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This was a direct attack on the theories of Laclau and Mouffe in that PODEMOS' leadership openly embraced populism and attempted to reclaim its meaning, maintaining close personal ties with the two contemporary thinkers.[11] The blame for the failure of leftist actors was put on "populism" and the "Essex School" as proponents of progressive democratic populism. Crucially, research that focuses on the relative success or failure of populist actors to achieve policy outcomes close to their programmatic promises in order to determine the success or failure of populism per se jeopardizes the conceptual clarity of populism: in reality, what it strives to study is not the populist (formal) component but the policy one. (Liberal) anti-populism has arguably extended its influence on the left too, leading to the dismissal of populism as a potentially beneficial strategy for the left. In other words, left populism brought SYRIZA to power; however, the inability to push forward its policy agenda (the "left" component of left populism) gradually affected its ability to mobilize the popular sectors and to operate as a salient point of populist identification - and not the other way round. Left populism cannot be reduced to a single monolithic category (as it usually happens with "populism" I in abstracto i thus disorienting populism research). [Extracted from the article]