ABSTRACT
The analysis of contemporary (right-wing) populism often suffers from conceptual vagueness, a short-time perspective, mass media biases, a focus on only one country or one particular group and strong normative viewpoints. Against this background, the chapter attempts to clarify the concept of populism, to categorise different types of populism, to put populism in a historical perspective, to lay out the deep undercurrents that foster contemporary populism and to discuss the compatibility of populism and civil society on principal grounds.
