Populism: Origins and Alternative Policy Responses (Paperback or Softback)

Populist movements, parties and leaders have gained influence in many countries, disrupting long-established patterns of party competition, impugning the legitimacy of representative institutions and sometimes actively weakening or coarsening government capabilities. By positing an acute contrast between the will of the people and established elites, and advocating simplistic policy solutions careless of minority rights, populists have challenged the development and even the maintenance of liberal democracy on many fronts.

Social scientists' attention to populism has grown rapidly, although it remains somewhat fragmented across disciplines. Many questions remain. Are populism's causes economic or cultural? National or local? Is populism a threat to liberal democracy? If so, what kind of threat? And what can be done about it? Employing a range of conceptual toolkits and methods, this interdisciplinary book addresses in a critical and evidence-based way the most common diagnoses of populism's causes, consequences and policy antidotes.

Professor Andrés Velasco is Professor of Public Policy and Dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics. He is also a Research Fellow of CEPR and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Earlier he held professorial roles at the Harvard Kennedy School, Columbia University and New York University. He served as the Minister of Finance of Chile between 2006 and 2010. In 2017-18 he was a member of the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.

Dr Irene Bucelli is a Research Officer at the LSE School of Public Policy and programme coordinator for the Beveridge 2.0: Redefining the Social Contract. She is also a Research Officer at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (LSE) where her research focuses on multidimensional inequality, poverty and deprivation.