Introduction -- Who did what?: establishing outcomes -- The social context of action: economy, infrastructure, and social organization -- The political context of action: collective actor formation in a dynamic political field -- The sources of political innovation: habit, experience, and deliberation -- Practicing populist mobilization: experimentation, imitation, and excitation -- The routinization of political innovation: resonance, recognition, and repetition -- Conclusion

While much of the political science literature on populism focuses on key political actors within the party system, a good deal less attention has been paid to forms of populist contention that feature ordinary citizens protesting against elite rule and championing the cause of 'the People' around the world. Populist Mobilization redresses this imbalance and presents a novel theoretical framework for the study of grassroots populist movements by integrating Laclauian discourse analysis with collective action frame theory. Aslanidis examines two widely influential movements that emerged from the protest cycle of the Great Recession: the Icelandic Pots and Pans Revolution and the Greek indignados. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with activists and an extensive analysis of the movements' paper trail and audiovisual material, he explores organizational aspects, processes of collective action framing, the construction of collective identities, and the influence of cultural elements. Additionally, the author embarks on a historical exploration of the intellectual roots of populism to dispel the pejorative connotations attached to the concept and advocates for a collaboration between sociologists and political scientists on a comprehensive research agenda for the populist phenomenon that transcends the institutional and non-institutional divide.

Politicians and political parties are for the most part limited by habit—they recycle tried-and-true strategies, draw on models from the past, and mimic others in the present. But in rare moments politicians break with routine and try something new. Drawing on pragmatist theories of social action, Revolutionizing Repertoires sets out to examine what happens when the repertoire of practices available to political actors is dramatically reconfigured. Taking as his case study the development of a distinctively Latin American style of populist mobilization, Robert S. Jansen analyzes the Peruvian presidential election of 1931. He finds that, ultimately, populist mobilization emerged in the country at this time because newly empowered outsiders recognized the limitations of routine political practice and understood how to modify, transpose, invent, and recombine practices in a whole new way. Suggesting striking parallels to the recent populist turn in global politics, Revolutionizing Repertoires offers new insights not only to historians of Peru but also to scholars of historical sociology and comparative politics, and to anyone interested in the social and political origins of populism.

Summary: Covers Tamil Nadu, India

When it comes to explaining the origins of electoral populism in the United States, we often look to the characteristics and conditions of voters, overlooking the reasons why populist candidates emerge in the first place. In The Making of the Populist Movement, Adam Slez argues that the rise of electoral populism in the American West was a strategic response to a political environment in which the configuration of positions was literally locked in place, precluding the success of new contenders or otherwise marginal competitors. Combining traditional forms of historical inquiry with innovations in network analysis and spatial statistics, he shows how the expansion of state and market drove the push for market regulation in southern Dakota, where an insurgent farmers' movement looked to third-party alternatives as a means of affecting change. In the context of western settlement, the struggle for political power was synonymous with the struggle for position in an emerging urban hierarchy. As inequities in the spatial distribution of resources became more pronounced, appeals to agrarian populism became a powerful political tool with which to wage partisan war. Offering a fresh take on the origins of electoral populism in the United States, The Making of the Populist Movement contributes to our understanding of political action by explicitly linking the evolution of the political field to the transformation of physical space through concerted action on the part of elites.

Populist Mobilization presents a novel theoretical framework for the study of grassroots populist movements and examines two case studies from the protest cycle of the Great Recession: the Icelandic Pots and Pans Revolution and the Greek indignados.

Populism is a central concept in the current media debates about politics and elections. However, like most political buzzwords, the term often floats from one meaning to another, and both social scientists and journalists use it to denote diverse phenomena. What is populism really? Who are the populist leaders? And what is the relationship between populism and democracy? This book answers these questions in a simple and persuasive way, offering a swift guide to populism in theory and practice. Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser present populism as an ideology that divides society into two antagonistic camps, the "pure people" versus the "corrupt elite," and that privileges the general will of the people above all else. They illustrate the practical power of this ideology through a survey of representative populist movements of the modern era: European right-wing parties, left-wing presidents in Latin America, and the Tea Party movement in the United States. The authors delve into the ambivalent personalities of charismatic populist leaders such as Juan Domingo Péron, H. Ross Perot, Jean-Marie le Pen, Silvio Berlusconi, and Hugo Chávez. If the strong male leader embodies the mainstream form of populism, many resolute women, such as Eva Péron, Pauline Hanson, and Sarah Palin, have also succeeded in building a populist status, often by exploiting gendered notions of society. Although populism is ultimately part of democracy, populist movements constitute an increasing challenge to democratic politics. Comparing political trends across different countries, this compelling book debates what the long-term consequences of this challenge could be, as it turns the spotlight on the bewildering effect of populism on today's political and social life.