Review article
https://doi.org/10.5559/di.26.3.01
What is Populism and How to Explore It?
Berto Šalaj
; Faculty of Political Science, Zagreb
Marijana Grbeša
orcid.org/0000-0003-0050-9694
; Faculty of Political Science, Zagreb
Abstract
Populism has been vastly present in Croatian public discourse.
However, this is not the case with scientific discourse in which
this relevant phenomenon remained for the most part neglected.
Aspiring to encourage scientific curiosity about populism in
Croatia, this paper provides an overview and a synthesis of the
most important insights about populism from contemporary
literature. In doing so it focuses on two main issues. First is the
issue of understanding populism while the second is the issue of
methodology in researching populism. The authors consider an
approach that regards populism as a "thin" political ideology
potentially most productive. In the section that discusses
methodology, they focus on the problems of conceptualisation
and operationalisation in researching populism. The authors
advocate a conceptualisation which treats populism as a meta-
-ideology characterized by the simultaneous presence of its two
defining features: positive evaluation of the people and diffuse
political anti-elitism. Understanding populism as meta-ideology
enables hypothesizing about different types of populism, which
emerges as one of the most propulsive topics in the future
research of populism.
Keywords
populism; approaches to populism; "thin" political ideology; political meta-ideology; types of populism
Hrčak ID:
187727
URI
Publication date:
17.10.2017.
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