8 Transforming Populism – From Protest Vote to Ruling Ideology: The Case of Serbia Dušan Spasojević * 8.1 Introduction Populism is not a new phenomenon. However, current academic and political popularity of populism is primarily based on its European revival. Interestingly, current European wave of populism is not a new thing, either. Prominent political figures have been connected with populism since the late 1980s, but the real proliferation of populism occurred during the first decade of twenty-first century. This period has been marked by different actors, mostly from the far-right end of the political spectrum, who were able to attract public attention and popular support. Contemporary European populism includes additional actors – populist parties from the left end of political spectrum whose political standpoints have been strengthened by 2008 economic crisis. On the other side, right-wing actors continued to grow due to importance of ‘populist friendly’ issues such as 2015-2018 immigration “crisis” and general EU crisis. Furthermore, during the current phase, European populism(s) proved ability to conform and to adapt to different political circumstances. Some of the major recent examples that could support this argument are the emergence and success of left-wing populism (mostly in the south Europe), emergence of populist ruling parties (mostly in the Central and Eastern Europe) and the success of new right-wing populist parties across the Western Europe (Alternative for Deutschland being the most striking and recent example). Some of these parties have proved the ability to rise to and to remain in power and even to reduce the decline in popular support after being removed from the power. In other words, one could argue that many populists’ parties have become institutionalized part of party systems and that they are here to stay. In this chapter, I will depart from fruitful academic field that was mostly devoted to Western European populism, with the intention to adapt theoretical frameworks to be more applicable for transitional and post-communist societies. This step will be the basis for the analysis of post-communist phenomenon – ruling populist parties. Namely, not * Associate Professor, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Political Science. 125