The populist obsession: theories and problems

• Main Author: Dario Germani
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mimesis Edizioni, Milano 2020-02-01
• Series: Im@go. A Journal of the Social Imaginary
• Online Access: http://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/IMAGO/article/view/2395

Not a day goes by without a reference to populism both within the scientific community and within the political area, in addiction to the information field–to define the attitude or characteristics of parties, movements and political context as a whole, but the question of what it is and in what it actually consists is open, or better, very open. It seems to be most frequently characterized by the elements of anti- establishment sentiment, authoritarianism and nationalism. The populist philosophy tends to exalt the virtues of "ordinary people" in opposition to the elites (which include not only politicians, but also representatives of economic and financial powers and intellectuals) seen as corrupt and dishonest. The aim of this work is to overcome the ideological debate that a great part of literature seems to dedicate to the phenomenon, reconstructing its genesis through a bibliometric analysis to the point of conceptualizing it through the Theory of Action.