The Complex Constructions of the People and the Leader in Populism

Abstract

T his essay questions assertions that conceptual debates on populism have for the most part been resolved, and that scholars should focus on empirical re-search to accumulate knowledge. While the cacophony of de fi nitions of the past has been reduced, there is still no agreement on what populism is. There are two broad epistemological approaches. Positivist-oriented scholars consider that populism is a phenomenon and a reality of the social world. They have developed minimal de fi nitions that can travel across time and space and de fi ne populism in contrast to what it is not. Non-positivist scholars argue that populism is a heuristic of the scholarly community, and that theory co-constitutes empirical reality. They refuse to reduce the complexity of populism to a de fi nition of one or two sentences, 1 argue that populism is a gradation and not a binary concept, 2 and contend that because the term is used to make normative arguments about democracy, citizenship, or national belonging it will continue to be contested.