Populism can be defined as an ideology,political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social movements (a form of mobilization that is essentially devoid of theory). It is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as "political ideas and activities that are intended to represent ordinary people's needs and wishes". It can be understood as any political discourse that appeals to the general mass of the population, to the "people" as such, regardless of class distinctions and political partisanship: "a folksy appeal to the 'average guy' or some allegedly general will." This is in opposition to statism, which holds that a small group of professional politicians know better than the people of a state and should make decisions on behalf of them. Nevertheless, populist discourse frequently (often, but not always, in the Latin American case) buttresses an authoritarian top-down process of political mobilization in which the leader addresses the masses without the mediation of either parties or institutions.

Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh President of the United States (1829–1837). Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814), and the British at the Battle of New Orleans (1815). A polarizing figure who dominated the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s, as president he destroyed the national bank and relocated most Indian tribes from the Southeast to west of the Mississippi River. His enthusiastic followers created the modern Democratic Party. The 1830–1850 period later became known as the era of Jacksonian democracy.

Jackson was nicknamed "Old Hickory" because of his toughness and aggressive personality; he fought in duels, some fatal to his opponents. He was a rich slaveholder, who appealed to the common men of the United States, and fought politically against what he denounced as a closed, undemocratic aristocracy. He expanded the spoils system during his presidency to strengthen his political base.

Ernesto Laclau (born 6 October 1935 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine political theorist often described as post-Marxist.

He studied History in Buenos Aires, graduating from the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires in 1964, and received a PhD from Essex University in 1977.

Since the 1970s he has been Professor of Political Theory at the University of Essex, where he founded and directed for many years the graduate programme in Ideology and Discourse Analysis, as well as the Centre for Theoretical Studies in the Humanities and the Social Sciences. Under his directorship, the Ideology and Discourse Analysis programme has provided the suitable research framework for the development of a distinct type of discourse analysis that draws on post-structuralist theory (especially the work of Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, etc.) in order to articulate innovative analyses of concrete political phenomena (identities, discourses and hegemonies). This theoretical and analytical orientation is today known as the ‘Essex School of discourse analysis'.