Democracy Under Siege: The Populist Factor in The Contemporary Crisis of Constitutional Democracies

The essay analysis the relentless rise of populist political and cultural phenomenon in a global perspective and, mainly, in the political context of EU Member States. Populism, in XXI century, represents a critical challenge for national and EU institutions and, in a broader perspective, for representative democracy itself. Anyway, in essence, what is populism? On closer inspection, populism is not a monolithic phenomenon, but it is a multifactorial experience, where the usual political categories appear undetermined, often mixed and reassembled. The paper aims to study, with a legal perspective and a comparative and multidisciplinary approach, some relevant populist political experiences in the EU space, their communicative and political strategy, the features of their leadership, to better understand its origins, policy contents, differences among various national experiences, political and social perspectives and, indeed, the impact on European constitutional democracy’s principles.