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John B. Judis, The Populist Explosion. How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2016, 182 pages
Review by Cristina MATIUTA
Debates on populism have intensified in recent years, with the rise of populism movements that are a challenge to political stability and democracy across Europe and in the United States. As political scientist Cas Mudde points out (in his book Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2007), in its original form, populism is an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups- "the pure people" and "the corrupt elite"- and argues that politics should be an expression of the "general will" of the people. And if until couple of years ago there was a consensus among elites on the left and right that populism is inherently bad, more recently there are voices arguing that populism is good for democracy (and eventually it is liberalism that is the real problem).
The book of John B. Judis, The Populist Explosion. How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, briefly review here, is very useful for understanding the significance of populism, its roots, how it appears on the left and on the right and how it works. The book is structured in six chapters, examining the rise and the spread of populism in the United States and European countries. In introduction, trying to answer the questions "What is populism and why is it important?", the author emphasizes that populism cannot be defined in terms of right, left of center, because "it is not an ideology, but a political logic- a way of thinking about the politics" (p. 14). There are rightwing, leftwing and centrist populist parties. An important feature of the populist parties is that they often function as warning signs of political crisis, arising in circumstances when people see the prevailing political norms as being in contradiction with their...