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Populists are everywhere. They win elections and found successful new political parties; they are the subject of hand-wringing by newspaper columnists and pundits; and they are the focus of a cottage industry of academic experts and analysts that mushroomed after the 2016 Brexit vote and the election of U.S. president Donald Trump. After a wave of support for populists swept across Europe in the 2010s, analysts scrambled to identify the causes. They found them in the economic crises that began in 2008; in rising income and wealth inequality; and in racism, a backlash against immigration, and the grievances of a forgotten working class.
Yet these factors are neither individually necessary nor jointly sufficient causes. What is missing is the story of how political elites across the ideological spectrum failed the voters. Mainstream parties on both the center-left and the center-right have failed to articulate distinct policy alternatives that responded to the concerns of the electorate in Europe over the past decades. This not only created political opportunities for populists, but also validated their claims that elites had grown unresponsive and that the public and its concerns needed better representation. As if that were not enough, traditional party electorates and newer constituencies began finding themselves at odds on a range of issues, and mainstream parties on both the left and the right now face internal tensions that only compound their inability to articulate coherent policies.
Populist parties and movements make two claims: first, that political elites are self-serving, indistinguishable, and indifferent; and, second, that populists, partly in order to rectify this situation, need to represent an organic "people" or nation rather than specific interests or groups. In Cas Mudde's widely used definition, populism "considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, 'the pure people' versus 'the corrupt elite', and . . . argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people."1 Populist parties thus assume that the "people" have a common interest, a general will whose realization ought to be the aim of politics. Accordingly, populists demand popular sovereignty and direct democracy rather than interest mediation through democratic institutions such as parliaments or parties. Examples of populists range from parties of the nativist...