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In democratic regimes, the conventional wisdom underlying economic rationality is that it challenges political rationality & what is good in economics may not be good in politics. Populism as an instrument of political mobilisation tries to keep a balance between these two divergences. Political populism is, quite often, considered as an impediment to attaining fiscal discipline in democratic regimes as it is used as an instrument for sustaining political & electoral support of diverse social groups through certain policies & programmes. This article analyses the politics of populism in the era of economic reforms & the crisis of the developmental state in India. References. Adapted from the source document.

"Populism," a key trope of our times, is sometimes a term of analysis and critique, but more often a label of disparagement and blame. While many activists claim to be " of the people" or " for the people," most would think twice about dubbing themselves "populist" as such. Yet it is precisely the slipperiness of the term that makes it so productive in political rhetoric. Why the increasing appeal of the trope? Given its widespread, contentious deployment, can it retain any usefulness as a tool of analysis—even critical engagement? Drawing on a range of current examples, the author argues (1) that populism in some form is a necessary condition of all antiestablishment movements, progressive or conservative; (2) that it is in itself never enough to fuel sustained, politically constructive mobilization; and (3) that in all these respects, populism seems to be taking on particular, disquieting features in late modern times.

Again and again, Latin America has seen the populist scenario played to an unfortunate end. Upon gaining power, populist governments attempt to revive the economy through massive spending. After an initial recovery, inflation reemerges and the government responds with wage an price controls. Shortages, overvaluation, burgeoning deficits, and capital flight soon precipitate economic crisis, with a subsequent collapse of the populist regime. The lessons of this experience are especially valuable for countries in Eastern Europe, as they face major political and economic decisions. Economists and

Last Sunday, August 13, Argentina held elections to determine the candidates who will run in next October's national presidential elections. In a surprising turn of events, the far-right candidate Javier Milei, an outsider that started in politics around 2019, surged ahead in the preliminary elections, sending shockwaves through Argentina's political landscape which has traditionally favoured left-wing populism. In this blogpost, I argue that disillusionment with political establishment, extremely high inflation and crime are core reasons driving Milei's surprise success at the ballot box.

Populism comes in many guises. Both Berlusconis personalization of politics and the Northern Leagues anti-immigrant regionalist movement are viewed as examples of the phenomenon of populism. A type of left-wing populism embodied by Hugo Chavez swept across Latin America. Insurgent and anti-system movements and parties in places as different as the Netherlands, India, Norway, Thailand, Russia and the United States have experienced what have been labeled populists movements. Such varied manifestations beg the question: what is populism? The objective of this edited volume is to provide an answer by examining "the many faces of populism." The unifying element across the different explorations of the phenomenon of populism is that there is a shared genus that allows for a typology of the different faces of populism and a demarcation of what is not a form of populism

As the articles in this Symposium suggest, populism and authoritarianism present ongoing challenges not only to liberal democracy but also to its legal underpinnings. Manipulation, avoidance, evasion, and outright rejection of the constitutional and legal frameworks of liberal democracy are features of populist authoritarianism. The basic argument of this article is that liberal-democratic public law and legal theory no longer satisfy human needs and desires because they were conceived in worlds that no longer exist, when the main pre-occupation was to secure liberty, not equality. The aim of the article is to explain the inherited structure of our public law and theory and the main events and developments that have produced this mismatch between public law and social aspiration.

The article presents the relational, socio-cultural approach to populism, also referred to by some as "performative". The approach claims phenomenological validity cross-regionally and is complex enough to provide a theory of populism and its subjective logic, while minimal enough to be used handily by other scholars. Populism is not a set of decontesting ideas or "ideology", but a way of being and acting in politics, embodying in discourse and praxis the culturally popular and "from here", in an antagonistic and mobilizational way against its opposite, together with personalism as a concrete mode of authority. Defined in the most synthetic way, populism is the flaunting of what I typologically call the "low". I also argue that civilizational projects of different kinds create a distasteful "unpresentable other"; populists then claim that this Other is nothing less than the true Self of the nation, its "authentic" people, disregarded in that process. Relatedly, the article introduces the general populist scheme of contending forces, present cross-regionally and in left as well as right populisms, with "the people" facing a three-way coalition: a nefarious minority Otherized; global forces strongly playing in favor of it; a government in line with that minority or alliance. Populism extolls the national pleb "as is" and promise to reconcile the nation with itself by making the plebs the whole. The cultural component of populism should be domesticated by political scientists, since it has deep roots in cleavage formation theory, the sociology of distinction, and updated Gramscian and Weberian sociopolitical analyses.

The Israeli democratic system is facing a serious crisis. After five rounds of parliamentary elections within three and a half years, Benjamin Netanyahu was able to forge a relatively strong coalition in late 2022. The political instability, however, did not end and instead morphed into widespread protests against the new cabinet seeking to pass a judicial reform. The meltdown is accompanied by incessant populist rhetoric stemming from Israeli right-wing parties which formed the coalition. Populism is inherent in a great number of countries around the globe. Israel is no exception in this regard. The phenomenon has been gradually taking a central place in its political arena since the 1970s. Currently, most major Israeli parties have certain populist elements in their rhetoric. This is in many ways a consequence of the heterogeneity of Israeli society and a plethora of its intersectoral contradictions. They have constituted an integral part of the state from its inception only to grow deeper. The unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an additional contributing factor. Right-wing populist parties possess a lot of traits that resemble similar movements in other countries, but at the same time are defined by their own specific features. In particular, they often combine inclusionary and exclusionary populism. By "us" these movements imply mainly the Jews and counterpose themselves to the Arab population in the country, as well as non-Jewish migrants. They also prioritize the Jewish character of the state over the democratic one, though without denying the importance of democratic structures. Concurrently, right-wing populist actors envisage their implementation in a different way. Even if they are not the reason for the parliamentary crisis in Israel, they still exacerbate it instigating further escalation in already considerable intersectoral tensions and narrowing opportunities for dialogue with other political actors.

Why write people's histories in our age of populism? Much of the original appeal of the genre derived from the marginality its subject once occupied in public life. Ordinary lives were hardly mentioned in school textbooks; popular culture was assigned to the bottom of the nation's hierarchy of values; and popular politics was either criminalised or disciplined to fit national voting patterns in states ruled by bullet and ballot alike. Defining the people naturally set the fault lines between liberal, conservative and socialist practitioners of the genre. J.R. Green's late nineteenth-century prototype – A Short History of the English People – presented a liberal story of social change, from the landing of Hengist to the battle of Waterloo. It incorporated the entirety of social life mushrooming beneath the deeds of kings, in all its evolutionary splendor. On the continent, notably in Central and Eastern Europe, the people would often feature in ethnic garb, in histories of national liberation or imperial projection. Yet it was Marxism, broadly conceived, that provided the most enduring template for people's histories, at least in the Anglosphere, from A.L. Morton's pioneering A People's History of England onwards. Extended beyond strictly national boundaries to topics such as modern Europe or even the world, two recent people's histories written in this vein, both taking their motto from Brecht's Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters, filter their subject through class struggle and offer a narrative of freedom from want in which a vast labouring multitude toils, suffers and rebels across ages. However, political outlook and epistemological commitments aside, for the past century people's history has claimed to restore to the people its own past, often one of misery at the hands of elites yet one all the more dignified for that reason. Do any of these coordinates still obtain today? Is not the current glorification of ordinary lives, popular culture and politics the bread and butter of populism?

The contemporary debate on 21st century populism centres on a term ("populism") that can be flled with multiple meanings. It provides the social sciences with a "meta-concept" that offers coherence to disciplinary discourses. In the 21st century, globalization and cosmopolitanism are often viewed as an irresistible force by intellectuals, with advocacy of cosmopolitanism becoming commonplace. For the most part, the academic community has only belatedly and reluctantly decided to address the electoral success of political parties that reject the political consensus of the post-1989 "New World Order". In sharp contrast to the intellectuals' stance, the empirical evidence suggests that it is localism (and not cosmopolitanism) that has been on the rise in recent decades. Glocalization is connected to the formation of varied collective responses and representations, thereby giving rise to the mutually defined pair of cosmopolitanism and localism. The cosmopolitanism–localism binary relationship is a result (or outcome) of glocalization. However, the majority of social-scientifc perspectives do not give proper consideration to the notion of "local". The notions of localization and de-globalization as part of post-Great Recession trends are discussed. The extent to which these can rectify shortcomings in current theorizing is explored.

Starting with the nationalist and anticolonial movements of the early 20th century, youth have played an important role in political life in the modern Middle East. But despite their importance, youth often go unrecognized as a category of analysis. In this episode, we speak with historian Dylan Baun about his work on youth politics in interwar Lebanon, exploring the rituals and political practices of groups like Kata'ib (Phalange) and the Progressive Socialist Party which would become key actors in the fighting of 1958 and later on, in the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990. We learn how young people forged political community both through and beyond sectarian violence, a phenomenon that Dr. Baun argues became strongly associated with rebellious youth.

Populists are often excluded from political life on the basis that they are too emotional. Both social movements as well as political parties who are labelled as populist are accused of using demagoguery and manipulation in order to attract support and new membership. Often, these critiques emanate from the political establishment, creating a division between emotional and rational actors in politics. In this article, I argue that instead of seeing populism as a nominal or ordinal category, we should look at how the term itself has performative properties. The article is interested in how populism as a concept is used as a tool for exclusion, and how being 'too emotional' is used as justification for excluding certain actors. This article first contends that this perspective is endemic to political and social theory, and has long been utilised to marginalise women, non-Europeans, or young people. Second, the article demonstrates how this perspective also pervades much of contemporary studies on populism, which do not sufficiently recognise the political implications of employing a strict divide between emotion and reason. Third, the article further contends that by using a Laclauian framework which sees politics as equal to hegemony as equal to populism, one can conclude that populist actors are no different from other political actors; emotions and affects are always central to any political identity. Instead, the division between emotional and rational in politics serves to sediments exclusionary practices against newcomers and challengers of the status quo. I conclude by using the Laclauian framework, focus can be turned to the performative function of populism, and its political implications.