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Although there is a lively academic debate about contemporary populism in Europe and Latin America, almost no cross-regional research exists on this topic. This article aims to fill this gap by showing that a minimal and ideological definition of populism permits us to analyse current expressions of populism in both regions. Moreover, based on a comparison of four prototypical cases (FN/Le Pen and FPÖ/Haider in Europe and PSUV/Chávez and MAS/Morales in Latin America), we show that it is possible to identify two regional subtypes of populism: exclusionary populism in Europe and inclusionary populism in Latin America.

Academics are increasingly using the concept of populism to make sense of current events such as the Brexit referendum and the Trump presidency. This is certainly a welcome development, but two shortcomings can be observed in the contemporary debate. On one hand, new populism scholars often start from scratch and do not build upon the existing research. On the other hand, those who have been doing comparative research on populism stay in their comfort zone and thus do not try to link their work to other academic fields. In this article, we address these two shortcomings by discussing some of the advantages of the so-called ideational approach to the comparative study of populism and by pointing out four avenues of future research, which are closely related to some of the contributions of this special issue, namely, (a) economic anxiety, (b) cultural backlash, (c) the tension between responsiveness and responsibility, and (d) (negative) partisanship and polarization.

There are three different types of populist mobilization: personalist leadership, social movement, and political party, although some populist actors have aspects of two or three. Personalist leadership is more prevalent in certain regions, such as Latin America. Social movements are more common in America, and political parties are the paradigmatic type of populist mobilization in much of Europe. “Populism and mobilization” concludes by considering why some types of populist mobilization are more prevalent in certain places than in others and asking: do these different types of populist mobilization have an impact on the electoral success of populism?

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Two images of populism are well-established: it is either labelled as a pathological political phenomenon, or it is regarded as the most authentic form of political representation. In this article I argue that it is more fruitful to categorize populism as an ambivalence that, depending on the case, may constitute a threat to or a corrective for democracy. Unfolding my argument, I offer a roadmap for the understanding of the diverse and usually conflicting approaches to studying the relation between populism and democracy. In particular, three main approaches are identified and discussed: the liberal, the radical and the minimal. I stress that the latter is the most promising of them for the study of the ambivalent relationship between populism and democracy. In fact, the minimal approach does not imply a specific concept of democracy, and facilitates the undertaking of cross-regional comparisons. This helps to recognize that populism interacts differently with the two dimensions of democracy that Robert Dahl distinguished: while populism might well represent a democratic corrective in terms of inclusiveness, it also might become a democratic threat concerning public contestation.

Although the study of populism has traditionally been the domain of Latin Americanists, research here has become increasingly comparative. One of the most important payoffs of this comparative work is conceptual. Rather than defining populism in structuralist, economic, or political-strategic terms, a growing number of scholars around the world are using an ideational conceptualization that draws heavily from earlier discursive theories. By employing the ideational approach, scholars have been able to provide empirical measures of populist discourse. In this article we explain and show the advantages of this ideational approach to a Latin American audience by presenting a new historical dataset measuring the discourse of Argentine, Chilean, and Peruvian presidents across the twentieth century. Our main intent is to clarify the ideational approach as well as to enliven the conceptual debate. While we are critical of alternative definitions, we acknowledge and reassess their theoretical insights.Aun cuando el estudio del populismo ha sido tradicionalmente un campo de los latinoamericanistas, la investigación al respecto se ha vuelto cada vez más comparativa. Uno de los beneficios más importantes de los trabajos comparados es conceptual. En vez de definir al populismo en términos estructurales, económicos o político-estratégicos, un creciente número de académicos alrededor del mundo utilizan una conceptualización ideacional vinculada con previas teorías discursivas. Mediante el uso del enfoque ideacional académicos han sido capaces de proveer mediciones empíricas de discurso populista. En este artículo explicamos y mostramos las ventajas del enfoque ideacional mediante la discusión de una nueva base de datos que mide el discurso de los presidentes de Argentina, Chile y Perú durante el siglo veinte. Nuestra principal intensión es clarificar el enfoque ideacional y a su vez avivar el debate conceptual. Si bien es cierto que somos críticos de definiciones alternativas, reconocemos y reconsideramos sus aportes teóricos.

In consonance with much of the existing scholarship, this chapter develops an ideational approach to the study of populism. Furthermore, it proposes a minimal concept of populism that can be used to analyse populist forces across time and space. According to this minimal concept, populism is defined as a thin-centred ideology, which is based not only on the Manichean distinction between ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’, but also on the defence of popular sovereignty at any cost. The chapter also examines the most common subtypes of populism and sheds light on current examples of populism in North and South America as well as in Eastern and Western Europe. Lastly, the article discusses the complex relationship that populism maintains with democracy, nationalism, and gender.