Populist movements are a threat not because they raise the issue of direct democracy, but because they advocate nationalist mobilisation based on xenophobia, writes Antony Todorov. Given the failure of the leftist projects of the twentieth century, it is telling that far-right populism is more anti-democratic in the new democracies of central and eastern Europe than in western Europe. Is populism identical to the crisis of democracy or rather a symptom of it?
Antony Todorov
is associate professor at the department of political sciences at the New Bulgarian University of Sofia. He is chairman of the Bulgarian Association for Political Sciences and author of Modern Political Thought, Sofia 2001; Bulgarian Political Life 1990-2005, Sofia 2005.
