ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some concluding remarks that can serve as incentives for further research: systemic crisis, popular sovereignty and the rise of populism; elite-populism, democracy and mass society; quality of democracy, populism and evaluation of democracy; and globalization, populism and change in democratic paradigms at a global scale. Populism always represents an analytical complexity, which needs to be interpreted and understood in light of the social dynamics that determine it, and this analysis must be both diachronic and synchronic. Populism, with its quantitative and qualitative variety and its epistemological complexity, raises fundamental questions on democratic theory. It is possible to identify an interesting avenue for future studies in the evaluation of populism, in light of its impact on the democratic quality of the political systems where it operates. The chapter concludes with what is the true challenge of the research on populism: the role played by globalization in the process of change in paradigms in democratic political regimes.
