Concepts In The Social Sciences: Populism

Populism is a widely used concept but it is rarely fully understood. For a term which appears so frequently in both popular and specialist writing, the social sciences have given it remarkably little attention. In this lively and engaging book, Paul Taggart surveys the field and concludes that populism has suffered from being considered usually in relation to particular contexts and has therefore become a rather fractured and elusive concept in general terms. To remedy this, the author introduces several themes which illuminate populism across different historical and contemporary cases. He provides a new definition of po9pulism, a survey of other difinitions and perspectives, and guide to populist politics around the world, including the United States, Russia, Latin America, Western Europe and Canada.