Populist conceptualization of the elite: Why populist party leaders are not elite?

Theoretical approaches to populism often emphasize that populists have a double standard when determining the elite. Namely, they treat the elite as an arch enemy, but their own leaders, who economically often belong to the elite, do not consider them as such. We consider this question by using Bourdieu 's cultural stratification scheme. The reason is that, for the populists themselves and their followers, cultural markers are more important than economic ones, just as cultural uncertainty is more important for the development of populism than economic ones. The article is divided into three parts: in the first part, the issue of how to determine the elite is presented; in the second part, the cultural stratification scheme is presented; and in the third part, arguments are given that populist leaders, from a cultural point of view, behave as part of the people, and not as part of the elite.