In 2016 the world seemed to change in the space of six months: Brexit in June, Duterte in the Philippines in July, Trump in November. Then Bolsonaro in Brazil, Modi consolidating in India, Meloni in Italy, Milei in Argentina, Wilders topping the polls in the Netherlands, Le Pen closing the gap in France. Different countries, different cultures, different economies — but strikingly similar rhetoric: 'the real people' against 'the corrupt elite', national sovereignty against globalist institutions, common sense against expert consensus, protection against immigration, tradition against progressivism. This is populism as a global political style, and it now shapes electoral politics in every major democracy. Cas Mudde's definition remains the cleanest: populism is a 'thin ideology' that divides society into two morally opposed camps — the pure people versus the corrupt elite — and argues that politics should express the general will of the people directly, without the mediation of institutions.
The wave has real causes. First, the 2008 financial crisis destroyed the technocratic legitimacy of the centre-left and centre-right parties that presided over it — banks were bailed out, ordinary savers were not, and the political class that engineered the response paid almost no electoral price. Second, the China shock and automation gutted industrial regions across the West, hollowing out the towns that had voted Labour, SPD, Democrat or Christian Democrat for generations. Third, the migration and refugee waves — Mediterranean 2015, US southern border, Ukrainian displacement — collided with genuine cultural anxiety in ageing, majority-white electorates. Populists did not create these shocks; they read them faster and named villains for them. Where the establishment offered technocratic incrementalism, the populists offered a story: you have been betrayed by people who look down on you, and I will punish them for it. That story wins, over and over.
Populism is not a synonym for the far right. Latin America produced the modern template — Perón in Argentina, Chávez in Venezuela, later Morales in Bolivia and López Obrador in Mexico — mostly on the left, mobilising the poor against oligarchic elites. Europe's 2010s crisis produced Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain from the left, and the AfD, FPÖ, Fidesz and Fratelli d'Italia from the right. What unites them is the vertical frame (people vs elite) rather than the horizontal one (left vs right on redistribution). What divides them is who counts as 'the people'. Left populism defines it economically — the workers, the poor, the many — and welcomes ethnic minorities and immigrants inside that coalition. Right populism defines it culturally and often ethnically — the native-born, the traditional, the majority — and treats immigrants as outside the nation. The right-wing variant has, at least in the 2020s, been dramatically more electorally successful.
Once in power, populist parties treat institutions the way a lawyer treats an inconvenient contract: as obstacles to be reinterpreted. Independent courts become 'unelected judges frustrating the will of the people'. Free press becomes 'fake news' and 'enemies of the people'. Central banks, statistical agencies, civil services, universities — anything that produces authoritative facts independent of the ruling party — become suspect. This is not incidental. If your entire legitimacy rests on being the true voice of the people, any institution that says you are wrong is by definition illegitimate. The result, tracked by Freedom House and V-Dem for a decade, is a measurable global decline in judicial independence, press freedom, and academic freedom, even in countries that still hold free elections. Populism does not usually kill democracy in a single blow. It corrodes the institutions that make democracy work over time — and often the corrosion outlasts the populist who caused it.