What if we are still missing the true nature of populism? In the end, the heady refrain of editorials and opinion columns has lost its fundamental entomology. In this well-documented book, Federico Tarragoni presents a new theory on this phenomenon which everyone seems to be talking about, without anyone knowing exactly what it is.
The author bases himself on a new point of view to arrive at a fundamental discovery: populism has nothing to do with demagogy, nationalism and totalitarianism. It is a radically democratic ideology of representative liberal democracies, with its own logic and internal contradictions. Its flag bearers in modern Europe are neither Berlusconi, Erdogan, Orbán, nor Marine Le Pen, but Podemos, Syriza, France Insoumise or the Five Star Movement.
Federico Tarragoni is an associate professor of sociology at the Université Paris-Diderot. He is the author of L’Énigme révolutionnaire (The revolutionary enigma) (Prairies ordinaires, 2015) and Sociologies de l’individu (Sociologies of the individual) (La Découverte, 2018), and is a specialist on social movements between Latin America and France.