Abstract
This work aims at reconstructing the theoretical-interpretative frameworks of the concept of populism which tend to reinforce or debilitate its general negative meaning. We point out how their rival classical arguments -the uncertainty of the people and the fact that populism would be a symptom which rises up from a defeat in an historical process of modernisation- are based on a questionable epistemological assumption: individual groups and social classes have interests and wills prefigured before political intervention. On the contrary, we describe as new frameworks of populism those which introduce this concept into a wider theoretical field: the construction and crystallisation of political identities.
Keywords:
populism; people; political identity; hegemony; representation