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Populist arguments have become more pervasive in Western European countries

Rooduijn, M. (2015) “Populist arguments have become more pervasive in Western European countries“, LSE EUROPP, 29 January.

 

To what extent has populism become a feature of public debates in European countries? Matthijs Rooduijn employs content analysis to assess the frequency of populist statements in newspaper articles in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK. He concludes that populism is more widespread in these countries than previously assumed, with populist parties not only enjoying more electoral success, but populist messages also becoming more pervasive in public discourse.

Radical right-wing parties have become increasingly successful in Western Europe; UKIP in the UK, the Front National in France and the Freedom Party in the Netherlands fare very well in opinion polls. Similarly, radical left-wing parties like Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece are increasingly popular among voters, underlined by Syriza’s victory in the Greek elections on 25 January. Although these parties differ from each other in many respects, they also have something in common: they all express a populist message. While a lot has already been written about populist parties, relatively little is known about the extent to which this populist message has become widespread beyond the party political sphere. To what extent has the populist message affected public debates in Western Europe? And do these debates become more populist when populist parties are successful? In a recent study I examine these questions.

Although scholars still quarrel about the question of how to define populism, they increasingly agree that populism can best be defined as a political message concerning the antagonistic relationship between the (good) people and the (evil) elite. The Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde, for instance, argues that populism is “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people”. The central elements of the populist message are ‘people-centrism’ and ‘anti-elitism’. Populism is people-centrist because it emphasises the idea of popular sovereignty and argues that the popular will should be the point of departure for every political decision. Populism is anti-elitist because the elite (be it a political, economic or cultural elite) is criticised for having lost touch with the people. The elite is accused of being corrupt, incompetent, arrogant and/or selfish.

 

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