In his latest book, Samuel Issacharoff analyzes the various ways in which liberal democracies face the populist challenge. Not only is it a somewhat natural extension of the author’s previous work on democracies, it also fits nicely within the literature on populism that considers this political phenomenon a pathology.

Issacharoff starts with identifying key challenges in modern democracies that propel populist movements. Socioeconomic factors include a deteriorating middle class and a sense of being a foreigner in one’s own country, whereas political threats are manifested in growing executive dominance, little to no deliberation, and hollowed-out parties. All these create a favorable structure for a new form of politics in which populists make claims of popular approbation. Issacharoff defines populism “as a form of democratic governance with weak institutions” (85) or a “corrosively anti-institutional form of governance” (170), which fits nicely into his institutionalist account, yet does not necessarily align with the different approaches in the literature, which only consider de-democratization as an effect of populism. The author claims that populists rely on unmediated politics and Caudillo command. The former refers to an attitude that questions formal and informal institutions and norms (e.g., judiciary, press, toler