and the media in populist profiling also provides an insight into the tools of con- temporary populist movements. Populism is easily used (and overused) to describe the existence of a stirring and controversial political project. With differ- ent forms, degrees, sizes and colours, populism in Europe seems to be alive and kicking. The findings of a possible com- parative analysis of populist projects in countries with different geopolitical, social and cultural characteristics in this emerging ‘unified’ Europe, such as UKIP (the United Kingdom), Syriza (Greece) and Podemos (Spain) might help us locate and deconstruct the patterns and opera- tional codes, which are not noted in Pau- wels’ comparison of populism across Western Europe. The terrain in Europe (and in the United States) is rapidly shift- ing. As D’ Alema rightly argued, there is a growing and urgent need for traditional parties to urgently identify why these changes are taking place, and to moder- nise their platforms in order to avoid further alienation from their grass-roots base, and thus directly address what the populace expects from the political establishment. About the Author Ryan Brading is a Teaching Fellow at the Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He is the author of Populism in Venezuela (Routledge, 2013). contemporary confucian democracy andrew tsz wan hung The Hong Kong Polytechnic University – Hong Kong Community College, PolyU Hung Hom Bay Campus, 8 Hung Lok Road, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China E-mail: ccandrew@hkcc-polyu.edu.hk doi: 10.1057/eps.2015.31; published online 29 May 2015 Books reviewed: Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times Joseph C.W. Chan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), xvi+256 pp., ISBN: 978-0691158617 Confucian Democracy in East Asia: Theory and Practice Sungmoon Kim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), xii+321 pp., ISBN: 978-1107641211 Democracy in Contemporary Confucian Philosophy David Elstein (New York: Routledge, 2014), xiv+220 pp., ISBN: 978-0203495186 andrew tsz wan hung european political science: 14 2015 373