1st Edition

New Perspectives on Populism

Edited By Jeffrey Friedman Copyright 2023

    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.

    1. Can the EU Stop Eastern Europe’s Illiberal Turn?

    Hilary Appel

    2. Populism and Presidential Representation

    Jeremy D. Bailey

    3. Populism in America: Christopher Lasch, bell hooks, and the Persistence of Democratic Possibility

    Will Barndt

    4. The Plague of Bannonism

    Ronald Beiner

    5. Populists as Technocrats

    Jeffrey Friedman

    6. Liberal Democracy, National Identity Boundaries, and Populist Entry Points

    Sara Wallace Goodman

    7. Brexit, Positional Populism, and the Declining Appeal of Valence Politics

    Colin Hay and Cyril Benoît

    8. Trump: New Populist or Old Democrat?

    Stephanie Muravchik and Jon A. Shields

    9. The Border Wall as a Populist Challenge

    Paulina Ochoa Espejo

    10. Of Scribes and Tribes: Progressive Politics and the Populist Challenge

    Bernard Yack

    Biography

    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).