Civil society and populism in Europe: outbreak or cure?

Abstract

Scholarly debates on the links between the rise of populist parties, leaders, and movements and the role of civil society are growing and increasingly fascinating. However, this is one of the areas within 'populism studies' that has received less attention. Exploring the links between populism and civil society opens up space for many possible avenues of research, rooted in different research traditions. This special issue, with a total of 10 papers, aims to deepen this increasingly important line of research, highlighting both lesser-described forms and examples of populism as well as dominant forms of populism in Europe, such as right-wing or left-wing populism. In this introduction, we aim to (1) outline the various links between populism and civil society and place them in the context of populism studies, and (2) summarise the papers in this issue and their main findings.