Populism is a doctrine that appeals to the interests and conceptions (such as hopes and fears) of the general population, especially when contrasting any new collective consciousness push against the prevailing status quo interests of any predominant political sector.

Political parties and politicians often use the terms populist and populism as pejoratives against their opponents. Such a view sees populism as merely empathising with the public, (usually through rhetoric or "unrealistic" proposals) in order to increase appeal across the political spectrum (cf. demagogy).

Academic definitions

Academic definitions of populism have varied widely over the centuries, and the term has often been employed in loose and inconsistent ways to denote appeals to "the people", "demagogy" and "catch-all" politics or as a label for new types of parties whose classifications are unclear. A factor traditionally held to diminish the value of "populism" as a category has been that, as Margaret Canovan notes in her 1981 study Populism, unlike conservatives or socialists, populists rarely call themselves "populists" and usually reject the term when it is applied to them.