Populist Actors as Communicators or Political Actors as Populist Communicators

European democracies seem to be increasingly haunted by the specter of political populism (Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2008). In some countries, populist parties are a more recent phenomena, in others the historical roots go deeper; but regardless of cross-national differences, political populism appears to be on the rise across Europe. Mudde (2004), for example, has argued that we are experiencing a “populist zeitgeist,” whereas others see our times as “populist times” (see Chapter 1 in this volume).