Recommended by Ece Özbey, RevDem Global Editor, CEU DI Populism Hub
Here are five book recommendations on populism published in 2024, which I believe merit widespread attention and discussion.
Kurt Weyland, Democracy’s Resilience to Populism’s Threat: Countering Global Alarmism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
In his timely and thought-provoking study, Kurt Weyland offers a markedly different perspective on populist politics, moving beyond familiar horror stories of democratic collapse. Drawing on a rich comparative analysis of populist chief executives across Latin America, Europe, and the U.S. experience over three decades, Weyland demonstrates that although populism indeed poses dangers, democracy’s demise is neither as frequent nor as straightforward as many fear. His rigorous, evidence-based examination suggests that each instance of democratic breakdown depends on unique, challenging conditions—enormous revenue booms for left-wing populists and extraordinary crisis-management feats for right-wing ones. Absent these rare advantages, populist threats fail to take root, and democracy perseveres. By illuminating how and why most democratic regimes withstand populist pressures, this book provides essential insights into the robustness of political systems and offers grounds for measured optimism about democracy’s future.
Angelos Chryssogelos, Eliza Tanner Hawkins, Kirk A. Hawkins, Levente Littvay, and Nina Wiesehomeier (eds.), The Ideational Approach to Populism, Volume II Consequences and Mitigation. New York, NY: Routledge, 2024.
Building on the influential first volume that established key conceptual, theoretical, and methodological foundations, this new edited collection assembles prominent experts to refine and extend the ideational approach, offering a powerful framework for understanding populism’s real-world implications. Rather than focusing on personalities, movements, or strategies alone, it zeroes in on how core populist ideas shape institutions, influence voters, alter international relations, and inspire both containment and mitigation efforts. Covering a broad range of cases and geographical contexts, contributors provide systematic, data-driven insights, demonstrating that defining populism ideationally leads to more accurate predictions about its distinct impacts. Eschewing broad-brush alarms, the book charts how targeted policies and refined communication strategies can counteract populism’s most pernicious effects, establishing itself as an indispensable guide amid amid the current surge in scholarly and public interest in populism. You can find the RemDem virtual roundtable discussion on the meaning(s) of populism here as well as the podcast on its role in the most recent U.S. elections here.
Michael Bernhard, Amie Kreppel, and Carlos de la Torre (eds.), Still the Age of Populism? Re-examining Theories and Concepts. New York, NY: Routledge, 2024.
In this edited collection, distinguished scholars from comparative politics, political sociology, and cultural studies join forces to reassess populism’s evolving meanings and capacity to reshape democracy in today’s rapidly changing global landscape. Drawing on an array of theoretical perspectives and enriched by wide-ranging case studies, the book higlights the structural, institutional and cultural drivers of populist movements. While revisiting classical questions and longstanding debates that have historically shaped the field, the contributors also explore populism’s entanglement with crucial issues such as climate change, religion, immigration, and reproductive rights, demonstarting how these matters play out under populist leaders in diverse political environments. Rather than delivering a single, definitive verdict, the book probes whether populism heralds the erosion or reinvigoration of democratic norms—and what futures may unfold beyond populist moments.
Yannis Stavrakakis and Giorgos Katsambekis (eds.), Research Handbook on Populism. Gloucestershire: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024.
This comprehensive research handbook stands out by drawing together an exceptionally wide range of perspectives and methodologies, transcending the usual confines of political science and comparative politics. Organized into distinct thematic sections, it not only traces populism’s conceptual foundations and historical lineages, but also ventures into novel terrains, such as the intersections of pouplism with colonialism, emotions, and charisma, as well as how populism permeates realms like arts, music, and digital spheres. Contributors tackle the complexity of populism’s manifestations—left and right, in government and opposition, national and transnational—while spotlighting emerging research agendas on constitutional dimensions, cross-border diffusion, and responses to global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. They likewise embrace methodologically innovative approaches, from psychoanalytic theorization to ethnographic fieldwork, offering new tools and perspectives for future inquiry. In doing so, this handbook equips scholars, students, and practitioners with a vital roadmap for navigating the evolving contours of populist politics.
Paris Aslanidis, Populist Mobilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.
Paris Aslanidis dedicates his first monograph to address the analytical imbalance in populism research, by foregrounding long-neglected non-institutional aspects of populist mobilization. As an alternative to conventional, top-down party-system-level analyses, Aslanidis focuses on how ordinary citizens—through grassroot social movements—construct, negotiate, and strategically deploy populist frames in streets and public squares to rally against ambiguously-defined elite rule. He traces the intellectual history of populism’s conceptual evolution within Cold War liberalism, reframing populism as a legitimate language of protest rather than a pathological force. Building on Laclau’s post-structuralist theory and American symbolic interactionism, Aslanidis presents a novel theoretical framework for analyzing grassroots populism as a collective action frame. To illustrate its real-world applicability, he examines two distinct cases from the Great Recession protest cycle: the Icelandic Pots and Pans Revolution and the Greek Indignados—one featuring identifiable leaders, the other leaderless—drawing on interviews and diverse movement materials. Ultimately, Aslanidis’ book offers an empirical blueprint for investigating populist social mobilizations worldwide, bolstering the claim that studying populism demands a thoroughly interdisciplinary approach.
