The advent of twenty-first century has witnessed the rise of populist parties and their governments in the western world. Many argue that their rise is coupled with changing socio-political landscape in terms of rejection of liberal values; inward-looking sentiments vis-à-vis open markets and international cooperation and many others.

Populism means different things to different groups, but all versions share a suspicion of and hostility toward elites, mainstream politics, and established institutions. It sees itself as speaking for the forgotten “ordinary” person and often imagines itself as the voice of genuine patriotism.

No one exemplifies that trend better than U.S. President Donald Trump. As during his Presidential election campaign, he pushed the racist conspiracy theory that Obama was born outside the United States; promised to build a wall along the Mexican border to stop illegal immigration; called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States; called NATO “obsolete,” and threatened to withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Since taking office, he has made good on many of his promises. Within his first week, he issued an executive order suspending the entry of people from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. Since then, he has shunned multilateralism by withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate agreement, launched a trade war, crippled the World Trade Organization by blocking the appointment of new judges to its Dispute Settlement Body, and imposed punitive secondary sanctions on European companies doing business with Iran after withdrawing the United States from the Iran nuclear deal. All this establishes on thing that he doesn’t just reject liberal values; but the liberal order, too.

His admirers and critics often describe him as a “unique, extraordinary experience.” But in an important sense, he is not as he is part of a broad populist upsurge running through the Western world.

In Europe, threat of terrorism and anxiety about a massive wave of immigrants from the Muslim world, coupled with the widespread belief that the EU hinders rather than helps when it comes to such problems, have created a perfect storm for populists, especially enhancing the standing of right-wing populists in many countries. Chief among them is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has taken advantage of public fears to rally opposition to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her belief that Europe should embrace a “culture of welcoming.”

The rise of populism has had important consequences for the state of liberal democracy in Europe. Although populism is not necessarily anti-democratic, it is essentially illiberal, especially in its disregard for minority rights, pluralism, and the rule of law. In case of Hungary, Orban has openly set about transforming his country into what he described in a 2014 speech as “an illiberal new state based on national foundations.”

Many scholars contend that European populism is an episodic phenomenon, that it creates moments rather than eras. As populists can succeed in opposition, they inevitably fail once in power. However, this has just proved to be a wishful thinking, as Hungarian President has been in power for six years and still leads the most popular party in Hungary and populism has dominated politics in Slovakia ever since the fall of communism. Deep structural changes in European societies produced the current populist wave. Those changes are not likely to be reversed anytime soon, so there is no reason to anticipate that populism will fade in the near future.

As a matter of fact, these recently elected populist governments in Europe has to make a choice between responsiveness and responsibility—between doing what their voters want and what economic reality and EU institutions dictate. However, Hungarian President has so far been successful at doing both things at the same time, in part by saying different things to different audiences.

Latin America’s struggles with populism, although far from over, offer some hints about where the current upsurge in populist rhetoric in the United States and Europe might lead. History shows that populism polarizes societies, weakens economies, and undermines representative democracy. But Latin America’s experience also demonstrates that democratic decline is not inevitable, that citizens’ movements can reform institutions and defend them against would-be populists, and that the disenfranchised will not tolerate empty promises forever.

Populism in itself is an elusive concept, and has been often used to describe the strategy of politicians who seek popularity by appealing to the electorate’s baser instincts. Populists claim to represent a neglected majority by defying an undeserving but powerful minority. In Latin America, populists found their first constituency in a working class that doubled in size between 1914 and 1945 as the region industrialized and that traditional society had failed to integrate. Later, in countries such as Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela, populists took advantage of the economic hardship of the “lost decade” of the 1980s, when growth stagnated and incomes plummeted.

In general, populists seek legitimacy through the support of the masses as they build mass movements to increase their personal power, not to truly change the system. They favor top-down control. They often employ redistributionist economic policies, which includes new social programs, ramp up spending, and take control of parts of the economy, often resulting in short-term economic booms, but as a result of the government spending, debts build, inflation spirals, businesses scale back operations, and economic crises ensue. Those who benefited from the boom see their fortunes come crashing down again. In Latin America, this basic narrative has played out in Perón’s and Kirchner’s Argentina, in Vargas’ Brazil, and in President Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.

Perhaps the most consequential feature that all versions of populism share is the weakening of liberal democratic institutions as they concentrate power in their immediate circle; thereby weakening crucial institutions, such as political parties, independent judiciaries, and the free press. They undermine checks and balances on executive authority by casting themselves as the sole arbiters of right and wrong and by encouraging their followers to distrust and oppose anything connected to the old establishment.

The United States and several long-standing democracies in western Europe are struggling with serious democratic challenges, especially the rise of illiberal populist forces. Countries usually achieve liberal democracy only after a long series of setbacks, conflicts, and failures. France offers a case in point. After the early glory of the French Revolution, the country followed an exceptionally bumpy path. EU’s growing unpopularity over the past decade has fueled “the nationalism and populism that threaten liberal democracy in Europe today.

Latin America’s experience has shown that gradual change is better than the alternative. It is up to voters, civic movements, and politicians themselves, even as they debate their differences, to defend and reinforce the institutions that make representative democracy work. As many scholars have aptly said that understanding democracy’s past is vital to understanding democracy’s present.