Is populism truly advanced in the world?

It is fashionable to affirm that populism is advancing in the world. Examples ofgovernments assuming positions that can be qualified in this way are abundant. But it seemspertinent to really dimension the existence and magnitude of this phenomenon and not onlyattend to a casuistic vision, largely focused on the Western world.That is why this paper will seek to measure the growth during the 21st century in termsof votes and seats in the lower national assemblies and the participation in the governments ofthe world of parties, differentiated according to their populist orientation.Today there are reliable sources of information to do this type of exercise. In particular,we will use the data compiled by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project to compare theelectoral presence and success and the ability to lead or be part of the government coalitions ofthe parties according to their adherence to populist logics.To do this, after an introduction related to the same concept of populism, the source ofinformation to be used in this text and the indices that will be used for analysis will becharacterized. Subsequently, the results of the measurement of the behavior of these indices inthe world in the period 2000-2019 and their relationship with the achievements of the parties interms of votes, seats and participation in government coalitions will be presented in a syntheticway. Finally, the meaning of the data compiled, displayed and analyzed will be discussed.The analyzed data allow us to advance in the finding of a relationship between populistdiscourse and the adoption of a position contrary to elitism and that the position to the right inthe political-ideological spectrum tends to make an organization less likely to adopt a populistrhetoric. However, there would be a long way to go to achieve a full explanation of thephenomenon of populism in this century and it is not insignificant progress in achieving electoralsupport and integration into governments that has been detected during the last decade. Thisforces us to think of new paths and alternative sources for understanding the phenomenon thatoccupies the center of attention in this essay.