Populism is booming, across all the nuances of the political spectrum: on the Right, the Left, the Centre or hybrid version. They occupy relevant positions in national parliaments, in governmental coalitions with mainstream parties or as successful challengers of the political status quo. This volume sheds light from different methodological and theoretical angles and offers evidence from a variety of cases on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions on populism’s emergence and consolidation in Europe in the last 30 years. The volume, composed of eight chapters, investigates how different populist parties in the European Union have been affected by the various crises, disentangling the role of the Great Recession vis-à-vis other factors (such as political and party system factors, but also structural social changes or cultural opportunities) in the growing strength of populist parties in various European countries. More specifically, the volume aims are to: Promote critical discussion on the concept of populism, reflecting on its conceptual ‘usability’ beyond the traditional party families to which it is usually related; Use preliminary theoretical clarification to shed new light on the different ways in which populism has been articulated in the various European countries (either in Continental and Southern Europe, or in the less known and studied Central-Eastern ones) since the economic crisis, which has acted as an external shock in many party systems, either giving birth to new political actors or consolidating existing ones; Investigate the connections between populism and the national contextual political and cultural specificities that can determine the development of different types of populisms across countries, elaborating on different ‘configurations’ of triggering conditions for populism and reflecting on the limitations of a discrete conceptualization of the phenomenon. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.