The nation is increasingly defined in terms of threats from outside. It’s the thinking behind Donald Trump’s vow to build a wall to increase security along the border with Mexico.
Tony Webster/flickr
The idea that societies equal nation-states, neat containers that can be closed off from outside threats, is powerful. The nationalist paradigm even has a hold over many critics of its politics.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel campaigns in front of a banner that reads: ‘Crime by immigration: a flood of refugees leaves its mark!’
Axel Schmidt/Reuters
Current events show that the old problem of populism is making a comeback, and that populism is indeed an autoimmune disease of our age of monitory democracy.
Is populism a poison or a cure for democracy, or both, depending on the circumstances?
Louis Boilly/Wikipedia Commons
We’re not sure if the cure, the populist outsider, will work and make life better. but we are willing to experiment as the old certainties of representative politics wither.
Why are communities that need government’s help seemingly rejecting it on principle?
Susan E Adams/flickr
Ambivalence among voters is reason to think about how democracy is working for us as a community. To keep democracy alive we need to be sceptical about the exercise of power and keep it in check.
Populism celebrates laypeople without offering them any real autonomy or integrity.
Geoff Livingston/flickr
Populist politics would appear to have left deliberative democracy by the wayside, but innovations that engage citizens in reasoned decision-making have much to offer.
A portrait of US President-elect Donald Trump guards a residential backyard in Iowa, complete with lights and security cameras.
Tony Webster/flickr
The better-to-do and the established of civil and political society have become complacent and deaf to ‘those at the bottom’. The working class has gone over to the right-wing populists.
Donald Trump is the latest example of populism’s return to the global political landscape. Nine scholars from seven countries examine the link between populism and democracy.
Donald Trump is often described as a populist leader.
Reuters/Carlo Allegri
In this special The Conversation project, scholars and commentators from around the world examine the rise of populism, and its implications, now and into the future.
Tea Party supporters have been demanding to be heard for a long time.
Valerie Hinjosa/flickr
We are witnessing the global rise of populism. Once seen as a fringe phenomenon from another era or only certain parts of the world, populism is a mainstay of politics today across the globe.
There is no better alternative than the rise of the populist left for Europe and beyond.
The People's Assembly Against Austerity
The future of democracy depends on developing a left-wing populism that can revive public interest by mobilising political passions in the fight for an alternative to neoliberal de-democratisation.
Professor of Comparative Political Science and Democracy Research at the Humboldt University Berlin; Associate of the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney; Director of Research Unit Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.