This is a major contribution to the scholarship on populism. Methodologically rigorous and geographically wide-ranging, the essays in this volume present the latest research and analysis on a topic of compelling importance for understanding European—and world—politics both in the recent past and in the urgent present. This carefully organised collection combines theoretical insights with richly detailed case studies and in so doing captures the complexity of a political phenomenon too often depicted in simplistic, caricatured terms. Finally, populism is getting the serious attention it deserves.
Daniel Scroop, University of Glasgow, UK
Seldom does a book give its readers such broad coverage (three continents), temporal range (19th century to the present), and depth of analysis as <i>Transformations of Populism in Europe and the Americas</i>, especially on a topic as contested as this. The editors and authors, mostly mature scholars with lots of monographs on their shelves, achieve an amazing degree of coherence despite their differences in training and approach. The introduction sets the reader on a clear path, with a balanced “populist minimum,” or synthetic definition drawing on most contributions. It also provides an overview of the chapters that follow. Bravo!
Michael Conniff, San José State University, USA
This is an important book for understanding the changing faces of populism. Populism means, and meant, different things at different times. The book provides a multilayered approach that illuminates the perspectives and limits of the concept. The different authors analyze the national, regional and global variations of populism in the past and the present, providing key dimensions of the current debates about its more progressive, repressive and conservative formations in Europe, the United States and Latin America.
Federico Finchelstein, The New School, USA