Defining populism

Jan-Werner Mueller suggests we should gain a common understanding of it:

So is a populist simply a successful politician one doesn’t like? Can the charge of “populism” itself be populist? I would argue that populism is not about a particular social base (such as the lower-middle class or what the French call les classes populaires), but is rather a form of political imaginary. It’s a way of seeing the political world that opposes a fully unified—but essentially fictional—people against small minorities who are put outside the authentic people.

It is a hallmark of populism—and a structural one, independent of any particular national context or policy issue—that it construes an “unhealthy coalition” between an elite that doesn’t really belong and marginal groups that don’t really belong either.