What is populism - lecture by Jan-Werner Mueller

Populism is used as an umbrella term for different movements. But there is a confusion about what populism actually is.

The lecture proposes a theory of populism which identifies the political category as both anti-elitist and anti-pluralist.

Mueller devides his lecture in 4 parts:
1. The dead ends of populism
2. How to capture populism in a nutshell
3. What populism in power means
4. Unanswered issues about populism

Mueller claims that populists are anti-elitist, but that could not be the only criteria. As everybody who would be critical about the established world would be a populist. So there has to be something more, he calls it the populist core claim. Which is the claim of the populist, that he/she/they only truely represent “the people”.