Takis S. Pappas has a PhD from Yale University and is a comparative political science researcher and writer affiliated with the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is the author of Making Party Democracy in Greece (Macmillan,1999),Populism and Crisis Politics in Greece (Palgrave, 2014), and the co-editor of European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession (ECPR, 2015).

• List of Figures List of Tables List of Political Parties Introduction Part I: Populism In Theory 1: What is Populism? 1.1: The Epistemology of Populism 1.2: Dealing with Deficient Premises 1.3: The Minimal Definition 1.4: The Overall Framework of Analysis 2: How to Distinguish Populists from Non-Populists? 2.1: Understanding Liberalism 2.2: Why Populism Matters 2.3: Spotting the Populists 2.4: Telling Non-Populists Apart 3: What Causes Populism? 3.1: The "Ordinary" People 3.2: Extraordinary Leadership 3.3: Symbolic Politics 3.4: The Causal Model Part II: Populism In Action 4: How and Where does Populism Thrive? 4.1: Populism Ascendant: Seven Positive Cases 4.2: Populism Evaded: Two Negative Cases 4.3: New Kid in Town: United States 2016 5: How do Populists Govern? 5.1: Power Seizure 5.2: The Illiberal Project: A Rationalization 6: Who is the Populist Voter? 6.1: Inside the Populist Mind 6.2: An Empirical Illustration: Greece 2015 7: How Does Populism Endanger Democracy? 7.1: Populist Pathways 7.2: Populism Resisted Glossary of Key Terms Bibliography Index

The book analyzes basic concepts of populism and the populist phenomenon and mainly tries to connect the theoretical analysis with populist governmental practices...The book analyzes the phenomenon of populism mainly based on the liberalism/antiliberalism distinction. Essentially, it is an attempt to systematize the dominant view, which considers democratically legitimized political majorities dangerous for individual rights, democratic institutions, and economic and political normality.