Populist parties raise important questions but offer terrible answers, a weakness others should exploit. Populism is by no means a new phenomenon, but recent years have seen a clear rise in parties turning to a more authoritarian, populist strategy of winning over voters. Now, the populist movement has managed to establish a strong position in Europe, and although its popularity is not currently rising, it is not diminishing either.

The paper focuses on the concept of populism in practice in the countries of the Western Balkans, mostly in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the use of state institutions and government-controlled media to propagate populist narratives. The basic research question relates to the nature of this populism, in the context of the theoretical framework of the given term, as well as the future challenges of the region.