ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relevant literature in order to produce a set of socio-economic and political-institutional conditions that are supposed to explain why populist discourses are more socially acceptable in certain countries than in others. The first section illustrates the theoretical framework linking the presence of populism to large-scale processes such as modernization and globalization. The second section illustrates and discusses the results produced by the empirical research testing supply- and demand-side factors that are supposed to explain the success of populism. The third section presents the conditions that are relevant for the present study and therefore selected for the analytical section. The aim is to produce an explanatory model able to keep together socio-economic and political-institutional factors that might explain the social acceptability of populism across countries and over time.
