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Populism has become a pervasive concept in political science research. However, a central and basic question remains unanswered: which European parties are more populist than others? Despite the increasing wealth of studies on populism in parties, we lack data that measures populism in political parties in a valid and precise manner, that recognize...
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Context 1
... instance, it allows us to assess the distribution of the parties' degree of populism vis-à-vis other ideological indicators. Figure 4 plots the populism score and overall left-right score for all 250 political parties included in the dataset complemented with a quadratic prediction plot. As expected, we see a curvilinear pattern in which far left and far right parties display higher levels of populism. ...
Context 2
... yield substantively similar results to the factor-predicted scores. Figure A4 in the online appendix shows a plot of parties' left-right positions and an IRT-predicted populism score. 10. ...
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Method
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Citations
... This research note, therefore, offers the first comparative empirical evidence about how political parties conceptualize the people and the elite -and how this differs across parties' ideological positions and across levels of populism. Using new party-level data from the 2023 wave of the Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA) (Meijers and Zaslove, 2021;Zaslove et al., 2024a), we examine the effects of populism, left-right ideology and nativism on parties' conception of the 'the people' and 'the elite' across 31 European countries. ...
... In order to study how populist parties define 'the people' and 'the elite', we rely on a new wave of the POPPA (Meijers and Zaslove, 2021;Zaslove et al., 2024a;2024b), which was fielded in the spring of 2023. The data covers 312 political parties in 31 European countries. ...
... 2 As in the first wave of the POPPA (Meijers and Zaslove, 2021), we include a series of items to measure various dimensions related to populism to create a continuous measure of populism. Modelled after the latent individual-level measures of populist attitudes (Akkerman et al., 2014;Castanho Silva et al., 2020), such a multi-dimensional approach to measuring populism has high construct validity as it independently captures constitutive components of populism (see also Lindberg et al., 2022;Meijers & Zaslove, 2021;Wiesehomeier et al., 2021). In addition to a multi-dimensional populism measure, the 2023 POPPA wave measures various ideological characteristics of parties -including their positions on an economic left-right dimension and nativism. ...
Populist ideology centres around a supposed clash between the ‘honest and upright people’ and the ‘evil and corrupted elite’. Yet, which groups are perceived to constitute ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ likely varies across parties. This research note investigates which factors explain how inclusive or exclusive the conceptions of these two core groups are. Why do some parties define the people in cultural terms, whereas others rely on economic considerations? And why do some parties consider CEOs as elites, whilst others consider academics as elites? We argue that parties’ degree of populism in combination with their ideological orientation allow us to understand these dynamics. In order to investigate these questions systematically, a new wave of the Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA) was collected in 2023. Covering 312 political parties in 31 European countries in 2023, a novel module allows us to understand how parties define ‘the people’ and ‘elites’. We find that parties' populism and host ideology are important drivers of their people/elite conceptions. The higher a party's level of populism the more exclusionary its conception of the people is. Nativism is, moreover, associated with the exclusion of societal groups on cultural grounds, while left‐wing economic ideology drives the exclusion of societal groups on economic grounds. With respect to elites, populism is the most important determinant for parties' conceptions of the elite. By contrast, party ideology plays a subordinate role in parties' elite conceptions. This investigation has important implications for our understanding of populist parties, what the nature of their populist appeal is, and how they seek to mobilize in the political arena.
... Some scholars have noted that populist parties are strongly supportive of instruments of direct democracy (Jacobs et al., 2018) to strengthen the power of the people (Mudde, 2007) and scrutinise political elites. However, support for referendums is not a defining feature of the populist ideational approach (Meijers & Zaslove, 2021). Recent findings reveal that populist parties pay less attention than mainstream parties to referendums (Gherghina & Pilet, 2021) as they promote these instruments of direct democracy to support leaders in a plebiscitarian logic (Gherghina & Pilet, 2021). ...
... Populism, commonly defined as a discursive schema or set of thinly layered ideas that cast a pure people opposite a corrupt elite (for reviews, see Kaltwasser et al., 2017;Urbinati, 2019) attracts continued attention in the scholarship on party politics and electoral competition (e.g. König and Swalve, 2023;Meijers and Zaslove, 2021;Rooduijn et al., 2024;Zulianello, 2020). Populist parties are often approached as democratic illiberal actors challenging constitutionalism (Galston, 2018;Pappas, 2019; see also Mudde, 2007), ones that have a negative impact on liberal democracy when governing (Pappas, 2019;Ruth-Lovell and Grahn, 2023) and often expressing anti-establishment messages (Bakker et al., 2020; see also Barr, 2009;Schedler, 1996). ...
This article moves beyond the pervasiveness of the concept of populism emphasising anti-elite sentiment to focus on the policy profile of populist parties. In doing so, it provides an understanding of how populism influences parties’ policy issue focus and what intermediates this relationship. Based on data from the Comparative Manifesto Project and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the article reveals the significance and facilitators of policy salience and issue ownership of populist parties. The main argument is that these parties hold policy profiles that they have coherently built over the years by representing policy issues mobilising citizens and aggregating voters. In this sense, they should not merely be seen as anti-establishment actors manoeuvring party systems strategically but also as ideologically driven and policy-purposeful parties. Moreover, populist parties have led efforts in emphasising the most urgent policy issues dictated by crises, making them central to party competition and to their policy profile.
... The main independent variable measures the disparity between voters' and political parties' populism positions. The literature on populism suggests that there are, at least, two common and core elements in the concept of populism: anti-elitism and endorsement of popular sovereignty (Akkerman et al. 2014;Meijers and Zaslove 2021). Therefore, we select all the survey questions related to these elements and construct voter populism scores using a principal component analysis. ...
How do voters’ and political parties’ characteristics on populism affect voters’ estimations of political parties’ left/right ideologies? Following the theories of cognitive projection in social psychology, we argue that the similarity or disparity in populism between voters and political parties affects voters’ estimations of political parties’ left/right ideologies. Using survey and party position data in 15 Western European countries, we find that people locate a political party’s left/right ideological position closer to their own stance than it is in reality when their populism position is similar with the political party’s populist ideology though the substantive size of the projection bias effect is not very large. We also find that this populism effect is larger among people with a low education level, people without political interest, and political parties with an ambiguous left/right ideological position. The results imply cognitive connections between populism and left/right ideology and help us to understand political behaviors that crosscut the traditional left/right ideological dimension.
... Today, populism has become what Claude Levi-Strauss described as a "floating signifier" (Farkas and Schou 2018), often reduced to a convenient catch-all for right-wing political agitation and xenophobia (Brubaker 2020;Frank 2020). Although many scholars agree that in recent years the conceptual precision toward populism has been muddied (Bonikowski et al. 2019;Meijers and Zaslove 2021;Rooduijn 2019), others have argued that conceptual imprecision is indeed helpful, especially when it expands the sphere of academic interest (Arzheimer 2019). ...
... Explanations for populist attitudes typically fall into two major theoretical categories: supply-side and demand-side explanations (Berman 2021). Supply-side theories attribute the rise of populism to systemic changes within democratic governance, particularly the failure of political elites and institutions to adequately address citizens' needs (Meijers and Zaslove 2021). These are top-down explanations, emphasizing the shortcomings of governmental and other institutional actors in the emergence of populism. ...
This study shows that populist attitudes are associated with reduced tolerance for political violence in rural areas of the United States. Using a representative sample from rural counties in the American West, the authors advance conceptual frameworks in populism studies and address the challenges of measuring social phenomena in rural areas. Using structural equation modeling and a “bare bones” measure of populism, the authors test hypotheses on links between economic and sociocultural grievances, ideological conservatism, populist attitudes, and tolerance for political violence. The findings confirm associations among economic grievances, conservatism, and populist attitudes, while showing that populism attenuates the link between economic grievance and tolerance for political violence. Thus, this study reveals an unexpected ideological role of populist attitudes in diminishing support for political violence. This advances sociological understanding of how populism interacts with broader ideological systems in the United States and draws greater attention to how political concepts are operationalized empirically.
... Demand-side studies of populism put the electorate at the centre of attention, in contrast to supply-side research on populism that tends to focus on research questions related to populist leaders and populist parties (see Barta, Boda, and Szikra 2020;Caiani and Graziano 2022;Meijers and Zaslove 2021;Söderlund and Grönlund 2024;Vachudova 2021). There is a growing consensus within this research field that individuals can possess stronger or weaker populist attitudes (Akkerman, Mudde, and Zaslove 2014;Spruyt, Keppens, and van Droogenbroeck 2016;Van Hauwaert and Van Kessel 2018). ...
Demand-side studies of populism, adapting a citizen perspective, have grown exponentially during the last decade as a result of a growing political and academic concern over the potential effects of populism on the political system. Nevertheless, how populist attitudes at the citizen level are related to actual proposals for system-change is a surprisingly neglected research topic. One such proposal concerns the future of multiple-mandate-holding (MMH), i.e. the simultaneous exercise of at least two directly elected political functions, a controversial practice in many parts of Europe. By utilizing cross-sectional panel data gathered in Finland in 2022-2023, a country characterized by extensive MMH among Members of Parliament, this study seeks to explore whether and how populist attitudes are related to the idea of representational pluralism in the political system, defined as the level of diversity among directly elected political representatives active within the political system. Using statistical analyses, we confirm our hypothesis that stronger populist attitudes are clearly associated with weaker support for MMH in general and stronger support for limiting the scope of MMH specifically. Our findings contribute to the theory-building of demand-side populism by showing that populist attitudes are also associated with the idea of representational pluralism.
... Our case selection is based on the similar levels of personalization within their three parent parties -SMER-SD, ĽSNS and OĽaNO, according to the Populism and Political Parties Database. The available data from the Populism and Political Parties Database (Meijers & Zaslove, 2021) indicate that these three parent parties are highly personalized with low IPD (see Figure 1 for details). Indeed, scholars have noted the dominance of party leaders within the party structures of SMER-SD and OĽaNO (Rybář & Spáč, 2020). ...
Many new parties are electorally succeeding across European party systems, including in post-communist countries. This is especially true in Slovakia, where it is accompanied by another very specific phenomenon, which in our perspective defines recent parliamentary elections – the prevalence of new breakaway parties. These newly formed parties created by splitting from parliamentary parties are now competing alongside them in early parliamentary elections. The 2020-2023 period, in addition to seeing the fall of governments, and a general political crisis and instability, was also characterized by frequent party factionalism. During this period, turbulent development within SMER-SD, ĽSNS and OĽaNO translated into the formation of three new parties – HLAS-SD, Republika, and the Democrats, which represent our case studies. The aim of our paper is to analyse how these new breakaway parties differ from their original parties organizationally, in the processes associated with intra-party democracy (IPD). We empirically explore their leadership selection, candidate selection and membership policies. The existing data (based on the Populism and Political Parties Database) indicate that their three parent parties are highly personalized with low IPD. The findings of our comparative analysis reveal that the new breakaway parties have incorporated more transparent approaches to intraparty processes compared to their parent parties. However, concerning candidate selection, they have not embraced greater inclusiveness than the parties they originated from. Overall, despite a noticeable trend towards intraparty depersonalization, the opportunity for a broader membership base to participate in the decision making process remains largely unrealized.
... First, taking a deductive approach, I develop a framework for conceptualizing and measuring judicial populism that enables its empirical identification across time, jurisdictions, and issue areas, in relative rather than absolute or categorical terms. To do so, I draw from works on judicial activism and from the broader literature on (political) populism that identify these concepts, respectively, as gradational rather than binary (see, for example, Cohn and Kremnitzer 2005;Moffitt 2016;Meijers and Zaslove 2021). Building on insights from authors such as Jan Jagers and Stefaan Walgrave (2007), Benjamin Moffitt (2016), and Daniele Caramani (2017), I argue that, particularly in the judicial sphere, populism is best understood as a form of political communication or performance, one that departs from technocratic norms and methods to present judges and their rulings as proximate and responsive to ordinary people. ...
... Beyond this thinnest "common denominator," many definitions of populism include a Manichean conception of the "pure people" versus the "corrupt elite," in which leaders champion the former against the latter (Mudde 2004;Müller 2016). In such a moralized binary view, the interests of the people are often presented as unitary and, thus, easily represented by a single leader or party (Meijers and Zaslove 2021). As such, populism is often defined as anti-pluralist (Müller 2016;Caramani 2017;Norris 2020). ...
... Fewer or more components might be offered in a future elaboration of this approach. 15 Eventually, a coding scheme based on these elements would enable a comprehensive assessment of the performance of judges or courts, similar to what 14 A sophisticated measurement strategy could code for constitutive components of the concept, allowing for comparisons of each element separately or in the aggregate (see, for example, Oliver and Rahn 2016;Meijers and Zaslove 2021). 15 It should be noted that my tentative set is mostly of the "political-cultural" sort, as proposed by Pierre Ostiguy (2017) but could potentially include more "socio-cultural" elements. ...
A growing number of analysts use the term “judicial populism” to refer to judicial behavior that they find problematic, but they apply it to divergent phenomena and find it objectionable for different reasons. What, then, is judicial populism, and when and why should it be of concern? Taking a deductive approach, I argue that judicial populism is best understood as a performance/discursive style, analytically distinct from judicial activism. Like judicial activism, it is a gradational concept, and both populism and activism may present in judicial behavior to different degrees and in different combinations. To illustrate, I develop a grid matrix with an X-axis that runs from maximal restraint/deference to maximal creativity/dominance in the content of judicial rulings (the “what”) and a Y-axis that runs from maximally removed and technocratic to maximally proximate and publicly oriented in the performance or communication of the judicial role (the “how”). This two-dimensional framework enables nuanced comparison of judicial behavior in disparate times, places, and issue areas, illuminating relative variations and trends therein. It also helps to illustrate that, from a pluralist and deliberative democratic perspective, it is not judicial populism per se that should trouble democrats but, rather, populist behavior taken to extremes.
... Olivas Osuna critiques the traditional focus on the electoral performance of Eurosceptic parties and their policy impacts, advocating for a deeper exploration of the discursive and ideational dimensions of Euroscepticism. He recom mends the use of analytical techniques scholars in the field of populism have employed to measure and compare political discourses and communications (Bernhard and Kriesi, 2019;Meijers and Zaslove, 2021;Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011) as well as citizens atti tudes and beliefs (Akkerman et al., 2014;Elchardus and Spruyt, 2016;Schulz et al., 2018). Olivas Osuna illustrates how Eurosceptic identities are constructed through the creation of antagonisms and political frontiers, using vague and adaptable symbols to unify diverse grievances against both real and perceived threats (Laclau, 2005;Olivas Osuna, 2024). ...
This article explores the intersection of structural and actor-oriented explanations of populism through a territorial perspective, focusing on populist Euroscepticism. It builds on findings from the ‘Local Mobilisation Against the EU. Territorial Dimensions of Populist Euroscepticism’ (EULOC) project, which examined local drivers and manifestations of populism and Euroscepticism across Europe. The article highlights the importance of analysing both the supply and demand sides of populist Euroscepticism, emphasising the role of geographic inequalities, local socio-economic trajectories and collective identities. By integrating national, regional and local case studies, the article aims to bridge the divide between structural and actor-oriented approaches, offering a more comprehensive understanding of populist Euroscepticism. This approach seeks to prevent reductionist arguments and contributes to broader discussions on political participation, representation and the dynamics of populist movements in Europe. The article underscores the need for nuanced, multi-layered research that considers the unique socio-political dynamics of different regions and the impact of local contexts on the development of Eurosceptic sentiments.
... see Table 1), which presents the positions of 250 parties from 28 European countries on key attributes of populism based on the survey of 294 experts. Further details on the POPPA study can be found in Meijers and Zaslove (2021). ...
Objective
We aimed to predict the trend of populist orientations and votes in Italy before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic.
Method
Using the Consequences of COVID‐19 (COCO) data set (quota sample of the Italian adult population), we conducted a 3.5‐year, seven‐wave longitudinal study, with one wave before the pandemic (June 2019) and six waves during the pandemic (April and October 2020, April and October 2021, and April and October 2022).
Results
Two latent growth analyses have shown that in the period we considered the degree of populism of the party chosen for the vote decreased linearly; this change was positively associated with the anxiety of the participants. Conversely, populist orientations remained stable.
Conclusion
The COVID‐19 pandemic plausibly contributed to a superficial and temporary halt to the long populist wave that hit Italy in the last decades, as demonstrated by the decrease in populist vote choices concomitant with a persistent substrate of populist orientations.
