This is the Guardian. I am Peter C Baker, the author of We The People, the Battle to Define Populism, published in 2019.

This was an idea that the Guardian brought to me the paper was doing a series that may have been

a year-long series about populism and examining

the question of populism with stories about populist politicians and parties

and movements around the world.

In the course of planning that series,

there had, I think, been an internal discussion

at the Guardian about what populism actually was and the definition of

populism that would be used in planning out the series of stories and some

editors there had become aware that among academic political scientists and

theorists who thought about populism there was actually some

disagreement about how to say what it actually was, which in some ways mirrored how populism is used by non-academic everyday people, which is in all manner of even varied and sometimes contradictory ways.

So when the discussion came around to thinking about how the long read might play a part in

this series, the idea came up that I would do a story about this academic

dispute and using it as a way to contribute to this conversation about the alleged populist moment.

Not really going in to say who's right or not, but what can we learn about this conversation around populism by looking closely at

disagreements among specialists who study it?

Something that's changed since 2019 is that as far as I can tell people are talking

about populism a good deal less than we were four years ago and I have been

thinking a lot about exactly why that is.

It partially has to do with the defeat of populist politicians and parties at the ballot box. I don't think that's the complete answer and I

think it's an interesting lens to use while looking back at this story today. All of the issues I discuss are still very much issues in the world in

...