Doing Research on Populism

Matthijs Rooduijn argues that the focus on populism has become a self-perpetuating process, with whole research groups, conferences and journals dedicated to the topic. To help the public get a better understanding of populism, Rooduijn and other colleagues collaborated with The Guardian to produce an investigative series of articles on populism, a project that also led to the creation of The PopuList, which, thanks to country experts, categorises European political parties as populist, far right, far left and/or Eurosceptic. Rooduijn then describes the latest developments in the field, the current trends, and the fruitful contaminations between populism research and other fields.