Populism

Abstract

This chapter presents the state of the art of the scholarship on populism. It offers a concise history of populism and the current scholarship on the topic. It argues that the substantial body of work that now exists has entered the mainstream of the political science discipline. However, this work has too often been fragmented and regionally specific. The chapter then offers an empirical analysis of the development of the scholarship since the 1990s by examining the work on populism in political science journals. We lay out the organization and rationale for the chapters in the Handbook and conclude with some reflections on the future research agenda on populism.