Populism is often defined as an ideology that opposes two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, ‘the common people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’. Populists are seen as a negative image of what liberal democracy is supposed to be: intolerant and refusing pluralism. Other definitions insist on the mobilization and empowerment of the people that populist politics makes possible. The well-known scholar Chantal Mouffe, the leading theoretician of left-wing populism, will debate with Federico Taragoni, who has recently published a book on the issue (L'esprit démocratique du populisme, 2019). They will discuss the concept and the state of populism at the beginning of the 2020s.
