Description: This volume aims to generate a dialogue between scholarship on populism and social and political theory. It focuses on categories such as citizenship, class, gender, cleavages, sovereignty, accountability, participation, leadership, and parties, in both the Global North and South.
Review Quotes: "In the increasingly crowded field of populism studies, Carlos de la Torre and Oscar Mazzoleni have designed a collection that offers an innovative approach to its subject matter. Instead of the usual populism in this country or that or chapters that focus on parties, the contributions in this collection focus on core social and political concepts such as citizenship, sovereignty, gender, accountability, leadership. The resulting anthology is compact and cohesive. It enables us to see that populism is a concept that cannot be understood independently of its relation to other analytic frames. Scholars of populism will find this collection essential to developing a broader understanding of a form of politics which is now becoming global in its reach."
----MABEL BEREZIN, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of Institute for European Studies, Cornell University
"This book reacts against a literature on populism that has grown exponentially and is closely interrelated but has gradually become unable to relay to the broader contemporary debates in political science and political sociology, which, however, affect the interpretive relevance of the concept of populism. It does so from multiple perspectives showing how scholarship on such diverse issues as gender, elites, leadership, class, parties, and emotions provides needed context and analytical usefulness to the study of populism. The book then significantly broadens the relevance of populism as an emerging topic needed to understand the contemporary features of classic debates, such as those of the roots of political mobilisation and citizenship. At the same time, it redefines, actualises and expands these debates."
----CARLO RUZZA, Senior Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Trento, School of International Studies
"This new book edited by top populism experts Carlos de la Torre and Oscar Mazzoleni provides a fresh conceptual look at populism. Key authors in the fields promote a necessary interdisciplinary dialogue that makes populism part of a wider discussion in the Social Sciences. They move beyond insular and self- referential discussions in populism scholarship and connect it to broader conceptual global debates about the politics of the present. This excellent book is a must read for all those interested in past and present challenges to democracy."
----FEDERICO FINCHELSTEIN, Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College