There is no threat to Western democracies today comparable to the rise of right-wing populism. While it has played an increasing role at least since the 1990s, only the social consequences of the global financial crises in 2008 have given it its break that led to UK’s ‘Brexit’ and the election of Donald Trump as US President in 2016, as well as promoting what has been called left populism in countries that were hit the hardest by both the banking crisis and consequential neo-liberal austerity politics in the EU, such as Greece and Portugal. In 2017, the French Front National (FN) attracted many voters in the French Presidential elections; we have seen the radicalization of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany and the formation of centre-right government in Austria. Further, we have witnessed the consolidation of autocratic regimes, as in the EU member states Poland and Greece. All these manifestations of right-wing populism share a common feature: they attack or even compromise the core elements of democratic societies such as the separation of powers, protection of minorities, or the rule of law. Despite a broad debate on the re-emergence of ‘populism’ in the transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century that has brought forth many interesting findings, a lack of sociological reasoning cannot be denied, as sociology itself withdrew from theorising populism decades ago and largely left the field to political sciences and history. In a sense, Populism and the Crisis of Democracy considers itself a contribution to begin filling this lacuna. Written in a direct and clear style, this set of volumes will be an invaluable reference for students and scholars in the field of political theory, political sociology and European Studies. This volume Concepts and Theory offers new and fresh perspectives on the debate on populism. Starting from complaints about the problems of conceptualising populism that in recent years have begun to revolve around themselves, the chapters offer a fundamental critique of the term and concept of populism, theoretically inspired typologies and descriptions of currently dominant concepts, and ways to elaborate on them. With regard to theory, the volume offers approaches that exceed the disciplinary horizon of political science that so far has dominated the debate. As sociological theory so far has been more or less absent in the debate on populism, only few efforts have been made to discuss populism more intensely within different theoretical contexts in order to explain its dynamics and processes. Thus, this volume offers critical views on the debate on populism from the perspectives of political economy and the analysis of critical historical events, the links of analyses of populism with social movement mobilisation, the significance of ‘superfluous populations’ in the rise of populism and an analysis of the exclusionary character of populism from the perspective of the theory of social closure.

今天，对西方民主国家的威胁是无法与右翼民粹主义的崛起相提并论的。虽然它至少从20世纪90年代起就发挥了越来越大的作用，但只有2008年全球金融危机的社会后果让它获得了突破，导致了英国的 "脱欧 "和2016年唐纳德-特朗普当选美国总统，并在欧盟中受银行危机和随之而来的新自由主义紧缩政治打击最严重的国家，如希腊和葡萄牙，推动了所谓的左翼民粹主义。2017年，法国国民阵线（FN）在法国总统选举中吸引了许多选民；我们看到德国的德国选择党（AfD）的激进化和奥地利的中右翼政府的形成。此外，我们还看到了专制政权的巩固，比如在欧盟成员国波兰和希腊。所有这些右翼民粹主义的表现都有一个共同的特点：他们攻击甚至损害了民主社会的核心要素，如分权、保护少数民族或法治。尽管关于 "民粹主义 "在20世纪向21世纪过渡过程中的重新出现的广泛讨论带来了许多有趣的发现，但不能否认缺乏社会学的推理，因为社会学本身在几十年前就退出了对民粹主义的理论研究，并在很大程度上将该领域留给了政治科学和历史。从某种意义上说，《民粹主义与民主危机》认为自己是对开始填补这一空白的贡献。这套书以直接和清晰的风格写成，对于政治理论、政治社会学和欧洲研究领域的学生和学者来说，将是一份宝贵的参考资料。本卷《概念与理论》为关于民粹主义的辩论提供了新的、全新的视角。从对近年来开始围绕民粹主义的概念化问题的抱怨开始，各章对民粹主义的术语和概念进行了基本的批判，从理论上启发了对目前主流概念的类型化和描述，以及对其进行阐述的方法。在理论方面，本卷提供的方法超越了迄今为止主导辩论的政治学的学科范围。由于社会学理论迄今为止在关于民粹主义的辩论中或多或少地缺席，只有少数人努力在不同的理论背景下更深入地讨论民粹主义，以解释其动态和过程。因此，本卷从政治经济学和关键历史事件的分析、民粹主义分析与社会运动动员的联系、"多余人口 "在民粹主义兴起中的意义以及从社会封闭理论的角度对民粹主义的排斥性进行分析等方面，对民粹主义的辩论提出了批评意见。