Dossier Presentation: Populism and the Political Construction of the People

This article aims at introducing the topic of populism and shows the papers that make up the dossier. To achieve this objective, we begin the text presenting and criticizing the vision on populism currently presented by the liberal mainstream of contemporary political theory. Then, we present some reflections on populism elaborated by currents of political thought that see the phenomenon from a less biased perspective, expanding the possibilities of its scientific understanding. Having introduced the theme and clarified the contemporary debate on it, we present the articles that, following the trail of reflections previously presented, analyze populism as a form of political construction of “the people” and bring to the fore crucial contributions to think on such construction both on its theoretical implications, as well as its empirical data.

Keywords
Populism; People; Democracy; Political representation; Bolsonaro