‘Exclusionary welfarism’: a new programmatic agenda for populist right-wing parties?

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article introduces a novel analytical framework to compare the changing positions of five populist right-wing parties in the field of welfare policies. Results outline that a novel programmatic approach on the socio economic dimension materialised, which clearly departs from traditional right wing ideologies. We call it ‘exclusionary welfarism’, characterised by (i) high salience of welfare issues, (ii) strong support for welfare state expansion, (iii) low support for the role of the market in welfare provision and (iv) the adoption of a chauvinistic stance in social policies. Furthermore, different profiles of exclusionary populist parties emerge. In fact, if both the salience of welfare issues and welfare chauvinism are shared across all parties’ manifestos considered here, the analysis shows high heterogeneity and varieties of exclusionary populist approaches among populist right-wing parties for what concerns the roles of the two main institutional spheres in welfare provision: state and market.