Economic crisis and the variety of populist response: evidence from Greece,Portugal and Spain

Abstract

Greece, Portugal and Spain are among the countries worst hit by the 2008 Great Recession, followed by significant electoral and political turmoil. However, one of the dimensions in which they differ is the presence and varieties of populism in parties’ political proposals. Drawing on holistic coding of party manifestos, we assess the varying presence of populist rhetoric in mainstream and challenger parties before and after the 2008 economic downturn. Our empirical findings show that populism is much higher in Greece compared to Spain and Portugal. We do not find a significant impact of the crisis as the degree of populism remains rather stable in Greece and Portugal, while it increases in Spain, mainly due to the rise of new populist forces. The study confirms that populist rhetoric is a strategy adopted mainly by challenger and ideologically radical parties. In addition, inclusionary populism is the predominant flavour of populist parties in new Southern Europe, although exclusionary populism is present to a lesser extent in the Greek case. We contend that the interaction between the national context – namely the ideological legacy of parties and the main dimensions of competition – and the strategic options of party leadership is crucial for explaining cross-country variation in the intensity of populism and the specific issues that characterise populist discourse.     

The double-edged sword: the political appropriation of the concept of populism

ABSTRACT

The concept of populism has been in use in political debate for over a century. Because ‘populist’ is often used in a pejorative sense today, those to whom it is applied to tend to reject it. However, a closer look at the history of the concept reveals that while its meaning may fluctuate and even be dismissed as irrelevant, its use can become a political tool. This study of the use of ‘populism’ refrains from making value judgments on the actual populist nature of certain parties or political tendencies. Instead, it analyzes uses of the concept from a historical perspective. Special emphasis is placed on politicians who chose to define themselves as populist, or accept the label imposed by others, with particular focus on the Finns Party of Finland. Such self-identified populists draw their conceptions of populism from the ever-growing field of populism research, striving to appropriate and realize what scholars have only hypothetically described as a professed ideal. A closer look at the uses of populism as a political self-identity forces us to rethink its uses as a pejorative, or as an analytical, concept.     

‘I,the people’: a deflationary interpretation of populism,Trump and the United States constitution

This paper advances a deflationary interpretation of populism, Donald Trump and the United States Constitution. It accepts that Trump utilizes a populist pose but rejects populism as too reductive for understanding his ascension and constitutional challenge. First, it argues that, although he merits the designation, Trump reveals more about populism than populism does about him. Trump illustrates populism’s conceptual elasticity, but employing it as a frame to understand him imposes coherence upon a figure whose monetized politics are chaotic, shallow and unanchored by principle. Second, populism provides a necessary but insufficient condition for critically explaining Trump’s ascension, either in terms of electoral populism or populism in power. Third, while democratic deconsolidation under Trump’s presidency cannot be discounted, the Constitution remains resilient in most important respects. A dispassionate constitutional sociology counsels a deflationary understanding rather than an uncritical alarmism that too frequently reproduces and reinforces the darker aspects of Trump’s populist political logic.     

Assessing the diversity of anti-establishment and populist politics in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The more populism enters public debates, the more it needs close scrutiny. Central and Eastern Europe offers a useful context for exploring the diversity of parties identified as populist. Anti-establishment rhetoric provides a suitable conceptual starting point because of its pervasive role in the region’s political discourse. Using a new expert survey, this article details the relationship between anti-establishment salience and political positions, showing that anti-establishment parties occupy a full range across both economic and cultural dimensions and many occupy more centrist positions. Narrowing the focus to content analysis of anti-establishment parties’ thin ideology in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, it is concurrently found that for many actors (including those usually labelled as populist) anti-establishment rhetoric is indeed predominant, yet not always extensively combined with other elements of populism: people-centrism and invocation of general will. The findings are important for understanding multiple varieties of anti-establishment politics also beyond the region.     

Don't call me a populist! The meaning of populism for western European parties and politicians

In recent years a common understanding of the core elements of populist communication has been achieved in academia. Yet, we know less about how the term populism is used by political parties themselves, despite widespread assumptions about the use of populism as a battle term to disqualify competitors. Based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of Twitter content from mainstream and populist actors in six western European countries, this study finds that populism is indeed used by mainstream parties in a pejorative way in order to label political competitors. Yet, not only populist but also mainstream competitors are labeled populist by the center parties linking a variety of different negative meanings to the term, which are often of a less demonizing nature not questioning the legitimacy of others. Populists in Italy and France refer to the term in a positive way, while Spanish and German populists rather reject the label.     

Rethinking Anti-Immigration Rhetoric after the Oslo and Utøya Terror Attacks

This article examines right-wing populism and populist rhetoric in Norway preceding the July 22, 2011 terror attacks at Utøya and in Oslo. It describes how the mainstream media, academics, and political parties have appealed to the public in an increasingly populist fashion and have spread fear about immigration, immigrants, and integration. It argues that while the populist right-wing Progress Party has adopted immigration and integration as its main cause and has gained support because of it, the Progress Party alone cannot be blamed for the widespread xenophobia in Norway. The media are also responsible for the way immigration, culture, and race have been reported, as are a wide range of politicians for formulating increasingly stricter immigration policies. In the aftermath of July 22 politicians became acutely concerned about their own anti-immigrant rhetoric and how it may have influenced the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. A broad consensus to address and change the language used in the immigration debate was agreed upon; more openness and more democracy was promised. Much has changed, but even more has stayed the same in Norwegian politics and attitudes to immigration and Islam.     

Gender,populist attitudes,and voting: explaining the gender gap in voting for populist radical right and populist radical left parties

Empirical studies have demonstrated that compared to almost all other parties, populist radical right (PRR) parties draw more votes from men than from women. However, the two dominant explanations that are generally advanced to explain this disparity – gender differences regarding socio-economic position and lower perceptions regarding the threat of immigrants – cannot fully explain the difference. The article contends that it might actually be gender differences regarding the conceptualisation of society and politics – populist attitudes – that explain the gender gap. Thus, the gap may be due, in part, to differences in socialisation. The article analyses EES 2014 data on voting for the populist radical right and the populist radical left in nine European countries. Across countries, the gender gap in voting for the PRR is indeed partly explained by populist attitudes. For populist radical left parties, the results are less clear, suggesting that populism has different meanings to voters on the left and on the right.     

Populism and the politics of the extraordinary in Latin America

Building on past and current experiences of populism in Latin America, this article makes four arguments. First, whereas populist movements seeking power promise to democratize society by challenging the legitimacy of exclusionary institutions, populist governments often include the excluded at the cost of disfiguring democracy. Second, during populist events the meanings of the ambiguous term ‘the people’ are disputed. When social movements are weak, and when the institutions of liberal democracy are discredited, a populist leader could attempt to become the embodiment of the will of the people. Third, even though the concept of the people is central to populism, it could be constructed differently. It could be imagined as heterogeneous and plural, or as the people-as-one, as an entity that shares one identity and interest that could be embodied in a leader. Fourth, populism shares with fascism an imaginary construction of the people-as-one. Yet differently from fascism, which staged extraordinary politics as war against internal and external enemies, populists staged their extraordinariness as winning popular elections and did not establish dictatorships.     

Populism and Connectivism: An Analysis of the Sanders and Trump Nomination Campaigns

This paper is an analysis of the Trump and Sanders’ campaigns for the presidential nomination of their respective parties. It studies the structure of the relationship between the campaign and its supporters through communication on each candidate’s Facebook page. While both campaigns have been termed populist, we differentiate populism from connectivism and develop an account of a connective campaign as a species of connective action. Whereas populism is predicated on a singular people, connectivity involves the acceptance and recognition of difference as a resource for political activity. Whereas populism involves a hierarchical authority relationship, connectivity is based on a reciprocal authority relationship. Finally, populism articulates an anti-establishment demand while connective campaigns demand for citizens to have the capacity for consequential engagement with political life. The empirical results demonstrate that connectivism and populism are distinct in practice and that these attributes hang together as two separate concepts. Further, we find that Trump’s campaign communications emphasize populist themes, for Sanders such themes are limited and in the shadow of connectivism.     

The Politics of Unpolitics

Scholars of populism have suggested that it might best be described as ‘unpolitical’, rather than apolitical or anti-political. This term captures the populist claim to stand morally above the sphere of politics (which it deems inherently corrupting), while being simultaneously drawn to engage in it. But such ambivalence towards politics is not limited to populist actors; indeed, ‘unpolitics’ might be considered intrinsic to British political culture. Most obviously, Conservatives historically portrayed themselves as unsullied by ideology, above party competition, and deriving their values from embodied experience rather than political reasoning. But, while traditional Conservative unpolitics emphasised hierarchy, new anti-deferential forms of unpolitics emerged in the postwar period. These were based on claims to be ‘ordinary’, which was defined in opposition to the ‘political’ in ways that made the latter seem necessarily illegitimate. Focussing on unpolitics shows that populism grew out of mainstream British political culture, as well as in opposition to it.     

Beyond protest and discontent: A cross‐national analysis of the effect of populist attitudes and issue positions on populist party support

Studies on populist parties – or ‘supply‐side populism’ more generally – are numerous. Nevertheless, the connection with demand‐side dynamics, and particularly the populist characteristics or tendencies of the electorate, requires more scholarly attention. This article examines in more detail the conditions underlying the support for populist parties, and in particular the role of populist attitudes amongst citizens. It asks two core questions: (1) are populist party supporters characterised by stronger populist attitudes than other party supporters, and (2) to what extent do populist (and other) attitudes contribute to their party preference? The analysis uses fixed effect models and relies on a cross‐sectional research design that uses unique survey data from 2015 and includes nine European countries. The results are threefold. First, in line with single‐country studies, populist attitudes are prominent among supporters of left‐ and right‐wing populist parties in particular. Second, populist attitudes are important predictors of populist party support in addition to left‐wing socioeconomic issue positions for left‐wing populist parties, and authoritarian and anti‐immigration issue positions for right‐wing populist parties. Third, populist attitudes moderate the effect of issue positions on the support for populist parties, particularly for individuals whose positions are further removed from the extreme ends of the economic or cultural policy scale. These findings suggest that strong populist attitudes may encourage some voters to support a populist party whose issue positions are incongruous with their own policy‐related preferences.     

Expressing or fuelling discontent? The relationship between populist voting and political discontent

Many studies have found that political discontent and populist voting are positively related. Yet, an important shortcoming of these studies is that they interpret the correlation between these two phenomena as evidence that existing feelings of political discontent contribute to the support for populist parties. We argue that there is also a causal effect in the opposite direction: Populist parties fuel political discontent by exposing their supporters to a populist message in which they criticize the elite. Our study links individual level data on political discontent of voters to the populist message of the party they intend to vote for, employing various operationalizations of populism. Based on a 6-wave panel study from the Netherlands (2008–2013), we conclude that political discontent is both cause and consequence of the rise of populist parties. Our findings imply that the effect of political discontent on populist voting has been overestimated in many previous studies.     

To whom are “the people” opposed? Conceptualizing and measuring citizens’ populist attitudes as a multidimensional construct

ABSTRACT

Previous research has predominantly measured populist attitudes as a one-dimensional concept, tapping into the distinction between the ordinary people and the culprit elites. With growing differentiation of populist viewpoints across the globe, this unidimensional approach may not reflect the multifaceted reality of the people’s populism. Most importantly, albeit paramount in right-wing populist rhetoric, exclusionist perceptions of others threatening the monocultural nation of the people are typically not captured in one-dimensional conceptualizations. To assess more precisely how populist attitudes are structured, we collected original survey data (N?=?809) among a representative sample of Dutch citizens. Using Multidimensional Scaling and Confirmatory Factor Analysis, we propose a two-dimensional structure: anti-establishment and exclusionism. This study further demonstrates how salient these different populist attitudes are among which voters.     

The power of populism: the Greek case

Abstract. PASOK's rise to power as well as its performance in office are analyzed in terms of the party's ability to construct a populist discourse. The political context and the structure of Greek society are presented as the main factors that enabled PASOK to articulate a populist discourse. It is argued that PASOK's performance in office served to expose its populist logic and that the party's policies in the field of the economy, labour and education show how populism affects political practice. PASOK's vagueness and contradictory policies are not accidental but the result of a populist logic that developed within specific social conditions and serves specific interests.     

Is populism the third dimension? The quest for political alliances in post-crisis Spain

In this article, we defend the ideational approach to populism by arguing that populist discourses have consequences for government formation and the coalition choices of political parties. Using two attempts of government formation in Spain during 2016 as an example, we show that incorporating a populist dimension of competition alongside the two traditional relevant cleavages in Spain (left-right and center-periphery) can successfully explain agreements where approaches restricted to the two traditional dimensions fail. Essentially, populism forms a third, ideational dimension with its own content, one that can be considered alongside thick ideological dimensions in formal spatial analysis, shaping alliances among political parties.     

The Populist Surge in Post‐Democratic Times: Theoretical and Political Challenges

Populism has often been described as a great challenge and threat to Western democracies. Not surprisingly, at a time in which we are witnessing a significant rise in populist actors in Europe and the US, scientific analyses and commentary regarding populism have become particularly popular and, indeed, necessary. My aim in this article is to offer a brief yet comprehensive overview of the ongoing debates in a bid to problematise the supposed ‘imminent threat’ of populism in light of recent developments within the political systems and societies of established democracies, especially under conditions of crisis. I understand populism as a specific type of discourse, and thus as a way—among others—of doing politics and appealing to groups of people. Thus, I highlight the varying orientations that populist movements might take, depending on the ideological traditions with which they are closely articulated and the sociopolitical environment in which they manifest. Last, I relate the ‘populist surge’ to discussions regarding post‐democracy.     

Populists,Producers and the Politics of Rentiership

Populism studies finds itself in a crisis of originality. While some scholars have signalled over-usage, others have argued that by contextualising populism, we are able to specify our own ‘populist moment’ and remedy the term’s slipperiness. This article opts for the latter tactic through a comparison of two aspects of contemporary populism with late nineteenth century precedents. In the late nineteenth century, the American People’s Party pioneered a mode of mass politics anchored in agrarian and industrial labour which launched the term ‘populism’ in Western discourse. Contemporary populists show rhetorical and political overlap with this template, but also come up against two new constraints: (1) a stagnant capitalism increasingly centred on ‘rentiership’; and (2) a disorganised civil society. These factors render today’s populism resistant to analogy but also conceptually more specific, sharpening the contours of our populist moment.     

An unjustified bad reputation? The Dark Triad and support for populism

While research concludes that populist leaders stand out for their “dark” personalities, studies on the psychological underpinnings of citizens’ populist attitudes are scant and inconclusive, with some agreement on the association between disagreeableness and populist attitudes. By bringing the Dark Triad personality traits of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism into the picture, we aim to answer whether populist citizens -like populist leaders-score higher in this dark traits, and whether the addition of the Dark Triad helps to better understanding the populist personality. Using an online Spanish sample, our analyses find that using the Dark Triad does indeed add to our understanding of populist attitudes. In opposition to widespread intuitions about the character of populists, we find that psychopathy and Machiavellianism are negatively associated with support for populism, with only narcissism being positively related to the people-centric dimension of populist attitudes.     

政党代表性危机与西方国家民粹主义的兴起

西方国家民粹主义的兴起,是代表性危机的结果。从政党政治的角度,主流政党疏离社会、融入国家,由代表组织转变为统治机构,导致政治回应性的弱化。主流政党代表功能的萎缩,促使社会成员转向民粹主义的替代模式。为了控制政策议程,民粹主义政党仍然需要遵循选举政治的逻辑。民粹主义固然挑战了主流的民主模式,但它同样可以在调整国家与社会关系的基础上重构政党体制,扩展政治代表的渠道。只有客观地分析国家、社会与政党在代表性建构中的互动机制,才能准确地认识民粹主义的社会基础及其发展趋势。