Descripció
Populism is the “40 is the new 30” of political research, buzzing for the last two decades with what seems as an unfading energy. A lot of attention has been paid todefining the phenomena and outlining its general features. Significantly less noticehas been paid to political parties. Even less work has been done on comparative party populism in contemporary Europe, one that would take into consideration social, political and historical aspects. This paper fills this void. Examining sixteenEuropean populist parties and movements across the continent, we argue that whileall adhere to the standard populist framework, there is not one but four populisms incontemporary Europe. We demonstrate our argument by positioning the caseselection against the following dichotomies: exclusionary v. inclusionary populism,authoritarian v. non-authoritarian populism, strong nativist v. weak nativist populism, and radical democratic v. conspiratorial populism. Based on thesevariables, we introduce four types of party populism: (1) radical right-wing populist parties, which are exclusionary, authoritarian with a strong nativist appeal and whichuse conspiratory explanations of liberal democracy; (2) radical left-wing populists,which are inclusionary, non-authoritarian with a weak nativist appeal and use aradical democratic approach; (3) illiberal (post-communist) populist parties, whichare exclusionary with strong a nativist appeal and use conspiratory explanations ofliberal democracy; (4) anti-establishment populists and political entrepreneurs,which are non-authoritarian with a weak nativist appeal and tend to have radicaldemocratic appeal (exclusionary variable is rather inconclusive due to their lack ofideology).
