A Bibliometric and Visual Analysis of Populism Research (2000–2020)

Abstract

The 21st century has seen a revival of populism in politics worldwide. Although scholars in different fields have extensively investigated populism, the term remains controversial and fragmentary. This article uses the bibliometric method to analyze the scientific production, critical points, and main trends of studies on populism from 2000 to 2020 based on the literature retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection, to better understand relevant themes and issues and conduct a comparative study. Populism research shows a general upward trend in three stages and covers a wide range of disciplines, with political science contributing the largest number of publications and sociology sharing the closest links with other subjects. Two relatively large cooperation groups of institutions were found in European countries, but cross-region links between institutions are weak. No relatively stable and large academic teams have been formed between political scholars, and low cooperation exists between prolific scholars in different disciplines. Literature with high co-citation counts are mainly conceptual and comparative studies, and research hotspots include the relationship between populism and democracy, the polarization of populism, and national populism. We believe that future research may shift focus to polarization, European populism, and political trust.