Budapest PERSPEKTIVE Options for the left in the time of populism TAMÁS BOROS June 2017 If there is a single political term which even those indifferent to public life have heard in the past year, it is populism. The phenomenon has shaken the existing world order, yet there is still no consensus as to what it means or whether it does necessarily pose a threat to progressive values. In the western world some left-wing and progressive parties have responded to the new spirit of the age by situating themselves in radical opposition to populism, others by adopting it into their own politics. In this article we examine the possible reactions to this radically changing political environment. Although populism itself is no new concept, in western liberal democracy it is only in recent years that this isolated phenomenon has become a defining trend. While eight years – or two parliamentary terms – ago there were in total only two countries among the member states of the European Union where at least one third of the elec­torate voted for a populist party, last year there were twelve. Meanwhile in nine coun­tries populists have come to power solitarily or through a coalition and in a further two countries populist parties support minority governments. In western and eastern Europe the right-wing populists have gained ground; in the Mediterranean countries the left-wing. Only in the smallest member state of the European Union, Malta, no si­gnificant populist party exists, while in one of the most populous, France, the populist leader reached the second round of the recent presidential elections, gathering one third of the voters behind her. Meanwhile, the world has been turned upside down by the decision of voters in the United Kingdom to leave the European Union and Donald Trump’s rise to presidency in the United States.