Populism as a political strategy

This chapter presents the political-strategic approach to populism in its conceptual development and theoretical provenance, especially its roots in Weber’s analysis of charismatic leadership. I consider recent contributions and examine the approach’s advantages vis-à-vis alternative frameworks, especially the broad, heterogeneous set of ideational and discursive approaches. Subsequent sections highlight the political-strategic approach’s special benefits during the current wave of populism. Now that in so many countries populist leaders have become chief executives, it is especially important to go beyond investigations of populists’ rhetorical appeals and understand how they actually govern, extend their power and thus endanger liberal democracy. Demonstrating its heuristic value, the political-strategic conceptualization suggests many conjectures and hypotheses about these topics. Most importantly, populist leaders incessantly challenge and threaten democracy - but they manage to do serious damage to liberal pluralism only under specific, restrictive conditions. Thus, populism’s effective threat to democracy is not as severe as recent observers fear.