the fact that both modernization and de
pendency theories of populism had fallen into disrepute, the phenomenon itself anything
but disappeared. The emergence of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela was a reminder that old-
style quasi-democratic populist politics in the region was far from dead. But that was not
all. For, during the 1980s and 1990s, a new type of populism flourished in Latin America
in a radically different socio-economic and political environment than that of the 1930s
and 1940s.
By the early 1990s, Latin American scholars were surprised to find out that a new breed
of politicians in the region were able to implement neoliberal policies while also enjoying
remarkably high levels of popular support—a phenomenon for which they coined the term
“neopopulism.” The most prominent such cases were those of Alan García and, subse
quently, Alberto Fujimori in Peru; Carlos Menem in Argentina; Collor de Mello in Brazil;
and Carlos Salinas de Gortari in Mexico. In all those cases, populism enjoyed a second po
litical epiphany, in which it was distinguished from classical populism in two respects:
first, its social basis, which now consisted of members of the urban informal sector and
the rural poor, as opposed to the organized working class; and, second, its implementa
tion of neoliberal policies instead of import substitution and state corporatism (Roberts,
1995; Weyland, 1999). What, therefore, became the central puzzle of the third wave of
scholars of populism was the antinomy between populism and neoliberalism and, more
particularly, “the rise of personalist leaders with broad-based support, who follow neolib
eral prescriptions for economic austerity and market-oriented structural
adjustments” (Roberts, 1995, p. 82).
As seen by this group of scholars, the endeavor of most Latin American countries for a ne
oliberal adjustment of their economies presented upcoming political entrepreneurs with
new opportunities for “the transformation and revival of populism under a new guise, one
that is shaped by the breakdown of more institutionalized forms of political representa
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tion and the fiscal constraints that inhere in a context of public indebtedness and a dimin
ished state apparatus” (Roberts, 1995, p. 114).
There have been several gains from this wave of scholarship on populism. First, there was
a renewed interest in “charismatic” leadership emerging in politically pluralist, rather
than oligarchic, systems (Hawkins, 2003, p. 1138; Weyland, 2001, p. 14). Second, pop
ulism was seen in a politically instrumental fashion. Thus, for Weyland, populism is “a po
litical strategy through which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government power
based on direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of mostly
unorganized followers” (2001, p. 14). Third, there was a renewed interest in the dis
course patterns used by populist leaders and their usages in politically incorporating the
masses. At the same time, however, the findings during this wave suffer from several
shortcomings, most important of which is their poor comparative potential with populism
in regions with different economic and social structures, particularly Europe and North
America. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, were there any serious attempts to study the
features of “classical” populism and “neopopulism” in Latin America in comparative fash
ion.
The Contemporaries
In recent years, the study of populism has grown (and is still growing) exponentially.
Largely based on the idea that a powerful populist Zeitgeist had already by the early
1990s overwhelmed Western democracies (Mudde, 2004), a young generation of scholars
has been investigating a host of phenomena labeled as “populist” in Europe, the Americ
as, and other parts of the world. With all this effort, however, and despite all our gains in
extensional coverage, we still lack connotative precision. Above all, the definition of pop
ulism remains the subject of heated controversy among social and political scientists, his
torians, and a miscellany of pundits. As indicated by several definitions proposed in the
related literature (see Appendix), populism is understood primarily in terms of actors (the
“people,” some elite, a leader); actions (mass mobilization, strategic leadership); style
(moralistic, dichotomous, majoritarian); domain (old–new, left–right, democratic–nonde
mocratic, European–non-European); consequences (polarization, social homogenization,
charisma); and normative implications (threat to or corrective of democracy). However,
on the whole and notwithstanding their merits, as I am shortly going to show, these defin
itional approaches stand on perilous conceptual and methodological grounds, which often
impedes comparative and theoretical efforts.
At the same time, and probably because we have been unable to unambiguously settle the
“what is” question, current research—and controversy—on populism is moving fast to
“how much” questions. Researchers are now increasingly busy to assess degrees (more
or less) of populism utilizing either classical content analysis of populist discourse (e.g.,
Hawkins, 2009; Jagers & Walgrave, 2007) or textual analysis of election manifestos and
other populist party literature (e.g., Pauwels, 2011; Rooduijn & Pauwels, 2011). An even
more recent area of growing interest is using survey data to measure populist attitudes at
the mass social level (e.g., Akkerman, Mudde, & Zaslove, 2014; Elchardus & Spruyt,
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2016). However sophisticated those analyses, it once again appears that, to use Sartori’s
metaphor, we have started to run before even having learned how to walk. For, at the end,
“regardless of whether we rely on quantitative data or more qualitative information, the
problem is the same, namely, to construct fact-finding categories that own sufficient dis
criminating power. If our data containers are blurred, we never know to what extent and
on what grounds the ‘unlike’ is made ‘alike’” (Sartori, 1970, p. 1039). I shall return to this
problem after having discussed in the following section 10 conceptual and methodologi
cal shortcomings that often have troubled our efforts to unravel the riddle of populism.
Conceptual and Methodological Pitfalls

As most seem to agree, for over half a century now we have been engaged in a lively but
hitherto futile search for a common understanding in the study of populism. As the battle
of definitions has become in recent years even more intense, most scholars admit a con
ceptual morass. At the same time, there is no introspection about the reasons of such a
lack of consensus and, particularly, the fallacious thinking that has caused it. Why is it so?
Conceptualizing populism, and using it for cross-area comparisons, I submit, has suffered
from at least 10 drawbacks that often recur in our study of populist phenomena and, in
this degree or another, cause methodological pitfalls. Those are: (1) unspecified empirical
universe, (2) lack of historical and cultural context specificity, (3) essentialism, (4) con
ceptual stretching, (5) unclear negative pole, (6) degreeism, (7) defective observable-
measurable indicators, (8) a neglect of micromechanisms, (9) poor data and inattention to
crucial cases, and (10) normative indeterminacy.
Unspecified Empirical Universe (The Summum Genus Problem)
One should naturally begin by asking: In our preoccupation with populism, what is actual
ly being compared at the highest level of generality? In other words, what is the summum
genus, or family—the all-inclusive class of things—to which our concept refers? The impli
cation is, of course, that we must be comparing items that belong to the same family,
genus, species, and subspecies—“in short, to the same class . . . [that] provides the ‘simi
larity element’ of comparability, while the ‘differences’ enter as the species of a genus, or
the sub-species of a species” (Sartori, 1970, p. 1036). Since in our analysis of populism
we are bound to eventually engage with classifying (in a per genus et differentiam way), it
is important that we are able to specify right from the beginning the general empirical
universe to which this term applies. Regrettably, we are still far from it. As even a glance
at the literature (or even just at the Appendix to this chapter) will suffice to show, our em
pirical analysis of populism refers to several, and often diverse, families of phenomena in
cluding “political movements” or “parties” (Di Tella, 1965, p. 47; Dix, 1978; Germani,
1978; Jansen, 2011, p. 82); “ideologies” or “creeds” (Laclau, 1977, pp. 172–173; Mudde,
2004, p. 543; Stanley, 2008; Wiles, 1969, p. 166); specific “discursive patterns” (Hawkins,
2009, p. 1042; Laclau, 2005; Pauwels, 2011); political “strategies” (Betz, 2002, p. 198;
Ware, 2002; Weyland, 2001, p. 14); representation “modes” (Roberts, 2015; or specific po
litical “styles” (Kazin, 1995; Knight, 1998, p. 227; Moffitt & Tormey, 2014), some of which
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are particularly related to “communication techniques” (Jagers & Walgrave, 2007;
Urbinati, 2013, p. 137). The problem is that, since each of the foregoing families of phe
nomena points to quite diverse units of analysis, the field remains fragmented and full of
variables that are hard to compare across the empirical universe. How can all those phe
nomena (including movements, parties, ideologies, creeds, discourses, strategies, modes,
styles, and maybe much more) that are invariably defined as populist become compara
ble? Unless one is determined to stand by her own stance and happily go on fighting fu
tile definition wars, the only way out is to envisage a high-level conceptualization of pop
ulism that, on the one hand, will be relevant to our specific research interests and aims,
while, on the other hand, serving as the ultimate genus under (and in relation to) which
all populist phenomena (the species and subspecies) will conveniently be subsumed.
Context Specificity
Like many other political concepts, populism is history-anchored and culture-bound. Hav
ing said that, and granting that a concept is its intension (i.e., the things that we have in
mind when we engage in empirical research), it is necessary that we contextualize our
definition of populism. Unlike all-purpose general definitions, which seek to determine
the meaning of a term within a broad language frame, contextual definitions ask “what a
term means or should mean within a narrower context, perhaps a specific research site or
research problem” (Gerring & Barresi, 2003, p. 204). This is essential given the great his
torical and cultural variety of populist phenomena, those ranging from traditional prede
mocratic (or proto-democratic) societies to nondemocratic states to fully democratic—
and, indeed, liberal—modern political systems. Because of such a grand range, any defini
tion of populism requires some contextual specification when applied to a particular set
of empirical cases. In effect, when we assert, for instance, that 19th-century U.S. pop
ulism is “not the same” as early 21st- century European populism, our argument is simply
that those phenomena are embedded in different historical contexts and hence their caus
es and outcomes are also different. This also alerts us to the fact that the perception of
populism differs according to the distinctly national, or world regional, experiences of the
scholars studying it (Gerring, 1997, p. 983). This explains, for instance, why students of
populism in Latin America have focused a great deal on political participation of the un
derclasses, while in Europe emphasis has shifted to the people’s quest for social and na
tional integration and in the United States to issues related to economic inequality. Even
in the context of a single country, populism may take on quite different characteristics in
different stages of historical development as, to take just two well-known examples, has
happened in France (compare Bonapartism, or Boulangerism, with Le Pen’s Front Nation
al) and the United States (compare the 19th-century People’s Party with the contemporary
Tea Party movement or, even more recently, the spectacular appeal of Donald Trump). In
short, since concepts are anchored in specific contexts, it is important that we use defini
tions of populism that are attentive, not to all historical and political contexts imaginable,
but only to the particular ones that each time fit our particular research interests and
thus help organize our research intension.
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Essentialism
Based on the view that populism is characterized by a set of attributes that are necessary
to pin down both its identity and functions, most conceptualizations of populism are es
sentialist. Although many “attempts to capture the essence of populism have sprung up at
different times and in different places, . . . it is very difficult to see a consistent
pattern” (Taggart, 2000, p. 10). In consequence, each of them captures one or several im
portant dimensions, features, or functions of the phenomenon, which are then assumed to
be primordial in constituting populism. Thus, to take just one example, after canvassing
the recent literature on populism, Rooduijn (2014, p. 578) has recorded no fewer than 12
characteristics of populism mentioned in it: people-centrism; anti-elitism; homogeneity of
the people; direct democracy; exclusionism; proclamation of a crisis; simplistic language;
direct communication style; polarization; image of outsider; centralization of leader; and
a loosely mediated relationship between leader and followers. This, to be sure, is a far
from complete list, as further perusal of the literature reveals additional characteristics
such as a strong moral element, charismatic leadership, and much more. Populism, there
fore, often ends up in being treated as a family resemblance category—one, that is, whose
members share a set of commonalities, or defining attributes, not all of which are to be
found in every instance (Collier & Mahon, 1993). This approach is beset with problems.
First, as Hempel has warned, the notion of essential nature of some entity is so vague “as
to render this characterization useless for the purposes of rigorous inquiry” (1952, p. 6).
The situation is made worse with the accumulation of several such features and other
properties, which moreover lack theoretical elaboration. To mention a few examples:
What is ideology? What constitutes morality (and how do we perceive immoral in contem
porary politics)? And when does charismatic leadership obtain? Finally, and perhaps most
importantly, the same features that are recognized as essential in the various definitions
of populism are often identical with properties declared necessary in other mass phenom
ena that are quite distinct from populism, such as millenarian and—both ancient and
modern—religious movements, charismatically led political communities, regional or sep
aratist parties, militant republicanism, contemporary right-wing extremism, nationalism,
and even fascism. There is pressing need, therefore, to reduce the concept’s properties
while also focusing on the concept’s ontology.
Conceptual Stretching
Essentialism is directly related to conceptual stretching, that is, broadening the bound
aries of the concept so as to include an ever-increasing number of empirical referents
without reducing its properties—something that “has been conducive to indefiniteness, to
undelimited and largely undefined conceptualizations” (Sartori, 1970, p. 1035). As
Canovan writes, “The more flexible the word has become, the more tempted political sci
entists have been to label ‘populist’ any movement or outlook that does not fit into any es
tablished category” (1981, p. 6). Indeed, in the study of populism, conceptual stretching
has been an ancestral sin. Witness the plethora of different collective and individual units
lumped together under the rubric “populism” over almost half a century ago: “the Lev
ellers; the Diggers; the Chartists; the Narodniki; the US populists; the Socialist-Revolu
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tionaries; Gandhi; Sinn Fein; the Iron Guard; Social Credit in Alberta; Cárdenas; Haya de
la Torre; the CCF in Saskatchewan; Poujade; Belaunde; Nyerere” (Wiles, 1969, p. 178).
The situation has hardly improved since. “Populism” has been used to describe such qual
itatively disparate phenomena as “Maoism, Nazism, Peronism, Nasserism or Russian Nar
odnichestvo” (Laclau, 1977, pp. 143–144). Following a similar line of least resistance, an
other author places “Le Pen and Tapie, Bossi and Berlusconi, Haider, Blocher, De Winters,
Glistrups and the leaders of the Romanian Populists, Tudor” in the same populist family
(Tarchi, 2002, p. 122). A yet another author has stretched the concept to the point of in
cluding such disparate contemporary phenomena as (a) radical right-wing parties, such
as the French National Front; (b) nonradical right-wing parties, such as Canada’s Social
Credit movement; (c) left-wing parties, such as the Scottish Socialist Party; (d) Tony Blair,
presented as “a champion of mainstream populism”; along with (e) a large, and ideologi
cally variegated number of individual leaders including, among others, Filip Dewinter and
Bernard Tapie from Europe, and Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, and Pat Buchanan from the
United States (Mudde, 2004, pp. 549–551). The list can grow even larger if one also in
cludes postcommunist agrarian parties in Eastern Europe; “nationalist” populist parties
(like Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia or Vojislav Seselj’s Ser
bian Radical Party); or communist populist parties (like the Communist Party of Bohemia
and Moravia, which campaigns against the new elites in the Czech Republic) (Mudde,
2001). To avoid stretching the concept of populism to a point of meaninglessness and get
instead a “general” concept with worldwide applicability requires that we reduce the
number of its necessary properties, or qualifying attributes. It is worth to always remem
ber that, assigned as we are with the task to construct a mousetrap, it is mice after all
that we want to trap and not other small mammals, reptiles, or birds of the field.
Negative Pole
The difficulty of having to deal with a multitude of (presumably) essential properties and
apply them to disparate units of analysis becomes particularly evident when one tries to
think about real situations in which those characteristics are either absent or, at the very
least, extremely weak. The question then is: Populism is different from what? Unless of
course we are ready to accept that populism is a concept without negation, i.e., one with
no specific boundaries, and therefore indeterminate, we have to define it a contrario—in
other words, to settle what populism is not. This, however, is far from easy since, in oper
ational terms, the negative pole must always score as zero on each and all of the core di
mensions that characterize the positive cases (Goertz, 2006, p. 32). In most cases, con
ceptually as well as definitionally, populism is seen as the opposite of “elitism,” the latter
understood as a situation in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a limited
number of “immoral” people who are “mediocre” and, having “lost touch” with the peo
ple, lack “responsiveness” (see, for instance, Hayward, 1996; Worsley, 1993). Could,
therefore, “elitism” be understood as populism’s polar opposite? I am afraid not, for rea
sons that go beyond the very conceptual morass surrounding this term, let alone the lack
of real empirical referents.2 If elitism is stretched to include any situation in which some
“elite” rules, then we end up with a whole gamut of diverse political situations: non
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democracies (oligarchy, aristocracy, authoritarianism, fascism), certain types of pluralist
democracy (technocracy, meritocracy), and even with elite pluralism (as in
Schattschneider’s [1975] notion of the “semi-sovereign people”). Nor is technocratic elit
ism inherently inimical to populism. “Indeed,” writes Mudde, “one of the most successful
[populist] movements, Social Credit in Canada, argued for a largely technocratic
regime” (2004, p. 547). Or, to take another example, Ecuador under Rafael Correa, “pop
ulism has tuned into elitism . . . [in which] technocratic reason . . . replaces the give-and-
take of democratic debate over proposals” (de la Torre, 2013, p. 39). Evidently, then, “elit
ism” proves a concept devoid of heuristic value (a Sartorian “cat-dog”) and, indeed, with
out modern-day empirical referents. Thus undefined, elitism cannot be a valid fact-finding
container—and, for the time being, we are left with no real negative pole for populism.
Still, any definition of populism, for making the notion distinctive, must be such that it ex
cludes nonpopulism.
Degreeism
Despite the lack of unanimity about populism’s negative pole, most comparative-minded
scholars choose to treat populism as a continuous (more-or-less) rather than a dichoto
mous (either-or) concept. Sartori (1984) has forcefully argued against degreeism, espe
cially when measurement is problematic, and defended dichotomous, or categoric, con
cepts that are defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Indeed, despite a
recent infatuation with attempts to measure populism (i.e., constructing interval scales
for showing differences, or distances, among the cases), essentialist characteristics are
extremely hard to pin down and, of course, measure. Take, for instance, the frustrating ef
forts that have been made to gauge populism through content and other discursive analy
ses (mentioned above). As Pauwels (2011) admits, such analyses suffer from questionable
data reliability, irregular sampling, and coding biases; it is also impossible to measure
(degrees of) populism over time and space. When treated along a continuum, populism
cannot be separated from nonpopulism. Rather, it is a property that to a certain extent
can be predicated of all political systems, whether democratic or not. What is still perfect
ly feasible, however, is to use ordinal scales for indicating the rank order of populist phe
nomena. Such quantification may only “enter the scene after, and only after, having
formed the concept” (Sartori, 1970, p. 1038). Despite their undisputed value, such cate
goric concepts have by and large been avoided in the study of populism for the obvious
difficulty they present (cf., Weyland 2001). This already raises the issue of concept opera
tionalization, to which I am now turning brief attention.
Empirical Operationalization
Although not all concepts can be made operational (think, for instance, of beauty, virtue,
or, indeed, morality), clear conceptualization is ideally accompanied by some kind of oper
ationalization, that is, stating “the conditions, indeed the operations, by means of which a
concept can be verified and, ultimately, measured” (Sartori, 1970, p. 1045). Such opera
tions necessitate the use of clear indicators or, in Hempel’s own words, “criteria of appli
cation couched in terms of observational or experimental procedure” (1952, p. 41). Con
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cept operationalization, thus, should take the form: let x be what can be defined (and veri
fied or falsified) via the indicators a, b and c (Sartori, 2009). The problem is that the feasi
bility, let alone validity, of operationalization is inversely analogous to the number of char
acteristics inherent in our concept definition. This alerts us further in two respects. First,
the more its properties, the larger the number of operations we must undergo for verify
ing the concept. Second, we must perform our operations with all, not only some, proper
ties. It is probably because of such difficulties that operationalizing populism is still un
derdeveloped. Most efforts toward operationalization concern specific variables of the
concept (the nature of its ideology, its discursive style, the characteristics of its leader
ship) rather than the concept itself. Such efforts include, among others, the distinction
between “thin” and “thick” ideology (Stanley, 2008), the content analysis of various pop
ulist manifestations (Hawkins, 2009; Jagers & Walgrave, 2007; Pauwels, 2011), and the
status of populist leaders on the basis of various indicators (Levitsky & Loxton, 2013).
Neglect of Micromechanisms
Perhaps the most conspicuous absence from the literature on populism is the systematic
attention to the role of various mechanisms—at both the micro- and meso-levels of analy
sis—that could help to better explain the phenomenon across the different spatiotemporal
settings in which it occurs. A mechanism stands midway between general theory and em
pirical facts and points to “a specific causal pattern that can be recognized after the
event but rarely foreseen. [. . .] It is less than a theory, but a great deal more than a de
scription since it can serve as a model for understanding other cases not yet
encountered” (Elster, 1993, pp. 3, 5). Examples of such mechanisms are charismatic lead
ership, symbolic framing (and other similar preference-formation mechanisms such as
Riker’s “heresthetics”), the strategic use of political polarization, social mobilization, pa
tronage politics, several cognitive and other social psychological mechanisms (used by
the populist voter for, say, reducing dissonance or coping with prospective loss), and, of
course, transformational mechanisms that populist parties often employ once they hap
pen to come to power for presenting themselves as more responsible, rather than merely
responsive, political agents. Despite the fact that many studies of populism are replete
with such mechanisms, they are seldom identified as such, let alone examined and tested
in comparative fashion with an aim at (mechanism-based) theory building.
Poor Data and Inattention to Crucial Cases
With the expansion of interest in populism and the proliferation of studies on this phe
nomenon, we are currently endowed with increasing amounts of empirical research and
survey data, most of which, however, has been accumulated in indiscriminate and rather
haphazard ways. For the individual researcher, to be sure, “[t]his may be an expedient
way of handling his private research problems, but remains a very inconvenient strategy
from the angle of the additivity and the comparability of his findings. As a result, the joint
enterprise of comparative [populist] politics is menaced by a growing potpourri of dis
parate, non-cumulative and—in the aggregate—misleading morass of
information” (Sartori, 1970, p. 1039). Poor data, in turn, prohibits any meaningful classifi
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cation of our cases, which eventually paves the way to poor—on no—theory. A related
problem in this respect concerns case selection bias. Most analysts naturally choose to
study populism by using cases that they can handle more easily whether because of per
sonal familiarity, linguistic facility, or other biases. This may, however, cause a neglect of
particularly important “crucial cases” since they may provide definitive evidence to theo
retical claims; as Harry Eckstein once argued, even “a single crucial case may certainly
score a clean knockout over a theory” (cited in King, Keohane, & Verba, 1994, p. 209).
Such is, most prominently, the case of Greece’s Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK),
which, largely because of linguistic unfamiliarity and nonproximity to empirical sources,
remained for many years outside the radars of comparative research on populism (for re
cent exceptions, see Pappas, 2013, 2014A; Pappas & Aslanidis, 2015). And yet, by any
measure conceivable, this party is a real trailblazer and by far the most successful case of
populism in contemporary Europe and, arguably, across the entire Western democratic
world.3
Normative Indeterminacy
Although conceptual stretching “also represents a deliberate attempt to make our con
ceptualizations value free” (Sartori, 1970, p. 1034), populism is heavily burdened with
normative connotations, whether positive or negative. This is particularly acute when it
comes to populism’s impact on democratic politics given populism’s strong affinity to
moral precepts and its appeals to “the people” as a potential electoral majority. Shouldn’t
the people come to power? And isn’t it good for democracy? Opinions differ sharply. On
the negative side, even when leaving aside the public appeals of mainstream politicians in
Europe and elsewhere to voters for avoiding “populist excesses,” many scholars think of
populism as an aberration (and, indeed, a specter) of political democracy and conceive it
as an “internal periphery” of it (see, for instance, Canovan, 1999; Rosanvallon, 2006). As
another author has put it, “populism is to representative democracy what demagoguery
was to direct democracy: internal to and parasitical on it” (Urbinati, 2013, p. 145). On the
positive side, it is being proposed that, rather than threat, populism may serve as a cor
rective to democracy by bringing the excluded masses back into politics, thus enhancing
pluralist representation and accountability. One way to avoid the conundrum has been to
simply determine that populism is both corrective and a threat to democracy (Mudde &
Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012).4 Otherwise, the matter will remain inconclusive as long as we
cannot reach a generally agreed-upon conceptualization of populism and, most important
ly, study empirically and comparatively the intended and unintended consequences of this
phenomenon in the different settings in which it has already appeared.
The Minimal Definition

We are back where we began in this chapter—or, more precisely, we are back to the very
beginning of our concern with populism in that first conference held in 1967 at LSE,
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where Isaiah Berlin, serving as Chairman of the concluding section, spoke to the rest of
participants with these words:
Now we must address ourselves to the biting of the sour apple, a difficult part of
our proceedings, which is the attempt to formulate some kind of model or defini
tion or formula into which we can fit all the various types and nuances of populism
which have been discussed; or, if we think that we cannot do it, to give reasons for
our failure to do so, which might be equally fruitful. (Berlin, 1967, p. 114)
As shown in the previous sections, the hitherto failure to agree on a common understand
ing of contemporary populism is related to our mixing up, and studying together, differ
ent kinds of populism, which in turn has caused several methodological pitfalls. As we are
now confronted with the steady increase of populism in the democratic world and with an
ever-increasing production of studies on populism in the academic world, we simply can
not afford, as Taguieff (1995) implicitly suggests, to abandon attempts at a rigorous defin
ition. More than ever, we need a minimal definition of populism so that, ultimately, we will
be able to both classify our empirical cases and theoretically compare them in meaningful
ways. This section undertakes the task to offer such a minimal (that is, per genus et dif
ferentiam) definition of populism which, by addressing the previous methodological short
comings and reducing the number of necessary attributes in the intension, will make our
concept theoretically more “general” and, at the same time, better able to cover greater
empirical mileage.
A minimal definition is one that includes only the core, or defining, characteristics of the
concept’s referents while excluding the variable (or accompanying, secondary, or contin
gent) ones (Sartori 1984). Since the core properties should alone be able to bound the
concept extensionally, any secondary properties are to be “treated as the focus of empiri
cal investigation rather than as a matter of definition” (Collier & Gerring, 2009, p. 5).
Ideally, as Gerring remarks, a minimal definition should be “perfectly substi
tutable” (2001, p. 78)—which is to say that one ought to be able to replace “populism” in
any sentence with the minimal definition with no loss of intended meaning.
That minimal definitions are difficult to achieve hardly needs stressing. As Kurt Weyland
has conceded, “[i]t is often difficult to identify characteristics that are necessary and
jointly sufficient in classifying a case as an instance of a phenomenon and to distinguish
those definitional attributes from background conditions, causes, functional require
ments, and consequences, as Sartori demands . . . The particularly confusing concept of
populism provides a best case for this skeptical position” (2001, p. 4). Keeping such diffi
culties in mind, here is the golden rule that we must follow when engaging in reconceptu
alization:
Make sure that the definiens of a concept is adequate and parsimonious: adequate
in that it contains enough characteristics to identify the referents and their bound
aries; parsimonious in that no accompanying property is included among the nec
essary, defining properties. (Sartori, 1984, p. 56)
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But this would hardly be the end of our difficulties. “Concepts,” writes Goertz, “are about
ontology. To develop a concept is more than providing a definition; it is deciding what is
important about an entity” (2006, p. 27; emphasis added). A concept’s ontology, there
fore, is intimately related to causality. Good concepts have causal theories and hypothe
ses embedded in them, which is to say that they “must also possess theoretical, or sys
tematic, import; i.e., they must permit the establishment of explanatory and predictive
principles in the form of general laws and theories” (Hempel, 1952, p. 46). It is from
those theories and hypotheses that we set out to understand how a concept presents in
the real world, interacts with its environment, and, through various mechanisms, which
vie for our explanation, causes change.
So, what is populism in the context of our contemporary democratic world? Under this in
nocuous formulation we are compelled to treat populism as an object concept (Sartori,
1984), that is, a concept used to identify distinct, albeit quite diverse, referents. On that
account, and stripped to its essentials, populism could well be defined as the idea that po
litical sovereignty belongs to and should be exercised by “the people.” Obviously, the key
term in the foregoing definition is “the people”—the meaning of which may differ from
one place to another, and thus can only become clear after empirical and comparative re
search. Whatever the case, the foregoing conceptualization of populism entails four es
sential attributes of “the people”: its potential to form a political majority; its allegedly
homogeneous “over-soul” nature; its embattled social positioning in an ostensibly bipolar
world; and its belief of holding the moral right. All those attributes draw from early re
publicanism and, while not extraneous to the democratic principle, are fundamentally in
imical to contemporary political liberalism.
That being so, and by taking our reconceptualizing effort only one little but brave step
further, we eventually achieve a truly minimal definition that understands contemporary
populism simply as democratic illiberalism (Pappas, 2012, 2014A, 2014B).5 Consequently,
the terms “populism” and “democratic illiberalism” are in this view perfectly substi
tutable and can be used interchangeably in our efforts to study modern populism, as car
rying exactly the same meaning and denoting exactly similar things.
Our new conceptualization of populism qua democratic illiberalism offers major advan
tages regarding its ontology, causal powers, and empirical validity, while it also keeps us
safe from major methodological pitfalls.
First, at the highest level of generality, our minimal definition points clearly to “illiberal
ism” as the ultimate genus, that is, a family of more specific phenomena that may develop
within contemporary democracy. In this light, illiberalism pertains to several—and hierar
chically organized—units of analysis, such as individual leaders, political parties or move
ments, party systems, and even regimes (dubbed “populist democracies,” cf. Pappas,
2014B); it also calls attention to a host of secondary attributes of the populist phenome
non (such as specific ideological and symbolic themes, certain discursive patterns, politi
cal strategies or styles), which are often, but rather confusingly, elevated to core-property
status.
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Second, it does bear repetition, modern populism is not about any kind of illiberalism; it
refers to illiberal phenomena that develop within the specific historical context of contem
porary representative democracy and in opposition to the principles of political liberal
ism. With this clause, and unless we may intent otherwise, populism becomes highly con
textualized and relevant to the study of contemporary democratic politics. At the same
time, however, our definition is not applicable to predemocratic (e.g., the Russian Narod
niki) and premodern types of populism (e.g., 19th-century U.S. populism) or, indeed, to
nondemocratic populism (e.g., Argentina’s early Peronism).
Third, by reducing the concept’s properties, we achieve a clear grasp of what constitutes
its ontology. As we have seen, a concept’s ontology rests on its core characteristics, which
alone amount to what a concept really is (Goertz, 2006). Thus, our definition is indeed
minimal in that it contains only two necessary properties, which, when in tandem, can
sufficiently capture the ontology, or nature, of the phenomenon we want analyzed: “demo
craticness” and “illiberalism.” In other words, when put together, these two characteris
tics become the constitutive—i.e., necessary and sufficient—dimensions of modern pop
ulism, that is to say, the concept’s very intension.
Fourth, as a result of both spatiotemporal context-specificity and a clear intension, our

minimal concept also becomes well bound extensionally with regard to the ensemble of
referents to which it may apply. Some cases, to be sure, will be mixed bags, and therefore
their inclusion in analysis, or exclusion from it, will be assumed by how one defines
“democracy” or “illiberalism.” Should we, for instance, classify Hungary’s Jobbik as a
populist (i.e., illiberal but still democratic) party, or is it to be relegated to the category of
nondemocratic parties, which fall outside our research concerns? Another example: Is the
strong anti-immigration discourse of the Danish Progress Party a clear enough indication
of “illiberalism” (so that we can classify this party as populist), or is it reckoned simply as
a set of ultra-conservative ideas, and policy proposals, of an otherwise perfectly liberal
party?
Fifth, and perhaps even more crucially, our new minimal definition of modern populism
points directly to its two negative poles, that is, political liberalism (as has been analyzed
by several authors, most notably Rawls, 2005) and autarchy (or, if I were to use a rather
tautological term, nondemocratic illiberalism). These distinctions, depicted in Figure 1, al
ready establish what modern populism is not, at the same time providing us with a clear
dichotomous view of our object: Populism, in short, is always democratic but never liber
al. Such a conception points to two clear cleavage lines that may open up in modern poli
tics and which are essential for further understanding the populist phenomenon: one
cleavage dividing democratic from nondemocratic forces (which effectively pits liberals
and populists jointly against autocratic nondemocrats) and another dividing liberal from
broadly illiberal forces (which pits liberals against populists and nondemocrats jointly).
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Figure 1. Three types of parties/political forces in

representative democracy.
Sixth, having now established what populism is (“democratic illiberalism”) and what it is
not (whether political liberalism or “nondemocratic illiberalism”), our concept has al
ready become specific enough to attempt its empirical measurement and try to compara
tively assess its degrees in time and space. It is here, too, that we can code our populism-
related variables in contradistinction to the variables related to both “liberalism” and “de
mocraticness,” and make them the basis for quantitative analysis. To this end, it certainly
helps that the proposed minimal definition is easy to operationalize empirically.
Thus, seventh, the two core attributes of newly conceptualized populism bear a very
traceable relation to sets of specific indicators and therefore lend themselves to empirical
testing. “Democraticness” can thus be operationalized as electoral participation and con
stitutional legality, while “illiberalism” involves at least three indicator-level variables—
the acknowledgment of one single cleavage in society, the pursuit of adversarial politics,
and majoritarianism (in contrast to liberalism’s acceptance of cross-cutting cleavages, the
pursuit of political moderation, and the protection of minority rights).
Eighth, the foregoing minimal definition of populism also points to several of the mecha
nisms that help it materialize: the means and agents necessary for forging, and dissemi
nating, the populist proposition; the symbolic and actual making of “the people”; the in
evitable choice of polarization as the best way to wage political struggle; the exaltation of
morality over reason; etc. In addition, and precisely because it specifies the ontology of
populism while it is also explicit about its opposite poles, our minimal definition is partic
ularly well suited for comparing positive (populism-laden) and negative (populism-free)
cases and also providing credible explanations about populist causality.
Finally, at least from the liberal democratic point of view, the herein-proposed definition
of populism is endowed with strong normative determinacy since it clearly posits this
phenomenon as the chief foe of contemporary liberal democracy. It therefore calls specifi
cally for the comparative analysis of populist parties in office, which, especially when able
to form single majority governments (as, for instance, in several Latin American states,
but also in Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, among other countries), seem to have
seriously damaged political liberalism, instead leading those countries to either increased
illiberalism (Greece, Poland) or political autarchy (Hungary, Turkey).
To sum up and conclude this article, my initial intent has been to provide a concise
overview of how the study of populism has grown—rather extravagantly—during recent
decades; to identify the major methodological pitfalls that have troubled comparative em
pirical research; and, finally, to propose a most minimal definition for the further study of
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populism in the context of contemporary democratic politics. Meanwhile, however, the
empirical evidence produced by continuous research on populist phenomena around the
world has become massive. Our next, and certainly more courageous, task is to bring to
gether conceptual finesse and the mass of empirical findings into a coherent framework
of analysis so as to produce nothing less than a general theory of modern-day populism.
Appendix: Main Definitions of Populism

Populism as Movement
“A political movement which enjoys the support of the mass of the urban working class
and/or peasantry but which does not result from the autonomous organizational power of
either of these two sectors. It is also supported by non-working-class sectors upholding
an anti-status quo ideology” (Di Tella, 1965, p. 47).
“A political movement which challenges established elites in the name of a union between
a leader and ‘the people’ (undifferentiated by group or class)” (Dix, 1978).
“[T]he political mobilization of mass constituencies by personalistic leaders who chal

lenge established elites” (Roberts, 2006, p. 127).
“Any sustained, large-scale political project that mobilizes ordinarily marginalized social
sectors into publicly visible and contentious political action, while articulating an anti-
elite, nationalist rhetoric that valorizes ordinary people” (Jansen, 2011, p. 82).
Populism as Style
Populism “connotates a political style [that] implies a close bond between political lead
ers and led” (Knight, 1998, p. 227).
“A political communication style of political actors that refers to the people” (Jagers &
Walgrave, 2007, p. 322).
Populism as Ideology
“Any creed or movement based on the following major premise: virtue resides in the sim
ple people, who are the overwhelming majority, and in their collective traditions” (Wiles,
1969, p. 166).
“Populism in modern democratic societies is best seen as an appeal to ‘the people’

against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values of the
society” (Canovan, 1999, p. 3).
“A [thin-centered] ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two ho
mogenous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite,’ and which
argues that politics should be the expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the
people” (Mudde, 2004, p. 543; 2007).
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“A thin-centered ideology which advocates the sovereign rule of the people as a homoge
neous body” (Abts & Rummens, 2007, p. 409).
“An ideology which pits a virtuous and homogenous people against a set of elites and dan
gerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sov
ereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice” (Albertazzi & McDon
nell, 2008, p. 3).
Populism as Discourse
“Populism consists in the presentation of popular-democratic interpellations6 as a syn
thetic-antagonistic complex with respect to the dominant ideology” (Laclau, 1977, pp.
172–173).
“A language whose speakers conceive of ordinary people as a noble assemblage not

bounded narrowly by class, view their elite opponents as self-serving and undemocratic,
and seek to mobilize the former against the latter” (Kazin, 1995, p. 1).
“A style of political mobilization based on strong rhetorical appeals to the people and
crowd action on behalf of a leader. [. . .] It is a rhetoric that constructs politics as a moral
and ethical struggle between el pueblo and the oligarchy” (de la Torre, 2000, p. 4).
“A Manichaean discourse that identifies Good with a unified will of the people and Evil
with a conspiring elite” (Hawkins, 2009, p. 1042).
Populism as Strategy
“A political strategy through which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government
power based on direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of
mostly unorganized followers” (Weyland, 2001, p. 14).
“A mass movement led by an outsider or maverick seeking to gain or maintain power by

using anti-establishment appeals and plebiscitarian linkages” (Barr, 2009, p. 44).
Populism as Political Culture

Populism is “the proposition that government policy should be what the people want and
that the people are free when their wishes are law” (Riker, 1982, p. 238).
“An interpretation of democracy made from within a republican structure and perspective
of government and politics” (Urbinati, 2013, p. 141).
Populism as Omnibus Concept

“Populism is a dimension of political action, susceptible to syncretism with all forms of
movements and all types of governments. [. . .] Whether dimension or style rather than
ideology or form of mobilization, populism is so elastic and indeterminate as to discour
age all attempts at a rigorous definition” (Taguieff, 1995, p. 25).
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Notes:
(1.) For the true aficionados, a summary of the conference proceedings appeared in 1968
under the title “To Define Populism” (Government and Opposition, 3(2), pp. 137–179),
while a complete transcript of the proceedings is to be found in the library of the LSE un
der the title “London School of Economics Conference on Populism, May 20–21, 1967:
Verbatim Report,” shelf mark HN 17 C74.
(2.) An elitist is supposed to argue against “the volonté genérale of the people” (Mudde,
2004, p. 543); contend that the masses are “immoral,” degenerate, or somehow inferior;
and try “depriving the [allegedly] sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity,
identity and voice” (Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2008, p. 3). But who in our contemporary
mass democracy is such a vile elitist? If we cannot find any (and I personally see none),
we obviously run out of cases and are thus left with an embarrass de pauverté.
(3.) When compared with other contemporary democratic populist parties around the
world, PASOK easily scores the highest rates in terms of party longevity, electoral suc
cess, duration in office, and ideological hegemony in society. Founded in 1974 by charis
matic Andreas Papandreou, it has enjoyed a long and continuous political life full of elec
toral breakthroughs (it won 48.2% of the national vote in 1981 and was still in command
of an impressive 44% by the elections of 2009). In the last four decades, PASOK has ruled
Greece for 23 years (21 singlehandedly and only 2 as a coalition partner). And, perhaps
most importantly, PASOK imposed its ideological hegemony upon Greek society at the ex
pense of political liberalism. For these reasons, PASOK approximates the ideal type of
populist party and deserves more scrutiny by students of comparative populism.
(4.) Paradoxically, Mudde’s (2004) definition of populism, which is based on the existence
of a moral social majority allegedly antagonizing an “immoral” elitist minority in society,
bespeaks a deeply anti-democratic state of political affairs since majority rule (to be dis
tinguished from the principle of majority) excludes from power—and, indeed, from all pol
itics—minority groups, those often being perceived as wicked, morally degenerate, cor
rupt, or otherwise inferior.
(5.) This same term has been used in the past to describe analytically distinct empirical
phenomena and, therefore, with different meanings. Perhaps the earliest use of the term
was made by Fareed Zakaria with reference to democratically elected governments that
are, however, soft on the protection of the their citizens’ civil liberties—a phenomenon he
identifies with the politics of several nations around the world ranging “from modest of
fenders like Argentina to near tyrannies like Kazakhstan and Belarus, with countries like
Romania and Bangladesh in between” (Zakaria, 1997, p. 23). This author’s illiberal
democracy, therefore, presents just as another “diminished subtype” of democracy (Col
lier & Levitsky, 1997), which, besides its loose empirical application, is of questionable
analytical value. Another author who has used the term in a more suggestive, yet concep
tually unspecified, way is Ivan Krastev, a specialist on Central and Eastern European poli
tics, who has proposed “democratic illiberalism” as a “major [and quite dangerous] trend
of the modern political world” that gives priority to “building capitalism over building
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democracy” (Krastev, 2007, p. 62). Still, although for Krastev democratic illiberalism is
distinct from populism, they may work in tandem to produce their catastrophic results:
“The liberal era that began in Central Europe in 1989 has come to an end. Populism and
illiberalism are tearing the region apart” (Krastev, 2007, p. 56). For our own purposes, by
far the most apposite mention to “democratic illiberalism” was made by Hungary’s pop
ulist Prime Minister Victor Orbán when, in a speech in July 2014, he described his views
about the future of his country as a purely illiberal state. Here are his exact words: “And
so in this sense the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a
non-liberal state. It does not reject the fundamental principles of liberalism such as free
dom, and I could list a few more, but it does not make this ideology the central element of
state organization, but instead includes a different, special, national approach” (Orbán,
2014).
(6.) As explained in Mouzelis (1986, pp. 88–89), interpellations are “ideologies which call
on, or interpellate, people as class subjects.”
Takis S. Pappas
Department of Political Science, Central European University
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Modern Populism: Research Advances, Conceptual and Methodological Pit­

falls, and the Minimal Definition

Modern Populism: Research Advances, Conceptual and

Summary and Keywords

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Conceptual and Methodological Pitfalls

Unspecified Empirical Universe (The Summum Genus Problem)

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Poor Data and Inattention to Crucial Cases

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The Minimal Definition

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Fourth, as a result of both spatiotemporal context-specificity and a clear intension, our

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Figure 1. Three types of parties/political forces in

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Appendix: Main Definitions of Populism

“[T]he political mobilization of mass constituencies by personalistic leaders who chal­

“Populism in modern democratic societies is best seen as an appeal to ‘the people’

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“A language whose speakers conceive of ordinary people as a noble assemblage not

“A mass movement led by an outsider or maverick seeking to gain or maintain power by

Populism as Political Culture

Populism as Omnibus Concept

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Arditi, B. (2004). Populism as a spectre of democracy: A response to Canovan. Political

Basurto, J. (1999). Populism in Mexico: From Cárdenas to Cuauhtémoc. In M. L. Conniff

Canovan, M. (1981). Populism. London: Junction Books.

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Conniff, M. L. (Ed.). (1999b). Populism in Latin America. Tuscaloosa: University of Alaba­

de la Torre, C. (2013). Technocratic populism in Ecuador. Journal of Democracy, 24(3),

Di Tella, T. S. (1990). Latin American Politics. A Theoretical Approach. Austin: University

Elster, J. (1993). Political psychology. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Germani, G. (1978). Authoritarianism, fascism, and national populism. New Brunswick,

Gerring, J. (1997). Ideology: A definitional analysis. Political Research Quarterly, 50(4),

Gerring, J. (2001). Social science methodology: A unified framework. Cambridge, U.K.:

date: 05 March 2020

Hawkins, K. A. (2009). Is Chavez populist? Measuring populist discourse in comparative

Hempel, C. G. (1952). Fundamentals of concept formation in empirical science. Chicago:

Jansen, R. S. (2011). Populist mobilization: A new theoretical approach to populism. Socio­

Knight, A. (1990). Revolutionary project, recalcitrant people: Mexico 1910–1940. In Jaime

Knight, A. (1994). Cardenismo: Juggernaut or jalopy. Journal of Latin American Studies,

date: 05 March 2020

Laclau, E. (1977). Politics and ideology in Marxist Theory; capitalism—fascism—populism.

Laclau, E. (2005). On populist reason. London: Verso.

MacRae, D. (1969). Populism as an ideology. In G. Ionescu & E. Gellner (Eds.), Populism:

Malloy, J. (1977). Authoritarianism and corporatism in Latin America. In J. Malloy (Ed.),

O’Donnell, G. (1973). Modernization and bureauratic authoritarianism. Studies in South

date: 05 March 2020

Pappas, T. S. (2013). Why Greece failed. Journal of Democracy, 24(2), 31–45.

Pappas, T. S. (2014a). Populism and crisis politics in Greece. Houndmills, Basingstoke,

Pappas, T. S. (2014b). Populist democracies: Post-authoritarian Greece and post-commu­

Modern Populism: Research Advances, Conceptual and Methodological Pit

“[T]he political mobilization of mass constituencies by personalistic leaders who chal

Conniff, M. L. (Ed.). (1999b). Populism in Latin America. Tuscaloosa: University of Alaba

Jansen, R. S. (2011). Populist mobilization: A new theoretical approach to populism. Socio

Pappas, T. S. (2014b). Populist democracies: Post-authoritarian Greece and post-commu

Roberts, K. M. (2015). Populism, political mobilization, and crises of political representa