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Political leadership and populism

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posted on 2023-06-08, 12:43 authored by Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Cas Mudde
Populism has appeared in different times and places. Allegedly, one of the few commonalities between all the different manifestations of populism is the existence of a charismatic and strong leader, who is able to mobilize the masses and control the political organization behind him. In this chapter we have argued instead that this type of leadership is not a defining attribute of populism. We defined populism as an ideology or worldview, which assumes that society is characterized by a Manichean division between ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite.’ This means that populism is not always constructed from above, i.e. by a powerful leader; many societies count a significant number of people who believe in the populist set of ideas, irrespective of the presence of a populist leader. In fact, populism exists with various types of leadership and can even be leaderless. In short, the link between political leadership and populism is much more complicated as much of the literature suggests and deserves more careful attention.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Pages

795.0

Book title

The Oxford handbook of political leadership

ISBN

9780199653881

Series

Oxford handbooks in politics and international relations

Department affiliated with

  • Politics Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

R A W Rhodes, Paul T Hart

Legacy Posted Date

2013-03-11

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