ABSTRACT
How have populists around the world responded to the COVID-19 pandemic? The pandemic entails both opportunities and challenges for populists. On the one hand, populists thrive in crisis; on the other, their standard approaches to crisis politics seem incompatible with a universal public health emergency. This chapter provides a conceptual basis and analytical framework for investigating how populists in 22 countries have reacted to the same exogenously triggered public health crisis and for identifying the factors that have mediated their responses. It sets the stage for the country chapters included in this volume, which together shed new light on the relationship between populism and crisis and, by extension, on the phenomenon of populism itself.
