Populism may come across as little more than an extreme form of national belonging--nationalism run wild so to speak--a case for national psychologists or a kind of collective pathology. However, as so often, appearances are deceptive. "Paradoxes of Populism" argues, from the vantage point of cultural history and political philosophy, that the far-from-random similarities with ordinary manifestations of nationalism should be approached not as a venture into the classical structures of nation-states and identities, but as a disruptive and destabilizing consequence of some of the constituent elements of sovereign nation-states becoming eroded and prised apart by contextual global processes and their agents. Hence, populism in all its varieties--and there are many, as the book demonstrates--is riddled with even more paradoxes and inconsistencies than mainstream nationalism itself--confusing causes and appearances, realities and fantasies, and turning the world inside-out. The age of populism is truly the Second Coming of nationalism. Its advent, however, happens in the background of real problems for millions of ordinary people in liberal-democratic states. Contrary to its self-image, populism does not represent a return to a peaceful, well-ordered and secure place of identity, progress and belonging, but, first, the introduction of irreconcilable division into the domestic arena; second, the breakdown of trust and civilized communication between governors and governed elites and people; and third, the exposure of the increasing powerlessness of the international order. These partial failures are creating a demand for new kinds of regime, autocratic and charismatic, tough and moralistic at the same time, and they necessarily tend to transform run-of-the-mill national identities into something that has a closer resemblance to national creeds and quasi-religious ritualism.

There would seem to be no generally acceptable middle ground anymore, but only battlegrounds full of ideological fanatics, self-serving egoists, power-seeking idealists, moralizing martyrs and obedient victims: an odd assortment of dramatis personae, struggling between defending perceived national interests and standing up for the sacrality of their national identity.