ABSTRACT
Populism today is a highly probable option of democracy, not only related to social movements but also institutionalized and ruling entities. Populism is no longer an extreme hypothesis in democratic game; no longer a deviation, an anomaly, degeneration or pathology of democracy, as it was often defined in the past. Populism is deeply linked to the structural transformations of western democracies, which are increasingly exposed to plebiscitarian swerves and are under constant attack from private interests. Populism is a complex, consolidated and manifold configuration of political power based on popular sovereignty, which has changed over time along with changes in politics, and which now represents an independent field of scientific analysis. Today people count several new forms of populism such as media populism, webpopulism or telepopulism. This is the result of social dynamics underpinning democracies being impacted by globalization processes, new communication systems and creation of new social spaces for politics and new forms of consensus in postmodern society.
