How to Distinguish Populists from Non-Populists?

Abstract

Chapter 2 discusses how to classify populist parties and clearly distinguish them from other types of parties they are often confused with. It begins by contrasting modern populism specifically with the variant of liberalism that developed in postwar Europe and the Americas, and then goes on to offer a rationalization of the need to study populism as one of only three available alternatives for organizing polity—the other two being liberalism and autocracy. Deriving from the minimal definition of populism as democratic illiberalism, the last two sections offer comprehensive classifications of parties that are populist and those that are not—the latter promptly being relegated to the distinct categories of antidemocratic, nativist, or regionalist and secessionist parties.