Abstract
This book is derived from a European Union (EU)-funded COST Action on populist political communication in Europe. It is of course timely not only because of the rise of varieties of populism in Europe and elsewhere but also because, in contrast to a voluminous literature on populism as a political phenomenon, there is surprisingly little work published on the communicative aspects of populism. This book seeks to develop a heuristic model for the analysis of populism from macro factors (e.g. unemployment, levels of migration) to the meso level of organizations (parties, movements, media institutions) to the micro level of individual citizens. Within that model, the book focuses on the communication strategies of populist political actors, how these actors are represented by media institutions and how citizens make sense of populist actors and media in their everyday lives. As such, the book develops a very sensible and comprehensive approach to populist communication seeking to situate it in a variety of contexts. This is followed by 24 chapters, each reviewing the literature on populist political communication in an individual country. These chapters provide useful summaries while fighting against some problems of definition: not only is populism a contested academic concept but also populism occurs in popular political discourse, mostly pejoratively but also very unevenly, across Europe. Thus, it is not clear whether what counts as populism in one country according to one author would count as populism in another country according to another author. That is why, of course, we need not only more analysis of populist political communication but also comparative analysis that is transnational in scope. If this COST Action ultimately stimulates such research, then it will make an important contribution to research on populism across Europe.