Introduction

Abstract

Populism and democracy represent two sides of the same coin as neither of them can subsist without referring to the 'sovereign people'. The success of populist movements and parties often gains momentum through the development of some kind of parallel public opinions without critical control by intellectuals and scholars. Inquiring into right-wing populism means, therefore, establishing an analytical typology of the different historical and geographical forms of populism. Instead of describing populism directly, different contributions focus on the assessment of the major consequences of the populist mobilisation. The rise of hybrid regimes represents the utter consequence of populist mobilisation and a starting point for the development of open authoritarianism. Populism can be understood as a symptom of a wider crisis of legitimation affecting democratic political systems that demands examination as to which extent its development depends on the depletion of the welfare state, the deregulation of the markets and the deconstruction of political culture that characterised the last decades.