Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at Yale, argues that explanations of populism focused solely on voter attitudes miss half the story. This lecture, part of his Yale DeVane Lecture series course Power and Politics in Today's World, shifts attention to the incentives and motivations of politicians themselves, asking how democratic institutions channel or amplify populist backlash. Shapiro traces the arc from the euphoria after communism's fall in the early 1990s to today's politics of fear and resentment, drawing on themes from his book After the Fall. Delivered to Yale students and the public in fall 2019, the talk builds a case that democracy's current troubles are partly self-inflicted by political actors responding rationally to institutional incentives, not simply a story of an angry or misinformed electorate.