Abstract
The article deals with who or what led to strengthening populist politics and its agents. This is a mutual combination of structural, cultural, political, media, etc. factors whereby one must recognise specifics in each country. However, the author pays special attention to the role of established elites, mainly political, but also others – i.e. business, intellectual and media in this respect. He claims that these elites bear a large part of the responsibility for the rise of populism because their irresponsibility, unresponsiveness and inefficiency in solving key social problems caused a sharp decline in trust in established politics and its leaders. This ‘lack of leadership’ offered populists a political ‘niche’ that some took advantage of.