BATI’DA POPÜLİZMİN YÜKSELİŞİ: HEYULADAN FENOMENE
THE RISE OF POPULISM IN THE WEST: FROM SPECTRE TO PHENOMENON

Summary/Abstract: In 1969, a group of academicians produced a study under the editorship of Ghita Ionescu and Ernst Gellner to define the term populism. These two academicians, who wrote the “Introduction” section of the study, stated in the first sentence of this section that “a ghost called populism haunting the world.” In this respect, academicians, who researched populism about fifty years ago, had difficulty in predicting how effective it would be on social-political life. On the other hand, as expressed in some academic-intellectual communities, representative democracy is in a deep crisis today. In this respect, it is stated that representative democracy cannot realize the full participation of citizens into political-public life. Thus, populism has been one of the first to take advantage of the crisis in representative democracy. The subject of this study is the adventure of transforming populism into a phenomenon in the West that is the homeland of representative democracy. In this study, we will try to provide an explanation of the phenomenon's employment by both right and left politicians in the Western world through intellectual, social and political dynamics.

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