A Bibliometric and Visual Analysis of Populism Research (2000–2020)

• Published in: SAGE open Vol. 13; no. 4
• Main Authors: Zhang, Xinyu, Liao, Yue
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.10.2023; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC; SAGE Publishing
• Subjects: Bibliometrics; Comparative Analysis; Cooperation; Literature Reviews; Political science; Populism; Sociology; Trends; research trend; CiteSpace; populism; bibliometric analysis; research status
• ISSN: 2158-2440; 2158-2440
• DOI: 10.1177/21582440231216174

The 21st century has seen a revival of populism in politics worldwide. Although scholars in different fields have extensively investigated populism, the term remains controversial and fragmentary. This article uses the bibliometric method to analyze the scientific production, critical points, and main trends of studies on populism from 2000 to 2020 based on the literature retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection, to better understand relevant themes and issues and conduct a comparative study. Populism research shows a general upward trend in three stages and covers a wide range of disciplines, with political science contributing the largest number of publications and sociology sharing the closest links with other subjects. Two relatively large cooperation groups of institutions were found in European countries, but cross-region links between institutions are weak. No relatively stable and large academic teams have been formed between political scholars, and low cooperation exists between prolific scholars in different disciplines. Literature with high co-citation counts are mainly conceptual and comparative studies, and research hotspots include the relationship between populism and democracy, the polarization of populism, and national populism. We believe that future research may shift focus to polarization, European populism, and political trust. Plain Language Summary A systematic review of the state of populism research (2000–2020) In this paper, we perform a bibliometric and visual analysis of populism research across disciplines by using CiteSpace (2000–2020). The aim of this study is not only to explore the field of knowledge, its evolution over time, its frontier, and a visualized presentation of results, but also to provide an example of conducting a literature review using quantitative methods. Populism research shows a general upward trend in three stages and covers a wide range of disciplines, with political science contributing the largest number of publications and sociology sharing the closest links with other subjects. Two relatively large cooperation groups of institutions were found in European countries, but cross-region links between institutions are weak. No relatively stable and large academic teams have been formed between political scholars, and low cooperation exists between prolific scholars in different disciplines. Research hotspots include the relationship between populism and democracy, polarization of populism, and national populism. We believe that future research may shift focus to polarization, European populism, and political trust.