Populist Tradition

The Populist Tradition: A Critical-Historic Approach offers a new approach to studying “populism”, treating it not as a negative, but as a concept that demands popular participation in democracy, whether self-organised or representative.

Leading specialists in democratic populism from around the world and across disciplines come together to reconnect present-day populism with its past to grasp the anti-democratic roots of the current critique of populism to better redefine it. Historically, they seek to counter the current unanimity on the antidemocratic nature of populism’s origins with examples that show its historic ambivalence and democratic radicalism. Sociologically, they draw on past examples and concepts to understand current movements and regimes. This excursus into the forms of democratic populism in Western and non-Western societies, today and in the past, allows us to formulate several hypotheses about the presence or absence of the demos in contemporary democracies. They demonstrate, from their examination of this tenacious political phenomenon, the ways in which the people can intervene in post-democratic societies.

This crucial reappraisal is recommended for scholars in history, political sciences and sociology, as well as anyone interested in revisiting populism’s historical trajectories and socio-political dynamics.

Déborah Cohen is Senior Lecturer of Early-Modern French History at Rouen University, France. She is a specialist in the popular history of France, covering the modern period and the Revolution. She works on the forms of political participation by the dominated classes and has just completed a project on civic denunciation during the French Revolution, as a form of surveillance of possible abuses and excesses by governments.

Federico Tarragoni is Professor of Political Sociology at Caen University, France and Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). He is a leading specialist in populism, on which he has introduced an innovative socio-historical approach. He also works on contemporary democratic activism in square-occupying movements (Indignados, Occupy Wall Street, Nuit debout, Aganaktisménoi). He received the Schneider Aguirre Basualdo Prize in Social Sciences from the Chancellerie des Universités de Paris and was formerly Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University Paris Cité.