This is a review article of the following five recent studies on populism: 1) Ruth Wodak’s <em>The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean</em> (Sage, 2015); 2) Benjamin Moffitt’s <em>The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation</em> (Stanford University Press, 2016); 3) Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser’s <em>Populism: A Very Short Introduction</em> (Oxford University Press, 2017); 4) Jan-Werner Müller’s <em>What is Populism?</em> (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); and 5) John B. Judis’ <em>The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics</em> (Columbia Global Reports, 2016). The review argues for a return to early Frankfurt School Critical Theory to address some of the shortcomings of these studies.
A Critical Review of Recent Literature on Populism