The definitive introduction to populism

The field of populism studies can be overwhelming for any newcomer. Especially since the popularity of the term grew exponentially in recent years, prompting the emergence of a massive wave of new academic work, the mere task of keeping up to date has become a monumental one. More than this, research on populism is often loaded with implicit normative judgement and theoretical biases that are difficult to detect, even – or perhaps especially – to those deeply immersed in the literature. Benjamin Moffitt’s latest book Populism is a contribution to the Polity series ‘Key Concepts in Political Theory’, and it is undoubtedly the introductory work that I would recommend to those seeking to get a definitive overview of the discipline, equally to undergraduate students and to more experienced scholars. Writing with a clarity of prose that many of us in academia could learn from, Moffitt develops in this work a concise exploration of the conceptual debates on populism and, building from that, links them to five other fundamental concepts of political theory: nationalism and nativism, socialism, liberalism and democracy. In a remarkably synthetic format, he manages to tackle through each of these short chapters most of the central questions at the heart of the field and offers a nuanced overview of why studying populism matters and what it means more generally to the broader discipline of political studies.

Moffitt argues that what makes his book standout from other introductory accounts on the topic is that it is primarily grounded in political theory, and not prompted or guided by empirical concerns. While he is wary that theory can be a “dense and difficult lingua franca” (4), his bet proved successful as he managed to make even the most theoretically challenging jargon accessible. More than this, Moffitt is careful to constantly link each point he makes to relevant examples in an attempt to “illustrate, flesh out, challenge and make sense of the conceptual arguments at play” (5). At times, this concern to weave theory and practice leads him to rely excessively on examples, as is for instance the case of his discussion on populism at the sub-national (municipal and regional) level which is very light in theoretical analysis and ends up only superficially tackling the questions raised by mobilising ‘the people’ within the traditional unit of the nation-state. 

Especially given that he develops it in only one chapter, it is a real tour de force for Moffitt to summarise so concisely the main approaches to populism studies without sacrificing too much depth. Shifting from the position he adopted in his 2016 book, The Global Rise of Populism and getting closer to the collective direction established in the 2017 Oxford Handbook of Populism, Moffitt develops three overarching approaches to populism: ideational, strategic and discursive-performative, the latter of which combines under a broad church what he called in his earlier work ‘populism as a discourse’, ‘populism as a logic’ as well as his own ‘stylistic approach’ to populism. Urging not to give up definitional discussions as “irrelevant or as mere nitpicking” (11) which may be interpreted as a hegemonic move to monopolise the field, Moffitt’s book provides a heartfelt plea for theoretical eclecticism. Demonstrating that a rich and diverse conceptual debate is not the sign of an immature field of research, he convincingly argues that “the kind of phenomenon one thinks populism to be tends to reflect very different ontological, epistemological and methodological approaches to the subject” (ibid.). 

Although his work admittedly falls in what he calls the “discursive-performative approach” (21), Moffitt manages to strike a delicate balance in his comparative endeavour between impartial distance and his own biases that inevitably lead parts of his discussion, most notably his rejection of antipluralism in populism as a normative judgement (83) or his discussion of nationalism as a discourse (34). That said, this apparently balanced programme has its own limitations as the bulk of his analysis revolves on the contrast between ideational and discursiveperformative approaches, leaving the strategic approach surprisingly absent in later chapters – an absence that Moffitt willingly acknowledges, claiming that, in spite of its “great impact on the comparative literature on populism”, the strategic approach “is not taken up in the theoretical literature to a great extent” (28). 

Finally, what is most unique and refreshing about this book is the deft way Moffitt confronts populism to other concepts with which it is typically compared, conflated or contrasted. Not only is this book synthesising his own work on liberal illiberalism as well as the recent discussions on the need to separate populism from nativism, the fourth chapter on how populism relates to socialism is a welcome addition to a part of the literature that remains underdeveloped. Last, but certainly not least, the final chapter on democracy serves as an excellent conclusion that ties the whole book together by tackling the most important questions raised by populism in relationship to democratic politics. All in all, and in spite of some of its flaws that are hard to avoid within such an abridged format, Moffitt’s Populism is an impressive piece of scholarship that is both didactic and ambitious, with the potential to become a standard introduction to the study of populism.