Abstract

Populism is usually seen in an ambivalent perspective as it is conceived both as a threat for the representative democracy and as an opportunity for the renewal of the democratic institutions This essay intends to show the evolution of the populist phenomenon in Latin America since its initial phase in the 30s of the 20th century until the neo-populist or even postpopulist conjuncture and the populist dynamics occurring in the European Union It will be a comparative study because a comparison helps to understand one reality vis-a-vis another through similarities and differences The interrogation in the title points to the starting point of this research is there continuity or influence between the populist realities in the two continental blocks