Populism and Democracy: Challenge or Pathology?

The recent success of radical right-wing parties in Western democracies is quite amazing, given their unimpressive history in the post-war period. These new parties are sometimes referred to as ‘populist’ parties. It is not surprising then that this wave of populist politics has incited a renewed academic interest in populism as an empirical phenomenon and in populism as a concept. I will first look at the definitions of populism, as there is no consensus among the authors under review what parties are to be labelled populist. It is, for instance, not evident that the Dutch LPF is a populist party. Then I will discuss the explanations provided for the success of the new parties in Western democracies. I will argue that the focus is generally too confined to strictly social–economic and political factors. The role of the media and particularly of entrepreneurship should be taken into account in order to explain the success of populist parties. Finally, I will address the pros and cons of populism as an ideology. I will probe the arguments that populism is a challenge to democracy and conclude that the authors under review are too soft on populism.