In times of growing populism throughout the world, the article offers a rethinking of its nature and manifestations with the help of Pierre Rosanvallon’s critical democratic theory. The French social thinker offers a comprehensive concept of this world phenomenon as a product of democracy and its borderline form. In line with his approach of considering each phenomenon in its theoretical and historical dimensions, Rosanvallon derives the “invariant elements” of populism, traces their manifestations from the late 19th century to the present (...) day, critiques key theoretical ideas of populism as they have been applied in practice, and suggests various ways to overcome the aporias of populism arising from the structural indeterminacy of democracy. Rosanvallon’s analysis was used to pose questions specific to contemporary Bulgarian society. (shrink)