Modern Populism: Research Advances, Conceptual and Methodological Pitfalls, and the Minimal Definition (original) (raw)

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 urgent need of a comprehensive general theory that will be able to capture the phenomenon specifically within the context of our contemporary democracies. This requires our breaking away from recurring methodological pitfalls and, above all, rethinking about a truly minimal definition of populism. This article has three goals. First, it offers an overview of the ways various scholars have treated, and advanced, over recent decades “populism” both empirically and theoretically. Second, it identifies a number of – mostly methodological – shortcomings that in many instances have beset the study of populism: (i) unspecified empirical universe, (ii) lack of historical and cultural context specificity, (iii) essentialism, (iv) conceptual stretching, (v) unclear negative pole, (vi) degreeism, (vii) defective observable-measurable indicators, (viii) a neglect of micro-mechanisms, (ix) poor data and inattention to crucial cases, and (x) normative indeterminacy. Third, in an explicit attempt to cure the foregoing shortcomings, this article proposes a minimal definition of modern populism as democratic illiberalism. This novel re-conceptualization of populism is expected to lead to a more conceptually sensitive and methodologically solid comparative study of the phenomenon at a time when the malfunctioning and pathologies of our modern-day representative democracies are all too visible and sorely felt.