A populist turn in the European left. What is new, and what is not?

Abstract

ABSTRACT What is left-wing populism? Is it just populist rhetoric grafted onto a left-wing ideology? How can we distinguish the populist left from the socialist left, the communist left and the radical left? Is the difference between the populist left and the non-populist left one of degree or of nature? How can we explain the populist turn taken by part of the European left in the mid-2010s? What was the breeding ground for these new political forces? And what links do these European left-wing populist movements have with the similar forces that emerged ten years earlier in Latin America? In order to answer these questions, this article draws on a broad review of left-wing populism studies literature and on five years of fieldwork within two prototypical contemporary left-wing populist forces (Podemos and La France Insoumise). The result is a thick conception of the phenomenon and a set of six differences between populist and non-populist lefts.