Our senior researcher, Rudolf Metz, has published a new article in the International Journal of Public Leadership (Emerald Publishing).

The paper, titled In the Age of Populist Leaders: Insights from Ideational, Strategic and Discursive–Performative Perspectives, argues that political leadership is not a peripheral feature of populism but its constitutive force. It clarifies how contemporary scholarship conceptualizes the role of populist leaders and maps the theoretical and empirical developments that place leadership at the center of populist mobilization across diverse contexts. The research brings together three leading theoretical frameworks — ideational, strategic, and discursive–performative — to examine how populist leaders shape emotions, identities, and institutions in contemporary democracies.

The article reinterprets populism not merely as an ideology but as a leadership process, dynamically co-produced by leaders, followers, and context through ongoing performances of “the people.”

The full article is available here.