Reviewed By: Connor Runnalls

Definitions by: Chelsea Walsh

Populism Definitions

Good evening Chelsea,

I have reviewed your various definitions on populism and would like to thank you for your work on this post. You did a great job in detailing the most important points of populism, as well as using strong examples in order to enhance the reader’s understanding. I found that overall, your material was strong and easy to follow. There was enough information to understand the content, without going off on different tangents which would have been quite easy given the term. I would say there is some information that could have been added, but that is just due to the broad scope of the term Populism. The visual that you used was a clear demonstration of the cycle that populism can fall under and how it has become such a heavily relied upon stance in politics world wide. I did address a small note with regards to the visuals down below in which I feel would have helped you present your term. There are a couple of suggestions that I would like to possibly recommend to further enhance your definitions, which I have detailed below. Aside from these small revisions, I’m not sure I would ask for any other revisions as you were concise in getting your definitions across.

1) Ultimately, populism is such a broad term that attempting to completely encompass its definition is challenging beyond belief. There are a few key parts that I would say were touched on but not explicitly explained. First and foremost, an important aspect to populism, on top it empowering the people, is the fact that the stance of populism itself is essentially the good (the people) vs the corrupt elite, and assumes that almost all, if not all, of the elite are corrupt. This particular distinction would set up your definition to an even stronger degree. Second, the distinction that populism is found for both authoritarian and democratic governments would further aid in the definition provided.

2) The organization of your definitions was laid out well overall. However, I do feel that the operational definition would have served a more helpful role had it come prior to the visual description. I found myself trying to learn and understand the picture before moving on to the operational definition, but once I had moved on to the operationalization I had an overall easier time understanding the picture. Perhaps a small summation in your own words of the visual, would have helped ensure that all readers are able to understand it immediately.

Overall, these are very nitty gritty details. I felt overall that you did a great job defining a relatively challenging and broad definition through talking on it’s key parts of the definition in a very efficient manner.

Great work!