Paradoxes of Populism

A study of the rising popularity of populism and the misconceptions surrounding it

"Paradoxes of Populism" discusses the fantasies, promises and contradictions of populism as also its backgrounds and causes. While demonstrating the many varieties of populism, the book explains its rising popularity and steers the reader through the many myths and misconceptions surrounding it.

“Paradoxes of Populism” argues that populism, far-from-random similarities with ordinary manifestations of nationalism, should be approached not as a venture into the classical structures of nation-states and identities, but as a disruptive and destabilizing consequence of some of the constituent elements of sovereign nation-states becoming eroded and prised apart by contextual global processes and their agents. The book demonstrates that populism, in its many varieties, is riddled with even more paradoxes and inconsistencies than mainstream nationalism itself––confusing causes and appearances, realities and fantasies and turning the world inside out. This book definitively engages with real-world challenges that the age of populism, the Second Coming of Nationalism, poses in liberal democracies states as well as their political and cultural interpretations in the populist fantasia.