Populism and Civil Society

Populism and Civil Society is the most serious systematic empirically informed analysis of the threat of contemporary populism to constitutional democracy available today. Cohen and Arato look into the causes, logic, dynamic and consequences of the contemporary populist surge and try to offer alternatives to it that are not tantamount to returning to the status quo ante, but instead takes seriously the critiques populists lay at the door of contemporary oligarchic democracies.

Andrew Arato is the Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor of Political and Social Theory at the New School.
Jean L. Cohen is the Nell and Herbert Singer Professor of Political Thought at Columbia University.

Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Populism: Why and Why Now?
Chapter 2: Populism as Mobilization and as a Party
Chapter 3: Populist Governments and Their Logic
Chapter 4: Populism and Constitutionalism
Chapter 5: Alternatives to Populism