Populism

A style of politics, not a fixed ideology

Less a fixed ideology than a style of politics that frames society as a struggle between “the ordinary people” and a self-serving elite, and claims to speak for the former. It appears on the left and the right.

Scholars often define populism by a thin core: a moral division of society into a pure “people” and a corrupt “elite,” plus the claim that politics should express the people's general will. That core attaches to very different host ideologies. Left populism tends to target economic elites and favour redistribution; right populism tends to target cultural or political elites and to emphasise national identity and immigration.

Because it is defined by a framing rather than a programme, populism is one of the harder things for a media-literacy tool to summarise neutrally — the same event can be cast as “the people versus the establishment” from opposite directions. It is also a contested label, often used by opponents as a criticism.

Thinkers often cited

Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser (contemporary scholars of the concept)
Ernesto Laclau (a theorist of left populism)

Internal disagreements

Left populism (economic elites, redistribution)
Right populism (cultural / political elites, national identity)

Common misconceptions

That populism is inherently anti-democratic — scholars disagree; some see it as a corrective to unresponsive institutions, others as a threat to minority rights and checks and balances.
That it is a single movement — it is a recurring style that different movements adopt.

Read further

Encyclopædia Britannica — “Populism” — Reference-encyclopedia overview.
Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, “Populism: A Very Short Introduction” (OUP) — Publisher page for a widely used scholarly primer (neutral).
The Guardian — “The new populism” project — Journalistic series (left-of-centre outlet) tracking populist movements worldwide.

Links were checked when this was written. The web changes — if one is broken, search the same title. Primary sources are labelled with the perspective they represent; neutral references come first.

This describes a tradition; it doesn’t endorse one. Prism uses these write-ups to keep its five framings recognisable to the people who actually hold each position. See how Prism works for what that does and doesn’t claim.