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Since the Brexit-vote and the election of a far-right business man as President of the United State, the social sciences have been struggling to explain the societal conditions that nourish the increasing appeal of populist parties and leaders in the Western world. The article reconstructs the potential of Margaret Canovan’s work for a sociological approach towards populism. With Canovan, it is possible to focus research on the emotional appeal of the populists’ call on ‘the people’. Reconstructing this emotional appeal does not only explain how populists succeed to present ‘the people’ as a new, politically conscious group, it may also render manifest the specificities of the crisis of post-industrial societies that underlies this new group-formation.
