The term ‘populism’ is now widely and somewhat confusingly used when discussing various political tendencies that have surged into prominence in the wake of the global financial crash of 2007–2008. Rather like the concept of ‘radicalism’, populism as an idea is distorted by the tendency of much mainstream commentary to regard it as a largely negative phenomenon. This chapter looks at the historical roots of the term and argues that there are examples from ancient Rome to nineteenth-century America where populism has taken a ‘progressive’ form, that is, genuinely advocating for wider democracy as a counter to oligarchy and authoritarianism.

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