[danmaz74]

In a liberal democracy the "will of the masses" is applied indirectly, through the election of representatives, making laws, and then applying those laws and governing in accordance to those laws. To get elected, politicians and aspiring politicians tell electors all sorts of things. Some of them tell electors that their problems have simple solutions, which go against what the intellectual elites (scientists, doctors, engineers, lawyers etc.) recommend or say is doable. Those are what are usually defined populists. Some of them actually believe that "experts" lie for some agenda. Most of them know perfectly well that those simple solutions won't work, but say what they think electors want to hear. Not all politicians/parties act like that, even if it's common to have some populists in all most parties - because populism works.

[somenameforme]

It's unclear to me how the definition you're using isn't biased to the point of meaninglessness. Let me use an example. Politicians know full well we stand no chance of meaningfully impacting climate change for a practical reason - most emissions are coming from relatively adversarial countries.

If we try to encourage them to reduce emissions via some form of ongoing compensation then we asking them to impair their development in exchange for accepting putting themselves into an exploitable dependency relationship with us. They will simply never accept this, so at best it will be superficial gestures that have no real chance of having a meaningful impact.

So is the rhetoric around climate change, and politicians/parties running on claims of being able to impact it, populist, in your usage? I'd imagine not. But is there a 'clean' way to explain how this is excluded while maintaining any degree of meaningfulness of the term as you are using it?

---

As for 'my' usage, I view populism as appealing to the genuine views of the masses, mostly in contrast to efforts to suppress or reshape them. It can certainly include demagoguery (which is largely what you're describing, but with a peculiar sort of bias built in), but it can also simply include leaders whose worldviews, or at least the worldview they espouse, happening to align largely with that of 'the masses.'

[danmaz74]

There is no such thing as "genuine views of the masses" which aren't shaped by anybody. "The masses" are made of people, all of which shape each other both at a micro and at a macro level, but the latter is disproportionately affected by mass communication - and, today, by digital social networks and their algorithms. Everybody has people who they look to for reference (ie, leaders) and that they trust on things which they don't know personally very well. Some leaders truly believe that you can eat your cake and have it too, and they tell their followers "trust me, and you'll have your cake and eat it too" - but usually these don't last long, because they're simply too stupid and/or ignorant. And this isn't an exclusive of the right or of the left: you have people who don't believe that carbon dioxide has a greenhouse effect, but you also have people who believe we can simply install solar panels and magically solve the mismatch between energy needs (temporal and geographical) and Sun irradiation.

Some other leaders know perfectly well that you can't eat your cake and have it too, and that in reality you need to make compromises between various things you would like to have - but they tell their followers the opposite, because they only care about reaching and then maintaining power. These are the demagogues, but they ally with the people from above and, together, form populist movements.

Then there are leaders who try to find the best compromise between the various things that "the masses" want/care about, and what reality allows to the best of our knowledge. Those are the non-populist, and they exist.