ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how a general differentiation made between two waves of research. In the first wave starting in the 1990s and continuing into the early 2000sthe scholarly emphasis was on exclusionary populism, whereas in the second wave, which picked up in the early 2000s, scholars have started to emphasize anti-elitist tendencies, or what can be labelled anti-elitist populism in Jagers and Walgraves typology. The phenomenon known as populism has, according to Pajnik, been present in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union at least since the times of peasant uprisings against the absolute monarchies. Pajnik, Kuhar et al. argues that detachment of political elites from relevant issues, together with rising inequality and conspicuous political, social, economic and cultural stratification of the contemporary Slovenian polity, boosted an anti-elitist discourse. Political actors are more prominently engaging in online populist and exclusivist discourse; most notably, the Slovenian Democratic Party heavily utilizes new information and communication technology.
