Andrew Batson — Mudde & Kaltwasser on populism

I found Populism: A Very Short Introduction by Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser to be very useful and conceptually clear, a worthy addition to Oxford’s charming Very Short Introductions series.
The real contribution of the book is that it provides a definition of populism that is both conceptually clear and empirically useful–no mean feat. Here it is:

We define populism as a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite,” and which argues that politics should be an expression of the general will of the people. 

Populism must be understood as a kind of mental map through which individuals analyze and comprehend political reality. It is not so much a coherent ideological tradition as a set of ideas that, in the real world, appears in combination with quite different, and sometimes contradictory, ideologies.…

The difference between populist democracy and liberal democracy is that the former posits the tyranny of the majority, while the latter protects minorities with legal rights.

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Mudde & Kaltwasser on populism
Andrew Batson