Donald Trump was President of the United States. His election sent shockwaves around the world. Not only because he was the host of a reality TV show prior to assuming office, but also because of his unhinged political style — widely described as populist — that castigated immigrants, trafficked in racist appeals, and embraced the vulgar and politically incorrect. His unhinged approach to politics sought to establish a connection directly with voters, “the forgotten people” as he likes to say, which was made easier by billions of dollars of unpaid media and a heedless use of social media, particularly Twitter. His emergence upon the political scene coincided with the rise of Democratic Socialist, Bernie Sanders. Sanders’s strong showing in the 2016 Democratic primaries, propelled by a fiery condemnation of the one percent and political class, and frontrunner status for the 2020 Democratic nomination has many convinced that America is amidst a populist moment.

America isn’t the only country contending with a populist upsurge. Across the globe, Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz argue, “populism is gaining ground” (Kendall-Taylor and Frantz 2016). Kendall-Taylor and Frantz, and many others, fear that the populist fervor is bad for democracy. Much of the literature on populism shares their anxiety. Mid-century analysts of populism were particularly disturbed by the phenomenon. In the landmark work, Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics (Ionescu and Gellner 1969), a cadre of high profile scholars took turns chronicling the perversities of populisms in all their forms. Later scholars, like Margaret Canovan and Paul Taggart assumed a more ambivalent relationship with populism, but focused instead on providing an adequate framework to even grapple with the elusive concept. Ernesto Laclau, tackling populism from a discourse analysis framework, was a more optimistic student of the subject. Cas Mudde, the most prominent contemporary scholar of populism shares some of the anxieties of previous scholars. Populism looks different in almost every one of these works. This speaks to the difficulty of pinning down the notoriously slippery concept. Over the years, populism has been described or defined as a syndrome, an ideology, a powerful reaction to a sense of extreme crisis, lacking in core values, as a chameleon, a movement, just to name a few. This essay will trace populism through some canonical works from its literature. Though a consensus definition of populism has yet to emerge, this essay will also examine works that seek operationalize the term for empirical analysis. 
 
 
Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics
 
The first systematic effort to analyze populism was constituted in the classic book, Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics. The opening salvo effectively captures the spirit of the work. Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Gellner introduce the collection of essays with trembling histrionics: “A spectre is haunting the world - populism” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 1). The work, in part a product of a conference on the topic held at the London School of Economics in 1967, boldly attempts to clarify the phenomenon of populism. To do so, the work brings together a legion of respected scholars to proposition the term from disparate vantages. Their effort centers on the ambition to give the concept definition. The first part of the book details various phenomenon around the world and throughout history widely described as populist. The second, and more interesting, part endeavors to bring coherence to the concept. The essays of Peter Wiles, Angus Stewart, Donald McRae, and Peter Wiles stand out as the most salient in the collection. Over the years, scholars have continually returned to this book, and particularly the essays of the aforementioned scholars. For these reasons, a thoroughgoing engagement with the following selection from Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics will be instructive. 
 
Donald MacRae’s contribution, Chapter 6, “Populism as an Ideology,” articulates a conception of populism very much in keeping with journalistic uses of populism. MacRae’s sense of populism as an ideology is more impressionistic than refined, in part, because he has “no ontology of ideology” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 153). This encompassing, amenable approach allows for MacRae to account for populism’s divergent and inconsistent features. In his description of populism as an ideology, MacRae posits that “populism is endowed by the idea of the sacred farm with a religious intensity and fervour” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 155). He describes populism as an “a-political” ideology, committed with the drive “to escape from the burden of history” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 157). MacRae’s charge implies that populist ideology is hysterical and backward. This allegation is reiterated when he describes both American and Russian populism as anti-Darwinian. By this he means that the two populisms “predicate that the best are not the fittest to survive unless enabled to do so by an apocalyptic act of restoration” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 158). MacRae’s assertion reveals his commitment to a distinct sense of progress that is purposive and desirable. In fact, he describes the populist vision as “repulsive” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 162).
 
The most fecund elements of MacRae’s essay rest in his identification of various paradoxical features of populist ideology— an approach that later scholars will take on with great alacrity. He describes populism as both radical and reactionary (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 159), suffused with items from intellectuals, but not intellectual (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 161), eager for state intervention, but distrustful of the state (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 162). Paradoxes are endemic to ideology, a feature that makes them flexible enough to account for the ambiguities and contradictions of populism. To MacRae, populism is an unrealistic belief system constructed to “console men in their real discontents and act as a charter for undefined but grandiose projects” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 164). Put differently, populism is a resource for the grieving men unable or unwilling to face the frustrations of reality.  
 
In Chapter 7 entitled, “A Syndrome, Not a Doctrine: Some Elementary Theses on Populism,” Peter Wiles bluntly characterizes populism as malady. From the outset, his politics on the matter are made clear. He writes, “to each his own definition of populism, according to the to the academic axe he grinds” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 166).  Though he positions himself as a disinterested observer of the subject, Wiles conceives of populism as an indeterminate disease with symptoms that he, the professional, is tasked with revealing. To make sense of this mystifying affliction, Wiles begins by establishing a specific definition. According to Wiles, “populism is any creed or movement based on the following major premise: virtue resides in the simple people, who are the overwhelming majority, and in their collective traditions” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 166). Wiles’s parsimonious definition, however, is too tight to encompass various exceptions; a fact he acknowledges (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 171).
 
To give his conception of populism substance, Wiles supplements his definition of populism with 24 characteristics that he claims are generally associated with the populist syndrome. The wide-ranging listicle contains the usual features of populist mythology. He posits that populism (1) is “moralistic rather than programmatic,” (4) “loosely organized and ill-disciplined: a movement rather than a party,” (7) “strongly opposed to the Establishment, and to the counter-elite as well,” (9) “avoids class war in the Marxist sense,” (10) “corrupted and bourgeisified by success,” (19) “religious, but it opposes the religious Establishment” though populist intellectuals “may be atheistic,” (21) “fundamentally nostalgic” and (24) “not to be thought of as bad” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 167–71). 
 
Wiles’s supplemental list of populist features does more to obfuscate and unmoor his conception of populism than it does to pin it down. As is evident from the selection of things that follow from his definition of populism, these qualities are often at odds, and sometimes in complete contradiction, with each other. Though he recognized that previous attempts to descriptively define populism failed to account for the wide-ranging elements of the phenomenon widely considered to be populist, he nevertheless falls prey to the inclination to construct a definition capable of handling the data that he commits to use. Consequently, his attempt at clarification yields confusion. However, his formulation is nevertheless instructive. By theorizing populism as malady, he explicitly demonstrates the predisposition of many scholars of the subject to think of populism as a contagion. 
 
Angus Stewart, in Chapter 8, “The Social Roots,” conceives of populism as “as the product of a certain type or types of social situation” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 180). The social situation Stewart has in mind is specific. Stewart argues that “populism emerges as a response to the problems posed by modernization and its consequences” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 180). From here, Stewart distinguishes between two types of responses, one “from the tension between backward countries and more advanced ones, and from the tension between developed and backward parts of the same country” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 181).  When underdeveloped societies are confronted by modernization, imposed upon them by the more powerful, the conditions for populism are met. Thus, Stewart argues, “populist mobilization represents attempts to revitalize integration on the basis of ‘traditional’ values” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 182). Stewart’s analysis moves away, to some degree, from the pathological conception of populism and instead conceives of the idea in more mechanistic terms. The anxiety about populism remains, however. Particularly, Stewart emphasizes the potential for populist movements to turn to authoritarian leaders (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 194–95).
 
Peter Worsley’s essay in Chapter 10, “The Concept of Populism” is perhaps the most clear-eyed in the entire book. He eschews the temptation to unify the various populisms under a “shared tradition” and contends that “its typological status is solely an analytical one” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 218). Such an approach could be interpreted as surrender, but Worsley is not so quick to abandon the project. After evaluating several prominent instances commonly conceived of as populist, Worsley asserts that “populism is better regarded as an emphasis, a dimension of political culture in general, not simply as a particular kind of overall ideological system or type of organization” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 245). For Worsley, populism speaks not only to the relationship between groups of people, “but, more widely, to popular participation in general” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 246). Worsley moves away from efforts to consolidate disparate characteristics of various populist phenomenon and toward an agnostic conception of populism that seeks to infuse a political system with popular participation. Worsley is considerably less anxious about populism than his contemporaries. He claims that populism is “neither democratic nor anti-democratic” but “is profoundly compatible with democracy” (Ionescu and Gellner 1969, 247).
 
 
Populism
 
Margaret Canovan’s Populism (1981) is predicated on a modest strategy that assumes that “we cannot hope to reduce to all cases of populism to a single definition or find a single essence behind all established uses of the term” (Canovan 1981, 7). Her review of the literature suggests a range of populisms that are not easily unified under the banner of one grand essence. Canovan’s goal is “not a single essentialist definition, but rather a typology of populisms” (Canovan 1981, 13). To begin, Canovan classifies two major families of populism: Agrarian populisms and Political populisms. Within the family of Agrarian Populism are three species of populism: farmers’ radicalism, peasant movements, and intellectual agrarian socialism. The family of Political populism is more encompassing and therefore contains even more species of populisms. Populist dictatorship, populist democracy, reactionary populism, and politicians’ populism are all types of Political Populisms. To complicate this even further, empirical examples of populisms that she identifies overlap several categories.
 
Canovan’s exhaustive work goes into great detail analyzing various populist phenomenon throughout history and around the world. Her first case, a study of the American populist movement in the late 19th century, is a “classic case of famers’ radicalism” (Canovan 1981, 58). She contends that the romantic populism of the narodniki is of the intellectual agrarian populism species. In this example, the movement was made up of radical elite, while the great mass of peasants were ambivalent to the aims of the movement (Canovan 1981, 60). According to Canovan, Agrarian Populisms are to be distinguished from Political Populisms. The four species of Political Populism are to be discerned by their predominating features. Populist dictatorship is characterized by “a charismatic leader who builds a dictatorship by appealing past the established elite and political system to ‘the people,’” while populist democracy is an ideology that aims “to give substance to the democratic ideal of ‘government of the people.’” Further, there exists a reactionary populism, that mobilizes “popular conservatism, ignorance, and prejudice in opposition to the progressive and enlightened views of the more educated and liberal elite.” Finally, she identifies a strain of populism she coins as politicians populism, which is “a style of political mobilization that endeavors to enlist as wide a constituency as possible” (Canovan 1981, 137).
 
Of the many types of populisms that Canovan presents, politicians’ populism is the richest and most interesting. Politicians’ populism is typically associated with “catch-all people’s parties” and ambiguous appeals to the people (Canovan 1981, 260–61). This is particularly interesting, as she notes, because these are qualities of both established and upstart parties in the United States and the United Kingdom (Canovan 1981, 262). Populist politicians stress harmony and attempt to transcend existing political divisions— in a sense, “appealing away from politics altogether” (Canovan 1981, 263). Canovan describes the unifying message espoused by populist politicians as a useful rhetorical political device “to ride to power on a fragile and temporary mood of popular harmony” (Canovan 1981, 268). Her examples of politicians’ populism are instructive. She examines figures like Jimmy Carter, Huey Long, and Charles De Gaulle. Their proximity to the mainstream of the political system is palpable. Canovan’s example of “catch-all people’s party,” the P.R.I. (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) held uninterrupted for generations up to and after the publication of Canovan’s work. Canovan’s politicians’ populism type, which includes “mainstream” political actors, moves us further away from the alien or pathological characterization of populism that was so predominant in Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics. At the same time, populism as presented in the work of Canovan, can be construed as ubiquitous rhetorical device available to out of power and in power politicians and parties. 
 
How useful is Canovan’s typology if most populist phenomena “belong in more than one category” (Canovan 1981, 289)? Canovan proffers a deductive reasoning for her families and species. However, this arbitrary taxonomy collapses under the weight of the empirical evidence she marshals. The rationale for her strategy is nevertheless apparent. By constructing a typology, Canovan is not attempting “to remove all of the ambiguities surrounding the term” of populism, rather her goal is to bring the fraught term some clarification (Canovan 1981, 301). On that front, her modest goal was realized. On another front, an achievement worthy of some celebration is the further excavation of populism from its relegation of the midcentury. 
 
 
The Populist Zeitgeist
 
In his article, “The Populist Zeitgeist” (2004), Cas Mudde endeavors to ensconce an empirical definition of populism. As such, Mudde, similar to others before him, defines populism as: 
 
“an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite,’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonte generele (general will) of the people. Populism, so defined, has two opposites: elitism and pluralism” (Mudde 2004, 543). 
 
Mudde’s conception of the people, are associated with the heartland (Mudde 2004, 546). In this sense, the people are an “imagined community,” an illusory conception, that isn’t really much of anything. Consequently, it is clearer to identify what populists are against (Mudde 2004, 546). Populists are frequently opposed to established parties that “corrupt the link between leaders and supporters, create artificial divisions within the homogeneous people, and put their own interests above those of the people” (Mudde 2004, 546). 
 
Mudde also attempts to uncover why populism has become ascendant in this age. Perhaps, he concedes, populism is motored by justified animosity toward a political elite that claims to place great importance on democracy but frequently enacts, often by nondemocratic means, policies that large swaths of people don’t support (Mudde 2004, 562). In this sense, Mudde posits, “rather than representative democracy, populism is inherently hostile to the idea of institutions of liberal democracy or constitutional democracy” (Mudde 2004, 561). Frustrated by non-democratic institutions, populism is fueled by what Mudde describes as the ‘democratic deficit’ (Mudde 2004, 561–62). This gap is further exacerbated by the fact that politicians are increasingly dissimilar to the average citizen (Mudde 2004, 553). This line of thinking is muddled by Mudde’s conjecture that populists support democracy but aren’t that interested in participatory democracy (Mudde 2004, 558). Populist supports seek out politicians who will surmise and act upon their will. Hence, according to Mudde, the populist tendency toward charismatic leadership (Mudde 2004, 560). 
 
 
On Populist Reason
 
Ernesto Laclau’s invigorating contribution to the populism literature, On Populist Reason, is both profound and difficult. The work skillfully and imaginatively eschews the logjam that befuddled the literature for so long. Laclau traces the genealogy of the concept of populism in an attempt to clear the impasse. He asks if the scholars of the topic are guided by “some unformulated political prejudices” (Laclau 2005, 10). Laclau painstakingly answers his own question. He begins by asserting that the questions that preoccupied previous analysts, such as whether populism is an ideology or movement, “is not only hopeless, but also irrelevant” (Laclau 2005, 13). Prior scholars, stricken with a bias against populism, conceived of the subject “in terms of abnormality, deviance” (Laclau 2005, 13). Laclau takes an alternative approach. First, he sets out to explain why the term has been denigrated, then he sets out to conceive of populism that is political vessel, filled with potential for political change. 
 
In the first part of his book, Laclau argues that mainstream scholars of populism were influenced by crowd psychology, a research area that traces back to Le Bon’s famous work, The Crowd. According to Laclau, early theorists of crowd psychology, exemplified in the work of Le Bon, were grounded by two assumptions: (1)”the dividing line between rational forms of social organization and mass phenomena coincides, to a large extent, with the frontier separating the normal from the pathological” and (2) “the distinction between rationality and irrationality would largely overlap with the distinction between the individual and the group” (Laclau 2005, 29). Furthermore, as Laclau demonstrates, crowd theorists postulated that crowds were extremely suggestible to the whims of a charismatic leaders, leaving the members susceptible to rash, contemptible behavior (Laclau 2005, 49). We can readily see how such a perspective would lead to the denigration of populism. Freud, Laclau posits, helped to upend these dichotomies, by blurring the line demarcating individual and social psychology (Laclau 2005, 52). Using Freud’s work, Laclau proposes a theory of leadership that demands that leaders must have something common with crowd membership. For Laclau, the crowd need not be something to fear.
 
In part two of On Populist Reason, Laclau postulates that “populism is the royal road to understanding something about the ontological constitution of the political as such” (Laclau 2005, 67). Discourse, empty signifiers, and rhetoric are integral to this constitution. By discourse, Laclau means “any complex of elements in which relations play the constitutive role” (Laclau 2005, 68). In this framework, things are defined relationally. That is to say, no term has a positive definition, but are only anything by contrast to what it is not. Empty signifiers are means to name impossible things to name, for our purposes, a collection of wide-ranging, heterogeneous demands that are logrolled together. From here, Laclau’s conception of populism becomes clearer. For him, populism is a means of “constituting the very unity of a group” (Laclau 2005, 73).
 
In a social world, people are related to each other as social agents. The smallest unit in Laclau’s political world is a social demand (Laclau 2005, 73). Individuals can issue claims that others can choose or choose not to satisfy. Necessarily, every demand is going to be different from all other demands. Thus, the table is set. Laclau articulates to preconditions for populism “(1) the formation of an internal antagonistic frontier separating the ‘people’ from power; and (2) an equivalence articulation of demands making the emergence of the people possible” (Laclau 2005, 74). Populism is a process of aggregating a plurality of heterogeneous demands in an equivalential chain, under the banner an empty signifier (e.g. the ‘people’), to compel an antagonistic other (e.g. the ‘elite’) to take some action. Laclau postulates the concept of the empty signifier as such:
            
“We mean that there is a place, within the system of signification, which is constitutively irrepresentable; in that sense it remains empty, but this is an emptiness which I can signify, because we are dealing with a void within signification”  (Laclau 2005, 105).
 
In this sense, the void of an empty signifier (e.g. populism or nationalism) is the source of its tractability.
 
Obviously Laclau’s approach to populism is far afield from the various analysts described previously. However, he does eventually express populism in a language we have come to associate with populism. He writes, “The crisis of representation which is at root of any populist anti-institutional outburst was clearly in embryo in the demands of the people” (Laclau 2005, 137). For him the manifestation of this “populism” is the product of the process described previously. Populism takes on a broader meaning in the work of Laclau. This is evident in his assertion “that the political operation par excellence is always going to be the construction of a ‘people’” (Laclau 2005, 153).
 
Laclau’s explication shares qualities with the implication of Canovan’s description of politicians’ populism. Harken back to Canovan’s examples of politicians’ populisms. She used two mainstream out-party challengers who won national elections and a dominant political party that had not been out of power in generations. What Laclau makes clear is that competition in constructing what constitutes the ‘people’ is the essence of politics. For Laclau, populism is a means for a transformative change. He writes:
 
“any political transformation implies not only a reconfiguration of already existing demands, but also the incorporation of new demands (that is, new historical actors) into the political scene — or its opposite: the exclusion of others who were previously present there” (Laclau 2005, 153–54).
 
Where others, such as MacRae and Wiles, looked at populism and saw pathology and malady, Laclau homed in populism’s potential for political regeneration. This is not to describe his work as a pollyannaish apologia for populism. Rather, his work depicts populism as a fundamental component of the political. 
 
 
Bernie and the Donald: A Comparison of Left- and Right-Wing Populist Discourse
 
The conceptual slipperiness of populism is unlikely to be ameliorated anytime soon. Fundamental to social scientific project is the compulsion to operationalize (sometimes contested) terms in such a way as to interrogate them systematically. Marcia Macaulay, in her contribution to Populist Discourse: International Perspectives (2018), attempts to do just that in her chapter entitled, “Bernie and the Donald: A Comparison of Left- and Right-Wing Populist Discourse.” In this essay, Macaulay recognizes both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump as populist political figures. As such, she contends that the two firebrands traffic in distinct, ideological populist discourses. Following Laclau, Macaulay posits that “language or ‘discourse’ is central to populism” (Macaulay 2018, 168). Such a conception of populism, that is, one that eschews typology or the identification of emic attributions, allows for an operationalization of populism that avoids the conceptual messiness endemic to the populism literature. 
 
As noted previously, Laclau’s conception of populism emphasizes how language, particularly, “empty signifiers,” are fundamental to the construction of a “people” that is more than mere rhetoric but in fact connotes the tangible social agents. The people, in this sense, are bound together as a collection by their heterogeneous, particular, demands of the ruling regime. In a populist discourse, these heterogeneous demands are collected under the banner of an “empty signifier.” Macaulay examines the Trump’s announcement speech and two speeches Sanders gave during the 2016 election to assess the appropriateness of the two candidate’s populist reputations. To do this, Macaulay uses Speech Act Theory to analyze the candidates’ “specific utterances” of their respective speeches (Macaulay 2018, 172). This type of analysis distinguishes speech acts into four types: assertives, expressives, directives, and commissives. 
 
An analysis of Trump’s announcement speech with this method yields some rather remarkable results. In his unhinged, blistering harangue, Trump issues a prodigious amount of assertives— nearly 80 percent.[1] Conversely, Trump makes issues very few commissive speech acts; a mere 6 percent of his speech acts commit him to a particular action or set of actions (Macaulay 2018, 173). Macaulay’s analysis depicts Trump’s announcement speech as a description of dystopian America, replete with unmet needs that that can only be satisfied if Trump is elected president (Macaulay 2018, 176). However, Trump’s election to the presidency is not only the means to realize the solutions to the unmet needs of the disaffected people, but is also an unmet need itself. In this way, Trump’s unmet need is integrated with the various unmet needs he articulates in his invective, which has the effect of consolidating Trump and the people he claims to represent (Macaulay 2018, 178). This process works to constitute a “people” by aggregating heterogeneous unmet needs under the banner of an empty signifier, in this case, “Making America Great Again.”
 
According to Macaulay's analysis, Bernie Sanders’s discursive style is in some ways very similar to Trump’s, while in other ways quite different. Like Trump, Sanders issues a striking number of assertive speech acts. In one speech, 71 percent of Sanders’ speech acts are assertive (Macaulay 2018, 182). Both Trump and Sanders painted a dire portrait of American life. Similar to but different than Trump, Sanders articulates a collection of unmet needs that emphasize economic disparities and an unconcerned power structure. However, Sanders’s and Trump’s preoccupation with unmet needs are not identical. Trump’s nativist polemic focused on the “enemy without,” while Sanders homed in more “on the enemy within” (Macaulay 2018, 185). The differences between the two politicians’ discursive approach don’t stop there. Sanders doesn’t position himself as a subject with an unmet need, rather his discourse reserves that role for his audience (Macaulay 2018, 184). The populist discourse Sanders utilizes constructs a “people” by quintessentially American populist means. The diverse unmet needs are articulated in patriotic terms which coalesce under the banner of the empty signifier Sanders describes as a “political revolution” (Macaulay 2018, 189). 
 
Macaulay’s analysis uses a Laclauan framework to present the discourses of both Sanders and Trump as populist by detailing how their speeches work to establish a “people” that are bound together by their heterogeneous, but similarly situated unmet needs. She describes how both politicians endeavor to bind the individuals of their audiences into whole, not only with each other, but with the leader as well. According to Macaulay, the populism of Sanders is “in keeping with American populism” (Macaulay 2018, 188). Trump’s populism, she argues, is of a more recent, right-wing vintage, that is characterized by anti-establishmentism, authoritarianism, and nativism (Macaulay 2018, 191). In doing so, Macaulay distinguishes the left-wing populism of Sanders and the right-wing populism of Trump.
 
Conclusion
 
A tour through the populism literature features some of the most quintessential quandaries of social science. As Margaret Canovan lamented, “no social scientist would deliberately invent” such an ambiguous term [populism], but we are obliged to contend with it because “it does exist” and it is “firmly ensconced in a number of languages, constantly used by scholars and journalists alike” (Canovan 1981, 301).  Unlike scholars of the physical sciences, social scientists must engage with living, mutable phenomenon that are often resistant to careful analysis. Social scientific inquiry is not only frustrated by the subjects, but also sometimes too by the analyst himself. As Laclau postulated, scholars of populism were blinded by their own biases of the subject. Perhaps they were, and then again, maybe he was the one who was biased. The point is that it's too easy to allow certain predilections to seep into one’s analysis, hindering the understanding one hopes to obtain. Nevertheless we continue to try, because populism is an endlessly fascinating subject.     

Works Cited
 
Canovan, Margaret. 1981. Populism. First edition. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Ionescu, Ghita, and Ernest Gellner, eds. 1969. Populism: Its Meanings and National Characteristics. 1st ed. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Kendall-Taylor, Andrea, and Erica Frantz. 2016. “How Democracies Fall Apart: Why Populism Is a Pathway to Autocracy.” Foreign Affairs.
Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reasoning. New York: Verso.
Macaulay, Marcia. 2018. “Bernie and the Donald: A Comparison of Left- and Right-Wing Populist Discourses.” In Populist Discourse: International Perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan, 220.
Mudde, Cas. 2004. “The Populist Zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition Ltd.
 

[1] “An assertion in Serlian terms is a speaker’s representation of the world as he or she believes it to be” (Macaulay 2018, 173).

A few years ago, I wrote a short story titled "Vlad the Illusionist" that was eventually published in Sliced Bread Magazine. It is a short read and interesting in many respects. There are several ideas in this story that remain a fascination of mine, including charisma, magic, and human connection.

You can read the story on the Slide Bread Magazine linked below: