Despite the fact that populism has been seen as a threat towards democracy in the mass media, however, the paradoxical aspect of populism has always been disregard. The controversies surrounding this term requires a better apprehension of its complexity. Furthermore, most of the narratives have been crafted in the Europe-centric way which leads to a one sided story and strongly opposing conclusion among other continents. Therefore, the current case study will perform a discourse analysis, focusing on the impact of populism towards the democracy, whether as a threat or corrective, based on four different countries across region – Western Europe and Southeast Asia. Populism in Southeast Asia is considered new research topic and there is no study to date that deals with the ‘threat/corrective impact’ in Southeast Asia. Apart from the general lack of focus on Asia, the Western Europe has been the subject of many studies in populism, especially in the post-Brexit referendum. However, the year 2018 has seen the populist parties have been accepted into the parliament and this will give a good opportunity to gain better understanding on how populism affecting their democracy. As secondary benefit, this study is designed as such to compare the result in both regions. The analysed cases are; Italy, Germany, Indonesia and Philippines. Both regions will be studied in terms of the factor of the rise of populism, the impact of populism and subsequently, either it provides corrective or threat towards democracy system. A more general conclusion is therefore that the notion of corrective and threat towards democracy should not be pushed too far although the common traits do exist.
