New Perspectives on Populism

Populism has taken the world by storm―but what is it? In this volume, twelve political scientists and political theorists approach this question from a variety of new perspectives, empirical and theoretic, covering populism around the world. In addition to chapters on populism in Eastern Europe and Britain, six authors analyse populism in the United States, treating it, variously, as a reaction against technocracy, a form of technocracy, a manifestation of regional and class norms, a violent ideological import, and (potentially) a progressive democratic phenomenon. All the contributors attempt to understand populists on their own terms rather than reducing populism to a psychological or structural phenomenon.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Critical Review.

Jeffrey Friedman, the Editor of Critical Review, is a visiting scholar in the Social Studies program at Harvard University, USA. He has taught political theory at Barnard College, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, and Yale University, and is the author of Power Without Knowledge: A Critique of Technocracy (2019).