Abstract

Despite being the subject of numerous analyses, citations and scholarly discussions, fascism and populism are two of the least clearly defined concepts in contemporary political science. Often they are considered closely related, sometimes they are even considered synonymous and, even in recent years, the hypothesis has been advanced that the second is nothing more than an updated version of the first. In this article we try to clarify the essence of the phenomena evoked by these two terms by examining them in a dual perspective, theoretical and empirical, with the aim of highlighting their points of convergence but also the many differences that characterize them